by Mel Keegan
“What’s grist?” Ingersol looked suspicious.
“Actually, I’ve no idea,” Vaurien admitted, “but mills don’t seem to work without it.” He held up both hands as if Jazinsky and Ingersol had him at gunpoint. “Enough. The Wings will pull us back to Alshie’nya and we’ll fix, right down to the structural damage. That’s all that concerned me. You’ve got your work cut out for you, but this is the salvage game. You don’t like it – quit.”
“Oh, I like the game,” Ingersol admitted. “I just never expected to be working on a freakin’ warship. And call it what you will, Rick, we’re taking bloody battle damage here.”
“I know, and I care no more for it than you do.” Vaurien permitted himself a sigh and sank into the chair Vidal had recently vacated. He frowned up at Ingersol. “She’ll be yours till the Lai’a expedition returns. I’m trusting you, Tully. And there’s very few other people I’d trust.”
“Trusting me to keep her in one piece? You can fire my ass off the job if I don’t,” Ingersol offered.
“Fire it?” Vaurien’s brows arched. “I was thinking more along the lines of keelhauling it.”
“Quit your worrying.” Ingersol helped himself to green tea and perched on the side of the table. “I’m just bellyaching for the fun of it … truth is, we did good. Any other civvy ship I know would be a pile of wreckage.”
“Except the Esprit de Liberté,” Jazinsky mused.
The new hull was the twin sister of the Wastrel, and would be Ingersol’s command, if he wanted it. From the look on his face, Marin thought, he wanted it. Even now, while he was still indulging himself in the grumbling that was his way to blow off pressure, he reached for one of the handies he had passed to Vaurien moments before. Telemetry from the drones was streaming there, and he frowned over it as Jazinsky said,
“I just saw the scans of your suit, Curtis.”
Marin gestured over his shoulder. “Mick told me. ‘Lucky boy’ was the term he used, as I recall. A micro-pellet the size of a grape, shot out of Oberon like a bullet.”
She knew all this. “We need to beef up every part of the armor, not just the big plates and the joints. The problem is, every particle of Zunshulite we add to it is just going to crank up the mass.” She looked from Travers to Marin and back. “You guys field tested the hell out of it. So tell me … how did it feel? Tell me the stuff drones don’t understand.”
As she spoke, Etienne said over the comm, “The Wings of Freedom has exited e-space. Engineer Ingersol, please return to Operations.”
“That’s me,” Tully muttered as he swept up the handies and passed one back to Jazinsky. “Let me put the drones back into storage and set up for the tow, get us home.” He hopped off the table and sketched Vaurien a rough salute. “Christ, you heard what I said? Like Alshie’nya measures up as home!”
He was gone when Jazinsky prompted, “Armor, guys?”
“Workable,” Travers said baldly.
She gave him a pained look. “Workable, but…?”
“Needs beefing up, if we’re going to get shot at,” Marin told her. “You started with industrial armor, not Marines armor – not that there’s much difference, but tech gangs don’t usually come under fire. Where we’re going, there’s a high probability of getting comprehensively shot up.”
“I’m there ahead of you. And the mass penalty, if I beef ’em up?”
“You can only crank up the grav-resist,” Travers said reasonably. “Sure, if some poor bugger gets a power failure, he’s pinned to the deck. So double-armor the cells, the power couplers and the Arago unit.”
“And pray you don’t get hit in the couplers by a chunk of debris the size of a football,” Marin added. He gave Jazinsky a wry half smile. “A lot of it comes down to odds and sods. I get hit, I don’t get hit. Nothing’s changed since the first arrows were fired on a battleground so long ago, the city of Troy was probably still wearing its first coat of paint.”
Travers permitted a gruff sound of humor. “What he said. Soldiers have a nasty habit of turning into statistics, Barb. Nothing anyone can do is going to change that.”
She closed her eyes, rotated her neck around, a sure sign she was tired, stressed, frustrated. “But I can sure as hell slow down the process. Okay, so I’ll add a hackle of Zunshunium scales over the power system and the Arago unit, and re-tweak the whole setup. You guys want to field test the suits again, when they’re done?”
