Event Horizon (Hellgate) (70 page)

A flash from the navtank, and the image reappeared, shimmied, stabilized. The angle from Hubler’s helmet camera showed a closeup on a bulkhead, and then a quick upward tilt – right above was the fissure, a black gash in the hull, bleeding cables and broken conduit, half-seen through a whirlwind of ice crystals A blast of static white noise over the comm, and Hubler’s voice said distinctly,

“Get under it, Midani – no,
other
side.
Quick
! Catch it on the … yeah, you got it.”

They caught a glimpse of Kulich’s armored figure as he dove under the cylindrical mass to stop it drifting into the deck. “
Whattahell
happening to that Arago?” Midani huffed.

“It slipped,” Hubler said tersely. “Nothing, and I mean
nothing
, was ever invented that worked properly in this kinda cold. “Jesus, this whole place is cold as a superconductor coil.” The tone was
labored
; he was working hard.

“What is this thing,
Jeezoh
?” Kulich panted, rising back up into the pickup angle of Hubler’s camera. “Catch it! Gotta be turning … no, other way! Right … all got it okay now.”

The cylindrical mass was drifting this way and that. Each time they caught it, they shifted its direction of drift and sent it sailing toward another bulkhead, in a compartment where every wall was dangerously close.

“Shit,” Hubler wheezed, “that was close. Can you see the fissure?”

“Snowing storming.” Kulich paused, muttered in his native tongue. “Further – going on more – going right-right.”

“Sixteen minutes,” Dario warned. “Roark, watch your clock and your rad counters.”

“Can’t go no faster than we’re going,” Hubler growled, “not and get this thing out without beating it up.”

“It’s going to be tight,” Tor began.

“I fuckin’ know that, son!” Hubler snarled with the tone of a drill sergeant. “Standby Decontamination, and we’ll do the best we can.”

“Roark, Doctor Grant will be in armor,” Vidal said quietly.

“Yeah? Well, ’
scuse
me if I hope it’s a waste of his time and energy.”

“So do I,” Vidal agreed, “but he’ll be there in Decon 2 with you.”

“Well,
fuckitall
, don’t I feel safer already?” Hubler muttered, and then, “wait right where you are, Midani. I’m going topside. Doc Sherratt?”

“Yes,” Mark and Dario responded in unison. Mark added, “Which?”

“Either.” Roark was huffing with effort. “I’m gonna sleeve the fissure with a rockwool insulating blanket. We left a winch drone up here, with a spool of cable. The plan is, I’ll drop down a cargo net. When she comes up, she’ll come through slow and steady with Midani underneath, pushing. Anything we oughtta know before we do this thing?”

For a moment Mark, Dario and Tor shared a silent conference before Mark said, “Nothing. You’re on time, on target, Hubler. You can make it back to Lai’a before your clock runs down.”

“Hallelujah. Here I go.” Hubler took an audible breath and bounced up through the rent.

The visual blanked as he went through, before the spectators recognized the eerie, cratered landscape of the
Ebrezjim
’s hull, and a small drone which had clamped on with Aragos, right by the hull breach that had killed this ship. Hubler did not pause for longer than it took to anchor himself to the surface and tumble over into a head-down attitude, from which he unrolled the layer of rockwool into the fissure.

The fabric was kevlex-titanium gossamer, and smart – Travers knew it well. Emergency services used it to patch hull damage on the fly in small ships, even gunships. It would fill a breach and a few meters of old fashioned duct tape would hold it in place securely enough to repressurize the compartment. He had used the stuff several times in reality and twenty more in simulation, and from the way Hubler handled it, he had done the same.

“Troop transport,” Vidal told him in a murmur. Travers looked over at him, through the wash of the threedee. Vidal’s brows quirked. “Me, Roark,
Resa
Carson, couple of newbies – coming back from a furlough, just got into the Fleet docks. We’d hitched a ride over from Borushek – the Hydralis militia hit the dock. We took a chunk of shrapnel like a guided missile … picked us up, threw us away. Killed the comm stone dead and chewed a chunk out of the hull.” He nodded into the navtank, where they were watching Hubler’s gauntlets swiftly shoving the rockwool blanket into place. “Quick hands, and we’re here to tell the tale.”

