Event Horizon (Hellgate) (48 page)

“Twenty-five minutes,” Etienne warned. “Beacon 4 is transmitting.”

Beacon 4 was the comm drone parked on station keeping at the head of Swarm 4, and Travers knew what it was broadcasting.
Warning: you are entering the restricted space of the Federal Republic of Jagreth. Turn back immediately. Warning: you are entering a protected zone, you will be destroyed. Turn back immediately.
The message looped endlessly, from the moment it was triggered to the time the intruders either cleared the zone or were neutralized.

Now all eyes were on the navtank, waiting, watching, while Shapiro spoke in sporadic murmurs to Prendergast. Jagreth’s own ATC would know nothing for another half hour – civilian systems were too insubstantial, and the swarms of tiny Zunshu weapons were far outside the domestic traffic lanes which wove a tangle around the planet itself.

“Twenty minutes,” Etienne announced. “No change of speed or vector. Standby.”

At ten minutes, the battle group would be almost on top of the ‘protected zone.’ The swarm would begin to lock onto them – soon enough, each individual mine would acquire the micro-gravities of the
London
itself.

“They’re running out of time,” Rusch whispered.

“I don’t think Colonel Carvalho would be inclined to see it that way.” Jazinsky was massaging the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefingers. “He’s not going to turn back.”

Marin was glaring into the tank. “How good is this data?”

“You mean, given the signal lag?” Vaurien pulled the clasp from his hair and massaged his scalp with both hands. “Even with cutting-edge Resalq signal boosting, this data is about ten minutes old. It’s the best we can do.”

“And the battle group is – was! – forming up,” Travers added. “The
London
’s dropping astern. We bloody knew Carvalho would fall back on the typical old Fleet strategy, it’s the whole reason the Confederacy put him on that poor ship.” He looked bleakly at Shapiro. “You tipped the bastard for throwing colonials at colonials, and if they’re erased, what does it matter? Looks like you were right. He’s going to do it.”

Framed in the blue-black void of the tank, the fat red icon flagging the super-carrier had cut speed; a cruiser and a frigate were forging ahead and the Zunshu devices had begun to swarm in great numbers. Travers swallowed hard, reminding himself forcibly, all this happened ten long minutes ago. Signal lag was a bitch. The Battle of Jagreth could already be over – no matter the outcome, the data would arrive according to the immutable laws of physics.

“Beacon 4 has been eliminated,” Etienne reported calmly.

Shapiro’s head came up. “
Carvalho’s
response to the clear, explicit warning of a protected zone was to shoot the messenger?” He held the combug to his ear, listened, and then, “Yes, Mr. President, that is correct. Colonel Carvalho has fired the first shot. The beacon has been destroyed … yes, sir, the weapon has acquired multiple targets … we don’t know that yet – remember the distances involved. Signal delay is inevitable. Please standby.” He plucked the bug from his ear, palmed it to shut off its audio pickup and muttered, “Goddamned civilians, did they learn nothing in school? He wants data
now
.”

“He can’t have it,” Rusch rasped.

“He could get it a little sooner,” Vaurien mused, “but not in realtime.” He lifted a brow at Shapiro. “Tully, are Weimanns on standby?”

And Ingersol, from the engine deck: “Of course. We’re still running dark, but the igniters are online. We’re at ‘go’ minus ten seconds, just like we set it up.”

“This ship goes anywhere near some freakin’ battlefield,” Rabelais said softly, “and she’ll be up on her toes, ready to run. We’re not a warship. Thank gods we’re not a warship.”

“From
Nysos
we can be out at the Weimann exclusion limit in 108 seconds,” Vaurien said levelly to Shapiro, “and we can jump to Swarm 4 in a matter of seconds. Get fresher data, jump right back. Prendergast can have his data five minutes early, if it matters so badly.”

But Shapiro was making negative gestures. “I’m not going to ask the
Wastrel
to go anywhere near any battlefield, and I’d expect you to decline, if I was witless enough to ask it. She’s the second most valuable ship that ever existed in the Deep Sky – the first being Lai’a itself.” His lips compressed. “Prendergast can learn some patience … not to mention a little elementary physics.” He slipped the bug back into his ear and grimaced. “Yes, Mr. President … yes, I’m watching the datastream right now … no, sir, I can’t relay it to you. Unless you have a threedee configured for celestial navigation the information will be unintelligible.”

“And you don’t find too many navtanks in presidential offices,” Vidal said in a harsh whisper.

“Active swarm encounter,” Etienne announced.

It was still speaking when the arrowhead icons marking the positions of the cruiser and frigate winked out. Around the Ops room, lungs that had been burning spasmed in a communal breath of reaction. A thousand lives had just ended, snuffed into nothingness.

“Turn around,” Travers growled. “For godsakes, you madman, turn the carrier back!”

For some moments he thought Carvalho might actually do it. The icon marking the position of the
London
slowed as the ship cut speed again, but two cruisers were already moving up ahead. Yellow sparks flashed on around them in the graphical display and Etienne said unnecessarily,

“Cruisers have opened fire.”

“Firing on what?” Vidal demanded. “They’ve seen the swarm?”

“I didn’t think seeing it was possible,” Queneau began. “I used to work on Fleet scanning and imaging systems – they
can’t
see a scatter of stuff the size of bits of rubbish, at the background temperature of deep space!”

“They’re firing at random.” Vidal was intent on the tank, not even blinking. “Etienne, close on 24x162, zoom it up … there. The bastard’s just hosing ordnance in the direction where he lost the ships, as if he figures there’s got to be something out there, probably a stealthed gun platform, certainly big, solid and stationary enough to hit with a railgun.”

