But then the Amnioni reacted to something he heard from his PCR. For a moment he replied in an alien tongue so guttural and threatening that it hurt Warden’s ears. Then he addressed Warden at last.
“The command module approaches, transporting Trumpet,” he announced. “We are in communication with Captain Dolph Ubikwe, who pilots the craft. He assures us that Davies Hyland and Vector Shaheed are aboard, and are prepared to surrender themselves.”
Poor Dolph, Warden thought obliquely. It must have galled his soul to let Morn take command of Punisher; but his present assignment was no better. How did he feel about delivering the means for humankind’s destruction to the Amnion? Bitter and betrayed, probably. Unless he trusted Morn? Or Angus—?
What could they do? What would they be willing to try? Warden had no idea. He found that he was no longer able to imagine what the people he’d created and abandoned might attempt.
“Preparations are complete,” Vestabule continued. “We will await them at the port designated for their arrival.” He indicated the door. Apparently he meant that he and Warden would receive Davies and Vector. “When they are aboard, Calm Horizons will announce a departure trajectory to your vessels, and commence acceleration.”
Warden’s heart thudded in his empty chest. Inside his breathing mask, his tongue hunted for a protection he didn’t have. “What about me?”
He assumed the Amnion would keep him, no matter what they’d promised before he left UMCPHQ. Despite his failures, he was a valuable prize. And they would want a hostage. His life might improve the chances that Calm Horizons would be allowed to leave unmolested.
Vestabule’s human eyelid fluttered uncomfortably.
“You will be permitted to join Captain Ubikwe aboard the command module, if that is your wish.”
Just for a second Warden’s head reeled as if he’d been granted a stay of execution. Permitted to join—He almost believed—The Amnion kept their bargains, didn’t they? They were notorious for it. Maybe they would keep this one?
But he knew better. Vestabule recognized too well the kind of danger Calm Horizons faced. He’d already been forced to give up on Morn and Angus: he would never let Warden go. If he said anything else, he was lying.
With an inward groan, Warden tried to brace himself for what might come. He hadn’t realized that Vestabule’s human heritage extended as far as outright falsehood.
Vestabule raised his arm awkwardly toward the door, gesturing Warden in that direction. For a moment Warden didn’t move. He couldn’t: a visceral dread paralyzed him. But then he remembered the price which Davies and Vector had agreed to pay for humanity’s sake; and he realized that he had to do whatever he could to match them. The fault for their plight was his. If nothing else, he owed it to them to look them in the eyes when they sacrificed themselves.
Grinding his teeth, he nudged himself into motion and drifted toward the door.
It slid open as he neared it.
Two Amnion awaited him in the uneven passage outside the chamber. They may have been the same ones that had guarded him earlier: they each had four eyes so that they could see all around them, mouths full of whetted teeth, three arms and legs, skin as rough as rust. And they were still unarmed. What need did they have for weapons? He was no threat to them.
Too late, he saw that one of them carried a hypo.
Marc Vestabule remembered Angus Thermopyle and treachery with a vengeance.
Frantically Warden slapped at the door frame; tried to alter his trajectory by sheer force of desperation. He flung a wild kick at the hypo, then scissored his legs to turn him. But Vestabule was right behind him. As soon as he started floundering, the half-human Amnioni grabbed him by the back of his shipsuit; caught him in a hold he couldn’t break.
Panic and hysteria closed his throat. Gasping with urgency, he fought while the guards closed on him. But he had no physical strength to compare with theirs. They gripped his wrists like iron; blocked his legs; stretched out his arms until he hung crucified in the air between them. Then the Amnioni with the hypo pushed back his sleeve and plunged clear liquid destruction into his forearm.
Mutation. Genetic ruin.
Involuntarily his brain went white with terror. Cellular dismay sent him into convulsions: he thrashed and flinched spasmodically. Contractions he couldn’t control wrenched through his muscles hard enough to tear them.