“Sure,” Travers said guardedly, “but somewhere safer.”
“Safer than Oberon, at least.” Marin gestured with his mug. “There’s a reason they parked a science platform with the biggest arrays on the frontier right there. It’s got a great view of the best of the Hellgate storms, on account of the orbit of Naiobe. And now we know where the Zunshu are coming from, and how they get here.”
“Oh, yeah.” Jazinsky looked down at Vaurien, and sighed. “You look like hell, Richard.”
“Thanks.” He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger.
“You need to sleep,” she informed him. “Look, go and get your head down. I’m going to organize the upgrades for the mines – Asako and Roark can handle the rest of the job on the fly. I’ll work on the armor while we’re getting the Wastrel back up to speed.”
He set his head back and closed his eyes. “We’ll be back at Alshie’nya in half an hour. Shapiro scheduled a briefing –”
“Which neither of us has to attend!”
“— and then, we’re invited to a party.” Vaurien smiled faintly. “They’re calling it the Return from the Dead party. Tonight, if either of us is still awake.”
“I heard.” Jazinsky actually chuckled. “Fancy dress is optional, but Mick said he might show up as a zombie, and for the life of me, I can’t tell if he was joking or not.”
The suggestion amused Marin and caused him a twist of pain, at one time. “There’s one way to find out. And –” He broke off as a bell chime rang through the airframe. “That’s our tow coupling up – didn’t take them long.”
“Next stop, Alshie’nya,” Vaurien said without lifting an eyelid.
Jazinsky was moving. “I’ll be in the lab.”
She was gone a moment later and Travers said quietly, “You know, she’s right. You look like you could use a three month vacation.”
“We all could.” Vaurien stretched out his legs, crossed his feet at the ankles. “After Lai’a. After … everything.”
He would take a catnap while he had the chance, half an hour before the Wings of Freedom got them back to Hellgate’s stable ‘tidepool,’ where the Intrepid had been reborn as the hybrid, Lai’a; half an hour more before Shapiro’s briefing assembled. It was not enough, but Marin knew Vaurien’s mind would be too restless to let him sleep before complete exhaustion overtook him. Then he might sleep for days, and Jazinsky would post a guard on his door, deactivate the threedee, to make sure he was not disturbed.
The Wastrel was moving. In the long armorglass ’ports, the stars had begun to track diagonally as she moved out to the edge of the Weimann exclusion zone and the Wings tested the integrity of the Arago tractors locking the two ships together.
Over the ship-wide comm, Etienne’s voice was no surprise. “Secure for Weimann insertion,” it said with the same serenity as it had announced major systems failure and structural damage.
For one moment Marin actually envied the machine intelligence, which felt no pain or fatigue, was haunted by no poisonous memories, never felt the sting of loss or dread – or love, he thought, watching Travers, who was intent on the violent panorama of Hellgate as the Wings of Freedom took the Wastrel into e-space.
Chapter Three
Salvage tug Wastrel,
Alshie’nya
The Esprit de Liberté was open to space on her starboard beam, and the caverns within were lit by a constant flicker of laser-bright welding, marking the points where constructor drones were fitting her. Travers whistled as he watched the industry from the crew lounge of the Wastrel, but the tu
g did not cut speed until she reached the safe harbor where Mark Sherratt’s ships rode on station keeping, along with the Mercury.
“Give me the resources of the Wings and twenty hours,” Ingersol was saying to Vaurien as Travers caught sight of Lai’a itself, framed in the flatscreen which filled the forward panel of the lounge. “There’s zilch we can do with number 3 hold, so my vote goes to dumping it. Salvage what we can, recycle what we can’t … give me number 3 hold out of the Esprit, and let the Wings and the Esprit herself lash up a new hold to replace it. The Esprit won’t be going anywhere for a while, so where’s the rush?”
Leaning on the bulkhead by the viewports, cradling a glass of white wine, Vaurien was intent on his ships. He had taken the tie from the long red hair, let it fall loose about his shoulders. “What about the crane?”
