“In other words,” he fired back at her, “you want me to trust you. You just disobeyed my direct orders, and now you want me to risk everything I’ve got left that you’ll back me up.”
“That was private,” she retorted. His interruption of her efforts to help Davies had left her terrified and furious; careless of consequences. “This is public. Even you can understand the difference.”
With an inarticulate snarl, he swung at her.
But he didn’t hit her; he snatched hold of her arm. Nearly flinging her off her feet, he impelled her toward the lift.
“Make it good,” he rasped as he rushed her along. “The harder you push me, the less I have to gain by keeping you alive.”
Make it good. She no longer had any idea what that meant. Minute by minute, she knew less and less about her own decisions; about the implications of her own actions. She’d lost control in more ways than one. The gap between what she thought or planned and what she did was growing wider. Everything about her had a tight, feverish quality, as if she were going into withdrawal.
Nevertheless she answered his demand as if he could count on her—as if she were sure of herself.
Together they hurried through Captain’s Fancy to the bridge.
Relief showed through Liete Corregio’s blunt competence at their arrival. Unlike Morn, she’d been to sickbay: her injuries had been treated. In addition, she’d had a certain amount of rest. And she’d never lacked confidence in her fundamental abilities. Yet she plainly didn’t want command of the ship in this situation. Her relief indicated that she no longer knew how to regard her captain. She didn’t want to face an Amnion warship without him because she couldn’t count on his approval.
Nick ignored her reaction, however. Scanning the displays, he snapped, “Status.”
Liete nodded at one of the screens. “She showed up five minutes ago. Popped out of tach just inside our range. Scan data on her isn’t very good yet. For one thing, we’re still fumbling with real-time distortion across our sensors. For another, we simply aren’t programmed for this much doppler. We’re having to oversample eight and ten times just to filter out the noise. At the moment, I can’t even tell you which direction she’s going.
“But she’s Amnion. We’re sure of that. And the emission signature resembles one of those warships we left back at Enablement. Calm Horizons.
“By some monumental coincidence, she’s between us and Thanatos Minor. I mean, right between. Unless one of us shifts, we’re going to hit her.”
Frowning at the screens, Nick asked, “How is that possible?”
Liete nodded at the smelly and carnivorous helm third.
“Easy,” Pastille answered, twitching his whiskers. He was glad for a chance to show off his expertise. “Alba and I could do it.” His grin implied that the computational problem was simple, not that he thought highly of Alba Parmute. “Give them our velocity, acceleration, and vector, an accurate mass reading, reliable hysteresis parameters, and a good estimate of how much power our gap field generator can handle, and they can plot our theoretical crossings from Enablement to infinity.
“If they had to guess at our hysteresis parameters and power capacity, they couldn’t do it. But they supplied the components, so they had exact information. If they’re pessimistic enough to think we might survive their brand of sabotage, they wouldn’t have any trouble knowing where to look for us—as long as we resumed tard on their side of the border.”
Morn knew all this. She was sure Nick did, too. But hearing it gave him time to think—and gave the bridge crew time to absorb her presence with him.
Abruptly he turned to communications. “Are they sending?”
The communications third, improficient at the best of times, looked badly flustered now. “I—I don’t know,” he stuttered, “I’m not sure. There’s so much static.”
“Live dangerously,” Nick drawled ominously. “Take a guess.”
The targ third, Simper, sniggered behind his heavy fist.
The flustered man turned pale. Looking at Liete as if for protection, he said in a small voice, “I don’t think so. If they are, the computer can’t make sense out of it.”
“It’s still early,” Liete put in. “As I say, we don’t know yet which direction they’re heading. We can’t measure the distance accurately enough. Even if they started sending as soon as they hit tard, we might not get it yet.”
“Does it work both ways?” Morn asked quickly. “Are they having the same trouble tracking us?”
Liete considered the question. “I don’t see why not. At any rate, I think we can be sure they aren’t expecting to see us like this. They’re probably surprised to see us at all. They should be astonished to see us moving so fast.”
“Right!” Now Nick was ready. He began to issue orders. “You”—he stabbed a finger at Morn—“take the data board.” Grinning harshly, he added, “No offense, Alba, but I want someone there who doesn’t think with her crotch.”
Alba Parmute pouted like her swelling breasts, but she obeyed.
Nick hit the command station intercom. “Lind. Malda. I want you on the bridge.” He seemed to be turning up an internal rheostat, intensifying himself to meet the challenge. Moment by moment, he looked more like the Nick Succorso who never lost. “Right away would be good. Right now would be better.”
On her way to the data station, Morn passed Alba. The data third tried to sneer, but she couldn’t conceal her speculative sexual awe at Morn’s hold on Nick.
Morn grinned back—and was shocked when she realized that her grin was the same as Nick’s. She was becoming more like him all the time.
Like him. And like Angus.
For a moment, the recognition stunned her. Automatically she sat down at the data board, belted herself in. But the readouts and lights in front of her meant nothing. Without the defense of her zone implant, her identity was being transformed by stress; deformed beyond recognition.
Then Nick’s voice reached her.
