Flashpoint (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  “If they die at all.” Vidal flexed his bony shoulders “I’m up for it. If you’ll have me,” he added to Travers and Marin. “Park ass on seat, watch screen, point and shoot. I think I can manage that.”

  “Then, have Etienne prep the Capricorn,” Travers said to Vaurien, “and we’ll see you later. Dinner, on StarCity –?”

  “All right.” Vaurien plucked the bug from his ear and knuckled his eyes. “The mines, Barb –?”

  “Deactivated,” Jazinsky told him. “The Mako can sweep them right back where they belong, and if there’s ever another shindig, they can be wrangled from the Chicago.” She gave Vaurien a tired look. “Go get some sleep.”

  “I could use it,” Vaurien admitted.

  “Take it,” she insisted. “Anything happens, I’ll wake you. This dinner at Robert’s place, tonight. Do I get to dress up?”

  “Indulge yourself.” Vaurien leaned over, caught her head and kissed her on his way by. “Neil, I’ll see you tonight. Curtis, Mick … all of you – thanks. That was a damn’ fine piece of work.”

  The data would be edited and archived on Velcastra, and boosted on to Jagreth and Omaru. When the London battle group arrived, the scene would repeat. The carrier would be three days out of comm range of Velcastra when she dropped out of e-space and received the news of Jagreth’s declaration of sovereignty. The battle group would attempt the same punitive action there as the Chicago had been ordered to attempt at Velcastra, and since the odds were long against the command corps of the London also seeking an alternative to mass execution, the carrier itself would surely be lost along with its battle group.

  Earth’s historians, Travers thought grimly, would describe the savagery of colonials who were capable of acts of barbarism, the like of which had not been seen in centuries. Nothing would be said of the intended annihilation of worlds like Velcastra. The Deep Sky’s chroniclers would tell a different version, and in a hundred years, or a thousand, the historical archaeologists would struggle to resolve the two.

  The AI’s voice was annoyingly calm. “The Capricorn is flight ready. Your callsign is Wastrel-101. Hangar 2 is standing by to decompress.”

  “That’s us,” Marin said to Vidal and Rusch. “President Liang, your ride is waiting. If there’s anything you want, grab it now.”

  For a moment Liang blinked, and then shook his head. “It was all transmitted. The only thing I could possibly want is the freedom of Velcastra, and this morning I can stand up in front of thirty journalists from CNS and be able to say, in all sincerity – mission accomplished.”

  “Then, come this way,” Marin invited. “We’ll have you back on StarCity in twenty minutes. Alexis, you’re joining a security detachment?”

  “It’s coming up to the Fleet platform,” she affirmed, “mostly Tactical volunteers, and every one of them a Fleet veteran. I’ll join them there. The official handover of the Chicago will take place this evening. And I,” she added, “would like to see the same arrangements made aboard the Kiev.” Her face darkened. “It’s a fine ship with an excellent crew I trusted for years. I don’t want to see it destroyed, for the sake of Confederate greed.”

  “Amen to that.” Vidal linked one arm through hers. “So draft a bunch of encrypted messages. See what you can set up – but do it fast, Alexis. Whatever becomes of the Kiev, we won’t know about it till we get back.” He shivered visibly. “Elarne. Transspace.”

  Transspace, Travers thought, and looked into Marin’s eyes, which were haunted by the same visions of a place where time and space were torn apart and reformed into something unspeakable, something as wonderful as it was terrible.

  The flames of a live fire danced in a black iron basket set into the pink granite hearth, mesmerizing Travers. It was too long since he had slept, and his mind was curiously dislocated, his eyelids heavy. Rich food, wine, civilized music and the fire lulled him into a state of near trance, where he could hear the voices but did not care to register the words.

  They were briefing Bronhill and Sung with the bare minimum of what they needed to know, and even that much seemed to be overwhelming. Jazinsky, Vaurien and Shapiro took it in turns to speak of the Resalq, the Zunshu, the truth of the Resalq’s near extinction, and the bald facts of the destruction of the outlying colonies.

  Of Albeniz. Bronhill and Sung grasped the reality of the new technology without question. They had seen it for themselves, and both had enough grasp of cutting-edge physics to glimpse at least a little of what Jazinsky could tell them. They knew Hellgate as a nightmare of ripped space and corkscrewed time; they struggled to get their fingertips on the concept of transspace.

