“Now Punisher’s found us. And she’s overtaking us fast. Give her thirty minutes, and we’ll be in point-blank range. If she wants to, she can catch us in two hours—if she’s willing to put off deceleration that long and brake that hard.”
Through his datalink, damage-control schematics overlaid potential starfields. Diagnostic parameters and repair protocols marshaled themselves for use. But he also noticed the particular tightening of Morn’s muscles; the squirming shadows behind her gaze when she mentioned the cruiser.
She was a cop. She should have been fucking delighted to see a UMCP warship. But she wasn’t. She dreaded that vessel more than she feared Angus himself.
This was something he needed to understand.
“What does she want?” he asked as soon as Morn paused.
Her eyes flared bitterly. “How should I know?”
A feral grin twisted his mouth. “What does she say she wants? Is she talking?”
Morn sagged a little. Apparently he was pushing close to the sources of her urgency.
“Emergency UMCP hailing,” she answered dully. “We’ve been ordered to slow down, let her come alongside. Maybe her scan hasn’t figured out yet that we’ve lost thrust.”
Again Morn bit her lip. “This is difficult for me,” she said unnecessarily. “I’m torn—
“Angus,” she broke out suddenly, “Min Donner is aboard that ship. Min Donner.” The UMCP Enforcement Division director. “God knows what she’s doing there.” For a moment Morn sounded baffled; wracked by uncertainty. Then she tapped an anger of her own. Weeks of suffering and self-expenditure had whetted her to a knife’s edge. “Somebody saw this coming a hell of a long way off. She must have joined ship before Punisher left UMCPHQ for the Com-Mine belt.
“She’s doing all the talking. Like she thinks we wouldn’t listen to anyone else.”
A long way off, shit, Angus thought. That was the goddamn truth. The same man who’d switched his datacore so that he could rescue Morn and then sent him out with Milos Taverner primed to betray him had planned for this situation as well.
Morn hadn’t stopped. She was saying, “If there’s anybody honest left in the UMCP, it’s her. But I’m just not sure—”
She straightened her shoulders. “Punisher isn’t threatening us. But she has us on targ. Her matter cannon are charged and tracking. She could open fire the minute we say something she doesn’t want to hear.”
Angus recognized the danger; but he refused to be deflected from what he needed to know. “What about Calm Horizons?” he pursued. “Did the cops finish her?”
That question probed Morn even more deeply. She winced in spite of her anger.
“We don’t know. When we went into tach, they were still shooting at each other. Davies says Calm Horizons was hurt. Maybe Punisher got her. Or maybe not. According to Mikka, Punisher looked hurt herself.
“We didn’t see any other ships. I guess VI hadn’t had time to muster a response.”
Angus chewed his concern for Morn while his computer spun scenarios, crunched possibilities: the likelihood that he could repair the drives quickly; the risks of a second cold ignition; other, more extreme options. Despite the complexity of the programs running in the back of his head, however, his concentration on Morn held.
Was she this worried just because Calm Horizons had committed an act of war? No, that wasn’t it. He’d missed something. She was afraid for reasons he hadn’t thought of yet.
Looking for answers, he changed directions, came at her from another side.
“All right,” he said as if he’d heard enough. “None of this makes any sense, but I can live without explanations. What do you want me to do?”
His hands gripped the edge of the surgical table, holding him there against the pressure of her alarm, his computer’s demands, and his own needs.
What do you think I fucking can do under these conditions?
She took a deep breath. Her gaze sank to his hands as if she were watching his knuckles whiten. Then she lifted her eyes sharply back to his. No matter what she feared, she remained strong enough to face him.
“I want you to keep us away from Punisher,” she announced distinctly, as if she thought he had that kind of power. “She fought Calm Horizons for us. She gave Davies your priority-codes. But she also handed you over to Nick. I don’t trust her. I trust Min Donner—I think I trust her—but I do not trust whoever’s giving her orders.”