“Morn, let’s assume we’ve identified that fucker right. Pull up everything we have on Calm Horizons. Let’s start calculating what we’re up against.”
As if he’d hit a switch in her, her ability to function clicked back on. She began tapping keys, executing commands; pouring data across the displays.
Shortly Malda Verone arrived to replace Simper. Muttering to himself, Lind assumed the communications station, screwed a pickup into his ear, and began applying filters to the blurred noise of the vacuum.
“Don’t miss anything,” Nick told him. “We need to make decisions fast. At this velocity, lateral thrust is going to be like cracking eggs with a sledgehammer. We need to keep our course corrections as small as possible. But until we know what they want, we can’t decide what to do about it.”
“I’m on it,” Lind reported without shifting his concentration. “If they fart, I’ll make music out of it.”
“Just be sure it still stinks,” gibed Pastille.
Nick ignored the riposte. “Malda, I want everything ready. Matter cannon won’t do us much good—unless we get a chance to shoot broadside—but I want them charged anyway. The same for the lasers.” Captain’s Fancy was well equipped with industrial lasers: they were invaluable for unsealing pirated ships. Like the matter cannon, however, they were light-constant—too slow relative to Captain’s Fancy’s present velocity. From that point of view, her speed was a disadvantage. It would reduce the effectiveness of her weapons. “And prime the static mines.”
Malda Verone didn’t acknowledge the order: she was already working on it.
“Allum,” Nick continued to the scan third, “I want more information. I want to know whether that fucker’s coming or going, and how fast.”
“So do I,” Allum responded in a discouraged tone. “But the readings just aren’t clear. If my board works any harder, it’s going to smoke.”
But a moment later he said excitedly, “Wait a minute. The computer’s catching up.” Staring at h
is readouts, he reported, “She’s going the same way we are. Exactly the same heading. Speed”—he hit a key or two—“approximately .4C.”
Which meant that Captain’s Fancy was overtaking the Amnion warship at half the speed of light.
Eagerness focused Nick’s attention. “Morn, what do we know about that ship? What can she do?”
Morn sorted data. “That class of warship uses a slow brisance thrust. They can go as fast as we can—I mean under normal circumstances—but they can’t generate as much g. So they aren’t very agile. That fits with our readings on Calm Horizons. That’s the good news.”
Abruptly her mouth went dry.
“The bad news is that she’s big enough to carry super-light proton cannon. That’s one of the advantages of slow brisance thrust—it allows spare power capacity.” Morn’s mother had been killed by a super-light proton beam. “We can’t survive a hit. If we have to fight, agility is about the only thing we’ve got going for us.”
Her feverish sensation began to feel more like chills. Adrenaline out of control. Withdrawal—
If Nick did any heavy g evasive maneuvers, she was in serious trouble. He had her black box.
Her mother had been killed.
Lind’s voice cracked as he announced, “They’re sending!”
Nick sat forward tensely. “Let’s hear it.”
Lind keyed the speakers. With a burst of black static, they came to life.
“Amnion defensive Calm Horizons to human ship Captain’s Fancy.” The flat voice came through particle noise as loud as a rattle of nails in a drum. “You are required to decelerate. Conformity of purpose has not been achieved. Amnion requirements have not been satisfied. If they are not satisfied, you will be presumed hostile. Calm Horizons will destroy you.
“To survive, you must decelerate.”
A sting of panic went through Morn. Requirements have not been satisfied. Phosphene bursts made it impossible for her to focus on the displays. Her mouth was so dry that she couldn’t swallow. The Amnion still wanted Davies.
estimate, but it should be about right. The computers are getting a better picture all the time.”
“Five minutes,” Allum verified from scan. “That checks.”
Ninety million kilometers. And closing at a relative velocity of 150,000 kilometers per second. Space enough to maneuver in. Time enough for desperation.
The ship’s scan wasn’t that good. Of course not. The Amnion warship could function because her equipment was superior to anything human: no human scan had that kind of range. Captain’s Fancy was reading old information—particle traces dispersing across the vacuum—and extrapolating from it. Ironically the velocity she’d been given by sabotage was what enabled her to interpret scan data over such distances; gave her a chance to defend herself. A station like Com-Mine would have been blind to Calm Horizons’ presence.
“Nick,” Morn said, forcing up words from her desiccated throat, “tell them we’ve got damage. Tell them when the gap drive blew it burned out the thrust control systems. We can’t decelerate.”
He shook his head. “They’ll know that isn’t true.” His concentration was so pure that he didn’t react to the message underlying her suggestion. “They designed those components. They know exactly how our gap drive failed.
“Lind, copy this. ‘Captain Nick Succorso to Amnion warship Calm Horizons. I have regained command of my ship. I regret that the satisfaction of your requirements was prevented by mutinous action among my subordinates. However, I am unwilling to decelerate. My own requirements were not satisfied. Gap drive damage necessitates urgent arrival at Thanatos Minor. Because of the nature of our damage, the satisfaction of your requirements is no longer compelling.’” Carefully he refrained from accusing the Amnion of cheating. “‘We will alter course to avoid collision.’ Send it.
