Event Horizon (Hellgate) (10 page)

The probe was already working, and Marin was intent on Jazinsky’s flatscreen, where data was cascading directly to Etienne. But the energy signature off the Zunshu device was rippling in response, multiple little spikes and troughs.

“It knows it’s being imaged,” Vaurien said cynically.

“Is it armed?” Travers wondered.

“The whole thing is one big weapon.” Jazinsky did not look up from her work.

“No, he means could it take a shot at our probe?” Vidal corrected. “Or at us.”

Her shoulders lifted in a shrug which hinted at her aggravation. “I have no idea. It could. But if it’s a planet-wrecker, it could also be absolutely dedicated. Its tiny little brain knows how to do one thing: follow a set course, slither into a star system unseen behind a façade of sensor jamming, and detonate.”

“Christ,” Vidal whispered. “If we hadn’t been right here, right now…”

Borushek would have been gone. Marin wondered how the Terran Confederation might have interpreted the loss of a Deep Sky colony. Even if they publicly claimed responsibility, touting it as a punitive action, the punishment for their defeat at Velcastra, behind locked doors military committees in the homeworlds would know the truth. Colonials would never destroy their own planets, much less the bright worlds with the massive populations; and for decades the Confederation had been warned of the Zunshu.

The handling drones were fifty-tonne machines, each with its own powerful engine sled and industrial grade Aragos. They dwarfed the Zunshu object as Ingersol jockeyed them into position, and Marin watched the flatscreen where the hypnotic display charted the constant variation in the energy signature. The patterns were regular; and they were steadily increasing.

It was Perlman who said, “It looks like … it’s trying to power up its drive. Trying to get out of there.”

“Makes sense.” Vidal looked from Vaurien to Jazinsky and back. “It has one function – to wreck its designated target. Logically, it’d do anything in its power to achieve its goal before it self-destructed to prevent us getting hold of it.”

“Do you think you’re seeing data consistent with drive ignition?” Vaurien asked sharply.

Jazinsky’s white-blond head shook slowly. “It’s damned hard to be sure. This is … it’s
alien
, Richard. All I can tell you for certain is, we damaged it, deactivated its cloaking. Right now it’s cruising on sheer momentum, it knows it’s being imaged, it knows it’s surrounded by hostiles, and it’s generating massive amounts of energy. If it could take a shot at the probe or the drones or us, it would’ve done it by now. So – assume it can’t; assume it’s trying to get out, like Mick said, and do its job. This repeating pattern could easily be a drive ignition signature.”

“The safe bet says it is.” Travers turned his back on the screen and pulled both hands over his face. “You want my recommendation, Richard? Destroy it, while we’ve got the chance.”

“Yeah,” Vaurien said darkly. “I think you’re right. Tully, pull the drones back. I’m not even going to try to get a tractor on it.” He flicked a glance at Jazinsky. “You got your data?”

“Some.” She pushed back up to her feet and stood with folded arms, glaring into the navtank. “I guess I’ll work with what I have.”

The waveform display was pulsing strongly now, and the hair had begun to rise on Marin’s nape. He took a half-step closer to Travers as Vaurien said, “Mick, standby the geocannon. Yuval, put some serious space between us and it.”

The deck vibrated beneath Marin’s soles as the sublight engines moved the
Wastrel
’s colossal mass, and he was sure Vaurien was counting according to some primal instinct. No manual had ever been written, no rules of engagement existed. Richard knew this ship, these weapons, better than anyone else aboard, and it was a matter of intuition when he said, “All right, Mick – fire.”

The forward geocannon had been salvaged from an asteroid miner. It was designed to dissect minor planets into debris for a smelter, and Marin knew the unspeakable power of its projectiles. Each shell was semi-aware, with a rudimentary AI and a one-shot engine producing acceleration he could barely imagine. Still, a lag of six seconds yawned between the moment Vidal stroked the trigger and the sun-bright flare of impact, detonation. In that time, Greenstein had the tug driving away at the maximum her sublight engines could sustain.

The flare was yellow-white, like a rosette of pure energy blossoming against the angry backdrop of Hellgate, and then it blinked off, as if a switch had been thrown. Hubler and Rodman were shouting over the comm, and a single red track in the navtank marked the position of the
Harlequin
, which was racing away.

“What the hell –?” Greenstein demanded.

“Implosion,” Jazinsky barked. “We triggered it. Damn, Richard, I’m reading about a hundred gravities off the epicentre!”

Vaurien’s voice was a whipcrack. “Sound collision – Aragos to maximum off the starboard quarter – Pilot, safe distancing! And the rest of you, grab something. This could be rough.”

It was a terrible understatement. Marin could not remember a time when the
Wastrel
had shuddered like a wounded animal, lurched as if she had been struck with a mallet the size of a small, dense planet. The airframe thrummed; a hold twisted and ruptured with a scream of tearing metal which transmitted clearly through the hull. For a moment she seemed to fall, as if she had been resting on stable ground that had dropped out from beneath her. A dozen alarms began to blare, but Vaurien silenced them at once and into the sudden fracas of the loop he shouted,

“Etienne, how bad?”

The AI was as placid as ever. “Number three hold collapsed. The forward gantry cane derailed and destroyed the forward e-space transmitters. The outer hull is critically stressed at the spinal junctures. Number two reactor autoscrammed. Sublight engines are at 15% instability. Weimann drive is offline. Service drone storage bunkers 4 through 9 are warped and jammed. Drones are unresponsive. Widespread but minor damage in the fabrication bays and hangars. The four heavy handling drones fail to respond and are presumed destroyed. No human casualties.”

