A Dark and Hungry God Arises (7 page)

Whatever they're talking about, ' Scorz reported in an abstract tone, 'they're beaming it too tight for us to hear.

There's some residual buzz, but I can't pick up anything else. '

Struggling to put Mikka and Morn and regret out of his mind, Nick muttered as if he didn't know he was repeating himself, 'Damn them all to hell and shit. '

Operations continued to transmit routine traffic information, trajectory confirmation, station protocols; nothing else.

He paced the bridge and tried to think.

At some point he would have to resume his air of superiority and confidence; fake it if he couldn't actually feel it. His dread and regret were infectious: the more uncertain he felt, the more his people would doubt him.

Mikka wasn't the only one - although she was the worst, because she was the most capable; because he'd trusted her the most. Sib Mackern seemed to flinch whenever Nick caught his eye. And Ransum's nervousness was spreading. Normally confined to her hands, it now affected the way she turned her head; it made her shuffle her feet as if she felt an unconscious desire to run.

Already three people on the bridge distrusted Nick enough to be unreliable.

Who else felt that way? Maybe no one except Vector Shaheed. And Vector's attitude was predictable: he had reason to think Nick was going to kill him. Hell, the phlegmatic shit deserved to be killed. He'd ignored an order. Maybe the infection hadn't spread any further yet.

But it was going to spread. It would certainly catch Pup. The kid was Mikka's brother. And he admired Vector.

And the rest of the crew would be exposed to the same illness as soon as they felt Nick's vulnerability and realized that the center of their lives might not hold much longer.

Groping for clues - for ways to pull himself out of his stew - maybe for hope - Nick stopped at the scan station and asked harshly, Where did they take that damn pod?'

'Cargo berth,' Arkenhill answered promptly without lifting his gaze from his board. He may have been trying to prove that he was as capable as Carmel. 'I guess they're planning to keep the pod. The ship docked a couple of minutes ago. You want to know which berth?'

'No. ' Nick had only one reason for caring what happened to Davies Hyland. 'I want id on the ship. '

'That's easy. We've got traffic data. ' As a precaution against accidents, Operations transmitted information on all ships and movements in Billingate's control space.

Arkenhill hit keys, consulted his readouts. 'She calls herself Soar. Captain Sorus Chatelaine. Port of registry, Terminus. '

'She's a ways from home, ' Mikka observed dryly. Terminus was farther from forbidden space than any other human station - at least a hundred light-years farther than Earth.

Nick turned to Sib Mackern. What does data say about her?'

Sweat and lack of sleep made Mackern's pale mustache stand out and his eyes recede. His hands faltered as he worked his board. After a moment he reported, 'Nothing, Nick. We've never heard of her before. '

Involuntarily Nick's fingers curled into fists. Sib sounded like a weakling - and Nick despised weaklings.

He had to stifle an impulse to hit the data second.

'Cross-reference it, ' he snapped. 'Name, captain, registry, id codes. Give me a real answer. '

Among illegal ships, there was often a considerable discrepancy between public and private id. Ships and captains could change their names as often as they liked.

But they couldn't change their registrations — or the id codes embedded in their datacores. Not without swap-ping out the datacores themselves.

Even that was possible, of course. But then there would be other kinds of discrepancies -

'Do it by configuration, too, ' Mikka added for him.

Try their emission signature or anything else scan picked up on them. '

Now it was his second that Nick wanted to hit. Not because she was wrong, but because she helped him when he shouldn't have needed it; because he did need it. His brain wasn't working, and he hated that more than he despised weaklings.

Morn, you goddamn bitch, what have you done to me?

Who betrayed me for you? Who let you out?

'Here it comes, ' Scorz put in abruptly. 'Final approach and docking instructions. '

Nick held his breath while the communications second relayed the details to command and helm.

She was being treated like a visitor. A ship without cargo. A fugitive. An illegal in search of recreation. Or a dealer in information.

Certainly not as a ship that needed - and could pay for - massive work on her gap drive.

Cursing explosively, Nick strode to Scorz' station.

'Give me a channel!'

Scorz tightened the receiver in his ear, tapped keys.

