Flashpoint (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  “Of course.” Mark nodded thoughtfully. “Midani Kulich will be invaluable, since he’s handled more Zunshu hardware than we modern Resalq have even seen. I was surprised and pleased when he invited himself along, but I know his decision is mostly the result of the situation between himself and Emil.”

  “They fought?” Travers was far from surprised.

  It was Tor Sereccio, easily within earshot of every word Mark had said, who laughed out loud. “They actually came to blows. Mark and Leon had to get between them, or they’d have slugged it out, and Emil would’ve knocked Midi’s head right off. He was so mad, you could see the smoke coming out of his ears.”

  The autochefs were running continuously now; food was being plated rapidly as Marin wondered, “When it came right down to the line, what did they fight about?”

  “Humans,” Tor said with dark satisfaction. “Or, more specifically, the fact the Kulichs are aliens among their own people, and the Resalq have drifted so close to the human forms, there’s Resalq girls now. True! We met one just before we shipped out of Riga. She’s, uh, female. I mean, the breasts and the empty space where it all ought to be. She actually could be human, you’d never know. Of course, Emil Kulich launched right into one of his boiling-acid tirades. You know how he is.”

  “And Midi,” Roy Arlott went on, “came right out and told him to shut the hell up and let it be, because he was just making enemies for the both of them. Midi,” he said thoughtfully, “sees the sense of surviving, taking something of yourself and your kind into the future, even if you have to make the ultimate compromise to do it. Emil’s the kind to stand on his honor and fight to the death, which only drives a species to extinction. Midani’s philosophy is … now, how did they used to put it?”

  “When you see defeat, turn – run away, survive to win another day,” Marin said with dry humor.

  “That’s it exactly.” Roy saluted him with a half-full schooner of pale ale. “Midi was the one who read everything we gave him, watched every vid, even tried to make sense of our stupid situation dramas on CityNetNet. He filled in the gaps between the day he and Emil were left behind by the Raishenne and the day we opened the stasis chamber. Meanwhile, Emil stuck his big Resalq nose in the air and didn’t even bother to learn the language well enough to start an argument and win it.”

  Dario leaned closer and slung one arm over Roy’s shoulder and the other over Leon’s. “Meaning, Midi Kulich sees the sense of guys like me and Tor and Leon. He sees Leon, shacked up with Roy, and he doesn’t have a problem with it. He’s come to respect humans. But, Emil?” He snorted a harsh, brittle laugh. “Emil has no interest in humans, and I’m sure he’d like to fix us mongrels, castrate us, so we can’t contaminate the bloodline.”

  “Worse,” Leon said pragmatically, “he’s not the only patented Resalq bastard who thinks along these lines. Did you know some of the real geriatrics, the ones who were there when it all happened – eons older than Mark – are still hiding their big, bald heads and double thumbs?”

  In fact, Travers had not known this. He was scanning down the menu displayed on the nearer of the three ’chefs, and chose the chicken and shrimp risotto with asparagus and hollandaise sauce. “These old ones would have opted to go out on the Freyana?” he guessed.

  “Oh, yeah. Emil Kulich is their new poster boy.” Tor snaked one long arm around Dario’s waist. “The sweet new world they’re colonizing is going to be a mess from the start. They’re setting out with three factions all rubbing each other the wrong way. Geriatric Resalq on a racial purity drive. Modern mongrel Resalq families – like Dario and me, only with a couple of kids underfoot, you know? – folks who’re only there to get out of the way of the Zunshu. And about a hundred humans like Roy and Curtis, who joined Resalq families by invitation, and who speak the language well enough to cuss you out in it.” He reached over, brushed Marin’s face with his fingertips. “I remember this little one when he was a kid, hollow cheeked, with eyes full of bruises, right out of Fleet. Mark brought him to the house on Saraine, and to be honest with you, Neil, I thought he’d brought some wounded kid there to die in peace.”

  “Die?” Travers’s head rose in surprise as he took a plate from the ’chef and stood aside to give Marin access.