Slowly Morn tightened her own fists. “Instead of surrendering this ship,” she went on, “or blowing her up, I want you to take us back to Earth. So I can tell our story to somebody besides the UMCP. Preferably the Council.”
His eyes widened. Behind his pose of calm, he was shocked. Tell our story—? He was an illegal to the marrow of his bones. For a man like him, talking to anybody with authority was as good as suicide. Morn might survive: she was a cop. But he would absolutely end up dead.
Roughly he demanded, “What in hell do you want to tell them?”
“Vector’s formula,” she replied. She might have been reciting a list. “How we got it. Why the Amnion are after Davies.”
All that was bad enough; but she wasn’t done. Her voice hardened as she added, “I want to make sure somebody hears me, describe what Vector and Mikka have done for all of us. I want to tell the Council that the UMCP gave me to Nick.” She faced Angus as if she were defying him. “And I want to tell them you were framed.”
He nearly lost his grip on the edge of the table. “Christ, Morn!” he protested. “You can’t tell them that.” If she did, she would have to tell them he gave her a zone implant—and she took the control. “We’ll both be executed. They’ll fry our fucking brains. The cops will kill every one of us eight times before they let you say something like that out loud.”
Was this what scared her? The prospect of explaining her own crimes in front of the Governing Council for Earth and Space?—condemning herself so that she could try to save her shit-crazy species from their own fucking cops as well as from the Amnion?
She nodded grimly. If she was afraid, the darkness of her gaze concealed it. “That’s why we have to stay away from them.”
Angus couldn’t contain the rush of his distress. He needed an outlet. He ordered his zone implants to reduce their emissions, diminish his imposed calm, so that he could shout.
“God damn it! Don’t you know what they got out of framing me? No, of course you don’t. You were stuck out there on Captain’s motherfucking Fancy while it happened.
“They paid Captain Sheepfucker and Milos to frame me. They wanted Com-Mine Security to look bad. So the Council would pass something called the fucking Preempt Act.” Angus himself had been one of the first victims of that legislation. Hashi Lebwohl had reqqed him from Com-Mine under the Preempt Act. “It gives the UMCP authority over local damn security everywhere in human space! Like they needed more muscle—like datacores and id tags and Emergency Powers and ships like Starmaster and all the money in the fucking galaxy aren’t enough.
“The cops,” he finished savagely, “are not going to let you undermine that much power.”
Morn lowered her head. Hiding her chagrin—or simply giving herself time to absorb this information. Angus didn’t know which until she looked up at him again.
Her eyes burned like the black flame of his visceral fury.
“For some sick reason,” she said through her teeth, “I’m not surprised. But that doesn’t change anything. It’s got to stop. One way or another.
“We don’t have the leverage to stop it. Maybe the Council does.”
It’s got to stop. Despite his dismay, Angus heard echoes of Warden Dios, with his strange priorities and his secrets. Had that goddamn one-eyed terrifying sonofabitch foreseen this too?
He had one protest left—one last objection which might make her change her mind. Shouting only angered her, so he reimposed his artificial calm. He wanted to sound like a man she couldn’t argue with.
He wanted to sou
nd like Nick Succorso—
“I told you you’re crazy,” he asserted sardonically. “Maybe you weren’t listening. Didn’t you hear me explain that I can’t go back to Earth? I thought you understood. As soon as Milos betrayed me, I became too dangerous, Whatever is chasing me, whatever I’m carrying with me, is too dangerous. That’s written into my programming. I can’t go back there unless somebody uses my priority-codes, orders me to do it.
“But my codes are blocked. You can yell them at me until you rupture something. I might even want to obey you. But my computer can’t hear you. It still won’t let me go.”
That was the plain truth. Without the authority of those codes, he couldn’t override his underlying instruction-sets.
Yet Morn wasn’t daunted. Even now she was more than a match for him.
“Fine,” she snapped grimly. “I’ll put Mikka on helm. I’ll give her orders. All you have to do is stay out of the way.”
