Grinning like a beast, he remarked, “I guess that’s fair.”
Deliberately he pushed his hands into the pockets of his shipsuit.
Poised on the balls of her feet, Min studied him as if he confused her. Dark speculation thronged in her gaze. Then she seemed to see something she recognized in him. She nodded once, harshly, and turned away.
“Warden must want you alive for a reason,” she told Morn. A stifled clamor frayed her voice. “I sure as hell hope it’s a good one.”
She might have been shouting, Make up your mind!
Stiffly she went back to the communications station.
Morn opened her mouth and found herself gasping. Her heart jolted as if she’d been struck, not Angus; as if the blow Min delivered and the one he repressed had both been aimed at her.
For a reason—
With a flash of laser fire and an instant of restraint, Angus had made the terms of her dilemma clear. He’d demonstrated his freedom—and his self-control.
In some way Warden had let him go. She was so precious to Warden that he’d released Angus altogether.
And now Min challenged her to make the choices she’d been given. Trust Warden. Trust what he’d done to Angus. Set aside her fears and her shame; her visceral revulsion.
Or reject—
There: that was the bottom; the final question. Earlier Min had talked about “restitution.” She believed Warden wanted to end Holt Fasner’s power over human space—and humankind’s future. She’d said, He’s going after Fasner. He’s trying to bring the Dragon down. That was restitution of a kind. And submitting himself to Calm Horizons was another. By that means he’d preserved his authority over—and his responsibility for—the UMCP: he’d created the conditions under which Min could lawfully refuse Fasner’s commands.
And now—
Because I’m free!
Was that yet another form of restitution?
Warden had freed Angus because she’d already done so. Before he caused Angus’ collapse, he’d said, You know him better than I do, Morn. I’ll trust your judgment.
Her judgment? Hers?
Here was the floor of the chasm. Humankind’s future, as well as millions of lives, depended on her judgment. And self-destruct was the only answer she’d ever truly understood.
It’s got to stop.
“Glessen,” Dolph ordered distantly, “get a first-aid kit for Director Donner.” Impotent passion seemed to drive him deep into himself, where he couldn’t be reached. “Help her take care of that hand. I doubt she’ll agree to go to sickbay.”
“Aye, Captain,” the targ officer answered through his teeth. Cursing under his breath, he moved to obey.
“You can sit down, Sergei,” Dolph went on. “Director Donner will let us know when she wants us to do something for her.”
Without a word Patrice did as he was told.
Morn inhaled with a shudder. A passion of her own gathered in her. I need a better answer. She felt it mount behind her eyes; flush like fever across her cheeks; burn in her wounded arm. For a terrible moment she seemed to understand everything—and she hated it all. Too many people had asked too much of her; cost her too much.
Her time had come.
“Angus, listen to me.” Her voice ripped at him. “Listen good, because I’ve had all of you I can stand.”
In time to the labor of her heart, she struck the edge of the command board with her cast, sending small shards of hurt like splintered glass along her arm.
“That’s Min Donner you shot. She’s been honest with us ever since we came aboard. She’s told us the truth. She’s kept her word. She’s left me in command, even though she knows why that’s wrong as well as you do. You are a butcher and a rapist, and you sell people to the Amnion! I will not tolerate any more damage from you!
“Is that clear?”
With all her strength she hit the board hard enough to shatter her cast.
An instant of pain stopped her. At first she couldn’t tell whether the partly healed bones of her arm held. She didn’t care. Peeling away broken pieces of acrylic with her good hand, she flung them one at a time at Angus’ face: accusations with ragged edges; raw demands; threats. But when her arm came free from the remains of the cast, she found that she could flex her fingers and elbow without too much discomfort.
Angus didn’t flinch as the light fragments struck him; made no effort to avoid them. If he blinked to protect his eyes, she didn’t see it. Instead of reacting, he faced her like a man who no longer knew anything about fear. Or maybe his fears had become so profound that they made him sure. He waited until she was done before he let himself rub a hand across his stung cheeks and forehead.
