Flashpoint (Hellgate)

by Mel Keegan

  For the first time Shapiro smiled. “And gods forbid that I should go blundering down the road to idiocy and insanity! Good enough, Mark. You trust the machine?”

  “I designed its mind,” Mark said softly. “Lai’a is almost as much my child as Dario and Leon. Of course I trust it. Lai’a is fundamentally Resalq, no matter the fact its body is of human construction – the Intrepid – and its life force, its generators and engines, are very much Zunshu.”

  “Retuning to the question of how long we can expect to be in the Drift,” Dario mused, “we also know from the Orpheus data that Mick Vidal very quickly picked up a temporal stream. This stream raced the Orpheus into what we could call the future, at about double our concept of normal time. If Tor, Barb and I can unravel enough of this scaleless map we picked up out of Freespace, we might be able to find congruencies between the Zunshu signal vector and the Orpheus flightpath.”

  “Maybe,” Richard speculated, “we can get Lai’a into a temporal current that’ll carry us along the Zunshu signal stream, like following a homing beacon, and take us there at two or three times anything we think of as normal time.”

  The concept stretched Travers’s grasp of anything he thought he knew about physics. It sounded more akin to sorcery than science, but when he looked from Jazinsky to Rusch and the Sherratts, he saw the same frown on every face. Even Mark struggled to get a tenuous hold on the mechanisms of transspace, but they knew what they knew – what Mick Vidal had known, the moment he and Queneau guided the Orpheus in through the jaws of the event. The hyper-Weimann drive would ignite inside Elarne, and transspace was navigable.

  A faint shudder through the hull of the Wastrel made the whole company return to reality with a start. Only Madame Deuel, who had never been a spacer, murmured in startlement, and Shapiro said quickly,

  “Nothing to worry about, Madame. It’s just the Wastrel’s engines starting to drive. In a ship this size, when the hull comes under thrust for the first time, there’s no way to fully dampen the initial shove.”

  As he spoke, Vaurien was listening to his combug, and when Shapiro fell silent he said, “That was Greenstein from the flightdeck. The Harlequin reported the hyper-Weimann module in place twenty minutes ago. Lai’a has run every diagnostic in the repertoire and estimates just a few percent under full efficiency, which is fine … and we’re tracking the seeds of what’s going to be a very major event, at least Class Six, could be Seven. We’ve been tracking storms for the last two days, and this is the best and biggest we’ve seen yet. It’s time,” he said tersely, “to go hunting.”

  Hunting – chasing one of the massive Hellgate storms which opened a portal into Elarne. A shiver took Travers unawares, and he swallowed on a belly that was suddenly uneasy. Tully Ingersol was on his feet as Richard spoke. “I’ll be on the engine deck,” he said, already punching the autochef for dessert and coffee on his way by.

  “And I’ll be in the lab, talking to Lai’a.” Jazinsky pushed away from the table. One hand dropped on Richard’s shoulder. “Game on.”

  “Could you use a hand?” Alexis Rusch was halfway out of her chair. “There’s not much I can do on the cutting edge of the numbers … but I do know how to keep the coffee coming, and you know this is the work I’ve spent my whole life doing.”

  Jazinsky beckoned. “You’re in … what about you, Tonio?”

  But his eyes were dark, slightly out of focus, and when he seemed to hunt for words it was Grant who said, “Give him an hour, and you’ll start to get some sense out of him. I’ve got him on the smallest dosage, to keep him vaguely coherent, but he’s still high as a kite, stupid sod.”

  “Where do you want us?” Marin was up too, and Travers watched him make his way down the back of the table to the ’chef for two mugs.

  “Pick your territory,” Richard invited. “I’ll be in the ops room, just keeping out of the way and letting people do their stuff. Harrison, you’re welcome to come along and watch. In fact, if the rest of you would care to pull up a chair and be spectators at a major Hellgate fireworks show, you’ll enjoy a spectacle very few people ever get to see.”

  Chandra Liang pushed out his chair and gave his hand to the ex-wife from whom he was lately inseparable. “I believe we’ll take you up on the offer.”