  “Self-destruct,” Marin said darkly. “I … came close, in the days right after my hitch was up. The Argos incident, and the murder of my best friend, and the fact I was culpable of what the law calls a revenge killing. It has a way of overloading on your mind, poisoning your thoughts, turning your dreams sour. You don’t sleep properly, can’t eat – it’s a long spiral down to hell.”

  “Damn.” Travers watched him punch for a meal of scallops and sea vegetables, wild rice and aromatic sauces, and he acknowledge the twist of his own insides. “I didn’t realize you were so far out there,” he said honestly. Marin’s eyes were dark with old, old introspection. “I owe Mark,” Travers added.

  But Dario only shook his head. “You don’t. Mark doesn’t make a lot of mistakes when it comes to people. He knew Curtis had the potential to be special, far superior to the average student, of either race. And Mark has always needed human operatives in the field. Not one Dendra Shemiji commission in fifty comes from Resalq sources, and even when they do, the target is always human. For at least a century, Mark has needed human agents, and Curtis –? He just had to find the peace and quiet to heal up. What he needed was a home and a chance to start over.”

  “The security of being a human in a Resalq family,” Roy finished. His eyes were wide, dark, as he looked up at the much taller Travers. “Don’t knock it, Neil. You wouldn’t believe how many of us there are. I looked over the complement of the Freyana. If Curtis and I were aboard, it would be six more than a round hundred humans shipping out with them, and only a few are scientists, historians, linguists, there to study. The rest are just – well, just family who blundered into the Resalq community and belonged there.”

  “I don’t knock any part of it,” Travers admitted. He was frowning at Midani Kulich, who had piled a plate with an extraordinary assortment of mismatched food, covered it with wasabi, apricot conserves and mayonnaise, and was taking his place at the table between Mark and Jazinsky. All three had their heads together, and from a pocket Jazinsky produced a handy. The data was already running, and they hunched over it, too intent to even blink. “They,” Travers observed, “work well as a team.”

  “Damned well,” Tor agreed. “It took a lot of courage for Midani to tell Emil to go screw himself, and walk away. He’s … very alien in this company. Hyper-aware of being the odd one out. But he’s trying to blend in, and most of us respect him for it.”

  “Most?” Marin echoed.

  Dario’s wide shoulders lifted in an expressive shrug. “There’s a few of the Wastrel techs who’re still staring and pointing. One or two of them caught a glimpse of him naked, and you know how well endowed the ancient Resalq were. Are. Whatever.” He gave Travers a lewd wink.

  “Midani’s getting offers?” Travers guessed, amused.

  “From the engine deck,” Dario affirmed, “but the truth is, he doesn’t fancy scrawny little humans.”

  “And he’s still inclined to stare and come over dizzy when he sees a buff-naked female,” Tor added with vast humor. “To him, remember, a girl looks like a skinny young fella who’s had a terrible accident. Some of the parts are missing, the replacement extremities are probably still in vitro, being cloned, you understand, scheduled for reassembly. If you’re waiting for Midani to fancy a female, human or one of the new Resalq ladies – and those words are bizarre! – you’ll have a long wait. It’s not in the ancestral Resalq nature. Midi Kulich and a female? It’d have to come down to sheer curiosity, if he ever plucked up the courage. Are we weird, or what?”

  “You’re weird,” Barb Jazinsky said tartly over her shoulder. “Park yourselves, will you? Everybody’s starving. We’ll be done eating before the rest of you even start!”

  The humor was welcome
but fleeting, and as Travers and Marin slid into the seats opposite Vaurien, Jazinsky and the Sherratts, Richard called the company to order. Travers might have hoped for a social dinner, a little too much to drink and a slow slither into the downtime he needed as much as everyone else at this table. Vaurien had other ideas.

  A plate sat in front of him, but he was not eating, and Travers had noticed how he was losing flesh. Richard had always been lean, but he was growing angular under the stress of the command he had accepted. His eyes were shrewd, calculating, as he looked from face to face, and at last he said, looking levelly at Travers,

  “By now you’ll know I’ve agreed to command the Lai’a expedition. The fact is, with the exception of Mark, I’ve logged more hours in Hellgate than anyone else at this table, and that includes the likes of Neil and Alexis, who were on Fleet assignment, and Barb who was there to study the guts of the beast from the inside. Me? I was only there to work, to learn Hellgate’s nasty little tricks, and beat it at its own game.” He shrugged expansively. “I’m still alive to tell the story, which makes me the best option for expedition commander … and I admit, the sound of those words scares the crap out of me. But we’re down to the wire at last, and it’s time for all of us to get real about this. We’re either in, or we’re not.