“I didn’t hit her,” he murmured thickly. “Don’t you get it? I could have broken her skull.”
He might have been echoing an earlier appeal. I could have stopped you. But I didn’t. Because I made a deal with you.
“Yes, I get it!” she flamed at him, fierce as impact fire. “I get it, God damn you. Warden removed the restrictions. Now you can hurt UMCP personnel. You can hurt anybody you want. But you haven’t answered any of my questions.
“I’m sick of it. You’re going to start now. Or I’ll tell Davies to shoot you where you stand!”
Davies may not have understood her; but he didn’t hesitate. He moved quickly away from Angus—out of Angus’ range—and raised his gun at his father. Like her, his eyes were shouts of panic and determination.
Still Angus faced her without faltering. The muscles at the corners of his jaw bunched and loosened.
“We’re going to rescue Dios,” he told her. “I said I know how. Isn’t that what you want?”
He shocked her out of her fury. Despite the glimpses of clarity he’d given her, she hadn’t grasped the full truth about him; hadn’t gone far enough to guess the changes implied by his new power to harm—and to withhold.
“Did you think Dios was playing when he talked to me?” he asked her stricken face. “Knocking me down just to show he could do it? You know better than that. You know him better—He has codes he never told me about. Commands I can’t block. And he untied me.”
A note of exultation began to beat in Angus’ rough voice.
“When he said ‘apotheosis,’ every damn database in my computer came on-line. Most of that stuff is there for emergencies. I couldn’t access it unless my programming decided I need it. But now I have it all.
“I know everything there is to know about this ship.” He indicated Punisher with a jerk of his head. “I know everything DA ever heard about Amnion equipment, weaponry, capabilities. Shit, I even know why I was designed this way.”
By degrees Davies’ grip on the pistol loosened. His hand sank, pushed down by the weight of Angus’ words. Like Morn, he stared as if he’d been rendered helpless.
Min waited, silent and motionless, while Glessen slathered tissue plasm onto her hand, covered her wound with a bandage. Bloodshed filled her eyes; but she did nothing to interfere.
Everyone else on the bridge listened like cold death.
Angus leaned his eagerness closer to Morn.
“But that wasn’t all. By itself it wouldn’t do me any good. When he said ‘vasectomy,’ he shifted my core programming. Erased the command that protects UMCP personnel. I shot Min Donner in the hand. You saw me. I could shoot her in the head, if I felt like it. If she quit being honest.”
Without warning he wheeled away from Morn and yelled savagely, “I could go around this bridge and cut every one of you bastards in half!”
But I didn’t.
An instant later an unnatural calm settled over him. He must have triggered his zone implants. Whether it happened voluntarily or involuntarily didn’t make any difference.
He faced Morn again.
“That’s why you’re going to trust me,” he informed her. “Because Dios could have forced me to do what he wants. I’m sure there’s a self-destruct code he could use. Or he could have given it to you.
But he didn’t. Instead of putting a gun to my head, he let me go.
“Before he sent me to Billingate, he told me it’s got to stop. Crimes like welding me.” Reflexive anger darkened his gaze. “Making me into a machine. Or suppressing that antimutagen. He said they’ve got to stop.
“Well, he stopped one of them. He kept that promise.
“Once I get him off that fucking warship, I’m going to ask him why he picked us to stop the rest of his crimes for him.” At last Angus allowed himself a trace of sarcasm. “If I don’t like the answer, I’ll probably kill him.”
Still no one spoke. Davies and everyone else waited like Min for Morn’s response.
Kept that promise.
Smiling across the bridge, Ciro announced, “I know what to do. He told me all about it.”
The look in Mikka’s eyes as she watched Morn was bleak and beyond hope; desolate as a derelict.
Because she’d lived so long with self-destruct, Morn recognized that in his own mind Ciro was already dead. There was nothing she—or Mikka—could do to save him.
