by Mel Keegan
And Marin was right. This ship handled much better than the simulated craft they were used to. Almost unlimited power gave Curtis the ability to cut closer to the tide, surfing on Arago fields that weathered the storming energies readily while the simulated driftship would have been warning of imminent mechanical failure.
They never heard a warning from the system. Engine and generator data was as sweet as Travers had ever seen from a hard-worked ship, and on the one occasion, when Marin cut critically close to a gravity well before he could slide up and around a ravel of temporal currents, the Arago projectors throttled up automatically, without protest.
Again Travers lost track of time in the thrill and rush of flight, and almost too soon the driftway was ahead of them. Marin was talking to Vaurien even then. “Driftway in five … let me find us a safe eddy, way out of the gravity currents.”
“Do that,” Vaurien’s voice whispered in Travers’s ears. “We’re not trusting Joss to even monitor transspace while you guys are on downtime. Hubler and Rodman might not be ready to fly, but they know what they’re looking at. They’ll take the first watch, and Fargo and Perlman the next. Mick and Jo are on standby, if we need a safe positioning maneuver.”
After which, Travers realized, Vidal and Queneau would be back in the tanks for the race to the next driftway. The process that would repeat over and over, until they exited the Odyssey Tide into the Hellgate driftway and began to hunt for a Class Five or Six event on the Orpheus Gate. Home.
“And I’m … out,” Marin reported as he boosted the Aragos at the apex of a rollercoaster turn and let the ship cruise out into the blue-gray shoals of the driftway. “Neil, what you got?”
He was reading colors and eddying waveforms, looking for a stretch of nothing, a pool so quiet, a comm beacon would stay more or less in place. The ship cruised on, on inertia for several minutes before he saw the void he wanted. “Got it.” He streamed data to Marin.
With a single pulse from the drive the ship rolled over, and her mass and momentum took her past the last tendrils of gravity from the Odyssey Tide. Satisfied, Marin throttled the drive to standby, shut back one of the generators – the next in line for routine maintenance. Drones would already be deploying as he said into the loop,
“All secure. We’re showing a drift so slow, we shouldn’t be anywhere near the tide for days. You there, Roark?”
It was Rodman who answered. “Any time, Curtis.”
And Hubler: “You guys did good. That was a smooth ride.”
“That,” Marin added as the tanks opened, “was a whole lot easier than flying the simulator.”
“Mick knew it would be.” Travers sat up, took off the veeree set and groaned as he felt the stickiness of his clothes, the tightness of back and legs. He blinked his vision clear, focusing on the dimness of the hangar where Hubler and Rodman waited to stand the first watch.
“How’s it feel?” Hubler asked shrewdly as they lifted themselves out. “That was your maiden flight. It was real. It’s always different when it’s real.”
“It was a rush,” Marin admitted. “Like the first time you fly a fighter against pilots who’re shooting live ammunition at you.”
“I’ll never forget the day.” Hubler stood, hands in pockets, braced on the biocyber legs. “Better than simulation?”
“Much.” Marin gave Travers his hand to pull him up. “Easier. Safer. Human pilots can do this, Roark. We’re just breaking trail here. One day soon this – transspacing – will be commonplace.”
Rodman was only waiting for Travers to vacate the navigator’s tank. She stepped in while he was still working the kinks out of his back and Marin fetched water from the ’chef. “Crew lounge,” she said cryptically.
“Crew lounge?” Marin drank half his water in one long swallow and slid an arm around Travers’s waist.
“You’re wanted.” Hubler was clumsy getting into the pilot’s tank, but he had done this often enough to have figured it out. He flashed them a rare, toothy grin as he settled down into the smart foam, which formed up like a glove about him. “Maiden flight and all.”
Travers could guess, but the cognac and the fine Velcastran cigars were no less welcome. Vidal had taken a glass of tea, and stood under Mark Sherratt’s left arm while Queneau and Rabelais were on the couch, close together, talking in murmurs too soft to carry. Vaurien and Jazinsky sat at the head of the table while Dario, Tor and Midani clustered around the autochef. Rusch and Shapiro, Leon and Roy Arlott were examining a fresh bottle which had appeared from the niche under the bar, while Perlman and Fargo permitted themselves only iced tea. They had the second watch, though Jim Fujioka nursed a brandy. Fargo was with Grant, sitting by the mess table, and whatever she had whispered into his ear was enough to make even a Lushi – or an Australian – blush.
