Angus told him. He told him about Milos.
Nick swore viciously, eagerly: fatal as thermite, he blazed on the verge of an explosion. “And you expect me to trust that? You expect me to stake my life on it? You expect me to believe you aren’t setting me up?”
Angus’ programming didn’t reply. It didn’t need to.
“I’m going to test you, all right,” Nick promised; he spoke as if the words were fire. “What kind of equipment did they give you to blow up Billingate?”
Angus’ programming didn’t reply.
“Isaac, you fucking sonofabitch,” Nick snarled, “this is Gabriel fucking priority. What kind of equipment did they give you to blow up Billingate?”
Pain. Despair.
UV prostheses so I can read electronic fields and circuits. Jamming fields so I can disrupt bugeyes. Lasers so I can cut open doors and people.
Madness. Ruin.
His datacore didn’t mention the plates that protected him, the reinforcements that made him strong.
Nick thought for a moment, then protested, “Shit, Isaac. If you can do all that, why did Milos let you go? He could have used you for anything he wanted. Are you asking me to believe he just walked away from a chance like that?”
There were limits to what he could make me do. I have restrictions to prevent me from killing UMCP personnel. That includes you. And he thought he was betrayed. Hashi Lebwohl told him I wasn’t going to rescue Morn.
“But Hashi lied.” Nick jumped at the idea. A craziness of his own flamed on his face; a thermonuclear sense of possibility. “And poor miserable Milos panicked when you started doing things he couldn’t control.
“All right.” He sounded like he was shouting, even though he kept his voice low. Blood filled his scars; it seemed to fill his gaze. Heat poured off his skin. “You’re going to prove it to me. You’re going to help me take over the ship. You’re going to protect me. And—”
Abruptly he caught himself as another idea occurred to him. “No, wait a minute. Wait a minute. How can I—?”
Then he had it.
“Isaac,” he articulated distinctly, “this is Gabriel priority. From now on, you are going to follow my orders exactly, even if I never say ‘Isaac’ or ‘Gabriel’ again. Do you hear me? I’m talking to your computer. This is Gabriel priority. Every order I give you has the force of Gabriel priority. You don’t need to hear the codes in order to obey me. If you never hear the codes again, you will still obey me.
“Tell me you understand.”
I understand.
Nick eyed Angus harshly. “Tell me what you’re going to do about it.”
There were no words. No words for it. All language had been burned out of him, all meaning extirpated; he would never be released. His last sanity was gone.
I’m going to obey.
“Right!” Nick rasped through his teeth in triumph. Frenetic with eagerness, he launched his passion toward the door. “Let’s get going! I’ve got something I want to teach those bastards!”
Angus had obeyed because Warden Dios had given him back to the crib, and his cries were too thin for anyone except his mother to hear. On Nick’s orders, he’d hurt Mikka and Davies, slagged Sib’s gun; cornered Morn on the bridge and driven her into hysteria.
Now he ran the ship so that Nick would have a chance to prepare himself for what lay ahead.
Trumpet had already come far from her point of insertion: she challenged the system in a kind of navigational combat, soundless and lethal. Trajectories arced across the display, bent off true by doppler effects and changing perspectives. His readouts shouted their warnings at him, blips signaling in confusion as dangers surged close and then receded. Asteroid swarms heaved like igneous hurricanes across scan and fell astern when he avoided them. The small scrap of planets and ships punched Trumpet’s impact deflectors. G plucked and sawed at her from all directions, distorting her vectors, falsifying her helm. She was lured toward collisions too massive to be deflected, gravity wells too potent to be escaped.
Yet he mastered the hazards almost easily, showing no strain: his computer and the gap scout were made for this. Faster than any sane ship, Trumpet dodged toward her destination.
When Nick had learned all he could absorb at one time, he sometimes napped, sometimes ate; sometimes he talked. Once he said cheerfully, “You’re probably wondering why I need bait. Everything would be so much tidier if I just had you slaughter them in their bunks. Or if your restrictions got in the way, I could do it. Jettison them from the airlock and be done with it.
