Riding his relief, Milos stayed where he was. Absent-mindedly he reached for his packet of nic. When he realized it was gone, he gave a fleshy grimace.
“Tell me,” he said softly. “What aren’t I thinking about?”
“We’re being cheated.” The pain in Angus’ mouth made him want to rage. “What kind of game do you think Succorso is playing?” He took a step closer to his second. “Or do you already know? Is that what you were talking to him about before we docked? Setting this up?”
Milos raised his hands to ward Angus away. His eyes hinted at Jerico priority commands. Still softly, he asked, “How do you know Succorso is cheating?”
“Because he’s keeping secrets. Somehow he neglected to mention Davies is my son. And he sure as hell didn’t tell us Davies has Morn’s mind. What do you think? Doesn’t that sound like he was trying to help us fail?”
Unless the real cheat was on another level entirely; more insidious as well as more profound. In which case, the things Succorso hadn’t revealed about Davies were just a distraction.
Milos’ eyes dropped; unconscious of what he did, he searched his pockets for nic. After a moment he murmured, “That isn’t what we talked about. As far as I know, his problem is exactly what he says it is. He promised this kid to the Amnion. Now he can’t deliver.” Slowly he looked up to meet Angus’ glare. “Everything he said was a demand for help.”
Angus wanted to spit his disgust in Milos’ face. Grimly he muttered, “Well, we’ll know soon, won’t we. If Captain Sheepfucker comes here looking for Davies, he wasn’t trying to make us fail. He was just playing with us.” Distracting us. “If he doesn’t, we’ll know we’re in trouble.”
Crowded with vehemence, he pointed at Davies and rasped, “Are you going to give me a hand, or are you going to stand there holding your cock until it falls off?”
A flush of anger highlighted the mottling on Milos’ scalp. Nevertheless he swallowed a retort. With a tight shrug, he came to help pick Davies off the floor.
The boy was completely rigid, secured like cargo by the flexsteel straps of his distress. His chest sucked air through his teeth; an urgent, fatal wheeze: nothing else moved. His eyes were clenched shut.
An unfamiliar pang like pity twisted Angus’ heart as he felt the pressure of his son’s crisis. He seemed to know what was happening inside the boy as if he’d learned it from Morn. Davies was remembering the absolute authority of gap-sickness, the command to commit destruction; remembering the wholesale slaughter of his family.
But it was something which hadn’t happened to him—a crime as well as a sickness in which he had no part. And he hadn’t lived through the consequences. Yet Morn Hyland, who owned those memories, had taken it better than this. She’d faced this same utter and irreparable horror, and had come back fighting—
In a sense, she’d forced Angus to give her a zone implant. Without it she would have found some way to kill him. Especially if that meant killing herself at the same time.
Her son was being broken by things which she’d already survived.
Angus’ son.
Another baby for the crib.
His part in Davies had made the boy weaker than his mother.
And now Morn might be lost because Davies wasn’t strong enough to be worth trading for her.
Fulminating uselessly, Angus pulled Milos and Davies into motion. His urge to murder something, anything, was so strong that only powerful zone implants and inexorable machine logic could control it.
Approximately gentle, he and Milos rode the lift with Davies to the midship passage, then lugged him toward the bridge. At the head of the companionway, Milos supported Davies while Angus moved partway down the treads; then Angus accepted the hard fetal knot and carried it the rest of the way. After only a moment’s hesitation he propped Davies in Milos’ g-seat at the second’s station. By the time Milos gained the bridge, Angus was at his own station, keying commands which ran Trumpet’s communications log across one of the display screens.
The log showed routine operational signals; the message from Nick which Milos had retrieved earlier; and a peremptory demand from the Bill.
This last transmission said, “Captain Angus Thermopyle of Trumpet, reply as soon as you get this. My security has been breached. You’re in as much trouble here as I am, and I intend to make sure you can’t avoid any of it—unless you help me find out what happened and do something about it.
“This is my rock, Captain Angus. I’m the Bill you owe. If you don’t pay me, you won’t live to be paid by anybody else.”
