Event Horizon (Hellgate) (123 page)

“You notice that.” Ingersol hesitated. “It’s a long story, Rick, but we’re here to tell the tale. For that matter, so is Omaru.”

“Jesus,” Jazinsky breathed, “you didn’t take the
Esprit
into some half-assed battle?”

“Me – on a warship?” Ingersol gave a snort of humor. “Why don’t you come on over? We’re setting up for dinner. I’ll regale you … damnit, Rick, you’ve been gone a long time.”

“Five months,” Marin said softly. “Neil?”

Their bags were packed – again. The luggage stood in the doorway to a stateroom where they had never properly settled in, and the lure of the
Wastrel
was powerful. How often had Vaurien made Travers the offer of that ship as home?

“We’ll be right over,” Richard was saying. “We have quite a story to tell, Tully.”

The engineer skipped a beat. “You hammered a truce out of the bastards? Tell me Shapiro argued them into a treaty.”

“It’s complicated.” Vaurien gave Jazinsky and Travers a tired smile. “We’ll be with you in ten, Tully. Why don’t you break out the good brandy?”

Ingersol breathed an audible sigh. “We’re celebrating, then.”

“There’s a lot to celebrate,” Jazinsky promised.

But Travers heard the shadow in her tone even if Ingersol did not, and he was watching a muscle twitch in Vaurien’s jaw, betraying clenching teeth. He lifted a brow at Marin, and Curtis said quietly, “I’ll get the bags, Neil. Meet you in the hangar.”

“Thanks.” Travers watched him step out of the makeshift Ops room with Rabelais and Queneau a pace behind him. Rusch and Shapiro were talking over the loop, both of them monitoring the datafeed from the
Wastrel
, and Shapiro in particular was anxious. Travers tuned them out and joined Vaurien as he and Jazinsky locked down Operations for the last time. They were headed for the service elevator, and Travers was a pace behind Richard.

The Capricorn had already commenced startup procedures and Perlman’s voice was a whisper of background comm. She and Fargo were running the full preflight routine for a plane that had not done service in two months –

Two months
shiptime
, Travers told himself as Vidal called, “Hey, wait for me, guys. I need to check in with Mahak. Ten minutes, max. Ernst and Jo went for the baggage.”

“Take your time, Mick,” Vaurien said easily. “Rushing now won’t make a damn’ bit of difference. We have five months to catch up on. And I,” he added, “want to know what the hell happened to my ship.”

“You heard Tully.” Jazinsky paused as the lift opened, and stepped in ahead of Vaurien. “Omaru’s still there … sounds like another world-wrecker came out of Hellgate.”

“And the
Esprit
was too close for comfort,” Travers added as he watched Vidal jog away toward the Sherratts’ lab. “Sounds horribly familiar.” He breathed a long sigh as Perlman reported the Capricorn in good trim and began to call passengers, and set a hand on Vaurien’s arm. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Vaurien lied.

“You’re not,” Jazinsky said tartly.

“She’s in one piece.” Travers gestured in the direction of the
Wastrel
’s sister ship. “If she’s here, she’ll fix.”

“Damage report,” Vaurien growled. He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Welcome home, Richard. Nice to see you, Richard … oh, and incidentally, we wrecked your ship.”

“Maybe,” Jazinsky allowed. “But you better find out how and why before you chew a chunk out of Tully.”

The hangar was warm with the plane’s engine draft, aromatic with the acid chemistry of big engines. Travers’s sinuses prickled as he went aboard, and from a seat behind the pilot he watched Shapiro and Rusch walk out from the elevator. Tim Inosanto and Reuben Kravitz were loading Bravo’s baggage – eager to get back to what Inosanto called ‘the real world.’ They were due downtime, furlough, and Travers recalled the feeling. They would soon be in the danceshops, sexshops and veeree dens of Elstrom’s pungent citybottom, and once, not so long ago, Travers would have been with them.

“No bags, Harrison?” Vaurien wondered as Shapiro and Rusch boarded the plane. “You’re coming back to the driftship?”

But Shapiro gestured over his shoulder. “The Sherratts are loading a mountain of gear right now. Alexis and I just added our few bags to the pile. Dario and Tor are setting up to tear the AI chassis right out of the driftship. They’re staying back to take care of it – Mark’s already given orders to strip the main AI lab out of the
Carellan
.”

“Six or eight hours.” Rusch settled into the seat beside Shapiro. “By the early hours of the morning, shiptime, if you wanted to leave Alshie’nya, you should be good to go.”

“Where’s the hurry?” Travers wondered. “You said it yourself, Richard. We already lost the three months. We won’t get them back by running around in a frenzy.”

As he spoke, Jim Fujioka and Bill Grant strolled out from the elevator. Fujioka was eager to get over to the
Wastrel
and compare notes with Ingersol. She was his ship now. Like Grant, he had not wasted his time since the
Intrepid
, and his studies in Arago technology and its close second cousin, Weimann dynamics, would have put him on any commercial ship – if he had been certified. Like Ingersol before him, Fujioka was one of the best in the business, but his skills would not be recognized in the Deep Sky. He would find his place in Freespace, Travers knew – like Bill Grant.

Over the loop, Tor Sereccio was talking to specialists on the
Carellan Djerun
. They were gabbling their own language at such high speed, Travers could not get a word of it, but he knew they were making arrangements for the AI core to be lifted out of the driftship. A Resalq team would be aboard in an hour, charged with moving the massive holographic memory crystal and its housing. A lab was already being powered up on the
Wastrel
, and the
Carellan
’s
sterntubes had brightened. She was maneuvering to come alongside and dock on.