“Ten hours to replace the track and remount the crane,” Ingersol estimated. “Same amount of time to realign the Weimanns. They’re not the problem – the real issue’s the structural damage, where the spine twisted about two degrees, like a corkscrew, when the Zunshu device imploded. The gravities were as bad as anything we read off a Hellgate event, and we were way too close. So…
“At least fifteen hours with a full complement of drones, to get us up to speed, and then I want to do a controlled shakedown with the Wings right beside us. Say, two more hours … and I’m begging for a fudge factor. Round it to twenty hours, Richard, and we should be good to go.”
“You got it. Tell your tech gang they’re on bonuses. They didn’t sign aboard a warship any more than you did. Or any of us.” He gave Ingersol a curious smile. “And you better start giving some thought to crew selection.” He gestured with the wine glass. “The Esprit is already looking good. I told you before. You want her, she’s yours.”
The engineer wore a perplexed expression. “It’s the craziest thing, Rick. I do ... and I don’t. Part of me says yeah, of course I want my own command, who wouldn’t? Another part of me says this ship is home. Leaving the Wastrel ain’t something I’m looking forward to.”
Vaurien gave Travers an almost triumphant look. “You see? How many times did I offer you this ship as a home?”
“And how many times did I walk away and go right back to Fleet?” Travers ducked his head. “No prizes will be awarded for genius, on that score! Still, if I hadn’t gone back to Fleet…”
“Lai’a wouldn’t, couldn’t, exist.” Vaurien made fatalistic noises. “Don’t even try to make sense of it, Neil. It happens as it happens. You and Curtis … me and Barb. Lai’a. There was a word for it, a long time ago. Kismet. Destiny.”
“You believe that?” Travers was faintly surprised. “Fate, destiny?”
For a moment Vaurien was silent, and took a long swallow of the Velcastran white. “I used to believe everything in the universe was down to random chance, just endless strings of simple happenstance. But I’ll tell you something, Neil. The older you get, the less you tend to believe in coincidence.” He drained the glass and set it on the servery counter at the side of the autochef. “You want to tie your head in knots? Get Bobby Liang – my gods! President Liang! – wound up on this subject and he’ll wax rhapsodic for half an hour. Mick could tell you the same philosophies … Daku. It’s not science, not spirituality. Something hybrid between the two.” He stretched his shoulders deliberately. “What do I believe?” He drew his fingers absently through the long, unbound hair. “I don’t know. But I’m old enough to be cautious about disbelieving anything.” He gave Travers a rueful smile. “To put it another way, it’s a damn’ big universe.”
For the first time in so long, Travers had the urge to take a comb and slide it through the red hair, as he had once often done. The past mocked him and the future confounded him, and he was still silent when Marin stepped back into the lounge.
“Three minutes till the Mercury locks on,” he said by way of greeting, “and she’s docking at the port side rings, Richard, to stay well clear of the damage. It’s like an ants’ nest out there – more than a hundred drones just broke out of storage on the Wings.”
“Tully gave me the estimates. Twenty hours.” Vaurien still sounded tired, though he had slept the crossing away.
“And I better get going.” Ingersol had been so intent on his handies, he had barely registered Marin’s presence. “Those Weimanns won’t realign themselves. Don’t look for me at Shapiro’s briefing – too much to do.”
“I’ll check in with you later,” Vaurien promised. “Give me a call if you run into problems.”
Ingersol accorded him some semblance of a salute and stepped out as Jazinsky appeared in the lounge’s wide door. She was carelessly elegant in fresh bronze skinthins and a deep green wrap, and the white-blond hair was caught in a clasp at the shoulder.
“Are we dressing for this?” Vaurien looked down at his own gray denims and pale blue shirt, his usual working garb.
“I can’t see a reason to,” she admitted, “but any chance to get out of the lab is an opportunity to remember I’m human. Alive. A woman.”
“You need reminding?” His left arm snaked around her waist, pulled her close.
“Sometimes, I do.” She leaned into his side and gave Travers and Marin a thoughtful look. “Are you coming to the briefing? Harrison asked all members of the Lai’a expedition to be there, if they can get away.”
