The Gap Into Power: A Dark and Hungry God Arises

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  After she and Sib gained the concrete, they were able to travel more quickly. As his handling of his jets improved he began to skim forward as if he were skipping. With a shrug and a ghost’s smile, she scudded beside him. When she died, she would be free, at last and forever.

  No doubt Tranquil Hegemony was holding fire until the Amnion could be sure they would hit all their targets with one blast. Skimming and prancing like lunatic children, Morn and Sib crossed the arc-lit docks until they were close enough to see Mikka and three other people illuminated by searchlights in front of a Needle-class gap scout which must have been Trumpet.

  She deactivated her jets and slowed to a walk. A step or two later, Sib did the same.

  “Morn?” Davies asked. He sounded plaintive; scarcely able to believe that she was there. “Morn?”

  She didn’t know which of the four he was: she was still too far away to recognize individuals through the polarization of their faceplates. She raised a hand to identify herself. When he also raised his hand, she smiled quietly, even though he couldn’t see it.

  “Why don’t they get it over with?” Pup muttered tightly. “What are they waiting for?”

  No one answered him.

  As if she were at peace, Morn turned to watch Tranquil Hegemony kill them all.

  From a distance of at least three k, the warship looked smaller; less fatal. Morn could no longer distinguish the gun ports: she could barely see the guns themselves. If her faceplate hadn’t protected her from the stabbing intensity of the searchlights, she wouldn’t have been able to see the ship at all. Nevertheless the range was trivial for matter cannon. Even badly designed guns wouldn’t suffer enough dispersion to weaken their impact for several thousand k—and nothing the Amnion made was badly designed.

  At least a thousand meters away across the concrete, Nick also had turned to watch. Some intuition must have warned him to look back at the charged shape of the warship.

  Like Morn, he must have seen the flame of thrust like a torch in the void.

  At once he began to howl again as if his heart were being torn out.

  Suddenly the searchlights cut off. For an instant the changed illumination confused Morn’s vision. Through the residual incandescence, she thought she saw Tranquil Hegemony’s guns wheel in their ports, fighting to reorient themselves.

  The torch overhead grew longer, plunging like a comet.

  Misaimed and useless, lasers from the warship’s sides emblazoned the heavens. She’d been taken too much by surprise. And she was already hurt. She couldn’t defend herself.

  At the last second Mikka cried frantically, “Liete!”

  Thrust flaming, Captain’s Fancy came down like a scream out of the deep dark. Lasers caught up with her before she hit, but they were too late. Truer than her own targ, she sledgehammered straight into the center of the damaged warship.

  Without transition both vessels were transformed from poised, rigid metal to pure fire and brisance.

  Morn lost sight of the cataclysm momentarily: she was falling and couldn’t look. The uncontained detonation of Captain’s Fancy’s drive and Tranquil Hegemony’s weapons sent a shock wave through the rock and the concrete as if they were water. Stone shattered; concrete cracked and buckled like ice; the surface under Morn bucked so hard that she stumbled to her knees. Arc lamps fizzled and spat; some of them died. Steam plumed from wounds like volcanic vents in Billingate’s structural integrity.

  By the time she lurched back to her feet, Captain’s Fancy and Tranquil Hegemony had collapsed into each other. Visual echoes of flame streaked the dark, “but the fire itself died rapidly as its energy and the vacuum devoured the last of the spilled oxygen.

  Nick was closer to the point of impact: the shock wave had knocked him flat on his back. Except for the palpable grinding of concrete as it settled into new shapes, there was no sound anywhere but the prolonged outcry of his anguish.

  Then Mikka sighed, “Oh, Liete.” Tears filled her voice; but Morn couldn’t tell whether they were tears of relief or loss.

  “Come on,” Sib murmured. He plucked at Morn’s arm, touched Mikka’s shoulder. “Let’s go aboard. We still have to get out of here somehow.”

  Finally Nick’s protest choked away into silence.

  Instead of moving toward the ship, Mikka went to her brother and wrapped her arms around him fiercely.