“But I’m ahead of you. Way ahead.” He spoke as if Angus had nothing to think about except him. “You haven’t figured out what happens after Vector learns how to identify that drug.”
He glanced over at Angus. His scars grinned like the fond hunger of a barracuda. “Ask me what we’re going to do.”
What are we going to do?
“Go after Sorus,” Nick announced as if the decision made him proud. “Sorus fucking Chatelaine. And Soar. And for that I need bait.
“She works for the Amnion—and the Amnion want your dear, sweet son. She’ll jump at it if I give her a chance at him. She’ll know it’s a trap, but she won’t be able to help herself. They won’t listen to excuses if she fails them.”
He mused for a moment, then added, “Of course, the cops aren’t going to leave us alone while we do that. I need something I can offer them to keep them off my back. Morn would do”—he clashed his teeth together viciously—“but they can’t have her. I’ve got other plans for her. And I have options. Between them Mikka and that pitiful asshole Sib know everything I do about those Amnion acceleration experiments. If Punisher starts to cause trouble, I can dangle that in front of her nose.”
Angus said nothing. Phosphors danced across his screens and readouts, echoing the system’s silent, random pavanne of destruction. Coercion was the only answer he had left.
“How much longer?” Davies demanded from the intercom.
“Shut the fuck up,” Nick retorted happily. “We’re busy.”
Davies persisted. “I need to know how much cat to give Morn.”
If he feared Nick, he didn’t show it. That was good. Angus was afraid enough for everyone.
“I don’t give a shit,” Nick answered. “Just don’t think you can protect her by letting her go crazy. You won’t like what I do to her if that happens. Or what I do to you.”
Grinning at Angus, he silenced the intercom.
Angus’ mother had smiled that same way when she leaned over the crib.
Sometime later Nick pointed at a readout and swore. “A homing signal, you sonofabitch? You didn’t mention that. No wonder Punisher was able to catch us.”
He chewed his lip for a moment, thinking hard; then he relaxed. “Under the circumstances I probably shouldn’t complain. But I can’t imagine what the hell you thought you were doing. Tell me why—no, I can guess why you did it. Tell me why you didn’t mention it.”
Angus answered like a corpse.
You didn’t ask. I don’t make choices—I just follow orders. If you don’t ask, I can’t tell you.
That was his only defense, his one secret. It had protected him once during DA’s interrogation. Now it warded him again; let him keep this last, useless piece of himself intact.
Nothing required him to tell Nick that he knew how to replace Morn’s shattered zone implant control.
“Well, let’s not make it easy for them,” Nick drawled. “They’ve already given me all the help I need. I don’t think I want to hear what they’re going to tell me to do when they’re sure I’ve got you under control.”
His fingers punched at the command board. On a readout, Angus saw that the homing signal had been deactivated.
Useless, yes. Empty and insignificant. Yet Angus clung to it.
And to one other thing as well; one other useless, empty, insignificant act. While he worked in Nick’s service—and Warden Dios’—he kept Punisher’s transmission vis
ible on another readout. Let Nick notice what he was doing and be suspicious: let Nick think he needed to be reminded of his compliance. He didn’t care. He couldn’t. Whenever his programming and Nick’s orders gave him a chance, he scrutinized that readout with the fixed incomprehension of a madman.
Warden Dios to Isaac, Gabriel priority.
Show this message to Nick Succorso.
The words were embedded in coding that he didn’t recognize and couldn’t read—some kind of machine language, apparently, intended to enforce obedience from Isaac’s computer. Nevertheless he studied them whenever he could; stared and stared until his vision swam and his choked wailing filled his ears.
Warden Dios had told him, We’ve committed a crime against your soul. He’d said, It’s got to stop.
Angus hunted for the end of his despair, the bottom of the abyss, but he couldn’t find it.
