DAVIES

Davies stared at the bloody gap in Angus’ back where he’d just reinserted the datacore chip into its socket, and waited for his heart to break.

He didn’t have any other ideas. If this didn’t work, Angus might as well be dead. Sickbay might keep him alive indefinitely; but no one aboard Trumpet would ever reach him again.

It wasn’t working. Davies could see that. Held by his restraints, Angus lay like a slab of meat on the surgical table. Only the autonomic rasp of his breathing indicated that he wasn’t a corpse.

Another failure. The last one: the fatal one. He hadn’t been good enough to help Angus save the ship. If Morn hadn’t risked gap-sickness to aid him, they all would have died. For a while he’d been so caught up in his own exhaustion that he’d let Morn and Angus suffer for long, unnecessary minutes. And after that he’d had to rely on Mikka to run helm, despite her injuries and Ciro’s pain, because he hadn’t been able to cope by himself.

He didn’t know how to repair the drives. He wasn’t even smart enough to turn off Trumpet’s homing signal.

But there was worse.

He’d failed to understand himself. Hell, he hadn’t even tried. He’d refused to look at what lay behind his fury for revenge on Gutbuster. Instead he’d let Nick commit his bizarre suicide. He’d killed Sib Mackern as surely as if he’d pressed the firing stud himself. And he’d taken his roiling terror out on Morn as if it were anger; as if she were inadequate in some way, not good enough for him.

I’m Bryony Hyland’s daughter. The one she used to have—before you sold your soul for a zone implant.

Now he’d failed to bring Angus back from stasis. Trumpet’s drives were dead: the gap scout couldn’t navigate; couldn’t cross the gap in any direction; couldn’t even decelerate. All her choices were gone. She was doomed to drift like a coffin consigned to the sea of space until death or the UMCP intervened.

He wanted his heart to break; wanted something essential inside him to snap. Otherwise he would have to face the consequences of all the things he couldn’t do.

He wasn’t listening when Vector sighed, “Well, what do you know. Would you look at that?” Nevertheless an unfamiliar congestion in the geneticist’s tone made him turn his head.

Mikka caught her breath as she followed Vector’s pointing hand.

Davies blinked, but couldn’t grasp what he was seeing. Apparently Vector wanted him to look at one of sickbay’s status displays. Which one? What difference did it make?

“Davies Hyland,” Vector drawled cheerfully, “my intense young friend, you are a genius. Or, as Angus will no doubt say when he gets the chance, a fucking genius.”

“The EEG, Davies,” Mikka urged quietly. She might have been on the edge of tears. “Look at his EEG.”

Now Davies saw it.

Just moments ago that screen had been effectively blank; filled by the undifferentiated emission of Angus’ zone implants. The sensors hadn’t been able to penetrate the noise to detect any neural activity. But now a whole series of normal-looking waves and spikes scrolled along the EEG’s band-widths.

“He’s asleep,” Vector explained before Davies could try to guess what the readings meant. “Not blank. Not in stasis. Sleeping.” He consulted a readout, then went on, “This isn’t exactly natural. These lines”—he indicated a few of the bandwidths—“are too regular. His zone implants are doing this to him. He needs time to heal. But he isn’t blank,” Vector insisted. “His systems are on-line again. He’ll probably wake up when his diagnostics say he’s ready.”

The geneticist grinned at his companions. “Maybe now we have something to hope for.”

Without warning a visceral relief gripped Davies so hard that he doubled over as if he were cramping. Mikka croaked his name, but he wasn’t able to respond. Pains he couldn’t name locked down the muscles in his chest and abdomen, pulling him into a fetal knot. He’d been under too much strain for too long; living on pure adrenaline. Flesh had limits—even his enhanced metabolism had limits—and he’d passed them long ago. Shocked by the sudden change in the stimulus of his neurotransmitters, his nerves went haywire, misfiring in all directions; clenching him into a ball. Adrift in zero g, he bobbed against the wall and bounced back as if he’d lost all mass; all substance.