“Maiden flights,” Vaurien said loudly enough to bring the assembly to order. He lifted his glass. “Mick and Jo, Neil and Curtis … and damnit if we aren’t still alive. Salut.”
Travers savored the fine old cognac. “Still alive,” he echoed, “and headed home.” He caught Marin in both arms and hugged him hard enough to drive the air out of his lungs.
“Fifteen driftways to Hellgate,” Marin said when he was permitted to breathe again, and held out the glass for a refill. “I wish you could take the cognac, Mick. It’s a good one.”
“Ten months,” Vidal said unconcernedly. “I guess I’ll drink to the launch of the Transspace Gypsy in juice.” He saluted them in green tea. “Here’s to home.”
Jazinsky lifted her own glass. “Here’s to the war being over. With Lai’a down, Roark and Asako have contracted to seed the comm drones right around Hellgate. They can transfer the Harlequin to the Esprit de Liberté, and – me?” She took a refill as Vaurien reached over for the bottle. “I might sleep for a year.”
“Two,” Vaurien corrected. “Or at least till we head out. Exploring,” he added. “I’ve discovered a taste for it.” He lifted his glass a second time. “Here’s to the ‘queen of worlds,’ wherever we find her.”
“She’s out there, and we’ll know her when we see her.” Jazinsky drank on the toast.
The gathering lost focus as the autochef began to run. Travers retired to the corner furthest from the celebration and let himself relax one muscle at a time. “Here’s to the war being over,” he echoed. He frowned at Harrison Shapiro, who had taken a glass to the other side of the table and sat by himself. “You know what his toast is.”
“Absent friends.” Marin settled beside him, close enough for Travers to feel the heat of his body. “We went into this knowing there’d be casualties. We were never going to come through Zunshu space without paying the price. Harrison was prepared for much worse, though I dare say he wouldn’t have been thinking of losing the non-combatants.” His hand settled on Travers’s thigh. “He’s an old soldier. He knows the score better than any of us.”
The truth was, they had been lucky, while Shapiro had certainly been willing to accept significant losses. Travers’s eyes wandered on, to Richard Vaurien, still pale and limping, and Tor Sereccio, who had begun to count days like Hubler, like Mick Vidal himself. He thought of Jon Kim and Tonio Teniko, and echoed, “Absent friends.” But the greater part of Neil clung to the knowledge that they were through, home was close, and Curtis Marin was still beside him.
“Penny for them,” Marin offered, watching him closely as if he could guess the thoughts scudding through Travers’s mind.
But Neil only shook his head and set the empty glass aside deliberately. “You want to rest? Eight hours’ downtime, and we fly again.”
“I could fly again now,” Marin told him. “The simulator’s a nightmare by comparison with a ship this size, this power. I guess Mick designed it that way – you don’t train the best pilots by making it easy. Smart boy.”
“Still,” Travers mused, “eight hours of downtime.” He quirked his brows at Marin. “Be a shame to waste them.”
“It’d be a sin,” Mari
n agreed sagely, and let Travers haul him to his feet and steer him out of the crew lounge.
Chapter Twenty-two: epilogs
One: Alshie’nya
The stars of normal space burned in the eye of the storm and Travers held his breath, counting down with the event clock in the corner of the navigation display. Vidal’s and Queneau’s voices whispered from the transspace cockpit, calm, absolutely professional, as Mick rode the freefall current into the seething heart of a Class Six monster. The navigator in Travers could feel the currents, the buffeting of immense gravities as the driftship raced toward the event horizon, and when he looked up at Marin’s rapt face he saw the same absorption. Marin’s hands lay on the edge of the navtank, but his fingers were extended, flexing slightly in the exact patterns Vidal’s hands were following as he brought them back to the Deep Sky.
From somewhere far off, Neil heard Jazinsky’s voice with the soft caution – the event was starting to collapse – but Queneau had plotted it down to the last tenth of a second. Hundreds of gravities surged around the periphery of the storm, but the freefall channel was picked out in shades of cerulean and cobalt and the driftship was dead-center in the stream.
