Event Horizon (Hellgate) (40 page)

“I think this round’s over.” Shapiro clasped Kim’s hand for a moment. “Chesterfield just gave the area a healthy security rating.”

“Means maybe one chance in five of getting shot at,” Travers said pointedly. “In all seriousness – like Jon said, do you want to bug right out? We should have been warned, if there’s fighting in Westminster.”

“And who,” Marin added in a rasp, “is fighting? This place was always safe. It was so stultifying, Fleet didn’t have to round up the draftees when the conscription notices were posted – kids of seventeen were so bored, they were ready to go, just to break up the monotony!”

The Capricorn was at four hundred meters now and the city stretched away beyond every horizon. He had lost sight of the blue-green ocean but ahead and below was a forty-hectare swatch of green, bordered by dense forest, checkerboarded by landscape gardens laid down in a time when Euclidian geometry was the vogue. At the heart of it all was a golden stone mansion which sprawled in a vast, elongated H-pattern, four storeys tall, with deep, shadowed courtyards at front and rear.

Local time was 16:50 as the Capricorn crossed the threshold into Chesterfield’s restricted airspace. The gunship shadowed them in every meter of the way, and Marin passed back to the automatics as they saw woodland, lawns, gardens, expanding below. The private landing field was at the rear of the mansion, recessed into a corner of the grounds and bordered on two sides by immense, dark stands of Jupiter spruce.

“Chesterfield Control, this is JS-10,” Yip was saying as the gunship began to drop on a hot bluster of repulsion. “
Wastrel
101 is secure … we have minor damage to avionics and engines. We’re not going to make orbit without service. Request a tender,
asap
.”

“Roger that, JS-10. Standby for an engineer’s tractor. And incidentally, Cameron, that was very nice shooting.”

“Not me,” Yip said blithely. “I was still pratting around, waiting for Oversight to authorize me to clear the triggers. General Shapiro’s people took the shooters … Colonel Briggs is pissed as all hell.”

“Briggs?” Travers echoed as the Capricorn settled on her struts and the engines began to cycle down.

“Tactical,” Marin guessed. Right ahead of the cockpit’s molded canopy surrounds, the gunship was opening up. As three armed and armored troopers hustled down the ramp he sat back. “Looks like they have Chesterfield security under control.” He gave Shapiro an amused look. “There’s not much for us to do here.”

“If they had it under control,” Shapiro said with a surprising depth of cynicism, “we wouldn’t have been dodging missiles.”

Travers had shrugged out of the harness and was on his feet. “You want us to sweep the place?”

“I’d say yes…” Shapiro was frowning out at the guard Chesterfield had assigned “…if I thought they’d allow it.”

“You have the authority,” Marin began.

“Do I?” Shapiro folded his arms over his chest. “I’m not so sure. On Velcastra or Omaru, yes, because President Liang and Colonel Tarrant worked in absolute cooperation with us. On Borushek – of course, because it was my own turf. Here?” He shook his head slowly. “They have this circus micro-organized.”

“And they still blew it,” Travers observed. “There’s been fighting in the city. You saw the smoking evidence.”

“I did.” Shapiro’s brows rose as he brushed down his blue-gray jacket and tugged his cuffs. “And I’ll dig for whatever information Chesterfield Control can provide! In the meantime, I don’t think they’ll give us much opportunity to organize our own security.”

He was on his way to the side hatch, moving past Marin and Travers, with Jon Kim right behind him. “So, where do you want us?” Marin wondered. “We’re a little … redundant here.”

At the top of the ramp Shapiro turned back with a wry smile. “Why don’t you take a few hours? I know this is your home, Curtis – or was. I imagine you’d like a chance to look up old friends, or visit places you haven’t seen in ten years or more.”

“Call, if you need us.” Travers tapped the bug in his left ear. “Our comm is busted up, we might not get a word you’re saying, but we’ll hear if you call. We won’t be far away.”

“I’ll do that.” Then Shapiro was heading down the ramp, and Jon Kim hesitated just long enough to give Travers and Marin a rueful look. “You, uh, trust Chesterfield Control?”

They shared a glance, and Marin shrugged. “I don’t know them. Look, stick close to him, Jon. Give us a chance to check out the local security without getting anybody mad enough to spit, and if there’s a problem we’ll call you.”

“Thanks.” Kim pulled his fingers through his hair, rearranging it. “Wish us luck.”

“Break a leg,” Travers said with a trace of grim humor.

A car was waiting for Shapiro, and Marin’s lips compressed as he watched it pull away – sleek, smooth, electric blue, so heavy with armor, it wallowed on its repulsion. Whether he and Travers trusted Chesterfield or not, they were out of jurisdiction here. The local security force was not about to give them any space to maneuver.

The draft from the gunship’s engines was acrid, hot, and something was not right. The lift motors
smelt
off, with a pungent scent of burning lubricants. Travers beckoned, headed away from it, and Marin was pleased to put thirty meters of close-cropped lawn between them and the gunship. Those lubricants were mildly toxic. When they carbonized, they were intensely carcinogenic. Rookie techs on the flightline learned every safety protocol by heart before they ever got their hands on a wrench.

Footsteps shushed across the grass behind them and Travers turned back, right hand going instinctively to his jacket, to the Chiyoda machine pistol holstered there. But he and Marin relaxed a moment later as they saw a blue uniformed figure, the crests of Jagreth and Chesterfield on the shoulders and breast of a flightsuit. The name on his chest read YIP, TC.

He awarded them a smart salute, though he was laughing as he approached – a tall young man in his early twenties, with a rangy physique, clear skin, good features without being particularly handsome. A pair of gelemerald earrings winked in his lobes. “Hey guys, that’s one we owe you.” He thrust his hand at Travers first, and shook.