“Davies!” Mikka snagged him by the arm, stopped his helpless motion. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

If he could have opened his throat, he would have called Morn’s name. But he couldn’t speak; couldn’t breathe—

Vector didn’t hesitate. “I’ll get some cat.” At once he started keying commands for the sickbay dispensary.

No! Davies wanted to protest. No drugs, no cat, don’t give me anything, that isn’t what I need, you don’t have to be afraid of me, I’m not like that! Morn was the one who needed cat. To control her gap-sickness. So that she wouldn’t try to kill them all.

Closed in pain as if it were a womb, his image of himself shifted.

I’m not her.

Here was the proof. When the universe spoke to Morn—when hard g pushed her flesh past its limits—she attempted self-destruct. Or she hurt herself in some way to deflect the impulse. But he had a completely different reaction. He became a killer of another kind altogether. Driven by his terror of the Amnion, and of their desire to use him against his entire species, he sent other people out to die. He hungered for murder, not suicide. And when his body was overwhelmed, he became a universe not of clarity but of pain: helpless as a convulsing epileptic.

He’d figured out how to bring Angus back from stasis.

And he was not Morn.

That knowledge seemed to reach depths in him which it had never touched before. The hurt which cramped his muscles and sealed his lungs was his, no one else’s. It was his inability to distinguish himself from her.

He’d saved Angus.

He didn’t want any goddamn cat.

Before Vector could reach him with a hypo, his chest and limbs began to unlock themselves.

“Vector, he’s moving,” Mikka announced unnecessarily.

Davies drew a long, shuddering breath. Bit by bit he unfolded himself. When he could turn his head, he did his best to nod at Vector and Mikka. “I’m all right.” He hardly heard his own voice, but at least he was able to speak. “I don’t need cat. I’m just—” Words couldn’t convey what he wanted to say. I’m not Morn. That’s important. “I just need sleep.”

Vector studied him for a moment, glanced down at the hypo in his hands, then referred the question to Mikka.

“Don’t look at me,” she murmured wanly. With the heel of one hand, she pressed the bandage over her eye and the corner of her forehead tighter. Maybe she thought that would make her injuries hurt less. “We all need sleep. If he says he doesn’t want cat, I say send him to bed.”

Slowly Vector nodded.

“I’m going to do that myself,” she went on. Her weariness was palpable. “As soon as I make sure Ciro hasn’t gone back off the deep end.” She sounded defensive as she added, “We might as well rest. We don’t have anything better to do until Angus wakes up.”

That was her brother’s doing, but she seemed to feel responsible for it.

“You’re probably right,” Vector replied as if he thought she needed the acknowledgment. “Go ahead.” He gestured at the console behind him. “I just want to run a few more tests, make sure he’s all right.”

Mikka nodded; turned toward the door. Then she stopped to put her hand on Davies’ arm.

“Thank you,” she said softly. When she looked straight at him, he could see that her good eye was full of loss. “As long as Angus can function, we have a chance. If you hadn’t brought him back, I’m not sure I could live with what Ciro did to us.”

Brusquely she opened the door and left.

When she was gone, Vector dropped his hypo into the sickbay disposal. With a nudge of his hip, he moved himself closer to the command keypad. But he didn’t take his gaze off Davies.

A chance, Davies echoed to himself. Not long ago he’d been alone: alone on the bridge; alone with his failures. But now he’d recovered his father. If Morn could come back from the place where gap-sickness and her shattered arm had taken her, he might finally find it possible to be whole.

Drifting again, he swung around so that Vector wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

Vector cleared his throat. “You’re a growing boy,” he remarked obscurely. “Give yourself a break. I can handle things here. Do what Mikka says—go to bed.”

Sure. Go to bed.

Keeping his back to the geneticist, he pushed off from the surgical table and let himself out into the corridor running along Trumpet’s core.

Moisture smeared his vision. He could hardly see where he was going.