Richard passed a hand before his eyes and worked his neck around. To Marin’s eyes he looked pale, but his voice was level. “Tully, Yuval, get us moving. Put us a safe distance from Oberon, where we won’t be a target, and then mobilize what drones you can bring online. Prioritize structural repairs, and see if the reactor will come back up.”

“Doing it, Rick,” Ingersol assured him. “The reactor looks okay … let me run diagnostics. I’ll get back to you.”

And Greenstein: “There’s plenty of sublight mobility, boss. I’ve got us on a loop, back toward Alshie’nya. Mind you, it’s a ten hour run at these speeds.”

“
Harlequin
,” Vaurien called, “
Harlequin
, are you all right?”

To Marin’s intense relief, Hubler’s voice was there at once. “We only got a tickle from the edge of the blast. We’re fine.”

Still on station at Tactical, Vidal visibly subsided as Vaurien said, “Thank gods for small mercies. Head back to Alshie’nya,
Harlequin
. Tell Sasha Tomarov and Paul Wymark we took one hell of a beating. We need a tow, soon as the
Wings of Freedom
can get here. Whatever else they’re doing can wait.”

The smaller ship was already heading out like a comet arcing across the vista of Hellgate. “On our way,” Asako Rodman told him. “You take care of yourselves … you look like a bombsite from out here.”

And from inside, too. Marin was looking at the vidfeed from the hangars and fabrication shops, and muttered a very old Resalq oath. “Damnit, there’s a week’s work to get this mess straightened out.”

“She’ll fix,” Jazinsky said bitterly. “I’d like to tell you we’ve seen worse, but the truth is, we haven’t. We’re not a warship.”

“And Borushek,” Vaurien added in an odd voice, “will never know how close it came.” He knuckled his eyes hard enough to leave the whites red. “Did our mines respond to the cloaked object?”

“Nope. They didn’t see anything worth coming online for.” Jazinsky looked as disgusted as she sounded. “But Lady Luck’s still riding with us. Now we know the cloak profile, I can reconfigure the mines. The next time the Zunshu try to drop a world-wrecker out of Hellgate, the swarm will be on it, same as happened to the battle group at Velcastra.”

“You have a lot of work ahead of you,” Vaurien observed.

She looked tired, Marin thought. Lines of strain had appeared around her eyes recently, and the blue-mauve backwash from the navtank seemed to deepen them. “The
Harlequin
still six fields to seed,” she was saying. “I can reconfigure the new ’bots ahead of time, and design the command set to tweak the rest on remote. Roark and Asako can take care of the field work, soon as I’m done in the lab. Christ! All the work we’ve invested, Richard – all the blood, sweat and tears, and in the end the survival of Borushek comes down to blind luck.”

“Be glad,” Vidal suggested, “we’re still lucky.” He was shutting down Tactical, passing monitoring back to the AI. “If you can get along without me, I need to take a break.”

“Go.” Vaurien waved him away toward the crew lounge. “You don’t need this kind of stress, Michael. Do you want Bill to have a look at you?”

“No … just a break,” Vidal decided. “Give me a hoy, if you need me.”

What he might have wanted was a stiff drink, Marin thought, but Vidal’s organs could not handle alcohol yet. His liver, kidneys, pancreas, spleen, were hanging together by virtue of medical nano, and he knew it. Travers’s eyes were dark as he watched Vidal leave the Ops room, and Marin urged him to follow.

The crew lounge was just ten meters aft, almost opposite. The scents of coffee and Italian herbs and cinnamon issued from the ’chef there, and without a word Travers volunteered to run the machine. Vidal sank down into the chair with the best view of the long armorglass panes and surveyed the flank of Hellgate with heavy eyes. Three of the supergiant stars blazed through a veil of dust, brightening it like virgin snow. He took a mug and cradled it between his palms as if his hands were cold, while Travers fetched coffee for himself and Marin.

For a long time they were silent, each imprisoned with the thought that Borushek – from the blue-green waters of the Challenger Gulf to the glorious high valley which cradled Riga, from the depths of Sark’s pungent citybottom to the glittering, spiring rooftops of the city – might have been no more than a memory.

At last Travers shook himself hard, and his voice was as bitter as Jazinsky’s. “
Luck
. We shouldn’t need to be lucky. The day you start relying on luck is the day you get squashed like a bug, and you bloody deserve to be squashed. I used to tell that to my kids, Bravo Company, where they really were kids, still wet behind the ears and running scared of everything they saw.”

“So we do better,” Vidal said, though his voice was an exhausted monotone. “This is one more weak spot plastered over. They won’t catch us this way a second time, not when we know their jamming profile now.” He blinked up at Travers. “Why don’t you stop fuming and try thanking the goddess of fortune for batting on our team.”

The suggestion surprised Travers, and much of his anger dissipated while Marin watched. “Point,” he admitted.

One thin hand splayed over the Daku tattoo on Vidal’s bony chest. “I can’t help focusing on the bigger picture since…”

He said no more, but Marin knew what he meant. He lifted a brow at Travers, and Neil sighed soundlessly. “You ought to be resting,” Marin told him.

“I am resting.” Vidal’s eyes closed.

“You shouldn’t be standing duty like that.” With his mug, Travers gestured back into the Ops room. “Too much adrenaline and testosterone, hormones on the rampage. You’re still too busted up to take much of this. Bill Grant was probably having kittens – you think he isn’t monitoring you?”

“Hormones?” The blue eyes opened to slits, and Vidal looked Travers up and down. “I know Bill’s monitoring me. I’m full of nano. I’m still getting shots. Grant won’t let me out of his sight for more than two hours. In fact, I’m probably overdue at the Infirmary.” But he did not move a muscle, and his lids dropped again. “What I need is to be up and moving.”