Event Horizon (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

“And the Zunshu made their big mistake,” Shapiro said darkly. “They picked on someone their own size, and were hammered for their trouble.”

  “Comprehensively,” Lai’a affirmed. “The ‘chronicle,’ as they termed their on-going recorded history, describes the destruction of mining operations and observatories throughout the Zunshu 161 system, before the Veldn turned their attention to the homeworld. The intention,” it added, “was not complete extermination. One habitable city was left – albeit with severely disabled hardware – plus a caretaker population for the generation nest. The Zunshu have never been in any danger of actual extinction.

  “They had lost their grasp of machine culture long before the Veldn arrived. Artificial intelligence went offline; automata were destroyed. The surviving Zunshu were highly spiritual but technologically simple people to whom machines were almost anathema. Certainly, no one survived who knew how to service, repair and manufacture complex equipment. With the AI and automata gone, their society degenerated rapidly. Six centuries later,” Lai’a added, “the living Zunshu appear unaware of their own history, much less the faith of their ancestors. Firm evidence exists to suggest they were shocked into regression and have not yet begun to re-emerge from a dark age of superstition and ignorance.”

  “They paid a high price,” Rusch said bitterly, “for this religious mania.”

  “If it was mania.” Jazinsky lifted a brow at Mark. “I want to run their data. I know exactly what Lai’a is describing. The ‘universe in a brane’ is a theory dating back to our late twentieth century. The physics are … like poetry, a sprite dancing just out of reach, beyond your lights. Given the Zunshu cortical structure and the fact their brains continued to grow, lifelong, under intellectual stimulation, they might have resolved issues our physicists never did.”

  “The otherworld continuum might be real?” Marin asked softly.

  “Don’t discount the possibility,” Jazinsky warned. “The Zunshu didn’t even blink at exterminating whole species in what they perceived as the ultimate self-defense … their morals are questionable, but one thing is no doubt. They were smart.”

  “They still possess the potential,” Lai’a said coolly. “The brains of the current population are underdeveloped, but the latent potential remains.”

  “And I don’t buy the religious mania argument,” Mark added. “That kind of insanity overtakes primitive peoples, Lex. Education, intellect, civilization, tend to eliminate extremes. Mania could have possessed a sector of the Zunshu public, but not all of them, not over the number of centuries during which they were the great destroyers. True, the original information returned by their shaman-priests would soon have been written into scripture which became more and more convoluted and dogmatic with time. But Roy, here, is the perfect example of an individual who felt the lure of spirituality for very personal reasons, studied the history of religion and was … repulsed.”

  He made a good case, Travers thought. Even Rusch herself was murmuring noises of agreement while Shapiro said, “The population in the city is – what, uneducated?”

  “The surviving Zunshu are predominantly young, isolated, ignorant, with no knowledge of the function of the broken machinery among which they live.” Lai’a paused to stream biological information to the screen. “I deep scanned several hundred individuals by routing the last gundrone into areas I would not have recommended to Resalq or humans. Many individuals were left behind in the rush to escape us; they are adept at hiding. Very few Zunshu appear to live to old age. Young individuals are riddled with disease arising from the contaminants in their environment, of which they are unaware. The city is decaying. Decay is always toxic.”

  “So …” Shapiro took a long breath. “So today’s Zunshu probably have no notion of the ambitions and offences of their ancestors.”

  “Since the machines quit, their knowledge of history,” Roy Arlott said thoughtfully, “would be reduced to myth, the stories one generation tells the next. The epic sagas soon become garbled, inflated, illuminated. The current Zunshu probably believe their ancestors were hammered into submission by the gods because of some mortal sin.”

  “Which isn’t too far from the truth.” Vaurien gave Shapiro an almost infuriated look. “The young Zunshu still alive in a ruined city certainly aren’t responsible for anything their ancestors did –”

  “But our worlds are still being attacked,” Travers said too loudly, and dropped his volume with an effort. “All this happened centuries ago. The Veldn swatted them like bugs? Fine. But the Wastrel stopped the device intended for Borushek just a month ago!”

  “Strategy,” Lai’a said simply.

  Travers groaned as he felt a familiar, sinking feeling in the pit of his belly. “I’m listening.”