As soon as the sickbay door closed behind him, he caught a handgrip and stopped. More than anything he needed sleep. Yet he was reluctant to return to his cabin. He’d been through too much recently. His limbs and back still ached from the strain of his seizure. If he found Morn asleep, he would be afraid for her. And if she was awake, he would be afraid of her: afraid of what she’d become; afraid of her ability to pierce his heart.

Before Trumpet’s final escape from the black hole’s g, she’d recovered consciousness briefly. I can’t do this again, she’d said to him. When I’m in trouble, the only thing I can think of is to hurt myself. She’d let the singularity crush her right arm. Self-destruct—I need a better answer.

That made sense. Too often she’d driven herself to brutal extremes in an effort to keep him alive; keep him human. He didn’t want to benefit from any more of her excruciation.

Nevertheless he didn’t understand what she meant by a better answer. What else could she have done?

She’d gone too far beyond him. He couldn’t imagine what she might have become.

Yet he’d found a way to rescue Angus from stasis. That steadied him. And by degrees the knowledge that he wasn’t her seemed to grow stronger. Maybe it would be strong enough to help him face her.

He rubbed the back of his hand across his damp eyes, trying to clear them. Then he floated down the corridor in the direction of his cabin.

Morn blinked at him blearily as he entered, as if she’d been awakened by the sound of the door. At first she didn’t appear to recognize him. After a moment, however, she murmured, “Davies.” Her voice sounded rusty with disuse.

He shouldn’t have tried to clean the blur off his vision. He didn’t want to see her like this: pale as illness; her eyes like dark craters in the fragile landscape of her face. All her beauty had been whetted down to bone. In addition, her entire right arm was wrapped in an acrylic cast and strapped across her chest; but she may not have been aware of it yet.

The sight wrung him. He had a strange sense of dislocation—an impression that he was seeing Angus’ handiwork, and Nick’s, from the outside for the first time. Somehow being caught and misdefined by her memories had partially blinded him to the cost of her ordeals. Witnessed from inside, that price was at once more extreme and less tangible.

Fresh tears spread across his cheeks. Despite his new knowledge—or perhaps because of it—his muscles tightened again, trying to draw him back into a ball.

But he’d brought Angus out of stasis. That was one burden he no longer had to carry; one disaster he didn’t have to explain. Surely he could stand the rest for a few more minutes?

He didn’t try to hide what he was feeling from her. Hunched over as if he were bleeding internally, he slid to the edge of her bunk and sagged there beside her, anchoring himself with his fingers in the webbing of her g-sheath.

“Davies.” With an effort, she swallowed to moisten her throat. “You’re still alive. That’s one good thing, anyway.”

“So are you.” Empathy and weariness hindered his voice; but he didn’t care. “I’m glad. You were hurt so bad—I was afraid you might die—or we all would—before I got a chance to apologize.”

Morn frowned weakly; swallowed again. “For what?” The drugs sickbay had given her were fading, but they still affected her, clogging her reactions, slowing her comprehension.

He was tempted to say, For letting Nick go kill himself. For sending Sib out to die. But those were secondary hurts between her and him; easier to talk about. Instead he told her roughly, “For not trusting you more. For saying all those nasty things to you.”

I’m Bryony Hyland’s daughter.

“Half the time I really can’t tell the difference between us. It confuses me.” Waves of pressure like little convulsions tightened his chest and belly, but this time they weren’t strong enough to stop him. “And I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to be as scared as I would be if I thought about it.

“So I told myself we had to go after Gutbuster because that was the right thing for cops to do. Punish her for her crimes. And I could tell you had qualms about it. You weren’t backing me up. So I treated you like you were weak—like there was something wrong with you—because you didn’t back me up.

“But it didn’t have to do with being a cop.” Anger and failure roughened his tone as he explained. “It had to do with being terrified. Gutbuster was after me. She wanted to give me to the Amnion. And the Amnion want to use me to help them learn how to make themselves look just like human beings. That’s why I wanted to kill her.

