Event Horizon (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  “Twenty minutes,” Dario said into the loop.

  “Done and done.” Hubler pulled his gloves out of the fissure and spun around, reaching for the drone, cargo net and cable.

  “It’ll take four minutes to get back to Lai’a,” Marin said quietly.

  “Roark.” Vidal’s voice was level but terse. “You got to start back in six minutes, max.”

  “You don’t say.” Hubler was feeding the cable through. “You hear that, Midani? Can you get it into the net, or d’you want me to come back down?”

  “Coming back down is gooder. No … is better,” Kulich said without hesitation. “Load is drifting-moving, all over, not stopping never.”

  “Bloody zero-gee,” Tor rasped. “If there’d been time, we’d have set up a gravity generator.” He gave Mark an apologetic look. “We blew this one. Sorry. We all thought we had hours longer. It should’ve been easy.”

  “I know … ride with it,” Mark said in the familiar, velvet tone that soothed even as it exhorted. “We’re not done yet, and we’ve learned a lot. Lai’a itself has learned a great deal.”

  Again the visual blanked as Hubler darted through the fissure, and then Travers recognized his gauntlets in the bottom of the frame, and Kulich’s helmet in the top and, between them, the gray cylinder of the AI core. It rolled, pitched, yawed, as they tried to feed it into the net, until at last they held the net steady and let the load yaw its way into captivity. Hubler swore lividly as the net tightened automatically, and as the drone up above registered the mass, the cable shortened.

  “Here we go.” Hubler was moving at once, bouncing up through the fissure like a fish diving between coral heads. Bare moments passed before he was saying, “Give her a push, Midani. Mick, time?”

  Vidal was right by the navtank, his face lit in surreal colors and shadows by its illumination. “You got one minute to start back, Roark. You got no margin for error – red zone in five.”

  The winch was running already, not actually pulling the load through the hull breach, but taking up slack cable. Travers held his breath, watching as the cargo net appeared, very gently jostling against the rockwool blanket – and then it was out, with Kulich’s helmet popping up through the fissure right behind it, like a rabbit out of a burrow.

  For a moment Hubler began to fiddle with the winch, but Vidal was there at once: “Ten seconds, Roark. Five seconds – forget it. Bring the whole shebang back just as-is. Move!”

  The winch seemed to have fouled, or the cargo net had twisted – Travers could not make out which in the harsh, grainy image, and nor did it matter. Vidal was right. Hubler and Kulich took the whole assembly of winch, drone and load between them, spun about, shut off the Arago tethers and hit the suit thrusters hard.

  In the navtank was Hubler’s point of view, an image of Lai’a, shrunken with distance but growing slowly, steadily, as they jetted away from the Ebrezjim. Mark frowned at the acceleration numbers, performed a quick calculation and said very quietly,

  “Roark, the mass you’re carrying is slowing you down. You’re not fast enough by forty percent. Can you get any more speed?”

  “Nope,” Hubler told him with grim certainty. “Got to hold enough gas in the tanks to brake – ’less you want me to try an Arago brake, with a load this delicate and valuable.”

  An Arago braking maneuver, as Travers well knew, was calculated by an individual, for an individual. Two armored figures, plus the drone, plus the load, given an inexact thruster burn – the variables ran wild.

  “Arago brake?” Rabelais muttered. “Don’t know what it’s like in this century, but where I come from, it was always ass-over-tit and glue the bits back together later.”

  “We got enough left in the tanks to do a proper thrust brake,” Hubler said grimly. “You got Decontamination standing by? Looks like we’ll need it.”

  Bill Grant had been listening for some time, and responded from the armored hangar. “I have a drone gang waiting for you, Roark. I’ve taken readings off the hull of the wreck – it’s nasty.”

  “We’re gonna fry,” Hubler said bitterly.

  “Not … necessarily.” Marin looked from Travers to Vidal and back. “Lai’a, can you catch them in handling tractors, perform braking … without damaging them or the cargo?”

  “It can be done. Tractors online,” Lai’a acknowledged.

  “Roark – hit it,” Vidal said sharply. “Burn everything – get some speed. Lai’a is going to catch you in tractors.”

  “It’s gonna – what?” Hubler echoed. “Tell me you didn’t say something about a tractor catch.” But he and Kulich had kicked the suit jets to maximum and their speed was ramping up.

