Free Gap [1] The Real Story: The Gap into Conflict by Stephen R. Donaldson Page A

home on leave after the ship which he had served as first officer, the UMCP cruiser Intransigent , limped to the haven of Orion’s Reach. As soon as his debriefing at UMCPHQ permitted, he sat down with Morn and told her the story.
    She saved us all, he said. She’ll be given the Medal of Valor for it. He must have assumed that Morn would want to know this. If she hadn’t sacrificed herself, we would all have been lost.
    He held his daughter on his lap with his arms around her as he talked. Under the circumstances, she wasn’t too old for this. His voice was steady and clear—the voice of a man who valued what his wife had done too much to protest against it. Yet tears ran from his eyes, collected along the certainty of his jaw, and dropped like stains onto Morn’s small breast.
    We picked up a distress call from the ore transfer dump off Orion’s Reach. The dump was raided. An illegal came in on them hard, blasted most of the habitation and control centers, then took all the ore that was ready for shipping and headed away. They would probably have been safe if the illegal had known we were in the vicinity. But no one knew. We were hunting. We didn’t advertise our movements.
    We left medical supplies and personnel at the dump and took off after the illegal.
    She called herself Gutbuster. She wasn’t fast, and she didn’t show gap capability. But she was heavily armed—as heavily armed as a battlewagon. We’d never heard of her before. We didn’t know there were any illegal ships that powerful. We were only a day of hard g away from Orion’s Reach when we engaged her. But by the time we drove her off, we were so badly damaged that we couldn’t get back for a week.
    Of course, we ordered her to come about. We told her she was under arrest. And we didn’t charge in recklessly. We could tell by her particle trace that she was something we hadn’t seen before, so we were cautious. But she kept on running, ignoring us. Finally we had to attack.
    We were careful—but we should have been more careful. We were too sure of ourselves. And too angry at what Gutbuster did to the dump. And we’re cops, Morn. We’re the police. We can’t simply destroy illegals without giving them every conceivable chance to surrender. If we did that, we wouldn’t be any better than the people we’re fighting.
    Because we weren’t careful enough, and because we gave her too much chance to surrender, her first blast ripped one whole side of Intransigent open as if we had no shielding, and had never heard of evasive maneuvers.
    A pure super-light proton beam. It was no wonder she was slow. Every bit of energy she could produce must have been necessary to power that cannon. Captain Davies Hyland couldn’t resist lecturing for a moment. That’s why UMCP cruisers don’t use them. We need mobility and speed. We can’t afford the kind of energy-utilization priorities those cannon require.
    I was on the bridge. The bridge wasn’t hit. But that blast did us so much damage that we immediately lost targ. The cables were cut. We still had power, but we couldn’t aim our guns. Another beam like that would have finished us. As it was, the only reason we survived was that Gutbuster needed time to recharge her cannon.
    Your mother was on station in targeting control. And targeting control was in the part of Intransigent that Gutbuster hit. All the control spaces were close to the core, of course. But that whole side of Intransigent had been ripped open to vacuum. Even your mother’s station lost structural integrity. A bulkhead cracked, welds parted. Targeting control began to lose atmosphere.
    She could have saved herself—for a minute or two, anyway. The leak was slow enough. She could have left her station, sealed it behind her. The automatic systems that locked the doors had enough override tolerance for that. But she didn’t. Instead, she stayed at her board. While her station depressurized and her air ran out, she worked to reroute