With a stiffness of her own, she entered the galley.
She didn’t take her fists out of her pockets until she was sitting at the table. Then, abruptly, she pulled up both hands and cupped them around the coffee mug. She needed something to steady her so that she could think. The coffee was seductive, too, but she was prepared to trust it.
He was right about one thing, anyway: he had a talent for coffee. A couple of hot sips made her feel almost instantly stronger. In simple gratitude, she said through the steam, “Thanks.” Then she sipped again.
“That’s better.” To all appearances, Vector Shaheed’s approval was genuine. “I don’t like to see anybody scared—especially not a woman like you. Out here, there’s many an old spacer who thinks women are worth dying for. I myself”—his smile became rueful for a moment—“am gratified just to have you sit here and drink my coffee.”
“What would you like to know about us?”
Without thinking, Morn asked, “Where are we going?”
Vector’s smile lost none of its soft ease, but the muscles around his eyes tightened. He drank some of his coffee before he replied, “You can probably guess that that’s not one of the subjects I’m prepared to talk about.”
She shook her head again, chagrined by her own weakness. She shouldn’t have asked that question: it exposed too much. And she certainly couldn’t ask what exigency had called Nick to the bridge. Groping for some sense of poise, of being in control of herself, she tried again.
“How bad is the gap drive?”
His eyes relaxed. “Bad enough. Bad enough so I can’t fix it myself, anyway. If I had to stake my reputation on it, I would say we can get into tach and out again one more time. If I had to stake my life on it”—he chuckled gently—“I would say it’s too dangerous.”
“How long can you last without it?”
“At least a year. We’ve got that much food and stores. Not to mention plenty of fuel. At the rate we’re traveling, we’ll starve before we run out of fuel.”
Vector’s manner didn’t give the words any special importance. Nevertheless Morn knew they were important. As long as Captain’s Fancy used only this gentle thrust, there was only one destination Nick could reach in a year: the belt. And of course there was no place in the belt to get a gap drive repaired. But even at much higher velocities, Captain’s Fancy had nowhere else to go in human space.
Forbidden space was another matter. Its proximity to the belt and Com-Mine Station was a large part of what made them so crucial to the UMC—and to all humankind. Running hard, the ship could probably get there in a few months. But then what? The possibility that Nick might be headed for forbidden space was too complex for Morn to evaluate. In any case, Com-Mine Center would never have authorized a departure trajectory in that direction.
Vector watched her think for a while. Then he started talking again. “I offered you a reason or two to be less scared. I can see that wasn’t one of them. Let me try again.
“There are twenty of us aboard, and from your point of view we probably all look like reasons to be scared. But that isn’t true. I don’t mean you can trust us. I mean you don’t need to worry about whether you can trust us. The only one of us you need to worry about is Nick. You see”—Vector spread his hands—“he isn’t just the captain here. He’s the center, the law. None of us is a threat to you, as long as he’s happy.
“And I’ll tell you something else about him. He never gives away his castoffs. You don’t need to worry that he’ll get tired of you and pass you off to one of us. You’re his. On this ship, you’re either his or you’re nothing.
“That’s why it doesn’t matter whether you can trust any of us. We’re no danger to you. We never will be. All you have to worry about is Nick. Everything else will take care of itself.”
Morn was stunned. Hearing her dilemma stated so nakedly made her brain go blank. He’s the law. He never gives away his castoffs. It doesn’t matter whether you can trust any of us. But because Vector was smiling at her, and she knew she couldn’t afford to be paralyzed, she forced herself to ask, “Is that supposed to help me feel better?”
“It should,” he replied promptly. “It simplifies your situation.”
Her mind was practically useless. “I guess you’re right,” she said slowly, struggling to think, to articulate her incomprehension in some way. “But it would help me more if I understood it. Why—” Why are you so loyal to him? “Why is he my only problem? You’re all illegals, you said that yourself. I don’t know why you do it, but you all want to get away from law somehow. That’s got to be true.” The only pirate she knew personally, Angus Thermopyle, would have committed any conceivable atrocity to make sure nobody else had power over him. “You don’t want rules, you want opportunities. So why is he the law? Why do you let him do that? Why does what he want take precedence over what the rest of you want?”
