ANGUS

Angus Thermopyle awoke the instant Morn said his name. Without transition his zone implants imposed new conditions on him. The regular alpha of sleep was canceled: dreams he couldn’t remember stopped as if they’d never existed: his long escape from the loud ravage of the swarm and the excruciating forces of the black hole ended severely, as if it had been cut off with a knife. Emissions programmed by his computer swept safety away; snatched peace out of his synapses and ganglia. Morn said his name, and his entire neural state of being was transformed. He didn’t twitch or tighten: his body remained still. Nevertheless, from the depths of a fathomless, healing dark, he moved instantly into light and consciousness.

Morn spoke again. “Angus. It’s time to wake up. We need you.”

He heard the anxiety in her voice, the pressure of self-coercion. He knew her too fucking well. She loathed him: she’d always loathed him. If she’d consulted only her own desires, she wouldn’t have come within thirty light-years of him. She was here because she needed him. Trumpet needed him. The people she cared about needed him.

Yet she was here. She’d survived hard g and gap-sickness in the swarm; come through them somehow.

What had Davies said earlier? When he’d risked removing Angus’ datacore? Morn’s going to wake up soon. I can’t tell her this. After what she’s been through—Bitterly he’d protested, I can’t tell Morn that the only man who stands a chance of helping us is stuck in fucking stasis.

Something had happened to her. Something brutal. Like everything Nick Succorso and Angus himself had done to her.

And still she was here.

In a flash of disgust as swift as the effects of his zone implants, he realized that he was glad.

His eyes were open. For all he knew, they’d been open the entire time. Lying on his belly on the surgical table, with his right cheek leaning into the cushions, he had a clear view of the sickbay console and readouts.

The sterile light of the room illuminated the indicators distinctly. They told him he was awake. No shit. In addition they assured him he was healing rapidly.

But Morn was on the other side of the table. Maybe she couldn’t see that his eyes were open. Or maybe she hadn’t looked at the readouts yet. “Angus,” she said for the third time. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know if you can hear me. But it’s important. You’ve got to wake up.”

Damn right Trumpet needed him. He’s the only one who can repair the drives. That brain-dead little shit Ciro had sabotaged them. Carried out Sorus Chatelaine’s orders even after Vector flushed her mutagens out of him.

No one else could get past the lock Angus had set on most of the gap scout’s internal systems. He, on the other hand—

He had the necessary database in his head, ready and waiting on the other side of his datalink. He could rebuild the ship from scratch without consulting damage control. Hell, he could fabricate half the goddamn parts himself, if he had to—

He swallowed to clear his throat. He was going to say, Go away, you stupid bitch. I don’t care how much you need me. I don’t need you. He was going to say that and fucking mean it.

But it was bullshit. He didn’t want her to go away. He no longer had any intention of hurting her—

When he hurt her, he hurt himself.

That was the story of his whole fucking life. For years, decades, he’d raped and killed and beaten and destroyed with all his strength. And after every act of violence his choices had dwindled. His freedom shrank. No matter what he did, he sank deeper into his personal abyss—the void of terror and pain from which he’d always fled.

Until Morn released him from his priority-codes.

His programming still restricted him in more ways than he could count; but now no one had the power to compel his allegiance.

And he’d survived the crib. Alone outside the ship in his EVA suit, hammered by the energies of warships and the swarm and a black hole, he’d fallen into the pure, blind, helpless agony he’d always feared; and he’d survived.

He definitely didn’t want Morn to go away.

But it was more than that; worse than not meaning to hurt her. He didn’t want her to think she couldn’t reach him. Didn’t want her to feel helpless—

“I hear you.” His voice was a dry scrape in his throat. “Don’t push me. I’ve got a lot to think about.”

God, what was the matter with him? What was he going to do next?—beg her to fucking forgive him?

No. Not now: not ever. He was alive, God damn it, in spite of everything. He’d survived the crib. He was Angus Thermopyle, not some shit-crazy philanthropist who wanted or maybe even needed to apologize for living.

“Thank God.” Morn’s relief was as plain as a message from his datacore. Despite her loathing, she didn’t wish him dead.

We need you. You’ve got to wake up.

Which didn’t make any sense. Ciro sabotaged the drives? Then why the hell was Trumpet still alive? How had she survived? Where was she?

Davies had said, The cops are coming after us. Angus had heard that. We’re sending out a Class-1 homing signal. Then Davies had asked as if he thought Angus had the answer hidden away somewhere, Whose side is that cruiser on?

