Chaos and Order: The Gap Into Madness

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The tone of his defeat was strangely familiar. He’d sounded exactly like that when he gave her the zone implant control in Mallorys. I accept. The deal you offered. I’ll cover you.

  “Pay attention. I can’t afford explanations right now.”

  Remember, I could have killed you. I could have killed you anytime.

  “Thrust didn’t fail. I powered down the drive. It’s set for cold ignition.”

  Morn’s eyes widened in surprise; she sucked a quick breath. At once she began hunting her board.

  “I want you to play dead,” Angus went on. “Sit there. Until I tell you.” His tone had recovered its edge. “Then hit those keys. Get us out of here:”

  “I’ll do it,” Morn promised from the center of her concentration. “I’ve got the keys. I’m laying in a course now. We’ll be ready.”

  “And give me scan data.” Davies could hear Angus’ attention shift to him. “I need to know what’s going on.”

  “Right,” Davies answered promptly. As if he were Morn, he felt focus taking over him; giving him distance. “It’s still a mess out there. You’ll probably see better than we can.” One of his readouts supplied him with an estimate. “The scan computer projects we’ll start getting data we can use in eighty seconds.”

  A gasp came across the speaker. Then Angus stopped talking.

  Over the intercom Davies heard his father breathing hard, too hard; panting for air or courage.

  He left his pickup active. Indicators showed that Morn had done the same. Grimly he resumed his efforts to pierce the dwindling storm with Trumpet’s sensors.

  The storm’s center was nearby between the gap scout and Soar. But the edges of the distortion would clear first: the center of the boson distortion would be the last to drift apart. When he finally, truly, applied his mind to Trumpet’s situation instead of to Morn, a new thought sent alarm hiving like insects along his nerves.

  What if Soar didn’t hold her position, waiting for sight? What if she altered her course and continued to advance, hoping to come around the storm and catch Trumpet blind?

  Sweat smeared his palms. In contrast his mouth felt as dry as a wasteland. Angus, he tried to say, Angus, I just thought of something. But he couldn’t find his voice: his throat refused to work. His hands shook as he pounded keys; redirected his instruments toward the fraying fringes of the distortion.

  Angus continued to strain for air as if he were wrestling demons.

  Almost at once blips signaled at Davies from several different locations. Ships on all sides of him; half a dozen or more.

  But that was patently impossible. Ghosts, he was picking up ghosts: spooks and echoes. If scan claimed to see a ship when its view was blocked by solid stone, there was no other explanation. Nevertheless it was a good sign, no matter how much it scared him. If the sensors could see ghosts, they would soon be able to identify real ships.

  Like moons or satellites trapped by orbital decay, the ghosts appeared to swirl and converge, coming together as scan labored to filter out the mad from the actual.

  There.

  No mistake.

  Shit!

  And no time—

  “Angus,” he barked urgently, trying not to shout, not to panic, “we’ve got company. Off to the side.” He named the blip’s relative position. Scan was still too hampered to supply an image. “She’s coming in fast.

  “It’s Free Lunch.” His voice cracked. Scan was sure. “The emission match is too close to be wrong.

  “God, Angus! Now what’re we going to do?”

  Angus didn’t answer. Only panting came over the intercom, guttural as a death rattle.

  Davies looked at Morn, but she didn’t answer either. Instead she stared at the screens, her face blank and helpless.

  She’d routed a course projection overlay to the scan display: her course; the one she’d plotted for Trumpet’s escape. It told him that when she hit her keys, ignited cold thrust, the gap scout would burn almost directly into the path of Soar’s ally.

  ANGUS

  The airlock closed and sealed behind him, but he didn’t notice it. He needed to reach the far side of Trumpet’s hull quickly—the exposed side. Get there and get back behind the relative shelter of the gap scout’s mass in the few seconds left. He slipped the muzzle of his matter cannon into the nearest handgrip, left it there. Slamming his boots against the rock, he sailed up and over the ship.