“You weren’t being weak. You were thinking about larger questions. More important questions. Like whose game this is. Who’s manipulating us now, and why. And what we can do about it.

“You didn’t deserve the way I treated you.”

Morn listened attentively until he was done. Her wounded gaze held his face. But after he finished she didn’t respond directly. Instead she murmured in a thin voice, “You said was. Gutbuster was after you. She wanted to give you to the Amnion. What’s changed? What’s going on? Where are we?”

Maybe she was confused herself—by drugs; or by the gap in her awareness of what had happened. Or maybe she simply didn’t realize that when he was separate from her he might not be sure of her forgiveness.

A wave of weariness seemed to break over his head. The muscles in his chest stopped clenching. He slumped on the edge of her bunk, shrinking into himself. Of course she wanted to know what she’d missed while she slept. He would feel the same in her place. Apologies weren’t as important as survival.

For a moment he couldn’t lift his head far enough above his fatigue to answer. But then he closed his eyes and found that if he concentrated just on speaking—if he didn’t let himself look at her, witness her condition—he could go on a little longer.

“It’s hard to describe,” he breathed distantly; putting words together one at a time in the darkness of his head. “The good news is, we got away from Massif-5. We’re coasting out in the middle of nowhere.” He’d seen the astrogation coordinates, but they meant nothing to him. “You saved us when you activated the helm failsafes. Otherwise we would have run into an asteroid. Or gotten sucked back into the black hole.

“Free Lunch was gone.” Fuel for the weird energies of the singularity. “There was no sign of Soar. Mikka took the helm for me, ran us out to the fringes of the swarm. When we got there, we found a major battle going on. A UMCP cruiser—must have been Punisher—was blazing away at Calm Horizons. I still don’t know how they found us. Or how Soar did. They aren’t supposed to know how to follow a Class-1 UMCP homing signal. But the Amnion are so desperate to stop us, they’ve committed an act of war.”

“Wait a minute,” Morn interrupted. She put her hand on his arm as if she thought he might not stop for her. “Did you say Calm Horizons? The same warship we got away from when we escaped Thanatos Minor?”

Davies nodded without opening his eyes. He didn’t know why she thought this was important. Surely the incursion was the crucial point, not the identity of the intruder. But he didn’t have the energy to ask for an explanation. His ability to tell his own story was too fragile.

Slumping deeper into the dark, he resumed, “Calm Horizons would have killed us.” Like Bryony Hyland. “She had us on targ. We didn’t have time to burn. We couldn’t go into tach. Not even for a blink crossing. But Soar showed up again. She must have avoided the black hole somehow. Just when I thought we were dead, she opened fire on Calm Horizons.”

He didn’t try to understand Captain Chatelaine’s actions. They were a mystery, like the attack by Free Lunch, or the ability of the Amnion to locate the gap scout; impenetrable. As incomprehensible as the oblique physics of the gap.

“Calm Horizons had to hit her instead of us, or else the warship would have been destroyed. The Amnion couldn’t take the chance they might miss us with their last shot.

“That gave us time. And Punisher was covering us. We burned like crazy. Then we went into tach. That brought us here.” He shrugged weakly. “Wherever here is.”

He expected Morn to ask why Soar had turned against her masters; braced himself to say, “I have no idea,” without sounding angry. But her attention remained focused on concerns he couldn’t grasp.

As she climbed out of her long, drugged slumber, she recovered her urgency. Her grip on his arm tightened. In a sharper tone she demanded, “Did Punisher kill Calm Horizons?”

He sighed. “I hope so.” He didn’t have the strength for this. He needed sleep, not more questions. “But we didn’t see it. Calm Horizons was hurt. Soar took her by surprise. Punisher was starting to get through. Then we went into tach. I don’t know what happened after that.”

Pulling on his arm, Morn raised herself to sit beside him. He felt her draw her legs out of the g-sheath and hook them over the edge of the bunk. Her shoulder and her grasp conveyed a palpable tension.