“For taking out the shooters?” Travers chuckled aridly. “You’d have taken them yourselves.”

“If Oversight ever gave us the authorization before the three of them just up and skedaddled.” Yip made negative noises. “Oversight’s a bunch of city council moms and pops, elected to organize pavement and sewerage, and suddenly they’re deciding who can shoot, and when, and where!” He sighed. “It’s not their fault, but it’s turned into a frigging disaster, and this whole show’s going to be over before we can get enough rules of engagement laid down to play the game properly. The bastards you nixed –? Chances are it’s the exact same shooters me and my
crew’ve
been trying to nab, right across the city. Every time, they duck out of sight before we get clearance to fire. They dive into the middle of a bunch of civvies, maybe an aeroball crowd, a mall, a school, so we got no chance of taking ’em.”

“Damn.” Marin thrust both hands into his pockets, looking out over the park, with its manicured lawns, astonishing topiary, marble and bronze statuary. “Well, you’re welcome, Lieutenant. We just jumped the gun –”

“Because we don’t have to answer to your bosses,” Travers finished. “We didn’t know there was fighting on Jagreth.”

“There isn’t.” Yip gave a cynical chuckle. “Officially. It’s just a bunch of Terran agents. We’ve always known we had a corps of them in the colony – every colony has ’em. They’ve been trying to get out, since we made the first moves in the changeover of power.”

Marin lifted his face to the sky, with its fleece of clouds and the brazen blue of late afternoon. The
smell
of the world was so familiar, a thousand memories he had not recalled since his teens came rushing back. “The handover to the colonial government hasn’t been as smooth here as it was on Velcastra.”

The lieutenant fell into step with them, toward the blind side of the mansion on the other side of lawns vast enough for a tournament. “It’s been smooth
enough
, but the fact is … we blew it right at the start. Governor Pasco took his staff out peacefully – right now there’s twenty of them, secretaries, aides, valets, at the Santorini Hotel, just waiting for a shuttle back to Lithgow or Haven, and a clipper from there back to the homeworlds. It was absolutely covert, in the wee, small hours of the morning, all smiles and handshakes. But somebody, somewhere tipped off the Confederate agents and suddenly we were blanketing the whole system with so much comm jamming, you can barely hear yourself think. The Earthers have been scrambling to get out – we’ve stopped the bastards at the spaceport and almost all the private fields in the colony. Every single time it explodes into a fucking shooting party. People,” he finished bleakly, “are getting killed, not just the Earthers, but
us
.”

“You said you blew it at the start,” Marin mused.

The young man’s shoulders lifted in an expressive shrug. “Somebody on Pasco’s staff called out, and damned if we know how. Maybe they just told a friend, or posted something dumb to CityNet. But even if they hadn’t, the Confederate agents were always going to give us grief. We thought we had the buggers pegged, but we missed a bunch of them right here in Westminster. We’ve been playing tag ever since, and they don’t hesitate to shoot, no matter who or what’s in the way. I
think
you just took ’em down.”

They had crossed the lawn into the shade of century-old trees. Travers opened his jacket in the afternoon warmth. “Nobody’s made it out of the system, right? You’re sure?”

Now Yip hesitated. “As sure as you can be. We think the Confederates are covered down to the last four, and the last time I was briefed we had them tracked to an industrial zone in the south. They’re under tight surveillance – they’re not going anywhere. We’ll give ’em the chance to quit and walk away with their lives. They can accept arrest and repatriation after the war, if they’re smart. If they’re not, they’re headed for the crematorium up in
Juanliu
.”

“Good enough,” Marin judged.

“Hey, you want coffee?” Yip offered.

But Travers was looking out across the hills to the south, where the forest had just begun to change color with the onset of fall. “Later, maybe. Any chance we can take a car?”

“You want to do the tourist thing?” The lieutenant made a face. “This is the most boring ball of mud in the universe.”

“I could name some worse,” Marin said, amused. “I was born here. I know a few places, if you want sand between your toes and the wind in your hair.”

The suggestion inspired a pained look, as if Yip could imagine nothing more tedious, but he pointed them to the garages at the rear of the mansion. “Sign out the
Grassetto
. It’s bulletproof … just in case.” He looked them up and down. “You, uh, armed?”

“Always.” Travers regarded the mansion with a deep frown. “I’m assuming your security is tight?”

“As a hustler’s corsets,” Yip assured him. “Nothing gets past this squad, not on our home turf. We laid on full security protocols, soon as the Confederate agents started sniping.”

“Targets?”

“Anything headed into or out of the mansion,” Yip said grimly, “especially an executive plane like your Capricorn, and
especially
if it’s under escort, meaning it has to have somebody high up aboard, with any luck General Shapiro himself. The
Earthers’d
just love to put him in a bodybag.”

“So Shapiro was the target,” Marin mused.

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?” Travers turned away toward the garages. “Signal lag between Omaru and here means the Confederate agents on Jagreth couldn’t have any firm intel, but it’s a safe bet the master puppeteer would show up here right ahead of the proclamation. They had location and approximate time, they just had to stake out a
shoothole
and wait.” He looked at his chrono, and then up at Marin. “We probably don’t have a lot of time.”

“We’ll catch up with you, Lieutenant,” Marin promised. “The
Grassetto
, you said?”

“Yeah. The big black Rand.” Yip waved and went on toward the mansion, where white umbrellas nodded over bistro tables in a red-paved courtyard under a display of prolific glory vines just beginning to redden as autumn came on.