Event Horizon (Hellgate) (21 page)

The Wyvern came up fast to meet them as Etienne opened Hangar 4, and Marin’s eyes were on a vidfeed as the plane came aboard. Rusch, Jazinsky and Vidal were waiting for the hangar to blow back up to pressure and temperature, and Marin himself was waiting for Travers.

Thirty minutes before, Neil had been in the gym, sweating through a workout Marin did not envy, but he knew it was Travers’s way of burning off stress. The
Kiev
might have weighed heavily on Michael Vidal’s mind, but it was Hellgate that haunted Travers – or, more specifically, transspace. An old Resalq mantra repeated endlessly in the back of Marin’s mind, bringing calm, but those things did not yet work for Travers. Perhaps they never would. Jazinsky had work to occupy every waking instant, but as he frowned at Vaurien, Marin wondered what Richard did to keep the apprehension at bay. Elarne was a spectre looming over them all.

Vivid in the sphere of the small threedee, Tarrant shook the hands of Rusch and Vidal and Jazinsky before the group passed out of range of the lens. The pilot remained with the plane, but Tarrant’s aide walked with him now, as she had accompanied him to Vidal’s official memorial on Velcastra. Zulika Garret was tall, raw boned, not the usual recruit for the personal aide of an imminent president; but everything was different on Omaru, Marin thought. The world had lived under the gun for so long, courage, skill and mulish determination were qualities valued far above business degrees and celebrity looks.

The AI whispered an update, that the party was on its way up in the executive elevator, just as Travers stepped in. His hair was still damp, his skin glowing, cheeks just a little ruddy after effort, and the sinews in his arms still stood out, visible under the short sleeves of a pale shirt he wore over tight black slacks. Marin approved of everything he saw as he watched Neil make his way to the autochef for a bottle of water and a mug of green tea. He was carrying the formal jacket and the sidearm harness, while Marin’s own lay on a dormant workstation.

“What I miss?” Travers came to a halt by the navtank, where Toshiko
Szebek
was slithering down and under, passing out of sight as the
Wastrel
nosed on into the Omaru system. He chugged half the water and set the bottle on the side of the tank as Jon Kim – smartly dressed in grays and dark blues, quite ready to attend to business – appeared in the passage beyond the Ops room’s open armordoors.

“Alec Tarrant’s plane is aboard,” Marin said thoughtfully. “It’s just a short Weimann hop from here to the blockade, and … here we go.”

A tiny shiver through the airframe told them the
Wastrel
had skipped back into e-space, and he glanced at the chrono. From the midnight realm of ice asteroids and comets, where the data node was parked on station keeping, to the comparatively warm, bright zone of the blockade was less than an hour. The
Wastrel
would drop out well short of the battle group – Rusch had supplied coordinates already known to the command corps aboard the
Kiev
.

“Do you ever question your sanity?” Kim asked in an oddly plaintive voice as he joined them at the tank.

“Every day,” Travers assured him. “You want out? Shapiro wouldn’t hold you to any promise you made in the heat of the moment.”

“No, no way would I leave him,” Kim said quickly, “but …” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbed. “We’re on Fleet’s shit list, Neil. You know that. It’s one thing, being tucked in safely at Alshie’nya, but here –? It’s Fleet, goddamn it. A super-carrier.” He rubbed his face hard. “I’m from the boonies. Ulrand. I’ve never even
seen
a super-carrier, except on CityNet. I’ve seen enough of them in the vids, of course, but it’s not the same. You guys?”

“We’ve served on several of them,” Marin said without arrogance. “The
Intrepid
, the
Kiev
itself, albeit briefly.” He gave Travers a sidelong look, and Neil’s head shook minutely, an expression of odd feelings.

“Coming back is weird.” Travers chugged the rest of the water and tossed the bottle back toward the autochef, where a little servitor drone would scoot out and collect it.

“And that,” Marin breathed, “is today’s major understatement.”

A burr of heavy servos announced the elevator, and he lifted a brow at Travers as the door slid over. “Showtime,” Neil said softly. “Where’s Harrison?”

Kim gestured over his shoulder. “He was finalizing some documents. He ought to be here, well, now.”

As if it were a cue, Shapiro walked up from the executive staterooms as Jazinsky and Vidal stepped out of the elevator. The diplomatic smile was in place on his face, as if it were a mask he assumed at will, and he greeted Alec Tarrant with a quiet word, a shake of the man’s hand.

They had not met since Vidal’s memorial – and the look on Tarrant’s own face was nothing short of bemused, Marin saw. Vidal’s return, his survival, was absolutely classified. No one outside of his father’s house and Chandra Liang’s establishment knew about it; but here was the dead hero, looking like a ghost only half exorcized.

“We were
way
beyond lucky,” Mick was saying. “My copilot survived too. In fact, she’s in better shape than I am. I took a heavy load of rad poisoning on top of the, uh, the crash.”

The cover story was that they had flown a mission on the skirts of Hellgate, suffered a mechanical failure and put the plane down hard on a planetoid. The impact smashed the generators; little power was left in the cells to run the heaters – no food, no heat, no medication for injuries, poorly recycled water. It was a common enough misadventure, especially among Freespacers; and it protected the truth. Knowledge of Ernst Rabelais and transspace and Lai’a was classified along with the Zunshu data.

“Well, I’m damned pleased to make your acquaintance, Colonel Vidal,” Tarrant said honestly before he also took Marin’s hand, and Travers’s, with a word of greeting.

He was just as Marin remembered him: a thickset man in the throes of middle age, with crisp hair cut short and swiftly silvering, startlingly alert blue-gray eyes, a weather-beaten face and the battered, capable hands of a man who had worked hard most of his life. Soon enough he would be the first president of the Republic of Omaru, but here, today, he was clad in black, simple, inconspicuous clothes. Nothing about him set him apart, not even the presence of a secretary at his shoulder.