  “The ordnance assigned to obliterate any species was committed to transspace in one mass launch,” Lai’a told him baldly. “The human term was ‘fire and forget’ weapons.”

  For a moment Travers struggled with the information, and Vidal swore in a harsh whisper. “Then, the weapons are out there,” Mick rasped, pulling both hands across his face. “They were seeded into the driftways ten centuries ago, and there’s nobody left to argue into a recall. The folks in the city have regressed way past the point where they’d even know what we’re talking about. They just run away when they see you coming.”

  “Xenophobia is as basic to the Zunshu nature as racial purism,” Lai’a said. “It is possible the information to effect ordnance recall is in the data transfer, but I have yet to identify it. Be aware, the computer core is partially corrupt. Information retrieved from it is correspondingly incomplete. Like the key to open those stasis chambers, the key to issue a weapons recall may no longer exist.”

  “Oh, this is perfect,” Vaurien growled. “Do what you can, Lai’a. And – Harrison, I believe you can stand down. Get some rest. Take some time for yourself.”

  “You mean, my part in the unfolding of history seems to be over.” Shapiro stood, worked a kink out of his neck and went to the ’chef for green tea. “If we came here for vengeance, we were trumped long ago. If we came with the virtuous fantasy of negotiating galactic peace, we’re out of luck! And there might be a thousand, ten thousand Zunshu weapons in Elarne’s driftways, where time doesn’t even pass the same way it does in normal space, all of them waiting to hit our frontier worlds. The challenge, Richard, is what’s to be done about them.”

  “For the moment,” Vaurien said tiredly, “nothing. Lai’a must finish the complete analysis of the data transfer before we know enough to make any informed move. After that, well, we have two choices … eh, Neil?”

  The same thoughts had been racing through Travers’s mind. Vaurien had seen them, naked on his face. “If there’s no recall code,” he said grimly, “we either arm every world, including those in Freespace, the way Velcastra and Jagreth were armed against Fleet … or we go hunting. We know the signatures of the planet-killers and the automata. We go find them, and eliminate them, before they hit us.”

  “Go hunting in transspace?” Vidal chuckled darkly. “I’ll be in that. If this is the game, Richard – you can count me in.”

  “I thought you would be.” Vaurien shifted uncomfortable in the hoverchair. He was at the tattered end of his endurance now, desperate for rest, and without a word spoken Bill Grant appeared beside him. A hypogun thudded against his shoulder and Vaurien conceded. “Yeah, I know, Bill. I need to give myself some more recovery time.”

  “Get back into zero-gee and sleep,” Grant said sternly. “Come back to the Infirmary with me now.”

  “Soon as we’re done here,” Vaurien promised. Even his voice was slowing, slurring. “There’s not much more on the agenda.” He looked along at the Sherratts and Kulich. “I believe you found a number of stasis chambers.”

  Dario was on his feet, tired to the bone marrow, uncharacteristically stiff in the joints. “Five of them, each of which could hold twenty people.”

  “The crew of the Ebrezjim?” Vaurien
hazarded.

  “We don’t know – no one can,” Dario confessed. “It isn’t possible to scan through the shell of a chamber. The casing is an event horizon between two time zones, as you’re aware. The best we can do at this moment is to take them aboard, into quarantine. Fact: we have no real idea what’s inside. It could be our people. It could also be a bunch of hazmat refuse. The chance of recovering part of the crew of the Ebrezjim makes the job worth the risk, but you have to remember, we have no real idea how to open these chambers. It won’t be like handling the one on Kjorin, which we tricked into opening itself.”

  “The key to opening it,” Mark mused, “would be in the Zunshu computer core.”

  “Except the core’s as corrupt as a whole gaggle of politicians and buggy as an ant farm,” Dario said tartly.

  “Look – give Lai’a its chance to finish,” Vaurien reasoned. “Load the stasis chambers, by all means. Quarantine – certainly. You might pass the job along to your scientists on the new colony world being founded by the Freyana. It could take a decade or a century in the lab to figure out the tech, but what does it matter?”

  “So, we’re leaving.” Mark stood and pushed in his chair.

