Flashpoint (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  “You rode through a massive event, in a freefall channel?” Jazinsky echoed. She looked at Mark. “Is that even possible?”

  “The proof is sitting in front of you,” Mark said ruefully. “A small ship, the size of the Odyssey or the Mako, say, could ride through the chinks in the armor of a monstrous event by sheer luck, where a ship the size of the Intrepid or the Wastrel would be chewed up.”

  A distant expression had settled on Rabelais’s face. “I thought I was dead for sure … then, there I was, riding the driftway. How long? I thought it was a week, eight days. Turns out, time was slow in that current. Nearly as I can work it out, I drifted a couple of hundred years in that week – I had no way to know, and no way to stay the hell out of the driftway, even if I’d been able to get readings off it before I went in. My engines were damaged, and you know for yourselves, the Weimann drive won’t fire up, not inside transspace.”

  It seemed Mark had been waiting for this, and Travers heard the edge in his voice as he said, “You solved the problem. You were able to navigate in transspace.”

  Travers shared a glance with Marin, and then watched Rabelais’s face crease in memory. “I didn’t solve it,” he said acidly. “I just got lucky. I must have been born lucky, or I’d have been mauled by the event that swallowed me. No, Doc … Mark. You’re hoping I can tell you some high-tech magic, some way to fire up a Weimann drive in transspace. What do you call it, Elarne? Didn’t happen. I drifted for days in the lagoon, was sure I’d drift till power and food ran out, and that would be the end of me.” His eyes brightened, burning in the too-thin face. “I drifted right into a hulk.”

  “Resalq?” Mark asked quickly.

  “I … don’t know,” Rabelais said carefully. “There were no crew aboard, the escape pods had all blown, the whole body was at zero pressure. She was torn open down one side like a can, wide open to space, gravity was off. But a few handling drones were left active – no tech I could recognize, but then again, I’m so far out of touch, what do I know? Mick and Jo and Alexis tell me, you guys have only just started flying transspace, and this ship was old. I mean, she was pitted, scarred, corroded, ancient.”

  Now, Travers looked at Mark and saw him lick dry lips to moisten them. “A big ship?” he asked.

  “Big enough.” Rabelais studied him shrewdly. “But then, how big’s ‘big,’ exactly?”

  “By ratio with the Odyssey,” Mark suggested. “Two, three, ten, twenty times the size of your ship?”

  “Maybe ten,” Rabelais judged. “It means something to you, doesn’t it?”

  “It … might,” Mark said slowly. “Can you describe the ship?”

  But Rabelais’s head shook. “Busted up, dead in space, five handling drones left working. Humans weren’t even out here in the Deep Sky in the days when she’d have been built, so I’m assuming it had to be a Resalq vessel. I’m just thanking God it had some equivalent of what we’re calling hyper-Weimanns, or I’d have been dead. At the time I knew none of this. I just knew my own engines were finished. I only learned later, Weimann units don’t work inside the Drift, and I realized I’d latched onto what Mick and Jo were calling hyper-Weimann tech.”

  “A Resalq ship, with a transspace drive?” Travers had only ever heard of one such ship, and with a glance at Mark, Dario and Tor, he knew the Resalq were thinking the same thing.

  “It could be,” Dario murmured.

  “Could be what?” Shapiro prompted.

  “An ancient ship with the transspace drive,” Mark said flatly. “You know my people launched one, a science vessel, to explore Elarne. We know it made contact with the Zunshu, somehow triggering the annihilation of our worlds, but it never returned. Never,” he added darkly, “made it back through. We always speculated, was it destroyed in some confrontation with the Zunshu … or did Elarne kill it?”

  Marin whistled softly. “It could have wandered into a driftway, and fetched up in the same lagoon. Give me the odds on that!”

  “Shorter than you think,” Dario mused. “If it was on a heading to bring it home, it would be on its way back to the Hellgate exit point, which Lai’a has charted as the Orpheus Gate. If something bad happened, say they lost power, it might be relatively easy to blunder into one of these driftways, and we know where they tend to end up, in this region. Is that right, Captain Rabelais?”