  “There’s a couple of faces that should be here tonight, but aren’t. You’re not seeing Roark Hubler or Asako Rodman. The Harlequin is with the tech gang, overseeing the installation of the hyper-Weimann module into Lai’a. As most of you know, the power core has been in quarantine for days now. We weren’t about to handle it, much less install it, until we saw the early warning signs of an event that would get us inside the actual guts of Hellgate. Elarne. We’ve been tracking big storms for some time, and at this moment we’re on standby, monitoring a beauty. Roark and Asako are in armor right now, wading up to their armpits in the fallout of the engine core.

  “If you know anything about J-type gravitons, Jung particles, you’ll know they’re so heavy, they straddle the boundary line, the e-space horizon. They’re active in e-space, reactive in normal space. They hemorrhage out of Zunshunium. They fry living tissue, make the proverbial Gordian knot out of DNA, and a hyper-Weimann module the size of the one being installed in Lai’a is more toxic than the entire Albeniz system compressed into a box the size of just one of our holds.

  “You’ll forgive us if we kept the module a half billion kilometers away from this taskforce till the crucial moment! Which,” Vaurien added pointedly, “has arrived. Roark and Asako will be watching the vids of this conference when they’re done.” He was glaring at Teniko now. “They were supposed to have a specialist aboard, but they’ll manage.”

  In fact, Travers thought, they were probably better off without Teniko’s presence. For him, the timing was all wrong. The work had to be done to schedule, but the drugs that kept him functional were also administered according to another schedule. If he did not get them, he would be worse than useless, and in the hour right after they had been injected, he was too high to undertake exacting, potentially dangerous work.

  Along the table, not far from Teniko, Bill Grant gave a quiet snort of derision, and Tully Ingersol was muttering. Teniko was only just aware enough of his company to know he was being criticized. He had not noticed Richard’s glare, and he answered Ingersol and Grant only with his middle finger.

  “Roark and Asako can handle it,” Jazinsky said smoothly. “I offered to be there, and they both told me to get the hell out of their work, and add my ten credits’ worth here. I’m going to run the transspace physics lab aboard Lai’a, so this is one briefing I can’t afford to miss.”

  “Transspace.” Alexis Rusch tried the new term on her tongue. “I like it. The realm transcending e-space … Elarne itself.”

  Shapiro leaned forward over the table toward her. “And the invitation stands, Alexis. You’re here because, if you want it, there’s a lab for you aboard Lai’a’s new habitation module.” He looked along the table at the rest of the company. “They’ve fitted the body of the old cruiser Apollo, which we lost in the Drift eight years ago. We never knew what became of it, but Richard tells me it’s been close to Alshie’nya for most of that time, being used as storage for delicate cargo.”

  “Right,” Richard affirmed. “She was always kept pressurized, with decent generators. Her engines were damaged, her electronics fried in a major temporo-gravitic event, but the hull is as sound as it ever was. We can promise you a degree of comfort. Proper staterooms, life support, decent food, water, heat. Living conditions will be about what you’re used to aboard something like the Mercury. Not quite as luxurious as the Wastrel, but then, the habitation module is a workshop, not home.”

  “Not home,” Dario mused. “That’s got to make me ask the obvious, Rick. Do we have any idea how long this expedition is going to take? You’re offering decent living conditions in a workshop … are we talking weeks, months or years in transit, in the field, with Lai’a?”

  Now, Richard could only spread his hands and look along the table. “I’m going to let you answer this one, Mark.”

  The question was shrewd, and Travers appreciated it. Dario and Tor had already committed to the Lai’a mission. Now they were looking on, much further down the track, and trying to frame an understanding of how long they would be in Elarne – in transspace – and when they could expect to return. The sober assumption, Travers realized, was that Elarne was perfectly navigable, survivable, and the Lai’a expedition would be a success.