Vector Shaheed seemed to consider that a good question. His eyes appeared inordinately blue and clear as he answered, “Because he never loses.”
Then he grinned like a man with a secret joke. “Besides, it’s axiomatic that nobody likes law more than us illegals do. It’s a love-hate relationship. The more we hate the UMCP, the more we love Nick Succorso.”
Morn blinked at him. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Vector lifted his shoulders in a mild, humorous shrug.
A moment passed before she noticed just how smoothly he’d distracted her from his idea that Nick never lost.
While she was still trying to collect her thoughts, however, the intercom in the galley chimed. The same neutral voice she’d heard earlier said, “Morn Hyland, come to the bridge.”
A moment later Vasaczk added, “Acknowledge.”
Morn didn’t move. She was frozen again; taken by surprise and snared in fright.
Vector’s stiffness seemed constant. His movements gave such an impression of resistance in his ioints that Morn expected him to wince as he got up from his chair and went over to the intercom. Nevertheless his expression remained as calm as blue water: any pain he may have felt remained far below the surface.
Keying the intercom, he responded, “She’s with me. I’ll make sure she doesn’t get lost.” Then he clicked off the pickup.
By way of explanation, he told Morn, “This will give me an excuse to be on the bridge. I want to know what’s going on myself.”
She hardly heard him. No, she insisted to herself, no, don’t panic, not now. Any risk she failed to face might kill her: she could only hope to survive if she met each danger as it came. Don’t panic now.
Nevertheless she was suddenly afraid right to the bottom of her belly. And the zone implant control was back in her cabin; she had no defense. She could feel what remained of her will crumbling. Her reserves drained out of her as if she were a broken vessel. Without her black box, she was only the woman Angus had raped and tormented, nothing more. If Vector Shaheed had left her alone, she would have put her arms down on the table and hidden her face against them.
He didn’t do it. Instead he touched her shoulder gently, urging her to her feet.
She stood as though she were under his control.
“Come on,” he said. “You don’t want to miss this. It might be interesting. You can be scared later.”
His hand on her shoulder guided her out of the galley.
“I told you that you don’t need to worry about whether you can trust us. That’s true. But there are a couple of people you should watch out for. Mikka Vasaczk is one. She can’t hurt you—but she would if she could.”
A moment later, in the same tone of secret humor he’d used earlier, he added, “Hell, we all would.”
CHAPTER 3
Hell, we all would.
For several minutes nothing else penetrated Morn Hyland’s distress, although Vector kept talking while he led her through Captain’s Fancy. Retailing information and descriptions like a tour guide, he steered her to the nearest lift and down to one of the oute
r levels; he may have thought that the sound of his voice would steady her.
But she only heard, We all would.
She was sure she’d guessed the truth. Nick had been summoned from her cabin to deal with some urgent development which involved her. It involved Com-Mine Security and Angus. Something had gone wrong with the deal Nick had made for his departure—with the deal Security’s traitor had arranged for him.
Or some hint or rumor about her zone implant had been passed to Nick, and now he meant to expose her; ruin her.
Surely there were other, less fatal possibilities? If there were, she couldn’t imagine them. Angus had burned that capacity out of her. She had to brace herself for the worst and face it.
Somehow.
All would.
Her training in the Academy must have been good for something. Hadn’t it taught her enough toughness to pull her brain into focus? Hadn’t Angus taught her enough desperation? She needed the zone implant control, wanted it so badly that she almost begged Vector to let her detour to her cabin; but she knew the risk was too great, she couldn’t hazard having the proof of her falseness in her possession. And she couldn’t go to her cabin, switch on the control, and then leave it behind. It wouldn’t work if she moved out of its range, and its transmitter wasn’t powerful enough to reach more than ten or twenty meters.
