Event Horizon (Hellgate) (66 page)

“Right here,” Mark said at once, “looking at instruments, hardware, under a rime of frost. It looks … so old. It
is
old. I haven’t seen this kind of tech since I was young, but I remember it. Today’s hardware does the same thing equally as efficiently; just differently.”

“Mark, there are dead aboard,” Marin told him quietly. “Midani has pictures. He’s found at least twelve bodies. They’re – well, they’re perfectly preserved. I can’t be sure, but it looks like they might have been dead before the hull was torn open. There certainly isn’t any of the distortion you expect from explosive decompression and exposure to vacuum.” He took a long deep breath which carried over the audio pickup. “Midani recorded faces – they’re thick with frost, of course, but the images should enhance. I don’t suppose you’d recognize your grandparent?”

“No,” Mark said sadly as he drifted back out of the Ops room and approached Marin and Travers in a long, slow zero-gee glide. “I don’t believe I ever saw an image of him. You’d have to match DNA to identify any relationship between myself and one of the dead, and it’s not something I want to do. It seems intrusive, discourteous, to disturb these people. The
Ebrezjim
has been their tomb for a thousand years. It’ll continue to be their tomb for some time, even if they’re eventually taken to the new Resalq colony for interment.”

He sounded troubled, and Travers was sure he knew why. It was an old spacer’s superstition, common in Freespace. If a soul passed over in space, did it find its way home? And if a soul were to pass over in a gods forsaken place like this void, how could it ever find its way out? Vidal had whispered the same sentiment, a long time before, and Travers had no more answer than anyone had.

“Four minutes, people,” he warned. “Wrap up whatever you’re doing. Check your power cells.”

On station at the fissure in the hull, Judith Fargo called, “Everybody back here for a head count before we shove off. Hey boss, you want to leave the equipment, sleds and all? This stuff is getting
cold
. A few hours, and it won’t be much warmer than the rest of the wreck, which is too cold to touch without busting up the delicate stuff.”

“Load the sleds,” Travers told her. “Ernst, Jo, you want to lend a hand there? We want everybody and everything back aboard Lai’a. Richard, you there? How are we looking?”

Vaurien had not intruded, but like any salvage captain he would have monitored the whole excursion. “Right here, Neil. Comm is a little weak but the datastream is fine. Lai’a just finished modeling the
Ebrezjim
. I’m looking at it right now.”

“We’re coming home,” Travers told him as Fargo and Rabelais slung the equipment up through the crevice. He was recalling all drones as he spoke, and returned the handy to passive monitoring. “Curtis?”

“We’re on time.” Marin frowned at the winking red warning in his helmet display. “But, damn, I wouldn’t want to push it much further than the 90 minute mark. 120 in a case of outright emergency. At 120 you’d have frostbitten feet unless you’d switched out your power cells at the hour mark, and overrun the heaters the whole time. I’ll make a recommendation right here: everybody heading outside for any reason carries a spare suit powerpack.”

“Call that another ground rule,” Vaurien agreed.

“Two minutes, people,” Marin said into the loop. “Hustle!”

They were out with time to spare, and Fargo and Kulich took on to the chore of switching power cells in the sleds before they started back. Lai’a hung above them, half-lit against utter blackness, with the spill of light from the drive core picking out its planes and angles.

Few people spoke on the journey back. The enormity of the job weighed heavily on the Resalq, no less than the presence of the dead. Rabelais and Queneau were hushed beneath the burden of memory, and Travers saw no reason to intrude on their thoughts.

Tiredness ambushed him as he stacked the armor back into its locker, and he peered at his chrono. The clocks aboard Lai’a were synched to those on the
Wastrel
, and he had lost track of time. It was the small hours of the morning. He had been running on adrenaline and sheer curiosity, but the body was asking for rest, sleep. Dario and Tor were too wired to even notice the time, but Rabelais and Queneau had fallen very quiet as fatigue caught up with them, and Fargo and Inosanto had been on
Wastrel
time for long enough to be yawning. Mark had desuited fast and already stepped out, headed for Ops.