Almost immediately he said, 'Stand by for Captain Succorso, ' and leaned away from his pickup to give Nick room.

'Operations!' Nick snapped, 'this is Captain Succorso.

Who's garbling your reception? Didn't you hear me say I need repair? Didn't you get my credit confirmation? I want a berth in the shipyard!'

'Captain Succorso. ' The reply which came over bridge audio was laconic; insufferably unconcerned. 'Our reception isn't garbled. And we aren't deaf. We just don't like ships that come in chased by angry Amnion. You're lucky we're letting you dock at all. But the Bill wants to talk to you. ' A pause. 'He wants to confirm your credit in person. '

All at once Nick's dread became as heavy as a blow to the stomach. For a second or two he felt that he couldn't breathe; that his voice would crack like a kid's if he tried to talk.

He couldn't wait for the shock to pass, however. Half-coughing, he rasped, 'Make sense, Operations. This is a goddamn credit-jack, ' coded to be read by a computer,

'not a physical transfer. He won't learn anything by looking at it.

'I need repairs. I can pay for them. Dock me in the shipyard!'

Operations forced him to wait for an answer. When it came, the voice from the speakers seemed to be laughing secretly.

'Apparently that credit-jack has been revoked. '

'You sonofabitch!' Nick hunched over the pickup, trying to drive his anger into the face of the man he couldn't see. 'It can't be revoked. It's money! You can't revoke money?

The radio voice permitted itself an audible chuckle.

Try telling that to the Amnion warship behind you. '

With a definitive click, Operations cut transmission.

An unnatural silence filled the bridge, as if the air-scrubbers and servos had shut down.

Karster usually kept his questions to himself. Perhaps to compensate for the fact that he looked as unformed as a boy, he tried to act like he already understood everything. He couldn't stand the silence, however.

'Confirm it in person?' he asked. What's that supposed to mean?'

'It means, ' Mikka replied as if she were suddenly tired,

'the Bill wants to know what's going on before he makes up his mind about us. '

Nick wheeled on the command second. If she kept this up, he was certainly going to hit her. 'You said it yourself, ' he snarled. 'It's not that simple. He's got fucking Morn's fucking brat. '

The Bill wanted to know what was going on so that he could milk the situation for all it was worth. And so that he could get even with Nick for bringing him this kind of trouble.

Nick had promised Davies to the Amnion.

Trying to demonstrate that he'd never intended to break his bargains with them — as well as to conceal the true nature of his dishonesty toward them - he'd also promised them Morn.

But the Bill had Davies. If Nick's credit-jack had been revoked, he had nothing with which to buy the brat back.

Except Morn.

He'd come to a place where he had to cheat somebody

- and whoever he cheated would kill him for it.

Unless -

The idea hit him like a bolt of his old lightning, the electricity which kept him and everything he valued alive.

- unless he cheated the cops instead.

Hashi Lebwohl had assigned him to undermine Billingate, do the shipyard potentially permanent harm.

And the DA director had told him how to do it. A dangerous gamble: the kind Nick specialized in. That Lebwohl was willing to take such risks had impressed Nick in spite of himself.

It was a risk which could be turned against Lebwohl and the entire fucking UMCP.

Would they respond to his last message? He didn't know. Maybe not. But if they did, so much the better.

They were much more of a threat to Thanatos Minor and the Amnion than to Nick himself. As far as they were concerned, Morn was the only excuse he needed for whatever he did. He could always say he was trying to rescue her.

And if they didn't respond, they couldn't interfere.

The consequences would be incalculable, of course.

But that wasn't Nick's problem. Let Lebwohl clean it up.

Or Dios himself. They deserved it.

In the meantime it just might work.

For a moment he simply stood still, tasting his own resources, letting the bolt's charge bring him back to himself. Then he turned away from Mikka as if her doubts no longer mattered.

'Arkenhill, ' he asked with a semblance of his old relaxed, deadly insouciance, 'how far back are those warships?'

The scan second had this information at his fingertips.

'Tranquil Hegemony is about half an hour. She burned for a while after we passed her - after the pod changed course. Closed most of the distance. But she's down to our speed now - normal approach velocity for Billingate. '

To show that the hostility of her intentions wasn't aimed at the shipyard.