  “Quite right,” Rabelais affirmed. “I wish I could tell you more, but she was just a hulk. The AI was dead, everything was wreckage ahead of the engine deck, but the event that peeled them open quit before it got to the engines. Like I said – sheer, dumb luck.”

  “Generators?” Jazinsky asked tautly.

  “Functional,” Rabelais told her. “Powered down, of course, cold as ice, but the drones had kept on servicing the conduits for all those years.”

  “Damn,” Vaurien whispered. “You cranked up the generators, and had the drones blow the docking clamps, cut the engine deck loose?”

  For a long moment Rabelais seemed haunted by nightmares only he could see, and Vidal reached out one thin hand to clasp his shoulder. Rabelais’s own hand grasped his arm in gratitude, and he cleared his throat. “The hardest thing was communicating with the drones. They didn’t speak any language I understood, but they were smart. I kept on trying anything I knew, trying to invent a common language, or hack my way into theirs, and the damn’ drones met me halfway. They adapted their own language to the gibberish I was talking, and when I tasked them to dump the engine deck out of the hulk, they went right to it.”

  Jazinsky was rapt, leaning across the table. “The Aragos, to hold it in place, bind it to the Odyssey –?”

  “Belonged to the engine deck itself, not my little bucket of bolts.” Rabelais was tiring rapidly, his voice falling away to a mere croak. “Between me and the drones, we jockeyed it into position, got it tied on. All the Odyssey had was a cab module with enough heat and air to keep me alive while I went scavenging.”

  “That’s how he found us,” Jo Queneau said, picking up the story as Rabelais wound down. “Mick and me, we’d been drifting for … I don’t know how long. We were just about out of every consumable you want to mention. Drive was burned out, no way to do nothing, just sit there and die. Then the sensors kicked in, we saw this weird-ass ship coming at us, and we both recognized it. Or, part of it.”

  “The small part,” Vidal added. “The front part. The engines? You could tell they’d been tacked on, but it worked, and it was coming right at us. The Odyssey. Ernst.” He gestured vaguely. “He looked right into the cockpit, saw two hopeless, helpless characters on their last gasp – and he had his drones rig a docking collar. Mated the ships together so we could get out, get a breath of air, get warm, before we started losing fingers and toes.”

  “First people I’d seen in longer than a year,” Rabelais murmured. “I’d been in the lagoon that long. Just me and the drones. Scavenging.”

  “For food?” Travers guessed.

  “For anything,” Queneau said with an acid pragmatism. “It’s full of wrecks. Human, Resalq … Fleet, civvy, Freespacer. Bodies in some of ’em, still. Others were busted wide open, but the cargo compartments were whole. We found a freighter full of machine parts and fuel cells. Bought us months – not much food, though. Just what we could get out of the galley in the crew compartment. Two autochefs, well stocked, all frozen. It all thawed out to mush, but you could eat it.”

  “Scavenging,” Vidal said hollowly. “Trying to figure a way out. Started working on the Orpheus flight systems … in better shape than Ernst’s rig. Better tech to start with. Newer.”

  “You got your instruments working,” Travers whispered. “You – what, you saw the way back to the field that had sucked you in?”

  And Vidal’s shorn head nodded as he hauled himself back physically from the brink of some nightmare. “We got the cockpit up to speed, ran power lines up from the engine deck. The Orpheus sensors could see further, better. We knew where the field was, but we got readings off it you
wouldn’t believe.”

  “Hot?” Mark guessed.

  “Radiation storm,” Queneau said, hushed. “The sort of shitstorm you see around the jaws of a big, nasty Hellgate event. Ernst rode it through once in the Odyssey, but she didn’t have much hull integrity left by the time we were trying to get the hell out.”

  “Busted up,” Rabelais said softly. “Too many smashes, impacts, while we were getting into this hulk and that hulk, looking for power cells and food, and maybe a few liters of fresh water. Couple of times, we collided pretty good … getting tired, slow. Not careless, but –”

  “But when you’re losing it with fatigue,” Vaurien agreed, “you don’t see things. I know how it works, Ernst.” He looked at Vidal and Queneau. “So you found yourselves a hull that would take the Odyssey inside, and you tied the whole mongrel together with interlaced Aragos, and then battered your way out?”