“You hungry?” Marin said as he closed up his locker. “I always get ravenous in the cold.” He yawned expansively and raked all ten fingertips through his hair.

The sense of dislocation was familiar enough. Transferring from ship to ship, world to world, always incurred a transition phase, like acclimating to a new environment. “Food, sleep,” Travers decided. “God knows, they must have gathered enough data to keep ’em busy for a week.” He slung an arm over Marin’s shoulders and steered him out of the suiting room.

Ops was quiet, the lights muted, a soft thread of Bach whispering from the big threedee where Alexis Rusch and Leon Sherratt were still dissecting the Orion 359 data. Leon was immersed in it again, relishing the opportunity to explore it in exhaustive detail, though he might not have expected to. Roy Arlott had pulled a chair up to the next workstation and gone to sleep, sprawled with his feet up on a second chair and a jacket laid over him. Vaurien and Jazinsky were sitting in the big chairs opposite the navtank, already eating a late supper.

And Mick Vidal was enduring Bill Grant’s ministrations. A hypogun thudded against his shoulder, delivering a fresh infusion of the medical nano which was keeping him alive. Grant, in an outsized Elstrom Eldorado teeshirt loud with the fluorescent green and orange team colors of the aeroball squad, yawned animatedly as he put away the gun and aimed a scanner at Vidal.

“You want to get some sleep, Mick,” he said sagely.

“You don’t say,” Vidal muttered as he pulled up his sleeve and worked the shoulder around.

“He’s right.” Mark had been in the crew lounge, investigating the autochef, and stepped into Ops right behind Travers and Marin. “You’re not getting enough rest, Michael … don’t think I’m not noticing.”

“Neither are you,” Vidal said defensively, and then relented as Mark popped a piece of fruit into his mouth. “My mind won’t shut up for long enough to let me sleep.”

“It will if you tell it to,” Mark said mildly.

“What, meditate?” Vidal sighed. “I seem to have forgotten how.”

“Relearn. All the Daku meditate.” Mark frowned at him. “You’re not still worried about dreaming?”

“I … might be.” Vidal took a step closer. “Mahak, it’s not that I don’t trust you, just …”

“Just that after months, you’ve grown afraid of fear itself,” Mark guessed. “Quite understandable. Still, you need to sleep.”

“And wake up sweating and screaming,” Vidal said, a barely audible mutter.

“If you do, I’ll be there to catch you,” Mark said simply.

It took a moment for the sense of what he had said to reach Travers, and then he angled a glance at Vidal as Mick reached out, gave his hand to the Resalq. “Richard,” Mark asked quietly, “You won’t need us before morning?”

“If I do, I’ll buzz you,” Vaurien told him, “but it’s all about analysis now, while Dario and Tor put together a gang of drones. Go on, Mark, take the chance to put your head down.”

“All right.” Sherratt collected Vidal with an arm loosely about his waist, and turned toward Travers and Marin. “Good night, Curtis. Neil.”

Rosy colour flushed around Vidal’s cheekbones as they made their way out, as if it embarrassed him yet again to be where he found himself, but Curtis said quietly, for Travers’s ears,

“Mark does this. He takes in strays. Heals them. Mick is where I was, all those years ago.”

“And Mark Sherratt made a Dendra Shemiji agent of you,” Travers said slowly. “You think he’s recruiting right now?”

“I don’t know,” Marin admitted. “Possibly. Even as a Daku, there’s a lot Mick could learn – though I’m not sure he’d be interested in doing the kind of work I did. Not after what he’s endured.”

“Still, those two are going to be close,” Travers said softly. “At least for a while. I’m glad, for Mick’s sake.” He leaned over and nuzzled a kiss into Marin’s ear. “You said you were hungry.”