She had to face the bridge with nothing but the tattered and unreliable resources she had left.
It wasn’t far from the lift. Captain’s Fancy was a frigate, not a disguised destroyer like Starmaster—or even a masquerading orehauler like Bright Beauty, with much more space for cargo than crew. Except for her luxuries, Nick’s ship was built to a more compact scale. The outer levels converged on an opening like an aperture in the structural bulkhead; through the aperture was the command module.
At need this command module could be sealed, even detached, from the main body of the frigate. In fact, the module could almost certainly function as a separate craft while the rest of the ship was operated from the auxiliary bridge.
Urged gently ahead by Vector Shaheed, Morn crossed the aperture and entered the compact circle of the bridge.
The perspective would have disoriented her if she hadn’t been familiar with it. She stood in a space like the cross-section of a cylinder, with her feet on the inner curve and her head toward the axis. In that respect, the bridge was no different than the rest of Captain’s Fancy: it was simply smaller. The floor swept up and arced over her head on both sides. Some of the bridge crew sat at their stations beside her, almost level with her; others appeared to hang upside down above her. But, of course, wherever she or anyone else stood, the floor was “down” and the axis of the cross-section was “up.” The big display screens for scan, video, data, and targ were built into the concave wall opposite the aperture. Their status lights winked green, but the screens themselves were blank. In all likelihood, Nick didn’t want Morn to have the information she could have gleaned from the displays.
Vector and Morn gained the bridge beside Nick’s command station. Like everyone else on the bridge, Nick was in his g-seat; his hands rested on his board, tapping buttons occasionally with accustomed ease. Nevertheless Morn noticed at once—even before she tried to take an inventory of the people arrayed against her—that he hadn’t strapped himself in.
Mikka Vasaczk stood near him, defenseless against any change in g.
Which meant Captain’s Fancy was in no immediate physical danger. Otherwise Nick would have been preparing for maneuvers of some kind.
“Nick,” Vector said with a nod like a little bow. Apparently nobody aboard called Nick “Captain.” “I was trying to seduce her with coffee. If you hadn’t interrupted me, I might have succeeded.” His smile remained mild, almost impassive.
Nick’s was altogether different. It was fiercely happy; it gave the impression that he was baring his teeth.
“That doesn’t worry me,” he said like a cheerful tiger. “If I didn’t do it, you would find some way to interrupt yourself. You like the process of seduction too much. You never actually want to succeed at it.”
Vector didn’t attempt a rejoinder; he seemed absorbed by the implications of Nick’s insight. Still smiling, he walked up the curve to an empty seat and sat down in front of what was probably the engineer’s console.
Morn was left alone beside Nick and Mikka.
Belatedly she tried to take in the rest of the bridge.
Apart from Nick, Mikka, and Vector, she counted five other crewmembers. Vector’s presence wasn’t necessary to the normal operations of the ship. That left six essential bridge positions: command, scan, communication, targeting and weapons, helm, and data and damage control. First, second, and third for each position: eighteen people altogether. Vector and his second brought the crew total to twenty. Vector’s “pup” was probably on duty in the drive space, monitoring the thrusters directly.
None of the bridge crew had anything urgent to do. They were all staring at Morn.
“Carmel.” Nick continued to focus on Morn while he addressed other people. “What’s scan got from Com-Mine?”
Carmel was a gray-haired, chunky woman who looked old enough to be Morn’s mother. “No change,” she reported. “Routine traffic. They haven’t sent anything after us yet.”
“Lind?” Nick asked. As he watched Morn, the hue of his scars deepened.
“We’re getting regular demands for acknowledgment,” replied a pale, wispy, nearly walleyed man with a communications receiver jacked into his ear. “They want to know if we hear them. And what we’re going to do. But they aren’t making threats.”
