Flashpoint (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  The rattle of the window glass was the first Travers knew of Vaurien’s arrival, but the Wastrel’s lighter was guided in to the back of the property, and from the house’s front windows he never saw it. He and Marin were in one of the long living rooms, where a real woodstove crackled and the smell of the ham and eggs Arlott was cooking for brunch had begun to torment his belly. The Resalq would drown the ham in pickled figs and slather the eggs with grapefruit marmalade, dust the whole plate with green pepper and say, ‘delicious.’ Travers would pretend not to notice.

  Marin was nursing a third coffee, feet up on the knee table by the wood stove. The morning had dawned overcast, with light snowfalls across Riga, but strong winds high over Mount Kepler had swept the sky clear. It was blue now, over pristine new snow, and it was so cold, Travers was reminded of winter on the fjords under the Wulff Glacier. A little after dawn, he shrugged into a thick, padded parka, took a rebreather, and walked around the perimeter of Mark’s property for exercise. Marin was still asleep when he stepped out, and when he returned was in the kitchen, making coffee and arguing companionably with Arlott about the relative merits of sportplanes.

  It was many years since Travers had felt a genuine pang of longing for the Three Rivers region of Darwin’s World, but the desire for home was strong as he took off the breathmask, hung up the parka, heeled off the boots. The aroma of percolating coffee lured him to the kitchen, when Marin gave him the first cup off the pot.

  The last cup off the same pot was almost cold in Curtis’s hand now, as they listened to the roar of heavy lift engines, and Marin set it on the table, between the assorted handies Mark and Dario had abandoned there the night before. Travers had glanced at the displays, but nothing he saw made any sense to him. He could handle the concepts with which they worked, but the physics was as alien a language as Resalq.

  The bang of the backdoor announced Vaurien and Jazinsky, and the heating vents in the floor began to whisper as the house AI pumped in heat to replace that lost when the doors were opened. Most houses in the Mossman area, the river country where Travers grew up, were sealed and AI controlled, from late fall to mid spring. The little similarities inspired a smile as well as another odd emotional wrench.

  What was on his face, he could not guess, but Marin shot him an odd look. Travers waved him off and stood, just as Mark came up the stairs from the labs. Dario was still down there, still working. Travers suspected he had pulled an all-night shift, though Tor had drifted down, still yawning awake, while Travers was still organizing boots and rebreather.

  “Richard, welcome.” Mark held out his hand, and Vaurien clasped it. “I could wish this were a social gathering.”

  “So could I,” Vaurien said with dry humor. He was in the familiar blue denim and a pale gray cabled sweater with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. “One day, Mark,” he swore, “when this is all over.”

  “If it ever is,” Jazinsky said acidly. She was a pace behind Vaurien, still rubbing her arms after the comparative chill of the conduit leading from the greenhouses to the house’s backdoor. Her blue and gold skinsuit was ill suited to the chill, and she had pulled on a burgundy red jacket which clashed with the colors. As usual, Jazinsky could not have cared less. Her hair was pulled back and escaping from a silver clasp at her nape, and a pair of blue lensed aviator’s glasses were perched on the top of her head. “Mark, you look tired.” She embraced him as she spoke, welcomed him like blood kin.

  “I am tired,” he retorted as he hugged her swiftly and fended her off. “And it’s going to get worse before it gets better. You have the item with you? The thing you took from the Freespacer, Belczak?”

  She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “In a containment box, on a handtruck right outside the door. Where do you want it?”

  Mark gestured at the floor. “The quarantine lab.”

  “Quarantine?” Vaurien echoed. “It’s dormant, not dangerous.”

  “But I need to see its innards,” Mark mused, “before I lay one finger on it. I have six different imaging systems in the quarantine lab. Barb?”

  She thumbed a remote, and the backdoor slid open to the chill once more. The handtruck moved itself swiftly inside as Travers and Marin joined them, and Vaurien gave Travers a rueful smile. On Grant’s orders he had slept a long time on the flight back in from Freespace, and he looked better, Travers thought. Some of the shadows had faded from face and eyes.

