Event Horizon (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  “Neil?” Jazinsky frowned at him with dark, gimlet eyes. “You and Richard go way back, long before he met me. We do this, or we don’t?”

  “You’re asking me?” Travers swallowed hard on a dry throat as he looked down at Vaurien. “If it was up to me – I’d say, do it. Mark, Harrison, Curtis, Mick, myself – Dendra Shemiji, Fleet, Daku, Resalq … goddamn it, if we can’t cover for him for long enough to give him the chance for surgery that’ll save his limbs, there’s something bloody wrong with us!”

  For a moment the Infirmary was silent, frozen into a tableau, and then Grant clapped his hands. His voice cut like a razor. “Okay, everybody git. This place is sterilizing for surgery. Lai’a! Mobilize your drones, tell me what you need. Judith, move Tor’s cryotank – just shove it into the morgue to make space. Tim – give me a report on Hubler.”

  It was Vidal who said, “Concussed as all get out, and one of the biocyber legs has gone offline. Means he can’t stand, and he’s a tad bit more cross-eyed than usual.” He dropped a hand on Grant’s shoulder. “I checked with Medic Inosanto while you guys were sweating over Richard … and Neil’s right. We ought to be in Ops.”

  He was leaving as he spoke, pausing only to look down into Hubler’s groggy face, where he lay beside Queneau, between the morgue and the quarantine airlocks. He cycled the lock on his way out – the rest of the habitation module was still at zero pressure – but Travers lingered a moment longer. He stood with Jazinsky, frowning over Vaurien, and at last it was the woman who said,

  “I never … he always seemed so … indestructible. He was always just there. I can’t imagine a universe without him.”

  “Worst case scenario, sixteen months in a tank,” Travers murmured. “He’ll live. I’ve seen a lot worse, Barb.”

  “So have I.” She forced herself to focus. “We lost a couple of techs on one job. A freighter … Weimann failure, and Naiobe caught it. We pulled the cargo handlers out, but it cost us two of Tully’s people in an explosion on the engine deck. They were cut in half. Nothing we could do for them, no time even to get them into cryogen. We had a good CMO on the Wastrel at the time, ex-Fleet, a lot like Eileen Drury on the Mercury. She left us to start up in practice for herself on the spacers’ rink, Elstrom High Dock.” Jazinsky shook herself hard and picked up the helmet she had set aside minutes before. “Keep me informed, Bill.”

  “I will,” Grant promised. “And the sooner you guys just get the hell out of here, the sooner we can get started!”

  “We’re going.” Travers dropped his own helmet back into place and punched keys to cycle the lock capsule again.

  As he, Marin and Jazinsky stepped back into the zero-pressure environment, red lights came on over the Infirmary’s double doors and the ‘No unauthorized entry – surgery in progress’ sign lit. Travers spared it a grim glance before he followed the others 30 meters aft to Physics 2.

  The lab had been redesignated as Operations, but it was too small to accommodate the whole company. Chemistry 2 was converted to relay data via several flatscreens and a big threedee, and Shapiro and Mark Sherratt had already laid down ground rules: only key personnel would be in Ops. They were working as Travers and Marin followed Jazinsky in. Rusch was busy, shoulder to shoulder with Dario Sherratt, but Rabelais, Rodman, Leon and Roy and Midani Kulich were all in the opposite lab, mere spectators.

  The datastream was dazzling. Travers struggled to make sense of it as he joined Vidal at tactical. Marin had taken comm and ship systems – all of them monitoring the AI’s every move. Jazinsky was juggling two science workstations while Shapiro, Mark and Dario worked through an overwhelming volume of data which had accumulated. Lai’a had charted the whole system, launched over a hundred drones, and the model of the 161-D subsystem was astonishingly complete.

  Vast areas of purple mist marked out the regions where weapons had been destroyed, leaving drifting fields of radioactive shrapnel; 34 moons were pinpointed, each with a record of industry, energy signatures, the noxious exhaust of machinery, some of which had been dormant for a long time.

  “There’s no sign of life on any of the moons,” Rusch was saying. “Not indigenous life, and not live tech crews working there. Just … nothing.”

