Event Horizon (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  “But they wouldn’t have sent an armed escort,” Travers added, “if there wasn’t a chance of trouble.” He leaned over toward Marin for a better angle on the air search display, and frowned.

  “Perfectly natural paranoia,” Marin told him. “There’s nothing, Neil, and even if there was … gunship. Relax.”

  Westminster sprawled from horizon to horizon. It had grown since the last time Marin had seen it, and he whistled at the extent of the urban sprawl. The government was letting the city limits creep away like an amoeba to the north and east. West was the Samaral Ocean, blue-green and glittering, busy with the fishtail wakes of massive industrial ships. They were working the aquaculture installations in the nutrient-rich Cailenne Current, which began as an upwelling from great volcanic vents on the equator and cut a line direct for the pole, bypassing the west coast, and Westminster, on its way.

  The names might have sounded exotic to Neil but they were as familiar to Marin as the streets and malls of his childhood. Travers had sounded them out, from the map in the brochure. They were Resalq names, like Jagreth itself, all of them drawn from the story in which Jagreth was a great hero, like Jason, and Cailenne was the timeless beauty for whom he risked all, and Samaral was the child born out of one of the greatest romances of an era now cloaked in myth.

  “Wastrel 101, this is JS-10.” Yip’s voice crackled and broke up with the highband jamming. “Turn right, 047o and cut speed. Do you have the landing signal?”

  “We have it.” Marin turned his attention back to the flight systems. “Thanks for your escort, JS-10.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Yip said. “If you’re wanting to see the best of Westminster in the next –”

  He was about to offer them a shortlist of the area’s highlights, but a clamor of cockpit alarms from both the Capricorn and the gunship cut him off, and in the same instant the comm came alive with the storm of crude language one expected when instruments had just flashed up a warning.

  The gunship was lidar painted – comprehensively target-marked on the starboard flank, and even the Capricorn’s merely-adequate instruments registered the heat bloom of missiles from the city below. Without a word Marin took the Capricorn off automatics and cleared the guns. She was only lightly armed and armored, but beggars could not be choosers and Marin’s hands were busy with the flight harness.

  “Strap down,” Travers shouted into the back, where Shapiro and Kim had been luxuriating in a few minutes of free time. “This could get rough.” He snapped the buckles of his own harness as he spoke.

  The gunship was wallowing around to present its thickest armor to three missiles which came chasing up out of the city. Marin’s first instinct was to get behind it, use the military armor to protect the Capricorn at the same time as putting a little healthy distance between them. When the missiles hit, the gunship would lurch and the spectacle of a midair collision burned brightly in the frontal lobes of his brain.

  The comm jamming ramped up again and Travers snatched the bug out of his ear as the white noise began to hurt. Marin tapped his own several times to tune the volume almost to zero. “Yip’s people are trying to jam the missile target acquisition,” he guessed grimly. “That ever work for you?”

  “Nope.” Travers’s hands splayed lightly across the weapons control surfaces, just as the gunship staggered in the air under the weight of two hits.

  The belly armor absorbed them. The ghost-gray hull was enveloped for several seconds in a ball of pink-orange fire as the third missile overshot. It streaked away into the sky, leaving a glaring white trail.

  “Dangerous,” Marin whispered. “That thing comes down in the city, and people are going to die.” He spun the Capricorn to bring the nose-mounted guns to bear and spared Travers a glance. “Can you get a target lock?”

  “Sure – it’s got a big, bright tail.” Travers knocked the safeties off the triggers. “The problem is the range – I’m not going to hit it from here. These cannons are a little bit flimsy.”

  “And the gunship’s busy – looks like they pinpointed the shooters. Hold on.” Marin opened the throttles. “Let me see if we can close some of this range down … JS-10, JS-10, we’re chasing your maverick. Standby us if you can.”

  Only another blast of static white noise answered as the Capricorn’s engines began to roar, and he took a moment to look at instruments. The groundscan was alive, and he swore softly. “The shooters are firing out of a big building, could be a school or a factory.”

  “And JS-10’s got ’em,” Travers rasped.

  “You got a shot?” Marin was looking at the range counters.

  “Not yet. Can you get us closer?”