Without apparent transition, Vestabule came around in front of him. One hand held the vial of pills Warden had seen earlier—the drug which rendered this particular mutagen temporarily inert. For a moment Vestabule watched his absolute, autonomic revulsion. Then the Amnioni opened the vial, rolled out a small capsule, and held it up in front of his face.
“I remember fear,” Vestabule grated rigidly. “It is wasted.” His own humanity had been taken from him by violence. “If you wish to retain your genetic identity, I have the means.”
With a flick of his fingers, he lifted Warden’s breathing mask and dropped the pill into his straining mouth.
Appalled and shameless, Warden crushed it between his teeth; choked down the bitter powder as fast as he could.
The corrosive taste brought him back to himself.
Shameless—Ah, God. He belonged to Vestabule now. Belonged to the Amnion. Like the guards, his native fear was too strong for him. After all his years of plotting, endurance, and pain, he’d been beaten as easily as a child.
How had he become such a coward? When had he earned the right to protect himself without counting the cost?
Slowly Vestabule nodded as if he recognized the horror in Warden’s eyes. A rough word released the hands of the guards. At once pain pulled Warden’s arms around him, raised his knees to his chest. He drifted weightless in front of the Amnioni like a man reduced to infancy; barely self-aware enough to push his mask back into place. But his gaze never left Vestabule’s face.
For some reason Vestabule told him, “We have received a transmission from Punisher. The woman who speaks names herself Acting UMCP Director Min Donner.”
Min—Oh, Min! Warden suddenly feared that he might start to weep. She would have been braver than this. If everything else failed, she would have spat out that pill; would have chosen to become completely Amnion rather than be used to betray the people she’d sworn to serve.
Vestabule’s human eye fluttered, but the Amnion one held firm. “She states,” he went on, “that our presence has produced a—” He paused briefly, hunting for concepts that meant nothing to his kind. “A political crisis. A conflict among factions. And she claims to fear that this conflict may become combat. Some among your ships or stations may open fire on the others.”
What? A last spasm closed Warden about himself. Then by degrees his muscles began to unclench. Fire licked damage alerts along his nerves as he straightened his arms, unfolded his legs. Combat? At a time like this? What the hell is going on?
Was Holt that desperate?
Vestabule didn’t answer such questions. Instead he said, “She asserts that if this occurs those who are attacked will respond. But she assures us that these hostilities will not be directed at us. They will not threaten us. No attack will target us. Therefore she begs us to take no hostile action ourselves.”
Christ! Warden thought in amazement. Hashi must have succeeded. He and Koina and Morn must be nailing Holt’s coffin shut right now. Otherwise Min wouldn’t be worried about what the Dragon might do next. Not so worried that she felt she had to warn Calm Horizons.
“There is human treachery here, Warden Dios,” Vestabule pronounced without inflection. “It may be that this Min Donner means to deal falsely with us. Or it may be that your Morn Hyland intends some ruse to harm us.
“I assure you that we will take extreme action if we are cheated—or hindered.” He made an almost human effort to emphasize what he was saying. “And I assure you also that you will commit your utmost efforts to ensure that Morn Hyland’s promises are kept.”
In that instant all Warden
’s terror and dismay transformed themselves to savagery.
Everything hadn’t failed. If Hashi and Koina and Morn had succeeded, he could afford to hope again. He could stop feeling beaten, victimized; go back to acting like the director of the UMCP. Min thought Holt was desperate. She was ready for him. Now all Warden had to do was trust Angus. And prepare himself to help as much as he could.
“If those promises are kept,” Vestabule finished, “and if we are not threatened in any way”—his human eye seemed to give off a glint of satisfaction—“you will be granted an opportunity to join Captain Ubikwe.”
Now Warden believed the Amnioni spoke the literal truth.
Using pain for strength, he asked acidly, “How long did you say this pill will keep me human?”
Vestabule didn’t hesitate. “One hour.”
Perfect, Warden snorted to himself. Long enough to get him aboard the command module and away—if events played out the way Vestabule wanted. Not long enough for Dolph to take him anyplace where he might find salvation.