  “Give me a reason to stay,” Vaurien challenged, “after you’ve taken those stasis chambers aboard. And incidentally, brief me when you’ve figured out how. It’s a salvage job – and they’re all a challenge, especially the ones you think look easy. ” He shook his head slowly. “We’re done here, Mark. Everything else in this system is pure science, and Lai’a can ferry a research team here, drop a science platform, something like Oberon, for the long term. We know the way now – there’s no need even to drop out at Orion 359 or the Red Gate. No need to run the gauntlet of the defense zones on the edge of this system. Coming back to Zunshu 161-D, Lai’a can drop out on the edge of the Weimann exclusion zone, and the close planetary defenses are exhausted.”

  “And you,” Jazinsky told him, “are going right back to zero-gee for a few hours. Rest, even if you can’t sleep.”

  “I’m going.” Vaurien palmed the hoverchair’s controls and turned it around. “Mark, Dario – go ahead and retrieve those chambers. Lai’a, keep me informed regarding the analysis of the data transfer. Otherwise, start preparations to head home. Barb, Lex, if there’s anything you want to do here, get it done now. We should start back at once … there’s so much to do in the Deep Sky. If we need to arm every world on both sides of the frontier against the Zunshu the way Velcastra and Jagreth were armed against Fleet – well, we’ve barely begun.”

  “And the sooner Chandra Liang, Alec Tarrant and the rest of them are informed about this,” Shapiro added bitterly, “the better. Rob Prendergast in particular isn’t going to want to pick up any tab for the defense of worlds in Freespace. I know a few arguments that might persuade him ... such as the orderly expansion of the Deep Sky.” Shapiro’s brow creased as he framed in words the ideas that had preoccupied him. “Worlds close to the current frontier will be signatory to the Commonwealth charter in a handful of years. They’ll bring us a wealth of virgin territory, minerals, indigenous life forms, and the diversity of their culture. We want all that, and if we’d like to reap the benefits in twenty years, or fifty, the time to make the investment is now. Defend them, so those worlds still exist in twenty years, and so the Freespacer population thinks kindly of the Commonwealth when they’re offered a treaty.”

  It would be factories, Travers thought, manufacturing shops like those on the Wastrel and the new Esprit de Liberté, churning out swarms of gravity mines and sensor drones, all designed after the tech of a dead civilization. Memories of the Zunshu city haunted him. Parts of it were beautiful, with fantasy shapes, hues, textures at once alien and seductively lovely. But other parts of the city were simply dead, and the people – his mind struggled to relate the word – were fallen into superstition, the subjugation of sheer ignorance. They were on their way back to barbarism, and he wondered how long it might be before the small population hived off into discrete tribes and began to squabble over territory and grazing rights, or perhaps over which clans would be honored as the custodians of the generation nests.

  The assembly had broken up into groups, conversation was low key, desultory, and Vaurien had paused in the doorway only to confer with Jazinsky and the Sherratts when the three amber status bars in the bottom-right corner of the screen flicked over to red. Travers was at the ’chef, fetching white wine for Marin, a light ale for himself, iced green tea with mint and ginseng for Vidal, when Lai’a said without the slightest shift in tone and intonation,

  “The sensor chain has activated with an early warning. A ship has dropped out of e-space at the Weimann exclusion threshold.”

  The beverages dumped right into the recycle chute and Travers was moving as Vaurien spoke in a voice like a whipcrack. “All hands – armor, right now. Lai’a, guns on standby, Aragos online. Blow us down to zero pressure, asap. Give me a full report on all engines – get me a scan of the incoming ship, soon as you have useful data. Bill, I want another shot of stimulants, as much as I can tolerate without frying my brain. And somebody help me here. I’m going to need an assist to get into armor!”

  Chapter Twenty

  It was a sphere, two hundred meters in diameter, featureless, blue-black. It surfed into the orbit of 161-D on the gravity of the giant world and its warm yellow star, while every gun Lai’a possessed came online, every Arago field overlapped, and the full human and Resalq crew gathered in Ops. The firewalls had ranged around the AI, and Mark’s hand hovered over the single control that might shut it down fast enough to save it. Vidal and Queneau were poised to take over navigation, and the transspace simulator had already connected, online. If Lai’a went down, the way back to Elarne was still open.

