Forbidden Knowledge (42 page)

She looked inside.

Vector Shaheed stood at one of his boards with his back to her.

Thirteen minutes.

Urgency and hyperventilation mounted in her.
Stay calm.
She had to go in there, had to get past Vector somehow. Yet she didn’t want to hurt him. For his own reasons, he’d treated her decently. And he already had enough pain of his own. The thought of damaging him in order to help her son brought the taste of vomit back into her mouth.

Stay calm
!

But there was something else she needed to do as well. She still had time. If she did it first, he might be gone—into the drive space, or out to the bridge—when she came back.

To save him—or to save what was left of herself—she flitted past him and entered the auxiliary bridge.

It shouldn’t have been empty. This close to an Amnion warship, the entire crew should have been at combat stations. But of course Nick had no intention of fighting. He’d already negotiated a peaceful “satisfaction of requirements” with
Tranquil Hegemony.
That was his only practical hope: he couldn’t defy both
Tranquil Hegemony
and
Calm Horizons
; not at these speeds; not in Amnion space. Why put more strain on his people, when they were already exhausted?

Morn went straight to the data station.

Trusting her own skills and Alba Parmute’s diffused attention on the bridge, she engaged the board and used it to reactivate bridge control over her cabin door. That was for Sib Mackern. Now nothing showed that he’d ever done anything to help her.

Eleven minutes.

Keying off the data console, she left the auxiliary bridge and returned to Vector’s domain.

No luck: he was still there; still working. In fact, he stood at the primary pod board. The readouts she could see past his shoulders seemed to indicate that he was running status and diagnostic checks, verifying the operational condition of the pods; testing life-support; confirming programmed thrust for navigation and braking.

Making sure that the pod which would carry her son to his doom could be trusted.

Ten minutes.

If her inner countdown was accurate—

She couldn’t wait. She would have to get past Vector somehow.

She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her.

At the sound, he turned.

She stopped to let him look at her—to let him see that she wouldn’t attack him if she didn’t have to.

He betrayed no surprise at the sight of her. His phlegmatic stoicism was equal to her unexpected arrival. More in greeting than in distress, he cocked an eyebrow. “Ah, Morn.” If he felt anything unpleasant, it showed only in the faintly unhealthy flush which covered his round face. He looked like a man who’d been exerting himself against the advice of the sickbay computer. “I suppose I should have guessed this would happen. Nick never seems to know the difference between what you can and can’t do.”

He smiled as if he were mocking her; but she saw no mockery in him as he asked, “Have you come to see Davies off?”

“Vector,” she said tightly, “get away from that board.”

I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t make me hurt you.

Nine minutes.

He went on smiling. “Oh, I don’t think so. Nick specifically told me to make sure nothing goes wrong. On this ship, it doesn’t pay to disobey orders—even implied ones. Since he never imagined that you could break free of your zone implant, he didn’t order me to stop you. Still his intent was clear enough. I can’t afford to let you touch anything.

“In any case, you’ve got nothing to gain. If you stop the launch and pull Davies out, Nick will simply capture both of you and start the whole process over again. He’ll apologize for the delay. Then he’ll probably send both of you to that warship, just to demonstrate his ‘good faith.’ Everything you’ve done will be wasted.”

“Vector, I mean it.” Remaining still cost her an effort. “Get away from that board.” She needed movement, action: her black box was set too high, and her son was running out of time. “I’ve come too far to stop now. I’ll sacrifice anything.”

She’d been prepared for days. Ever since Davies was born—and sold to the Amnion.

“I recognize that.” Nothing could have been less sarcastic than the mild scorn of Vector’s smile. “Unfortunately I don’t have any choice. If I don’t get out of your way, you’ll probably kill me. At the moment, you look like you could do that with one hand. But if I do get out of your way, Nick will kill me.”

His stiffness as he folded his arms reminded Morn of the arthritis which threatened to cripple him; of his loyalty to his friend Orn, who had inflicted him with arthritis by beating him up.

Eight minutes.

