Flashpoint (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  Curtis said nothing, and Travers was merely thinking aloud. “If this thing is just a data channel that listens with one array and reports with another, like a glorified comm relay … it has to be operating on the Zunshu frequencies, yes? And it has to know where home is, or at least how to call through the mess inside Hellgate. Yes?”

  “Give the man a whole pack of cigars.” Jazinsky rested one flat palm on the hotbox. “You know, I’m looking at this, and I’m seeing an omen. Harrison sent us into Freespace to bring back the Shanghai survivors, but the truth is, as crappy as this is going to sound, this little thing is worth a thousand times more than a couple of hundred human lives.”

  An odd sensation shivered through every nerve Travers possessed. “It gives you a line to the Zunshu?”

  “Maybe,” Mark warned. “First of all, the ruins of its brains have to be analyzed, and that’s more than I can do here and now. Half of the analysis will be sheer guesswork, because the brains are so rudimentary and so twisted up. It’s going to take the processor power of Lai’a to make sense of this device. Even when we have the raw data, getting something useful out of it is another question. This thing knows how to call home? Obviously. But shooting a comm signal through Elarne has always defeated us. We don’t know enough about the tides and currents, the rips and eddies of both gravity and time, in the guts of Hellgate. That’s where the Zunshu have it over us.”

  “Yet this little contraption knows how to do it,” Jazinsky argued.

  “It’s broken,” Marin said quietly. “Is there enough left for Lai’a to make sense of it? Because if there is…” His eyes were wide, dark, as he looked up at Travers, stunned by the implications.

  The question seemed to galvanize both Sherratt and Jazinsky. “We won’t know till we hand the thing to Lai’a,” she said briskly. “And that’s why the Wastrel is shipping out later today for Alshie’nya, by way of the drydocks – Albeniz.”

  “What takes you to Albeniz?” Marin wondered as he peered into the threedee, where the innards of the Zunshu thing were being peeled back, layer by layer.

  “Richard’s new ship,” Jazinsky told him. “She’s half-fitted, and that’ll have to do. They brought the Weimanns online two weeks ago, and frankly, it’s time to get her out of there.”

  “Albeniz,” Mark observed without looking up from the handy he was studying, “is too close to Hellgate, and just about the same distance from Naiobe as both Takashozu Field 9 and the Strauss Lode, both of which have been lost to Zunshu squads. The fact is –” he straightened his back and looked into the threedee “—we’re just waiting for the news, through the Deep Sky data conduit. We know there’s been another assault, we just don’t know where. Only the fact Albeniz is too big to be destroyed by a simple squad has protected it thus far.”

  “But four or five or ten squads of Zunshu automata in a simultaneous strike would take it,” Jazinsky added bleakly. “Give them time to amass, coming from wherever it is they come from. Another month, and I’d put Albeniz at the top of the hit list.”

  The Fleet drydocks were noisy, dirty, with the vast contamination and toxic fallout typical of such facilities. Because of this mess, the docks were situated in a system where no single world was a candidate for terraforming. A floating population of forty or sixty thousand humans and ten times as many drones lived on several planetoids and two major, barren worlds, and space was a toxic mess.

  They were an easy target. Travers wrestled for a moment with the logistics of trying to turn back an assault from multiple squads of the automata Bravo Company had fought on Kjorin, and then rejected the idea as ludicrous. Albeniz would be a casualty, and soon.

  “You realize,” Marin whispered, “when the Albeniz facility is destroyed, the Confederacy is going to blame the colonial republicans.”

  “And there won’t be one syllable we can say to convince them we’re not guilty,” Jazinsky said in cynical tones. “The Zunshu might actually do us a favor. Without Albeniz, the nearest Fleet dockyards are Haven, Lithgow, Kuchinbai, way back in the Middle Heavens. Too far to be convenient for the bastards.”

  “Another reason for them to just leave the Deep Sky to get on with our own business,” Travers suggested.

  “So long as we can weather the punitive expedition.” Mark’s face was set into grave lines. “You know they’ll want to punish. If they can,” he added, “and that’s another question.” He looked from Travers and Marin and back. “You know the Wastrel has been offloading cargo.”

