Event Horizon (Hellgate) (50 page)

“The medical ship’s out.” Marin turned away from the tank. “That was a clean Weimann transition.”

“They were just dead lucky.” Rusch’s face was haunted, almost gaunt, but she could not look away from the tank. “She was right on the fringe of the swarm, the mines didn’t get a lock on her.”

And Ingersol: “Micro-jump in ten seconds. Standby … four. Three. Two. One.”

The
Wastrel
gave an uncharacteristic lurch, seemed to pivot in freefall for several elongated moments and then lurched again. The plot in the navtank wheeled around and stabilized, displaying the new location, and Travers swallowed on a moment of nausea as Jazinsky said,

“Our IFF is screaming … and we’re well out of range of the swarm, Richard.”

“Be sure,” he insisted. “Be very, very sure.”

“I am, goddamn it.” Her fists clenched on the workspace. “I see the little bastards, and they’re ignoring us. I also see the
London
. She – she’s wallowing like a hulk. Christ, Richard, it looks like she’s taken some major damage already. I’m reading some weird-ass energy signatures off her. Half of what I’m seeing makes no sense.”

Vidal was working with the tank, and as Travers watched the threedee display switched from the familiar graphical representation to a compilation of long-range vid feeds. He was looking at the ship itself and Jazinsky was right, she was wallowing. If she was under power, Travers saw no evidence of it. Their view of her was from far astern and a little above, and her sterntubes were almost dark, just a hint of dull red still glowing deep within.

Even now her guns were quiet. It was Roark Hubler who said, “If I was on that bucket, and I knew there was a bunch of ticks on me, shit, Mick, I’d be scratching hard enough to take my skin off.”

“So would I.” Vidal looked back at Rusch and Shapiro. “They either don’t know about the swarm yet, or they don’t have enough power to run both Aragos and guns.”

“And they’re pumping so much power into their fields, the generators must be close to melting down. They know they’re in deep bloody trouble, even if they don’t know what kind,” Jazinsky said tersely.

As she spoke the energy signatures resonating off the
London
shifted, fluttered, and Vidal took a fresh set of readings. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Shit, Richard – keep your distance. You saw that?”

“The fields are going intermittent,” Jazinsky warned.

“They’ve let at least one mine get too close,” Vidal added. “The
generators’ll
start to scram soon.”

“Yuval,” Vaurien called into the loop, “safe distancing.” He turned toward Shapiro. “All yours, Harrison.”

Shapiro was ready for it. “Commander
London
, this is General Harrison Shapiro. Commander
London
, acknowledge.”

He called again and again, but the
London
did not respond. She was listing, drifting, and as she tumbled in space she turned enough to present a clear view of her starboard bow quarter. Travers felt his mouth fall open. There
was
no starboard bow quarter.

“Mother of God,” Vidal murmured. “At least one mine got through the fields.”

“One would do the job,” Jazinsky said gravely.

“They probably had a field generator go on the fritz,” Ingersol said into the loop. “They’ll do that to you, if you run ’em too hard, too hot, for too long.”

The implosion had erased a large part of the ship, and as Travers began to make sense of the confusion of data he saw that most of her was open to space. She was twisted along the spine, and the highband comm arrays had collapsed when the hull and frame rippled like the surface of a pond with the unspeakable forces of the implosion. The engine deck was intact but the drive was shut down. If any survivors were left aboard, they were quarantined in the high and aft decks, running the Arago generators at dangerous levels. Radiation levels were lethally high across most of the vessel and still rising.

“Barb, deactivate the mines,” Vaurien said simply. “We’re looking at a hulk full of the dead. Etienne, scan for escape pods.”

Jazinsky’s hand extended, touched a single key, and in numerous displays one of the three red status bars returned to amber. “Survivors?” She looked up and back at Vaurien. “It’s hot as hell in there, but somebody could have gotten into armor.”

The AI said in its infuriatingly calm tone, “No escape pods are in sensor range. Swarm 4 is returning to dormancy.”

“The crew didn’t have time to punch out,” Travers guessed. He was cold, right through to his bone marrow, just short of shivering. “It would’ve been like trying to get off the
Intrepid
, when the Echo gunship ... no time.” He could say no more.

“Etienne,” Vaurien said tiredly, “launch a gang of survey drones. I want a vid feed of the interior, as soon as the Arago fields collapse.”

