The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order Read Free Page B

spin froze while Punisher navigated the
belt, some kind of collision would be inevitable. To protect herself the ship
would be forced to do almost everything without g. And she hadn’t been designed
for that. Her people weren’t used to it.
    But
whatever Angus Thermopyle did or failed to do was out of Min’s control, beyond
her knowledge. Somewhere in the vicinity of Thanatos Minor, the chronometer was
running on a deadline which she didn’t know how to meet. That fact gave her a
greater sense of urgency than Warden’s actual orders did.
    “As
soon as we hit normal space,” she continued, “I want communications on maximum
gain across all bandwidths. If it’s out there, I want us to hear it.
    “Assuming
we don’t encounter any surprises, take us into the belt over on the far side —
say, ten thousand k from the border — and find some rock we can hide behind,
anything with enough magnetic resonance to confuse opposing scan. Wake me up
when something happens or when we’re in position, whichever comes first. I’ll
go into more detail then.”
    Captain
Ubikwe lifted his head and bared his teeth, dismissing her. “Consider it done.”
    Softly
but distinctly, so that everyone could hear her, she pronounced, “I do.
Otherwise I would have taken command.”
    To
spare him the distraction of answering her, she turned away and let the bosun
guide her through the aperture back into the main body of the ship.
    On the
way to her assigned quarters, she made a mental note to consider transferring
Dolph’s targ officer to her personal staff. She wanted people around her who
were willing to raise objections.
    If
Warden had let Min raise enough objections, she might not be here now, dragging
a damaged ship with a battered crew across the gap on a mission which would
turn out to be either so useless or so critical that it should have been given
to someone else.

 
     
     
    HASHI
     
    H ashi Lebwohl was not a dishonest man. It was more accurate to say
that he was a-honest. He liked facts; but truth had no moral imperatives for
him, no positive — or negative — valuation. It had its uses, just as facts had
theirs: it was a tool, more subtle than some, cruder than others.
    It was
a fact of his position as the UMCP director of Data Acquisition that he was
expected to satisfy certain requirements. Warden Dios himself liked — indeed
demanded — facts. For that reason among others, Hashi respected his director.
Warden Dios made no effort to play fast and loose with reality, as the late and
unlamented Godsen Frik had done endemically; or as even Min Donner did, in ways
which she characteristically failed to recognise. Warden lived in the world of
the real. Under no circumstances would Hashi Lebwohl have hesitated to do his
job by supplying Warden with facts. And he was seldom reluctant to share his
understanding of the way in which facts linked with each other to form more
complex, less tangible realities.
    On the
other hand, he felt no obligation whatsoever to tell Warden Dios — or anyone
else — the truth.
    He
received his first hints of what had happened on Thanatos Minor long before
anyone else; quite some time before any other information reached UMCPHQ. Yet
he withheld the facts for nearly an hour. And he kept the truth entirely to
himself.
    The
hints went to him, first, because they were coded exclusively for his use, and
second, because no one in UMCPHQ Communications knew that they had anything to
do with Billingate or Joshua. They were nothing more or less than flares from
DA operatives, and such messages were always routed straight to the DA director
the moment they came in.
    The
earlier of these two signals was a cryptic transmission from Nick Succorso
aboard Captain’s Fancy . Initially Hashi didn’t mention it because it
contained no useful information. Later, however, he suppressed its contents
because they disturbed him.
    If
you can get her, you bastard , Nick had sent, you
can have her. I don’t care what