  Queneau was looking at Vidal out of vast, bruised eyes. “Like fighting your way upstream against the current … amounts of power you don’t want to think about. And a shitstorm of radiation to get through. We knew we were going to get fried alive, and in any case, somebody had to fly the ship out. She wouldn’t take herself out.”

  The imagery was powerful. Travers clasped his hands to stop their trembling, and took a breath. “Lai’a heard your distress beacon almost as soon as it launched into Elarne. It changed course, went to get you. Two of you were in cryogen.”

  “Tanked,” Vidal rasped. “Best chance of getting through the field without being fried, and we didn’t have much life support left. One would stay alive longer than three. And one could fly her through, start the beacon.” His eyes closed. “Through the field. The field.” His face twisted as if he had been punched.

  “Temporal field?” Mark asked very quietly, very gently.

  “I don’t … I can’t …” Vidal caught himself in an iron grip.

  “Hush now,” Rusch urged, “don’t distress yourself, Michael. Those are the least important details. Harrison, surely we’ve heard enough for now. We know the how and the why. It’s a miracle they were still alive, and a miracle Lai’a picked them up.”

  “Not so much of a miracle,” Mark said darkly. “They didn’t quite make it through the field Mick describes, Alexis. Lai’a reports catching them in tractors and pulling them out of what you’d call the leading edge of it, if it were a weather front. Almost like an event horizon. They were in an eddy where time was passing substantially slower. By all accounts, they’d been there for quite some time, and Lai’a got itself thoroughly contaminated, getting close enough to get the tractor on them.”

  “Damn,” Travers whispered as Shapiro gestured for Kim to stop recording. “That’s one hell of a story, Mick.”

  Shapiro was studying Vidal, Queneau and Rabelais gravely. “Thank you all for your time. We’ll fill in the fine details in due course, when you’re recovered, and when you remember more. Don’t feel that you’re under any pressure to go on. For the moment – get well. Doctor Grant?”

  He had been hovering over them for the last ten minutes, looking increasingly annoyed, and his tone was curt. “Thank you, General. Now, I’ll thank the rest of you to get the hell out of my Infirmary and let me take care of these people.”

  “We’re going,” Shapiro assured him. “But I’d like to call a general crew assembly, Doctor, tomorrow, before the Wastrel leaves for Velcastra. I’d like to get the whole team for the Lai’a expedition in one place, at one time, while there’s a chance. Would your patients be well enough to attend by then?”

  “Sixteen hours,” Vaurien said helpfully, “and then the Sherratts will be returning to the Carellan, working the transspace charts with Lai’a.”

  “I’ll be there,” Vidal said stubbornly, and ignored Rusch as she sighed over him. “Jo?”

  “I’m in,” Queneau said, little more than a rasp. “Ernst?”

  All faces turned toward Rabelais, who was smiling at his family. “I can see, now, certifiable insanity runs in my genes, and I passed it on down the line. Yes, General Shapiro, we’ll all be there. God help us.”

  “Give me strength,” Grant breathed. He gave Shapiro a glare. “I’ll have them on their feet, but keep it short, because they’ll exhaust fast.”

  “I know.” Shapiro was frowning at Vidal and Queneau. “Colonel Vidal, Captain Queneau … thank you again.”

  It took a moment for the sense of what he had said to register, and then Vidal produced a crooked smile which showed too many teeth in the gaunt face. “I could get used to the sound of that. You, uh, have the authority to award promotions?”

  It was an astute question, and Travers watched Shapiro shrug. “It all depends on the outcome of the Colonial Wars. If we win, and Fleet Borushek passes back into my control, then yes, any rank awarded in these exceptional circumstances will be formally recognized. If we lose, we’ll head into Freespace and it’s all academic, and if we’re caught … well, you’ll be executed as a colonel instead of a major! And if you intend to retire from the service,” he added with a gesture at Travers and Marin, “like them, you’ll take the prestige of rank, not to mention the service gratuity, into civvy street with you.” He gave Rusch an amused look. “Another Fleet colonel in the family, Alexis.”