  “It’s been decades,” Sung said when Jazinsky fell silent, “since the ‘strong Fleet policy’ speeches. That fool of a president, Jardine Mayhew. And it’s been decades since Earthers started getting stinking rich on the back of the military appropriation. Ship construction. And this is where all your tonnage of warships will get you!” She gestured in the direction of high orbit, and the platforms, where the event already being called the Battle of Velcastra was fought out, over the space of not quite fifteen minutes. “Zunshu? Damn! Of course, we saw the memo. Everyone did. Something about colonials jumping at shadows and yapping about a nonexistent enemy, in a wild attempt to get Fleet off their backs, get their freedom without earning it.”

  “Without fighting for it,” Allan Bronhill added pointedly. He frowned at Shapiro and Jazinsky as Shapiro took another glass of wine from Kim. Liang’s seat was empty. For the third time in an hour, he had gone out to take a call. “If there were any way to get the truth in front of the people of Earth, I believe a lot of them would agree to a ceasefire to end this bloody war and refocus our attention where it needs to be.”

  “But they don’t have the technology to be any use as allies, when we go up against the Zunshu,” Vaurien mused. “If they offered a ceasefire, I’m sure the colonies would be pleased. But you’ve seen for yourself, Allan, this is the least of it. We have bigger problems. We’ve always had bigger problems. The Colonial War was just the thorn in the ass that made the rest of it harder to handle.”

  The flames in the black iron basket were gold, orange, red, dancing like tiny dervishes as gas trapped in the wood jetted out in odd directions. Travers was on the end of the couch, leaning heavily on his elbow, watching them in the half-trance. Marin was on the floor, shoulders against the deep cushions, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, a glass of white wine held loosely in his left hand. Vidal was on the other end of the couch, head back, dead to the world and, Travers thought, looking a shade less ravaged, a fraction stronger. Whatever alchemy Grant had designed for him, it was working.

  And Alexis Rusch was still on the Chicago, surrounded by a security unit drawn from Velcastra’s elite services and headed off by van Donne’s people. Ramon had volunteered, and van Donne was curious to get back aboard a carrier for the first time since he was dishonorably discharged. Rusch had messaged not an hour ago, and swore the duty was little more than a formality. The transfer of command was as uneventful as a handshake between officers.

  The official defection was signed by Liang and Bronhill before dinner was served. The document was physical, a sheet of heavy paper which had already been entered into the world’s permanent archive. Six hundred personnel had elected to transfer to the island of Padthaway, and were spending their first night listening to the sounds of the ocean, while construction drones completed the accommodations and dinner was set out in the shade of a line of Cocos palms above a beach where gulls and parrots squabbled. Padthaway had been the anchorage for the trawler fleet a century before, but as the population of Velcastra ballooned, aquaculture replaced open water fishing and the island was abandoned.

  Deeper in the house, an old-fashioned pendulum clock struck midnight and Marin lifted his head from its pillow on Travers’s thigh. The Wastrel was leaving at 03:00, local time, and the flight back to Alshie’nya would be challenging. Jazinsky had invited Vidal, Queneau and Rab
elais himself to work with Etienne, configuring a simulator to deliver the closest approximation to transspace they could derive. She had encouraged Perlman, Travers and Marin to fly it, if they were able. Travers was fascinated, but he was not looking forward to the duty.

  Nor was Marin, but he was not about to refuse it. Heading into Elarne, the Lai’a expedition would demand as many pilots as it could get. And transspace pilots were a different breed. Vidal and Queneau had learned this. Transspace pilots worked in pairs; one pilot, one brain, one pair of hands, would be devoured by Elarne.

  “Midnight,” Marin said drowsily.

  “Go back to sleep,” Travers told him.

  “I wasn’t asleep.” Marin drained the last of the wine and set the glass down on the pink granite beside the fire basket. “Just thinking.”

  “About Elarne?” Travers wondered.

  “About us.” Marin stretched, worked his neck around. “I remember sitting in this room while Chandra Liang told me about how his kid had been murdered. He might have mentioned how a guy from the Intrepid had risked his neck to bring out the information.”