  “Lai’a can calculate it,” Vidal said acidly. “This is a Resalq super-AI we’re talking about, not some hangar deck halfwit.” He gave Travers a humorless half smile. “Been here, done this … five broken bones between the two of us. Six, if you count the knuckle Roark broke on the jaw of the moron who almost ripped us apart in the Aragos.”

  Humor aside, it was the best option, and Hubler knew it. Travers was watching the instruments, running swift calculations. “They’re going to do it,” he said to no one in particular. “The armor’s still sizzling, but if I remember how to do the math, they’ll be inside the safe zone.” He looked up at Mark, brows arched.

  “With a margin of eight seconds to seal the hangar and start the decontamination process,” Mark said with a grim optimism. He puffed out his cheeks. “We really did fudge this one in mid-flight.”

  “Learning process,” Dario said with deliberate pragmatism. “Us and Lai’a. All intelligent creatures have to learn … two minutes, Bill – you’re set up, ready to receive?”

  And Grant: “The bay doors are open, I’m running five layers of Arago shielding between me and the shitstorm out there, and I’m in armor. Damnit, is anybody but me ready to get the hell out of this creepy place?”

  It was Mark who said, “I think we all are, Bill. Start them on decon, get the cargo locked down safely. We’re going to take a minute to say chelemlal for the dead, and then – Lai’a?”

  “The transspace drive is available,” Lai’a assured him. “Ignition sequencing is not possible before the habitation module is sealed. The course back to the exact point of horizon transit is pinpointed by the hyper-Weimann wake. Hyper-Weimann ignition is at captain’s discretion; potential transit in 66 minutes.”

  “Wait for my word,” Mark said thoughtfully. “Richard … a short time only, for a memorial.”

  “Take all the time you need, soon as they’re back aboard.” Vaurien was intent on the display. “Roark, Midani – tractor braking will begin in 20 seconds. Brace yourselves.”

  The usual Arago brake was sudden, hard, like running headfirst into a wall, and injury was common even when the subject was armored. Hubler and Kulich could easily have ridden it out, but the Ebrezjim’s AI core was another matter. Lai’a treated it like a basket of eggs. Forty seconds out from the hangar, six gentle tractors caught the whole package of Hubler, Kulich and their prize, and the screens were so soft, so malleable, it must have been like falling into a deep stack of air cushions.

  “I can see you,” Grant called. “Lai’a, can you hear me?”

  “Of course, Doctor Grant,” the AI said with mild reproach.

  “Well, pardon me,” Grant muttered. “Sling ’em around, I want ’em to slide on into the hangar boots-first, got it?”

  “Understood,” Lai’a echoed. “Seal hatches at your earliest convenience.”

  “Duh,” Grant grumbled, and then, “Roark, Midani, you’re gonna have to hold the load between you – keep it the hell off the deck.”

  “Our business, Doc,” Hubler informed him. “You just bloody be there with a whole barrel of decontaminant foam … I just took a reading off the surface of this tuxedo I’m wearing, and – handle with fuckin’ tongs!”

  “What a coincidence,” Grant said acidly, “I just happen to have several large pairs of tongs. Ten secon
ds. Standby.”

  In the navtank, the angle of view from Hubler’s vidfeed displayed an upside-down wide shot of the habitation module, where a narrow section of the Zunshu armor had slid aside, like the fins of a scaly fish sweeping up and back around its flanks, to give access to the decontamination bay. The cavern of the hangar was no longer expanding – Hubler, Kulich and their prize hung stationary in the tractor fields.

  Vidal held the combug to his ear. “Roark?”

  “Shut it, the both of you,” Hubler snapped. “Midani?” They hugged the salvage between them, protecting it with their own armor. “Lai’a!” Hubler barked. “Go!”

  The Australian was thick in Grant’s voice as he shouted, “Roark – boots on the deck, old son, don’t come in head-first.”

  Tumbling in the cushion of the Arago fields, Hubler and Kulich barely had any control over how they would cross the threshold, and the vidfeed was a crazy carousel of spinning images. Travers took his eyes away, looking at the clock instead.