What the fuck was going on?

He decided to move. But he couldn’t: the table’s restraints held him. He flexed against them, then remembered what they were for. To keep him still while sickbay—and Davies—operated on him. To protect him from g.

“If you’ll let me out of these damn straps,” he croaked, “I’ll sit up.”

If you trust me that much.

While he waited, he asked his computer for a status report.

Internal diagnostics informed him that he’d suffered a dislocated hip (corrected), severe dehydration (treated), and massive hemorrhaging (stopped). Blood chemistry analysis reported appropriately high levels of metabolins, coagulants, analgesics, antibiotics. Prognosis: complete recovery in forty-eight hours.

All of his welded resources were functional. If he had to, he could cut his way out of the restraints.

But Morn had already begun to tug awkwardly at has fetters, releasing them one after another. The moment he was free, he rolled over and swung his legs off the table.

Pain lanced through his hip as he moved. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to use his suit jets against the singularity’s pull. Or maybe that small extra support was all that had saved him.

Almost instantly his zone implants muffled the sensation. Only a residual throbbing ache remained to remind him that he needed more time to heal.

Anchored on the edge of the table, he looked at Morn for the first time since he’d left the bridge to risk EVA in the swarm.

She floated an arm’s length away. “We let you sleep as long as we could,” she said at once. Anxiety complicated her tone. She seemed to speak quickly so that she wouldn’t freeze; so that her loathing wouldn’t get the better of her. “But we’re out of time. There’s another ship on scan. Resumed tard five minutes ago. We’ve got id.

“It’s Punisher. A UMCP cruiser. The same ship we passed when we first reached human space.” She faltered, then finished, “The same one that ordered you to give Nick your priority-codes.”

She appeared to think Angus would consider that detail significant; but he didn’t. He wasn’t listening.

Rest had done her some good: he saw that at a glance. The young woman’s beauty of her face was gone, permanently eroded by suffering and desperation. Stark against her pale features, her eyes were as dark as caves. Nevertheless sleep or food—or both—had improved her skin tone and restored some of the elasticity to her muscles. It had eased the deep-cut lines around her mouth, between her brows, at the corners of her eyes.

He dismissed those details as soon as he noticed them, however. His attention was caught by the cast which encased her right arm in acrylic from shoulder to wrist; by the straps which closed her arm against her chest.

At the sight, black rage came to fire in him as suddenly as the explosion of an incendiary grenade. Only his zone implants kept him from launching himself at her, grabbing her, shaking her to learn the truth.

Nearly choked by dark flame, he demanded harshly, “Who did that to you?”

In about a minute the bastard responsible was going to find himself strangling on his own balls.

A small wince plucked at the side of her face. “I did it to myself,” she answered thinly. “That’s how I controlled my gap-sickness. While I was at the command board.”

To herself. He swore through his teeth. To herself? He believed her instantly. And he wanted to slap her.

“You’re crazy, you know that?” he rasped. “Out of your goddamn mind. You know what g does to you. How many times”—he started shouting, had to shout so that he wouldn’t hit her—“did I tell you to leave the fucking bridge?”

Her forehead knotted into a frown. She was afraid of him, always afraid of him. But she was also stronger than he was. Even when she was terrified, she knew how to concentrate.

“Angus,” she pronounced distinctly, “we don’t have time for this. A lot’s been happening. You’ve been asleep for—”

“I know.” His computer supplied the information. “Six hours.” More than enough time for every enemy he’d ever had to line up and take shots at him. “And before that I was unconscious. In stasis.”

His fury needed a better outlet. He hungered for violence. Anything that hurt Morn hurt him, and he wanted to repay it. Nevertheless he made an effort to match her. We need you. With the support of his zone implants, he imposed calm on the avid fire crackling inside him.

“Punisher is after us,” he went on. “You said that already. And Ciro sabotaged the drives. Davies said that.” Beyond question the thrusters were dead. He couldn’t hear the muted hull-roar of an active drive. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Where are we? How did we get here?

I saw Free Lunch die. Where’s Soar?

What do you want from me?

Morn caught her lip between her teeth as if she were restraining a retort. With a visible effort, she swallowed her impatience. After a moment she nodded slowly.

“I’m sorry. I forgot how much I need to tell you. And we’re out of time—” She grimaced. “But I can’t very well ask you to help us if I don’t explain what kind of help I want.