  “The same guy who had rooted around in his crawl spaces, installing the security system this place still depends on,” Travers said, amused, “though Robert didn’t know it. Come to that, I’m not sure he knows even now, who brought out the information about the kid. What’s it matter? Water under the bridge, Curt. It’s President Liang now, and we’re welcome to drink his wine and stake out his best furniture.”

  “Kismet.” Marin’s eyes were closed. “Fate. Destiny. Whatever.”

  “Go to sleep.” Travers threaded his fingers through the softer curls at Marin’s nape, where his hair was growing long in defiance of anything suggesting military service. “I’ll wake you when they prep the Capricorn.”

  And he was gratified when Marin let his head drop back, a welcome weight on Travers’s thigh, and relaxed. Vaurien looked over, from the dining table where Bronhill and Sung were hunched over an array of handies, trying to make sense of Jazinsky’s work. Travers wished them luck. He had stopped trying to understand anything beyond the broadest concepts describing transspace. Vaurien himself was rapidly winding down after a bottle of something sparkling which appealed to the Frenchman in him. Travers approved.

  Minutes later Vidal’s voice surprised him, and he started awake from a half-doze. “You guys are lucky,” Mick whispered. He had not moved, save to turn his head on the over-stuffed cushions, and he blinked at Travers, clear-headed, introspective. “If my body were the slightest bit of use, I’d be envious.”

  “You’re mending,” Travers told him. “Give it time.”

  “I don’t exactly have a choice.” Vidal stretched with an audible crackling of joints. “Besides, I’ve already been seduced. Transspace.”

  “Transspace won’t keep you warm at night,” Travers said doubtfully. “Won’t give you a shoulder to cry on, when you need it.”

  “Wait till you see it,” Vidal whispered, and the enchantment was naked in his face. “I’m not talking about the simulations we’re going to run on the way back to Alshie’nya. I’m talking about … rivers of liquid diamond, and an ocean of blue fire, and bridges woven out of arcs of lightning that have been frozen in place by time that’s stopped, and tides of blood, but you know it’s not blood, it’s energy flowing on the surface of a gravity event, and you can hear it singing, this resonance pulsing off the event horizon like a voice, words you can almost understand, and you know you’ll figure it out if you can listen for just a little longer, and the voice will be telling you every secret the cosmos ever hid from us.” His eyes closed and his face clenched in concentration as he tried to recall every nuance of it. His voice was hoarse. “I want to go back there, Neil. Need to go back.”

  “Mick, it almost killed you,” Travers murmured.

  “Next time it won’t.” Vidal took a long breath. “Next time, me and Jo, we’re going in there knowing half the tricks ahead of time, and we’ll have the power to fly it properly. Lai’a. That’s one bastard of a ship.”

  “With a mind of its own,” Travers reminded him. “A Resalq mind that’s quite capable of flying transspace well enough to pull you out.”

  Vidal’s eyes were wide in the soft light, reflecting the hearth with witchfires. “But it’s a machine. Mark designed it to reason like a Resalq, but it’s still a machine, Neil, and transspace is more. I’m not saying Elarne is alive, but there’s something almost organic about it, and it needs an organic mind to fly it right. I realize you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”

  “No, I don’t,” Travers agreed. “But we’re going to find out soon enough.” He was silent for a moment, mulling over Vidal’s imagery. “You can train Curtis and me as transspace pilots?”

  “Maybe. Probably.” Vidal was not about to mince words. “It takes something special, and you won’t know if you have the magic till you try. Gill Perlman and Judy Fargo have volunteered to give it a shot – which doesn’t thrill Perlman’s partner. Jim Fujioka’s mad as all hell, but what’s he going to say? Takes two to fly transspace, Neil, and Jim’s the best gunship tech in the business, not a pilot. Fargo,” he added, “isn’t too bad at all. According to Perlman, she’ll be good enough to fly the Earthlight very soon.”

  “What about Hubler and Rodman?” Travers wondered. “Rodman’s one of the best, and Roark flew your own wing for years. Delta Dragons.”