  “Sib’s right.” Vector spoke in tense bursts, as if he had difficulty breathing. “Calm Horizons is still out there. So is Soar. And the Bill—probably isn’t feeling very charitable. They won’t want to let us get away with this.”

  Leftover flame seemed to echo in Morn’s head. She feared that if she tried to move, she would lose her balance again. Captain’s Fancy was gone: nothing remained of the place where she’d abandoned herself to Nick, perfected her zone implant addiction, and fought for her son’s life except twisted metal and ruin. Liete Corregio, Pastille, Simper, Alba Parmute, Carmel, Karster, Lind—the dead were too many to be numbered. At last she understood that it was all too expensive. This terrible expenditure of lives and pain had to stop.

  “She’s Angus’ ship,” she breathed like a memory of fire.

  “But he put Mikka in command,” Sib said as if that changed everything.

  Mikka, Morn thought, not Nick. Angus hadn’t given her away again. He was still himself enough to distrust Nick.

  When she turned, she found Davies beside her.

  “Where is he?” her son asked. “Is he coming back?”

  “I don’t know.” If she could have forgotten the blaze and concussion of impact, she might have wept. “He broke into my cell.” He gave me a weapon, but I lost it. “Then he went somewhere.”

  “He’s going to rejoin us if he can.” Mikka’s tone was harsh; as guttural as a groan. Scourging herself into motion, she let go of Pup and faced Morn. “He set a time limit. If he isn’t back by then, we’re supposed to leave without him.

  “Come on.” She gestured stiffly toward Trumpet. “Let’s see if we can keep his ship in one piece until his time runs out.”

  Through his faceplate, Morn saw Davies nod grimly. With her vision distorted by polarization, she couldn’t tell the difference between him and his father.

  Pulling Pup after him, Vector went first. His suit didn’t disguise the arthritic stiffness of his movements; his joints must have hurt acutely as he climbed the handgrips up Trumpet’s side. When he rounded the curve, Sib and then Mikka followed; Morn and Davies brought up the rear.

  From the elevation of the airlock, Morn looked across the docks to see what Nick was doing.

  He’d regained his feet; turned his back on the charred wreck of his ship. Alone and awkward across the riven concrete, he picked his way toward Trumpet. Every step was slow—even from this distance, he appeared to be in pain—but he came steadily, carrying his loss like a pallbearer.

  Distinctly Davies said, “This is our chance to get rid of him. We can seal him out. Let the Bill have him—if he can find his way inside.”

  Seal him out—

  A pain of her own twisted around Morn’s heart. Like Angus, Nick had done things to her which she would never forgive. And he had her black box.

  Coming to help her had been Angus’ idea, not Nick’s.

  Get rid of him—

  Her desire to close the lock against him was so intense that she nearly moaned.

  Yes! Let him die outside and be damned!

  But it was too expensive. She’d seen that with her own eyes, felt it with her own heart’s pain. The Amnion had tried their mutagens on her. Like treachery and lies, revenge cost too much; grudges and hate cost too much. Nick and Angus had taught her that.

  She didn’t hesitate.

  “No,” she told her son. “You’re a cop. From now on, I’m going to be a cop myself.” Not the kind of cop Warden Dios and Hashi Lebwohl were: the kind her father and mother had been. “We don’t do things like that.”

  “Are you sure?” Mikka demanded from the
lock. “We’re better off without him. We’re safer—he’s made too many enemies. And he hates Angus too much.”

  “I’m sure,” Vector put in softly. “Morn’s right. The rest of us aren’t cops, but we have enough other problems without doing things that will make us sick of ourselves.”

  “Besides,” Sib observed, “he still has his guns. If he tries to blast his way in, we might not survive the damage.”

  Morn took Mikka’s silence as assent. She gave Davies a quick hug, then lowered herself down the ladder into the ship.

  Davies rather than Mikka keyed commands into the control panel, shutting the airlock so that it would reopen for Nick. He gave the impression that he was already acquainted with Trumpet. Morn wondered how long he’d been with Angus; how long ago Angus had rescued him. But she didn’t ask. For the moment, at least, all her questions had been burned out of her.