“I was asleep myself for most of it. But Davies, Mikka, and Vector told me the story.”

Angus wrapped artificial calm around his black fires and braced himself to listen hard.

“We got away from that black hole,” she reported flatly. The strain of suppressing her urgency made the darkness in the caves of her eyes seethe. “I guess that’s obvious. We knew you were still alive because we could hear you breathing over your suit pickup. By then I was”—she referred to her arm with a glance—“finished, so Vector brought you in. Mikka and Davies took us out to the edge of the swarm.

“But we were stuck. Both Punisher and Calm Horizons were there. How Calm Horizons found us I don’t know.” Punisher had followed Trumpet’s homing signal, of course—at least until Nick had turned it off. “The same way Soar did, I guess.

“Punisher and Calm Horizons blazed at each other the whole time. According to Davies, Punisher was trying to cover us. But Calm Horizons has that super-light proton cannon. And she knew where we were. We were hidden by asteroids, but she still fixed our position somehow. There was nothing Mikka and Davies could do. But just when Calm Horizons was about to smash us, Soar showed up and opened fire on her.”

Morn raised her hands to ward off questions. “I can’t explain that either.” Angus didn’t try to interrupt, however. He assumed she was telling the truth. If she lied, he could learn the truth by looking at Trumpet’s log. And for right now he cared only about the facts. Explanations meant nothing to him unless they helped him predict what his enemies would do.

Tensely Morn continued, “I guess Calm Horizons couldn’t handle both Punisher and Soar. She used her proton cannon to destroy Soar.

“Then she needed time to recharge. That gave us a chance. Before she could fire again, Mikka burned out of the swarm and hit the gap, got us away from Massif-5. We’re 1.4 light-years out in the middle of nowhere.”

Triggered by numbers, Angus’ computer began multitasking seamlessly. Involuntary astrogation databases scrolled through his head, extrapolating possible positions. Nevertheless he missed nothing Morn said; nothing she appeared to feel.

She sighed. “So far, so good. Unfortunately no one knew what Ciro was doing. He must have thought he still had to obey Sorus Chatelaine. He found his way into the drive spaces somehow. Whatever he did to the drives knocked them out right after we resumed tard. Since then we’ve been coasting. Living on the energy cells.

“Now Punisher’s found us. And she’s overtaking us fast. Give her thirty minutes, and we’ll be in point-blank range. If she wants to, she can catch us in two hours—if she’s willing to put off deceleration that long and brake that hard.”

Through his datalink, damage-control schematics overlaid potential starfields. Diagnostic parameters and repair protocols marshaled themselves for use. But he also noticed the particular tightening of Morn’s muscles; the squirming shadows behind her gaze when she mentioned the cruiser.

She was a cop. She should have been fucking delighted to see a UMCP warship. But she wasn’t. She dreaded that vessel more than she feared Angus himself.

This was something he needed to understand.

“What does she want?” he asked as soon as Morn paused.

Her eyes flared bitterly. “How should I know?”

A feral grin twisted his mouth. “What does she say she wants? Is she talking?”

Morn sagged a little. Apparently he was pushing close to the sources of her urgency.

“Emergency UMCP hailing,” she answered dully. “We’ve been ordered to slow down, let her come alongside. Maybe her scan hasn’t figured out yet that we’ve lost thrust.”

Again Morn bit her lip. “This is difficult for me,” she said unnecessarily. “I’m torn—

“Angus,” she broke out suddenly, “Min Donner is aboard that ship. Min Donner.” The UMCP Enforcement Division director. “God knows what she’s doing there.” For a moment Morn sounded baffled; wracked by uncertainty. Then she tapped an anger of her own. Weeks of suffering and self-expenditure had whetted her to a knife’s edge. “Somebody saw this coming a hell of a long way off. She must have joined ship before Punisher left UMCPHQ for the Com-Mine belt.

“She’s doing all the talking. Like she thinks we wouldn’t listen to anyone else.”

A long way off, shit, Angus thought. That was the goddamn truth. The same man who’d switched his datacore so that he could rescue Morn and then sent him out with Milos Taverner primed to betray him had planned for this situation as well.

Morn hadn’t stopped. She was saying, “If there’s anybody honest left in the UMCP, it’s her. But I’m just not sure—”

She straightened her shoulders. “Punisher isn’t threatening us. But she has us on targ. Her matter cannon are charged and tracking. She could open fire the minute we say something she doesn’t want to hear.”