She did more than shock him: she shook him to the core. His grasp on reality seemed to fail under the impact of her determination. Put Mikka on helm. Stay out of the way. That would work. His programming would allow it.
Suddenly every brutal, inhuman restriction which the cops had welded into him appeared negotiable—
Without warning some of the tactical scenarios weaving themselves across the background of his mind began to look plausible. His computer and his instincts spun ruses and gambits into webs which might conceivably be strong enough to hold.
He didn’t move to act on them, however; didn’t let go of the table to take up Morn’s challenge. He needed to understand her. If she could find his way out of his electronic prison for him, she might be capable of almost anything.
He needed to know what drove her.
“All right,” he said more quietly. “That might work. But something about all this still sounds like bullshit to me.
“I know you,” he insisted. “You haven’t told me the whole story. There’s something nagging at you. Something that scares you worse than I do. I can see it in your eyes.
“I don’t want to fucking guess what it is. Just say it, so I’ll know what I’m dealing with.”
He expected her to flare out at him; accuse him. You want me to trust you? You raped me, hurt me, damn near broke me, and you want me to trust you? I would rather be dead. But she didn’t. Dark as pits, her eyes held his without flinching. Muscles tightened at the corners of her jaw, forcing her chin up.
“When I was in the Amnion sector on Billingate,” she said acidly, “they took samples of my blood. Samples with Nick’s immunity drug in them. I figure they ended up on Calm Horizons.
“But even if they didn’t, she heard Vector’s broadcast.
“I want to find out if she’s still alive. That’s more important than anything. If Punisher killed her, it almost doesn’t matter what happens to us. The formula will get out somehow. We may lose everything else, but we’ve already gained that.
“But if she survived, she might get back to Amnion space. They’ll learn how to counter the drug. Vector’s formula will be useless before anyone in human space ever benefits from it.”
For reasons he could hardly recognize, Angus felt a rush of relief. Was that all she feared? Then it didn’t threaten him. If she was telling the truth—
He believed her. She cared about shit like that. Maybe she hadn’t when they were aboard Bright Beauty; when she was in his power. Maybe he hadn’t let her. But she did now.
He should have known she wasn’t scared for herself. Her damn convictions had become too strong for that.
Those same beliefs had freed him from his priority-codes. Now they were bending the bars of his welded lockup. If he gave her enough help, they might turn him loose altogether.
“Hell, Morn,” he replied almost cheerfully, “you can’t do anything about that. There’s no point in suffering over it. You don’t know where she’ll go from Massif-5. If she’s crazy enough to commit an act of war, she’s crazy enough to try anything.
“For all you know, she’s still looking for us.
“Don’t waste your time on her. Worry about something that makes a difference. Worry about what we’re going to do.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Talk’s cheap, Angus. What are we going to do?”
She meant, What’re you going to do?
He gave her a malicious, happy grin. “That depends,” he told her cryptically, “on just how much damage that little shit did to the drives.”
Despite the pain in his hip, he released the edge of the table with a thrust which carried him toward the door. Reality had changed. Morn changed it. Anything might became possible.
Somehow when he’d first met her he’d put his feet on a road which had led him away from everything he knew or understood about himself. Now each step carried him farther.
MIN
Despite the precise assistance of the gap scout’s homing signal, Punisher would never have been able to follow Trumpet if the encroaching Amnion warship hadn’t dropped fire in order to concentrate on her own acceleration out of the Massif-5 system.
As long as the Behemoth-class defensive continued to deliver torrents of matter cannon fire, as well as super-light proton blasts like thunderstrikes, Punisher was forced to maintain her staggering, frantic evasive maneuvers. Even when the cruiser had accumulated adequate velocity to hunt Trumpet across the gap, she couldn’t risk tach: not when she needed to alter her actual heading by the second in order to keep herself alive. If she’d used her gap drive to escape the defensive’s guns, she would have resumed tard so far off Trumpet’s trail that she would have required precious hours—or even days—to reacquire the gap scout’s signal. And in that time Trumpet might flee beyond recovery.
