Flashpoint (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  “I have one small personal indulgence to beg, and I hope you’ll bear with me. My … associate, Jon Kim, called me from Velcastra, and I received the transmission this morning. Jon says he has safely arrived at the Elstrom spaceport, on a tramp freighter, and has found himself lodgings at a downmarket establishment where – at least in theory – he’ll attract no attention. Certainly, at this point he’s unaware of any surveillance on him. The Mercury will dock shortly before the memorial service begins, and I’m going to ask you two to simply take the lighter and, as a favor to me, collect him, bag, baggage and dogs, and bring him up to the cruiser.

  “There should be no risk involved, and the eyes of Fleet and CNS will be focused elsewhere, with the arrival of dignitaries from several worlds for the memorial. The Vidals, Shackletons and Rusches will certainly draw attention and cameras away from you, but no one outside this group will know the purpose of the meetings on Velcastra. Liang, Prendergast, Tarrant and I will be deciding dates and places.

  “The time,” Shapiro said darkly, “is now. The Colonial Wars are ours for the taking if we move forward without hesitation, and the sovereignty of the Deep Sky is in our hands – if not its long-term survival, and that, as you well know, is a different question entirely.

  “Every piece of that puzzle is in place, save one … and we won’t find it on this side of the Rabelais Drift. Lai’a is completing its shakedown cruise with the engagements we can expect at Omaru and Velcastra. With the sovereignty of those colonies established, its assignment changes, and ours with it.” His brows rose, issuing an invitation which stood Travers’s hair on end.

  “The hunters,” Shapiro said with ominous quiet, “are about to become the hunted. As soon as the Confederacy has no option but to come to the table, my job is done. The military has no place in the negotiations of civilian governments. My assignment – yours, if you’ll stand with me – is Hellgate. The Zunshu.

  “Lai’a is being fitted with an armored habitation module in which a small crew of humans can survive the transit through the Drift. Achieving a safe transition on the far side, our people, humans and Resalq, will come face to face with the enemy for the first time since the science crew aboard the Ebre'zjim itself.” He sat back heavily and the chair bellied with his weight. Behind him, the late afternoon sky had thickened with cloud and rain lashed the armorglass. “I know Mark Sherratt has made you an alternative offer, but he and I are still talking, still hammering out the details of where we need to be, what we need to do. I think it’s very likely Mark will want to accompany this mission.

  “Frankly, I can’t imagine doing this, being there, without him. I’m going to need Dario Sherratt and Tor Sereccio for their knowledge of the Zunshu technology. I’m going to need several Resalq scientists and historians for their specialist knowledge of Zunshu tactics. I need to be assembling the team for this mission yesterday, and I’ll need your decision soon after the Wastrel docks.

  “You’re not under orders, gentlemen. This team will be comprised strictly of volunteers. However ...” Shapiro took a long deep breath, exhaled it, and gave the camera an odd look, not quite a smile, not quite a grimace. “I’m recruiting the best. And you two are the best. I’ll be looking for your decision when you come aboard the Mercury for the flight to Velcastra. Until then, gentlemen.”

  The threedee reverted to the shifting mauves and blues of its standby pattern, and without a word Travers returned to the bar for a second scotch and ice. He poured one for Marin, put it into his hand and sat beside him.

  For a long time neither of them spoke, and Marin’s voice was whisky rough when at last he said, “Well, now. Mark told us to think it over, weigh it up, decide carefully. Now you know why.”

  If it had been a decision between being on the front lines in the impending confrontations between colonial forces and the DeepSky Fleet and shipping out with the Resalq, Travers would have called it no contest. He and Marin would have been on the Carellan Djerun, scouting for new homeworlds where Resalq and human diaspora could recolonize. But Shapiro’s plans made the situation so much more complicated, Travers had literally blanked since the message ended.

  “Sleep on it,” Curtis said wisely. “I’m going to talk to Richard and Barb – and to Mark, when we hit Borushek. I want to hear every side of this, every argument, before we tell Shapiro how it’s going to be.”

  “And Velcastra?” Travers set down his glass and took Marin in an embrace they both needed.