  The handtruck went where it was told, down the broad stairs and into the part of the house Travers knew least. Jazinsky and Mark followed it, but Vaurien was more interested in the aromas of coffee and food. Arlott had set up a fresh pot, and brunch was keeping warm on a low heat while he sat on a tall stool by the workbench, already finished eating and intent on a handy.

  “Seles thelse arteridis,” he said as Marin and Travers appeared. “Twenty years, I’ve been saying seels theliss arteedees … damn.”

  “I don’t think it matters how you pronounce it.” Marin fetched down a fresh mug and poured for Vaurien, who was searching for cream.

  “It does to them,” Arlott muttered.

  “You mean Emil?” Travers guessed. “Ignore him. He’s speaking your language like a bloody barbarian, and then nitpicking over every Resalq vowel. If you want to speak it with an accent, like Curtis, go for it.” He had produced a stack of plates from a high cupboard and was rummaging for forks while Marin examined the food. “What’s it mean, anyway?”

  It was Marin who said, “The best translation is, ‘Fortune favors the brave,’ but the literal translation is, ‘Courage, fortune, gavotte’ … or perhaps tango, or waltz. The arteridis was a social dance form. The original meaning is, ‘Courage and good luck go dancing together.’ Or perhaps ‘Bravery and good fortune are dance partners.’ And here’s the key reference. At a Resalq social event, if you went there with your partner, you wore a kind of corsage which identified you as your beau’s dance partner. The corsage was called a favor, the way a kerchief or a veil, that kind of thing, would be worn by a medieval knight, given to him by a lady, and it was known as a lady’s favor.”

  “Fortune,” Arlott said acidly, “favors the brave.” He tossed the handy back onto the bench in disgust. “This bloody language is impossible. You can get a perfect translation of every syllable and still not understand a word they say. It’s not even just about learning their history. You have to take their culture up osmotically, through the pores. Then again, I suppose all languages are the same, when you get away from the literal translation and into the social usages. I still have to learn to cuss properly in Resalq!”

  As they spoke, Vaurien had subsided into a deep reverie, as if the secrets of the universe could be divined from the coffee in his mug. Travers frowned at him, well aware that so much was on Richard’s mind, he was literally tuning out every word which did not directly involve him. Marin had known the man for long enough to notice the long silence, and lifted a brow at Travers in mute question.

  “So,” Neil prompted, when Richard showed no sign of rousing from the reverie. “Jazinsky never left the lab on the way back in. The object from Celeste … Zunshu? She made sense of it? We could never coax a word out of her.”

  Vaurien pulled a stool up beside Arlott and cradled the mug between both palms. “Oh, it’s Zunshu. But not a mine, not a stasis device. She’s pretty sure it’s a passive monitor, semi-intelligent, very old … very broken.”

  “Broken.” Marin shared a glance with Travers. “By Henri Belczak’s people?”

  But Vaurien’s head was shaking slowly. “It seems to have been caught on the fringe of the event that destroyed the Silver Lake site. It was just sitting there, inert, dead, when Belczak’s idiots arrived, but Barb is fairly sure it would have been very much alive, a passive monitor, for a long, long time, just waiting.”

  “For us to show up,” Arlott said quietly. “Humans or Resalq, it makes no difference.”

  “Actually,” Vaurien said slowly, “Barb’s theory is that it was waitin
g for a wake-up signal which would reactivate it. If she’s right – and Mark is about to confirm or deny the theories – its secondary function is to report what it’s monitored.”

  The gist of what he had said took several moments to sink into Travers’s brain, and then he shared a dark look with Marin. “Report back to the Zunshu?”

  “Who else?” Vaurien took a long pull at the coffee. “Fact: the stasis chamber we opened on Kjorin was transmitting for a little over two and a half seconds before we could shut it down, and in a matter of days we were starting to lose the most outlying colonies. We know the Zunshu automata are moving. We suspect it’s only a matter of time, and not much of it, before devices capable of killing worlds like Borushek arrive here. And the device Belczak’s crew retrieved from the Silver Lake lode? A passive monitor. It just listens, watches. But what’s the use of a monitor that doesn’t call home and report?”