  And she was overtaken by a strange sense of recognition, an unaccountable impression of safety. From the airlock and the lift down to the central passage and along it to the EVA suit compartment and the weapons locker, she knew this ship. Details were different, of course, if for no other reason than because Trumpet was new; but she’d done some of her training in Needle-class gap scouts. For the first time since Starmaster’s death, she found herself in a place where she felt she belonged.

  Davies must have had the same reaction—

  After her long hours in an Amnion cell and her hazardous escape, Trumpet’s poignant familiarity nearly overwhelmed her. She had to remind herself forcibly that this was Angus’ ship, Angus Thermopyle’s; that when she entered Trumpet she was reentering the domain of the man who had raped and debased her to the core of her being.

  If she could have believed that she or any of the people with her—even Nick—were capable of taking Trumpet away from Billingate intact, she would have prayed for Angus to fail his deadline; beseeched the uncaring stars to grant her that one last mercy.

  Mikka was in command; but Davies stowed his suit and weapons first. Once he unsealed his helmet, Morn saw his face clearly for the first time since the day he was born.

  Her heart seemed to stop when she saw that he’d been beaten up.

  The damage was recent. Blood still crusted his forehead; bruises which hadn’t had time to turn livid swelled his cheeks, puffed around his eyes.

  The Bill had done that to him. Or it’d happened in the struggle to escape.

  Or he and Angus had fought over her; over the things Angus had done to her.

  An inarticulate protest died in her throat as she studied her son.

  Apart from his battered face, he didn’t appear hurt. He was noticeably thinner than Angus: in fact, he was thinner than he’d been when Captain’s Fancy had left Enablement. And his skin looked hot, as if he were burning up inside; tension poured off him like heat. Nevertheless he was physically intact.

  His eyes hid whatever he was feeling. He glanced at Morn quickly, but didn’t meet her gaze. He may have been angry at her for refusing to doom Nick. Or he may have been ashamed of himself for wanting to lock Nick out.

  Or he may have begun to recover the pieces of her past—

  The thought that he might be able to remember how she’d abandoned herself to Nick made her own skin burn. Yet that chagrin was small compared with other, more profound shames. He might recall how Angus had raped and brutalized her—or the way she’d saved his life—

  Or how she’d killed Starmaster—

  As he wheeled away and hurried toward the bridge, he seemed to take the last of her strength with him. Without warning her legs became so weak that she nearly folded to the deck.

  She’d been terrified that how he was born and what he knew about her might drive him insane; that only the strange blockage of his memories kept his mind in one piece. Yet he was whole now, whatever he remembered. Angus had given that to him—or done it to him.

  His mind was no longer hers. He’d begun to inherit the legacy of his father.

  And he’d had to fight for it.

  Suddenly she wanted Angus to come back so that she could force or beg him to tell her what he’d done to her son.

  She stood in the passage without moving, too beaten and exhausted to remove more than her helmet.

  Fortunately Vector seemed to understand her condition. As soon as he’d put away his suit and projectile launcher, he knelt in front of her despite the pain in his joints to unseal her suit, unstrap the harness from her hips, tug the tough fabric off over her boots.

  Mikka had already finished storing her gear. She scrutinized Morn for a moment, then turned to her brother. Her old scowl was etched into her features, but fatigue and concern had worn off every other expression. “Ciro, find the galley,” she told him. “A ship like this, the food-vend probably works by magic. Make coffee, cocoa, hype—anything hot. And sandwiches. Bring them to the bridge.”

  Ciro? Morn thought wearily. She’d never heard Pup’s real name. Like Davies’, his face had changed since she’d last seen it: danger and fear had aged him by several years. For the first time, his resemblance to his sister was obvious.

  He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it when Mikka pushed his shoulder gently. “Right away would be good,” she murmured, unconsciously copying Nick. “Right now would be better.”

  Ciro ducked his head and went to obey.

  With Sib behind her, Mikka followed Davies toward the bridge.

  Vector smiled wanly at Morn. Pain or exertion left a sheen on his round face. When they were alone, he said, “I owe you an apology.”

