“If you wish to effect repairs and depart Amnion space safely, you must deliver the human offspring, Davies Hyland, as agreed.”
In recognition and horror, Morn hissed, “Nick, you can’t!”
He silenced her with a slash of his hand.
Deaf to her protest, the impersonal voice went on, “The ‘mutinous action’ of your subordinates has postponed this requirement, not canceled it. You will concede him as recompense for safe conduct from Amnion space—and for Amnion credit which you have obtained by culpable means. To accomplish this, you must decelerate.
“You are instructed to match velocity with Amnion defensive Calm Horizons. When you have done so, you will transfer the human offspring, Davies Hyland. Then you will be escorted to Thanatos Minor—or to the borders of human space, if you prefer.”
Nick, no.
The alien voice continued implacably, “Unless Amnion requirements are satisfied, you will be destroyed. No reply or protest will be heeded. Only deceleration is acceptable.”
“Lag!” Nick demanded as soon as the transmission stopped. “What’s the lag?”
Lind was prompt. “Nine minutes there and back, give or take. They heard us in five. We got their answer in four.”
“So they’ve been committed to their new course for at least four minutes?”
“Right,” Allum and Pastille said in unison.
“Lind, copy this.” Nick grinned savagely. “‘Captain Nick Succorso to Amnion warship Calm Horizons. Get a horse.’ Send it.”
Morn sat staring at him, as light-headed as if she were about to pass out.
He hit the intercom. “Mikka, you ready?”
“Standing by,” she answered.
“Don’t launch yet. Secure for maneuvers.”
At once he faced Pastille again. “All right, ace. Do it again. Gentle course correction, no more than one g. Put us back on a straight line for Thanatos Minor.”
“But they’ll just—” the helm third began. Morn could see him sweating in his whiskers.
“‘Slow brisance thrust,’” snorted Malda. “Get it through your head.” She may have been trying to spare Pastille Nick’s ire. “Even if they can accelerate forever, they do it slowly.”
“We’re using their first course correction against them.” Nick’s tone was casual, but the look in his eyes suggested that Pastille wouldn’t live much longer. “Their own inertia will prevent them from being able to intercept us.
“Are you satisfied”—he made the word sound Amnion—“or do you want to be relieved?”
In other words, Morn thought dumbly as Pastille worked, the only way Calm Horizons could stop Captain’s Fancy was with a long-range broadside.
Nick had set that up. He’d forced the Amnion into a position where their only choice was to fire. And their target was moving at an unprecedented speed.
He had no intention of surrendering Davies.
For some reason, she couldn’t breathe. When the course correction hit, she nearly flopped out of her seat, not because the g was hard, but because her head was already reeling.
“Done,” Pastille said for the second time, sounding scared.
Through the intercom, Nick told Mikka, “Now!”
Almost immediately she replied, “They’re launched. Give me twenty seconds to seal the lock.”
“Do it,” he said, and clicked her off.
Then he addressed the bridge. “Now we’re committed. It’s too late to back down. If anybody screws up, we’re all fried. Morn, figure out how much time that fucker needs to get in firing position. Once they see us shift, they’ll know they can’t catch us. I want you to calculate their best shot at us.
“Allum, tell me the exact instant you see them start shifting themselves.
“Pastille, when I give the word, I want straight one-g braking thrust. No more than that. I want it for exactly ten seconds. Then cut it.
“Malda, the instant those ten seconds are up, fire the static mines.
“Morn?”
Morn had difficulty pushing herself upright. She tried to say, “I’m all right,” but the words didn’t make any sound. Adrenaline seemed to go off in her head like small suns, distorting her vision, cramping her lungs. Withdrawal—Dependent on artificial control, her synapses had apparently forgotten how to manage themselves. She couldn’t tell the difference between her readouts and her nightmares
her father or her son begging
Morn, save us.
Oh, sure. How could she do that? She couldn’t even save herself. She was being torn down to her subatomic particles, dispersed by betrayal into the immedicable gap between her addiction and her mortality.
