Event Horizon (Hellgate) (84 page)

He let Marin tumble him on the rugs, sprawled back and looked up at the high ceiling of a compartment that had been a storage bay for maintenance drones, Arago sleds, heavy equipment. Scores of lamps created heat and convincing daylight, and a single jet of water thirty meters away cast a rainbow over Marin’s shoulder as he dropped his clothes, stretched every joint till they popped, let warmth and humidity soak into every cell.

He was in fine condition. He ran five kilometers each morning, covering the habitation module many times over before he jogged into the Bravo gym and lifted weights for twenty minutes. Even now, Marin tended to regard his body as a tool, perhaps even a weapon. The Dendra Shemiji training would be long, long time wearing off.

Naked, more relaxed than Travers had seen him in some time, he knelt on the rugs and mixed
sherzaki
. Neil took a flute from him, tried it, nodded appreciatively. “You’re laid back. Want to let me in on the secret?”

“No secret.” Marin tried the drink. “That’s not bad. Needs a touch more sake, don’t you think?” He was pouring when he said, “I guess I just … acclimated to all this. Orion Gate, Red Gate, Zunshu space. Exploration. People of our generation never did any of this, but as kids we all used to dream about it. The Middle Heavens, the Deep Sky, it was all settled, charted, terraformed, populated, long before we were born. Didn’t stop us daydreaming about being trailblazers. We got the chance at last, and I’m going to make the most of it.” He took a mouthful of
sherzaki
, leaned over and set his mouth on Travers’s, to share it. His voice was husky as he said, “Richard was talking about heading out, after the war. The far side of Freespace, a world Earth never even heard of. Think about it, Neil.”

In fact, Travers had been thinking of it. He set aside the glasses and rolled Marin flat on the rugs under him, while phantom visions of Three Rivers tumbled out of his memory. The morning sun was white and sharp as a sabre off the shoulders of mountains where hanging glaciers never dwindled much even in high summer; the uplands rolled greenly, as far as the eye could see, with soft grass knee-deep to a dozen horses; and at the center of it all stood a cabin built of local timber, where a finger of smoke pointed southeast ahead of a lazy breeze. The visions were seductive, but the scene did not have to be staged in Three Rivers.

Beneath him, Marin wriggled to comfort, hands seeking up under the hem of Travers’s black linen tunic to find the contours of his back, his breast, his belly. Neil growled, deep and bass, as a frisson of pleasure rushed through him, prickled his skin, brought his whole body alive. Marin’s right hand pressed high between his legs, finding him, urging.

The heat and humidity broke a light sweat across Travers’s back as he shrugged out of the tunic. Marin’s hands snapped open his belt and the gray slacks fell with a soft
shush
. The
meshlex
was expensive, extravagant, not something a soldier would have chosen; but Travers had left those days behind.

He was still kicking the slacks off as Marin turned over on the rugs and stretched again. Curtis indulged in a groan of sheer luxury, and reached back to find him. A little bottle of something fragrant, cool, blue, stood by the rugs, but Travers had to chuckle as he discovered Marin had already used it. This scene must have been on his mind for some time.

“Consider me seduced,” he growled as he moved between the long, slender legs – runner’s legs, sinuous, supple – and took the gift he had been offered. Another time, Marin might tease with foreplay that would take Travers out to his limits, but not now. He seemed to want it simple, immediate; not quite spontaneous, since he had gone to some trouble to make this happen, but Travers was enchanted, and knew what he needed. He stroked both hands down the long, fine back, raked his nails across the tender skin of his flanks, and sank into him in one long stroke.