“I am.” Marin stirred, stretched, knuckled his eyes and dealt Travers a swift embrace which challenged his ribs.

Minutes later they were in the cabin that felt strangely different, though it was identical to the quarters they had occupied on the
Mercury
. They were cross-legged in the middle of the bed while Travers balanced a single heaped plate on a pillow. The food was rapidly cooling while the neglected wine was a little too warm. Curtis seemed not to care.

Travers watched him eat with cursory interest in the food itself, as if anything that filled his belly would have done. He drank a half glass of a decent Velcastran merlot and sprawled out across the bronze sheets. “Lights, dim,” he groaned. Obediently, the lights muted themselves, leaving Travers to finish the risotto and omelette in near darkness.

Sleep stole his mind like a thief, a moment after he had set down his head, pulled Marin into a loose tangle of limbs and told the lights
off
. The threedee was idling, Lai’a was busy with its own work, and Travers’s dreams overtook him before he realized they were on him – dreams of intense cold eating into his marrow, of being at the bottom of a cave where the river was frozen, and if he looked into it, through a surface like polished glass he saw dead faces.

And he knew them. Roark Hubler was there, and Tonio Teniko. He was utterly alone and calling Marin’s name, and Richard’s, produced only echoes. He passed Hubler’s and Teniko’s icy faces, hunting for others, praying not to see them, until his feet slithered on sheet of ice. He toppled, and suddenly it was himself looking
up
at the layer of polished glass. But unlike Hubler and Teniko, his life was not suspended. He was awake, aware, hammering on the ice, shouting wordlessly and sure no one could hear, not in this place –

“Hey, quiet now, hush, you’re only dreaming.” Marin’s voice was soft in the warm darkness. “I guess Mick’s not the only one. There’ll be a few bad dreams on this ship. It’s just knowing where we
are
, what we’re doing. You all right, now?”

Travers had jerked awake into an instant of disorientation, but reality clicked back into place soon enough and he groaned. He dragged both palms over his face, feeling the dampness of a cold sweat on his forehead. “What time is it?”

“About 06:00.” Marin rolled flat on his back. “Go back to sleep. They’ll call us if they want us, but if they’re working shifts over there, we already did ours.”

But Travers was awake now. They had been asleep for only three hours but it was enough for his mind to be clear. He reached for Marin, hands exploring while his eyes were still closed. Marin was only feigning sleep, and when Neil drew the roughness of his cheek gently across his breast, dwelling on the pebble of each nipple, Marin gave a bass groan and capitulated.

The long slender legs spread, catching Travers between, and he rolled, bringing Neil right where he wanted him. Travers gave a breathless chuckle and sat up, watching Marin tug a pillow under his head. The only illumination was the pale blues from the threedee, and Curtis might have been an ice sculpture, half in darkness. The last faint threads of the dream still haunted Neil, making his heart pound and sweat prickle around his ribs.

The adrenaline rush might have been unpleasant, but he used it – thrust away the images of frozen faces and buried his own face in the curve of Marin’s shoulder as Curtis’s arms went around him. The mattress was softer than they were used to, but it conformed dutifully to Marin’s shape and their combined weight as Travers moved, restless, hunting for release, pleasure – his own and Curtis’s. One fine, slender hand dipped between them and made mayhem with Travers’s nerve endings, till he caught his breath, hissed through his teeth.

“Slow down,” Marin murmured, his voice a little hoarse, a little rough. “There used to be a saying – where’s the fire? I never appreciated it.”

Slow down? Travers sat back on his heels while Marin’s legs draped artlessly around him. The ice blue light from the threedee outlined him, from the form of jaw, nose, brow, to the curve of his shoulder, the hard plane of his chest, the elegant fullness of heavy genitals that would have inspired a sculptor. Times, Travers had come to wish he was an artist, and for a moment he wondered if there might be an opportunity, after the war, to see if the talent was in him.