“Two. One … the transspace drive has scrammed,” Vidal reported. “Standby for Weimann ignition. Jo?”
“I just picked up Beacon 244,” Queneau told him. “Here’s your feed, Mick. Be aware, there’s a lot of chatter, just Hellgate phantoms, in the highband range.”
“Got it.” Vidal paused to reorient himself to the different conditions of flying e-space. “Weimann procedures are underway … and we’re eight minutes from Alshie’nya, Rick.”
In the big recliner on the other side of the tank, Vaurien was cradling fresh coffee and a wide handy in his lap. “Take us home,” he told Vidal in a voice thick with emotion.” He looked up at Travers and Marin, gave them a nod of recognition. “That was damned good work, all of you.”
“Hey, we’re home, aren’t we?” Queneau crowed.
The deck thrummed again as the Weimanns came online; the display paused, shifted, realigned as the live vidfeed was replaced by enhanced images. Hellgate slid leisurely astern, and Travers listened as Vidal began to shut down the transspace cockpit. Joss could take the driftship back to Alshie’nya. It was on the exit road already – Borushek was far ahead, if they chose to stay on this heading, but the ship was swinging through a wide arc toward the Bronowski Reef.
Home. Travers would never have believed he could be so pleased to see the fractured, angry face of Hellgate, but every navigation marker in the tank was like a lamp lighting the way back. He watched Ulkur go by, and Rannach, worlds scorched in the 2631C supernova event. Less than a minute later he saw Nirgal, where the Cyclops Sensor Array still monitored the drift for civilian laboratories which had been left so far behind, they were beyond obsolete, though they could not yet know it.
Footsteps from the passage announced Vidal and Queneau. Their faces were jubilant, and while Ernst Rabelais caught the woman, swung her around, Travers took Vidal in an embrace that was much less cautious than it would have been months ago. The body in his arms was hard, with a wiry strength. Perhaps Mick would never be the full-bodied young beauty he had been when he led the Delta Dragons, but Travers had no quarrel with the man he had become.
“Alshie’nya. Weimann drive shutdown,” Joss announced as Vidal gave both his hands to Marin.
Travers felt a curious double-thump in his chest as the deck shimmied with that slight heave under his feet, the momentary falling sensation in the pit of his stomach. Again the navtank realigned itself, and a live vidfeed was overlaid with the markers of many ships, many installations. Vaurien groaned audibly as he saw the Wastrel, the Carellan Djerun and, a little distance away, the Esprit de Liberté, and the Earthlight shuttling between them, doing service as a harbor tug.
“The Mercury’s shipped out,” Jazinsky observed. She looked closer at the readings off the ships, paused to listen to the comm as they began to pick up the ship to ship loop, and swore quietly.
Vaurien frowned at her through the haze of the threedee. “Something wrong?”
“Yes. No. Well …” Jazinsky turned her back on the flatscreen she had been watching. “Joss, did you just realign the onboard clock with local time?”
“I did,” Joss affirmed.
“Check it. Do it one more time.” Jazinsky looked back at the flatscreen and the pale blue eyes closed for a moment.
“What?” Vaurien demanded.
“See for yourself.” She gestured at the datastream.
Curious, Travers looked. He looked again. Marin took a sharp breath and set a hand on his shoulder, but it was Vidal who said, “That can’t be right.”
“It’s right. Joss just synched our clocks with the Wastrel.” Vaurien pulled both hands across his face. “We’ve been gone five months.”
“But that’s – impossible,” Queneau began.
“Is it?” Rabelais’s head was shaking. “How long was I gone? I thought, a few months, maybe six at the most. Turned out to be centuries. It’s different in there, kiddo.”
“Damn.” Vaurien touched his combug. “Hey, Mark … Alshie’nya. And you might want to check the datafeed. The time index.”
The Sherratts were still in Tech 3, taking apart a virtual model of the Veldn code fragment, and the work was slow. Ironically, they needed the resources of Lai’a. Without the AI, everything was a compromise. “I already checked it, when Joss synched with the version of itself on the Carellan,” Mark told him. “I’ve been afraid of something like this. Transspace has rucks and snarls – we can always get through them, but from the inside there’s no way to tell the passage of time.” He paused. “Five months, Richard, could have cost the Freespace colonies dearly.”
