Flashpoint (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  “Parked on the blind side of Meredith, where we were before Bronhill’s message arrived.” Vaurien gestured at the big red planet far outside the orbit of Velcastra. Much of the system’s industry was there, since it was a ball of rock which had never evolved even the simplest life forms. “We’ll launch a dozen of our own popups as well as eavesdropping on the system’s own data relays, and … watch. We’re not going to get involved, Neil, no matter what happens. Chandra Liang will remain aboard, and he’ll have one hour to call the key members of the new government and have them evac to a safe distance.”

  “One hour.” Travers’s brows knitted. “It’s not long.”

  “Not long enough for the intel to be leaked,” Jazinsky said shrewdly, “in the event Elstrom is infested with Confederate spies. Not long enough for Fleet to find out about the weapon and do any damn’ thing about it.”

  “But long enough for the key government members to get out if it’s a bust,” Vaurien added, “and form a government in exile.” Of a sudden he sounded weary. “If we lose Velcastra … well, liberty in the Deep Sky will have to wait. It could take a generation before we’re ready to try again, and half that long to re-terraform the world, return the biosphere to viability.”

  The lurid illumination of the navtank lit Jazinsky’s angular features with macabre tones. “Of course, the Velcastra we know now will be destroyed, and you know the world would be recolonized with immigration direct from the homeworlds … but we also know it won’t last that long. Albeniz is gone, Neil.”

  “I heard. We’re running out of time, aren’t we?” Travers asked of no one in particular.

  She leaned on the side of the tank, working her shoulders around as if they ached after the night’s work. “We’re down to the wire. We give it our best shot, right here, right now. If we win, we get Fleet the hell out. We grab ourselves the freedom to defend our worlds against the far greater enemy. If it’s a bust, we can lose Velcastra today – or we can chicken and surrender when Fleet shows, sit on our hands. We do that, and we’ll lose Velcastra to the Zunshu in a month, two months, after we’ve been occupied, garrisoned, punished by being locked down so tight, we don’t dare breathe, much less develop and deploy the means to turn back the Zunshu.”

  At last Travers found a smile, as tired as Vaurien’s face. “You’re preaching to the choir, Barb. It’s now or never … time to find out if we’re as good as we think we are.”

  Shapiro’s voice surprised them all. “We are,” he said from the screen where he had just muted Bronhill’s voice track. “Allan is no fool. He’s a physicist, like Alexis, with a fine mind and a powerful sense of honor. He and his command corps have taken enormous risks to bring this deal to us. If we didn’t have the Zunshu weapon, it could mean the difference between us winning, as we did at Ulrand, and suffering the carnage Fleet intends. He has no idea how the battle group will go down, but when it has, he’ll bring the Chicago into the inner system and she’ll be officially handed over at the Fleet docks.”

  “The crew?” Travers prompted.

  “Taken off and accommodated in isolation, groundside.” Shapiro glanced into the screen, where the data was streaming. “The logistics are being organized right now. The Chicago personnel will be replaced by a skeleton crew drawn from Velcastran volunteers. Almost anyone between 22 and 50 years of age has been through the Fleet machine. There are technicians, pilots, specialists from every department, waiting on the street. It won’t be difficult to put a crew aboard.”

  “The Chicago will come back online for the defense of Velcastra,” Chandra Liang added, “rather than its annihilation.” He left the threedee and offered Travers his hand. “I never thanked you for your part in all this, Colonel.”

  Surprised, pleased, Travers clasped the man’s cool hand. “Mister President, all I want to see is a smoking hole in space where the Chicago battle group used to be, or better, a bunch of ships lining up to negotiate surrender terms.”

  “That,” Vaurien breathed, “would do very nicely.” He glanced at his chrono and rubbed his eyes. “I need some breakfast and some peps. No one’s going to get any sleep until this is over. Barb?”

  “Yeah.” She stretched and looked down at the pale gold skinthin she wore. “I want a shower first. Share the water?”

  “We’re on rationing?” Travers demanded.

  Vaurien swatted his backside on the way by, and Travers watched them make their way out of the ops room, just as Marin appeared on his way in. Curtis smiled fleetingly in greeting, but his eyes were skimming the tank and seeing the same data Travers had recognized.

