Free The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order by Stephen R. Donaldson

Amnion didn’t understand such emotions
— and didn’t fear them. “Billingate and all those ships, destroyed for nothing,
wasted. I thought you didn’t like waste.
    “Goddamn
it, didn’t you tell Calm Horizons who was aboard that ship? Didn’t you
tell them what Angus Thermopyle is — what he came here to do? Why did they let Trumpet get away? Why didn’t they use that damn cannon — cut their losses, solve this
problem once and for all? Don’t you understand how dangerous those people are?”
    Because
she knew what was coming, she struggled against it.
    “Angus
Thermopyle is a cyborg. The cops sent him to destroy Billingate. That’s bad
enough — letting him get away is bad enough. But there’s worse.
    “Nick
Succorso’s priority-codes didn’t work on Captain’s Fancy . Haven’t you
figured out yet what that means?”
    “What
does it mean, Captain Chatelaine?” Taverner asked steadily.
    Sorus
kept her glare on Marc Vestabule. She’d known him longer, distrusted him less;
she feared that if she looked at Taverner she might not be able to control her
desire to punch him in his fat face.
    “It
means one of two things.
    “ Either ,”
she articulated harshly, holding up one finger like an accusation, “those codes
were never good in the first place. Morn Hyland and Nick Succorso planned the
whole thing together, carried it out together. Their visit to Enablement was a
trick, a ruse — probably one of Hashi Lebwohl’s covert operations. They got
something from you, learned something, set you up for something, I don’t know
what it was. All I know is, it worked. It paralysed you long enough to let them
get away.
    “ Or ”
— she raised a second finger beside the first — “Hyland told Succorso she’d
given you his priority-codes before he turned her over to you. So he had
time to rewrite them. But that still means Hyland and Succorso must be working
together. Why else would she let him in on a secret like that, when he was
about to sacrifice her? And why else is she still human, if she didn’t get some
kind of immunity drug from him?”
    Now
Sorus began to see what lay behind Nick Succorso’s rumour that she herself had
access to such a drug. If Billingate hadn’t been destroyed, neither the Bill
nor anyone else would have left her alone — or let her live. The consequences
of Nick’s lie would have driven her out into space, where he could attack her.
    “So the
whole thing was still a ruse,” she concluded. “I don’t know what they were
trying to get from you, but they as sure as hell got away with it.
    “What
possessed Calm Horizons to let them do that? Why didn’t she blast Trumpet while she had the chance?”
    Milos
Taverner confronted her now as if he and she were alone on the bridge. The
force of his attention seemed to pull her eyes to his. “You ask an important
question, Captain Chatelaine.” His vocal cords, less mutated than Vestabule’s,
nonetheless made his voice sound alien: more spectral than human. “It suggests
another, which is for you to answer.
    “When
the ruse was revealed — when Captain’s Fancy began to act contrary to
Amnion instructions — why did you not ‘blast’ the vessel? It was within your
power to spare Tranquil Hegemony , yet you did not do so. You question
our inaction. Will we not also question yours?”
    Sorus
felt the threat: it was palpable and ominous, like static building in the air.
Abruptly she let go of her anger. She couldn’t afford it here. Instead she hid
her fear behind a mask of sardonic confidence — the mask she’d always worn when
she was with the Bill.
    Covering
herself while she marshalled her resources, she dropped her gaze to her board
and completed the sequence of commands that reengaged internal spin. At once
the almost subliminal whine of servos and motors filled the bridge as the floor
eased into motion under her. As smooth as oil, Soar began to generate
centrifugal inertia. A familiar sense of her own weight