It could be like this, he thought hazily as he began to work – a summer’s morning on a world so new, it was virgin, the sky clean, air so fresh, it tasted like champagne. A nook in an orchard, he decided as his hands molded around Curtis’s shoulders to hold him to the rhythm, with that very cabin not far away, those same horses in the soft grass, a world without Terran agents and the threat of bounty hunters –

And then thoughts spun away into incoherence. The cosmos might have consisted of himself and Curtis Marin, a writhing mass of emotion and sensation flaring into brilliance where two bodies became one. Beneath him Marin cried out, high and sharp – Neil had heard foxes call that way, long ago, in springtime on the side of the mountain, under the Wulff Glacier. Hot, acid tears stung his eyes, perhaps in an instant of mourning for all that could never be again. He blinked them away and worked harder as Marin began to hunt for the end.

The plan was to sleep late, and Travers did. He had no firm memory of making it back to their stateroom, when he woke at last he found himself between bronze sheets while the threedee whispered a wakeup call. He cracked open one eye, heard water running in the bathroom, and a whisper of music there. Marin was showering, and the ’chef issued the scents of fresh coffee and croissants.

He sat up with a groan, wondering where the last ten hours had gone. Good dreams followed good sex, and he felt more rested than he had in weeks. Months. He peered at the time as he swung his legs off the bed. The rookie class would be forming up in the suiting room in an hour.

The bathroom door slid open, emitting a billow of steam, and Marin looked out. “You’re awake. I’d begun to think I’d killed you.”

“What, I died of bliss, sometime around the third cosmic climax in the wee, small hours of the morning?” Travers was fetching coffee.

“That, or a cardiac arrest,” Marin allowed with a paucity of romance as he stepped out of the steam. He began to rummage for the slacks he had mislaid. “I’d have yelled for a medic, of course. And sent flowers to the funeral.”

“Magnanimous of you.” Travers shared his amusement as he sat on the foot of the bed, waiting with the coffee and content to watch him for the pleasure of looking at him, until Curtis was in Tai Chi pants and a familiar pale mesh shirt.

He tried the coffee, found it much too strong and took it back to the ’chef for cream. “Something about a crash course in Marines armor, for the civilian contingent?”

“You got time to help?” Travers wondered.

“I want to run first,” Marin told him, “but I’ll come right to the jump bay, soon as I’m done. God knows, there’s not much to talk them through, but I’d rather be sure they know it. Roy and Jon especially. Dario, Tor, Ernst and Barb have been working with every kind of armor for decades. This hardsuit’s different, but it shouldn’t take them long to get used to it. To be honest, I’d also like to drag Alexis in there.”

“You would?” Travers was surprised, and not at all sure Alexis Rusch would be coerced.

“No colonel with a triple doctorate has seen the inside of a suit of Marines armor since she went through the executive version of boot,” Marin said pointedly, “and you know how soft
that
would have been. Holdfast,
Malteppe
? Not by a long shot.”

“You still remember that?” Travers saluted him in coffee.

“Like I’ll ever forget. It was me against Sergeant R.A. Neville … and I think,” Marin said thoughtfully, “I won.”

“You did. But I still had to make the bastard shut down the sim.” Travers finished the coffee and went back to the machine for a refill. “He was going to throw more at you – the kind of action where you’d have been cut to pieces. Dendra Shemiji might have walked away from the sim, but the rest of the platoon would’ve been in the Infirmary. Or the morgue. By that time, Neville was ready to kill the rest to take you down.”

Marin sobered fast. “Yeah, I know. If I never said it before – thanks. At the time, I was pushing Neville to see how far he’d go, and I thought I might’ve pushed too hard. I was ready to take the simulation tank itself to pieces, to stop it, which is so far against regulations, I’d have been on charges – so much for the Dendra Shemiji assignment! I didn’t know you were out there watching, but I’m very, very pleased you were.”

“Hey.” Travers set aside the coffee and enfolded him. “One look at you, and I think I just knew. You and me, it was all going to happen. And no way was I going to let some mad bastard screw it all up.” He feathered a kiss around Marin’s face, laid claim to his mouth, and stood back to survey his handiwork. “Thank
you
for last night. It was … inspired.”

