Event Horizon (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  Twenty thousand mines had already been seeded around the shoals and skirts of Hellgate, and connecting the swarms were long ratlines of passive monitors, covering the Drift. When the Harlequin was done, five thousand passive monitors would be adrift between the bloated stars, the black hole and the tendrils of dust left by the supernova, 2631C. They were simple listening machines with one objective: they gathered data from the Drift and uploaded to a vessel scheduled to pass by.

  The patrol would be the first duty of the Esprit de Liberté. Data would be sent to labs on the Wastrel and the Carellan Djerun; and buried somewhere in the collation, Jazinsky and Mark Sherratt were sure, the keys to the mystery of the Zunshu would be found.

  Travers understood only a little of what they were doing, but he grasped the significance of the work, as did Hubler and Rodman, who understood even less of the details. The Harlequin swung away, powered out on a right-angle from Oberon and positioned itself for the next run. Six monitors were on the ramps, ready to be set into position, and with fifty more laid down, tested and validated, they would begin to seed the minefield itself.

  Mines and monitors alike were churned out by the Wastrel’s factories. They were dormant as they left the shops, with the kernel of their rudimentary AI shut down and waiting for an activation code any sane person hoped would never be broadcast. Just one of those mines was enough to erase a small ship from space. Eight would cripple the Wastrel; twenty, and too little would be left for observers to be sure a ship had ever been there at all.

  Travers was deeply impressed by the care Hubler, Rodman and Ingersol invested in the preparation of each minefield. Tully was on the techs’ loop even then: “Barb, I’m going to bring these units online, see if I can get them to calibrate their own position. They’re not far out of line – pitch jets might get them where they need to be. You want to oversee this? Second pair of eyeballs on the job.”

  “Can’t be too careful,” Travers muttered.

  And Rodman: “At least they’re just passive listening devices. Every time I remember we’ve got a hold stuffed full of those mines, I come out in cold shivers. One nasty little ship-killer, and we’re history.”

  Over the loop Jazinsky said, “Sure, Tully, on my way. You can leave it there, Neil, Curtis. If you’re happy with the performance, and you believe we can expect proper efficiency from techs and troops in these suits – good enough for me. Come back in. They’ll be setting up for dinner in an hour.”

  Before she finished speaking, Oberon issued another pulse and the comm whited out again. Travers swore into the mass of hissing distortion, and beckoned Marin. He could see Curtis, even see his face through the darkened visor, but they were reduced to hand signs. Marin signaled in the old military visual code which was drilled into draftees in the first month after conscription: Am securing the sled, wait for me there, then we’ll go back to Lock 9.

  Travers gave him the OK and adjusted his comm, switching from band to band, trying to get over or around the distortion. It was as comprehensive, as dense, as any deliberate jamming, and all he could do was wait for it to clear. He was wondering what kind of deal Vaurien had been able to arrange as at last the loop began to break back through the sizzle of interference.

  A word here and there made sense; it was the tone of Roark Hubler’s voice that set Travers’s pulse hammering, and he raised his voice to shout over the white noise, first at Marin, then at the Ops room. “Harlequin is reporting bogeys – Wastrel, are you hearing this? Richard? Richard!”

  The interference was clearing, but not nearly fast enough. Travers fed power to the suit broadcast, cranked the comm to maximum and tried again. Marin had retuned the Aragos holding him to the deck and approached in long bounds, covering the thirty meters between Travers’s position and the drone store in three long strides. Proximity improved their comm, and Curtis was shouting,

  “Neil, I’m getting audio from Hubler and Rodman. They’re saying something just shot out of Hellgate. Freespacers?”

  “Might be.” Travers’s mind was racing. Some associate of Boden Zwerner who recognized the Wastrel and was willing to try his luck in a bid for revenge – or some colleague of Henri Belczak with an axe to grind after the battle at Celeste? “Richard? Ops room!”

  The voice answering belonged to Ingersol, thready and intermittent, no matter how much power he fed to the transmitters. “We’re getting one word in three, Neil, and zilch data feed. We’re blind. You’re probably seeing more than we are – what you got?”

  “Kel-bloody-brochev,” Marin swore in a hybrid version of the native Resalq, a humanization of Midori Kulich’s favorite expletive. “Neil, my sensors are maxed out. If it was a Freespacer ship big enough to have Hubler and Rodman running scared, we ought to be seeing it by now.”