  “The mines, which will be seeded into orbit when the time comes, to stand between Borushek and a super-carrier battle group.” Travers gestured in the direction of the orbital platforms, where the Mercury was docked. “Shapiro took delivery before we checked out the Capricorn. The mines to defend Velcastra are being loaded onto a couple of freighters as we speak.”

  “And the warload to defend Omaru and Jagreth is being crated on the Wings of Freedom at Alshie’nya,” Jazinsky finished. “We ship out to Albeniz to install the AI on the Esprit de Liberté, and as soon as the nav-tank is loaded, we’re out of there. Gone. The Esprit is going to Alshie’nya to finish refitting. Sacha Tomarov’s crew on the Wings will hammer her into good enough shape to be habitable. Right now, she’s all holds and engines, generators and Aragos. You work aboard in hardsuits and sleep tethered to an eyebolt in freefall, out of the way of the drones!”

  “But she’ll be one hell of a ship,” Mark said approvingly. “As big as the Wastrel, and even more powerful. Which is all the more reason to get her the hell out of Albeniz before suddenly she’s sitting at ground zero in a Zunshu event! And that –”

  He broke off as Joss, the house AI, interrupted with a soft chime and said in those quiet, exotically accented tones, “Vehicle registration ASN 429W has just landed in the forecourt. Single occupant is approaching the main door. Shall I grant access?”

  “Do you recognize him – or her?” Mark wondered.

  “Human,” Joss reported. “The vehicle is registered in Riga. Will I access the civilian register?” And then, before Mark could answer, “Captain Vaurien observed the vehicle on approach and is granting access to the occupant. It appears he knows him.”

  A kick of intuition made Travers stir, and he dropped one hand onto Marin’s shoulder. “I’ll give you three guesses. And I’m going back up, Curtis. If I’m right, Richard’s going to need a little moral support!”

  For a moment Marin’s brows rose, and then shared the same flash of intuition. He was a pace behind Travers as he took the stairs two at a time, and they both felt the waft of chill air which fell through the house as the front door opened briefly. Heating vents began to whisper at once, as heat and oxygen were swiftly pumped in.

  And before he reached the top of the stairs, Travers knew he was right. Richard was standing like a statue, hands thrust into the pockets of the dark blue denims, head cocked, watching Tonio Teniko take off the parka, gloves and scarf and dump them at his feet. He was waiting for the kid to make his case, but more than this, like Travers he could only be speechless for several moments at the change in Teniko.

  He looked rough, Travers thought, as if he had been on a week-long binge, high as a kite for too long, and unaware of anything, everything, that had been done to him in that time. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes hollow, shadowed. A lot of the incredible beauty that had been his worst enemy was still intact, but the voluptuous sensuality was already gone.

  And he was taller. Travers whistled softly as Marin came up behind him. Teniko was a hand’s span taller, with wider shoulders, bigger hands and feet. The process of growing bone was exquisitely painful, and even now, even here, Teniko’s eyes were dark, dilated with the drugs he needed to endure it.

  But he was not high, Travers saw. He was entirely lucid as he dumped the outdoor clothes and took a hesitant step closer to Richard. “Uh … hi,” he offered. “I, uh, I’m in Riga for the, uh, therapy, and I knew you were coming in, so…”

  “Do you thought you’
d come over, invade Mark’s privacy and bug me some more,” Vaurien said harshly.

  The dark eyes blinked at him. “If you want to put it like that.”

  “I do,” Vaurien told him. “What do you want, Tonio?”

  At Travers’s side, Marin said quietly, “I never saw anyone change so much.”

  “You never saw anyone reengineered in realtime,” Travers murmured.

  “I want … I want to help.” Teniko shuffled his feet awkwardly. “I want to come back.”

  Vaurien turned away from him, turned his back on Teniko and pressed his face into both hands for a moment. “Have you forgotten?”

  “No. I haven’t forgotten anything.” Teniko’s voice was low, almost a rasp, and a couple of notes lower than it had been.

  “Then you remember why I slammed the door behind you.” Richard glared at him. “I told you four times, Tonio. You don’t bring crap like mai boogey and angelino onto any ship of mine. Four times, you ignored me.”