The driftship was braking now, with the Bronowski Reef distant on the starboard bow quarter, the 2631C pulsar nested in the filaments of its nebula on the aft port quarter, and the Wastrel was visible to the naked eye, growing swiftly. Travers had been listening to their comm for some moments, and as he had expected, the voice hailing the driftship directly belonged to Tully Ingersol.
“Lai’a – Lai’a, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he called. “Rick, you online?”
“I’m right here,” Vaurien acknowledged, but he was frowning over long-range video now. Travers had caught one glimpse of the flatscreen when Richard demanded, “What the hell did you do to my ship?”
The Wastrel scanned fine, Travers saw at once, but the data from the Esprit de Liberté was not so good. The engines were dark, the whole airframe was cold, as if she had been dormant for so long, even residual energy signatures had dwindled away.
“You notice that.” Ingersol hesitated. “It’s a long story, Rick, but we’re here to tell the tale. For that matter, so is Omaru.”
“Jesus,” Jazinsky breathed, “you didn’t take the Esprit into some half-assed battle?”
“Me – on a warship?” Ingersol gave a snort of humor. “Why don’t you come on over? We’re setting up for dinner. I’ll regale you … damnit, Rick, you’ve been gone a long time.”
“Five months,” Marin said softly. “Neil?”
Their bags were packed – again. The luggage stood in the doorway to a stateroom where they had never properly settled in, and the lure of the Wastrel was powerful. How often had Vaurien made Travers the offer of that ship as home?
“We’ll be right over,” Richard was saying. “We have quite a story to tell, Tully.”
The engineer skipped a beat. “You hammered a truce out of the bastards? Tell me Shapiro argued them into a treaty.”
“It’s complicated.” Vaurien gave Jazinsky and Travers a tired smile. “We’ll be with you in ten, Tully. Why don’t you break out the good brandy?”
Ingersol breathed an audible sigh. “We’re celebrating, then.”
“There’s a lot to celebrate,” Jazinsky promised.
But Travers heard the shadow in her tone even if Ingersol did not, and he w
as watching a muscle twitch in Vaurien’s jaw, betraying clenching teeth. He lifted a brow at Marin, and Curtis said quietly, “I’ll get the bags, Neil. Meet you in the hangar.”
“Thanks.” Travers watched him step out of the makeshift Ops room with Rabelais and Queneau a pace behind him. Rusch and Shapiro were talking over the loop, both of them monitoring the datafeed from the Wastrel, and Shapiro in particular was anxious. Travers tuned them out and joined Vaurien as he and Jazinsky locked down Operations for the last time. They were headed for the service elevator, and Travers was a pace behind Richard.
The Capricorn had already commenced startup procedures and Perlman’s voice was a whisper of background comm. She and Fargo were running the full preflight routine for a plane that had not done service in two months –
Two months shiptime, Travers told himself as Vidal called, “Hey, wait for me, guys. I need to check in with Mahak. Ten minutes, max. Ernst and Jo went for the baggage.”
“Take your time, Mick,” Vaurien said easily. “Rushing now won’t make a damn’ bit of difference. We have five months to catch up on. And I,” he added, “want to know what the hell happened to my ship.”
“You heard Tully.” Jazinsky paused as the lift opened, and stepped in ahead of Vaurien. “Omaru’s still there … sounds like another world-wrecker came out of Hellgate.”
“And the Esprit was too close for comfort,” Travers added as he watched Vidal jog away toward the Sherratts’ lab. “Sounds horribly familiar.” He breathed a long sigh as Perlman reported the Capricorn in good trim and began to call passengers, and set a hand on Vaurien’s arm. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Vaurien lied.
“You’re not,” Jazinsky said tartly.
“She’s in one piece.” Travers gestured in the direction of the Wastrel’s sister ship. “If she’s here, she’ll fix.”
“Damage report,” Vaurien growled. He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Welcome home, Richard. Nice to see you, Richard … oh, and incidentally, we wrecked your ship.”