  “I know.” A line of sweat tickled across Travers’s brow as he scanned visually for the Harlequin. She was out of sight, perhaps on the other side of the Wastrel or the Oberon platform, or else simply too far away to be picked up by the naked eye. “Tully, can you hear me? Tully!”

  “I’m getting some of your transmission,” Ingersol shouted. “What’s it look like?”

  “No way to tell,” Travers told him. “Sound all-stations, get the ship on alert, clear the geocannons. Call Mick Vidal to Ops – get him on Tactical, and do it fast. Stand to Bravo Company. I say again –”

  The interference had begun to clear now, and as he finished repeating the message Travers could already hear Etienne bringing the crew to stations. Travers was not surprised to hear Michael Vidal.

  “Neil, they’ve asked me to take Tactical. What am I shooting at? I’ve got nothing in the tank big enough to call a target.” His voice was taut.

  “Power up the cannons and Aragos, and standby,” Travers told him. “Harlequin, can you hear me now?”

  “Reading you 12/17,” Asako Rodman responded. “Tell Vidal to reconfigure – he’s looking for ships, and he won’t be seeing ’em. Scan in the four-meter range, and smaller.”

  “Roark, that’s boulder size,” Vidal protested. “You got a meteor shower coming out of Hellgate?”

  “Mick, that’s pod size,” Hubler corrected. “Some kind of acceleration shells, we’re counting five of them – they punched out of the Drift like a volley of freakin’ artillery and vectored ’emselves in on the Wastrel and Oberon, soon as they were clear to maneuver. I never saw anything like ’em before. They’re not Fleet hardware, not Freespacer tech, and you know what that means. Shit, hold on – we’ve got a clear shot, we’re going to take it.”

  A peppering of red enunciators winked on in the helmet display, and Travers’s eyes narrowed as he watched. The Harlequin had taken on a full warload at the orbital yards at Ulrand, and to his knowledge she had not fired a shot since. The same impressive cannons that had seen service in the Freespacer battle there were hot again, and sensors counted sixteen rounds delivered dead on-target, on the closest of the bogeys. He held his breath now, hoping, wishing he knew how to pray, but as the interference from the blasts cleared his sensors told him the same truth they told Hubler and Rodman.

  “No joy,” Rodman called bitterly, “and that’s the best we got.”

  And Hubler, a moment later: “You seeing this, Mick? They have to be shielded. We didn’t even knock the little bastards off-vector.”

  “Get out of there,” Vidal advised. “They haven’t returned fire, but we’re not assuming they’re unarmed. With these guys, who knows?”

  “They’ll be armed, count on it,” Marin said emphatically, “but in craft this size they won’t have ordnance to burn. Do like the man says, Rodman – get out while you can. Show them a sitting target, and they’ll take a crack at it.”

  “We’re gone,” Rodman sang.

  Sensors showed a fierce heat bloom at the Harlequin’s position as the engines lit up brightly, and Travers called, “Are you tracking unknowns yet, Mick?”

  “Not yet,” Vidal told him, “but the Harlequin just bounced her data right to E
tienne. It’s only blind luck she was out there, close enough to see them. Mark Sherratt will tell you, these raids normally have no warning, no lead time. Ask Curtis. He knows so much about this crap, it’s a wonder he can sleep.”

  “I guess we got our personal guardian angel,” Ingersol breathed. “Uh, Neil, I looked at the inbound tracking data from Fridjof Prime, back at Ulrand, when you guys fought there, at the refinery … same deal?”

  “Same deal,” Travers muttered. “Mick, you getting anything now?”

  Vidal’s body might still have been frail but his mind was almost as sharp as it had ever been. “I’m trying, Neil. There’s just too much bloody interference from Oberon, I’m still not seeing shit. Richard!”

  “Right here.” Vaurien’s voice was the sole note of calm in the loop. “I’m coming to you, Michael. Take a deep breath, and recalibrate.”

  “Already did that. Whatever Roark’s seeing, they’re too small to pick up at this range through this swamp of background white noise.”

  “Understood.” Vaurien did not skip a beat. “Etienne, bring the deep scan platform online. Harlequin, you hearing me?”