  “We can do that,” Marin judged. “It’s a bodyguard he needs. You, me, and your kids, as you used to call them. Bravo Company. I see no reason why we can’t go and pick up his beau, Jon Kim. Taxi duty. The whole assignment should be a walkover -- it’ll be like old times, Bravo Company and all … except we’re not in Hellgate and the Mercury’s just a cruiser.”

  “While Lai’a,” Travers added, “is fitting for a mission that scares the willies out of me.” His arms tightened around Marin. “You know Mark will be on the team.”

  Marin was less certain. “It depends,” he mused, chin on Travers’s shoulder. “The chances of surviving this one are low, and I know where Mark’s priorities lie. Right now, he’ll be lying awake nights, asking himself if he ought to be on the Carellan instead, with the Resalq, building a new future on new worlds in the space they charted, which humans haven’t explored yet.” He lifted his head and gave Travers a rueful look. “But I’m thinking Mark’s kids will be going along. Dario and Leon have made the Zunshu their life’s work. Which means Tor will be along, and you know Roy Arlott goes where Leon goes.”

  “And would Mark let them all march with Shapiro’s crusade and not go along himself?” Travers placed a kiss on Marin’s forehead, another on the bridge of his nose, a third on his lips. “If Mark’s along, you’ll want to be there.”

  “Maybe,” Curtis said against Travers’s lips, “but then again, maybe not. I’m not going to put Mark’s family before mine. You. We were talking about getting well out – Darwin’s. It’s your home and could be mine. Jagreth is way too close to Hellgate. We have a reason to get out, and a place to get out to.”

  “But could you do it?” Travers’s brows arched. He laced his fingers at Marin’s nape to hold him there. “Could you get out and leave them to it? Leave Mark, who’s also your family? You’ve often said he adopted you, gave you a life, after Fleet. Could you walk away?”

  “Could you?” Curtis wondered.

  The question cut right through to the bone marrow, and Travers was a long way from any coherent answer. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Ask me again, closer to Borushek.”

  “After we’ve talked to Richard and Barb, and Mark,” Marin agreed. “Damnit, Shapiro knows how to make this complicated!”

  He tried to slide out of Travers’s arms, but Neil held him, kissed him first lightly and then soundly, perhaps reminding him of all they stood to lose. A new life in a quiet backwater – the Three Rivers region, where the streams ran glacier blue and the sun struck sparklets off the snow on the high slopes even in summer, where the iceboats raced on the frozen fjords under the Wulff Glacier, winter to spring, and horses, cattle and mouflon ran wild in the high pastures.

  The promise of that life spoke powerfully to Travers, yet every time he turned toward it the siren-song of the unknown called him back. The part of him that had been unable to settle down when Richard offered him a place, a partnership aboard the Wastrel, was still alive. The same part of him which had re-enlisted when he was free to walk away from Fleet, was awake again. And it knew a call to arms when it heard one.

  With an effort he stood and pulled Marin up with him. “You hungry?”

  “Yes.” Marin dragged both hands through the mass of his hair. “I also want to talk to Richard’s people about this.”

  “Not in front of van Donne and his guys,” Travers warned as he swiped a fresh shirt from the closet.

  “Not even in front of Hubler and Rodman,” Marin added.

  “Shapiro would call
it ‘strictly need to know.’”

  “So would Mark. Dendra Shemiji security has always been tighter than anything Fleet ever ran.” Marin stepped out and waited for him. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Damnit, Neil – Hellgate.”

  “I know.” Travers was shoving the shirt into place, and paused to feign a shudder. “But this time, if we go back to Hellgate, we go back with Lai’a. And we’ll be hunting,” he added darkly.

  Hunting Zunshu.

  Chapter Seven

  Sark, Borushek

  Most of Fleet Sector Command was calm, orderly, but Marin’s hackles had risen the moment they stepped into the security elevator. New scan platforms had been installed since they left, and a man’s nerve endings prickled, burned, as he was deep-scanned right through to his bones. The eyeballs were sore, the tongue tingling, the taste of metal in the mouth, before the machines were satisfied and the elevator went up – and throughout the scan, the car had been sealed tight as a cell. If the machines sniffed an intruder, a stun field would have erupted through the lift, and unhelmeted humans would have been comatose in less than a second.

