Event Horizon (Hellgate) (129 page)

“Nice.” Travers leaned forward to see the tattoo in the soft light of a half dozen glowbots. “Very nice.”

“There’s this tattoo artist I know in citybottom,” Mick told him. “He does the best work this side of Elstrom. Bobby Liang will have had the same done.” He stabbed a finger at the enormous mound of baggage and boxes by the door. “Are we supposed to load
that
?”

“Let Dario and Tor take care of it.” Mark’s voice spoke from the stairs leading down the lab. “Speaking of whom, where are they?”

“Repacking their
stuff
on the Capricorn.” Vidal had returned to the hearth. “Tor’s probably bottomed out a bank account here. Then again, he’s not likely to see a store again for a year. Or several.” He glanced at his chrono. “You heard from Richard? He wants to ship out soon. We gotta get moving.”

“We are.” Mark stepped aside, and an Arago sled appeared behind him. “Curtis, would you call Leon and Roy downstairs? Half that pile is theirs. They can load it themselves!”

The sled went out the house’s side door, which was lock-in, lock-out, to save the inside air pressure. The night was very cold, the sky only thinly overcast; a few familiar stars showed in the east. The humans emptied out the closets for parkas and breather masks, but the Resalq barely acknowledged the cold. It was regret, not discomfort, on Mark’s face as he said,

“Joss, it could be a long time before anyone returns. Leave the security systems operational, otherwise power down. Monitor for signals from your synched counterparts, or from us, and … wait.”

“Very good, Doctor,” Joss said unconcernedly. Time meant even less to the AI than to a Resalq, whose lifespan so far outstripped the human. “Have a pleasant flight. I look forward to your eventual return. Good night.”

“Good night, Joss.” Mark was the last to step out of the house.

The lights and heating turned off behind him. The house would soon return to almost ambient temperatures and pressures and, Marin thought, like the rest of Riga it would hibernate until it returned to the mountains.

He watched the familiar property drop away below as the Capricorn fell directly up into a lake of stars. The lights went out right across Riga, plunging the valley into darkness lit only by starlight on fresh snow. Marin watched until the Capricorn passed over the mountains, and then turned back to find Travers’s blue eyes on him.

“You okay?” Neil asked softly.

“Me? Of course.” Marin only shrugged. “It was never my home, but I spent a lot of time here across the years. It’s …” He hunted for what he felt. “It’s a
time
I’m going to miss, I think, rather than a place. You know what I mean.”

“Oh, I know.” Travers picked up his hand, kissed it, and sat back for the flight. “There’s an old saying. Onward and upward.”

Vidal was flying, even then logging an orbital flightplan with Sark ATC. He told the controller he was headed for Sark High Dock, and it was only a faint lie. The
Wastrel
was two thousand kilometers west, close enough for the Capricorn’s instruments to already have picked up its acquisition signal. Vidal could have handed it to the automatics and sat back for the ride, but flight was his pleasure.

Sark brightened on the horizon while Marin watched; the stars burned ahead of the plane’s snub nose and Vidal throttled up the engines to take it fast out of the atmosphere. Borushek sprawled away in a fantasy of gold and blue lights picking out the shapes of coastlines and highways. Marin watched the world turn beneath them –
where the fires of night are burning bright, thou shalt sing to the glories of yore
.

“
Wastrel
Flight, this is
Wastrel
101 on approach,” Vidal was saying.

And Etienne: “Hangar 4 is open.”

A combug slipped into Marin’s ear, cold and hard. He heard the loop a moment later – Ingersol and Jim Fujioka going over engine dynamics specific to the
Wastrel
, Perlman and
Cassals
conferring between the flightdeck and one of the hangars, Fargo and Jazinsky in Ops. The tug was securing to leave orbit. Ingersol had received news from Jagreth – the
London
’s engine deck was clean enough to be undocked; Weimann and sublight engines plus three military-grade generators would be in transit to Alshie’nya in a matter of days. By the time the
Wastrel
returned from the
Freyana
assignment, the
Esprit de Liberté
would be scheduled for a second shakedown cruise. Ingersol was delighted.

The clock was counting to departure. The status board in the passage opposite the armordoors securing Hangar 4 showed minus forty minutes, and Marin spent most of that time in the crew lounge, looking down on the night side of the world. Travers was quiet, giving him the space to think, remember, for which Curtis was grateful.

The status bars clicked over to amber in the threedee and Etienne said into the loop, “Standby for sublight engines. Breaking orbit in one minute; vector plotted for the exclusion zone. Commencing Weimann ignition procedures. Departing Borushek space in twelve minutes.”

As it spoke the deck began to thrum. The engines ran up to peak in test and then lapsed back to their normal purr, and Marin felt nothing physical as the world slipped down out of the long viewport, and away. Travers’s arm was heavy across his shoulders and Neil’s voice was soft. “We’ll be back.”

“Will we?” Marin was doubtful. “And if we weren’t, it wouldn’t matter.” He turned into Travers’s embrace,
savoring
the strength in the big arms which closed about him. “Would it?”

Travers said nothing, but kissed him.

3: Raishenne, Carahne

From space it was a blue-green jewel, fourth from a yellow G4 sun in a region of absolute stability. The
Aenestra
had also surveyed the nearby star systems, all of which were mineral rich, wealthy in planets, impoverished in life. In twenty light years, only Carahne was blessed with an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, liquid water across forty percent of the planet and abundant indigenous life, none of it more advanced than the great bipedal
felinoids
which hunted through the equatorial forests and savannahs under the ranges of ancient, extinct volcanoes.