“No doubt this was inevitable. I mean, the whole thing was doomed from the beginning. I don’t belong here—I’m not the right kind of man for this life. I chose it because I couldn’t live with the alternatives, but it never fit me. Or I never fit it. Outraged idealism seems like as good an excuse as any to turn illegal, but it doesn’t work. The contradiction had to catch up with me eventually. You might say the only thing I’ve accomplished here is that I’ve given the moral high ground back to the people I hate.

“I’ll be better off if I can end it now.”

“Vector, stop this! I haven’t got time for it!” Her hands felt like they must surely give off sparks when she flexed them. She should have been gasping for air, but the ferocity of her need held her steady. “‘Outraged idealism’ is a shitty excuse for giving human beings to the Amnion. You know that. But you don’t want to face the logic of your own decisions, so you’re trying to avoid it by despising yourself. You’re trying to prove you
deserve
what the UMCP did to you. Who’s going to question withholding an immunity drug from an illegal like you? Who’s going to respect Orn Vorbuld’s friends? But it’s not that simple. Don’t you see where that kind of reasoning leads?

“It leads to
genocide
, Vector. The destruction of the entire human species.

“Look at me. You think I’m here to save my son—and you’re right. But I would do the same thing if
you
were in that pod. I would do the same thing for
Nick
.” That was the truth, regardless of her loathing for him. “I’ve got more reason to hate the UMCP than you do. I’ve got more reason to be afraid of Nick. But I will see every one of us
dead
before I allow this kind of absolute
treason.
”

Seven minutes.

She took two steps forward, surging like a burst of flame.

“
Get out of my WAY!
”

Slowly he unfolded his arms. His gaze had gone inward: his face revealed nothing except its unhealthy flush. “You’re still a cop,” he murmured. “No matter what you’ve done. At bottom, you’re still a cop. One of the few. You say you would take the same risks if I were in the pod. I suppose I believe you. That’s worth something.

“You’re right, of course.
I
made the decisions that got me into this mess, and now I don’t want to face the consequences. Those of us who truly and profoundly hate the cops really ought to do better than that.”

Shifting himself aside, he gestured Morn toward the ejection pod board.

She went for it so fast that she didn’t see him plant his feet, settle his weight; she didn’t see him draw back his arm. She barely caught a glimpse of his fist as he swung it at her head with all his mass behind it.

The blow slammed her against the wall, then dropped her to the floor as if she’d been nailed there.

Six minutes.

“Sorry about that.” Something muffled Vector’s voice. He may have been sucking his cracked knuckles. “You don’t deserve it. I just had to be sure you didn’t force me to do this.”

Apparently he glanced at the chronometer. “You’ve got five minutes and forty-eight seconds.”

Her skull rang like a carillon. For a moment her zone implant couldn’t catch up with the pain. Through a racket of agony, she heard the door open and close.

Still a cop.

Force me to do this.

Five minutes—

Forget calm, a voice said to her, as distinct as a chime. You’re out of time.

Clawing at the air, she flipped herself over, got her hands and knees under her.

Her zone implant saved her: its emissions fought down the pain and weakness, cleared her head; did everything except give her adequate air. Gasping on the verge of unconsciousness, she struggled to her feet.

The board seemed to reel in front of her; her vision swam out of focus. Nevertheless she fumbled her way forward, found the controls to the door, and locked it. To delay anyone who might interfere.

Then an artificial stability took charge of her misfiring neurons. Her gaze sharpened on the readouts.

There.

The board told her which pod had been activated. It gave her a launch countdown, life-support status, departure trajectory, braking parameters. A plot from scan showed her
Captain’s Fancy
and
Tranquil Hegemony
; showed her the pod’s programmed course between them. The pod would decelerate straight into one of the warships’ holds.

The scan plot was automatic. She wasn’t on the auxiliary bridge: she didn’t have access to scan itself, or to helm. She would have to rely on guesswork. But since the plot was automatic, it also showed Thanatos Minor looming in the background. And it gave her
Captain’s Fancy
’s velocity and heading—which in turn enabled her to estimate the distance and course to that lonely rock. She ought to be able to guess well enough.

