A Dark and Hungry God Arises (4 page)

All Milos needed, the one absolute requirement for keeping his neck out of the noose, was to make sure that no one knew he was buggering for both sides.

So mighty Warden Dios and his precious Hashi Lebwohl - not to mention the sanctimonious Min Donner - were wrong about Milos. They didn't know what their own actions could cost them.

They thought that if they rubbed his nose in their power hard enough, if they made him feel beaten and filthy enough, they could compel him to submit to having his neck in the noose.

Milos didn't doubt for a second that the noose was real. After all, if none of Lebwohl's and Dios' plans went awry there weren't likely to be many survivors on Thanatos Minor when their pet cyborg carried out his programming. And Milos wasn't likely to be one of them: he didn't have Thermopyle's enhanced resources to help him escape alive.

Which of course was exactly what Lebwohl and Dios were counting on. If Trumpet brought anyone back to UMCPHQ, it would be the cyborg they had spent so much money on, not the relatively inexpensive human being.

They should have known better.

They shouldn't have let him have the command codes that ruled Thermopyle. If they hadn't given him the capacity to redirect Angus' prewritten exigencies, he would have had only one option left; only one place to go with his anger. Now, however, he had several.

One of his options was to make Thermopyle pay at least some of the price of his, Milos', humiliation.

But not here: not this close to UMCPHQ; not while it was still possible for the cops to monitor whatever happened aboard Trumpet. Milos was prepared to wait a while. At least until this gap scout — a ship which Angus knew intimately, and which Milos understood very little

- resumed tard on the other side of the dimensional gap.

So he didn't respond to the crude jibes Angus aimed at him almost incessantly. In any case, he knew perfectly well that those insults were just so much spatter and froth, an almost incidental by-product of Angus' seething malice. Angus wasn't paying any real attention to his second. All the important parts of the cyborg's mind were focused on his new ship: on feeling her energies under his hands; on studying every scrap of knowledge his databases contained about her. On imagining what he could do with her.

No, more than just imagining: tasting; sensing with his whole body. Milos had seen enough malevolence in Angus' eyes to sicken him for a lifetime. He felt that he and he alone - certainly not Hashi Lebwohl or Warden Dios - could gauge the sheer potency of the venom which boiled and spat inside Angus Thermopyle like a witch's brew. He knew how alive with hate Angus was.

But he'd never discerned in Angus anything resembling the look of unholy joy which burned across the cyborg's face while he familiarized himself with Trumpet. As he worked his board and studied his screens, Thermopyle looked like he was having an orgasm.

Shit. And shit again.

Once Trumpet crossed the gap, Milos would have to begin exercising his power over his putative 'captain' fast and hard. He wanted to crush that look of vile ecstasy almost as much as he wanted to live.

But not now; not yet. Instead of reacting to Angus'

sneers, Milos concentrated on his own board, learning as quickly as he could how his brief but primarily theoretical training for this ship functioned in practice.

Damage control was easy: most of the systems, and all the reports, were automatic. Data wasn't much different than the kind of computer work he'd done for years as Com-Mine Station's deputy chief of Security. And, for reasons which were probably obvious, but which he never mentioned, he already knew everything he would ever need about communications. Scan was another matter, however. He'd never used doppler sensors or particle sifters or - was that a dimensional stress indicator? - and had only the thinnest understanding of the information they provided.

None of his 'duties' affected the actual operation of the ship, however. That was a problem of another kind.

Command, helm, targ, engineering; even life-support and general maintenance: Angus ran them all. In practice as well as in theory, Milos' survival depended on his capacity to run Angus.

'You about ready?' Angus asked, sounding as cheerfully destructive as an ore-crusher. We're coming into the fucking cops' fucking private tach range in a couple of minutes. I don't want you shitting your suit when we hit the gap. I hate that smell. I get too much of it just having you on board. '

'So what?' Milos muttered, keeping his attention on his readouts. 'You hate everything. ' He loathed and feared the very timbre of Angus' voice; but it was essential to show Angus that he, Milos, couldn't be intimidated. 'A bad smell won't change anything. '

Angus snorted. 'So you say. But you haven't caught a whiff of yourself yet. You don't know as much about shit as I do. '

Milos didn't bother to retort. He'd been raised among guttergangs. And he'd spent months back on Com-Mine interrogating Angus. He already had more experience than he would ever need with excremental human corruption.

