A sigh came from the speakers. Now Warden’s voice hinted at weariness; the accustomed fatigue of loss. “I’m not going to do that. I’m sure Min already tried it. If Morn is in command there, I assume you’ve found a way around your priority-codes.
“We talked about that once,” he added obscurely.
He must also have assumed that Nick was no longer a factor. An easy deduction: if Nick had retained control over Angus, the situation aboard Punisher would have been completely different.
Slowly Angus raised his hands to his face, rubbed at his sweat-grimed cheeks. “In that case,” he retorted, “no, I’m not all right either. The fat man isn’t as stupid as he looks. None of us are all right. The difference is, I’m the only one who knows what we’re really doing here.”
What we’re—? Davies gaped at Angus—really doing? What was he talking about?
“Which is?” Warden asked warily.
Angus didn’t hesitate. As if he were passing sentence, he pronounced heavily, “We’re waiting for you to keep at least one of your promises. I’m sure every one of us has a candidate in mind. Personally, I want to see you keep the one where you stop the crime you’ve done to me.”
Morn’s eyes widened involuntarily, and Davies caught his breath. Like her, he hadn’t considered the possibility that Warden might have made promises to Angus as well.
Angus was right: in spite of his truculence and his refusals, he’d named the truth.
“I’m considering it,” Warden drawled across the gap between the ships. “I haven’t made a decision yet. I don’t know enough about the situation.”
“Well, while you’re ‘considering it,’ “Angus retorted, “let me tell you what we’re considering.
“We want to know what kind of mutagen Vestabule gave you.”
Warden sighed again. “Don’t worry about it,” he returned. “I have a suicide pill in my mouth. I’ll bite it open if I have to.” Firmly he added, “I’m not particularly eager to turn into an Amnioni.”
Davies believed him. He was starting to feel capable of suicide himself. And the UMCP director’s voice carried conviction, despite the intervening distortion. Morn had spent most of her life believing implicitly in Warden Dios. Now Davies felt that he simply could not doubt anything Warden said.
That made his own position harder to bear. It was easier when he was full of outrage.
Morn pulled her hands through her hair, resisting the persuasion of her memories; tugging at her scalp to remind herself that the cops were corrupt.
“Why are you telling us this, Director Dios?” she asked unsteadily. “What’s your point? I’ve already said I don’t consider myself a cop anymore. I’m not under your authority. Whatever we decide to do isn’t going to depend on whether or not you have a suicide pill.”
“I recognize that,” Warden replied at once. The pressure of his position aboard Calm Horizons seemed to urge him ahead. “But I want you to recognize who you’re talking to. I’m not some Amnion pawn you can afford to ignore. I’m Warden Dios, and I’m trying to do my job.”
By an exertion of self-discipline so severe that it appeared to make her shiver, Min kept her attention fixed on her PCR and pickup; on Center.
Do my job, Davies nodded helplessly. Save Suka Bator. UMCPHQ. A few million lives. How could he argue with that? How could he hold back from offering to sacrifice himself? Didn’t he think those lives were worth what he would have to pay for them?
But Morn wasn’t swayed. “I’m sorry, Director Dios. I’m afraid I just don’t understand.” She may have meant, Which promise are you trying to keep? “Why are you aboard that ship? How can you do your job if you’re a hostage?
“What makes you think negotiating with the Amnion won’t cost us more than we can possibly afford?”
Her words may have stung Warden. “You don’t need to understand it, Morn,” he responded with unexpected vehemence. “What you need to understand is that the Amnion are going to destroy Suka Bator, UMCPHQ, your ship, and anything else they can aim their guns at if we don’t give them what they want.
“And after that what’s left of us will be at war with forbidden space. All-out war. Wholesale slaughter. My God, Morn,” he finished brutally, “we’re talking about enough blood to drown a planet. Try understanding that.”
She covered the misery on her face with her hands. “Don’t drag it out, Director,” she breathed. “Tell us what it means. So we’ll know what we’re up against.”
“All right,” Warden consented grimly. “I’ll put it in plain language for you.
