Event Horizon (Hellgate) (29 page)

“Of course.” Shapiro adjusted his combug. “
Wastrel
, this is …
Sark
.
Wastrel
, do you copy?”

Richard Vaurien’s voice was like balm on raw nerves. Marin found himself turning to the sound like a plant to the light. “
Sark
, we’re ten minutes from Bahrain and monitoring your comm. You’ve got several ships in a bad way. Space is full of escape pods and we’re hearing a lot of distress calls. Do you want us to assist?”

“Commander
Wastrel
… go ahead.” Shapiro took a long breath. His eyes closed for a moment, and when they opened they were clear, calm. “Catch the escape pods and vector them to the
Sark
. Take the crews off the vessels that are in immediate danger, and transfer them to our simulation deck. Push the worst of the wreckage into orbit around
Barhrain
… assess the viable hulls, and tow the most salvageable
two
of them to the polar docks. Park anything else salvageable by Rashid.”

“Understood,” Vaurien responded. “
Sark
, do you want us to take care of those runaways for you? On the vector they’re holding, they’re going to pass close to us.”

For a moment Shapiro seemed to consider it, and then said, “No,
Wastrel
, we’ll take them. Standby the distressed ships – give priority to them and the escape pods.”

“Will comply,” Vaurien said easily. “Neil, Curtis, are you online?”

Travers touched his combug. “Right here, Richard.”

“We estimate up to a thousand survivors for transfer to your belly deck,” Vaurien warned. “You’re going to need security.”

“We’re on it.” Travers was already moving.

The same thought had been on Marin’s mind for days, since the consequences of fighting here were examined, and this predicament had featured prominently in Shapiro’s preparation. “God only knows who and what we’re taking aboard,” he said softly to Shapiro and Rusch. “And we’re not a hundred percent sure of the
Sark
’s own complement at this time. We’ll set up to wrangle security, with your authorization. Your own people have enough to do.”

“Do it,” Rusch said without hesitation, though her eyes were still fixed on the display where the frigates
Arke
and
Circe
had formed up together, as if for safety in numbers, and by now were a few scant seconds short of tractor range. “And while you’re doing it, I’ll transmit the defection deal. These people need to know the score.”

The statement had been crafted days before, she had only to drop a cube into a data socket and send it. The message whispered in Marin’s ears as he and Travers turned their attention to security, and it would be received right across the blockade by any ship that still had the power to receive.

The workstation monitoring onboard security was well back from the navtank, flanked by the life support and tech displays. Travers laid his palm on the screen and keyed in his ID code, and the AI recognized him at once. Marin stood back now, letting Neil take this – nobody was more familiar with a super-carrier’s belly decks than one who had come up through the ranks and served years as a master sergeant, though Marin knew what Travers was doing.

Memories of Holdfast,
Malteppe
were so pungent in his mind, he could literally smell the reek of the mud again as he watched Travers configuring the biggest of the simulation tanks to accommodate a large body of people in a degree of comfort. Temperature, pressure, humidity, air quality, all were set to the carrier’s normal, and every reserve autochef would be rolled in from the storage bunkers. Handling drones had already come online in the forward hold, but as they went to work Travers began to break the gundrones out of the bays where they were housed until flocks of them were activated for some battlefield sim.

These drones fired live ammunition, and they were as deadly as the machines fielded against the Zunshu insurgents at Fridjof Prime. Marin recalled them all too clearly, and frowned at the vidfeed from the simulation tank. The lights were bright, the deck was dry, servitor drones trundled to and fro with enough ’chefs to keep detainees reasonably at ease, but forty gundrones hovered up by the ceiling bulkheads, and no one in the tank would be under any illusion.

“They’re going to assume they’re prisoners,” Hubler growled.

“They’ll be right.” Travers was done, and stepped back. “Until we know who they are, and where they stand … you want Confederate loyalists free to assault the
Sark
from the inside?”

In a running battle from deck to deck? Marin dismissed the idea. “We know we’re bound to have a handful of loyalists who’ll say anything to hang onto their liberty. Leave the colonials to deal with them, if or when they make a move. If they’re stupid enough to incite violence, they’ll pay the price.”

“Sabotage can hurt us,” Rodman said bitterly.

“Which is why everyone leaving that tank will be chipped and AI monitored.” Rusch sighed. “And I fully realize we’ll be chipping fifty innocents in order to control the potential saboteur.”

“But that’s the way it is, and every colonial knows it,” Vidal said harshly. He paused only for a moment, and then, “Commander
Circe
, Commander
Arke
, power down your weapons and return to Bahrain.” He repeated the command twice, and Marin was unsurprised to hear no response. Vidal stood back from the tank. “Do it, Roark.”

The tractor power was so comparable to the
Wastrel
’s, the frigates’ commanders must have known they had little chance to slip away. Hubler seized them both and, fully expecting both ships to open fire, he ramped up the Arago fields protecting the bow and belly of the
Sark
. Sure enough, guns began to blaze, but he had them like puppets now. With the tractors he rolled the frigates over to put the
Circe
between the
Sark
and the
Arke
, like a shield.