“Morn!” Nick yelled in sudden alarm, “don’t touch that board!”
She wasn’t gapsick; but he reached her before she had a chance to say so. He caught hold of her wrists, jerked them away from the console, shoved her back in her seat.
At the same time Liete Corregio said stolidly, “It’s up to you, Pastille. Show us you’re worth having around. Calculate what that warship has to do to get their best shot at us. If you can pull it off, I’ll ask Nick to forgive you.”
“I’m all right,” Morn whispered into Nick’s strained face.
“No, you’re not,” he retorted.
Too light-headed and wracked to lie, she murmured, “It’s not gapsickness. It’s withdrawal.”
You think I’ve played dirty with you. What do you think I’ve done with myself?
“I can do my job,” she croaked past her thick tongue.
“The hell you can.”
All she could see was the pale blur of Nick’s face.
“Four minutes.” She snagged the number out of her whirling head. “They need four minutes.”
“Four,” Morn insisted, “if their computers are better than ours.”
“They’re better,” Nick said out of the blur.
“All right, four,” Pastille put in. “A broadside will take only another minute to hit us. We’ll be that close. Say eight and a half minutes from our course correction. That’s all approximate. I can do a first-order hypothetical countdown to improve the guess.”
“I can do it.” Morn fought to focus her eyes. “Let me do my job.”
Nick held her hard, as if he were trying to estimate her condition by the tension in her arms. Then, abruptly, he leaned close to her, put his cheek to hers. “You bitch,” he breathed against her ear. “It’s nice to see you suffering for a change.”
Dropping her wrists, he walked back around the bridge to stand beside Liete at the command station.
Morn braced herself on the sides of the console and tried to find the still place in the center of her spinning mind.
A first-order hypothetical countdown. An estimate of the moment when Calm Horizons would fire—an estimate in which the only allowed variable was time-dilation. Captain’s Fancy’s computers had been working for at least a day now to gauge that variable. She ought to be able to run a countdown that was reasonably accurate.
If she could think.
But “reasonably accurate” wouldn’t be good enough. She had to do better than that.
She couldn’t think. Whenever she tried, anxiety slammed through her, and her vision jolted out of focus.
She didn’t need to think. Somewhere in her computer were programs that could think for her. All she had to do was use them.
Morn, save us.
Utter anguish.
Hoping to counteract the phosphene dance, she rubbed her eyes roughly. Then she began calling data to her board.
Start the countdown from the moment of course correction: anchor everything on that instant. How much time was left? Seven minutes? Six? She could check, but she didn’t bother. Watching her life slip away would only increase her panic.
The speed of light: that was constant. Take as constant everything Captain’s Fancy knew about Amnion warships in general; about Calm Horizons in particular. Take as constant the decision to destroy Captain’s Fanc
y—and the need for the best obtainable angle of fire. And time-dilation itself was constant: the two ships’ respective abilities to cope with it were the only true variables. Treat them as one.
Muster the data. Initiate the calculations.
Hit all the right keys.
Please.
“Got it,” she said, although she wasn’t sure she spoke loud enough for anyone to hear her. “It’s on the screen. It might not run steadily. I’ve put in an automatic self-test and correction. The computer will estimate the accuracy of its own time-dilation compensations. Then it’ll adjust the countdown.”
All her joints had begun to ache. The sensation of fever was growing stronger, and her head throbbed. She needed water, but didn’t have the strength to ask for it. She closed her eyes to give herself a moment’s rest.
Like a voice in a dream, she heard Liete say, “Better check it, Pastille.”
Almost immediately the helm third responded, “It looks right. I don’t know how she does it. The last time I went through withdrawal, I couldn’t find my head with both hands. That ‘self-test and correction’ is a great idea.”