'Calm Horizons has been coming up on us as fast as a lumbering tub like that can and still leave room to decelerate. In fact, she cut it a lot finer than we did. '

Which she could do because she was Amnion - and because she'd been moving much slower than Captain's Fancy's imponderable. 9C. 'She should be in dock' -

Arkenhill checked a screen - 'call it eight hours from now. '

Nick shook his head. They won't come all the way in.

They're going to hang off in prime range for that damn super-light proton beam, just to remind us - and the Bill

- we can't hope to cross them and live.

'So, ' he continued as if he were thinking aloud, 'I'll have a little more than half an hour to talk to the Bill before Tranquil Hegemony arrives. And I can stall for four or five hours after that - until Calm Horizons is in position to support Tranquil Hegemony.

'By then I'd better be ready to get us out of this mess.

One way or another. '

He scanned the bridge. No one disagreed with him —

and no one except Mikka and Ransum met his gaze.

The helm second's face conveyed nothing more profound than worry and tension. However, Mikka's expression was dour and defiant, almost openly skeptical. Minute by minute she allowed more of her distrust to show.

'Scorz, ' Nick said over his shoulder, approximating a poised casualness he still didn't feel, 'call me when we're ten minutes out of dock. I'll be in my cabin. '

Getting ready.

Then he moved to the command station and leaned close to Mikka's ear. Maybe she was the one who'd betrayed him. Ignoring the way she pulled her head back as if she didn't want him to touch her, didn't want to feel his breath on her cheek, he murmured intimately, 'I'm going to do my job. You do yours. But the next time you look at me like that, you'd better be prepared to back it up. '

Leaving that threat behind him, he walked off the bridge.

When Captain's Fancy docked, he was waiting in the access passage of her airlock as if he were eager.

He tried to believe that he'd recovered his sure genius for victory: to some extent he succeeded. Yet his new energy felt as artificial as the resources Morn's zone implant gave her.

Why were the Amnion so bloody determined to get their hands on her brat? What did he represent to them?

Was he just an excuse - a way to unmask Nick's real treachery? Or did Davies have some value Nick couldn't guess?

Because he couldn't answer questions like that, he couldn't gauge his own position accurately — or the Bill's.

How much did the Bill have to gain by pleasing the Amnion in this situation? How much did he stand to lose by refusing to help Nick?

The sensation that Morn had done him more damage than he could sustain continued to gnaw deep in his guts despite his efforts to believe he was ready.

'Dock in two minutes, ' Scorz announced over the intercom. 'Secure to disengage spin. '

Nick was ready for that, at least. With his hands on the zero g grips, he waited for the transition between Captain's Fancy's internal spin and Thanatos Minor's pull.

The rock's gravitic field was roughly. 8g. In itself, Thanatos Minor lacked the mass to produce so much gravity. However, one of the curious side-effects of the.

kind of fusion generator which powered Billingate was an increase in the planetoid's effective density. It had almost enough g to be comfortable.

As Nick's boots began to drift from the deck, imitating freefall, Scorz said unnecessarily, 'One minute. '

Nick clenched his teeth against his visceral distrust of dock. He was illegal: his survival depended on movement

- Captain's Fancy's as well as his own. Even when he was safe, he disliked surrendering his ship to the clamped paralysis of a berth. But now he was faced with the very real possibility that he and his ship would never move freely again.

Then the hull relayed a jolt of impact. Transmitted through the bulkheads, the sound of the grapples and limpets carried clearly across the ship. From Billingate's lock came the hiss of air-lines. As if they were mag-netized, Nick's boots pulled him toward the new floor.

'Dock secure, Nick. ' This time the voice over the intercom was Mikka's. We're switching to installation power now. ' Familiar with every hum and glow of his ship, he noticed the nearly subliminal flicker of the lights as the current changed. 'Shall we keep drive on standby?'

Damn her. That was something else he should have thought of for himself. Resisting an impulse to snarl, he answered, 'Good idea. Let's act like we expect to be assigned a shipyard berth almost immediately. ' Then he added, 'Lock up behind me. Nobody goes in or out until I get back. '