The Gap into Madness: Chaos and Order by Stephen R. Donaldson Read Free Book Online Page A

case, a gap-capable
orehauler. Ship id showed that she’d been built and registered legally out of
Betelgeuse Primary; armed heavily enough to defend herself, but not enough to
make her an effective pirate. Except for her recent appearance at Thanatos
Minor, no positive evidence indicated that she was illegal. The marks against
her were negative in kind.
    According
to Data Storage, Soar had done virtually no logged and certified work in
the past five years. Before that, she’d been steadily employed by various
mining concerns and stations: after that, nothing. And she’d been identified in
the vicinity of one or two raids under circumstances which made it unclear
whether or not she’d been involved.
    Data on
Sorus Chatelaine was even thinner. After graduating with a master’s license
from the space academy on Aleph Green, she’d served aboard several different
gap ships for a few years; then she’d disappeared when her vessel was
apparently destroyed by an illegal. Missing and presumed dead: no confirmation.
That was the last entry in her id file.
    But it
wasn’t the last entry to appear on Hashi’s readout.
    Somewhere
in the bowels of Data Storage, an enterprising tech had engaged in some
imaginative cross-referencing, and had appended the results to Soar’s file.
    As a
starting point, the tech noted that Soar’s emission signature and scan
profile as recorded by ships sighting her during the past five years diverged
significantly from the characteristics defined by the shipyard which built her.
Indeed, both signature and profile bore a much closer resemblance to those of
one particular illegal vessel which had been presumed lost nearly ten years
ago. Not a definitive resemblance, but an intriguing one. Enough of a resemblance
to suggest that the illegal vessel, after a five-year hiatus, had regained her
freedom to travel in human space by attacking the original Soar and
taking on her identity — in essence, by stealing her datacore.
    The
name of that illegal vessel had been Gutbuster .
    And Gutbuster’s file held a mine of potential connections.
    For
example, Hashi read, Gutbuster was the vessel which had killed the
original Captain’s Fancy , leaving only one survivor aboard, her cabin
boy, Nick Succorso.
    And she
was the vessel which had once damaged the UMCP cruiser Intransigent ,
commanded by Captain Davies Hyland. His wife, Bryony Hyland, Morn’s mother, had
died in the fight.
    According
to Intransigent’s records, Gutbuster carried superlight proton
cannon. That was almost unprecedented for an illegal vessel: the expense of
such guns, both in credit and in power consumption, was prohibitive.
    On the
other hand, she had no gap capability.
    Which
explained her five-year hiatus from action. In order to survive, she’d limped
to a bootleg shipyard — or perhaps into forbidden space — to retrofit a gap
drive.
    That,
in turn, accounted for the subtle, but unquestionable discrepancies between Gutbuster’s known and Soar’s recorded emission signatures and scan profiles.
    Hashi
was tempted to postpone other, more urgent matters for a while: just long
enough to issue a commendation for the tech who’d compiled this report. He had
no time for such luxuries, however. Strange and unquantifiable ideas spun
through his head as if they could hardly be contained by the mere bones of his
skull or the walls of his office. If the facts and suggestions he’d gleaned
were as evanescent as quarks — micro-events with little more than a theoretical
reality — they nevertheless partook of subatomic energies potent enough to
produce thermonuclear detonations and core meltdowns.
    Caught
in a whirl of exhilaration and terror, he snatched off his glasses and covered
his eyes with his hands, not to prevent vision from entering in, but rather to
keep an electron storm of potentialities from escaping.
    Kazes
had attacked the GCES and UMCPHQ, using legitimate id made from UMCP SOD-CMOS
chips.
    Kazes
are such fun, don’t you