  The instant he rounded the occlusion of Trumpet’s bulk, a keen lance of pain drove through his EM prosthesis into his brain. Too swift for his zone implants to stop or manage it, it seemed to nail his optic nerves to the back of his skull.

  Oh Christ shit God! Involuntarily he slapped a hand over his faceplate, but that didn’t help him. Even sheathed in mylar and plexulose, his flesh was too permeable to ward off the pain.

  He’d forgotten to adjust the polarization of his faceplate against the boson storm; to filter out the savagery radiating on the bandwidths his prosthesis received.

  Damn it! Where were those fucking databases when he needed them? Why hadn’t his programming foreseen this?

  He knew the answer. Neither Warden Dios nor Hashi Lebwohl had understood how far he would go when he was desperate.

  Through a red, squalling, visual knife of pain, he found the controls on his chestplate, began frantically dialing changes to the polarization.

  By the time the neural screaming eased enough to let him see again, he’d already drifted more than fifty meters from Trumpet Out toward the center of the storm, where Soar waited—

  How much time did he have left?

  Fifty-five seconds and counting, his computer reported.

  Viciously he toggled his jets; turned his trajectory with compressed gas so that he swung back in Trumpet’s direction.

  As fast as his jets could take him, he gusted toward the place he wanted on his ship’s flank.

  He hit hard; nearly missed his grip and bounced away. But machine reflexes saved him. He closed his fingers on the cleat beside the access hatch.

  Forty-seven seconds.

  Trying to concentrate, forget pain and time limits, let his microprocessor carry him, he keyed open the hatch.

  Unlocking it was another of the details he’d prepared before leaving the bridge. Otherwise he would have had to shout to Davies or Morn, tell them what he wanted, give them the codes. Now only his planning saved him. His breathing rattled so thickly in his throat that he didn’t think he could speak, much less shout.

  The hatch accessed the storage compartment which fed Trumpet’s singularity grenades to their launcher.

  Earlier he’d wondered why his tormentors had bothered to equip the gap scout with singularity grenades. They were almost impossible to use. Launching them was easy enough: detonating them effectively was altogether more difficult.

  At the moment, however, he didn’t care what Dios’ or Lebwohl’s reasons might have been.

  Thirty-nine seconds.

  Quickly he undipped the nearest grenade from its rack, levered it out of the compartment. That part was simple in zero g. And the grenade was no bigger than his chest: he could manage its size. But its mass was another matter. It weighed—a database told him this—over five hundred kg. It had inertia with a vengeance. He could pull the device into motion, but he would have to red-line his jets to make it stop.

  He couldn’t afford to fail. What was the good of all his reinforced strength, if it wasn’t enough when he needed it?

  Gasping for courage as much as air, he heaved the grenade up, toggled his jets to full power, and began to lift like a feather up the exposed curve of Trumpet’s side.

  Twenty-four seconds.

  Unless Davies’ estimate was wrong. Maybe Soar could see him already.

  He didn’t risk a look in that direction.

  Move, asshole! Motherfucking sonofabitch, move it!

  Above the line which served him as Trumpet’s horizon, he shifted the vector of his jets. Straining until he feared his
sinews might snap, he fought the grenade to a new heading.

  Across Trumpet’s spine. Directly at the black asteroid. Down at the last moment toward the narrowing space where Trumpet met the rock.

  Seventeen seconds.

  He couldn’t turn the grenade in time. It crashed into the asteroid. Shedding chips and splinters like hail, it rebounded away.

  He was ready for it. He jammed the toe of one boot into a handgrip for an anchor: his hips cocked urgently to aim his jets. With a final lurch that nearly dislocated his arms, the grenade settled beside the ship and stopped moving.

  Eleven seconds.

  Shit, that was close! And he still wasn’t done. He needed to nudge the grenade back upward until it was poised at the horizon. Then retrieve his small matter cannon; take up his own position.

  Somewhere inside the lost crib of his EVA suit he had to find the strength to throw the grenade at Soar.