  “We’ve always known they rely on drones,” Jazinsky said tersely. “Why go work in nasty environments yourself, when you can build automata like the ones Neil and Curtis fought on the hull back at Oberon?” She was hunting through columns of numbers. “I’m looking for thermal blooms – automata run hot, with the energy cell in the chest cavity.”

  “I’m seeing zilch,” Dario mused. “I’ve already run the search – the moons are dead rocks. Looks like they were abandoned centuries ago.”

  “The same way we abandon smelters and mines – think of the Omaru system,” Mark said slowly. “It seems the Zunshu aren’t tidy housekeepers. When they’re done with something, they just abandon it and leave it to corrode.”

  “Which makes a hell of a mess,” Jazinsky added. “I’m looking at a whole bunch of data from the outer system … it’s garbage out there. This whole shitty place is a junkyard. It’s no wonder they don’t hesitate to make trash of our worlds. They do the same to their own.”

  Mark stepped back from the navtank, stretching his shoulders, which looked odd in the armor. “But there’s no sign of life on the outer worlds. I’ve been sifting the data, Barb. As Lai’a noted, there’s no comm traffic, but it’s more than that. The outer worlds are very cold; several are balls of ice, one or two are gas giants with magnificent systems of rocky moons, but to live or work out there, any species that evolved in a clement environment such as we see here, at 161-D, would have to build sophisticated, sealed cities, or at the very least installations ... domed canyons, subterranean facilities, grounded ships, whatever.”

  “Meaning colony generators,” Jazinsky agreed. “Power systems to keep everything running, keep it warm and bright. And you’re right … I’m looking at the same numbers here. The outer system’s uniformly cold and dark. The signs of old industry are all over the place, but every nut and bolt has been abandoned.”

  “The Zunshu came home,” Travers said slowly. “Maybe they made such a wreck of the rest of the system, they came back to 161-D to get away from the junk. Or...” He paused to think for a moment. “Lai’a, have you looked for wake ghosts?”

  “He’s right.” Alexis Rusch took a step closer to the navtank. “Fallout trails, Lai’a, left by ships coming and going?”

  “I can detect no such trails,” Lai’a responded.

  The question was shrewd, and Mark turned toward Travers. “What are you thinking, Neil?”

  He gestured at the tank, with its plot of the gas giant and moons. “Maybe this is the homeworld; but maybe they’ve gone. Everything we’re seeing is shut down, dormant, corroding. There’s one platform down in the atmosphere – a big one, I’ll grant you – but everything else is abandoned. So maybe the Zunshu left this system. Barb was talking about colonies spread across this region, and the regions around other Drifts. We didn’t see any sign of a Zunshu colony at Orion 359, but that’s just one Drift. There have to be scores of others. Hundreds. Barb?”

  She weighed everything he had suggested seriously, but at last sounded doubtful as she said, “Good idea, Neil, but I’m not buying. If they’d gone … if this world was abandoned … they wouldn’t have left it defended so heavily. The system is so loaded with defense zones, they’re guarding 161-D as if it’s the most precious world in the cosmos. The only world you guard that way is – well, home. Mark?”

  “Yes – not to discount the possibility of Zunshu colonies elsewhere,” Mark added quickly. “But 161-D is defended like the jewel in the crown. Whatever’s here, it has to be on the platform.”

  “And if they did establish colonies elsewhere,” Rusch added, “the information should be available there.”

  It was Dario who put into words what they were all thinking. “We need to know where else the bastards are.”

/>   “Not for the purpose of annihilating them,” Shapiro rasped, “but because we need to know who we’re talking to – how many, how powerful, and where they are.” He paused. “How powerful is the smart question. If I’m right in assuming they played their top trumps right here at home, we can handle them if we have to … but I’d rather negotiate. This … this has to end before there’s any more death.”

  His voice broke on the word, and Rusch sighed audibly. “Harrison, why don’t you stand down? Take a break. Ask Bill for something.”

  “Take a pill?” Shapiro made a bitter, humorless sound. “This isn’t the first time for me, Lex, you know that. I buried my wife after an accident. We’d been together since we were both very young and I thought, when Lauren left me, she’d taken my life with her. The cure isn’t a pill. Ask Mark. He buried a child. Nobody should have to bury a child, much less their own.”