  The coffee was hot, sweet, strong. Travers took a deep swig and made a face at the sludge-like consistency, but Marin was right – the caffeine would bring his mind back into gear. The Sherratts helped themselves to dessert on the way out, and Midani Kulich stuck with them, obviously feeling more secure in Resalq company. But Shapiro and Jon Kim hung back, and Travers saw the question in the older man’s face.

  “Well?” Shapiro was watching Kim at the ’chef, punching for fruit, gelato and liqueur sauce. “You’ve heard it all now. You know as much as the rest of us do.”

  “About the Lai’a expedition,” Travers agreed. “Do you want to share intel about the situation back in the Deep Sky?”

  “You know most of it.” Shapiro paused to take a bowl and a glass of something cherry-red and rich. “The Chicago is a week away. The London is behind her. The key colonies are already equipped with the Zunshu weapon, and will declare independence with absolutely precise timing. There’s no more any of us can do to influence the Colonial Wars … and as for the Zunshu presence in the Deep Sky, the continual loss of our outlying colonies? If there’s a way to stop them, we’re not going to find it here.”

  Indecision hung over Travers like a shroud, and he saw the same shadow behind Marin’s eyes. “I still haven’t had a chance to talk to Mark,” Curtis said quietly. “Do you know if he’s with Lai’a and his kids, or with the Freyana and his people?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Shapiro admitted. “He told me a great deal about this man, Emil Kulich. If anyone has the ability to keep the Freyana safe, it would be him. Like Kulich or hate him, you can’t fail to respect him.”

  “But even his brother walked away from him,” Travers mused. “Look, let us talk to Mark. Privately. We’ll let you know.”

  “Don’t be too long in the deciding, Colonel,” Shapiro warned. “Time’s almost up.”

  “Colonel?” Travers echoed.

  “Promotion – overdue, as I said.” Shapiro accorded him a faint smile. “With this rank you’ll retire on full pay from the colonial government you served … if there’s anything to retire to,” he added. “The paperwork will be in order, Jon will see to it. Beyond that, I can’t promise anything. Like the rest of us, I can only hope.” His eyes were dark, solemn, and he shepherded Jon Kim out before him, in the direction of the ops room.

  “Christ,” Marin breathed when they found themselves alone in the mess. “Like the man said, we’re down to the wire, and I still don’t know. Mark said we would, and it would be easy, when the time came.”

  “Then, this isn’t the time,” Travers said shrewdly. “Not yet.”

  “Not the time?” Marin gestured at the deck, where the thick, heavy vibration of monstrous sublight engines was a faint buzz transmitting into the ankles and shin bones. “We’re here. We’re chasing a Drift storm. It’s happening! And part of me wants to see this sweet new world they’ve discovered, weeks off the charts. Part of me wants to be looking at properties in the Three Rivers part of Darwin’s. Part of me wants to be with the madmen, the certifiable crazies, aboard Lai’a.” He gave Travers a pained look. “God, I don’t know anymore. I don’t know if I ever knew anything. Look at me! Colonel Marin. There was a time I thought this was all I wanted. The rank. Command rank. Now? It’s … empty, Neil. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  But it did, and Travers was sharply aware of the gravity of the position. “Command rank,” he echoed. “You want a ship under you, a ship of your own?”

  Marin’s eyes were silver in the lights. “A warship, with the Colonial Wars rampaging?” he asked softly.

  But Travers had looked further. “After the wars – Colonial and Zunshu. An exploration ship, headed out, charting space no human ever
saw before.”

  The offer seemed to taunt Marin. For some moments he chewed on it, and then gave Travers an odd half smile and set a hand on his arm. “I’ll ... get back to you on that. You want to watch the fireworks –?”

  With a dozen extra seats wheeled in, the ops room was crowded. The navtank was bright, filled with a threedee display of the data streaming through the Wastrel’s sensor platforms, while the flatscreens ranked around the periphery relayed the displays from Jazinsky’s lab and from the pilots’ stations up on the flightdeck.

  The storm was still brewing, and it was already a beast. Tendrils of energy snapped and crackled along the line where it would eventually break. The fabric of space itself, and the elusive substance of time, would rupture, and nature would permit a fleeting glimpse into the void within. Lai’a was right beside the Wastrel, riding her starboard side, like two leviathans wallowing through the deep ocean.