  It showed seven seconds when the hangar doors began to rumble, and two seconds when green indicators showed them locked. A gang of maintenance drones had swooped on Hubler and Kulich before they touched down, and now Travers focused on the data from Grant’s rad counters.

  Both armor and salvage were hot enough to constitute a major hazmat threat, but in two minutes of high-pressure hosing the levels began to fall. For the first time in half an hour the Ops room relaxed. Vaurien leaned heavily against the side of the tank and gave Mark a look of rueful amusement.

  “That,” he said with stygian humor, “was all about sheer luck.”

  “Success sometimes is,” Rusch said with a lifetime’s cynicism.

  Rabelais was at the autochef, fetching coffee and donuts. “Look at me, I’m the living proof of it.”

  “I know – Lady Luck must be besotted with you buggers,” Grant muttered into the loop. “It’s shaping up like about an hour to get out of here, Richard. They’re surface-hot, but I just jacked into the suits’ data ports. The interior’s good. They got home right on the thin edge of safe.”

  “Here’s to luck.” Vidal saluted the navtank in coffee. “An hour before you can get your hands on the computer core, Mahak.”

  Mark seemed to force his mind back to the present. “Dario, Tor, you’ll want to set up an Arago cradle to hold the core, and –”

  “And configure the heat in the hangar to bring it up to temperature just slowly enough that it doesn’t turn to mush,” Dario finished. “Hey … my job, remember?”

  “Cryptocybernetics.” Tor slung both arms around Dario’s shoulders and regarded Mark with a frown. “Chelemlal.”

  “It’s ready to play.” Mark gestured at the handy he had been working with while Travers was so intent on Hubler and Kulich, he would hardly have noticed a ship-wide alert. “Richard?”

  “Go ahead,” Vaurien invited, “and then – Lai’a?”

  “The hangar is sealed and the transspace drive is sequencing,” Lai’a reported. “Engines will be available in 30 seconds.”

  “Chelemlal.” Mark brushed the handy with one thumb.

  The thread of music was so ancient, its form made little sense to modern ears, and the Resalq words were in the old tongue. Even to Marin the litany was pure sound. Travers was aware only of the beauty of it – haunting, lilting, melancholy. He would have recognized it as a memorial even if he had not known the word chelemlal.

  The Resalq were spiritual people, but not religious, he knew. They outgrew the concept of deity while mankind was still living in caves, and their brains were large enough, complex enough, to hold vestigial memories from previous lives; their knowledge of the serial reincarnation of their species was based in fact, not faith. Travers might have wished the knowledge was applicable to the human species, but it was not. Despite technology, the phenomenon of death was still the deepest mystery humans knew, and anything beyond remained a matter of faith.

  His eyes lingered on Marin as they listened to the Resalq memorial, and he knew what he hoped. Curtis’s own eyes were closed, his face rapt as he listened to music and litany – like Vidal, whose Daku spirituality was as fervent as anything the Resalq knew. Travers almost envied them the belief in something. The soldier in him longed to believe; the same soldier refused to accept anything he could not touch or taste or smell. One day, he told himself – one day, an epiphany might be waiting for him, as it had ambushed Marin and Vidal.

  The memorial was not long. Lai’a had been holding the transspace drive on standby for less than a minute when the recording faded into silence. Mark’s eyes opened; he made an open-handed gesture before face and breast – a gesture repeated by all the Resalq present, and Marin also – before he gave Vaurien a nod.

  “Lai’a.” Richard’s voice was soft, still thick with emotion. “Time to go.”

  The AI was unmoved by the memorial. “Standby for transspace drive ignition. Temporal horizon transit in 66 minutes.”

  The same amount of time as it would take for the decontamination process to set Hubler, Kulich and even Grant at liberty. Travers watched as Vidal gave his hand to Mark; and Mark took it, held it. “Will you drink to the crew of the Ebrezjim in Velcastran cognac with me?” Neil offered. “It’s the infidel’s memorial.” He gave Vidal a faint, crooked smile. “After you and Big Jo vanished into the Drift, we held your wake.”

  “Leon told me.” Vidal mirrored the smile for a moment; tears sparkled on his lashes, unshed, though he chuckled. “I wish I could’ve been there.”

  “At your own wake?” Travers demanded.

  “And there is the ultimate paradox.” Mark touched Vidal’s cheek with gentle fingers. “And yes, I’ll drink with the infidel, Neil.”