  He wasn’t strong enough. No one was. UMCPDA had equipped him for any number of things, but not for this. For the last time in his life his wrists and ankles were tied to the slats; utterly bound. Nothing he’d ever been able to do would prevent Sorus Chatelaine and the malign forces of the swarm from tearing him apart.

  “Angus.” Davies’ sudden call seemed to crack open his head. Stress made his hearing wail like feedback. “We’ve got company. Off to the side.” Davies gave coordinates which only Angus’ computer understood. “She’s coming in fast.

  “It’s Free Lunch. The emission match is too close to be wrong.

  “God, Angus! Now what’re we going to do?”

  Soar’s ally. Here. Already.

  It was worse than being tied in his crib, worse than needles and pain. Angus wanted to scream, but he was gasping too hard.

  Clutching like a wildman at cleats and handgrips, he wrenched his way up the hull to his chosen horizon and looked out at the seething midnight of the swarm.

  It should have been too black for him to see anything. The erratic crackle and flare of static couldn’t mitigate the dark. But in the deep distance the aurora borealis of the Lab’s destruction still burned faintly, giving a nacreous, fatal glow to some of the asteroids, limning others with evanescence. And Soar’s running lights were on, etching her against the void.

  She was there; there, directly in front of him; no more than fifteen k away.

  And closing.

  He could see Free Lunch up past the point of his right shoulder, at the edge of his faceplate’s field of view. She, too, had her running lights on. But she was closer—God, she was closer! Five k at most. Point-blank range.

  Angus hadn’t planned for this. Nothing would help Trumpet against two attackers.

  Helpless, he was always helpless, always, there was nothing he could do. The abyss hovered over him, loving and cruel. His own weakness tied him down: his own failures and fears stuck him full of pain.

  “Give me orders!” Morn’s voice cried. “Angus, tell me what to do!”

  “I can see Soar!” Davies yelled. “They’re both ready to fire! They’re going to kill us!”

  Tell me what to do!

  Morn had set him free. Otherwise he might have given up and died. He would already have died inside himself, driven mad by helplessness and coercion. But Morn had set him free—

  And his equipment didn’t understand surrender. His programming made no provision for it.

  Desperately he flipped back down Trumpet’s side, propped himself under the grenade, and shouldered it into motion.

  Then he dove for his matter cannon.

  That was enough. He had weapons. And terror was strength. Morn had set him free. His zone implants steadied him, refined his control, but took nothing away from his stark urgency.

  As the grenade crested his horizon, he rose with it.

  Stopped it with a sharp blast of his jets.

  Took his position behind it.

  He was too late. In that instant Free Lunch opened fire.

  A second later Soar fired as well. Without transition the dark became a caterwauling blaze of light and discontinuities as matter cannon unleashed pure chaos.

  But they were firing at each other. God, they were firing at each other! One of them had betrayed the other. Trumpet was too rich a prize to share.

  And they could afford to ignore the gap scout. She already looked dead.

  If Soar had used her proton gun, Free Lunch would have been finished; torn apart before she could deliver a second barrage. But Angus knew the energies of matter cannon; recognized them when he saw them. Soar fought back in kind—

  That gave Free Lunch the advantage. She’d fired first; would be able to recharge her guns first. And she’d taken Soar by surprise. If either ship could win this battle, it was likely to be Free Lunch.

  He made his choice by instinct—too quick for thought. Bracing himself, he heaved at the grenade with every gram and fiber of his enhanced force; fired his jets with all their power in the same direction.

  What he did should have been impossible. The grenade weighed five hundred kg. And he was alone. But he’d been made for this in ways he didn’t understand; trained for it in ways he couldn’t imagine. Terror was strength. It was life. Trapped in the crib of his suit, he strained for freedom so hard that watching him should have broken his mother’s heart.

  Somehow he succeeded at launching the grenade straight at Free Lunch’s looming mass.

  It would take forever to get there. Or it would have taken forever, but Free Lunch continued to advance, improving her position and angle of fire between barrages. She came to meet the grenade faster than the grenade itself moved.

  Angus gave his computer a fraction of an instant to calculate relative trajectories, estimate the point and moment of impact. Then he dropped to Trumpet’s hull.