  An uneasy quiet settled over the kitchen. Travers dropped a bundle of cutlery on the bench by Arlott’s handy, while Marin lifted over the skillet. It was Curtis who said at last, “Has Jazinsky said anything about being able to interpret any of the thing’s AI? I mean, I know it’s rudimentary, semi-aware, but if its function is to listen and report, it stands to reason, doesn’t it, it’ll be on Zunshu frequencies, and it’ll know where it’s transmitting to.”

  The same thoughts had been slithering through Travers’s mind. Arlott looked up from the handy as Marin spoke. They were waiting for Vaurien to comment, but he seemed reluctant. He frowned at Travers for some moments, and evaded the question neatly.

  “Have you decided to sign with Harrison, or Mark?”

  The change of gears made Travers uncomfortable. “We haven’t decided anything, not yet. Neither has Mark, I think. You know he thinks of Lai’a as a living creature, almost a child of his own. And you know Dario wouldn’t know how to say ‘no’ to this mission. You think Mark would let them go without him?”

  “I didn’t ask about Mark.” Vaurien’s voice was soft, deep. “I asked about you, Neil. You and Curtis.”

  Something in his tone made Marin take a step closer to Travers, close enough for Travers to be aware of his body heat. “As Neil said, we haven’t decided,” Marin said quietly. “You think we should sign with Shapiro? Or not? What do you know, Richard?”

  But Vaurien only shrugged. “I’m not sure of anything anymore. I’m starting to think I never was! If I had the sense I was born with, I’d point the Wastrel in the other direction, and not drop out of e-space till I was so far from the Deep Sky and the Confederacy, she was practically off the charts!”

  “Then, do it.” Travers leaned back on the workbench, arms folded on his chest. “You always followed your instincts, Richard. Intuition. If this is what your gut tells you, don’t hesitate.”

  “And Harrison’s mission, and Lai’a?” Vaurien sighed. “And Mark’s people, and the Deep Sky?” Vaurien smiled faintly as if amused at his own indecision. “I’m trying to dissuade myself from being any kind of a hero! I’ve survived this long by putting myself, my ship and my crew first, and now … I’m not sure any of us can do that any longer.”

  It was Roy Arlott who pushed away the handy and said, “Does this mean what it sounds like? You’re making the old speech, aren’t you? The one that goes, ‘No greater love has any man, than that he lay down his life for another.’ You’re trying to rationalize buying some kind of one-way ticket into Hellgate, aren’t you?”

  “Roy,” Travers said gently, “we all are. It’s the same deal Mick Vidal was offered, and he didn’t have to think twice about it. He flew the Orpheus without a second’s hesitation. And I’m starting to wonder if he had more guts than the rest of us put together.”

  Arlott shuddered visibly. “You think it’s a one-way trip, then? I mean … I know Leon wants in on Shapiro’s team, and I always told Lee, where he goes, I go. But I don’t know if I’m ready to …”

  “No one’s ever ready to go out there and give his life,” Marin said gravely, “but a lot of people do, when the time comes. Vidal always kept a distance between us, because he wanted Neil, and he never fooled me into thinking otherwise. But I respected his honesty, and I respected the courage it took to fly the Orpheus.” He gave Arlott a faint, sad smile. “You don’t have to follow Leon into hell. Just understand why he’s doing it.”

  “For his people.” Roy’s eyes glittered with tears, and he rubbed them savagely before they could spill. “For godsakes, will you folks eat before that food gets cold? You have no idea what fresh food’s worth – you’ve never lived on the wrong side of a blockade, where a carton of fresh eggs starts to look like the holy fucking grail!”

  He shoved a plate into Travers’s hands as he spoke and marched away, probably hunting for Leon. Travers wondered what he could possibly say to Leon, but before he could speak, the comm whispered with Mark’s voice.

  “Curtis, Neil, Richard, would you come down here?”

  But Vaurien was disinclined to move. “I’ll follow you down … I’ve seen all of the Zunshu hardware I care to, and I’m hungry.”

  They were in the quarantine lab, directly under the living rooms, in an armored bunker where every molecule of air was filtered and not even neutrinos made ingress. With a sigh, Travers covered the skillet and set it back on the stove. He would load up a plate and flash it, when they had seen what Mark wanted to show them.