“How many will you give me if I decide to go?”
“None.”
From somewhere deep inside him Warden Dios dredged up a slow, fierce grin.
“That’s what I thought.” With a twist of his hips, he turned; pushed off from the rough wall to float along the passage in the direction of the cargo hold and docking port where he’d first entered Calm Horizons. “Come on. Let’s go see what we can do to make Davies and Vector feel welcome.”
Vestabule remembered treachery, but he’d forgotten the rest of being human.
ANGUS
Streaked by solar fire, and half-fixed in the flare of spotlights, Angus rode Trumpet’s metallic skin like a limpet with Ciro beside him while Dolph Ubikwe nudged the command module onto its final approach vector for Calm Horizons. He was armed with nothing but a pair of laser cutters, a stubby cylinder of hull-sealant, and a spare EVA suit. The fact that he intended to tackle an Amnion defensive with such paltry firepower would have been laughable if it hadn’t appalled him so badly.
He felt completely dehydrated. Sweat slicked the inside of his suit; and he’d already been out here for what seemed like hours, watching Calm Horizons’ fatal bulk block out the heavens. Despite the efforts of his suit’s systems to regulate his body temperature, he always oozed like a pig when he went EVA—an autonomic reflex his zone implants could scarcely control.
But his cruel, blind, irreplaceable programming had prompted him to drink at least a liter of fluids before he put on his EVA suit—an essential precaution which his human mind usually forgot. Terror had that effect on him. The sheer scale and cold of space horrified his crib-bound perceptions. The merciless and impersonal death which reached to infinity in all directions was the only thing he’d ever known that matched the universe of pain he’d received from his mother’s love.
So of course he’d spent most of his life fleeing in small metal ships like coffins through the deeps of a horror he could never escape. Tenuously protected by hulls of steel and will and fear, he’d spent every minute on the run. On his good days the engulfing abyss had touched him only through the abstract schematic and binary data supplied by his instruments.
But most of his days were bad—
The occasion beyond Beckmann’s installation when he’d left Trumpet to fling a singularity grenade at Free Lunch had been one of the worst. Then only stark desperation had saved him from his own terror—desperation, and Morn’s crazy decision to run helm in hard g—after which the hungry stresses of the black hole had dislocated his hip; sent him into stasis; damn near killed him.
And now EVA had been forced on him again. He’d been out here for a long time, studying the defensive’s ominous side while Dolph tugged Trumpet slowly closer and closer to an entirely different kind of ruin. The crib had tightened its grip on him once more. And once more he had to beat it of die.
By rights his heart should have thumped hard enough to burst. But his datacore restrained it.
A gnawing desire to talk to Morn tormented him.
The impulse was madness. According to the specs for his suit transmitter, he could still reach Punisher. But the power drain of dialing his signal that high would have weakened his jamming fields. And the Amnion were bound to detect a transmission that strong. Angus himself had ordered Morn, Min Donner, and Dolph to keep their radio mouths shut.
Nevertheless, while Calm Horizons blotted out half the galaxy, and the moment of docking slid closer, his ache to hear Morn’s voice grew so acute that he could hardly stifle it.
Are you all right? he wanted to ask. Is the Council listening? Does telling them what happened to you change anything? But more than that he wanted to ask, Why did you do it?
He knew she hated him. He’d seen it on her face so often that he wanted to kill her for it. Or himself: he could hardly tell the difference. So why had she helped him escape his priority-codes? Why was she letting him make decisions that could easily kill them all?
Only his old passion for survival kept him from calling out to her.
How long before the command module touched against the defensive’s docking seals? Nine minutes? Less? His computer could have given him a precise projection, but he didn’t want to know. He was already scared enough.
Sweat leaked into his eyes. He couldn’t wipe the sting away. He had to squeeze his lids together so tightly that his face hurt in order to clear his sight.