“Calm Horizons is too big,” she murmured distantly, as if she were thinking aloud; trying to brace herself against a threat he couldn’t see. Surely the Amnion couldn’t track UMCP homing signals? “She has too much firepower. If Punisher didn’t kill her right away, she’s probably still alive.”

Maybe not, Davies countered in silence. He was too weary to argue aloud. She was practically stationary. She doesn’t accelerate fast. And Punisher must have called for help from VI. If more ships came—if they caught Calm Horizons before she could go into tach—

He wanted to finish; needed to finish. After that he would be able to rest. For a moment he put his free hand over his eyes in an effort to increase the darkness so that he could concentrate. Then he continued.

“Angus is still alive. God knows how he survived being outside in all that.” He hadn’t suffered any more g than anyone else. But he hadn’t had the support of a g-seat or bunk. And he’d been exposed to all the forces of the singularity and the swarm. If nothing else, he could easily have been crushed by rock rushing to answer the black hole’s hunger. “But Vector brought him in before we left the swarm. Sickbay says he’s going to be all right.

“Other than that—”

His voice trailed away. He had more to relate; but now he needed her to ask him what it was. He didn’t think he could go on unless she prompted him; pushed him.

Slowly she loosened the pressure of her grip on his forearm. He seemed to feel some of her tightness easing. Maybe at last she’d become enough aware of him to realize that he was near the end of his resources.

“What’s the bad news?” she inquired more gently. “When people tell you what the good news is, there’s always bad news.”

Again he nodded blindly. He hardly heard himself speak.

“Ciro went haywire. I guess that mutagen made him crazy. Even though he was cured, he still thought he had to do what Sorus Chatelaine told him.”

Morn shifted at Davies’ side. She may have winced. Or she may have simply nodded. He didn’t look to see.

“When Mikka came to help me on the bridge, Ciro left their cabin and found his way into the drive space. He must have been in there when we burned—All that g with no protection banged him up pretty good. He’s lucky he didn’t break any bones.

“But it slowed him down. He took too long. That saved us. Before anything failed, we were able to go into tach, get away from Massif-5.”

Davies waited while a wave of fatigue nearly washed him out of himself. Then he went on.

“He took too long, but he did it right. We’ve lost both drives. That’s why we’re coasting. There’s nothing else we can do. We still have navigational thrust, that’s all. We can’t even decelerate. And we sure as hell can’t cross the gap again.

“We haven’t tried to rig any repairs yet,” he added as if he were drifting. “Top busy taking care of our wounds.” Too tired. “But I don’t think we can do it.” Or do it in time. “Without Angus, we can’t get into the damage control databases. We don’t know the codes. And his zone implants have put him to sleep so he can heal. At least that’s Vector’s theory. He won’t wake up until they let him go.”

Davies stopped. The hollow dark inside his head seemed louder than his voice, and for a moment he feared that he might start to whimper or moan without realizing it. But he probably didn’t have the energy.

After a while he heard Morn ask, “Is that all? Is there anything else I need to know?”

He shook his head. Carried by its own momentum, his head continued rocking from side to side on his weak neck.

“Well, it’s bad,” she said judiciously, as if she wanted to comfort him by not panicking, “but we’ve had worse. I was afraid we were still in the swarm. Angus was dead, and we were stuck in the swarm because without him we couldn’t escape.”

She paused, then mused more to herself than to him, “I guess it’s possible Calm Horizons is finished. That would help.”

To his surprise he found that he had enough strength left for a small pang of vexation. What was so important about Calm Horizons? Was that all she cared about? Didn’t she understand the consequences of what Ciro had done?

He opened his eyes so that he could glare at her.

“Before he went EVA,” he rasped sourly, “Angus activated our homing signal again. None of us can get deep enough into the command systems to turn it off. Eventually someone will come after us.” That was a safe bet. “Maybe Punisher. Maybe some other UMCP ship, or one from VI.