  “Yet it happens,” Mark said quietly, “far more often than it should. He’s right, Alexis. It’s not a drug he needs, but work – and then more work till he’s so tired, in the end he can sleep.”

  “He needs the space to grieve in peace and quiet,” Jazinsky muttered, “and he’s not going to get it – I’m so sorry, Harrison.”

  “Thank you. Thank you all.” Shapiro had tightened an iron band down on his emotions. The storm would break later, Travers knew, but for the moment the old soldier was in complete control. “I never should have allowed Jon to come on this insane expedition. And of all the souls on this ship to be taken, it was one of the most innocent.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Marin counselled. “It was Jon’s decision to be here, the way Roy Arlott is here with Leon. The rest of us are soldiers or scientists, but don’t let that take anything away from their courage. Jon was smart – he knew where he wanted to be.”

  “And he took the same risks as we all did – I know,” Shapiro said tautly. “I know all the rational platitudes, Curtis. I’ve spoken them too many times, when men and women under my command have been killed in line of duty. I’ve consigned young people to their deaths, knowing the burden of grief to be borne by others. What goes around tends to come right back around … it’s simply my turn.”

  “Logic,” Marin said softly, “will only carry you so far. Let yourself grieve, Harrison.”

  “Later.” There was a note of steel in Shapiro’s voice, and one gauntlet gestured into the tank, where fresh data was scrolling. “What’s that?”

  “Probe 87 has returned,” Lai’a told him. “It has completed a polar surveillance orbit. It located no further defense zones, General, and no gun platforms in or around 161-D itself. All data supports the conclusion that we have exhausted the defenses of the inner system. While similar zones abound in the outer system, they are not mobile. Sensor drones are proceeding outward from this orbit, and they report no activity.”

  “No activity,” Rusch echoed in a harsh whisper. “Damnit, Mark, it can’t be this easy.”

  “Easy?” Travers demanded. “Lai’a drove into this system with the power of several super-carriers, answering gravity weapons with gravity weapons, and we still got our asses handed to us, two dead, three wounded, one in cryogen, one getting massive surgery!”

  “I … know all that,” Jazinsky said slowly, “but it’s just – something’s wrong, Neil. You don’t feel it? Something’s rank rotten here.”

  “I feel it,” Shapiro agreed. “But we’re not going to learn any more from here. I’d say it’s safe to stand down from ship-wide alert and repressurize. Mark?”

  “Hold off on repressurization a little longer,” Mark said slowly. “Barb’s correct. Something’s very wrong, but … Lai’a, I’d like to launch a probe to investigate the platform. Task it to perform a close flyby, image the whole thing, listen for comm from within, take thermal and chemical readings off it. If the probe is shot at – evasive maneuvers, get it out of there if possible, and if not, report on the weapons that destroyed it.”

  “Launching the survey drone,” Lai’a acknowledged. “Doctor Grant reports Major Hubler is only mildly hurt. Captain Queneau has been discharged from the Infirmary. Doctor Sereccio’s scans have been performed in lacus. Doctor Dario Sherratt, if you would like to refer to Med 2, preliminary information is available.”

  Without a word Dario transferred to the flatscreen in the rear corner of the cramped space of the physics lab. He read for several moments before Travers heard a soft hiss, a curse. Mark joined him there, and a moment later said quietly,

  “It could be worse, Dario. He’s alive, and he’ll recover.”

  “I know.” Dario sighed heavily. “He was always the one talking about having kids. To me, it never mattered. I just took for granted he’d be that way when the time was right, and there’d be his kids, and mine, getting underfoot, driving us nuts, making us proud, I suppose, a long time from now.”

  “It can still happen.” Mark turned his back on the flood of medical information. He had seen enough. “His organs can be cloned, the same as Michael’s, and Roark Hubler’s legs.”

  “Two years,” Dario groaned.

  “Eighteen months to grow major organs for our people.” Mark set a hand on his shoulder. “If you were unconcerned about children, it shouldn’t bother you to wait the extra time.”

  “But it’ll bother him,” Dario said darkly. “Eighteen months of him being cranky … you know, seventeen years, we’ve been together, and there are still times when I want to wring his neck.” He took a sharp breath. “And other times when I don’t know where I’d be without him.”