  But the missile was turning, and it was Marin’s turn to curse beneath his breath. “It’s smart. Now, where did these shooters get smart weapons?”

  From the back, Harrison Shapiro called, “How smart? Shrike, Tomahawk, Comanche?”

  “Something like a Comanche,” Travers guessed. “And it’s turning right into us.”

  “Fleet hardware,” Marin said sourly. “Who the hell is shooting?” He cut back speed as the missile picked them up. “You’re going to get one shot, Neil.”

  “I know.” Travers was intent on the fire control systems. “You expect this crap in Omaru, not here – I didn’t know there was fighting on Jagreth.”

  “There isn’t – wasn’t, before,” Marin corrected. “Never. Nine seconds. Eight. Seven. Neil!”

  “Flimsy guns … one shot, remember.” Travers waited, and waited again, and then stroked the triggers softly.

  The shot was clean. The missile ignited in a ball of pink fire through which the Capricorn shot too fast even for its paintwork to scorch. Marin braked hard, dropped the port wing and described a wide arc to bring them back onto the assigned flightpath. The comm distortion cleared for a moment and they heard Yip on the air, a moment before rotary cannons opened up, spitting tracer which the gunship rode on its belly plates.

  “They’re on the roof of the Masterson building,” Yip was shouting. A crackle, spattering static, and then, “No! Tactical, stay the hell out of the way. Leave this one to us, they’ll carve a Tac flyer into confetti!”

  A woman’s voice bawled into the audio chaos, “There’s two hundred people in that building, goddamn it! You fire on it, JS-10, and I’ll make fucking sure it’s your funeral!”

  Intent on the groundscan now, Travers muttered, “I can see the shooters. Three figures, flak jackets, helmets, equipment cases, one rotary cannon, and the way they’re hosing off, they’re going to be out of ammo very soon. Come on Yip, take the bastards, not the building.”

  The sidescan was busy with hundreds of civilian marks which Marin had ignored, save for avoiding them, but the Capricorn’s simple AI beeped a warning as a trio of ‘heavies’ came in from the south. “Tactical,” he said quietly. “Three squaddies … armed. They should be able to take the shooters.”

  “Unless those shooters have reloads for the rotary, in which case Tac flyers will go down like skeets. JS-10 won’t let ’em get close enough to try it.” Travers screwed the combug back into his ear. “Lieutenant Yip, do you read?” Nothing. “Shit,” Neil hissed, and reconfigured the weapons systems. “How close can you get us?”

  “Depends.” Marin was already closing on the gunship once more, deliberately keeping it between the Capricorn and the rooftop. “They could fire on us, if we give them the opportunity.”

  “Missiles? I don’t think so.” Travers had zoomed the vidfeed to its grainy maximum. “Equipment cases. Count ’em up.”

  Marin glanced at the feed for just a moment. “Good call. Damned good call. Hold on.”

  They both knew the dimensions of the Comanche weapons system, and the mass. Marin saw three figures on the rooftop, one Arago sled and only two cases. Each case carried two missiles, or one missile plus the launcher. Three people using stealth to move military grade weapons through a city could only carry so much. The launcher was abandoned on the stained pla
screte between the building’s big shell-shaped a/c vents, and if three missiles had been fired –

  “JS-10’s transmitting.” Travers was frowning over the comm. “It’s gibberish, loads of encryption. What in Christ’s name are they waiting for?”

  “Authorization,” Marin said bitterly. “They need clearance before they can fire on anything even vaguely like a civilian target, and – what is this, a school, a research center? Two hundred people in there, Neil. You’re thinking like Fleet – think like Tactical. You’re on a city paycheck, your boss is in civvy street … and we need to be closer, if you’re going to take the shooters, not the whole goddamn’ roof.”

  At a parapet below, the figures were starting to run as they saw the Capricorn swing wide around the gunship. Rather than reloading the rotary cannon they had ditched it, which could only mean they were out of ammunition. The Capricorn’s armor was just heavy enough to tolerate the rotary, but Marin was grateful not to have to put it to the test. Travers’s fingers were dancing over the fire controls, already targeting each figure individually, and Marin opened the throttle. The Capricorn dove fast enough to squeeze the eyeballs in his head, fetching ‘shock diamonds’ shimmering in his vision – but it was fast enough, close enough.