Involuntarily Morn went to sleep—
—and thrashed awake again as if someone had set a stunprod to her chest. When she squeezed her sight clear enough to see the screens, she found that the moment she’d predicted for Calm Horizons to fire had almost come. If she were right, the broadside would be on its way in ninety seconds.
One hundred fifty seconds to destruction.
Super-light proton fire was light-constant; as fast as scan. Captain’s Fancy would get no warning before the barrage arrived.
Pastille and Malda hunched over their boards; Allum scrutinized his scan readouts. Everyone else studied the screens. But nobody had anything to do. Except wait.
As they watched, the computer’s self-correction program took the countdown ahead by fifteen seconds.
Without shifting his gaze, Nick said, “Pastille, I hope you’re ready.”
“If I get any readier,” the helm third muttered thinly, “I’ll pass out.”
“Malda?” Nick asked.
The targ first jerked a nod.
“Isn’t this fun?” Nick sounded suddenly happy. “If we aren’t going to survive, we won’t know it until we’re already dead.”
One minute forty seconds.
Nick, Morn said. Let me talk to Davies. Let me say good-bye. But her dry throat locked the words inside her.
The countdown kicked ahead another eight seconds.
“On my word, Pastille,” Nick warned. “Exactly on my word.
“Malda, you’re on your own.
“Have you noticed,” he remarked conversationally, “that every time the countdown shifts, it gets shorter? Never longer. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Maybe our figures are too generous. Maybe we’re closer to dying than we think.”
One minute ten.
Morn had the impression that she’d given up breathing. It didn’t seem worth the effort. For one clear moment she could say honestly that it made no difference to her whether she lived or died. The Amnion were welcome to whatever remained after the broadside hit.
There were still twenty seconds left on the screen when Nick said like the crack of a whip, “Now.”
Pastille hit braking thrust so fast that Morn sprawled onto her console.
The static mines swept ahead, taking Captain’s Fancy’s place in the warship’s projections.
Ten.
Nine.
The new g wasn’t much; Morn knew that. It felt strong because it pulled her at right angles to the ship’s gravity; but it wasn’t heavy. Surely it wasn’t heavy enough to make her sick. And yet she couldn’t lift her head off the board.
Eight.
Seven.
Six.
Complex g and zone implant addiction withdrawal. Together they were too much for her. She felt herself spreading out and away, ahead into the dark; riding a flight of primed static mines. When they went off, her brain would burst.
Her mother had died like this.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Nothing was clear now. She must have been breathing: otherwise she would have lost consciousness. But she couldn’t remember doing it. Maybe gapsickness was preferable after all. Her life was out of her hands. It would have been nice if she could have chosen her own death.
Two.
One.
Malda set off the mines.
At once discernible space disappeared in a blast of electronic chaos.
Only a heartbeat or two later—seven or eight seconds ahead of Morn’s projection—a barrage ripped through the heart of the static. If Captain’s Fancy had been hit, the blast would have stripped her down to her welds and blown her away along the winds of the vacuum. But it never touched her. In fact, blinded by her own mines, she never actually saw the Amnion fire. She only knew of its existence because its intensity transcended the static, drove her sensors white and then blank as their circuitry shut down to protect them. She never knew how narrowly she’d been missed.
As Nick had intended, all Calm Horizons saw was distortion.
By the time the Amnion sensors penetrated the static accurately enough to determine that Captain’s Fancy hadn’t been hit, his ship was beyond reach.
“Well,” he announced in a tone of grim satisfaction, “now we know they’re serious.”
Serious, Morn thought with her head resting on her board. Serious enough to destroy Captain’s Fancy rather than let Davies get away. She probably ought to sit up, but she didn’t really want to. Thanatos Minor was in Amnion space.
Apparently without transition, Nick stood in front of her. “Come on.” He began unbelting her from her seat. “You’re useless here. I’ll take you back to your cabin.”
She found herself clinging to his neck. For some reason, she couldn’t tell which direction was up.
When they reached her cabin, he set her down on the bunk and took out her black box.