  “I am being deep scanned,” Lai’a announced without drama. “The ship has entered orbit, thirty kilometers from this position.”

  “Scan it,” Vaurien rasped.

  “I am scanning already,” Lai’a told him with a touch of reproach. “What is far more interesting is that the vessel is allowing itself to be scanned. The AI is offering various comm bands … I am negotiating. Standby.”

  Scan data had begun to stream as it spoke. Alexis Rusch whispered a profanity, which was so unusual, Marin angled a glance at her armored figure. Every line of it was tense as she focused on the flatscreen at Tec 2 to the exclusion of all else. The data was largely wasted on Curtis, but he recognized enough to know the incoming ship had a mass greater than Lai’a, though it was smaller, and its drive was so different from the familiar Weimann unit, he could not begin to guess what he was looking at. It was armored; segmented like an orange; heavily armed, with every weapon on standby. But it invited the deep scan from Lai’a, as if it were eager to trade information.

  Seconds dragged into a minute while the science platform worked, identifying hull materials, drive containment, and the thermal signatures of eight life forms clustered in a single compartment near the middle of the ship. Marin’s spine was tense as a drawn bow; Travers was pacing, and at last Vaurien demanded, “Lai’a?”

  “I am negotiating,” Lai’a repeated. “Standby.”

  “What are you negotiating?” Vaurien barked.

  “I am working in conjunction with the Veldn AI to develop a common language, compression and encryption algorithms,” Lai’a told him. “Accuracy demands some small time. The language we share must be verified to ensure complete precision. I do not refer to the Veldn spoken language.”

  “And we can’t afford mistakes,” Shapiro said quietly. “Patience, Richard. You know what’s at stake here.”

  “First contact,” Vaurien said tersely. “Lai’a, are we at battle alert?”

  “Do you wish to attack the Veldn ship?” Lai’a inquired.

  “Not unless it takes a crack at us.” Vaurien paused. “Is it likely to?”

  “It would not have allowed me to deep scan it, Captain, if the Veldn had any such intention,” Lai’a reas
oned. “Deep scan is the sole method via which to trade data before a common language has been generated.”

  “Then we’re in no jeopardy,” Vaurien concluded. “Joss, take us back up to normal pressure and temperature. Helmets off, people … but stay in the hardsuits. Lai’a, be ready to depressurize.”

  “Just in case,” Travers said quietly.

  Marin watched his instruments and was glad to crack the helmet seal. The air was chill and smelt slightly acid, but he could see Travers’s face as they waited for the machines to negotiate their middle ground – watch Vaurien’s face as he weighed risk factors, and Vidal’s, as Mick seemed to prepare himself to fly transspace in reality, where a mistake meant much more than another crashed simulation.

  “Whoa – I’m looking at environmental numbers here,” Jazinsky said sharply. “Richard, Mark, you have to see this.”

  “Environmental readings from the Veldn ship?” Travers came around to the workstation where Jazinsky had slowed the datastream far enough for him to make sense of the finer details.

  “If you can call it an environment,” She muttered. “It’d kill us inside of a second. The temperature’s up around 80oC and the pressure’s something like triple anything we can handle even under extreme duress.”

  “What kind of world are they from?” Rabelais asked in a hush.

  “Very hot, and … their gravity’s way high.” Jazinsky froze the screen to display a summary. “They’re breathing a dense mix of methane and ammonia, loaded with hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Oxygen would be pure poison to these guys.”

  “Their world would suffocate us, roast us, crush us.” Travers puffed out his cheeks. “So much for being able to look ’em in the face, shake ’em by the hand and invite ’em back to the Deep Sky for a flying visit.”

  But Rusch was less hasty to dismiss the possibility. “We have scores of planets to suit them back home. One or two, these folks would call garden paradises – humans and Resalq bypass the same worlds, call them hell, because we can’t function there. Even our drones cook and corrode.” She glanced at Travers and Marin, eyes sparkling with the sheer delight of meeting an alien species, halfway across the galaxy from home, and being able to communicate. “As to shaking hands, looking them in the face, well, that’s another matter. Depends how evolution designed them, doesn’t it?”