  She blinked at him dumbly. Her brain was full of Davies and weakness: she had no idea what he was talking about.

  He levered himself up from his knees. Old hurts hampered his gaze as well as his joints. “If it weren’t covered by so much other damage,” he explained quietly, “you would have a bruise where I hit you.”

  As careful as velvet, he stroked the ridge of her cheekbone with his fingertips.

  Instinctively she flinched away. He was male, like Nick; like Angus. His touch and his gentleness seemed to impact her like a blow.

  He smiled again as he lowered his hand. In a tone like a shrug, he said, “I like to think I would regret that in any case. But as it happens I have more reason than you may realize. You forced me to look at the implications of my life, and I didn’t like what I saw. If I were wiser—or perhaps simply braver—I would have hit myself, not you.

  “I don’t understand any of this. How it comes about that a man like Angus Thermopyle is here to rescue you from Nick and the Amnion—well, it’s beyond me. But it’s given me a chance to see things differently. That’s my other reason for regret. In retrospect, it seems”—his smile broadened slightly—“downright callow of me to have hit the woman who changed my life.”

  What he was saying must have been important, if he made such a point of it; but its significance eluded her. Once she realized that he didn’t mean to hurt her, she could no longer focus on him. In her thoughts she’d already joined Davies. On the bridge of a ship she knew—a UMCP ship, whether Angus had any dealings with the police or not. Only her weakness held her back; only the immeasurable cost of her hours in an Amnion cell.

  She needed her zone implant control. Without it she had too little substance, too few resources, to change anyone’s life, even her own.

  “I’m sorry,” she began. “I need—” Unable to say the words, she stopped.

  Apparently he had his own ideas about what she needed. He nodded as if he were amused by his personal follies. “So do I.”

  Then he took her arm and helped her into motion.

  As frail as a derelict, she shuffled through the ship.

  When she reached the head of the companionway, she heard voices below her.

  “If anyone tried to break in, the computer didn’t record it,” Davies reported, presumably to Mikka. “I checked the communications log. There’s a whole series of threats, some from the Bill, some from Operations. They get more
hysterical as they go along, but they aren’t very specific. Then they stop. The channel goes dead. No more demands, no more threats—and no more operational data. Nothing but static. Calm Horizons could be right on top of us—there could be half a dozen ships coming in on Billingate—and we wouldn’t know it.” He gave a sardonic snort which reminded Morn of Angus. “On the other hand, we’re still getting installation power.”

  “Ship’s status?” Mikka asked brusquely.

  “Up and running,” Davies said. “All systems green. I went through the checklists. We’re ready.”

  “Then give me scan,” she ordered. “Let’s find out who’s in range to hurt us.”

  Morn pulled away from Vector. Bracing her arms on the rails and locking her knees, she lowered herself down the treads. She wanted her son to believe in her. If he saw how weak she was, he might not trust her.

  He sat at the command station. His hands on the console were accurate, but cautious; not particularly adept. Morn’s memories and his time with Angus familiarized him with the ship, but they couldn’t take the place of experience. He was probably competent to run Trumpet under normal circumstances: the present danger required someone with more expertise.

  Mikka was the best choice Angus could have made, even though she knew less about Trumpet than Davies did.

  She and Sib stood on either side of the command station, watching for data as Davies activated scan and fed the results to the display screens. In moments blips appeared on a schematic of Billingate’s control space. Davies typed a few guesses based on the ship’s last operational input. The blips took on ship id.

  “That’s all we can see,” he muttered. “Thanatos Minor blocks us from the shipyard. We’re blind past the horizons.”

  Holding her breath, Morn moved to the back of his g-seat. If she braced herself there, she could stay on her feet and study the screens.

  Five blips. Two of them were off in the direction of human space, one incoming, the other heading out. Trumpet had picked up their demands for traffic data and navigational protocols had obtained ship id from those transmissions. The incoming vessel called herself Gambler’s Luck. Unless she slowed her approach, she would be in range to have an effect on the action around Thanatos Minor in twenty minutes. The outgoing ship, Free Lunch, was burning hard, obviously on the run from trouble.