“Commander
London
,” Shapiro was saying gravely, “the weapon has been deactivated. You may shut down your Arago generators at will.”

No response. Travers had expected none. Marin’s face was white in the backwash from the navtank and Neil laid an arm across his shoulders, pulled him closer as Etienne reported,

“Drones deployed. Monitoring Arago shielding. Standby.”

The energy patterns issuing from the
London
fluttered wildly as Jazinsky got to her feet. She shoved the chair away. “There goes a generator … and another.”

“If anyone’s alive in there, they’re not receiving comm.” Marin forced his tongue around the words. “The Aragos were probably left on automatic … the core AI would have scrammed, and it didn’t reboot.”

It was a safe bet. Travers’s limbs felt leaden and he leaned on the side of the tank, merely listening as Etienne reported, “Arago activity has ceased. Survey drones are inserting. Standby for internal vidfeed.”

“Send it to the tank.” Vaurien’s face had settled into a mask through which no expression showed. He beckoned Travers closer. “Neil, Mick … nobody knows the inside of a super-carrier better than you do. Wrangle these drones. If there’s survivors, find them.”

The Ops room settled to a bleak quiet into which the loop whispered sporadically. Ingersol had the Weimanns cycled back up to readiness and the tug pilots were merely waiting for orders. Travers and Vidal watched the feed from a gang of ten drones which streamed in through rents in the crumpled hull. The images were harsh, grainy, sheeted out by the distortion of dangerous radiation levels. The dead were everywhere; Travers saw nothing alive.

Alexis Rusch swore softly, the first time Travers had heard an expletive from her.
“Time,” she murmured, eyes closed, “to make an end. Please gods, tell me there was nothing we could do for them.”

“Nothing.” Shapiro set a hand on her shoulder. “Colonel Carvalho signed the death warrant for this ship. We knew he would. And even if we could have discouraged him here, she’d have flown into another swarm at Borushek or at Omaru, or right back here at Jagreth in a week or a month. I don’t believe Carvalho would ever have accepted the alternative – strategic withdrawal, cease fire, negotiation. His bone-headedness was the reason the Confederacy sent him here. Andrew Grimes would have backed off after the first couple of casualties and run home with reports of a terror weapon. Carvalho? In his mind no such weapon existed, Alexis, just as the Zunshu are a fraud and we colonials are a rabble of inbred, craven mutineers who deserve punishment.”

One screen was still displaying battlefield tactical data from the perspective of the
Wastrel
. Alone in it, swamped by the vastness of it, the icon marking the position of the
London
extinguished.

“Intruders neutralized,” Etienne said unnecessarily and without a hint of emotion.

Shapiro passed a hand over his eyes. He turned toward Vaurien and Jazinsky with a hard, bitter expression. “Have the
Mako
replace the mines that were destroyed.”

“Sergei is already under contract,” Vaurien assured him. “Pay him enough and you can trust him.”

“And who’s paying him now?” Vidal wondered.

“President Prendergast is picking up this particular bill,” Shapiro said wearily. “It might be the first time Captain van Donne has performed legitimate work for legitimate pay.”

The vid feed rolled on, and on, ten images from ten drones hunting through the wreck for any sign of a sealed compartment, a figure in armor, a distress call, even a flashlight in the gloom of the dead hulk. There was nothing, and the longer the drones searched, the less Travers expected to see any sign of life.

From the bow quarter the drones were working their way steadily aft to the engine deck, and with every minute the radiation levels climbed until they were too high even for man-portable armor to protect living tissue. Few compartments were even worth searching; most were collapsed, depressurized, so sizzling hot, human life would have been extinguished long before. The drones were still working, but one by one they were becoming more unpredictable as Travers watched, until two went offline altogether. Two more began to stutter.

“Rick, we lost the survey drones,” Ingersol warned. “They’re way too hot to bring them back home now. It’s not even worth trying to decontaminate ’em.”

“Bill me,” Shapiro whispered.

“Bill Prendergast.” Vidal turned his back on the tank and rubbed his eyes hard enough to leave them bloodshot.

“Are we done?” Vaurien looked up from the handy where he was running routine
Wastrel
data.

“We’re done.” Travers could not look at the vid feed any longer.

“Then, we’re leaving,” Richard said in a tone brooking no argument.