A pace behind him, Zulika Garret was as poker faced as any Marine still wearing the uniform. She even wore the shorn hair and blunt fingernails of a soldier, and where Tarrant wore black, she was in shades of charcoal. She deliberately stepped back into the shadows, almost blending into the background with a display of subtlety Mark Sherratt would have appreciated. Marin exchanged nods with her, a tiny acknowledgment that he remembered her, and had not forgotten Mitch Garret, the brother who fought with the Hydralis militia, or Marty Cimino, the husband who was still sleeping in cryogen, waiting for cloned lungs.

“As it happens,” Tarrant was saying to Vidal, “I came to know quite a lot about you, Colonel. I watched a couple of bios, at the time of the memorial. Half of Velcastra was in mourning.”

“Mourning the notorious playboy,” Vidal said dismissively. “I was stock in trade for their paparazzi, any time I was home on furlough. But they never talked about my Daku affiliations … or the fact I flew with the Delta Dragons,” he added, brows arching pragmatically. “I was wearing the unit badge on my face. I still am. Elstrom CityNet never bothered to notice it.”

“They could never have known you were the Daku spy on the blockade, and it’s probably better if we sweep that part of your career under the rug,” Alexis Rusch suggested. “Mine too. What’s history going to make of me? I was cursed to command the
Kiev
through much of the time when Hydralis was gradually reduced to rubble, and the best I could do was minimize the damage, slow it down.” She gave Tarrant a rueful look. “You gave us quite a run for our money. You forced my hand over and over. You were
too
good, Colonel Tarrant. In the end I
had
to hit Hydralis; I hit her as softly as I could manage. If I didn’t, I’d have been replaced by a hardline commander who’d have wiped your city and its people clean off the face of Omaru.”

An expression of pain raced across Tarrant’s face, swiftly hidden. “I realize all this. We did a lot of damage to Fleet. Created a lot of casualties, and in the blue light of day, after the dust settles, I’d say there’s going to be as much guilt as grief. Omaru is still fighting, Colonel. You’re expecting to meet twelve blockade ships today, but your battle group has been whittled down to ten.”

Her expression might have been carved from granite. “A skirmish?”

He shrugged. “Attrition. The
Myrmidon
flew into one of the mine fields laid down by Captain van Donne’s
Mako
. And yes, of course we posted beacons, but they seemed to issue invitations rather than warnings for the idiot commanding. She was gone in an instant, and every soul with her. Scientists from the
Kiev
collected data and I should imagine they’re working around the clock, trying to make sense of what happened. They have no Zunshu data, but they can hypothesize about new weapons, and I’d guess they’re doing it right now.” He sighed, a sound of frustration and regret. “One of your frigates, the
Aldgate
, took on the
Mako
and Captain van Donne led them one hell of chase through the smelters on the other side of the system. He raked her with a full spread of missiles, took out enough sensors to partially blind her, and she crippled herself in a collision with one of the dormant Goldman-Pataki installations. She got comm online, managed to call out for a tug, and they towed her back to the Fleet docks, over the pole of Omaru. No lives were lost, but the crew were given furlough on Borushek and the
Aldgate
won’t relaunch for another month.”

Rusch absorbed all this with the stoicism of a career officer. For a woman who had never harbored any ambition to command in a time of war, she handled the responsibility, the pressure, with composure Marin admired. “All right, ten ships. Which makes your job a little easier, Michael.”

“Your job?” Tarrant wondered.

“Not a part of this endeavor you need concern yourself about,” Shapiro said smoothly. “Leave our work to us, Colonel Tarrant.” He paused, frowned deeply. “You understand, don’t you, the danger you’re placing yourself in by being here?”

For a moment Tarrant seemed to hunt for words. “I’m the one authorized to speak for Omaru,” he said at last. “If anything happens to me there are scores of others who can take my place – I’m expendable, and wise enough to know it. My immediate replacement is my old comrade, Amanda Lo. She’s already been moved to a safe location, far from Hydralis. From there, she and the staff who are waiting to assume government will monitor events in the next day or two. If I’m captured or killed, it’ll be President Lo speaking for Omaru. The liberty of this system is our object, General, not my aggrandisement or hers.”

“Well said.” Shapiro was satisfied. “We’ll do everything we can to safeguard you. And I assume Omaru’s preparations for this event are complete?”

“This event,” Tarrant echoed with a lopsided smile. “Sounds like we’re throwing a party.”

“Oh, the party comes later,” Rusch assured him.

“I hope to be there. And yes, Omaru is well defended. Sergei van Donne and his crew finished seeding and configuring our minefields two days ago. The
Mako
left a short while ago. Until yesterday she was out by Shikoku, making final tests, but she signaled ten hours ago. She’s headed to Jagreth to field-test the minefields there.” Tarrant looked back at Garret, who nodded. “Wrangling of our defenses has passed to our own specialists. They took instruction from van Donne while the work was being done; they’re confident of their abilities, and so am I.”

Shapiro summoned a smile and gave Rusch a speculative look. “It appears we’ve rented the hall and hired the band … again.”

“Time,” she said grimly “to find out if we can dance.”

It was typical of Alec Tarrant to issue a snort of ribald humor. “Well, it’s too bloody late now to find out we can’t!”

From across the Ops room, Vaurien’s voice said levelly, “Alexis, we’ll be dropping out at the arranged coordinates in ten minutes.”

She stirred forcibly and Marin watched her pull her shoulders back, take a deep breath, before she went to join him. “Etienne has the frequency and the IFF code, of course?”