“If that happens before Angus wakes up,” he explained with as much force as he could muster, “or before he can fix the drives, we’re out of choices. We’ll be at the mercy of whoever takes us.”

The UMCP was corrupt. Vector’s mutagen immunity drug proved that. Whether or not Min Donner—and therefore Punisher—was honest, she had to obey orders: orders which could easily come from the same source as the corruption. Holt Fasner. Possibly Hashi Lebwohl. More likely Warden Dios himself.

“They might still want to suppress what we know. No matter who they are, we’ll be pawns in somebody else’s game. And we can’t run or fight. We don’t have any realistic defense except self-destruct. But if we kill ourselves, Vector’s formula dies with us.”

He sagged as another surge of exhaustion broke through his thin ire. “Out here,” he finished as if he were giving up hope, “nobody’s going to hear that broadcast anyway.”

Morn’s sore gaze held his glare without flinching until he looked away. She may have been battered and abused to the core; but at least she’d had a little rest. He couldn’t match her.

“I understand,” she said quietly. “I guess I’ve been afraid all along that this would happen.

“So in the end it comes down to whether Punisher managed to kill Calm Horizons.”

Davies couldn’t help himself: he gaped at her as if her obsession with the Amnion warship were making her alien.

Yet she must have been human enough to realize that he couldn’t grasp what she meant. She smiled at him ruefully, touched his forehead as if she wanted to smooth away his incomprehension. Then she began to explain.

“Someone somewhere in the VI system is going to hear our transmission. We can’t know if they’ll care. Or if they’ll believe us. Or if they’ll try to do anything about it. At least they’ll hear it. We’ve accomplished that much, even if we can’t do more.

“But if Calm Horizons is still alive—”

Painful memories darkened Morn’s eyes. Frowning at the hurt, she said more bitterly, “They heard the broadcast, too. They have the formula. On top of that”—dismay at the recollection twisted her expression like a touch of nausea—“I’m pretty sure they have samples.

“When I was their prisoner—back on Billingate—they tried to mutate me. But I didn’t change. I was full of Nick’s immunity drug. So they took some of my blood.”

Now Davies caught a glimpse of what she was getting at. He’d forgotten about her time in the Amnion sector of Billingate. She’d lived through horrors which for him were only nightmares; endured an experience which would have destroyed him.

“That means if they survive—if they reach Amnion space—they can figure out how to counteract Vector’s formula.”

Grimly she concluded, “Then if the wrong people get their hands on us, stop us, everything we’ve done is wasted. Even if VI hears our broadcast and takes it seriously enough to follow up on it, it’s still wasted. Because the Amnion will have the formula. The drug won’t be safe anymore.”

Davies may have nodded. He wasn’t sure: he couldn’t feel his head moving. And he was no longer able to tell the difference between exhaustion and hopelessness. He’d brought Angus back from stasis: surely that counted for something?

With a thin sigh, he asked, “What’re we going to do?”

For a moment she didn’t reply. Then he felt her tighten and shift against his side as if she’d made a decision.

“You’re going to rest,” she announced in an easier tone. “That’s enough for right now. There’s no point in trying to make any plans yet. We don’t know how much time we have. Or who they’ll send after us. Or how badly Angus is hurt. Maybe his equipment’s been damaged. Maybe his brain’s been damaged. He may have more tricks up his sleeve. Or he may not. And if he does, he may or may not be willing to do what we want.

“It’s too much to worry about when you can’t even keep your eyes open. You can leave it to me for a while.” She snorted softly, as if she were amused. “If the safety of human space depended on my talent for worry, we wouldn’t need cops at all.”

When he didn’t respond, she left the edge of her bunk, pulling him with her.

All the resistance had drained out of him. He was weightless: only his fatigue had substance. Floating, he let her pilot him to his bunk and ease him into the g-sheath.

Her lips brushed his cheek. Close to his ear she whispered, “Thank you. It helps to know what you were so angry about.”

Without transition he dropped into the dark as if she’d kissed him to sleep.