“If we’re not heading back in to Jagreth, give me two minutes,” Shapiro said with an uncharacteristic grimace. “Fortunately, the signal lag here is too long to chat – I’ll message Prendergast: engagement over,
London
destroyed, no escape pods, no survivors. She might have been attempting a Weimann jump when she was overtaken by the
weapon
.” He drew a long deep breath, held it, exhaled it as a sigh. “This could have been better.”

“You hoped to save the carrier?” Marin was surprised.

“Perhaps I hoped to salvage some … human souls.” Shapiro looked away. “It’s a crass waste of life, and it shouldn’t be happening.”

An odd numbness had overtaken Travers, as if he had smoked the whole pack of Mountain Mists two at a time, in the space of a few minutes. He blinked at the tank, which was empty now save for the markers denoting the civilian comm beacons, an emergency refuge platform, an infectious diseases lab parked on station keeping in the middle of a billion square kilometers of empty space.

Silence settled over the Ops room, punctuated by the AI, the chatter of the techs’ loop, the whisper of cooling fans on countless machines. Travers’s mind seemed to resist any attempt to function properly and his eyes were hot, sore, as he looked into the void of the navtank. If there was supposed to be some sense of elation in the victory, he felt none of it. He might have been hollow inside and was grateful for Marin’s arm, which slung heavily across his back.

At last it was Tully Ingersol who said from the engine deck, “We’re still primed for Weimann ignition, Rick. Can we, uh, get out of here?”

And Vaurien stirred with a supreme effort. “Yeah.” He glanced at Shapiro, who answered with a mute nod. “Yuval, Tully … take us to Alshie’nya.”

Chapter Ten

Alshie’nya

If Travers did not know better, he would have assumed the
Carellan Djerun
was being gutted as if she were on her way to a ship breaker’s yard. Nothing could be further from the truth, but five of her labs were stripped bare to the bulkheads and four of her staterooms were so empty, they might never have been occupied.

Equipment and personal effects were trundling away on innumerable Arago sleds, headed aft to the cargo hatches from which a squadron of freight handling drones made the short crossing between the
Carellan
and Lai’a. They would shuttle back and forth until the Resalq were done and the habitation module aboard Lai’a was loaded; and from everything Travers was seeing as he and Marin made their way through the science vessel, Lai’a must be close to loaded already.

An odd shiver rushed through him. The
Mercury
would be in the same last-minute frenzy of preparations, and the moment the
Wastrel
had left the Jagreth system, Jazinsky began to pull the equipment out of her labs, ready for transport. By now the stateroom she and Vaurien shared was reduced to a pile of cases, and freight drones began their shuttle service within minutes of the
Wastrel
and the
Carellan
docking. Travers had never seen either ship in such disarray. He and Marin still needed to pack, but a mention of this to Curtis inspired only a shrug. Like Vidal, Rabelais, Queneau, even Tonio Teniko, they possessed too little for packing to be a challenge.

In fact, the Resalq ships were already on standby to leave. Etienne had synched itself with the core AIs aboard the
Carellan
and the
Mercury
, and it had touched base with Lai’a minutes before the
Wastrel
’s drive engines shut down. A query from Marin, and Etienne briefed them without drama. The Sherratts were passing command of Mark’s ships to trustees from Riga and Saraine, just as the
Wastrel
would be under Tully Ingersol until Lai’a returned. One of the Resalq vessels was assigned to stand by the
Freyana,
which Emil Kulich had taken out as a colony ship, while the
Carellan
herself maintained a subtle, whisper-quiet surveillance on Saraine. Like the
Wastrel
, their priority was to keep themselves out of trouble.

And Lai’a, Travers realized, was waiting. It was keeping no explicit countdown to launch – if such a countdown was in progress, the status boards on the
Wastrel
would have shown it – but the habitation module was finished, fitted, and a squadron of freight drones never paused. The hull of the old, wrecked Fleet cruiser
Apollo
was fully cocooned in Zunshu armor, snug against the belly of the big ship; a web of Arago fields would spin about it, guarding it against the appalling gravities of the passage through a Hellgate event, and also from the hot, acid fallout of its own engines. A glimpse of the naked, seething hyper-Weimann drive made Travers’s skin crawl. For every skerrick of respect he felt for the work done by Mark Sherratt, Jazinsky and Teniko, he acknowledged another skerrick of healthy dread.