A shade of color highlighted Marin’s cheekbones. “Thought you’d like that. Doesn’t have to be a one-off. The arboretum’s always hot and humid as a summer evening in Dominguez.” He laid one hand flat over Travers’s heart. “I’m going to run. I’ll meet you in the suiting room.”

He was gone on those words, and Travers set the shower faucet to scalding. Twenty minutes later he was in the jump bay, looking at ranks of armor, personalized helmets set into niches above the lockers, and waiting on the last few members of this workshop. Predictably, Jazinsky and Sereccio were the last to show, Barb because she was so busy, Tor because he was attending under protest. But Travers was surprised and pleased to see Mark Sherratt, and Alexis Rusch arrived with Rabelais and Vidal.

All of them barring Jon Kim and Roy Arlott had experience with armor, but the Zunshulite suits were necessarily far more cumbersome than any industrial hardsuit, and the mass was astonishing. Even the helmets were so heavy, it was impossible for someone like Arlott or Rusch or Vidal, in his current condition, to lift them if the Arago power was off. Each helmet had its own tiny emitter, the same kind of field projector used in glowbots and viddrones, so the apparent mass was never more than a few kilos.

Even so, Arlott growled about the weight of his own helmet until Travers checked it. Looking thoughtfully at the small, slight Roy, he increased the Arago power till the dead weight of the helmet was not so intimidating. Jazinsky was impatient, and not slow to point out that she had designed this armor, and knew more about it than anyone else in the suiting room with the exception of Mark Sherratt.

Of them all, Rusch and Leon were the most receptive to advice. Tor grumbled and sniped until Dario was exasperated and Mark was about to apologize for him; but Travers turned his back to Tor, dropped his voice and said softly, “Don’t worry about it. Curtis told me.”

“He did?” Dario was first astonished and then a tiny fraction embarrassed. “He’s not usually such a … a prick.”

“I know.” Travers chanced a grin. “Have you thought about getting him a shot? Get enough booze into him, he won’t even know he’s had it.”

“That,” Dario said in deep, sinister tones, “is not a bad idea.”

They were all in armor when Marin arrived, and Vidal was demonstrating the new Arago instrumentation while Travers adjusted Arlott’s apparent mass for the fifth time. Richard Vaurien loitered in the armordoors, watching as Shapiro explained the hardsuit, piece by piece, for Jon Kim. Rabelais was so used to suits, he was into armor, through orientation, desuited and sitting by the lockers, finishing a second iced green tea before Travers was satisfied with some of the others. Jazinsky was critical of the fit and wanted feedback from Rusch about how the suits fit a woman, but otherwise she seemed satisfied.

“Good enough,” Vaurien decided as Vidal, Marin and Rabelais stacked the helmets back into storage. He looked rested, in the old white denims and a faded shirt with the sleeves pushed up above lean brown forearms. “You happy with them, Neil?”

“More or less,” Travers told him, “and without taking the armor outside for a test run, they’re not going to get any more familiar. They can get in and out of it, set the weight, adjust the life support, which is all most of them are going to need. If it comes to fighting, leave the work to Bravo.”

“And you?” Vaurien asked quietly.

Travers took a long breath, held it, let it out slowly. “Curtis, Bill and I were part of Bravo when this ship was still the
Intrepid
. This is just one last rodeo, as Judith Fargo would say.” He looked up at Vaurien with a grim determination. “Let’s just get it done, Richard.”

For a moment Vaurien hesitated, and then nodded. “We’ll transit at the Red Gate tomorrow. Blood Gate. Whatever it means.”

“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to be an explorer.” Travers stood back to let Rusch, Rabelais and Tor leave, and Sereccio continued to grumble, though he must have known no one was listening. Leon would have told Roy what his problem was, and Mark would have told Vidal, who would have informed Rusch and Rabelais. Tor seemed untroubled that most of the company knew about the turmoil of Resalq hormones. As Marin had said, the Resalq were not uncomfortable about their own biology, and what embarrassed Dario was having to apologize for him, when he had picked a quarrel for no good reason.