“And we can’t seem to find an excuse to beg off,” Travers said with sharp, ironic humor.
“We’ll be there.” Marin was watching the viewports, where the Mercury had drifted up into view, moving in alongside the Wastrel like a calf beside a blue whale. “Besides, they’re serving dinner.”
The two ships had synched their onboard clocks, and for some time Travers had been aware of the demands of his stomach. He had a fancy for something different. The Wastrel’s ’chefs were configured very differently from those on the Mercury; and very little on the Carellan Djerun seemed to be edible at all, though the ingredients were the same as might be found on any colony world.
The ship locked on with a heavy reverberation of steel on steel, and Etienne’s announcement was unnecessary. “Nine Worlds Commonwealth Fleet cruiser Mercury is secured at the forward port docking rings. General Shapiro requests the Lai’a complement report to the conference lounge. Dinner will be served in twenty minutes.”
“That’s us,” Jazinsky said with a faint sigh.
Vaurien let her steer him away from the viewports, and aft, and Travers followed Marin in the same direction. The locks were still clearing and in the minutes while pressure equalized across both ships, the Wastrel group formed up. Michael Vidal arrived with Bill Grant, and the Lushi seemed to be reading him some lecture which Vidal endured with a bored, resigned look. Behind them, Jo Queneau walked up from the direction of the hangars; and with her was the legend himself.
Even now Travers sometimes caught himself staring. By all accounts Ernst Rabelais was a very ordinary human being – middle height, with pleasant looks rather than the stunning beauty of a celebrity, and a keen intelligence rather than Jazinsky’s and Mark Sherratt’s brand of fierce intellect. But Travers has always believed a man’s deeds set him apart, perhaps earned him the eminence of a living legend. Rabelais was extraordinary, even if he did flush with embarrassment when he caught someone staring, and might occasionally protest. He was the first human to tickle the skirts of Hellgate – perhaps lift them and try to steal a peek beneath. Mark swore the Resalq had watched the Odyssey cruise by, charting black holes and navigation hazards, laying down the trail of beacons which would become known as the Rabelais Track; and then he vanished ‘into the cracks,’ as any veteran Hellgate pilot would say, and the next time he drew a breath of free, Deep Sky air –
He was looking better, Travers thought, and so was Jo Queneau. Like Vidal, they were working hard and eating steadily; unlike Vidal, they had not been literally fried alive by the radiation field at the boundary of the stable zone between the tides of Elarne. Vidal was lagging behind the
other two, and he knew it; Travers felt his resentment clearly, though Vidal directed the anger at himself, not at Queneau and Rabelais.
He had changed for dinner as if it were a social occasion, while the others were still in denims and crew shirts. They had just walked out of the private hangar which had become their workshop, and Travers caught a little of their conversation without eavesdropping.
“It’s not right yet,” Queneau was saying, grumbling as they walked into his range of hearing. “I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it in the nerve endings, almost like it’s vibrating around in my sinus cavities – it’s still off by a fraction.”
“And damned if I can track it down,” Rabelais mused. “I’m not a physicist, Jo. Neither of us is. We’re doing this by the seat of the pants method. We never put numbers to it. Maybe we should have. Maybe we’ll have to, before we get it right enough to be functional.”
Vidal’s tone was caustic. “Let me guess. You crashed it again.”
“Crash and bloody burn,” Queneau said gloomily. “If this contraption was a gunship, there wouldn’t be a matchstick left of it by now.”
“And we’re starting to chase details around and around,” Rabelais added. “Fix this, and that goes out of whack; fix that, and the other thing goes right out the door. Damnit, Mick, I don’t have the background in physics to nail down what the problem is, not in a year.”
The contraption they were talking about was their flight simulator, and the very mention of it gave Travers an odd shiver. He had lost count of the number of hours he had spent in routine simulators, learning to fly everything from gunships and troop transports right through to the Murchison F-76, which for years had been the mainstay of the fighter complement on the Omaru blockade.