The problem was time. Reprogramming the pod was complex. She only had four and a half minutes left, and she hadn’t started yet. No time to paralyze Nick’s command board. In any case, that could only be done from the auxiliary bridge. So anything she did might be countermanded—if Nick caught her at it.

She couldn’t chance that.

Springing to the thrust board, she hit the overrides, cutting off drive control from the bridge; then she initiated the shutdown sequence. Now
Captain’s Fancy
couldn’t brake or maneuver. That in itself posed no threat to the ship, not this far from Thanatos Minor. But it would distract Nick—

In fact, he was already on the intercom, shouting, “Vector? Vector! What the fuck are you doing?”

Three and a half minutes.

She slapped the intercom silent and returned to the pod board.

Now. No time for accidents or mistakes. If she could reprogram the pod before it launched, it would be out of reach as soon as it left the ship’s ejection bay.

Her zone implant made her unnaturally fast as she tapped in Nick’s priority codes.

She had no intention of canceling the launch—of trying to save Davies aboard
Captain’s Fancy.
Vector was right: that would achieve nothing. What she had in mind wasn’t much better; but at least it would prolong her son’s life for a while.

She didn’t have anything else to strive for.

First she copied the pod’s programming to one of her readouts. Carefully overriding the status indicators which would report a change to the bridge, she erased the programming from the pod. Then she began to write in new instructions.

Two minutes.

Accumulated stress frayed her breathing. Unable to pull in enough oxygen for its demands, her body seemed to burn itself as fuel. Spots swirled in front of her eyes, distorting the readouts, confusing her fingers. Her black box was set too high. At some point it would kill her.

She didn’t falter.

Initially her orders were identical to the original ones. Launch unchanged. Trajectory unchanged. Those things gave her a starting point for her guesswork. Her instructions diverged at the moment of deceleration. Instead of braking, she told the pod to generate full burn and change course, away from
Tranquil Hegemony
toward Thanatos Minor. If no one warned the Amnion of what she’d done, they wouldn’t have time to react: the pod would skip past them and away before they could try to reach it.

And they wouldn’t shoot at it, no, definitely not, not after going to all this trouble to obtain Davies alive—

One minute.

But at that velocity it would crash fatally on the rock. Unless Billingate shot down the pod to protect itself. Either way, Davies would die in a helpless fireball. The pod had to decelerate enough to survive the impact; enough to show Billingate it posed no threat. And she had to estimate that: when to initiate deceleration, how much thrust to use.

She wasn’t Nick: she couldn’t do algorithms in her head.

Her son would die if she estimated badly.

No matter. Better to kill him by accident herself than to let him be subjected to Amnion mutagens.

Fifteen seconds before launch, she finished her programming and copied it to the pod.

That was the best she could do. She didn’t expect to live long enough to find out whether it was good enough.

But just in case—

By the time the ejection pod nosed out of its bay and passed beyond recall, she’d already unlocked the door and left the engineering console room.

On the bridge, Nick stopped cursing Vector’s silence long enough to watch the pod cross the distance to
Tranquil Hegemony.

It wouldn’t take long. The two ships were only five thousand kilometers apart—and the pod had slightly more than
Captain’s Fancy
’s velocity, thanks to the short thrust of launch. Just a few more minutes. Then he could start to breathe again. The Amnion kept their bargains. They may have felt justified in giving him flawed gap drive components, but they wouldn’t try any tricks or treachery here. Not this close to Billingate.

Nevertheless as he studied the displays he felt a premonition clutching at his scrotum. He knew in his balls that something was about to go wrong.

“Why would he do that?” Carmel asked with her usual blunt temerity. “We’re sitting targets without thrust. From this range, they can take us apart in tidy little pieces. Hell, they can knock off the command module and leave the rest of the ship intact.”

“I don’t know,” Nick growled irritably. “Figure it out for yourself. Or go find him and ask him. That’ll be his last chance to say anything before I disembowel him.”