Saraine itself was no more perfect for the Resalq. With an axial tilt of 22
^o
, the climate was constant; the metal-heavy core generated gravity that was just a few percent heavier, only noticeable for the days it took the body to adjust; and the world was large. The Resalq would not want for space to grow for centuries, or ever. The only lethal life form to be engineered into extinction was a flesh-eating insect which immobilized a living host with narcotic venom, laid its eggs in the warmth of the abdomen and kept the host alive in a state of catalepsis until the larvae hatched and devoured it. The insects were selectively eliminated while the city of Raishenne was built by construction drones, and when the
Wastrel
drove into high orbit the system was already busy, noisy, dynamic.

Mines were working on two rocky worlds, and one of the three moons had become the cargo port. Security drones negotiated with Etienne while the
Wastrel
was still out by the Weimann exclusion zone, instructing it to bring the ship to Raishenne High Dock and wait there.

“Pretentious,” Vaurien observed, “aren’t they?”

Mark Sherratt turned his eyes to the ceiling, or the gods. “You have no idea. Pompous, arrogant, conceited, haughty, snobbish.” He looked through the haze of the navtank at Midani Kulich, whose mouth had compressed in annoyance. “Ask him.”

But Midani’s wide shoulders lifted in a noncommittal shrug. “Is Emil. Is old Resalq. You remembering good, Doctor … me remembering, me being only just technician before became soldier. Technician not worth too much. Soldier getting more
hul’rim
.”

“Respect,” Mark translated.

“
Ress
-peck,” Midani said doubtfully.

Roy Arlott enunciated the word slowly and emphasized the consonants. “
Reh-
spect
.” He chuckled richly. “What’s it matter? Chances are, you just came home. In a year, you’ll forget any Slingo you ever learned. You’ll have precious little use for it after this.” He was watching a flatscreen, where the vidfeed of the new city showed wide avenues, the green of a park where the trees were still small.

“Maybe,” Kulich said darkly. “
Maybe
.”

It was Emil on his mind, Travers thought. He and Marin had volunteered for shuttle duty. Perlman and Fargo were in a brand new transspace simulator, assembled, wired and loaded only a day before, and Vidal had passed responsibility for the session to Rabelais and Queneau. They were more than capable of running data, collating results; and Perlman and Fargo were close to qualifying. The handholding days were gone.

The Capricorn was already preflighted as the
Wastrel
made her way to Raishenne High Dock. The precious, delicate cargo was loaded onto three industrial Arago sleds, and Ingersol and Fujioka were about to jockey them into the cargo space on the engineer’s tractor. Vaurien and Jazinsky lingered by the navtank, still waiting for the city AI to summon a Resalq to answer formal calls, and Travers knew Richard’s temper had begun to shorten.

“There she is.” For several minutes Jazinsky had been monitoring the deep scan. As a major icon appeared she touched Vaurien’s arm. “There’s the
Freyana
, parked neatly behind the second moon … she looks fine from here.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Mark mused, but a few moments’ examination of the deep scan dispelled any doubts. “She
is
fine. I’m seeing good numbers from engines, hull, interior.” His brow creased. “The only thing she’s
not
doing is transmitting. Not a squeak.”

Gestures abrupt with annoyance, Vaurien reached over and slapped the comm. “Captain Kulich, this is Richard Vaurien. We have a consignment for you, data and hardware. Where do you want it?”

And if Kulich did not respond soon, Travers thought, Vaurien was likely to dump the data into as many cubes as it took, offload cargo where it was most convenient to him, and call the job done.

Something in his tone must have spoken to Emil Kulich. The threedee at Comm 1 brightened only moments after Vaurien spoke. Midani stepped sideways, careful to put himself outside the pickup angle as his sibling stepped into view. He spoke only in Resalq, not a word of Slingo, and he looked down his long nose at Mark Sherratt and Roy Arlott.

The translation algorithm was recent, and Etienne ran it almost in realtime. In Travers’s ear the combug said in an approximation of Emil’s tone and timbre, “Welcome to Carahne. We didn’t send for you.”

Only those closest to Mark heard his groan of exasperation. “The
Freyana
stopped transmitting some time ago. You didn’t expect someone to come and investigate?”

“I did,” Emil said coolly. “I expected an investigation long before this. You are late, Doctor Sherratt. If we had required assistance in a catastrophe event, we would have suffered major casualties by now.”

“If you’d suffered any kind of catastrophe,” Mark said levelly, “it was your duty to evacuate the colony back to the
Freyana
and return. Drop the arrogance, Kulich. It does you no credit. What happened to the
Freyana
?”

For a moment Kulich glared at him, and then subsided one muscle at a time. “The highband burned out. We have not yet gotten around to replacing it, since we have little need of it. The colony transmitters are perfectly operable.”

“But you didn’t report this,” Mark said with ominous quiet.

“It was not germane,” Emil said offhandly. “I told you, the colony transmitters are perfectly functional.”

“Not germane?” Sherratt echoed, as if words failed him.

In fact, it was Midani who stepped into the vid pickup and unleashed a tirade in the Resalq which Etienne struggled both to keep pace with and properly translate, since much of it involved cursing, elaborate, almost picturesque profanity. Travers chuckled, and wiped the smile off his face as he watched Emil change color, his face infusing with anger from the line of his collar to the great elongated dome of his bald head.