  The two chain guns mounted under the nose moaned as Travers touched the triggers again, and the three figures seemed to wrench apart in a welter of red. “Done,” Travers said with a moment’s smug satisfaction.

  They might have expected JS-10 to protest, but Yip’s voice whooped over the comm. “Good shooting, Wastrel 101! Muchas gracias. Turn right and follow us to Chesterfield LZ.”

  The roars of disapproval issued from the Tactical lead flyer, and Marin glanced back at Shapiro. “Seems they’re not happy with us. Do you want to respond?”

  But Shapiro’s head was shaking. “Turn them off. This is a local squabble, it doesn’t involve us. ”

  The shouting silenced as Travers switched up to the Wastrel’s own band, and he heard a thread of comm, every second word missing. It was Vidal, repeating the request for information over and over.

  “We’re all right, Mick. It’s done – local shooters. I say again –” Travers repeated the message twice.

  “Who?” Vidal demanded. “Who’s shooting? We were not warned about combat conditions in Westminster!”

  “We weren’t expecting to fly into a strike on Velcastra either,” Travers said with acid humor. “We’ve no information yet, Mick – we’ll update you, soon as we know more ourselves.”

  There might not be any formal notices posted of aggression in the Westminster city limits, Marin thought, but he saw plenty of evidence for it. Three buildings were still smoking; a fire had burned out several acres in the Kostroma sector, and the city’s two private landing fields were loud with beacons warning civilian traffic away.

  Shapiro and Kim were unstrapped and leaning on the backs of the pilot seats. Shapiro had slipped a combug into his right ear and was listening to the Chesterfield security channel, but Kim was surveying the city with an appalled expression.

  “What is this? Jagreth fighting itself?” He set a hand on Shapiro’s arm. “You want to bug out, Harrison?”

  “I think this round’s over.” Shapiro clasped Kim’s hand for a moment. “Chesterfield just gave the area a healthy security rating.”

  “Means maybe one chance in five of getting shot at,” Travers said pointedly. “In all seriousness – like Jon said, do you want to bug right out? We should have been warned, if there’s fighting in Westminster.”

  “And who,” Marin added in a rasp, “is fighting? This place was always safe. It was so stultifying, Fleet didn’t have to round up the draftees when the conscription notices were posted – kids of seventeen were so bored, they were ready to go, just to break up the monotony!”

  The Capricorn was at four hundred meters now and the city stretched away beyond every horizon. He had lost sight of the blue-green ocean but ahead and below was a forty-hectare swatch of green, bordered by dense forest, checkerboarded by landscape gardens laid down in a time when Euclidian geometry was the vogue. At the heart of it all was a golden stone mansion which sprawled in a vast, elongated H-pattern, four storeys tall, with deep, shadowed courtyards at front and rear.

  Local time was 16:50 as the Capricorn crossed the threshold into Chesterfield’s restricted airspace. The gunship shadowed them in every meter of the way, and Marin passed back to the automatics as they saw woodland, lawns, gardens, expanding below. The private landing field was at the rear of the mansion, recessed into a corner of the grounds and bordered on two sides by immense, dark stands of Jupiter spruce.

  “Chesterfield Control, this is JS-10,” Yip was saying as the gunship began to drop on a hot bluster of repulsion. “Wastrel 101 is secure … we have minor damage to avionics and engines. We’re not going to make orbit without service. Request a tender, asap.”

  “Roger that, JS-10. Standby for an engineer’s tractor. And incidentally, Cameron, that was very nice shooting.”

  “Not me,” Yip said blithely. “I was still pratting around, waiting for Oversight to authorize me to clear the triggers. General Shapiro’s people took the shooters … Colonel Briggs is pissed as all hell.”

  “Briggs?” Travers echoed as the Capricorn settled on her struts and the engines began to cycle down.

  “Tactical,” Marin guessed. Right ahead of the cockpit’s molded canopy surrounds, the gunship was opening up. As three armed and armored troopers hustled down the ramp he sat back. “Looks like they have Chesterfield security under control.” He gave Shapiro an amused look. “There’s not much for us to do here.”

  “If they had it under control,” Shapiro said with a surprising depth of cynicism, “we wouldn’t have been dodging missiles.”