Angus recognized the danger; but he refused to be deflected from what he needed to know. “What about Calm Horizons?” he pursued. “Did the cops finish her?”

That question probed Morn even more deeply. She winced in spite of her anger.

“We don’t know. When we went into tach, they were still shooting at each other. Davies says Calm Horizons was hurt. Maybe Punisher got her. Or maybe not. According to Mikka, Punisher looked hurt herself.

“We didn’t see any other ships. I guess VI hadn’t had time to muster a response.”

Angus chewed his concern for Morn while his computer spun scenarios, crunched possibilities: the likelihood that he could repair the drives quickly; the risks of a second cold ignition; other, more extreme options. Despite the complexity of the programs running in the back of his head, however, his concentration on Morn held.

Was she this worried just because Calm Horizons had committed an act of war? No, that wasn’t it. He’d missed something. She was afraid for reasons he hadn’t thought of yet.

Looking for answers, he changed directions, came at her from another side.

“All right,” he said as if he’d heard enough. “None of this makes any sense, but I can live without explanations. What do you want me to do?”

His hands gripped the edge of the surgical table, holding him there against the pressure of her alarm, his computer’s demands, and his own needs.

What do you think I fucking can do under these conditions?

She took a deep breath. Her gaze sank to his hands as if she were watching his knuckles whiten. Then she lifted her eyes sharply back to his. No matter what she feared, she remained strong enough to face him.

“I want you to keep us away from Punisher,” she announced distinctly, as if she thought he had that kind of power. “She fought Calm Horizons for us. She gave Davies your priority-codes. But she also handed you over to Nick. I don’t trust her. I trust Min Donner—I think I trust her—but I do not trust whoever’s giving her orders.”

Slowly Morn tightened her own fists. “Instead of surrendering this ship,” she went on, “or blowing her up, I want you to take us back to Earth. So I can tell our story to somebody besides the UMCP. Preferably the Council.”

His eyes widened. Behind his pose of calm, he was shocked. Tell our story—? He was an illegal to the marrow of his bones. For a man like him, talking to anybody with authority was as good as suicide. Morn might survive: she was a cop. But he would absolutely end up dead.

Roughly he demanded, “What in hell do you want to tell them?”

“Vector’s formula,” she replied. She might have been reciting a list. “How we got it. Why the Amnion are after Davies.”

All that was bad enough; but she wasn’t done. Her voice hardened as she added, “I want to make sure somebody hears me, describe what Vector and Mikka have done for all of us. I want to tell the Council that the UMCP gave me to Nick.” She faced Angus as if she were defying him. “And I want to tell them you were framed.”

He nearly lost his grip on the edge of the table. “Christ, Morn!” he protested. “You can’t tell them that.” If she did, she would have to tell them he gave her a zone implant—and she took the control. “We’ll both be executed. They’ll fry our fucking brains. The cops will kill every one of us eight times before they let you say something like that out loud.”

Was this what scared her? The prospect of explaining her own crimes in front of the Governing Council for Earth and Space?—condemning herself so that she could try to save her shit-crazy species from their own fucking cops as well as from the Amnion?

She nodded grimly. If she was afraid, the darkness of her gaze concealed it. “That’s why we have to stay away from them.”

Angus couldn’t contain the rush of his distress. He needed an outlet. He ordered his zone implants to reduce their emissions, diminish his imposed calm, so that he could shout.

“God damn it! Don’t you know what they got out of framing me? No, of course you don’t. You were stuck out there on Captain’s motherfucking Fancy while it happened.

“They paid Captain Sheepfucker and Milos to frame me. They wanted Com-Mine Security to look bad. So the Council would pass something called the fucking Preempt Act.” Angus himself had been one of the first victims of that legislation. Hashi Lebwohl had reqqed him from Com-Mine under the Preempt Act. “It gives the UMCP authority over local damn security everywhere in human space! Like they needed more muscle—like datacores and id tags and Emergency Powers and ships like Starmaster and all the money in the fucking galaxy aren’t enough.

“The cops,” he finished savagely, “are not going to let you undermine that much power.”

Morn lowered her head. Hiding her chagrin—or simply giving herself time to absorb this information. Angus didn’t know which until she looked up at him again.

Her eyes burned like the black flame of his visceral fury.

“For some sick reason,” she said through her teeth, “I’m not surprised. But that doesn’t change anything. It’s got to stop. One way or another.

“We don’t have the leverage to stop it. Maybe the Council does.”