The helm screen informed him that Trumpet was fifty-three seconds from the UMCP's reserved gap range. She was assigned to go into tach in a minute and a half.

Then human space would be out of reach.

For both of them.

Maybe forever.

When that happened, Angus Thermopyle was going to find out just how much Milos Taverner knew about shit and survival.

Eighty seconds later, Angus said, almost crowed,

'Hang onto your balls. As soon as we cross, everything changes. You bastards have just cornholed me for the last time. '

Milos knew that wasn't true. In an apparent effort to reassure him, Hashi Lebwohl had allowed him to watch a number of Angus' tests on UMCPDA's monitors. And he'd been given many of the test results to read. They all demonstrated incontrovertibly that Angus had been well and thoroughly welded; that he would never be able to violate his programming. For all his enhanced capabilities, he was the most helpless being in human space.

Nevertheless, without thinking about it, without even realizing he did it, Milos cupped his hand over his crotch as Trumpet disappeared into the gap.

Even while the power of the United Mining Companies Police was at its peak, a number of illegal or bootleg shipyards survived and occasionally flourished in and around human space.

The reason for their existence was simple. Forbidden space had a vast hunger for the same raw materials which Earth craved in such quantity, as well as for the mass-production technologies at which humankind excelled; a hunger which legal trade - both enabled and limited by the United Mining Companies - couldn't satisfy. To feed this appetite, the Amnion were willing to pay well for what they desired, without questioning how those things were obtained. This was true despite an explicit treaty to the contrary. Therefore piracy became a thriving subcu-taneous industry. Theft offered a higher reward for a given amount of effort than honest prospecting or mining.

That the risks were great, or that the opportunities were unpredictable, were drawbacks which had never hindered crime at any time in human history. That piracy required fast and space-worthy vessels, however, would have been a significant drawback in the absence of bootleg shipyards. Ships were far more difficult to steal than their cargoes. If they were taken while in dock, they were often stopped before their new masters could escape. And if they were attacked somewhere in space, they were usually damaged too severely to be worth much.

Illegal shipyards came into being by the blunt logic of human larceny. A passion for profit was the engine which drove Earth and her widely scattered stations. When that passion was felt by men and women with unscrupulous souls, they acted on it illegally. The law of supply and demand guided many of them, not into piracy, but into providing support for pirates.

The best-known - because the best-defended - of these bootleg shipyards was the one called Billingate on Thanatos Minor.

There were a number of such shipyards within human space, of course. However, by virtue of their locations their existence was precarious: they were vulnerable to direct attack by the UMCP. In order to exist at all they required secrecy. Therefore they hid like ferrets; they moved whenever they could; often they kept their own operations — and profits - small so that they would be less susceptible to exposure or betrayal.

Billingate had few worries along those lines. Because it had been hived into the bleak rock of Thanatos Minor, a planetoid which sailed the vacuum a few million kilometers inside the borders of forbidden space, it had little or nothing to fear from overt assault. It was protected —

albeit obliquely - by treaty. It was also defended by Amnion warships: the quadrant of space it occupied lay along the most heavily patrolled boundary with human space. And it was defended as well by the ships which depended on it. In human space, any illegal might reasonably flee rather than face a UMCP destroyer or battle-wagon. In forbidden space, flight was less attractive because it led deeper into the fatal realm of the Amnion.

Safety from imposed mutation existed only at the fringes of Amnion territory. Illegals were inclined to feel cornered when they were threatened near Billingate; therefore they were predisposed to fight back.

This shipyard did not need secrecy to protect it.