  “I needed it,” Teniko began.

  “Rubbish.” Vaurien was impatient with the argument. He had clearly heard it too often. “Nobody on any ship of mine would abuse you. Mark offered to wipe every rotten memory right out of your head, and teach you Dendra Shemiji secrets, their martial arts, which you’d have been privileged to learn. But you? You’d rather skull out on crap that’ll kill you one day, and then – do this to yourself.”

  The Lushi looked down at his body, in the pearl gray slacks and ice green shirt. “You don’t like it?”

  “No, I don’t like it,” Richard informed him. “It’s not you. It’s not who you were, and who you’ll always be inside. It was you I liked, just the way you were, not … not this.”

  “But this is who I want to be,” Teniko said in that quiet rasp, which was so unlike the voice Travers remembered, he would never have recognized it. “What about what I want?”

  “You’re quite welcome to it.” Vaurien strode to the wet bar between the tall potted palms, and poured himself a shot of bourbon. “I hope you survive to enjoy it. I hope any of this survives.” With the glass, he gestured at the house, at Riga, and Borushek. “Because we’re out of time, we’re strapped for talent, and you’re one of the best minds in the field, and what are you doing? You’re skulling, to get through the pain of – of this!” He gestured jerkily at Teniko, spilling a drop of bourbon. The rest was tossed down his throat a moment later, leaving his voice hoarse. “Take a tip from me, will you? Get the hell off Borushek. Soon. Or you might not live long enough to turn yourself into a Pakrani.”

  The dark eyes were wide, luminous in the house lights, and they shadowed. “It’s happening, isn’t it? It’s now.”

  “Oh, it’s now,” Richard said distractedly, “and I don’t have any more time to waste on your kind of fun and games. You want to trip out of your gourd? Fine. Just don’t bring the horse shit onto any ship of mine, don’t ask me to sit and hold your hand while you do it, or pick up the wreckage when you’re done.”

  “I’m – I’m done with the first phase,” Teniko rasped – too low, too base. An unfamiliar voice. “The clinic doesn’t want to see me for another three months. I’m just … growing.”

  “In agony,” Vaurien observed. “This process wasn’t supposed to be endured by people while they were wide awake, you little fool. This was how they took human stock out of the homeworlds, people like me, and turned us into Kuchini, Pakrani, Mazjeet, whatever.”

  “Lushi,” Teniko whispered. “But only children were redesigned as Lushi, did you know this?” His eyes strayed to Travers. “Did you ever think to ask Bill Grant about his family? It was his parents who came out to the Deep Sky from Australia when they were fourteen, fifteen years old. The took the therapies in mid-flight … slept through most of it, like Richard says. Their parents were small, Eurasian Australians, and the children were reengineered for Lushiar, whether they wanted to be or not.” His lip curled. “It wasn’t ethical.”

  He made an interesting point, and Travers was surprised. He had never spoken to Bill Grant about Lushiar, or growing up Lushi, but he had always known from the Australian accent and attitude, Grant’s genetically pure, homeworlds human origins were not far in the past.

  “Don’t complicate the issue, Tonio,” Vaurien said in hard, unrelenting tones. “The ethics were decided a century ago by people so far away, their decisions, their politics, have nothing to do with our worlds. Bill Grant was born to Lushi parents, who are what their parents made of them when they followed the work, the opportunities, to a small world where the gravity’s light, the air’s thin, the horizon is close, and half the planet is water. Lushiar is beautiful, and the Lushi were custom designed for it, just the same as the Pakrani were designed for their own colony. There’s nothing right or wrong about either one of them. You just … are what you are. Like Jazinsky.”

  “But it’s not what I want to be,” Teniko protested.

  Vaurien groaned. “You want to know what you are? You’re a self-centered little prick.”

  “For wanting to be like Jazinsky.” Teniko had already lapsed into the surly attitude which was much more familiar.

  “For doing it now.” Vaurien swung on him. “For taking the fine mind you were born with and subtracting it from the team which might, and I say might, win the Deep Sky for us – and doing it right now, right here, when the goddamned Zunshu are beating on the gate, and the Resalq are heading out of here so fast –”

  “Heading out and leaving humans to be destroyed.” Teniko’s eyes narrowed on Vaurien. “How self-serving is that?”