  Frantic for speed, he clipped the belt of his suit to one of the handgrips; cinched it tight so that he wouldn’t waver or fall away. He set his boots on the base of the nearest particle sifter, dialed up their magnetic field to help him stay in place. Swinging the muzzle of his gun around, he brought it to bear.

  Another barrage. Free Lunch’s lambent fire enclosed Soar like a penumbra of ruin. Her sinks pulsed and burned like suns, throbbing to bleed off the damage. Frenetically she blazed back at her attacker.

  If her fire hit the grenade before it reached Free Lunch—Before Angus could fire himself—

  “Now!” he howled into his pickup. He could scream at last—scream from the pit of his torn heart, even though his voice seemed to fall dead in the dark around him; unheard; unheeded. “Do it now! Hit those keys!”

  Indicators inside his helmet yammered at him, warning of dehydration, temperature overloads, exhausted jets, oxygen depletion. Clutching his matter cannon, he waited in the crib at Morn’s mercy to find out whether he was going to live or die.

  MORN

  “It’s Free Lunch,” Davies had croaked into his intercom. “God, Angus! Now what’re we going to do?”

  Morn could see the other ship’s blip on the screens. She stared at its place in her course projection overlay as if her heart had failed. The terror of Starmaster’s murder filled her, and she couldn’t move.

  She understood cold ignition. Some ships were able to do that. The acceleration would be severe, but not cruel. From a cold start, Trumpet’s thrust drive wouldn’t generate enough force to push her and Davies beyond their physiological limits. They had trained, under hard g: they could bear it. If she didn’t fall into clarity and craziness—

  But her course projection was a problem of another kind; insuperable. The scale of thrust Trumpet could produce, the nearness of Soar, and the nature of the available route through the swarm had determined the course Morn had programmed. There were no alternatives.

  As Trumpet pulled off the asteroid and came around, she would pass—would have to pass—straight in front of Free Lunch.

  Davies’ fingers hit and flashed on his board. Targ displays jumped up and down the screens: scan scrambled to
find its way through the residue of the storm. Free Lunch took on definition, looming and fatal. It was obvious which of the two ships would survive a collision. And Free Lunch would be able to fire at point-blank range—

  Morn had no choice. The helm computer showed her none. If Trumpet didn’t go there, she would go nowhere at all.

  Angus’ stertorous respiration scraped and ached over the intercom as if he were dying.

  Morn wanted to call out, Help me, God damn you! Tell me what to do! But she didn’t believe he was in any condition to hear her.

  Then another fear took hold of her.

  What if Trumpet did go there! What if she survived? What happened then?

  Morn couldn’t reach past the immediate crisis. Beyond her course projection lay only darkness: asteroids and collisions; blank scan and blind navigation; hard g, unconsciousness, gap-sickness. She hadn’t studied Deaner Beckmann’s charts or the lost Lab’s operational data. She didn’t know how to think beyond the doom on the overlay in front of her.

  But the gap scout and everyone aboard would die if she failed: if Trumpet survived Soar and Free Lunch, and Morn hadn’t planned for what came next.

  She’d already killed her father’s ship and most of her family.

  Trembling with fear, she copied Trumpet’s assigned departure protocols from the log, then dummied them back to her helm program so that they would run automatically. After that, she set the command overrides to slow or stop the ship if her preset course threatened to damage her.

  Morn had no idea what else to do.

  “Jesus, Morn.” Abruptly Davies silenced his intercom pickup so that Angus wouldn’t hear him. He turned his station partway toward her. “Do you know what he’s doing!”

  She shook her head. The course projection overlay held her, and her heart may have failed. She couldn’t guess what Angus had in mind.

  “He’s taken one of the singularity grenades,” Davies murmured in awe or dismay. “Manual launch. He thinks he can suck those ships into a black hole. My God, he must be planning to throw it at one of them.”

  Which might have worked, if Trumpet had faced only one enemy. And if by some miracle he could have contrived to place the grenade where it would absorb enough power from its target.