She might silence her homing signal, as she had once before.
Fortunately the dilemma of Trumpet’s departure was as urgent for the Amnioni as it was for Punisher. The alien warship found herself virtually stationary in a hostile star system, with her shields and sinks damaged, the target of her incursion gone, and an entire flotilla of enemy vessels burning toward her from Valdor Industrial. She had to run.
Helpless in her g-seat at the periphery of the bridge, Min Donner focused intensely on the actions of both ships, although she couldn’t do anything about them. Because Punisher had heard Vector Shaheed’s amazing broadcast, Min feared that the defensive would commit herself to destroying the cruiser.
She also wondered how long Sergei Patrice on helm could endure the strain of this ordeal. Glessen on targ did what he could to help; but the real burden of keeping Punisher alive now fell exclusively to Patrice.
Min suffered from nausea and vertigo herself, despite her years of experience and her eagerness for battle. And Punisher was a cruiser, a quick-strike vessel: she hadn’t been designed for this kind of hours-long pummeling, these brutal maneuvers.
Gradually it became clear, however, that whoever was “invested with decisiveness” aboard the Amnioni didn’t mean to prolong the battle. The defensive had other priorities. She continued to blaze at the UMCP cruiser while she shrugged her vast bulk into motion. But then, near the effective limits of Punisher’s ragged return fire, she broke off her side of the engagement, presumably so that she could dedicate all the power of her drives to acceleration.
Her vector away from the asteroid swarm didn’t point toward forbidden space, or any other obvious destination. Instead her immediate course aimed only at escaping Massif-5 as efficiently as possible.
“Cease fire, targ,” Captain Dolph Ubikwe ordered. Immobile as stone, he sat at the command station as if he were welded to his g-seat. “We aren’t hurting her anyway. And we might enjoy being able to hear ourselves think.”
“Aye, Captain.” Glessen keyed toggles, dropped his hands from his board. At once the hot, frying hull-sound of the matter cannon ceased. Without transition the squalling of half a dozen stress and damage alarms seemed to grow louder. Nevertheless after several hours of incessant
fire Min felt that the bridge had become suddenly quiet.
“Stay sharp, Sergei,” Captain Ubikwe warned. “At the rate she’s pulling away, we’re probably safe from her matter cannon. But that damn proton gun can still reach us.”
Patrice mumbled a reply Min couldn’t hear. He looked too tired to speak any louder. The stark lighting of the bridge gleamed in the sheen of sweat on his face.
“Maybe not, Captain,” Porson offered from scan. “The sensors say she doesn’t have a targ fix on us anymore.”
At once the data and damage control officer, Bydell, put in numbly, “If we can trust the readings.” Remorseless pressure had worn the young woman down; but she clung to her duties. “We’ve taken a hell of a beating, Captain,” she explained. “Damage control says we have potential failure on half the receptors. Maybe she’s dropped targ. Or maybe we just can’t tell the difference.”
Min swore to herself. She wasn’t surprised: Punisher’s wounds could only have worsened under the strain of helm’s maneuvers. Still the ED director hated anything which weakened her command; threatened her people.
As Trumpet fled Massif-5, the gap scout had broadcast the formula for a mutagen immunity drug. This may or may not have been what Warden wanted—Punisher still hadn’t succeeded at deciphering the transmission which had given Nick Succorso control over Angus, so the director’s real intentions remained secret—but it transformed Min’s sense of her own mission.
She hated anything which might come between her and Trumpet.
“Damn her to flinders,” Dolph growled. He was studying the Amnioni’s escape trajectory. “It galls me to let her run. She’s a goddamn loose cannon.” He may have been talking to Min. “Who the hell knows where she’ll go off next? Could be anywhere.”
Min swallowed bile and frustration. She understood his implied complaint. He might conceivably have been able to finish the big defensive—if Min hadn’t ordered him to go after Trumpet instead of pressing his advantage when the Amnioni’s sinks began to fail.
This Day All Gods Die Page 14