  “Before you ask, Mick’s gone to get his shots,” he yawned. “I thought you’d be here … and it seems we’re moving to a plan.”

  “Here.” Travers handed him the AB-Blox capsule Grant had given him, and dropped a kiss on the side of his neck. “Pull up a chair. I’ll see what’s left in the ’chef and bring you up to speed. We’re maybe three hours out from Velcastra –”

  “And four,” Harrison Shapiro added darkly, “from war.”

  Marin’s eyes widened for a moment and then closed, perhaps an expression of the apprehension which shadowed them all. Without a word, he held the capsule against his neck and fired in the blockers to bring his brain back online fast.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Meredith was big, dirty, noisy, the permanent home of two million people and twice as many drones, though the planet had no atmosphere, no liquid water. The cities were domed or buried in the rust-red surface, and the sky was congested with docks, marshalling yards, smelters, refineries. It was named after Charlotte E. Meredith, one of the First Fleet engineers who had pioneered mining in this system, and from what Travers could see of the night side of the planet, the world had been sacrificed to industry to keep Velcastra itself, and its near neighbor, Marina, pristine and lovely. The dark side of Meredith was bright with chains of lights marking out the vast open-pit mines which worked every minute, every day.

  It reminded Travers strongly of Cimarosa, and with an odd sensation of déjà vu he thought back on the last time he had walked the streets of Vazyabinsk. He had gone there with data for Robert Chandra Liang, to be delivered by Richard Vaurien’s own hand – the truth about the murder of Karl David Liang, which brought Curtis Marin to the Intrepid.

  Full circle? Travers was dividing his attention between the navtank and the group opposite, where Liang had been conferencing with his key people for most of an hour, while they hurried quietly out of Elstrom and StarCity, long before dawn. They had just enough time to pick up family and close friends before they slipped out through the traffic lanes and came together in a high orbit, ninety degrees off both the military docks and the civilian passenger and freight terminals.

  They were out with minutes to spare, and Liang’s face wore an expression of relief, though he was an unhealthy, ashen gray color. Travers did not envy him. He had taken something – his pupils were shrunken, his body language was jerky – and he was chain smoking bel grass, drinking too much coffee as he paced between the threedees and the navtank. Harrison Shapiro was a mere spectator now, content to stand in the tank’s shadows with Jon Kim and watch. This was Liang’s war.

  The Mako had taken station well out, in the roads where Allan Bronhill swore the Chicago battle group would drive into the system, and the Zunshu weapon was primed. Four hundred warheads were online, swarming into the lanes, which had been cleared and closed on Liang’s executive order, thirty minutes before.

  “Ten minutes,” Vaurien said into the quiet of the ops room.

  Jazinsky was tracking warheads via the Wastrel’s own popup drones while Marin moved from threedees to navtank and back, watching the data unfold as if it were all an elaborate simulation. “They’re in position,” Jazinsky was saying, “and they look good. The Mako is bugging out fast. Sergei needs to know where we want him.”

  The loop was a soft hum of voices from the flight deck, hangars, engine deck, and van Donne’s voice cut across t
hose of Ingersol’s tech crew, metallicized and slightly distorted by the tachyon band which boosted transmissions into near-realtime. “We’re out of here, Richard,” he told Vaurien. “Ten minutes, you said? Then, we’re done.”

  “Why don’t you come out to Meredith?” Vaurien invited.

  “Ringside seating,” van Donne said with glib humor. “We’re already on our way out with the tail feathers smoking, Wastrel.”

  “Weimann signatures,” Jazinsky said sharply. “Looks like twelve of them. They just dropped into scan range, and I’m seeing the carrier, four cruisers, six frigates, and the tender … dead on time, on target. Bronhill and Sung might have managed to pull this off.”

  Mute, pale, Marin moved around the periphery of the tank and came to Travers’s side. The faint rumble of the lifts announced newcomers, and Travers glanced over his shoulder to see Alexis Rusch, Ernst Rabelais and Jo Queneau. Of Vidal, there was no sign, and Travers touched his combug. “Mick, this is Neil. You’re going to miss the show if you don’t get here.”