“Shit,” Milos breathed, staring at the screen. “How does he know it was us?”
“He doesn’t,” Angus snorted. “He would be cutting our airlocks open right now if he did. But he knows we talked to Captain Sheepfucker—the obvious candidate for a security breach. And he’s got a recording of your activities while we were waiting for that message. Even if he was brain dead, he would wonder what that was all about.
“The important thing now is to not let him know we’re back aboard.”
Milos looked at Davies as if he were considering rolling the boy out of his g-seat. “Won’t he figure it out?”
“Eventually,” Angus admitted. “But maybe by that time we’ll be rid of the kid.”
If Succorso wasn’t cheating.
If the Amnion still wanted Davies.
And if—the unexpected idea shocked him like a static discharge—he could bear to trade his son away.
A more vulnerable version of himself.
He’d spent his life fleeing from his personal abyss. Could he abandon Davies to it now? Could he surrender his son to the crib—
with his scrawny wrists and ankles tied to the slats
while his mother filled him with pain
jamming hard things up his anus, down his throat, prying open his penis with needles
and laughing—?
How could he leave any part of himself there?
His datacore might not give him any choice.
Suddenly he felt as weak as Milos. Like Milos, he breathed to himself, Shitshitshit, because he didn’t have the strength or the words for his dilemma.
“I hope so,” Milos said distantly. Then he asked, “What do we do now?”
Angus’ datacore didn’t care how weak he felt; his zone implants didn’t care. “Wait,” he muttered. “Until we hear from Captain Sheepfucker.”
“In that case”—Milos moved to the companionway—“I need nic.”
Go ahead, Angus thought impersonally. Smoke your lungs out. Maybe you’ll die of cancer.
But he didn’t think anything that good was going to happen.
Davies’ clenched respiration was starting to sound like a death rattle.
Welded unbreakably to his equipment, Angus waited like a capped volcano.
Milos returned from replenishing his supply of nic. Smoking like an oil fire, he paced a slow circle around the bridge, passing across the display screens and behind the companionway as if his life revolved on Angus or Davies.
After ten minutes the intercom chimed.
Milos froze in midstride. Angus jerked up his head.
“This is Nick.” Succorso’s voice, casual and maddening. “Let me in.”
On the keypad of the airlock intercom he tapped the id code Angus had given him.
A spasm shook Davies. His breathing sharpened. But his eyes remained knotted shut; he didn’t unlock his fetal grip on himself.
Angus silenced the intercom. “I’ll do it,” he told Milos. He could have opened the airlock from his board, but he didn’t. Instead he turned his seat and leaped for the companionway. “I don’t want that bastard on this ship unless I’m watching him every second.”
The time, his computer informed him, was 04:11:19.07.
Up the companionway. Along the passage past Trumpet’s galley, sickbay; the weaponry and computer spaces. Into the lift. Angus’ heart hammered; his brain ran lightning calculations. The bugeyes would hear S
uccorso’s voice; would see him enter the airlock. The fact that Trumpet wasn’t empty might not remain secret much longer. Angus, Milos, and Davies would be safe only as long as it was impossible for anyone to imagine that Angus could emit a refractive jamming field; as long as it was easier for the Bill to believe that Succorso had been given the codes to let himself aboard Trumpet.
When the lift opened, Angus moved to the airlock panel and unsealed the doors; then he retreated into the car—out of bugeye range—while the lock cycled.
Succorso stood outside, at the end of the scan field. His eyes were dark and hollow, as deep as gouges; his scars looked like streaks of ash across his cheeks. Nevertheless his mouth wore a buccaneering smile and his arms swung from his relaxed shoulders as if he were afraid of nothing.
He was alone.
Angus raised a warning finger to his lips, then motioned Nick into the airlock.
As soon as the exterior doors closed, Nick asked in a careless tone, “Did you get him?”
Angus waited until Nick joined him in the lift before he pronounced, “You’re the one with the death wish, not me. You like treachery so much you would rather sabotage your allies than help them, no matter how desperately you need them.”