“Logical. Worth a try,” Rusch said bitterly. She gave Vaurien and Shapiro an apologetic look. “In
Carvalho’s
place, I’d be thinking along the same lines. In the interests of saving my ships, I’d lay down speculative fire on the most promising coordinates.”

“I would hope you’d pull the goddamn’ battle group right out of there, Lex,” Rabelais remonstrated, “since you’ve got a few more viable brain cells than this bloody imbecile, Carvalho.”

“Of course I would,” she began, and then stopped as the icons marking the two cruisers winked out of existence. “Jesus, I don’t believe this.”

“It’s as if they learned nothing at Velcastra.” Travers heard the stress in his own voice and seemed to swallow his heart.

“Mr. President, I stress again,” Shapiro was saying for at least the third time, “this data is ten minutes old due to the signal delay caused by extreme distances. We wouldn’t be receiving it at all if the
Wastrel
hadn’t laid her own chain of sensor drones as we entered the system. There is no way to contact Colonel Carvalho directly in realtime, even with signal boosting technology. We’re already boosted to the maximum possible to drop the signal lag from forty minutes to ten … yes, sir, that is correct. Colonel Carvalho was warned repeatedly and unambiguously … yes, Mr. President, his response was to destroy the beacon.”

“And deploy warships.” Travers turned his back on the tank. “Then fire almost at random, in an attempt to destroy a hypothetical target.” He looked over at Marin and Vaurien. “These Fleet tactics were old when Carvalho was a cadet.”

“I learned them when I was a rookie,” Marin said bitterly.

“We all did.” Rusch was acerbic with disgust.

By now, a pair of markers had fallen well astern of the carrier. “Those two will be the tender and the hospital ship,” Jazinsky mused, “and you can bet your pension, Harrison, they’re loaded with Confederate observers.”

“Those ships are non-combatant,” Vidal added. “Carvalho won’t expect them to be fired on. The plan will be for them to stay well back, out of danger, and then run – get out with the intelligence if everything goes pear-shaped for Fleet.”

“But they
will
be ‘fired on,’ and I know it’s the wrong term.” Marin looked across at Jazinsky, who nodded silently. “Carvalho can’t know it, but a Zunshu swarm doesn’t make any differentiation between a hospital ship and a warship.”

“Can the commanders be warned?” Jon Kim asked pointedly. “Should they be?”

“They had the same warning as the whole battle group.” Rusch sounded tired, sad. “Colonel Carvalho is coming blasting in, expecting the non-combatants to be spared by human commanders on conventional ships. The question is, how long before even he realizes he’s up against something else?”

“Apparently, not soon enough. Look.” Vidal gestured into the tank.

Travers forced himself to watch, though Marin’s back was turned to the display. Four frigates and a cruiser were moving to the front in a spearhead formation, the classic attack pattern. Their chain guns were overlapping fire, sweeping space around them like a vast broom, and Rabelais asked softly,

“Can they hit the mines this way? I mean, I know they can’t
see
them, but can they hit them?”

“Oh, sure.” Jazinsky had moved closer to Vaurien. She leaned back into his chest and seemed to be sharing his body heat, as if she were chilled. “If they hit the mines by accident, the devices will trigger themselves – implode. The resulting gravity spike gives the rest of the swarm more surfing power. They just get faster. Also, the closer together you squeeze a bunch of ships, like this model attack formation
Carvalho’s
ordered, the higher their collective mass, which makes them a bigger gravity target. What you see here is going to draw the swarm like wriggling live bait.”

The analogy was stinging. Travers watched, fascinated, horrified, as the spearhead drove into the midst of a swarm it could not even see. He counted seconds as the ships plowed on, and then the first was gone; and the second. His belly turned over and he stopped counting.

“Swarm 4 has acquired the super-carrier,” Etienne reported.

“Any change in the
London
’s vector?” Travers watched Vidal fumble for a pack of Mountain Mists, which he was not supposed to be smoking. A lighter flicked several times before the sweet scents of kip grass and roses wafted on the too-warm, too-still air of the Ops room. When Mick offered Marin the pack and lighter, he accepted them. Like Travers he rarely smoked, but kip grass had its time and place. Marin took a deep drag on a cigarette and passed pack and lighter on to Travers.

The navtank was looking sparse. Only a handful of marker icons remained. Two cruisers, a frigate, the
London
itself, plus the two non-combatants. The medical and engineering vessels were well back now, falling deliberately further astern as the displays refreshed, relaying data pulses across a distance comparable to the spaces between planetary orbits. And those ships had to be loaded with Confederate observers, Travers thought as the kip grass dulled his raw nerve endings. Perhaps even a senator from Earth would be aboard, like Charleston Aimes Rutherford, expecting to witness a glorious victory, a punitive strike against a colony world.

“Etienne, does the swarm have target lock on the non-combatants?” Jazinsky wondered.

“Negative,” the AI said calmly. “They remain out of range.”

“Did we want a hospital and a workshop imploded?” Jon Kim’s voice was hoarse. Travers passed him the Mountain Mist, and he lit one with a grimace of gratitude.

“Of course we don’t want non-combatants destroyed,” Rusch told him. “In fact, it’s very much to our service if they make a survival run and carry the intelligence back to the Middle Heavens.”

“They’ll form up with the
Avenger
, without any doubt,” Shapiro went on. “Someone like Colonel Carvalho – or like Andrew Grimes, if we’re incredibly lucky – will dissect the data. Based on the analysis, the
Avenger
should be recalled to the homeworlds, for their defense.”