  He gave Travers a grim look as they waited, and was unsurprised by the scene on Shapiro’s private levels. The office was in boxes, stacked by the private lift which led directly to the air park. Travers gave a low whistle. His voice was very soft.

  “He could be out of here in five minutes.”

  “Three.” Shapiro’s voice issued from the annex, the apartment where he spent most nights, and all nights since the situation had begun to simmer. “I have a gunship on the air park, my AI is synchronized with the mainframe on the Mercury, which is on standby in low orbit, and there’s a pair of handling drones in that closet, waiting to pick up and run.”

  As he spoke, he appeared in the doorway, and Marin had to smile. Shapiro was still streaming water, still scalded pink by a shower that had almost taken the skin off him. He was rubbing his hair with a towel in one hand, while the matching towel was wrapped haphazardly around his hips.

  He was leaner than Marin remembered, harder, as if he were spending more time than usual on the racquetball court, to sweat the killing stress out of himself, buy himself the exhaustion he needed to sleep. And if Marin was any judge, he was not eating. Jon Kim would be troubled by the differences he saw in the man – and perhaps Jon Kim was exactly what Harrison Shapiro needed, the comfort and solace of a lover, in a time when reality seemed to have begun a long, slow spiral out of control. And Kim had called when he got into the port of Elstrom. He was already on Velcastra, keeping out of sight, waiting.

  “When do we ship out for Velcastra?” Travers was asking, with a gesture at the sky, where the cruiser was not far overhead.

  “Forty hours,” Shapiro told him. “I wanted to be gone tonight, but they’re working on the drive. Jim Fujioka is aboard, and forty hours is his best estimate. I believe him. We’ll push the speed on the run in to Velcastra, make up most of the lost time on the way. Fujioka tells me the drive ignition problems are simple enough – ‘fix it with a new one,’ I believe is the technical term. We’re waiting for replacement parts. Six hours for installation and four in test, and we leave. I’ve offered Fujioka the promotion to Chief of Engineers, if he wants it.”

  “He’s good,” Travers observed.

  “I only hire the best.” Satisfied with his hair, Shapiro threw the towel back into the ensuite and began to rummage for clothes. Uniform slacks, shirt, shorts, piled on the foot of a bed that did not seem to have been used in some time. “Speaking of which – you did damned well in Freespace. I’ve seen the manifest, the survivors you brought home – and I saw the report, how you did it. That was good work, under difficult conditions. You might like to know, Bill Grant is in the base hospital at this moment, briefing the medical staff on the status of various individuals who are still at risk, and my AI is contacting the next of kin of all the Shanghai veterans we’ve identified.”

  “Job done,” Travers observed.

  “One job done, another about to begin,” Shapiro said ruefully.

  “Velcastra.” Marin thrust both hands into the hip pockets of the dove gray slacks and frowned out through the vast armorglass panels at a transport on its way to the freight apron.

  “Velcastra and Hellgate.” Shapiro lifted one brow at them, curious, challenging. “Velcastra is easy. “The politics of war. Some system has to be the first battlefield, but which? Four of us are empowered to speak for whole worlds, and I can tell you, it’s a daunting obligation I don’t enjoy. If there were anyone to pass the buck along to, I’d be glad to do it, but this is a military town. Borushek’s politics are so enmeshed with Fleet, the legitimate colonial government is a toothless, spineless puppet and the republican shadow government is comprised of ghosts too frightened to show their faces or raise their voices.”

  “With good reason,” Marin argued. “They reveal themselves too early, and then we lose this war, and they’ll be in labor camps or executed as traitors to the Confederacy.”

  “They’ll come out of the woodwork when the shooting’s over,” Travers added. “As soon as it’s safe, they’ll be glad to snatch the reins right out of your hands and then criticize your work.”

  Unexpectedly, Shapiro smiled. “They’re welcome to take the reins. I’m an old soldier, not a politician. The last thing I want is to be responsible for a big, messy, noisy civilian population! We have far more important things ahead of us.”