  “Yo,” Rodman called. “You want realtime coordinates.” Not a question.

  “Best you can guesstimate,” Vaurien affirmed. “Relay what you have direct to the AI. Michael, use the deep scan to derive a firing solution and configure the Aragos, get some shielding between us and them.”

  The Wastrel’s deep scan platform was the sensor array from a Resalq research vessel. It was designed for observing stellar phenomena, and far more sensitive than the close-range sensors which normally guided the guns. Vidal swore quietly. “Damnit, I’m getting slow. I should’ve thought of that.”

  “No,” Marin argued. “You’re used to the resources of a warship. You’re still trying to adjust to think civilian. Richard, we’re outside. Where do you want us?”

  “Pick your ground,” Vaurien offered. “Nowhere’s going to be safe, and you’re already wearing the toughest armor this side of Zunshu space itself. Michael, any joy?”

  And Vidal, as appalled as he was self-satisfied: “Oh, yeah. I’m seeing six, Harlequin, not five, but you pegged the size dead right. Just over the three meter mark … some weird-ass engine signature, doesn’t even look like an engine. The only thing I’ve seen that’s halfway similar –”

  “Is the signature off the mines the Fleet battle group flew right into, at Velcastra,” Barb Jazinsky finished. “Oh yeah, these bogeys are Zunshu. No question about it now. Okay, Tully, I’ll take Ops – get moving. Weimann ignition procedures. Get us to jump minus three seconds and hold it right there.”

  Ingersol: “Will do. You better check the highband. According to everything I’m seeing on sensors, those bloody fools on Oberon are charging up for another pulse. They blind us again, and we’re a sitting bloody duck.”

  “Shit,” Jazinsky swore in a rasp. The comm clicked audibly as she switched up, and Travers almost winced as she bawled, “Danny Ramesh, are you listening to me? Ramesh!”

  He was there at once. “Like I’m going anywhere? What the hell is your problem, Jazinsky?”

  “Shut down your goddamned pulse generator,” she told him, “right now. Do it, Danny, or I swear I’m going to blow the emitter right off the shoulder of Oberon.”

  He snorted a laugh that was terrible in its ignorance. “Yeah, right. Take a pill, go have a lie down. I might talk to you later when you’re making more sense.”

  “They’re still feeding power to the emitter,” Richard warned. He touched his combug. “Doctor Ramesh, I should warn you, we’re serious.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Ramesh groaned.

  “Etienne, clear Starboard 22 and lock onto the Oberon J-band emitter. Standby to fire on my command,” Vaurien said in a tone like crushed velvet. The words carried clearly over the comm. “Ramesh, shut it down.”

  “Or we’ll shut it down for you – permanently,” Jazinsky breathed.

  Marin’s helmet turned toward Travers. His voice was a bare murmur. “Which is what we should have done hours ago.”

  “This is the property of the taxpaying public of the Deep Sky,” Ramesh roared.

  “All the more reason to go dark and keep it in one piece,” Vaurien said reasonably. “You have one minute, Doctor Ramesh. Etienne, countdown and fire on zero if the pulse emitter fails to deactivate. Acknowledge.”

  “Fifty-eight,” Etienne said calmly. “Fifty-seven. Fifty-six.”

  “Michael?” Vaurien’s voice betrayed nerves wound tight as steel hawsers.

  “I’m glimpsing objects,” Vidal told him. “But they’re so damn’ small, target acquisition is going to be like spitting into a cyclone. Looks like two are vectored on the Wastrel, the rest are going for Oberon.”

  And Jazinsky: “Time?”

  “Maybe two minutes before they get to us,” Vidal judged, “three minutes before they reach Oberon. It’s difficult to be exact because they’re surfing on gravity fields, their velocity’s constantly changing.”

  “And we,” Marin said darkly, “are unarmed, Neil.” He took a step away, in the direction of lock 9, but Travers’s gauntleted hand on his shoulder held him back.

  “No time to get in to the armory. Come this way.” Travers was already moving, and thanking the old soldier’s gods that he knew this ship as well as he had ever known the Intrepid.

  The loop hummed with data and he listened as the flock of pods raced up out of Hellgate with the speed and maneuverability that had always defeated the Resalq. The same tiny craft had dropped the Zunshu machines into Fridjof Prime, and the Fleet docks at Albeniz, absolutely without warning. They were so small, so fast, in almost every instance the target was overrun before defenses could come online.