Hard as a blow, he keyed the car upward.
Nick’s smile twisted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Angus would have hit Nick if he could. His zone implants prevented him, so he did his best to punch with words. “You didn’t tell me Davies is my kid. You didn’t tell me he has Morn’s mind. That was a mistake, asshole—a big mistake.”
Nick shrugged. A smolder gleamed in the damaged depths of his eyes. “So you did get him?”
The lift stopped, opened. Angus pointed Nick toward the bridge. “For all the good it’s going to do you.”
A question crossed Nick’s features: he let it go. Ambling in Thanatos Minor’s light g, he headed along the passage to the companionway.
Close at his back, Angus followed him down the steps.
In Angus’ absence, Milos had finally made up his mind to push Davies out of his g-seat. The boy lay curled around himself on the deck between the command stations. His breathing had accelerated: he heaved for air as if he were suffocating. But his eyes stayed shut. If anything his muscles were clamped more tightly than before.
Smoking hard, Milos sat in his g-seat. He’d pivoted his station to face the companionway; but he didn’t meet either Nick’s gaze or Angus’ glare.
“Christ on a crutch, Captain Thermo-pile,” Nick drawled. “You were supposed to rescue him, not scare him into autism.”
At the sound of Nick’s voice, Davies’ eyes sprang wide. Wild and white, they stared blind madness at Nick’s boots.
Another pang touched Angus’ heart.
“It wasn’t me.” He pushed past Nick to take his own g-seat. Swiveling his station, he confronted Nick with his hands on his board, ready for maneuvers or matter cannon fire. “You did this—you set it up. Seeing me triggered a memory crisis of some kind. If you’d warned me, I might have been able to stop it. Instead I made it worse because I didn’t know what was going on.
“The Amnion may not want him like this. I don’t know about that, and I don’t care. It’s on your head—you can pick up the pieces. We made a deal. Morn for Davies. I kept my end.” Grimly he promised, “Now you are going to keep yours.”
Nick made a sound like a dying laugh. “Oh, they’ll want him, all right. He’s still human—he’s valuable no matter what condition he’s in. And they wanted to study him, see what effect her zone implant had on him. That hasn’t changed. They won’t be able to blame me if they don’t like the results.
“Here.” He reached into his pocket, took out an id tag on a fine chain. “This is hers. I’ll leave it with you”—his mouth twisted with humor or scorn—“to show my good faith. I’ll take him to the Amnion sector.” He nodded at Davies. “Then I’ll go get her and bring her here.”
The id tag was Morn’s: Angus recognized the embossed UMCP insignia at a glance.
Too fast for Nick to stop him, he snatched the chain.
“Wrong.”
Nick tensed as if he were about to jump at Angus. Almost immediately, however, he forced himself to relax. He may have been taken aback by the speed of Angus’ reflexes.
Angus gripped the id tag so hard that his fist shook, daring Nick to spring; nearly pleading for Nick to attack him. Into Nick’s face he rasped, “First you bring her here. Then I’ll let you have the kid.”
Slowly one of Davies’ arms uncurled. His palm pressed flat against the deck.
A tic began to pull at the muscles of Nick’s cheek, stretching his scars until they looked like small grimaces. Without shifting his attention from Angus, he asked, “What the hell is going on here, Milos?”
“How should I know?” Milos sighed—a veiled groan. “He’s been out of control ever since we docked.”
“Then talk to him,” Nick demanded between his teeth. “Give me some help here. I’ve done everything I can to make you rich. Right now you’re spending money I made for you. You owe me, Milos. You got him out of lockup, didn’t you? You must have some kind of leverage with him.
“It’s time to pay your debts.”
Milos dropped his nic on the deck. His hands trembled as he took out another one, lit it. Nevertheless he sounded almost sure of himself, almost calm, as he replied, “You’re a dead man, Nick. Only a fool pays his debts to a dead man.”