  The lab hummed quietly with machinery. Four benches were set up laterally across the space, and a two-meter threedee was bright, cycling fresh data. On one bench sat the containment box; on another, naked as a subject on an autopsy slab, lay a body Travers had not seen since Kjorin.

  The last time he saw it, it was trying to kill him. The machine was laid open now, from skullcap to groin, down its left side. Fiberoptic filaments bled out of it; sensor probes were inserted into its guts; two scan platforms were locked into position over its belly. Travers peered into the cavity and swore. It only looked like a Resalq, humanoid with a more than passing likeness to humans themselves. A millimeter under its skin, it was not merely a machine, but no kind of machine Travers could recognize.

  “It’s interesting, isn’t it?” Mark agreed, materializing at Travers’s side. “These automata are very old, and from the data I’ve been seeing from fragments retrieved from one of the frontier mining colonies we’ve just lost, the technology hasn’t changed by one iota in so many centuries, your people, Neil, were still riding around on horseback and arguing over the best recipe for gunpowder!”

  “You’ve had data from one of the disaster sites?” Marin echoed.

  “Fragments,” Mark corrected. “A long-range scan, made in the minutes before a colony snuffed itself out of existence. These things were seen at ground zero. They were imaged, probed, by a security popup – just a little disposable drone that was still in low orbit when a ship got there. It was retrieved, its data downloaded.”

  “And the things that snuffed the colony were like this,” Travers finished.

  “Identical.” Mark hugged both long arms around his own chest. “These could be the same machines as the ones we were fighting when I was no older than you and Curtis are right now. And that,” he added musingly, “is food for thought, don’t you think?”

  It was, but all Travers saw were unanswerable questions. “It’s like the Zunshu technology stopped? Stagnated, for almost a thousand years?”

  “That doesn’t happen,” Marin said quickly. “Does it?”

  “No,” Jazinsky agreed, “it doesn’t. The civilization that was capable of destroying the Resalq homeworlds with world-killer devices, and then hunting down the fugitives with these things, wouldn’t just stop.”

  “Unless…” Mark turned his back on the dismembered automaton and returned to the containment box. “Unless something compelled it to stop. Something arrested its technological development in midstride.”

  Marin had stooped to look into the threedee, which displayed a slowly-rotating image of the inside of the
device from Silver Lake, in incredibly fine detail. “None of which does us any good, does it? Because even if the Zunshu tech did molder since bows and arrows were state of the art on Earth, they’re still centuries ahead of us.”

  He was right, and Travers was not about to waste brain cells on the mystery. He gestured at the hotbox, and looked from Jazinsky to Mark and back. “So it’s a monitor? Richard said you guys are pretty sure it’s some kind of a drone. It listens, watches, and calls home.”

  At last Mark smiled with wry, reluctant humor. “That’s one way of putting it! Barb?”

  She mirrored his amusement. “It’s superbly simple, not much more than a conduit for observation, and about as intelligent as a bivalve. It doesn’t act, it reacts to changes in the universe it perceives. It listens for certain sounds, and when it hears them it … calls home.” Fists on her hips, she was glaring at the hotbox as if the contents were her mortal enemy. “This one is old. We were able to get a date on it, from the decay in its power cells. How old? Not less than five centuries. And it’s been sitting there, dormant as a bump on a boulder, until it woke up a short while ago.” She gestured at the other bench, and the wreckage of the automaton. “Kjorin. We woke it when we opened the stasis chamber. It transmit a signal for way too long before Lai’a could stop it, and we could have woken a hundred of these things. A thousand.”

  “Once woken,” Mark continued, “these little things come online and act as nodes in a comm array spread out right across what we think of as the frontier, and on into Freespace. And at the heart of it is –”

  “Hellgate,” Travers whispered.

  “Elarne itself.” Mark leaned both hands on the bench by the containment box and looked up over it at the threedee. “We were lucky to get this one so intact. It was caught in the very edge of the gravity event that destroyed Henri Belczak’s mining operation. The rudimentary brains were destroyed, the power cells were virtually drained. But enough of it remains intact for us to analyze it.” He took a long deep breath and looked sidelong into Marin’s eyes. “You know what we’re looking for.”