  And for hours Oberon had been transmitting, loud and strong, in the very bands the Zunshu passive listening devices monitored. Nothing natural fired such pulses. Only industry or science used the comm bands close to the e-space horizon. The command traffic of military and industrial drones was loud there; the big AI freight haulers that cut time-saving slingshots through the safer quadrants of Rabelais Space bounced signals through the J-layer, where tachyon fields vibrated in and out of e-space. But nothing natural emitted such signals, and the noise Oberon had been making, right on the skirts of the Drift, seemed to Travers like blood in the water.

  Just aft of the rank of four-meter parabolic dishes was a code-sealed hatch. He had never actually handled it, but he had seen it on vidfeeds numerous times. Tech gangs often worked out here. Tully Ingersol was far more familiar with the Wastrel’s outer hull, and as Travers dropped to one armoured knee beside the hatch he called,

  “Tully, you there?”

  “Engine deck,” Ingersol responded. “What d’you need?”

  “Give me the code for service hatch 68, aft of the four-meter dishes.” Travers adjusted the tint of his visor and surveyed an outsized keypad designed for massive, armoured hands.

  Ingersol did not even have to think about it. “Alpha-gamma-2-4-9-kappa-delta. You’re doing what I think you’re doing?”

  The gauntlets were thick enough, heavy enough, to make tapping in the code a frustrating exercise, though the keys were huge. “How long till the Wastrel can jump the hell out of here?” Travers whispered.

  “Fifty seconds, but sublight engines are already hot and all three reactors are throttled up. We can at least give them a run for their money.” Ingersol paused. “Shit, Neil, you, uh, you guys did this at Ulrand, right? You beat them?”

  “We beat them,” Marin said levelly. “In fact, we’ve beaten these bastards twice. And the Wastrel can jump out and escape, Tully – it’s the crew on Oberon that’ll be erased like they never existed. Ops room.”

  “We have tracks on all bogeys,” Jazinsky told him. “Two headed for us, four going for Oberon like a school of sharks.”

  “There’s almost fifty people on Oberon,” Travers said as he lifted the service hatch. A light flickered on
in the trench beneath. “Bravo Company, where are you?”

  The voice answering belonged to Judith Fargo, as Travers would have expected. She had earned the promotion to lieutenant, and she took the rank seriously. “Armed and in the hardsuits, in Hangar 4, boss, starboard side. We can freakin’ see Oberon from here. You call it.”

  The Capricorn was parked in Hangar 4, and Travers took a deep breath, weighing the risk before he said evenly, “There’s a bunch of ignorant, dumb civvies on Oberon, and they’re getting fragged unless we get between them and a squad of automata. You want to go kill some more Zunshu?”

  “We can do that,” Fargo said without hesitation. “Perlman’s been prepping the Capricorn as a CYA fallback. She’s about one minute off flight ready. It’ll take another minute to get over there and dock. We got time?”

  “Just,” Travers judged. “Make it fast, Judith, and – be careful.”

  He was still speaking when Etienne counted down to five, and Danny Ramesh’s voice exploded into the loop. “Fuck you, Vaurien – we’re shut down, going dark. You’ll never work in the Deep Sky after this – you better take off for Freespace and keep running!”

  Vaurien was far too busy to deal with Ramesh, and it was Jazinsky who answered. “Save the squealing for later, you little twerp, and while you’re at it, look at your bloody sensor displays. You should be seeing six marks, coming in from the Drift on a vector of 159/280, almost in line with Naiobe itself.” Ramesh began to bluster, and she cut him off with a roar. “You want to stay alive long enough to file your report, look at your goddamned data!”

  A pause, and he was back, angry, surly. “We’re tracking a bunch of sizzling Hellgate meteors, four headed this way. So what? The AI already ramped up the Arago screening, it’s not an issue, Jazinsky.”

  “You think? Get your people in their hardsuits,” Jazinsky said tartly, “or tell them to drop what they’re doing and head back to the Tycho.”

  As Ramesh began to argue, Travers stopped listening. In the service trench under hatch 68 was an assortment of tools – not weapons, as such, but industrial tools became terrible weapons with a shift of intent.