The
Arke
stopped firing, but the
Circe
continued to pump everything its guns could produce into the Arago fields meshed over the
Sark
’s forward belly section. Vidal swore beneath his breath as he configured the chain guns. Marin was watching the vidfeed, and his eyes narrowed against the glare as several thousand rounds cut steadily through the frigate’s modest Arago fields and tore open the engine deck of the
Circe
as if she were a can. Engines and reactors scrammed immediately; blastdoors would surely have slammed, locked, to save the rest of this vessel before the Arago fields yielded, and the tech crew –

Now Marin held his breath until he saw three escape pods blow out of the flanks of the engine deck. “They’re out.”

“They had the sense to head for the pods as soon as the Aragos started to overcook.” Travers pulled both hands over his face. “If they’d followed orders –”

“They’d be dead,” Vidal said bitterly. “The only people crazy enough to invite a super-carrier to cut them to rags are the kind of Confederate officers who’ll probably be doing life in Jackson for war crimes in any case!” The side of his fist hammered into the workstation. “Commander
Circe
! Who the hell is that – is it Norman Hollows? What’s the matter with you, Hollows, are you insane?”

The comm sheeted out with the interference from ruptured machinery, and several seconds passed before a light young voice called, “
Kiev
, cease fire – just stop firing. We’re finished.”

“That’s not Hollows,” Rusch said sharply.

Vidal rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Major Hollows, respond.”

A hiss through the comm distortion: “He’s dead, sir.”

“Who is this?” Vidal demanded as he and Rusch shared a dark look.

“I’m Lieutenant Yu – I’m just the comm officer. The major pulled a freakin’ gun right here in the Ops room … there was a fight, sir. He, uh, he’s dead.”

“Any other casualties?” Vidal wanted to know.

“Just the escape pods from the engine deck, and they’re answering … at least, they were before we lost power. Shit, sir,
everything
went down – I’m calling out on a handy.”

For a moment Vidal glared at the displays, and then he rasped, “Organize your techs, Yu – get your power back online. Stay right where you are. A salvage tug is on its way to you.” He touched the bug in his right ear. “
Wastrel
, are you hearing any of this?”

The voice answering belonged to Jazinsky. “We’re hearing all of it, Mick. It’s going to take an hour, absolute minimum, before we can get to them – could be closer to two. It’s a mess out here.”

“Do what you can,
Wastrel
,” Shapiro said grimly. “Alexis?”

The defection deal had been broadcast five minutes before, and Marin could well imagine the furore exploding across the battle group. Seven ships were merely disabled. With the services of the Fleet dock, tech gangs and drones could have them viable in a few days, and most of those vessels had suffered few casualties, if any. Vidal’s targeting had been too accurate, too fast and much too sudden to permit real resistance. As reliable data came in, Marin saw that only the ships where a reckless Confederate commander had used a frigate to assault the super-carrier were badly damaged. Two were beyond repair, but for the officers and crew aboard the remainder, the resentment and anger that had been simmering for years among draftees on the lower decks had surged up to flashpoint.

The comm crackled and a woman’s voice called anxiously from the second runaway. “
Kiev, Kiev
, this is
Arke
standing down. Is anyone hearing this? Guns are powered down, engines are going cold.
Kiev
, stop firing – just stop your goddamn’ firing.”

In fact, Vidal’s guns had not fired in minutes, since he did enough damage to the
Circe
to disable her pending dock work. “All right,
Arke
,” he said tiredly. “You heard the deal – you’ve had the same offer as every other ship on the blockade.”

“We heard.” The woman skipped a beat, then: “This is Major Deborah Caddy. Gods help me, I’m the bloody CMO of this poor bucket of bolts – the command corps is locked in the forward drone bunker and I’ve got two wounded, including that prize bloody idiot, Major
Hushovt
, who’s
supposed
to be in command. He’ll live … if I can keep this crew away from him. The last I heard, they were drawing lots for who was going to wring his damn’ fool neck.” She paused. “No chance of talking to your CO, I suppose? Whose side are we on after this little mutiny? Is the
Kiev
going privateer, are we headed for Freespace, did we just hoist the flag of Omaru, or – what in the
festerin
’
hell
is going on here?”

“Do we know her?” Travers asked quietly.

“Very senior Fleet surgeon, close to retirement,” Shapiro told him. “From Lithgow, originally – got on the wrong side of Fleet Quadrant Command back in the Middle Heavens over a case not unlike Robert Chandra Liang’s son, and was assigned here for her sins.”

Vidal was fading now, and Marin was not surprised. Mick sagged into a chair and beckoned Rusch, and she was glad to take the comm from him. “Let me negotiate, Michael. I’ve known her for years … Deborah, this is Alexis Rusch. I’m very glad to hear your voice. The flag you just hoisted belongs to the Nine Worlds Commonwealth.”

“Alexis?” Caddy’s voice rose sharply. “My information was, you’re dead or dying in a sanatorium or a hospice somewhere on Velcastra. Not that I’m not glad to hear you, Lex, because I am,
damn’
glad.”

“Reports of my death,” Rusch said with arid humor, “will turn out to have been just
slightly
exaggerated. Welcome to the Nine Worlds Commonwealth – unless you prefer internment and a shuttle back to the DeepSky Fleet, and assignment to another warship.”

“I thought it’d be something like this.” Caddy sounded ruefully amused. “We’ve been hearing about this Commonwealth of yours since the battles at Ulrand and Velcastra. We get the news, even here. We’ve been wondering who’d be next. Is this it?”

“Not quite,” Rusch said carefully. “This is just the end of the blockade. The Battle of Omaru will be fought when the DeepSky Fleet sends another battle group here.”