“God, I’m tired,” he murmured in a probably futile effort to explain away his reaction. “If you think it’s pleasant being harried all the way here from Enablement, you haven’t tried it recently.” Then, because craziness was just another form of inspiration, he added, “Do you know what those bastards did to me?” He no longer needed outrage. He was calm now, almost clinical himself. His grin showed how calm he was. “They sold me sabotaged gap drive components. I damn near blew up in the gap. If my engineer hadn’t panicked and tried to abort tach, I wouldn’t be alive now.”
And you wouldn’t know how treacherous your hosts can be.
“I wonder what you did to provoke that,” Sorus mused.
Nick ignored her. From now on he was going to ignore her. Until he was ready to finish her.
For the present he concentrated on the Bill.
In the Bill’s eyes, he could see the lean man’s efforts to guess what had produced this change in him.
After a speculative pause the Bill asked, “Were you expecting Captain Angus? You seem pleased to hear of his arrival.”
“Not particularly,” Nick answered with some of his old, casual readiness. Even a crazy man could understand how dangerous this moment was. The Bill had to be deflected from the truth. “I was thinking about something else. She”—he rolled his eyes at Sorus—“probably didn’t tell you I’ve got an old score to settle with her. A very old score. There was no reason for her to mention it, of course. She didn’t know it would be relevant. But it’s sure as hell relevant now. When she first walked in here, the only thing I could think about was butchering her on the spot. Then it occurred to me”—his grin felt malign and gratifying against his scars—“that I’ve got better options. This could turn out to be a lot of fun.”
Let her believe him as much or as little as she chose. He didn’t care. The Bill’s reaction was all that mattered.
“The truth is,” Nick went on, “I don’t give a shit whether Captain Thermo-pile is here or not. He’s got nothing to do with me. But if you want my advice, this is it. Don’t let him come in. Something stinks about all this, and it isn’t me.”
The Bill pursed his mouth reflectively, then flexed his fingers like a dismissal. “There is cause for concern, certainly. Fortunately we have plenty of time to consider the situation. The thought of time reminds me, however, Captain Nick, that you were interrupted. As I recall, you were about to make me a new offer.”
Nick shrugged. “Never mind.” No matter how undone he was, he could be as dismissive as the Bill. “We’ll talk about that later. I’ve got other things to think about. For now, a visitor’s berth sounds like a good idea. Unless”—he tightened his grin—“you’re planning to revoke all my money, not just that one credit-jack.”
“Captain Nick,” the Bill said in a tone of good-humored reproach. Shadows played in and out of his mouth as he spoke. “Money is money. Please spend as much of it here as you wish. I’ll be delighted to honor your credit-jack as well—as soon as your other difficulties are resolved.”
“Good,” Nick drawled. “In the meantime, take good care of my property. I don’t want to have to worry about what you’re doing to that little sonofabitch.”
Without a glance at Sorus Chatelaine, he turned and strolled toward the door.
“Some things never change, Captain Succorso,” she murmured, taunting him. “Keep that in mind.”
The door slid open in front of him. Ignoring her, he left the Bill’s strongroom.
Milos Taverner was coming to Billingate.
By the time his escort returned him to Captain’s Fancy, his time had already run out. As soon as he entered the lock, shut the door, and keyed the intercom, Mikka told him, “Tranquil Hegemony is in, Nick. She’s been demanding to see you ever since she docked. Now I guess they’re going to send another of their emissaries to talk to you.”
Fatally calm, Nick asked, “Where is she?” while he waited for Mikka to unseal the ship.
“A dedicated berth in the Amnion sector. I’m surprised they don’t insist you go there. Make you deal with them on their own terms, in their own air. But I guess they don’t want to give you a chance for more delays.”
“All right.” Nick snapped off the airlock intercom as the inner door opened. More delays? He had no choice. If he couldn’t delay, he was finished. He had no levers to use against the Bill—none except the immunity drug, which he was saving to trap Sorus. So he had to rely on Milos.
Milos was here with Angus? Why? What kind of power brought those two natural enemies together? Was it a power Nick could make use of somehow?