  Marin studied the man curiously. “If you speak for Borushek in these locked-door meetings, I don’t envy you the duty. We’ll round up Jon Kim, get him up to the Mercury … and what then?”

  “Then?” Shapiro pulled up short. “With Jon safe, that’s one thing I can stop worrying about! I had a second message from him, it arrived six hours ago. He’s moving from the hostel at the spaceport to another further out. He says he thinks he might have been picked up by surveillance of some kind, and recognized.”

  “Fleet?” Travers wondered.

  But Shapiro made negative noises. “They have no interest in him. If it’s anyone, it’ll be the Ulrish secret service or their bounty hunters. You should know, a warrant has been issued for his arrest in Marak City, and as with all fugitives – and there are many! – flight is being read as an admission of guilt. There’s a price on Jon’s head, and a twenty-five year sentence without possibility of parole ahead of him, if he’s returned to Ulrand alive. The bounty notices were posted on CityNet and CNS.”

  Which meant anyone with a ten-credit license could take a crack at him, as soon as he was positively identified. “The Ulrish secret service has a reputation for being ham-fisted,” Marin mused.

  “But their bounty-hunters are the likes of Conway Streller and Marianna Wing,” Travers added.

  “And Kim thinks he’s been spotted?” Marin asked.

  “He’s not sure,” Shapiro said carefully. “He’s hired himself a car and he’s going to get out into the rural zone, south of Elstrom. He thinks he can vanish into a small town, keep a low profile for long enough.”

  “Long enough for us to get in, and then he makes a call, we go grab him.” Travers nodded slowly. “Trust him. He’s a big lad. He had the savvy, and the balls, to see trouble coming and get himself out of Marak.”

  “Yes.” Shapiro pulled his spine back and massaged his neck with both hands. “I tell myself this every day. I suppose what bothers me is that Jon isn’t military. Being Ulrish, he never even had the benefit of conscripted service to give him an edge.”

  “Civilians come in tough and shrewd too.” Marin was watching Shapiro closely, the tiny muscles about his mouth and eyes. He saw the signs of personal involvement everywhere. Harrison Shapiro cared, and it made him worry for an individual the way he did not fret over the whole colony world of Borushek. The colony would always survive in the face of the Confederacy, even if it were punished with mass arrests, executions, trade sanctions, increased taxation and conscription. But an individual was frighteningly vulnerable. �
�There’s no reason Kim shouldn’t be fine,” Marin said quietly. “He has the car, he’s headed out. Even if he was ID’d, he’ll have given them the slip, they’ll have to start again. As Neil said, he was smart enough, fast enough, to get right out of Marak City. Don’t underestimate him. A few days, and we’ll be there. A quick pickup, he’s on the Mercury, and you can go back to worrying yourself gray about all the rest!”

  “All the rest?” Travers echoed.

  “Hellgate.” Marin heard the terseness of his own voice.

  “Hellgate.” Shapiro looked from Travers to Marin and back. “You know the mission. You know what’s at stake.”

  Travers lifted both hands as if Shapiro had him at gunpoint. “We talked to Vaurien and Jazinsky on the way here. As you’d expect, Jazinsky is foaming at the mouth to get aboard Lai’a and get into the Drift. Richard is cursing the proverbial blue streak. It’s every nightmare he ever had, with little chance of coming out of it alive.”

  “You think so?” Shapiro dropped the towel from his hips, pulled on the gray silk boxer shorts and picked up his slacks. “I’m not asking for volunteers for any suicide squad, Major. I believe there’s an excellent chance of a successful mission. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have authorized it.”

  “Mark agrees?” Marin asked shrewdly.

  “Talk to him.” Shapiro zipped the slacks and reached for his shirt.

  “We intend to,” Travers assured him. “If the Mercury doesn’t shove off for forty or so hours, we have time to go up to the Carellan.”

  “Mark’s in Riga,” Shapiro corrected as he shrugged into the pale blue shirt. “The Resalq science community is on the same three-minute alert as I am. I asked if they need help to prepare, or to get out fast if the time comes, but they told me no. Knowing Mark Sherratt, I’m not surprised he has it under control. God knows, who’s had more practice than them at running and hiding?”