  For a moment Vaurien seemed at a loss for words, and Travers held his breath. Richard might have stalked away, or thrown Teniko’s jacket at him and told him to get out. The air in the room crackled with a great charge of static electricity.

  At last Richard arranged himself in the nearest armchair, crossed his long legs at the ankles, folded his hands on his belly and said, “All right, Mister Teniko, I’m listening. What’s your plan for evacuating a world the size and complexity of Borushek, without panicking the public and causing total mayhem? Because only a few percent of them have access to the ships to get themselves out, and there aren’t enough military or civilian vessels to accommodate more than a handful. Who decides who goes, who stays? You? Why you?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Teniko growled, surly indeed now. “I didn’t say there was any way to save humans. I just don’t happen to think the Resalq are as high and fine as you do. They’re just people, like anyone else.”

  “And they should stay here, should they, and be destroyed alongside the human population?” Vaurien demanded. “You need a history lesson. They’re a bloody endangered species, Tonio. And when you’re down to numbers that hardly even constitute a stable gene pool, you bust your buns to protect what’s left, before another species vanishes out of the universe.” His brows arched. “You have an argument with that?”

  There was little Teniko could say. He shuffled to the bar for tequila and ice, and held the glass in both bigger, clumsier hands. The fingers did not look quite right, Travers noticed. The joints were too large, the last digit, and the nails, too small. The process of growth was not balanced across the whole body. Some parts of him were growing faster than others, and though this was normal, it was enough to throw him off balance.

  “I want to help,” he offered a second time.

  “You think you can?” Vaurien sounded skeptical.

  “I’m not on the therapy right now.”

  “No, but you’re growing, you’re in pain, you look weird.”

  “I know,” Teniko said quietly. “They told me it’ll take three years for me to get through it, have it done, and I’ll be like Jazinsky.”

  “Good for you.” Vaurien looked away. “If there’s anything left of the Deep Sky by the time the Zunshu are through raping it, I hope you have a nice life. If they snuff Borushek and Velcastra and Omaru, you’ll be headed in, like the rest of humanity. You going to Pakrenne, or Lith
gow, or somewhere? Maybe some Middle Heavens pit, far enough from Hellgate for you to be safe. Stay the hell out of the Near Sky and the homeworlds. Pakrani are so rare in any city back there, they’ll be gawping at you in the street.”

  “I’m not – not high, not now, not so often,” Teniko muttered. “I can work. I can do what you need.”

  Vaurien looked up at Travers. Travers’s brows rose; his shoulders lifted in the faintest of shrugs. “You should look at yourself,” Richard told Teniko. “You should be back in the sanatorium.”

  “No.” Teniko swallowed the tequila in one swig. “I can work.”

  “You think you can. Your mind’s not clear enough.” Vaurien leaned forward toward him now, elbows on his knees. “One mistake, and you can destroy everything we’ve worked for. There’s no space on a team like this – with professionals like Mark and Barb and Dario – for somebody who’s flying three sheets in the wind.” His brows knitted in a dense frown. “What are you taking?”

  “For the pain?”

  “For anything. What do you take, and how often?”

  “Ibrepal,” Teniko said quietly. “Six hours … four, if it’s … bad.”

  “Shit.” Vaurien settled back in the chair. “The side effects are euphoria and mild hallucinations.”

  Travers groaned soundlessly and shared a sidelong glance with Marin. They were mere spectators at this scene, and Travers hoped Richard would not involve him, because he would not have known what to say.

  “I can handle it,” Teniko was protesting. “The Ibrepal doesn’t cause me a lot of the side effects other people get.”

  “That,” Vaurien said scornfully, “is humbug. I know how Ibrepal works. It adjusts human brain chemistry so you just don’t notice the pain because you’re too busy being euphoric and fantasizing your way through ten different daydreams an hour.”

  “You know a lot about it.” Teniko seemed to object.

  “I should.” Vaurien flexed his left hand and looked up at Travers once more. “This is a clone. You never knew, Neil. You never asked, and I didn’t think it was worth talking about.”