Six hours. Twelve. Eighteen. The strain should have been too much for any man, even a welded cyborg. It would have been too much if he hadn’t used all his knowledge, skill, and cunning to thread a course which minimized Trumpet’s reliance on thrust. Ordinary mortality needed sleep: even tortured babies in their cribs slept when they couldn’t bear any more. And Nick rested when he felt like it. Yet Angus’ zone implants kept him awake, alert; compliant to the pitch of desperation, despite the fact that his small limbs were bound to the slats so that his mother could fill him with pain.
Warden Dios to Isaac—
Deep in the lost background of his mind, after each new penetration, she still comforted him as if it were him she loved.
Show this message—
At last their destination loomed on the fringes of scan—the asteroid swarm, according to Mikka, where a lunatic researcher named Deaner Beckmann had hidden his installation. By some bitter coincidence, his lab just happened to have received its original financing from Holt Fasner. The same man who owned the cops.
Angus’ databases and Trumpet’s instruments confirmed that this particular swarm was doomed to eventual immolation in Lesser Massif-5. But he hadn’t been given any indication that the UMCP knew of the Lab’s existence. And Trumpet’s scan had no hope of piercing deep enough into the swarm to detect its emissions. Distance was only part of the problem: that many thousand gigatons of shattered rock simply shed too much interference of all kinds. And a hot singularity less than a parsec off the swarm’s course through the system distorted everything the gap scout could see.
Mikka had said that the Lab was located on an asteroid big enough to be a moon in the middle of the swarm.
With all that rock running interference, she’d explained, it’s damn near impregnable. You have to go in slow—and some of those asteroids have matter cannon emplacements dug into them.
Nick tapped in commands. Angus watched without interest as his board lost helm.
“I’ll take her from here,” Nick explained. “I know where the Lab is. And I know how to talk us in. You’ll just get us blown apart.”
Show this message—
Angus had shown it all; every word; every scrap of code. But Nick had ignored the machine language to concentrate on the words.
“You have targ,” Nick went on. “Screens, dispersion sinks, all our defenses. Data and damage control.” Those functions came to life on Angus’ console. “Your reflexes are probably faster than mine. If we get in trouble, you’ll have to do our fighting for us. I’ll handle the rest.”
Mikka had said that the Lab did a lot of med research. Most of the BR surgery you’ve ever heard of was invented here. But that’s just a sideline to finance what they’re really doing. Which was Deaner Beckmann’s real research. Gravitic tissue mutation.
He wants to evolve genetic adaptations that will allow organisms to survive the stress of working close to singularities. Because he thinks humankind’s future lies inside. But people can’t go there if they can’t take the pressure. So he wants to make a few changes.
Like the cops.
Warden Dios to Isaac—
It’s got to stop.
The Lab might be the only illegal installation in existence where Angus could be unwelded. But he didn’t have that choice.
The swarm’s image on scan grew sharper quickly—too quickly, considering the dangers. A sane ship would have decelerated in order to approach the vast stone torrent more carefully. But no sane ship would have crossed this system as fast as Trumpet did: she had no sanity aboard. Nick was crazy with freedom and power, and his excitement burned like fission as he brought the gap scout around to begin matching the vector and velocity of the asteroid swarm. Movement through that careening chaos of rock would be impossible unless the ship first assumed the same course at the same speed.
A flat hand of g pushed Angus into his seat as Trumpet turned, but he could bear it. Nick had to work within his own limitations. If he pushed himself too hard, he might lose consciousness; might lose everything. And Angus was much stronger. In addition, Trumpet’s bridge gimballed smoothly on frictionless bearings, adjusting its orientation to compensate for g. Any strain Nick could stand, Angus could stand easily.
Davies and Morn could endure it, too, if they were sealed in their bunks. Vector, Sib, Mikka, and Ciro ought to be able to survive the same way.
By degrees lateral thrust eased. The ship had come into line with the swarm’s trajectory through the cluttered void. Almost immediately, however, that force was replaced by deceleration. Trumpet had too much velocity; at this speed she would crush herself on the first asteroid she encountered.