“The Amnion consider Davies Hyland their rightful property. They want him returned to Calm Horizons. In addition, as compensation for an act of war committed against Thanatos Minor, they want Angus Thermopyle, Vector Shaheed, and you. If the four of you don’t come here and surrender yourselves, the defensive is going to open fire.”
His words restored the full force of Davies’ dilemma.
Calm Horizons wanted him.
In subtle ways the terms of his decision had shifted. The visceral throb of loyalty he felt whenever Warden spoke seemed to alter the valence of the emergency. Involuntarily he forgot Warden’s crimes. Yet his fear remained, appalling and paralyzing him. The demands of the Amnion pressed him toward a gap he didn’t know how to cross.
Without realizing that he’d moved, he found himself standing in front of Min Donner as if she held the clue he needed; the hint which would unlock him from his impasse. The truth—She hardly glanced at him, however. Although she seemed to hear everything that was said around her, she concentrated like a hawk on the pickup at her throat and the PCR in her ear.
Angus started to say something; but Morn silenced him with a cutting gesture. She faced a dilemma of her own: distinct from her son’s, but no less arduous.
“What about you, Director Dios?” she asked thickly. “What do you want?”
The speakers crackled. “You’ve said more than once that you don’t consider yourself bound to take my orders.” Warden spoke slowly, precisely, as if he were suppressing a vast need. “If you did, I would order you to comply. Since you don’t, I’m trying to persuade you.” Harsh with coercion, he added, “If you refuse, I’ll instruct Director Donner to take command away from you and force you to comply.”
Then he went on more gently, “I don’t mind paying for my own mistakes, Morn. God knows I deserve to bear the brunt of this. And you know that’s true. You’ve learned everything you need about Intertech’s mutagen immunity drug. By now you’ve probably heard that Angus was framed so we could pass the Preempt Act. If you have, you can figure out that we sold you to Nick so you couldn’t tell anyone Angus was innocent. And the final responsibility for Calm Horizons is mine. I chose Milos Taverner to go with Angus to Billingate.”
On the record Warden Dios admitted his crimes.
“I’m dead no matter what happens, Morn. If being a hostage, or asking you to give yourselves up, is part of the price I have to pay, I’ll do it. But I simply cannot let millions of innocent people be killed just because I’ve failed in my duty.”
Min paused; turned to see how Morn would respond. From under his dark brows, Captain Ubikwe studied Morn piercingly. Most of the duty officers neglected their boards while they waited for her answer. Even Mikka raised her head from the targ keys and readouts; looked at Morn with her face full of exhaustion and mute, baffled longing.
Angus muttered curses under his breath. Ciro gave no sign that he understood anything except his own peculiar secrets. He sat with his head back and his eyes half closed, murmuring softly to himself. But Vector listened with pain in his eyes and lines of loss around his mouth.
The Amnion consider Davies Hyland their rightful property.
I’m dead no matter what happens—
Davies’ life hung on a decision he couldn’t make.
Morn seemed unaware that everyone waited for her. She was caught in the grip of Warden’s appeal. Moisture blurred her eyes. A frown twiste
d her forehead. She gripped the arms of her g-seat as if she needed them for balance.
She was silent for a long moment as if she were listening to echoes of her parents’ voices. Then she leaned over the pickup.
Husky with constricted emotion, she said, “We’ll have to talk about it, Director. I can’t make these kinds of decisions for other people.
“Stay on this channel. Weil come up with an answer as soon as we can.”
With the tip of one finger, she silenced her pickup gently, as if she were bidding the UMCP director farewell.
Davies hardly heard her. His attention was fixed on Min. He needed to ask her a question which he didn’t know how to formulate. The crisis he dreaded most had caught up with him at last. Somehow he had to decide what he was going to do.
Min Donner seemed to be the only person on the bridge who might be able to tell him why he shouldn’t put her gun to his temple and blow his brains out.
Warden
Morn said, “We’ll have to talk about it. I can’t make these kinds of decisions for other people.” Then her voice clicked silent, leaving Warden Dios alone with Marc Vestabule.