So pirates with enough credits went to Billingate to purchase vessels — or recreations. Illegal gap ships went to Billingate for repairs. And any brigand who could get there went to Billingate to fence his or her loot. Thanks to its location, Thanatos Minor provided an ideal clearing house for the raw materials, technologies, and organic tissues which the Amnion craved. The human species was betrayed more consistently, more often, and more profitably there than anywhere in human space - or human history.

For this reason, Billingate had grown populous -

UMCPDA estimated between four and seven thousand inhabitants - as well as rich.

For the same reason, it had also become known.

The stories which reached the ears of private citizens and corporate officials, station Security officers and UMCP ensigns, sequestered researchers and GCES

Undersecretaries alike, had a specificity which the tales of bootleg shipyards generally lacked. Because Billingate had been built entirely by illegals for illegals, it had good cause to be regarded as 'the sewer of the universe'.

Internal crime was violently interdicted because it reduced profitability; but every vice known to humankind thrived there, restricted only by the available credit of its participants. Slavery was common. Chemical dependencies of every kind could be readily nourished.

Sacrificial prostitution prospered for the amusement and enrichment of the men — and women? — who owned nerve junkies or null-wave transmitters too reduced to defend themselves. Bio-aesthetic, -prosthetic, and -retributive surgery enhanced or destroyed human capabilities.

It was better to be dead than poor on Thanatos Minor.

Over this morass of human desuetude and corruption, a man called simply 'the Bill' presided on the strength of his even-handed malice, his political acumen (that is to say, his ability to gauge the motivations and breaking-points of his people), his talent for protecting the shipyard's profits by making sure that he got paid first; and on the authority he gained by being perceived as Billingate's

'decisive' by the Amnion. It was he who ruled Thanatos Minor, settled disputes, punished offenders, kept the books - and made Billingate function with some approximation of efficiency, despite the manifold weaknesses and eccentricities of its populace.

Rumor suggested that he had been surgically provided with a double phallus so that he could penetrate women in both nether orifices simultaneously.

Unfortunately all this information served no purpose except to increase the outrage with which Billingate was viewed in the more conservative, genophobic, or ethical strata of human society: it did nothing to threaten Billingate itself. The UMCP was prevented by clear treaty from entering forbidden space to extirpate Thanatos Minor. Likewise, of course, the Amnion were precluded by treaty from permitting Billingate's existence; but this was an unequal, essentially toothless restriction, since the Amnion could - and did - deny all knowledge of the Bill's operations. On that basis, any UMCP incursion into Amnion space would be deemed an act of war.

In the corridors of UMCPHQ, as well as in the chambers of the Governing Council for Earth and Space, it was frequently argued that war was preferable to this kind of peace. As long as places like Billingate were able to exist, the UMCP could never prevail against piracy.

However, the official position of the United Mining Companies was that the benefits of trade justified the costs of piracy - and war would put an end to trade.

Speaking for the UMCP, Director Dios took the same position for different reasons: he argued that the costs of war would be far greater than the benefits of eliminating piracy. War, he claimed, would produce an exponential increase in bloodshed and lost lives, without any guarantee of success. Despite the strength of the organization he headed, he was known to question whether humankind could ever win a war with the Amnion.

He had no idea why he was still alive.

Of course, there was no physical reason why he should be dead. Nick Succorso's goons hadn't damaged his body. They'd kept him locked in silence while the ship performed a long and brutal deceleration. They'd made him wait for hours as the ship coasted. Then they'd rousted him from his cell, man-handled him across the ship, and sealed him in an ejection pod. But none of that had threatened his life.

And the pod itself was designed to keep him safe. It enclosed him as tightly as a coffin, allowed him virtually no movement — and certainly no access to its controls.

He could see nothing except the status screens which were supposed to help him hope; monitors which were intended to reassure him, but which instead told him his heart and lungs were working too hard. Trajectory and thrust were preset: how could anybody who needed an ejection pod be expected to navigate? Nevertheless its pads and restraints protected him from the g of launch: its systems cooled the heat of his terror, supplied him with plenty of oxygen to compensate for his ragged, urgent breathing.