Angus seemed to press himself against the edge of the command board. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” Despite his eagerness for freedom, he did his best to persuade her. “But you don’t need that. You just need to accept it. Stop suffering over what Dios wants, or Fasner, or Vestabule. You know what you came here to do. So get started. Leave the rest to me.”
Morn flexed her sore fingers; rubbed at her aching forearm. She felt strangely naked without her cast, as if she, too, had been released.
Her judgment.
Warden Dios thought she was more important than God. He’d saved her from the consequences of his own dishonesty by selling her to Nick. Then he’d welded Angus to rescue her. When the crisis of Calm Horizons’ encroachment became too great for him to control, he freed Angus to carry out his designs for him.
Humankind’s future depended on her.
Ciro knew what to do.
The decision was one she could make.
Nevertheless she postponed it for another minute. Studying Angus closely, she asked, “How much of all this is in your databases?”
She meant, How much do you know about what Warden wants?
If the UMCP director kept one promise, he might keep others.
Angus scowled at her delay. “Some of it.” He contained his frustration, however. “Resources, mostly. Possibilities. Applications. I don’t think even Dios saw this exact disaster coming. He’s just good at planning for emergencies.
“But I know how to use it,” he avowed. He might have been taking an oath—the same oath Min took when she’d raised her hand as a target. Then he laughed like a burst of thrust distortion. “Maybe that’s why he picked me. There’s nobody better.”
When she felt sure he’d told the truth, she was ready.
Days ago, in another lifetime, he’d pleaded with her to let him edit his datacore. I made a deal with you, he’d reminded her. I gave you the zone implant control. You let me live. Then he’d said, I kept my end. Whether you kept yours or not.
As far as she could tell, that was the truth as well.
When I hurt you, I hurt myself.
She knew how to trust him.
“All right.” To herself she sounded unnaturally calm; as calm as he was. Somehow she reached past her fears to the answer she needed. If lost Deaner Beckmann’s hypothesis was accurate, the sheer gravity of her plight had pulled her to a new kind of clarity. Davies had already agreed to take the risk. “We’ll do it your way. As soon as you tell us exactly what you’ve got in mind. You’re playing by new rules. So am I. Maybe we can change the rules of the whole game.”
Then she leaned back in her g-seat and let an unfamiliar quiet settle over her heart.
WARDEN
Warden had plenty of time to think while he waited for Morn to reestablish contact; all the time he needed. More than enough to realize how much he’d staked on her.
God, he’d gambled everything—
Unless or until Hashi found the evidence he hunted, she was the only witness who could support Koina’s accusations against Holt Fasner. Without her, anything Koina said depended solely for its credibility on Warden’s personal statements—which might be dismissed as self-serving fabrications.
In addition Morn was in command of Punisher. She’d reached some kind of accommodation with Min Donner; enlisted Min’s fierce integrity to back her up. Now she held the physical force to plunge the whole solar system into battle and ruin if Warden couldn’t convince Marc Vestabule to agree to her terms.
She and Davies had helped Angus edit his datacore. She’d admitted as much. And she’d known about Viable Dreams before she made that decision. For some reason he’d told her the most damning thing he could about himself. Yet she’d trusted him.
Warden Dios was directly, personally responsible for much of the abuse and degradation she’d experienced since Starmaster’s death. But now he had no choice except to leave the fate of everything he needed and desired in her hands.
He could have killed Angus. Hashi had told him how to do it. Instead, however, he’d elected to risk humankind’s future on Morn’s judgment.
Angus’ death would gain nothing.
On the other hand, setting him free might be worse—
The UMCP director had time enough, and more, to consider all these things while he waited to hear from Morn again. Five minutes at least—probably closer to ten. If the small chamber where Vestabule kept him held a chronometer, he couldn’t read it. But there wasn’t enough time in all creation for him to convince himself that he’d made the right choice.