His heart trembled as he drifted at the communications terminal grown into one wall of the small chamber where Vestabule guarded him. Sweat beaded on his temples; prickled along his spine. His human eye throbbed at the strain of the Amnion illumination: his prosthesis told him nothing he could use.
Morn Hyland was in command of Punisher. The scale of that accomplishment—or the depth of the disaster—stunned him. Somehow she’d persuaded or forced Min and Dolph to stand aside. Now she insisted that she no longer served the UMCP. Dolph plainly considered himself helpless. Min had reached some accommodation which allowed her to serve as Acting Director without opposing Morn’s command. And Angus was openly hostile—
Something had happened. Something wonderful—or terrible. With Vestabule looming at his shoulder, Warden was no longer sure he could tell the difference.
Questions seemed to throng at him from the inhuman walls. What would Morn decide? Would Min obey him if he ordered her to surrender Morn and Davies? How had she become Acting Director? What happened to Hashi?
Effectively a prisoner aboard Calm Horizons, Warden Dios had no choice except to trust the people he’d most misused: Min and Hashi; Morn and Angus.
Slowly Vestabule reached past him to deactivate the board pickup. For a moment the Amnioni used his own pickup to address someone—presumably Calm Horizons’ command center. Warden couldn’t decipher the guttural Amnion sounds; but he guessed that Vestabule was making sure the defensive’s channel to Punisher remained open.
Then Vestabule turned his attention to Warden.
“Your people do not obey you,” he pronounced stiffly. Like Warden, he had only one human eye. His Amnion side stared at Warden inflexibly; but the human one was moist with distress. “You are not invested with decisiveness. You cannot satisfy our requirements.”
Oh, shit.
Alarm labored like the acrid air in Warden’s chest as Vestabule continued. “I must open communications with Holt Fasner. Your failure allows no alternative. He states that he is able to command compliance from all effective power in human space.”
Anchoring himself on the communications board, Warden turned quickly to contradict Vestabule.
“If that’s what he says, he’s lying through his teeth.” He mustered anger to muffle his panic; raised his voice to force it past the obstruction of his breathing mask. “Ask Center to send you a copy of the UMCP charter War Powers provisions. You’ll see I’m telling the truth. Fasner’s authority over the UMCP was suspended the minute you began this incursion. Right now I am the only effective power in human space.”
Damn you, I’m selling my soul for this! Don’t throw it away.
Vestabule’s strange features revealed nothing. The blinking of his human eye was too ambiguous to interpret. The aura he cast to Warden’s IR sight seethed and pulsed with hues the UMCP director didn’t recognize.
“I know it doesn’t look that way,” Warden went on harshly. “Morn Hyland resigned her commission. She doesn’t recognize my authority under martial law. And it’s obvious Captain Thermopyle broke out of his programming somehow.
“But I’m not done yet.”
Without inflection the Amnioni countered, “Do you not find it difficult to assert that you are ‘the only effective power in human space’ when it is plain that you have no effect? Even among your kind such clear contradictions must cause distress.”
Warden swore to himself.
“I’m not done yet,” he insisted. “You’re surrounded by our ships. Right now Punisher won’t take my orders. But none of them will take Holt Fasner’s. Any deal you made with him would be useless because he can’t make those ships hold fire.
“I still have more to say to Morn. And even if I can’t give her orders, the situation itself is pretty persuasive.
“You talk about how much you remember, but I’m not sure you remember what it’s like for a human being to believe in an idea that’s bigger than you are. Morn isn’t just a cop. She believes in what cops are for. Her whole family did, and she’s no different. She’s been hurt and disillusioned, but she isn’t capable of forgetting it’s her sworn duty to protect innocent lives.”
Behind the concealment of his anger, he prayed fervently that he was right.
“But even if she ignores me,” he grated, “I’ll still give you what you want. For one thing, Morn can’t hold that ship if Director Donner and Captain Ubikwe decide to take it back. The crew will obey them. And both Min and Dolph will obey me.