  “Probe 107 is in the atmosphere,” Lai’a reported.

  “Is it being scanned?” Shapiro wanted to know.

  A pause, and Lai’a said, “Yes. It registers the first active scanning we have seen since entering this system.”

  “Somebody’s awake on the platform,” Travers growled.

  “Or an AI.” Marin came closer to the tank, the better to follow the flood of incoming data. “Lai’a – watch yourself.”

  “I will know at once,” it assured him, “if any attempt is made to interfere with my processes. Standby for manual override.”

  Vidal was already moving. “Relay navigation and engine data to Tech 3. Jo, you out of the Infirmary yet?”

  And Queneau, over the loop: “Just cycled the locks. I’m coming to you. You want me to take navigation?”

  “Yeah. Just in case.” Vidal’s armor was braced before the workstation. His living human eyes digested flight data just as Travers had moved to tactical and Marin was dividing his attention between comm and environment.

  “Probe 107 is on approach to the platform,” Lai’a said calmly. “It is being deep scanned, but it has detected no overtly hostile activity.”

  “It’s not being shot at,” Shapiro muttered.

  “No target acquisition, General,” Lai’a affirmed. “It has been scanned deeply enough for its components to be modeled, but the individuals, or the AI, responsible for the deep scan are not about to destroy it.”

  “Not yet,” Jazinsky said with profound cynicism. “Give the bastards a chance. Do you have a vid feed from 107?”

  “Not until it is within 200 meters,” Lai’a told her. “The medium in which the platform is suspended has a specific gravity similar to salt water, and a high concentration of contamination in suspension. The result is –”

  “It’s murky down there,” Marin finished. “Not a lot of visibility. We’ll take what you can get, Lai’a. How long?”

  “One minute before useful visual information can be returned,” Lai’a said in guarded tones. “Doctor Grant reports Major Hubler resting comfortably. Doctor Sereccio’s cryogen unit has been moved to OR 2. He is scheduled for surgical procedure at 04:00.”

  Dario’s breath rasped over the pickup. “So soon?”

  “Why wait? Tor wouldn’t thank you for leaving him on ice while history’s being made.” Jazinsky was intent on the indistinct images which had just appeared in the tank. Lai’a was rig
ht, nothing useful could be inferred at this distance. “And don’t forget, Richard’s argument against tanking Teniko was that if the ship were damaged, only folks mobile enough to get up and bug out would survive.” She skipped a beat. “Richard turned out to be dead right … he usually is. But it was himself who was trapped, and Tonio…” She seemed to shake herself.

  “Don’t try to put sense to it,” Marin warned. “It’s enough to drive you right out of your mind … Barb, Mark, look at this.”

  As he spoke Lai’a announced, “A low-power, short-range signal is transmitting from a point on the platform.” It paused to monitor, record. “Message is 17.3 seconds in duration, and loops. The signal was almost certainly triggered by the appearance of our probe.”

  “Let’s see it.” Travers came around for a better view at the flatscreen where Marin was working.

  Since Curtis was monitoring comm, he had the data at his fingertips in realtime. The meaningless audio was playing while he watched the waveform slowly rotating in threedee. “It looks … similar to the wave pattern we recorded at both the defense zones,” he said slowly.

  “It is certainly the same language,” Lai’a said without hesitation, “however, the message content is very different. I am comparing the three samples. The aggregate of all remains insufficient to enable translation.”

  “But someone,” Mark said grimly, “is talking to us. The same someone who was talking out by the weapons fields. Lai’a, confirm that this is nothing like any Zunshu language we’re ever sampled from any of their hardware.”

  “Confirmed. Which could be precisely the point, Doctor Sherratt,” Lai’a speculated. “All languages we have seen previously were the code systems of drones, probes and automata. This language could be the spoken tongue of the living Zunshu.”

  “Spoken?” Marin echoed.

  The word was surely a misnomer. The audio signal was a wailing, howling tone, oscillating back and forth around several dissonant notes with a seemingly random scattering of higher and lower tones overlaid like harmonic resonance. It might have been the wind shrieking through a crevice, or the voice of a night bird crying over the forest, punctuated by bats.