  The crew lounge was quiet as Travers poured hundred year old cognac into nine glasses. Tonio Teniko had disappeared, and Travers was not surprised. He had little regard for anything Resalq. Vaurien and Jazinsky, Dario and Tor, Mark and Vidal, Rusch and Leon, lifted their glasses. Marin took his from Travers’s hand, and looked into the dark amber contents as if he could see the future there as he waited for Mark to speak.

  He lifted his own glass and spoke first in the ancient Resalq, and then in the Slingo common across the colonies, though the words were almost certainly a close translation. “Let thy stars be as bright as the eyes of a child, may the light of the ancestors, on whom time has smiled, shine from the otherworld, calm upon thee … fly safe fore’er in the skies of the free.”

  Quick, hot tears sprang to Travers’s eyes, and he drank. The cognac was fine. The bottle had been behind the bar in the crew lounge on the Wastrel for months, stashed in a corner. Travers had not so much hidden it, nor smuggled it, as simply set it aside for an occasion, though he could never have imagined this. All save Vidal drank, and Mick touched the glass to his lips, took a minute drop on his tongue and inhaled the vapors.

  Marin sank into the deep couch under what would have been a viewport, if this hull had still been a cruiser. Hull plates had been fitted over outside, featureless pearl-gray bulkhead inside; concealed lights brightened the empty area, and Jazinsky tripped a projector to fill the dead space with a montage of drifting images of Deep Sky worlds. Home had never seemed so distant. Travers watched a series of panoramas from Velcastra, Borushek, Jagreth, and when Marin held out his hand, he joined him on the couch.

  Ship data scrolled endlessly through a flatscreen by the door: Decon 2 was still busy, but Grant’s prognosis was that Hubler and Kulich had escaped the Infirmary by the breadth of a whisker. The visual feed showed an angle from high up above the inside armordoors. All three hardsuits were currently enveloped in dirty brown gel which had been white five minutes before. Just being there in the hangar with them was enough to contaminate Grant. As the decontaminant gel absorbed radiation it darkened, and when it was saturated to black the drones would sluice it off and apply a fresh cocoon. Eventually the gel would remain white, and when the last cocoon – itself a toxin so corrosive, it would destroy
living tissue on contact – was hosed off with a flood of heavy water, Hubler, Kulich and Grant would be free to desuit.

  For the moment they were bickering amiably, while the brains of the Ebrezjim lay suspended in freefall, still in the cargo net, at a temperature so low, the five-meter cylinder of salvaged stuff was sucking enough heat out of the hangar for the walls to begin glistening with a rime of frost. The Sherratts and Tor Sereccio were hashing out last-minute amendments to their preparations for bringing the Ebrezjim AI up to viable temperatures. Rusch and Vidal lounged by the ’chef, talking over clan business – a new wing being built on the house in Elstrom, a few rejuvenation options left open to Charles Vidal even at his advanced age, the legal trouble Patrick and Mei Ying had gotten themselves into lately.

  Without eavesdropping Travers caught the names – mention of a sport plane, and a vacation home on Cahill Island, in Velcastra’s southern hemisphere. Vaurien and Jazinsky had returned to Ops, and a great deal of Dendra Shemiji background reading was waiting for Travers, but he was still in the crew lounge, nursing a lite beer, when Lai’a said,

  “Transit in five minutes. Doctor Mark Sherratt, Colonel Rusch, you expressed an interest in personally taking readings off the horizon.”

  Both Mark and Alexis had drifted back to their quarters after the memorial. The crew lounge was quiet. Marin was passing the time with a handy while Judith Fargo played out a hand of solitaire – apparently losing – at the end of the long mess table. She looked up as Lai’a spoke, but she had little interest in the physics of Elarne, or even the multi-dimensional topography.

  Travers dropped a hand on Marin’s lean thigh. “I’d like to see this.”

  “The temporal horizon, the radiation storm? Oh, yeah.” Marin set aside the handy, pushed up out of the couch and stretched his back. He glanced at the flatscreen, where Hubler, Kulich and Grant had left Decon 2 by now, and the drones were cleaning down the armor for return to the suiting room. “All aboard,” he observed, “and this train’s leaving the station.”