  But Vidal made negative gestures. “Roark’s still good, but … not for this kind of shit. He talks a good fight, but his nerves are shot to shreds. I’ve told him, don’t let Harrison force him into volunteering. Me and Jo, probably Perlman and Fargo, and you and Curtis – gives Harrison all the safety nets he needs.”

  “Safety nets?” Travers’s brows arched. “You mean, if Lai’a goes down halfway between the Orpheus Gate and hell itself, and human pilots either fly us out of there, or we’re not coming back?”

  “And if something happens to Jo and me out there,” Vidal gestured into infinity, “somebody has to fill the space where we were. Shit, Neil … the Zunshu. Anything could happen to me, or Jo, or both of us. So we hand over to the two of you, or to Perlman and Fargo, and you get the rest of them home.” He looked unblinkingly at Travers. “You think the Zunshu are just going to roll over and play dead? After what they did to the Resalq, what they’re doing to us?”

  He was expecting a fight, Travers thought. So was Shapiro, though he had not said it. Shapiro hoped to negotiate peace, but the Zunshu had no history of being amenable to arbitration. The old Resalq worlds were scarred, the new human colonies were vanishing, and the remains at Orion 359 hinted at a similar story.

  With a sigh, Vidal settled back again. He was looking drowsily at Marin, whose head still lay on Travers’s leg. “I wish I’d been there, Neil. Told you, a long time ago, I’d be there and throw rice, get a little drunk and dance at you handfasting.”

  “It wasn’t an occasion,” Travers said with a faint chuckle. “We had Jon Kim upload the documentation. He and Shapiro witnessed it and we opened a ridiculously expensive bottle of champagne, right there in the ops room on the Mercury. That was it.”

  “No rice?” Vidal smiled, a rueful, wistful expression.

  “No rice,” Travers assured him. “We might do it again, once day. Back on Darwin’s, with the full civil union ceremony and the big party. Mark was telling me, the flight from Velcastra to Darwin’s could be a matter of hours, in transspace, so there’s no excuse for a front-lines transspace pilot not to be there.”

  “Oh, I’ll be there.” Vidal settled and closed his eyes. “With a liver that works. And a dick that works. Christ, Neil, you have no idea.”

  “I can imagine,” Travers began.

  “You can’t,” Vidal said, slurred as he began to doze. “And even if you could, you wouldn’t want to. Me? I just want to forget. Soon as we get back to Alshie’nya, I’m settling in with Mark Sherratt, and he can do something weird to my head. Get inside it, strip
the memories, burn them out at the roots, whatever it takes. I don’t care. Curtis says he can do it, and I have to believe he can. I just need to sleep, Neil, without the dreams. Dreams,” he added, a bare rasp, “of things that never happened.”

  But they had happened in other timestreams, Travers thought, and to Vidal they were excruciatingly real. He said no more, and Travers let him slide down into a doze. Grant had said rest was the best medicine, since his liver was too damaged to properly convert anything he ate, and the process of putting flesh on his bones would have to be managed by the same nano that was keeping him alive.

  It was going to be slow, painful, and Travers could only hope Mark Sherratt was able to work the ancient Resalq magic Marin believed he could. Part of it, he knew, was the desire for it to work. Tonio Teniko had no longing to forget any detail of what he had endured. Vidal wanted nothing more than to erase it all, and dive back into the storm of transspace with his body and mind repaired, with the power of Lai’a under him, and the cool rationale of a Resalq AI designed after Mark Sherratt’s own mind.

  “Soon,” Travers whispered, and threaded his fingers into Marin’s hair, let the fire lull him back into the half-tranced state where Vidal’s images wove and dissolved like sprites, and he listened to the old pendulum clock in Chandra Liang’s library striking the half hour with genuine, antique Westminster chimes.

  MINDSPACE

  Mel Keegan

  On the far frontier, life is tough when you’re a transspace pilot stripped of your license to fly. The good jobs go to graduate guildsmen who make the professional grade ... and who play by the guild’s rulebook.

  Jack DiFalco broke the rules. Busted, he found himself on the wrong side of the law and the rough side of the guild -- and his crime was mindspacing … playing one of the incredible high-tech games which are changing the future of humanity. Playing not in VR, but in the gamespace, the total-immersion rigs where players enters the realm of the machine. And some of them don’t make it back out.