  He was still in the Infirmary. “Two more minutes, so the sadist says, and he’ll pull the tubes and wires out of me.”

  The shots, as Grant called them, were delivered by an IV hooked into cannulas which fed the liver and pancreas direct. Fresh nano were transfused every second day, and without it, Vidal would go down fast. Travers and Marin shared a glance, and Marin said into the loop,

  “The Chicago battle group is insystem right now … close enough to plot in the navtank. I’m thinking we have six, maybe seven minutes before they’ll be in range to make dog meat of the clipper docks, the civilian transit platform, anything big enough to be called a target.”

  “Six,” Vaurien corrected. “And they’ll run right into the mines in five. Sergei, anything we should know about?”

  The Mako was a small gold dart in the tank, still a good distance from Meredith, which put van Donne’s realtime data ahead of the Wastrel’s, even with signal boosting. “Three or four mines look dead in the water,” Ramon’s voice reported. “I’m not getting a pingback from them. They could be faulty, or maybe they’re just slow coming online. The mechanism is way too freakin’ delicate – and I know, it’s how they are.”

  “Three or four gone dead is fine,” Jazinsky said levelly. “That’s why we seeded a field this size. And you’re right, Ramon, they’re delicate as thistledown. They worry crap out of me.” She gave a snort of ironic humor. “It’s a good thing Mark Sherratt designed them!”

  “Mark designed ’em?” Ramon echoed. “They’ll probably work, then.”

  Probably? Travers forced in a breath and acknowledged the twist of his insides. He turned his back on the navtank and folded both arms on his chest. Over the loop, Tully Ingersol was reporting generators idling, Weimann drive on ignition procedures. The Wastrel could be out of the system in under two minutes. In what Chandra Liang called the ‘doomsday scenario,’ her only duty would be to pick up the Velcastran exile government before she swung out to Ulrand to deliver them to Marak City, and from there returned to Alshie’nya, and Lai’a.

  Minutes passed with elastic slowness as the Mako rushed out to Meredith, and Travers glanced at the chrono too often. Vaurien’s face was a mask, not an expression permitted to show through.

  “Four minutes, and those cruisers will be in range to start the shooting party,” Jazinsky whispered. “Three minutes, and they’ll be in among the mines.”

  In the tank, the flags marking the dozen Fleet vessels had broken up, and the major marker, the super-carrier itself, had dropped well back. Bronhill would have briefed the taskforce commanders; she would serve as baseship, providing emergency services, rescue and recovery. It was far from unusual strategy, and from everything Travers knew of the command corps of Fleet vessels, commanders would not question it.

  “We’re getting encrypted comm from them,” Vaurien reported. “Etienne, process it, feed it in here.”

  “DeepSky Fleet communications are on twenty second delay,” the AI warned, “and decryption adds four seconds. Signal quality is poor due to the procedure.”

  “Understood.” Vaurien had dug a pack of Ice Blue out of a pocket, and Travers watched him flick a lighter, inhale, and plume smoke from both nostrils. He rarely indulged, but if his belly was as tight as Travers’s, the kip grass would offer a fraction of respite. As he lit up, he lifted a brow at Neil, and tossed the pack and lighter through the haze of the nav tank.

  “You want a smoke?” Travers asked of Marin, but Curtis’s head shook minutely. He was busy with some Resalq discipline, Travers knew, and he envied the skill. It took years to learn, and he had only begun to understand how it worked. For the moment, he lit an Ice, dragged deeply, and the scents of lime and tangerine seemed to tame the swarm of butterflies.

  “Two minutes till they’re among the mines,” Jon Kim said in an odd voice, high pitched, raw. “Jesus, Harry, what are we doing?”

  “There’s a word for this,” Vaurien said in an oddly calm tone. “As long as humankind has been chronicling its own history, we’ve called it war.” He watched Shapiro and Kim through the veil of his own smoke. “You okay, Harrison?”

  In fact, Shapiro was pale as a wraith, but he nodded. “There used to be a saying. The hall is rented, the band has tuned up … time to find out if we can dance.”