The best he could say on his own behalf was that he’d committed his loyalty—and surrendered his life—to the two people in human space who had the greatest right to demand such things from him.
Finally an indicator on the alien console caught Vestabule’s attention. With his human hand, he activated incomprehensible controls; and at once Morn’s voice entered the room.
“Director Dios, this is Morn Hyland.”
The sound was almost frighteningly clean, immediate. Calm Horizons’ equipment filtered out Punisher’s thrust distortion with preternatural ease. Morn might have been speaking to him from the far side of the room.
Warden took hold of the edge of the console, pulled himself closer to the pickup.
“This is Warden, Morn.” Despite the potential cost of anything he said, he responded firmly. “We need to resolve this now. I can’t keep Calm Horizons waiting any longer.”
“I understand that, Director.” Morn’s calm was deeper than his: it hinted at depths he couldn’t measure. “But our position hasn’t changed. Vector and Davies have agreed to surrender themselves. I refuse. And Angus—”
Vestabule hardly moved. Nevertheless his posture conveyed an increased tension; a poised threat.
“Director,” Morn went on as if she feared nothing the Amnioni could do, “Angus can’t make this kind of choice. When you spoke to him, he collapsed. Whatever you said hit him hard. And since then he’s been like a crazy man. If I begged him to do what you want, he wouldn’t listen to me. If I held a gun to his head, he would probably laugh at me.
“As I’ve already told you”—her severity could have drawn blood—“I will not impose the decision you want on anyone. I would rather die fighting. If Angus can’t choose to go of his own free will, then he isn’t going.”
Warden flicked a look at Vestabule’s closed face. “Morn—” he began urgently.
She overrode him. “I heard you the last time. The Amnion don’t consider that acceptable.”
The accusations she might have leveled against him were present in the room; as clear as her voice.
“Director Dios, I’m willing to fight about this”—for a heartbeat or two she paused—“but I would prefer to reach some other agreement. Tell Vestabule he can have Trumpet instead of Angus. She’s intact. Her drives failed—we had some sabotage—but everything else is und
amaged. Datacore, weapons systems, everything.”
He can have Trumpet?
Caught by fear and wonder, Warden stared at the console speaker. The place where her words reached him was all he could see of her.
Have Trumpet? Are you serious?
That’s brilliant!
Or insane.
She was saying, “Punisher doesn’t have a shuttle. Vector and Davies will be using the command module. But that’s not a problem. The module can piggyback Trumpet at the same time.”
Crisply she finished, “Tell Vestabule that’s our best offer.”
Before Warden could reply, Vestabule silenced the pickup. He faced the UMCP director squarely. His human eyelid fluttered with discomfort in the acrid air. Colors which might have indicated distress seethed through his aura.
“It does not suffice,” he pronounced.
At once Warden cried, “It must!” He no longer cared how much desperation he betrayed. The time had come to show it.
You inhuman bastard, are you bluffing?
Vestabule shook his head. “You cannot control your cyborg,” he stated inflexibly.
Perhaps he meant to accuse Warden of lying. Earlier Warden had said, There are codes I can use that will affect Angus. He’d deliberately misled the Amnioni. Now he had to accept the outcome.
Nevertheless he protested falsely, urgently, “Something happened when he edited his datacore.” Protecting Angus as well as he could. “He made changes I don’t know about. They must have corrupted parts of his programming. Are you going to throw away Davies and Vector and millions of lives over that?”
Through his teeth, he countered, “I’m not the one who taught him how to edit a SOD-CMOS chip. You are.”
Again Vestabule shook his head. That motion of denial may have been the last remaining vestige of his former identity.
“There is human treachery here.”
If he knew that, he wasn’t bluffing.
Still Warden tried to argue. As if he were breaking under the strain, he croaked, “What do you want from me? You can have Davies. You can have Vector. You can have Trumpet, for God’s sake. You’ve even got me. What more do you think I can do?”