Angus couldn’t feel the difference. G was g, always pulling in the same direction as the bridge revolved to meet it. The ship knew the change, however. She made it obvious. Braking roared through the hull, a raw, almost subliminal howl of energy, at once louder and more profound than the oblique stress of lateral thrust.
The screens flickered and broke up for a second or two while scan algorithms recalculated for deceleration; Angus’ readouts offered him a heartbeat of gibberish. Then the displays sprang clear. Data began to pour in: distance, size, composition, relative velocity from half a hundred obstacles at once. A particle storm of input raged past Trumpet’s hull, was interpreted by her computers, and appeared in front of him as if it were coherent; as if so many instances of mass thrashed by so many conflicting forces could be seen as anything other than chaos.
Proximity alarms began to signal in the background. Nick was bringing Trumpet too close too fast. Angus, who wouldn’t have hesitated to attempt the same maneuver himself, didn’t trust Nick to handle it. Yet Nick ran helm precisely, despite his relative unfamiliarity with the ship. Filled by a rising chorus of klaxons, she finished her deceleration as she breached the fringes of the tumbling river of rock. Then she started dodging among the stones toward the distant heart of the swarm.
The screens became an impossible jumble of positions and vectors. For any ship to navigate past so much mad rock—and to do so at this speed—would have been an enormous challenge if the asteroids had been stable in relation to each other; if time and distance and entropy had deprived them of individual motion, so that they traveled as one. But of course they didn’t. Conflicting gravitic fields from Massif-5’s stars and planets, from the nearby singularity, and from the swarm itself affected each of the asteroids differently, according to its mass and composition. As a result, each rock shifted constantly within the general plunge. Stones the size of ships or stations rolled against each other and either cracked apart or rebounded on altered vectors: the whole swarm seethed as if it were seeking to coalesce. Only the sheer confusion of collisions and g prevented the asteroids from collapsing around their center like a black hole.
Navigation was still possible. If it weren’t, the Lab could never have come into existence. But movement had to be done slowly, as close as feasible to the exact velocity of the immediate stones. Trumpet was in danger as much from Nick’s pace as from the surrounding torrent.
He ran the ship as if he were trying to prove s
omething to Angus; as if he meant to show Angus that he was as good as any cyborg. Swearing gleefully, brandishing his teeth and scars, he drove the gap scout among the mute thunder and rebound of the rocks as if he were superhuman; elevated once again by instinct and skill to the stature of the man who never lost.
Proximity alarms squalled at him like pierced souls. An asteroid as big as a warship knocked against its neighbor and was instantly, silently, transformed into a small fleet of gunboats reeling off into the jumble. Energies from the ripped solar winds, fed by magnetic resonance, fired lightning in long, blinding sheets against Trumpet’s shields. The displays broke apart as scan scrambled to redefine itself in new patterns. Nevertheless Nick found his way unerringly toward the swarm’s defended center.
He ran helm like a magician. In that sense, at least, he knew what he was doing. Warden Dios had known what he was doing.
Show this message to Nick Succorso.
With no duties except to study his readouts and stay ready, Angus rode out his personal nightmare and the ship’s like the damned familiar of some demented wizard, dangled by curses from the wand of his master.
Punisher’s transmission had been embedded in codes which Nick hadn’t been able to read any better than Angus could. If that part of the message had been meant for him, he’d missed it or ignored it. Unless he ordered Angus to show it to him again, it was lost.
Yet it was etched in the neurons of Angus’ brain. He could have recited it from memory at any moment. He stared at it on his readout, not because he’d forgotten it, or had any hope of understanding it, but because he had nothing else.
“It gets easier,” Nick explained as if he had a lump in his throat. Despite his exaltation, he was feeling the strain. “The Lab has been clearing space for itself for years. Cutting up asteroids for fuel and minerals, rare earths, that sort of thing. Clearing the approach. Improving the field of fire for those emplacements Mikka told you about. We should be able to pick up a signal from one of their transmission remotes soon. After that we’ll be under their guns most of the way in.”