  “Oh, we can dance,” Jazinsky said grimly. She was holding the combug to her left ear with one finger, listening to the Fleet signals. “They’re cool, complacent, arrogant. Richard, are you hearing this?”

  “I’m listening,” Vaurien said in contemptuous tones. He looked from Travers to Liang. “Some bastard just gave the order to lay in a firing solution to destroy the civilian transit platform.”

  “Dear gods.” Liang closed his eyes, and his right hand closed on the Daku amulet.

  The ankh was still broken; freedom in the Deep Sky was still a dream, and would remain so for another minute, according to the Wastrel’s chrono. On time, Jazinsky said,

  “One minute, and they’ll know they’re in deep shit. Tully, standby engines. Mako, get moving, damnit. Get your fat ass here, Sergei.”

  “We’re almost with you,” van Donne barked into the loop.

  The chrono was counting down in seconds now, and Travers turned back to the navtank. Eight mines were blinking red, signaling that they had either gone dead or had never come properly online, and he shot a glance at Jazinsky. She did not seem concerned, as if she and Mark had calculated on a much higher failure rate in the hyper-sensitive machines.

  To sensors, they looked like fragments of junk. The casings were configured to reflect readings consistent with the shrapnel cast off by careless launches, and they were super-cold, super-dark. A casual sensor sweep would not see them at all.

  Four cruisers and six frigates were driving in fast, spread out across three shipping roads between the civilian transit platform, the Cygnus Logistics freight terminal, and the clipper docks. The steady buzz of Fleet comm reported that firing solutions had been calculated aboard three of the cruisers to destroy all of them, while the fourth ship was breaking away, heading west, on a vector that would take it over the horizon, where Elstrom StarCity was sleeping, three hours before dawn.

  The frigates had pulled up, high above, covering them while the tender hung back, on standby to provide recovery service, in the event that Velcastra put up any kind of a fight; but only light civilian traffic was moving between the surface and the platforms. A few freighters were on their way out, a handful of cargo haulers and a shuttle were heading to and fro between Velcastra itself, Meredith and Marina. Command aboard the Fleet ships was surely expecting a one-sided slaughter.

  A whisper from the AI reported that the Mako had come aboard, but Vaurien was too intent on the navtank to respond. Footsteps announced Vidal as the chrono counted through twenty seconds, and Travers glanced up from the tank as he joined them. He looked rough, ragged around the edges, as he always did for an hour after he had endured the shots that
were keeping him alive. His eyes were hollow, dark, as they flickered up to Travers and then down into the tank.

  “Fifteen seconds,” Jazinsky murmured. “And they see the mines … they’re sweeping ahead of them with Aragos.” Her voice was grim. “Bad idea, guys.”

  Arago fields would trip the mines faster than a direct command to detonate, and now Travers held his breath. The Zunshu devices were configured to deploy on a ten second delay, and a silent voice in the back of his mind seemed to count down. He knew the Wastrel was receiving this data on a four second lag, via the tachyon band – he knew, as he counted down to three, the first Zunshu devices had already deployed, and still his mind counted down.

  “They’re deploying. One mine … two … five,” Jazinsky said in a bare whisper. “There they go … nine, now. Twelve … starting a big, big event off the port bow of the first cruiser in, see it?”

  Before Travers could read the data, it was gone.

  The spearhead of ten capital ships, spread in a great arrow formation between the orbital platforms, was marked with fat red flags, and one of the flags simply turned off. Travers might have hoped for a spike in the datastream, the sun-bright flare of an explosion as the cruiser’s drive engines detonated, a blazing hail of fragments flung out and tripping every alarm on the cargo and passenger terminals.

  Nothing. Just the disappearance from the navtank of the flag marking the lead cruiser as the Zunshu gravity weapons caught the mass of the ship and crushed it into a space too small to register on normal sensors. Jazinsky was recalibrating the deepscan platform while Vaurien watched over her shoulder, and Travers held his breath till she said,

  “Got it. Gravimetric scan registers the distortion of a super-heavy object something like fifty picometers in diameter, on an exit trajectory that’ll take it into the outer system. On that vector, it should get swept up by one of the giants.”