It’s got to stop. Despite his dismay, Angus heard echoes of Warden Dios, with his strange priorities and his secrets. Had that goddamn one-eyed terrifying sonofabitch foreseen this too?

He had one protest left—one last objection which might make her change her mind. Shouting only angered her, so he reimposed his artificial calm. He wanted to sound like a man she couldn’t argue with.

He wanted to sound like Nick Succorso—

“I told you you’re crazy,” he asserted sardonically. “Maybe you weren’t listening. Didn’t you hear me explain that I can’t go back to Earth? I thought you understood. As soon as Milos betrayed me, I became too dangerous, Whatever is chasing me, whatever I’m carrying with me, is too dangerous. That’s written into my programming. I can’t go back there unless somebody uses my priority-codes, orders me to do it.

“But my codes are blocked. You can yell them at me until you rupture something. I might even want to obey you. But my computer can’t hear you. It still won’t let me go.”

That was the plain truth. Without the authority of those codes, he couldn’t override his underlying instruction-sets.

Yet Morn wasn’t daunted. Even now she was more than a match for him.

“Fine,” she snapped grimly. “I’ll put Mikka on helm. I’ll give her orders. All you have to do is stay out of the way.”

She did more than shock him: she shook him to the core. His grasp on reality seemed to fail under the impact of her determination. Put Mikka on helm. Stay out of the way. That would work. His programming would allow it.

Suddenly every brutal, inhuman restriction which the cops had welded into him appeared negotiable—

Without warning some of the tactical scenarios weaving themselves across the background of his mind began to look plausible. His computer and his instincts spun ruses and gambits into webs which might conceivably be strong enough to hold.

He didn’t move to act on them, however; didn’t let go of the table to take up Morn’s challenge. He needed to understand her. If she could find his way out of his electronic prison for him, she might be capable of almost anything.

He needed to know what drove her.

“All right,” he said more quietly. “That might work. But something about all this still sounds like bullshit to me.

“I know you,” he insisted. “You haven’t told me the whole story. There’s something nagging at you. Something that scares you worse than I do. I can see it in your eyes.

“I don’t want to fucking guess what it is. Just say it, so I’ll know what I’m dealing with.”

He expected her to flare out at him; accuse him. You want me to trust you? You raped me, hurt me, damn near broke me, and you want me to trust you? I would rather be dead. But she didn’t. Dark as pits, her eyes held his without flinching. Muscles tightened at the corners of her jaw, forcing her chin up.

“When I was in the Amnion sector on Billingate,” she said acidly, “they took samples of my blood. Samples with Nick’s immunity drug in them. I figure they ended up on Calm Horizons.

“But even if they didn’t, she heard Vector’s broadcast.

“I want to find out if she’s still alive. That’s more important than anything. If Punisher killed her, it almost doesn’t matter what happens to us. The formula will get out somehow. We may lose everything else, but we’ve already gained that.

“But if she survived, she might get back to Amnion space. They’ll learn how to counter the drug. Vector’s formula will be useless before anyone in human space ever benefits from it.”

For reasons he could hardly recognize, Angus felt a rush of relief. Was that all she feared? Then it didn’t threaten him. If she was telling the truth—

He believed her. She cared about shit like that. Maybe she hadn’t when they were aboard Bright Beauty; when she was in his power. Maybe he hadn’t let her. But she did now.

He should have known she wasn’t scared for herself. Her damn convictions had become too strong for that.

Those same beliefs had freed him from his priority-codes. Now they were bending the bars of his welded lockup. If he gave her enough help, they might turn him loose altogether.

“Hell, Morn,” he replied almost cheerfully, “you can’t do anything about that. There’s no point in suffering over it. You don’t know where she’ll go from Massif-5. If she’s crazy enough to commit an act of war, she’s crazy enough to try anything.

“For all you know, she’s still looking for us.

“Don’t waste your time on her. Worry about something that makes a difference. Worry about what we’re going to do.”

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Talk’s cheap, Angus. What are we going to do?”

She meant, What’re you going to do?

He gave her a malicious, happy grin. “That depends,” he told her cryptically, “on just how much damage that little shit did to the drives.”

Despite the pain in his hip, he released the edge of the table with a thrust which carried him toward the door. Reality had changed. Morn changed it. Anything might became possible.

Somehow when he’d first met her he’d put his feet on a road which had led him away from everything he knew or understood about himself. Now each step carried him farther.