He needed answers; needed Milos. But Milos and Trumpet were still eighteen hours away.
He would have to stall the Amnion.
He entered the relative safety of his ship and headed toward the bridge like a man for whom danger and survival had become simple.
Unquestionably he was losing his mind. Pieces of it seemed to fall away by the minute, uncluttering what remained.
She was his ship, his, and he took strength from her. She would serve him somehow, save him yet—she and Milos. As he moved through her he had the sensation that Thanatos Minor’s gravitic hold was growing less, that his legs had more lift and his arms more thrust.
All his dreams of revenge on Sorus Chatelaine had a chance to come true at last.
He wished he’d known her real name before this. It would have helped make his plans against her more vivid.
Brandishing a grin, he crossed the aperture to the bridge.
Mikka and her watch were still at their stations. Some of them did nothing but sit, obviously waiting for Nick’s return. Others—Arkenhill, Sib Mackern, Mikka herself—studied operational data from the installation; they may have been looking for hints of the ship’s fate.
Now, however, they weren’t alone. Liete Corregio stood beside Mikka. Like Mikka, she gave the impression that she was scrutinizing everything on the command readouts as well as the display screens. And Vector Shaheed was seated at the engineer’s station. For a man who’d been sentenced to death, he looked remarkably phlegmatic—which reminded Nick that he’d always liked the engineer. Vector was at least courageous enough to face facts without feeling sorry for himself. Maybe, Nick thought indulgently, Vector didn’t have to die after all. Competent engineers were hard to find.
“Nick,” Mikka said as if she were announcing him. Stolidly she stood up from her g-seat, offering him command.
He waved her back to her post. He felt too buoyant to sit down. In any case, there was nothing he needed to do at the command board. He scanned the bridge; for a moment he fixed a smile that was almost charitable on Vector. Then he asked nonchalantly, “So where’s this fucking ‘emissary’?”
“Depends on how fast he walks,” Mikka muttered. “We were told he’s on his way. Should be here in the next five minutes.”
Nick nodded cheerfully. The likelihood that the emissary would threaten him within an inch of his life didn’t trouble him. He already knew what the threats were. What he didn’t know was how ready the Amnion were to carry them out.
“Nick,” Sib said from the data station, “about that other ship, Soar—” He sounded tired and worried; scared of Nick’s displeasure.
Feeling magnanimous, Nick cut him off. “I already know. She used to call herself Gutbuster. She was illegal a long time ago, before places like this hit their stride. In those days she sold directly to the Amnion.” That was a guess—the woman who became Sorus Chatelaine had never told him who her buyers were—but he believed it. “Maybe she still works for them.”
Then, on a whim, he put his head between Mikka’s and Liete’s. Leaning close, he whispered so that only they could hear him, “She’s the bitch who cut me.”
Like Mikka, Liete wasn’t especially pretty. Her features were too blunt: her competence was too obvious. But Nick thought that the surprise, the instinctive anger, on her small, dark face made her lovely.
Quietly she breathed, “Are w
e going after her?”
Is that what this is all about?
“We sure are,” Nick promised.
Facing him straight as if to offer him everything she had, Liete murmured, “Good.”
“Terrific,” Mikka snarled. Nick’s news deepened her scowl to a grimace. “That’s just what we need.”
Her hostility threatened to curdle his mood. Turning his mouth to her ear, he said distinctly, “I warned you. If you want to take that attitude with me, you’d better back it up.”
Her reaction startled him. As unexpected as a flash fire, she flung herself away from him in revulsion. Springing out of her g-seat, she confronted him across the command board.
“I’ll fucking back it up, you bastard!” she yelled. “I’m your goddamn command second! I’ve backed you up too often—I’ve saved your fucking ass too often—to be treated like this.
“Things aren’t bad enough for you already? You think you’re the only one here who cares what happens—the only one whose life is on the line? We’re all hanging by our fingernails because you took us to Enablement, you cheated the Amnion, you traded Davies away. And after swearing to give him back, you lost him. Now the Bill has him. Our credit isn’t worth crap. You haven’t got anything left to trade. If we try to leave, those warships will fry us—and if we stay here, we’ll starve. That’s assuming we aren’t murdered where we sit because you haven’t kept your bargains.