  “Charles will be very proud,” she guessed, “when I tell him what he’s been doing, this last year.”

  “Till tomorrow, Colonel.” Shapiro accorded Vidal a nod, and was a step behind Kim as they and the Sherratts left.

  But Rusch, Vidal and Jazinsky, Travers and Marin remained, while Grant fussed over medications, supplements, and the first solid food the three were supposed to be eating. It was a protein-rich biscuit, in the saucer of a calcium-fortified drink, and Travers doubted either had much flavor. He watched Vidal take a bite, chew, chew again, and then try to remember how to swallow something solid.

  Rusch was listening to the audio message Vidal had recorded earlier for his father, and as it finished she asked, “Is there anything you want to add, Michael?”

  “To my father?” Vidal’s brows rose. “To take care of himself, and he should stop grieving, because I’m not bloody dead. To my cousins? Get your thieving paws off my stuff, and I expect to find my sportplane parked right where I left it in the garage. If it’s not, there’s going to be trouble. To my mother? Congratulations on being Jagreth’s First Lady, and don’t call me.”

  “That’s harsh,” Rusch began.

  “Honest,” Vidal argued. “Send it, Alexis. If you think I’m going to mince words with Trick and Ying, and Elaine Osman – think again.”

  “All right.” She turned off the handy and slipped it into her slacks’ pocket. “Then, I’ll let you get some rest.”

  It was rest he needed more than anything, but Vidal pushed up to his feet determinedly and rasped, “Sod that. I want to get out of here.”

  “Bill?” Travers asked quietly, and Grant shook his head. “The Doc says, no deal.”

  “Sod him, too,” Vidal snapped. “Get me some clothes.”

  “Damnit, Mick, you look like a ghost!” Travers remonstrated.

  Vast blue eyes impaled him. “For chrissakes, Neil!”

  “I know what he means.” Marin’s voice was taut. “Being here, sick in a place of sickness, is suffocating him. He needs to breathe, and feel like his heart can beat without having steel hawsers tightened down around it.”

  Vidal gave him a surprised look. “Exactly. You…?”

  “The Argos.” Marin’s throat bobbed on a heavy swallow. “You didn’t know? I don’t talk about it, but I thought you might have run my file.”

  “No. Why would I run it? I always respected you,” Vidal said as he held out his right arm to Grant. “Get this IV out of me, Bill. Just for a couple of hours.”

  A look of deep uncertainty hovered on Grant’s mobile face. “You swear you’ll come back? Jesus, Mick, you’re not even halfway fit to walk out of here.”

  “I’ll come back,” Vidal promised. “Clothe
s, Neil?”

  “I’ll get them,” Marin offered. “Five minutes, Neil. Sit tight.”

  With a loud sigh, Grant slid the tube out of the cannula in Vidal’s arm, but he left the cannula itself in place, and rather than lecturing Vidal he told Travers emphatically, “No booze, no smokes, no garbage food, no matter what the bloody idiot asks for. Understand? He’s still full of nano, and the repairs are just starting to settle in. His lungs, his liver and his brain won’t take the abuse, if you throw rubbish at them.”

  “Fair enough,” Travers agreed. “Mick?”

  And Vidal nodded, lips pressed tight, face clenched, as Grant shooed away the meddrones, and ushered Queneau and Rabelais back to their beds. The bay became quiet and the lights dimmed automatically, leaving Vidal wreathed in shadows. Travers studied him with a dismay that had grown familiar, and when Vidal was clearly waiting for him to speak he said, a half whispered confession,

  “You’re scaring crap out of me, Mick.”

  “Out of myself, as well,” Vidal admitted. He drew his palms over his face as if he were reluctant to touch his own bones. “The truth? I don’t even know why I’m still alive.”

  “Because it’s not your time,” Travers said with the spacer’s habitual fatalism. “Like any of us, you’ll go when it’s time, not before.” He took Vidal’s hand, held it with a curious sense of delicacy. “Have you seen Roark?”

  Vidal stirred with a great effort. “Yeah. He stopped by a couple of hours ago. He’s on the Harlequin now, so he said. He and Rodman got together … damn. I wouldn’t have seen that one coming. He’s changed, since –”