“On top of that, there are codes I can use that will affect Angus. I haven’t done it yet”—as if involuntarily he burst into a shout—“because I’m trying to keep as many of my people alive as I can!” The trembling in his heart spread to his lungs; his voice. His mask seemed to constrict his breathing until he had to pant for air. “As soon as I turn this into a test of what you call ‘decisiveness,’ there’s going to be bloodshed.”
In case Vestabule missed the point, Warden explained bitterly, “No matter how careful Min and Dolph are, Davies might contrive to get himself killed.”
The Amnioni stared back uncomfortably. The strange contrast between his human and alien eyes gave the impression that he was torn by the irreconciled contradictions of his nature.
“The same thing might happen if Holt Fasner gave orders Punisher was willing to obey,” Warden growled. “I’m not in a hurry to take that chance. I don’t think you are either.
“We made a deal.” His voice shook as if he were furious. “I get you what you want. You don’t try to bargain with anybody but me. And the Amnion are famous for abiding by their agreements.” He made a point of shifting the capsule in his mouth. “Leave Holt Fasner out of it.”
A slight turn of Vestabule’s head suggested that he was listening to the receiver in his ear. He grunted a complex response that seemed to crunch and cut like shards of broken sound; a response full of laceration and death—
In his panic Warden wondered whether he was strong enough to force his capsule into Vestabule’s mouth before the Amnioni could bring down ruin on his frantic hopes.
Then Marc Vestabule answered him in a tone like old iron, “Understand this, Warden Dios. I must have satisfaction soon. What I chiefly remember of being human is desperation. If our requirements are not met, I will have no other recourse.”
Warden ached to ask what Vestabule meant. But he could guess.
“You remember desperation,” he muttered darkly. “That’s a start. Then maybe you can understand that you don’t gain anything by threatening me. I’m already committed to satisfy your requirements.
“If you really want me to succeed, give me something I can use. Tell me what happened to Nick Succorso.”
Vestabule blinked erratically. “Of what relevance is this?”
“I just told you,” Warden snorted through his mask. “We’re talking about des
peration. Morn’s. Davies’.” Mine. “The more I know about why they’re desperate, the more effective I can be. How much pressure do you think I can put on them if I don’t understand what they’ve been through?
“Not so long ago Nick held Angus’ priority-codes. He commanded Trumpet. With Angus to back him up, he ruled that ship. But now there’s no sign of him. And Angus is free of his codes.
“Isn’t it obvious how crucial that is?”
For a moment Vestabule considered the question. His unreadable study of the UMCP director didn’t waver. The process by which he reached decisions—whatever it was—didn’t involve any discernible emotion, any alteration in his aura; any consultation with his fellow Amnion.
When he was done, he acquiesced. Without preamble he stated, “Captain Nick Succorso was slain by Captain Sorus Chatelaine. I find this incomprehensible. By some means he contrived to board Soar, where he threatened her with death. She killed him instead.” His head moved meaninglessly from side to side, as if he’d forgotten how humans expressed bafflement. “Then she betrayed Calm Horizons.
“I remember desperation, but I can remember nothing which would account for her actions.”
Apparently it was Sorus Chatelaine he didn’t understand, not Nick—a woman who’d served the Amnion for years before turning against them.
Under other circumstances Warden might have been fascinated by this hint of how an Amnion mind worked. Now, however, he hardly noticed it. He barely absorbed the information that Nick was dead. The manner of Nick’s death distracted him.
Abruptly he recalled Hashi’s discovery that Soar had once been known as Gutbuster. In her previous identity Soar had killed Morn’s mother, Bryony Hyland. And she’d also destroyed the original Captain’s Fancy, leaving only her cabin boy, Nick Succorso, alive.
A fatal coincidence, for Sorus as well as Nick. And yet the outcome was that Morn and Trumpet remained alive. Something in the tangle of hunting Trumpet, being hunted by Nick, and serving the Amnion had turned Captain Chatelaine against her masters.