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

he didn’t do anything to help her, she might stay that way for hours. Until something inside her started to heal. Or until she slipped over into madness.
    He had no intention whatsoever of helping her.
    But then she spoke. In a sore whisper, as if her voice were worn out from screaming, she said, “Let me die.”
    Inside his suit, Angus had begun to sweat again.
    “I don’t want help. Let me die. Go away.”
    He stared at her, studied her. He didn’t know it, but his expression resembled hers. Despite its distress, her face had lines that reminded him of Captain Davies Hyland. And the badge on her shipsuit said “Ensign M. Hyland.” The captain’s daughter? That was quite possible. Ships were often crewed by families. Especially in organizations like the UMCP. Where loyalty was the only thing more important than power and order, muscle and stability, the two essentials of civilization and money. But she looked too young to be a veteran. Her first mission?
    “Go away.”
    What did she see that made her want to die?
    Abruptly he keyed his suit’s mike. “Why?” Through the speaker, his voice was harsh, like the demanding metal noise of ships in collision. “What did you do to them?”
    Without warning, she gripped the sides of her head and began to wail; a thin, weak keening.
    “Stop that,” he barked. “Tell me what you did to them. If you don’t, I’ll be glad to beat it out of you.”
    Her wail cracked, hurt her throat, and scaled higher.
    “Shut up!” He brandished his rifle. “They’re all dead. Nobody can hear you. I shot your father myself. Shut up.”
    That made her look at him. Some kind of recognition ate into her like acid. For part of a second, she gave him a flare of straight, absolute anguish.
    “He survived? He was alive?”
    Angus nodded. “Until I blew him apart.”
    During the space between one heartbeat and the next, she seemed to collapse inward like the core of a fusion reactor, compressing herself for an explosion. Then she flung herself out of her g-seat, clawing at his faceplate.
    With her bare hands, she ripped and beat at him, trying to reach him through the suit. Her wail became a screech, as wild as the cry of a mad thing.
    At that moment, for no clear or even conscious reason, he took his first step away from himself, his first step along the course which led to his real doom.
    He didn’t pity her. He didn’t pity anybody: any man or woman weak enough to be pitied was weak enough to be taken advantage of. He wasn’t ashamed of having killed her father. Captain Davies fornicating Hyland had damaged Bright Beauty; he deserved worse than he got. And Angus Thermopyle certainly had no intention of rescuing the captain’s daughter. What use could he possibly get out of a madwoman? Never mind the fact that she was UMCP, muscle for all the worlds which had ever despised him, in addition to being a witness to what he had done to that mining camp—a danger to him as long as she lived.
    And yet he didn’t shoot her.
    Maybe he was simply tired of being alone. Maybe on some level he’d begun to notice that behind her fierce distress she was obviously a woman. Maybe his desire to know what had happened to Starmaster was stronger than he realized. Or maybe she presented possibilities of revenge which he hadn’t yet had a chance to appreciate.
    Whatever the reason, when she attacked him he actually dropped his rifle.
    For a moment, he grappled with her, fought to pin her arms. But she was too crazy and frantic for that; so he drew back one heavy fist and clubbed her to the floor.
    She whimpered, twisted, tried to squirm away from the pain—and then lay still, breathing in a graceless rasp like the sound of his own respiration inside his suit.
    Hitting her—that kind of violence—was so seductive that he wanted to do it again. He wanted to give her ribs a kick and see what would happen. He restrained himself, however. Unexpectedly, he found he had one too many things to worry