  Two of the flatscreens showed long-range vids, and it was eerily like looking into the past. The Intrepid was back in Hellgate, and hunting again, albeit not for wreckers. Travers gave it one long look, and recalled the little he had seen of the Orpheus telemetry. He shivered as he pulled a chair up to the end of a workstation where Leon and Roy sat with Midani Kulich.

  Only Kulich was working. His fingers flew over a handy which looked oddly small in his palm, and he was muttering to himself in his own language.

  In the last months, Roy Arlott had learned to follow the original Resalq at speed. “Quesne felcharen,” he said quietly. “Midani, soelo kahunj, lei?”

  “Lei,” Kulich sighed, and set the handy aside. He looked up, saw Travers’s eyes on him, and forced a smile. He still spoke the human tongue hesitatingly, and with a dense accent, but his grasp of it was much better. “I know, they know pretty good what they doing. And me, am not … was not never much good scientist. I was good tech. More like Tully, no like Barb. I no have brains for do what they do, Barb and Mark.”

  “But you like to keep tabs on them, as long as you can,” Travers observed. “You’re going with Lai’a.”

  “I go,” Kulich agreed. “For me, is like …” He looked at Arlott for help. “Enar’jive, you know this?”

  It was Leon who said, “It means vengeance hunting, or a quest for justice. It’s an archaic term, Neil, almost alien to the Resalq, but not unknown.” He lifted a brow at Travers. “We have our soldiers.”

  “Like Emil,” Kulich said darkly.

  “But it’s you who’s going with Lai’a,” Marin added speaking slowly to give him a chance of following, “while Emil is out there, opening up a new colony with the Freyana.”

  To Travers’s surprise, Kulich’s eyes glittered with anger. “Could have be Emil go with Lai’a, no me. But then? Then me, Midani is captain with Freyana. Emil never lets happen, never lets Midani go above.”

  “You mean –” Travers chuckled, “it’s a sibling thing? Emil always had to beat you, and if anyone was going to be the captain of the last surviving Resalq colony ship, it was going to be him?”

  “Damn’ right,” Kulich said bitterly, with a genuine hint of the colonial accent – a term that had no literal translation from the Resalq, but an original humanism which make sense to him. “But still,” he said darkly, “I get enar’jive, me, go in glory of justick hunting. Is good enough.”

  “Justice,” Arlott corrected quietly.

  “Justisss,” Kulich repeated. “Tisss. Maybe is me future remembers, last old Resalq, with Lai’a, get justice from Zunshu, yes?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Leon agreed. “Let Emil have the Freyana. He’s welcome to it. You’re part of the best crew that ever flew together. You were ten years in Fleet, Neil. You tell him.”

  The best crew that ever flew together? Travers brows rose, and he looked into Marin’s stormy eyes as he said, “I never flew with a crew like it, and I served with some great ones. Speaking of which, Leon … your equero. Coming or staying?”

  “Ask him yourself,” Leon said guardedly. “He’s swinging like a bloody pendulum. He wants to be in two places at once.”

  “Only two?” Marin seemed to force a smile. “I’m trying to be in three, Leon, and it’s enough to drive you right out of your head.” He was looking for Mark even then, but before he could call his name, the tug pilot’s voice cut across the loop and the ops room came to order fast.

  “Ops room, standby,” Greenstein said sharply. “We’re reading fifty to eighty gravities off the shoulders of this monster, and more radiation than you want to know about. We’ve been waiting for our shot, and here she comes.”

  And then Jazinsky: “Lai’a is powering up Aragos. Hyper-Weimanns are on standby.”

  “And the event,” Rusch added, “is still increasing at the same rate … she’ll be a giant, even among Class Sevens. We used to call these ‘ship killers,’ because we’ve seen them chew up and spit out a hull the size of a super-carrier. Or swallow it whole, and it’s just plain gone.”

  Vaurien stepped into the lights at the end of the navtank. “Bring the whole ship on alert, Etienne,” he said softly to the AI. And then, into the loop, to the pilot, “Standby for collision procedures, Yuval.”

  A sharp hiss issued from Madame Deuel – the colonial governor’s daughter who had never set foot on industrial or military ships before. “Collision?”