  Travers had shrugged out of the harness and was on his feet. “You want us to sweep the place?”

  “I’d say yes…” Shapiro was frowning out at the guard Chesterfield had assigned “…if I thought they’d allow it.”

  “You have the authority,” Marin began.

  “Do I?” Shapiro folded his arms over his chest. “I’m not so sure. On Velcastra or Omaru, yes, because President Liang and Colonel Tarrant worked in absolute cooperation with us. On Borushek – of course, because it was my own turf. Here?” He shook his head slowly. “They have this circus micro-organized.”

  “And they still blew it,” Travers observed. “There’s been fighting in the city. You saw the smoking evidence.”

  “I did.” Shapiro’s brows rose as he brushed down his blue-gray jacket and tugged his cuffs. “And I’ll dig for whatever information Chesterfield Control can provide! In the meantime, I don’t think they’ll give us much opportunity to organize our own security.”

  He was on his way to the side hatch, moving past Marin and Travers, with Jon Kim right behind him. “So, where do you want us?” Marin wondered. “We’re a little … redundant here.”

  At the top of the ramp Shapiro turned back with a wry smile. “Why don’t you take a few hours? I know this is your home, Curtis – or was. I imagine you’d like a chance to look up old friends, or visit places you haven’t seen in ten years or more.”

  “Call, if you need us.” Travers tapped the bug in his left ear. “Our comm is busted up, we might not get a word you’re saying, but we’ll hear if you call. We won’t be far away.”

  “I’ll do that.” Then Shapiro was heading down the ramp, and Jon Kim hesitated just long enough to give Travers and Marin a rueful look. “You, uh, trust Chesterfield Control?”

  They shared a glance, and Marin shrugged. “I don’t know them. Look, stick close to him, Jon. Give us a chance to check out the local security without getting anybody mad enough to spit, and if there’s a problem we’ll call you.”

  “Thanks.” Kim pulled his fingers through his hair, rearranging it. “Wish us luck.”

  “Break a leg,” Travers said with a trace of grim humor.

  A car was waiting for
Shapiro, and Marin’s lips compressed as he watched it pull away – sleek, smooth, electric blue, so heavy with armor, it wallowed on its repulsion. Whether he and Travers trusted Chesterfield or not, they were out of jurisdiction here. The local security force was not about to give them any space to maneuver.

  The draft from the gunship’s engines was acrid, hot, and something was not right. The lift motors smelt off, with a pungent scent of burning lubricants. Travers beckoned, headed away from it, and Marin was pleased to put thirty meters of close-cropped lawn between them and the gunship. Those lubricants were mildly toxic. When they carbonized, they were intensely carcinogenic. Rookie techs on the flightline learned every safety protocol by heart before they ever got their hands on a wrench.

  Footsteps shushed across the grass behind them and Travers turned back, right hand going instinctively to his jacket, to the Chiyoda machine pistol holstered there. But he and Marin relaxed a moment later as they saw a blue uniformed figure, the crests of Jagreth and Chesterfield on the shoulders and breast of a flightsuit. The name on his chest read YIP, TC.

  He awarded them a smart salute, though he was laughing as he approached – a tall young man in his early twenties, with a rangy physique, clear skin, good features without being particularly handsome. A pair of gelemerald earrings winked in his lobes. “Hey guys, that’s one we owe you.” He thrust his hand at Travers first, and shook.

  “For taking out the shooters?” Travers chuckled aridly. “You’d have taken them yourselves.”

  “If Oversight ever gave us the authorization before the three of them just up and skedaddled.” Yip made negative noises. “Oversight’s a bunch of city council moms and pops, elected to organize pavement and sewerage, and suddenly they’re deciding who can shoot, and when, and where!” He sighed. “It’s not their fault, but it’s turned into a frigging disaster, and this whole show’s going to be over before we can get enough rules of engagement laid down to play the game properly. The bastards you nixed –? Chances are it’s the exact same shooters me and my crew’ve been trying to nab, right across the city. Every time, they duck out of sight before we get clearance to fire. They dive into the middle of a bunch of civvies, maybe an aeroball crowd, a mall, a school, so we got no chance of taking ’em.”