“Pastille, this is your chance to prove you’ve got a right to be such a smartass. I want a one degree correction. And I want it soft. Less than one g. At this speed, that vector will miss them by a wide enough margin.”
“What good will that do?” asked the helm third. “They’ll shift to compensate.”
Calmly Nick returned, “Did I ask your opinion?”
“No.”
“Then just do it. If you can’t calculate your own algorithms, get the computer to figure them for you.
“Tell me as soon as they start to alter course,” he instructed the scan third.
To conceal his irritation or chagrin, Pastille turned to his board.
Instinctively Morn clenched her hands on the edges of the data console and waited for g—for the burst of clarity which would destroy her.
But Pastille was good at his job, when he chose to be. She felt a sudden pressure as her weight tried to sink across the centrifuge of Captain’s Fancy’s spin; however, it only seemed heavy because it rotated in and out of phase with the ship’s internal g. And it was over in a moment. It left her giddy and feverish; but that was relief, not gapsickness.
“Done,” Pastille reported petulantly.
“You all right, Morn?” asked Nick.
The intent of his question was complex, but its import was simple. She nodded.
Five minutes lag. Ten for a message to go and an answer to come back. No, not that long. Captain’s Fancy was closing the gap at half the speed of light, not counting the minute decrease in relative speed caused by the course correction. The lag was shrinking fast.
Morn didn’t have much time.
“Nick,” she offered tensely, “what about a bluff?” As her sensation of fever mounted, she began to think that clarity would have been an improvement. She couldn’t trust Nick—and the symptoms of withdrawal would only get worse. “We can tell them we’ve already beamed a report to Thanatos Minor and human space. If anything else happens to us, the word of how we were betrayed will spread. The only way they can save their reputation for honest trade is by leaving us alone.”
“That might work,” Liete commented thoughtfully.
“Or it might convince them they don’t have anything to lose by killing us,” Nick countered. “If their reputation is already damaged, why not give themselves the satisfaction of blasting us?
“I’ve got a better idea.”
Again he toggled the intercom. “Mikka, how do you feel about going EVA at two hundred seventy thousand kps?”
Mikka took a moment to respond; when she did, her tone was noncommittal. “I would rather break my kneecaps. What have you got in mind?”
“Static mines,” he said crisply. “I want a cloak of them around us—twenty or thirty at least. But if we launch them from targ, Amnion on scan might be good enough to read the power-flash. I can’t risk that. We need a manual launch.”
“What good will that do?” asked Pastille for the second time. “If we surround ourselves with static, we’ll be blind. We won’t see it coming when they hit us.”
Nick shot the helm third a curdling look. Pastille closed his mouth.
If the same question troubled Mikka, she kept it to herself. “I won’t have to go outside,” she answered. “I can do it from one of the locks. How much dispersion do you want?”
“I don’t care about the distance—not at this range. I just want it slow. And thin. I don’t want to cast a shadow on their scan.”
“When?” the command second asked.
Nick glanced at Malda; when she nodded, he told Mikka, “They’ve been primed. Get them ready fast. But don’t launch until I tell you.” With a fierce grin, he added, “Make sure you’re secure. I don’t want to lose you when we maneuver.”
Snapping off the intercom, he turned back to Pastille.
“If you think I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said distinctly, “you’d better put on a suit and jump ship. We won’t miss you.”
Pastille ducked his head. Biting his lips, he murmured bitterly, “Sorry, Nick. It won’t happen again.”
“Just for the record,” Nick continued in a snarl, “how do you suppos
e that fucker’s targ is going to handle our velocity? They’re too far away for real-time tracking. If they want to hit us, they’ll have to hypothesize our position. I intend to make that difficult.”
Morn wasn’t listening. Her throat kept getting drier, and she had more and more trouble breathing. All she cared about was how the Amnion would respond to his message.
Which one of their requirements were they determined to satisfy?
“Nick, they’ve shifted,” Allum reported from scan.
Morn reached for the data from scan so that she could plot it; but Pastille was faster—probably trying to redeem himself. Quicker than she could work, with her eyes dazzled by random neural blasts and her fingers going numb, he processed the information. Then he barked, “Intercept course. If we stay on this heading, they’ll cross our line just in time for impact.” He hesitated, then asserted, “We’ve gained about two minutes.”
Lind’s voice caught as he said, “Message coming in.”
“Audio,” Nick instructed.
“Amnion defensive Calm Horizons to human Captain Nick Succorso.” Decreasing distance had marginally improved reception from the warship. “You are required to decelerate. This is mandatory. If you do not comply, you will be destroyed.
“Your speed makes communication difficult. Therefore negotiation is not feasible. You state that gap drive damage causes the satisfaction of Amnion requirements to be ‘no longer compelling.’ This statement is unclear. You transgress Amnion space. Therefore all Amnion requirements are ‘compelling.’ Speculation suggests that you consider the Amnion culpable for gap drive damage. Very well. You are considered culpable for the failure of Amnion efforts to resolve uncertainty concerning your identity. If you accuse the Amnion, you will be accused in turn. The Amnion accusation predates yours.
Forbidden Knowledge: The Gap Into Vision Page 37