  Yet Elarne was only part of the problem, and from the cautious, shuttered look on Mark’s face, he was less concerned with shooting the rapids of Hellgate than with the confrontation Shapiro was hoping for. He cradled a glass of white wine, studied it as if it were a crystal ball, and spoke carefully.

  “There are no easy answers. Can Lai’a maneuver inside Hellgate? Yes. This is no longer conjecture – we know a great deal, since the Orpheus data return, and the success of the Lai’a mission is directly attributable to the contribution made by Michael Vidal and Jo Queneau. The Deep Sky will be indebted to them forever. But once we’re in Elarne, navigating the region which has come to be termed transspace, we’ll still need to find the Zunshu. Although we’ve recently come into possession of a kind of map revealing their approximate location, you need to understand that this map has no scale. Distance, velocity and time are variables I can’t begin to put any real values into.”

  “A map?” Marin patted his lips with a napkin and switched from wine to water, poured from the cut crystal carafe between him and Mark.

  “The device we picked up on Celeste,” Jazinsky told him. “I was right. It was part of a comm chain, not unlike the Deep Sky data conduit. That little contraption was perfectly capable of routing a signal home through the Drift. It’s taken us weeks to even begin to understand how it functions, and even now I’m not sure of most of it. Dario has a better grasp of the hardware than I do, and Mark knows a lot more about the guts of Elarne. But you could call it a kind of map. Give us a few more weeks, and we’ll be able to interpret the route of the signal, which will give Lai’a its course. But as for putting a scale on this map?” Her head shook. “Not a chance.”

  “So,” Mark went on, “we can only start to make inspired guesses.” He set down the glass and clasped his hands on the table before him. “What do we know for sure? We know, fact, the Ebre’zjim was able to cut a navigable path through Elarne, find the Zunshu and come to grief, all in a matter of four years, and this included more than two years of exploration in the Drift before contact was made between them and the Zunshu. This tells us that if we follow in the wake of the Ebre’zjim, we can expect to spend a very long time on this journey!

  “Not,” he added deliberately, “that retracing the course of the Ebre’zjim is an option. Every skerrick of the original data was lost during the years when the Resalq were exterminated. Today, we can reference little more than the tales told by the very elderly Resalq who are right now
aboard the Freyana, heading out on a very different expedition.” He looked up at Midani Kulich and smiled. “The oldest surviving Resalq are, alas, not scientists or explorers! What they remember is only the framework of our history, not the details. The Ebre’zjim did launch, and did communicate with us for years. Her transspace flight was an unqualified success … her contact with the first alien species of our acquaintance was an utter disaster.”

  “And that confrontation,” Shapiro said bleakly, “is the one this mission is rushing toward. However, the Ebre’zjim was not a warship. In fact, neither is Lai’a! What Lai’a is, I’m not quite sure. Talking to it, one has the sensation that it’s alive. The Resalq AI is eerie. Mark?”

  Mark was nodding slowly. “It’s self-aware, capable of learning, and it’s been gifted with a sense of conscience. It knows right from wrong, at least insofar as Resalq and humans perceive these qualities. You’re wondering, Harrison, if you can issue orders for Lai’a to assault some Zunshu fleet, or perhaps even installations on their worlds?”

  For a moment Shapiro hesitated. “I’d dearly like to believe a peaceful solution can be negotiated, but in the event relations break down between this expedition and the Zunshu, as they obviously did between the Zunshu and the Resalq, a military solution might be the only option left. And Lai’a,” he added, “is the most terrible weapon either of our cultures has ever developed. If it won’t take orders, what use is it?”

  “It won’t follow orders blindly,” Mark amended. “And nor should it. Consider Lai’a as your ally, your operative, your collaborator, fully aware of what’s at stake, what’s been suffered, and what must be done. Just as you would expect a human officer – Neil or Curtis, say – to view any orders given to them through the lens of their own intelligence and conscience, you can expect Lai’a to respond with discrimination. Sensible orders will be complied with. Foolishness or madness will be countered with rationale.”