  “A misnomer, Madame,” Vaurien said in the same soft tone. “We’re chasing a gravity storm, of course, but when it tries to get hold of us we’ll be using powerful, interweaved Arago fields to fend it off, which is exactly the strategy we use to punt asteroids out of our path when we’re working a Drift mine like the Bronowski Reef. It’s a procedure termed collision avoidance in industrial ships. The risk is minimal.”

  “Minimal?” she echoed.

  He angled a rare smile at her. Travers had forgotten how charming Richard’s smile could be. “You’re in little real danger, ma’am, and hazard management is our specialty.”

  “This crew is the best in the business, Madame Deuel,” Shapiro said levelly. “You need have no hesitation about trusting them to do what they do … and I’m reading the telemetry from Lai’a. It’s ready to insert, when the event approaches optimum.”

  “The hyper-Weimanns have entered ignition sequencing,” Jazinsky reported. “I’m seeing smooth, even wave patterns, identical to the patterns we read off the Orpheus and exactly what we expected to see. We’re good to go.”

  But the event was still growing, and Travers’s eyes were drawn to the displays. He watched with the familiar horrified fascination as the fabric of space began to visibly distort, shivering, shimmering, folding on itself and puckering around an epicenter of incredible gravities. A major Hellgate storm was never easy to watch. A spectator seemed to be standing on the lip of a cliff, gazing into a void which yawned open at his feet, and which had no end.

  Unable to be still, Mark Sherratt was on his feet and pacing, dividing his attention between the displays, the data stream from the tug’s own sensor platforms, and the Lai’a telemetry. He had a combug in his right ear and spoke quietly to it, in the native Resalq. Among the human company, only Arlott and Marin troubled to listen, and even Marin shook his head as he was unable to get more than a few words.

  Without needing to be prompted, Roy translated. “He asks, ‘How do you feel, Lai’a?’ It answers, ‘I have no issues. All systems are functioning within a few percent of maximum.’ He asks, ‘The transspace drive?’ It answers, ‘Cannot be adequately tested outside of the event. Forty seconds to insertion. Sixty seconds to transspace drive ignition. Aragos at capacity.’ He says, ‘Can you see into the event?’ And it says, ‘I can. I am relaying data to the Wastrel AI. I am receiving signals from Elarne.’”

  “Signals?” Travers echoed. “What kind of signals?”

  The same question made Vaurien’s eyes wide and glitter. “Barb, are we getting signals out of the event?”

  It was Rusch who answered. “I’ve taken over comm, Richard … and I’m reading the sam
e thing as Lai’a. It looks like some kind of signals, but I’ve never seen such distortion. They’re warped, twisted up – I’m trying to enhance them. They look recent, no more than a couple of hours since transmission, but we know enough about Hellgate not to be fooled. Given the temporal flux, they could be centuries old.”

  In the navtank, the event tore open at last, wrenched space apart from the inside and opened a cavernous maw. The lips and jaws glared white, blue, mauve, fluorescing and dancing with world-sized arcs of energy, forces Travers could scarcely grasp. Within was a blackness so dense, it was like looking into a well of nothing.

  And Lai’a was underway. Sublight engines drove it hard, directly for the center of the storm. The long range vidfeed showed a blinding white corona, marking the position of its sterntubes, and over the comm its voice said with surreal calm,

  “Insertion in fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen.”

  “Jesus,” Jazinsky whispered, “I’m reading eighty G’s in the jaws of the event. Mark, you want to call it off? Mark?”

  “Lai’a, read the G-flux,” Sherratt said sharply.

  “G-flux is tolerable,” Lai’a said in the same cool tones. Insertion in ten. Drive ignition in thirty.”

  “Ninety G’s,” Jazinsky whispered. “Lai’a has to be getting the same readings off it … tell me it knows what it’s doing.”

  “It knows,” Mark said soundlessly.

  As he spoke, the strange hybrid ship with the Resalq mind vanished into the star-bright glare at the lips of the event, and Travers took a quick breath as he discovered his lungs burning. He was watching Mark now, and Mark was intent on the datastreams as well as the comm. Lai’a was still speaking but had moved back into the Resalq, and Travers could tell more from Mark’s face than from the telemetry.