The tic tightened in Nick’s cheek. His air of nonchalance changed character: a poised stillness came over him. Not for the first time, he reminded Angus of a viper, supple and deadly. Yet his eyes held a haunted look, a hint of desperation. He might have been drowning.
His gaze flicked around the bridge as if he were looking for a weapon. “Nice ship,” he commented appraisingly. “You did yourself a favor when you stole her. She’s a lot better than that other hunk of junk.”
Then he met Angus’ scowl again.
“I don’t trust you, Captain Thermo-pile. I know too much about you. How do you expect me to believe you won’t renege as soon as you get your hands on her?”
“I don’t.” Still praying that Nick would attack him, Angus lowered his fist until it rested on the command board. “In fact, I may decide to do exactly that. This is the price you pay for not telling me he’s my kid—for not warning me. He doesn’t leave this ship until you bring Morn Hyland here.”
Now Davies was staring at his hand on the deck rather than at Nick’s boots. Painfully, stiff with cramps, he unbent his other arm, straightened his knees a bit.
Nick raised his fingers to rub at his cheek, but he didn’t seem aware of it. Darkness filled his eyes. “In that case” —a lopsided smile bent his mouth—“you can kiss her good-bye.” He laughed like breaking glass. “I mean, you already have kissed her good-bye. There in Mallorys was the last you’re ever going to see of her.
“Don’t bother coming with me.” He laughed again. Now it sounded like breaking bones. “I can find my own way out.”
He turned for the companionway.
Davies pushed himself up onto his knees and lunged forward, grabbing Nick around the legs.
Nick staggered a step; recovered his balance. Angus assumed his son was strong; he’d been strong himself at that age. But the stress of clamping his body into a ball so tightly had left the boy weak. He couldn’t pull Nick off his feet.
Nick wrenched himself around despite Davies’ grasp. “Let go of me, you little shit.”
Davies’ mouth gaped open. A croak like a crippled howl came from his straining throat. Driving one leg under him, he managed to knock Nick back against the companionway.
As Nick hit the treads, he snap-punched Davies in the temple so hard that the boy slumped aside.
But Davies didn’t let go. He’d lost his hold on Nick’s legs, so he clung to one of Nick’s ankles. A constricted frenzy flamed on his face.
Quick as a piston, Nick kicked him in the
solar plexus.
Davies must have seen the blow coming, however. He had Morn’s training—and Angus’ instincts. In spite of his weakness and pain, he released Nick’s ankle; as Nick’s boot slammed into him he flung his arms around that leg and heaved sideways, pulling Nick over him and down.
Milos was on his feet—not to intervene, just trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the fight.
Angus sat where he was, gripping Morn’s id tag so hard the metal cut into his palm; studying his enemy.
Once more he had the dislocated sense of being more than one person; of existing simultaneously in separate realities. One part of him left his g-seat and jumped eagerly into the fray, savage for a chance to use his new resources—to make Succorso pay some of the cost for his long ordeal. Hell, with his welded force he could easily kill Succorso. And the strange pangs were growing stronger. Davies was his son—
A more vulnerable version of himself.
Weak with cramps and his mother’s absolute chagrin.
Yet Angus didn’t move. Prewritten instructions held him still, instructions which denied him the right to hurt anyone with any kind of UMCP connection—and which placed no value on Davies. He sat and watched the struggle as if it were purely of abstract interest, while inside his skull he howled like his son.
Nick was good: Angus had to admit that. The instant he hit the deck, he rebounded to his knees. One two three times he pounded Davies in the face, and again, onetwothree, too fast for Davies to block the blows. Blood splashed from Davies’ cheeks, his mouth, his brows. Gulps of air panted in and out of his mouth like aborted screams.
Nevertheless Davies didn’t quit. Ducking his head against Nick’s fists, he tightened his grip as if he were fighting for Morn’s life and strained to haul himself up Nick’s body, reach high enough to do some damage.
“Shit!” Milos gasped suddenly. “Angus, Nick’s going to kill him!”
With the same abstract abhorrence which kept him still, Angus wondered whether Milos was about to issue a Joshua order.
He couldn’t take that chance.