He might have felt less frantic if Ciro had talked to him. That was safe enough. Calm Horizons would never hear them on this frequency; at these power-levels. He didn’t care how demented the kid might sound, or how deep his fixation on Sorus Chatelaine ran: Angus would have listened to anything as long as Ciro didn’t become confused about what he had to do, or when, or how. But the damn boy was silent most of the time. If he wasn’t prodded for a specific response—some short, unhelpful sentence like, The hatch is open, or, I won’t let you down—he left Angus alone with his sweat and his fears.
Just once Ciro had broken out of his detachment. I wish you would all shut up, he’d snapped at Mikka aboard the gap scout. I already have enough to think about. Other than that he kept his madness to himself.
So how the hell was Angus supposed to endure being out here? Minutes or hours ago he’d mapped his route; planned for every contingency he could imagine. For the remaining eight minutes, or seven, he had nothing to do. He’d abandoned the false, necessary safety of Trumpet much earlier than necessary. He’d consigned himself to this hell as if he’d believed the experience would be good for him.
Stupid shit.
For as long as he could remember he’d been at his best when he was terrified: faster, stronger, smarter than under any other circumstances. But it wasn’t true now. He’d become a man he didn’t recognize, and everything he did was alien to him.
That bastard’s so big—, he’d told Ciro. I need time to study her. But he’d been lying. The truth was that he’d hoped the sight of so much terrible emptiness would help him recover himself; turn him back into the man he remembered.
What was he doing here? What in God’s name had made him think this was a good idea? The Angus Thermopyle he remembered would have cheerfully stayed aboard Punisher; let Warden fucking Dios and UMCPHQ and Suka Bator and the whole damn planet rot in their own brutality. Or he would have broken Trumpet away from the command module; fired the drives; taken his chances burning for open space. But he hadn’t done that. Not him: not the new, smitten, brain-numb Angus. Instead he’d offered to rescue the whole motherless lot of them. Or get himself killed in the attempt.
What had possessed him?
A datacore with a crippled instruction-set? Not likely: he hadn’t felt the coercion of his zone implants.
Or was it Morn? Maybe. She’d been totally, abjectly in his power after Starmaster’s end—and yet she’d saved his life when Nick’s trap sprang on him. She’d released him from his priority-codes for the simple, silly, imponderable reason that she belie
ved welding him was wrong. And she’d gone on trusting him, despite the accumulated risks. She’d eaten her way into his heart somehow: he couldn’t forget what he owed her.
Nevertheless as far as he could tell the one—or the final—thing which had removed him from his own recognition like a sated mother when he’d suffered as much as she needed was the fact that Warden Dios had kept a promise. He’d told Angus, It’s got to stop. And he’d made good on his commitment. He’d erased every restriction which might have prevented Angus from killing him.
By the harsh logic of Warden’s mercy, Angus found that he now had no choice except to rescue the bastard. One kept promise—and Morn’s trust—were enough: they compelled him like a hardwired command.
Despite everything he’d suffered—and everything he’d learned from so much pain—he could still be seduced into idiocy.
“Shit,” he rasped to Ciro because he thought he would snap unless he heard a human voice soon, “if the fat man doesn’t slow down, he’s going to ram that damn port. Crumple us like tin when we hit. Weil bleed to death in our fucking suits before the Amnion figure out we’re here.”
That wasn’t true, of course. His computer calculated trajectory and deceleration automatically: he knew Dolph was bringing them in safely. By now Calm Horizons was so near that she’d stopped growing. Her size and the polarization of his faceplate conveyed the illusion that he could reach out and touch her whenever he wanted. He cursed and complained for the simple reason that in moments he would have to meet a complex sequence of hazards which scared him more than all of space.
It was almost time. In another minute or two he would cast his life to the solar winds—and take as many of his enemies with him as he could.
For the tenth—or the hundredth—time, he checked to be sure his cutters were fully charged, then adjusted his polarization to compensate for Calm Horizons’ chaos of spotlights and shadow.
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