The science team’s work never stopped, Travers thought, yet for himself and Marin, it was over. They would be at a loose end, and for the moment he was content to drift for the first time since his conscription notice had been posted when he was seventeen years old. If Shapiro had made the decision to remain on Borushek, or perhaps transfer over to Elstrom SkyCity in Velcastra’s stratosphere, Neil and Curtis might have been offered the security assignment. But like Vaurien, Shapiro was moving on.

“Like us,” Travers said softly as Perlman issued last calls to passengers before the Capricorn launched.

Vidal was the last aboard, a pace behind Mark with a gaudy backpack slung over one shoulder. Sherratt carried none at all. Their baggage would be loaded on the cargo sleds headed for the new lab; and Lai’a itself would be on the last of those sleds. Vidal plunked down in the seat behind Travers, beside Sherratt, leaving the seat beside Neil open for Marin.

“We’re missing someone,” he observed. And then, into the loop, “Hey, Curtis, you’re about to miss your flight.”

Over the comm Marin’s voice was light with amusement. “I got waylaid – I’m on my way. Hey, Gill, one more minute, and I’ll lock up your cargo hatches.”

The Capricorn was at capacity, every seat filled, and Travers doubted there was space for all their bags in the under-deck storage. Marin appeared from the elevator moments later and, sure enough, he brought three small bags aboard, handed one to Neil and kicked one underfoot, for the brief shuttle flight.

The hatches slammed and Tim Inosanto checked them. He gave Perlman clearance and she called into the loop, “Driftship Flight, this is Driftship 101, cycle the hangar anytime you want.”

Operations had been left under Joss’s control. The AI was as tranquil as the versions of itself on the
Carellan
and at the houses in Riga and on Saraine. “Standby, Pilot. Hangars will cycle momentarily.”

“It’s over,” Marin said quietly as the familiar red spinners and sirens kicked on across the deck, and the hangar blew down fast.

At a few bars of pressure left on the scale the outer doors opened to space, and Travers saw the
Wastrel
and the
Carellan Djerun
framed there. Perlman took the plane out and down, rolled her over to approach the belly hangars in the big ship, and from there Neil caught a clear glimpse of the
Esprit de Liberté
.

“Damn, she was in some kind of a fight,” Vidal murmured. “Maybe you ought to see the other guy before casting aspersions.”

Vaurien was on the other side of the plane, his view not quite as good. “I’m not casting anything. I just want to know. She wasn’t supposed to fight – and sure, Lai’a came home beat-up, but we knew we were headed to war.”

“We also knew Hellgate wouldn’t be the safest place to cruise,” Vidal added, “until we talked our deal with the Zunshu.”

“Speaking of which,” Marin said in Vaurien’s and Shapiro’s direction, “the reason I was late getting down with the baggage was Roark. He and Asako are loading the
Harlequin
right now. They already worked out a cruise pattern to lay down the first network of comm drones … they figure they’re going to need maybe double the number in supply right now. The manufacturing bays are still working at capacity, according to Joss.”

“And they
fabricators’ll
need resupply soon.” Jazinsky was watching the red wink of the
Wastrel
’s acquisition lights. “Lai’a burned through a great deal of the original load – drones and ordnance.”

“I’ll task the Earthlight to reload,” Vaurien said easily. He lifted a brow at Shapiro. “The only floating question is, who’s picking up the bill? It’s not going to be cheap, and if we’re to go on and provide individual systems, much less Freespace systems, with the safety net of a chain of comm drones – well, it’d punch a big hole in the Fleet appropriation fund.”

“It’s an issue for President Chandra Liang,” Shapiro decided. “Open a tab. Start with Hellgate itself, figure on protecting Velcastra, Borushek, Omaru, Jagreth, the worlds that are too close for comfort … work the rest out later.”

“Not too much later,” Mark warned. “One mistake, and a hundred million people can be gone in an instant. Robert, Alec and the others don’t want to get complacent and learn the hard way.”

“I won’t let them get complacent,” Shapiro said grimly.

“And I’ll pick up the tab, Richard,” Sherratt offered, “for the protection of Saraine. It’s far enough out for the Zunshu approach roads to be quite narrow – much easier to defend than Omaru and Borushek, which are so perilously close to Hellgate, one shudders to consider the amount of luck involved in them surviving this long.”

Vaurien’s face was grim indeed. “The
Wastrel
caught the Borushek device, remember. And from hints Tully dropped, the
Esprit
might have caught a device intended for Omaru.”

“And the weapon didn’t run headfirst into one of our minefields in the Hellgate exit roads,” Jazinsky added. “It should have. What went wrong?”

“A very good question.” Vaurien flexed his left side, which stiffened every time he sat for any length of time, or stood too long. “Tully will have the answers.”

The Capricorn had nosed up into the hangar while he spoke, and Perlman set it down smoothly. The deck hatches closed with a deep rumble Travers felt through the bones of feet and shins as she called Ops. “Home again, home again,” she sang into the
Wastrel
’s busy loop, “
jiggity
jig.”

“Feel free to jig on your own time, lady,” Ingersol chuckled, “I got way too much to do. Hey, Rick, come right on up to the crew lounge. Dinner. You got Resalq with you?”

“Just me,” Mark told him. “I’m easy – I’ve worked among humans for long enough to learn how to eat almost anything.”

“You mean, you can chow down on this muck we call food?” Ingersol chuckled again. “I’ll make sure the ’chef’s set up, Doc.”

“Wine,” Jazinsky suggested. “Anything dry and white, and keep it coming.”