“And now”—she pounded the station with both fists—“now you’re going to turn this whole disaster into a fucking grudge match with some woman who works for the Bill and probably the Amnion as well!
“This is shit, Nick!” Abruptly her anger seemed to run out of energy. Sounding as weary as Sib—but not scared, not even a little—she finished, “And I would be shit if I didn’t try to stop you.”
The bridge was as silent as a tomb. No one aboard had ever seen Nick challenged like this. Even Orn Vorbuld, who had tried to rape Nick’s woman—and had left a virus in the computers to protect himself—hadn’t done anything like this.
All at once Nick started laughing. He had to laugh to prevent himself from screaming. Mikka’s protest brought back the firestorm of fear and fury which had nearly engulfed him in the Bill’s strongroom. In another minute he was going to kill the command second with his bare fists.
“That’s all right, Mikka,” he chuckled. “I can see you’re upset. But you’re working from a false assumption. You’re assuming you know what the issues here really are.” You’re assuming I’m already beaten. “That’s why you’re wrong. And that’s why—”
“Nick,” Scorz put in anxiously, “that emissary is here.”
Nick opened his throat to roar, Why you’d better shut up if you want to live! But the look on Liete’s face stopped him. Her eyes were shining with excitement—no, with trust; with the precise utter confidence in him, the willingness to surrender herself absolutely, that he craved from the bottom of his heart.
Mikka didn’t feel that way about him now. Being Mikka, she may never have felt that way about anything.
But Liete Corregio was on his side to the end.
So he didn’t need to scream. Or kill Mikka. Or defend himself. Suddenly calm again, as casual as ever, he asked Scorz, “Who is it this time?”
A sigh of relief or trepidation seemed to spread away from him around the bridge. “He didn’t say,” Scorz reported as if he were fighting a knot in his throat, “but I think it’s the same bastard they sent last time.”
Involuntarily Nick recoiled as if he’d been hit. “Him?” he snapped. His calm was gone in an instant; forgotten. “Here?”
“I think so,” Scorz offered hesitantly. “He sounds the same.”
A laser of inspiration shot along the synapses of Nick’s brain; his nerves were ablaze with coherent light. The same bastard they sent last time. Not some regulation Amnioni off Tranquil Hegemony.
Marc Vestabule.
Which meant that somebody on Enablement, some Amnion “decisive,” had anticipated this situation. Anticipated Captain’s Fancy’s survival in the gap. Anticipated Nick’s escape to Thanatos Minor. Otherwise why was Vestabule aboard Tranquil Hegemony?
“By damn,” Nick murmured in wonder, “they weren’t trying to kill us with those gap drive components.” He was impressed in spite of himself. “They were testing their equipment. Using us to see if those components worked.”
None of Mikka’s watch understood him: he was too far ahead of them. Mikka herself scowled like a shout of frustration. Arkenhill and Karster stared at Nick with their mouths open. Ransum squirmed in her seat as if she had skinworms. Liete seemed caught between Nick’s excitement and her own incomprehension.
Only Vector was quick enough to follow Nick’s reasoning.
“But what are they for?” he protested quietly. “They would have killed us if we hadn’t aborted tach.” He may have been trying to remind Nick that he’d once saved Captain’s Fancy.
“Not for the gap,” Nick answered as if he were sure. “For acceleration.” Almost in awe, he added, “Imagine what a tub like Calm Horizons could do at .9C.”
“Oh my God,” Sib groaned.
Around the bridge voices swore. Nick ignored them and went on thinking.
Nothing on Earth—nothing in human space—could be defended against a super-light proton beam fired from a warship traveling at .9C. If the Amnion ever decided to abandon their strategy of nonviolent imperialism, they wanted to be sure they would win.
So Davies Hyland was just a smoke screen. What the Amnion really wanted was to kill Nick; kill Captain’s Fancy. Before he or his ship warned human space.