“I don’t like doing this.” He was flushed with his success against Calm Horizons, and he wanted to take it out on her. “I would rather watch you go through withdrawal for a while. But I can’t risk it. You might go crazy. And my only alternative is to take you to sickbay for a dose of cat. That won’t work because I don’t know yet how long I’ll want to keep you helpless. The sickbay computer won’t accept a command to dope you indefinitely. So this is my only choice. Let’s see how you like being null-wave for a while.”
As he reached for the buttons, a recognition of her own plight reached her through the static of withdrawal in her head. She croaked weakly, “Wait.”
“Why?” he growled.
Survive. If she let him kill her—or drive her into gapsickness—she would never be able to help Davies. The Amnion weren’t likely to give up now. She fought to speak clearly.
“It’s a short-range transmitter. You can’t turn it on and take it with you. It’ll lose effect.” Please understand. Please. You’ll kill me. “If you don’t leave it here, it won’t work.”
That made sense. Surely he could see that she was telling the truth?
“Tough shit,” he rasped as he keyed the function that was designed to render her catatonic.
Closing her eyes, she slumped inert.
When she was limp, he stretched her out on the bunk and sealed her into its g-sheath so that she wouldn’t be battered to death when Captain’s Fancy began braking. Although he probably couldn’t spare the time, he stood over her for a moment, studying her. Then he breathed like a benediction, “Fucking bitch.”
But he must have believed her. As he left the cabin, he put her zone implant control away in one of the lockers.
Trembling, she forced herself out of the sheath and struggled to her feet.
This was her chance.
No, it wasn’t.
She had to let him think that his control over her was complete. Whatever it cost her, she needed to preserve her last secre
t—needed to conceal the fact that she’d disabled this function. No matter how much she craved the power to possess herself again, she had to refuse it.
So she didn’t try to hide the black box for herself. And she didn’t try to sneak out of her cabin. There was heavy g ahead. She couldn’t know when it would begin, or how long it would last. And she needed rest in the same way that her addiction needed a fix. Without much trouble, she found her zone implant control. In despair, she tapped the buttons that would put her to sleep.
She didn’t set the timer.
Replacing the box where Nick had left it, she dove back to her bunk and managed to reseal the g-sheath before her mind disappeared into the involuntary dark.
ANCILLARY
DOCUMENTATION
THE PREEMPT ACT
The United Mining Companies Pre-Emptive Enabling Act for Security,” known for convenience as, “The Preempt Act,” was passed over the strenuous objections of libertarian politicians on Earth and against the opposition of the local administrations of most human stations: Terminus; Sagittarius Unlimited; SpaceLab Annexe; New Outreach; Valdor Industrial; but, notably, not Com-Mine. Behind its legalisms and jargon, the thrust of the Act was plain: it gave the UMC Police jurisdiction and authority over local Security everywhere except on Earth itself.
Prior to the Act, local Security was required to give cooperation, information, and support to UMCP officers and agents whenever they were on station; but UMCP “turf” only began at the perimeters of station control space—that is, at the effective limits of station fire. The rationale for this restriction had to do with the UMCP Articles of Mission. According to the Articles, the UMCP existed to “combat piracy and secure the defense of space.” Nothing more.
For some time, however, interpretation of the Articles had been predicated, not upon “nothing more,” but upon “nothing less.” In particular, no intelligent effort could be made to “combat piracy” without confronting the problem of the Amnion. As the personnel, resources, and determination of the UMCP expanded, so did its mission, which soon came to include the defense of human space against any crime.
Once this interpretation of the Articles became current, its extension in the Preempt Act grew to seem more and more inevitable. In order to “combat piracy and secure the defense of space,” the UMCP naturally needed to reach inward (toward human illegals, most of whom perforce based their operations on one station or another) as well as outward (toward the Amnion). Within the hierarchy of the UMCP, passage of the Preempt Act was a major priority for a number of years.
Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision Page 38