“All right.” Nick slapped his hands on the arms of his seat and pivoted his chair away from Morn. “We’ve got a decision to make, but we have time. They know we took damage. The longer we put on velocity this slowly, the more they’re likely to figure we can’t trust tach. And if we can’t go into tach, they probably figure they can chase us down. If it’s that important to them. Which might encourage them to postpone their own decision for a while.”
That, Morn thought, might be the real reason Nick had acceded to her request for no heavy g.
“But whichever way they jump,” he went on, “we need to be ready to jump ahead of them.”
Abruptly he swung around to face Morn again. “We’ve got a problem.” But his tone wasn’t abrupt: he spoke laconically, as if all he wanted was to engage her in conversation. “Our deal with Com-Mine Security isn’t holding—the deal we made to get you out. They want us to come back. If we don’t, they may decide to come after us.”
“Why?” she asked neutrally. The crisis was upon her, but it didn’t surprise her: it was just what she’d feared. To that extent, she was ready for it. Yet hearing Nick state it caught her in a new way, despite her alarm. Was it possible he’d made a mistake? Was it possible that he could lose?
She already knew he had limits—
He replied casually, but there was nothing casual about his scrutiny as he said, “They think you’ve got something they want.”
She couldn’t help it: her whole body flushed with panic and remembered passion. Shame burned on her skin, as if he’d stripped her naked and offered to sell her to the highest bidder. The entire bridge crew was staring at her; even Vector watched her. Mikka Vasaczk’s animosity was palpable at her back, even though she was held by Nick’s gaze and couldn’t look away.
The zone implant control, of course; that’s what Com-Mine wanted. Angus didn’t have it on him when he was arrested. By now, Security had had time to search Bright Beauty; they knew the control wasn’t there. They must have figured out she had it.
They wanted to arrest her. And they wanted an excuse to execute Angus.
As if in confirmation, Nick concluded, “They want us to return you.”
In a small voice, like a bird horrified by a snake, she asked, “What are you going to do?”
“That’s easy.” The darker Nick’s scars became, the more he smiled. “We’re go
ing to get the truth out of you. Then we’ll be able to decide.”
“What ‘truth’?” Suddenly she hated the way she flushed, the way her body betrayed her. She hated Nick’s bold hunger and Mikka’s hostility. She had rage in her, and it began to leak past her defenses. “You already know I’m UMCP. You knew that before you picked me up.” She gathered strength as she went on. “What other secrets do you think I’ve got? What ‘truth’ are we talking about here?”
Nick’s manner remained perfectly nonchalant; only his eyes revealed the intensity of his focus on her. “We’ll take it one ‘truth’ at a time. What makes you think we knew you were a cop when we rescued you? If we’d known that, we would have known you didn’t need rescuing.”
“Because,” she retorted, “you’ve got a connection in Com-Mine Security. There’s no other way you could have framed him.” Angus’ name wouldn’t pass her lips; she couldn’t force it out of her throat. “I helped you plant those supplies, but you couldn’t have stolen them in the first place without inside help—without somebody in Security who was willing to take risks to help you.
“Maybe that’s what’s going on now. Maybe your connection is feeling the heat—maybe he needs to get me back to distract the rest of Security from the way those supplies were stolen.
“But that’s beside the point. Whoever he is—whatever reasons he’s got for helping you—he would have told you everything Security knows about me. He would have told you who I am.”
Nick didn’t contradict her. He may or may not have liked intelligence in women, but he accepted hers. He spread his hands expressively. “So you see our problem.”
“No,” she began, “I don’t. I’ve got a problem of my own to worry about. I don’t understand why—”
“I’ll spell it out for you,” Mikka interrupted, as harsh as mineral acid. “You’re a cop. Maybe that’s why you let us take you. Security got Thermopyle. Now you want to make sure the UMC Police get us.”
Morn allowed her mouth to fall open. Anybody who believed her capable of making decisions like that knew nothing about the experience of being Angus Thermopyle’s victim.
Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision Page 5