But they had to do it in a way that concealed the truth. A way that kept their secret hidden—and preserved their reputation for honest trade on Billingate.
No, it was too big: the conclusions were too large to be drawn from such small evidence. Nevertheless Nick felt the presence of possibilities so vast that he could only guess at their dimensions.
Milos Taverner was coming to Billingate. With Angus Thermopyle. Superficially that made no sense whatsoever. Beneath the surface, however, it stank of Hashi Lebwohl. Nick had no trouble making that kind of intuitive leap.
He could only speculate about the nature of Lebwohl’s intentions; but he didn’t really care what they were. The important point was that when Milos and Angus arrived, he would have a direct conduit to the UMCP.
Together that conduit and his new information might be enough to make the entire United Mining Companies fucking Police back him up.
All he needed was time.
“Scorz,” he said as if he were calm again; as if his excitement were a kind of peace, “tell Vestabule an escort is on the way. We’ll open the door for him in a couple of minutes.”
As the communications second hurried to obey, Nick turned to Liete. “You’re on. Get a gun—take Simper with you.” Just to remind at least this one Amnioni that Nick Succorso was prepared to defend himself. “Bring that fucker here.”
Her eyes flashing like a salute, Liete Corregio left the bridge.
As he watched her go Nick felt a stirring in his groin. For the first time since he’d learned of Morn’s treachery, he wanted a woman.
• • •
Scorz was right: the emissary was Marc Vestabule. Anyone who saw him once would recognize him again.
He was a failed—or an incompletely successful—experiment: a human being who’d been given a mutagen which the Amnion had hoped would make him one of them—genetically, psychologically—while leaving his physical form intact. Only pieces of his former self remained, however; the stubborn residue of his humanity. He retained some areas of his brain, some human habits or resources of thought. Much of his body was still human: one arm, most of his chest, both shins, half his face. And he was able to breathe human air without much difficulty. But his knees were knots of Amnion skin so thick that his shipsuit had to be cut away to let him move freely. His other arm looked like a metallic tree li
mb gone to rust. And half his face was distorted by an unblinking Amnion eye as well as by sharp teeth with no lips to cover them.
He entered the bridge between Liete and Simper as if he had no fear—as if he’d been made oblivious to his own mortality by the essentially Amnion knowledge that he had no individual significance; that his uniqueness among his people was only a tool, not a matter of identity.
That was his strength. It may also have been his weakness.
“Don’t tell me,” Nick drawled as soon as the emissary stood before him. “You want to sit.”
Marc Vestabule blinked his human eye at this reference to their previous encounter. In a voice like flakes of rust scraped off an iron bar, he replied, “No, Captain Succorso. I want you to honor your bargains with the Amnion.”
Nick shrugged. “Well, I’m going to sit. Looking at a shit like you makes me weak in the knees.” A small flick of his hand sent Mikka away from the command station. Sprawling casually into the g-seat, he turned it to face Vestabule.
As he grinned into the emissary’s gaze he said, “Scorz, set up a recording of this. Put it on automatic relay. If anything happens to us—for instance, if we’re attacked while we aren’t looking, or if Vestabule here is on a kaze mission—I want Operations to hear everything we say. But only,” he cautioned, “if we’re attacked or damaged. As long as this clown plays straight with us, we’ll keep the conversation to ourselves.”
“Right.” Scorz went to work promptly.
“Now,” Nick said to Vestabule, “why don’t you start by telling me exactly what bargains you want me to honor—and why. Just so we all know specifically what we’re talking about.”
Including Operations.
The blinking of Vestabule’s eye was the only hint that he may have experienced human agitation or anger. Like his expression and his posture, his tone revealed nothing as he replied, “Captain Succorso, this is foolish. You protect yourself from dangers which do not exist, and at the same time you aggravate your true peril. You have entered into agreements with the Amnion”—he appeared to grope for the right word—“voluntary agreements. ‘The mutual satisfaction of requirements.’ We satisfied your requirements. You did not satisfy ours.”