“Twenty minutes,” Dario said into the loop.

“Done and done.” Hubler pulled his gloves out of the fissure and spun around, reaching for the drone, cargo net and cable.

“It’ll take four minutes to get back to Lai’a,” Marin said quietly.

“Roark.” Vidal’s voice was level but terse. “You got to start back in
six
minutes, max.”

“You don’t say.” Hubler was feeding the cable through. “You hear that, Midani? Can you get it into the net, or d’you want me to come back down?”

“Coming back down is
gooder
. No … is better,” Kulich said without hesitation. “Load is drifting-moving, all over, not stopping never.”

“Bloody zero-gee,” Tor rasped. “If there’d been time, we’d have set up a gravity generator.” He gave Mark an apologetic look. “We blew this one. Sorry. We all thought we had hours longer. It should’ve been easy.”

“I know … ride with it,” Mark said in the familiar, velvet tone that soothed even as it exhorted. “We’re not done yet, and we’ve learned a lot. Lai’a itself has learned a great deal.”

Again the visual blanked as Hubler darted through the fissure, and then Travers recognized his gauntlets in the bottom of the frame, and Kulich’s helmet in the top and, between them, the gray cylinder of the AI core. It rolled, pitched, yawed, as they tried to feed it into the net, until at last they held the net steady and let the load yaw its way into captivity. Hubler swore lividly as the net tightened automatically, and as the drone up above registered the mass, the cable shortened.

“Here we go.” Hubler was moving at once, bouncing up through the fissure like a fish diving between coral heads. Bare moments passed before he was saying, “Give her a push, Midani. Mick, time?”

Vidal was right by the navtank, his face lit in surreal colors and shadows by its illumination. “You got
one
minute to start back, Roark. You got no margin for error – red zone in five.”

The winch was running already, not actually pulling the load through the hull breach, but taking up slack cable. Travers held his breath, watching as the cargo net appeared, very gently jostling against the rockwool blanket – and then it was out, with Kulich’s helmet popping up through the fissure right behind it, like a rabbit out of a burrow.

For a moment Hubler began to fiddle with the winch, but Vidal was there at once: “Ten seconds, Roark. Five seconds – forget it. Bring the whole shebang back just as-is.
Move
!”

The winch seemed to have fouled, or the cargo net had twisted – Travers could not make out which in the harsh, grainy image, and nor did it matter. Vidal was right. Hubler and Kulich took the whole assembly of winch, drone and load between them, spun about, shut off the Arago tethers and hit the suit thrusters hard.

In the navtank was Hubler’s point of view, an image of Lai’a, shrunken with distance but growing slowly, steadily, as they jetted away from the
Ebrezjim
. Mark frowned at the acceleration numbers, performed a quick calculation and said very quietly,

“Roark, the mass you’re carrying is slowing you down. You’re not fast enough by forty percent. Can you get any more speed?”

“Nope,” Hubler told him with grim certainty. “Got to hold enough gas in the tanks to brake – ’less you want me to try an Arago brake, with a load this delicate and valuable.”

An Arago braking maneuver, as Travers well knew, was calculated by an individual,
for
an individual. Two armored figures, plus the drone, plus the load, given an inexact thruster burn – the variables ran wild.

“Arago brake?” Rabelais muttered. “Don’t know what it’s like in this century, but where I come from, it was always ass-over-tit and glue the bits back together later.”

“We got enough left in the tanks to do a proper thrust brake,” Hubler said grimly. “You got Decontamination standing by? Looks like we’ll need it.”

Bill Grant had been listening for some time, and responded from the armored hangar. “I have a drone gang waiting for you, Roark. I’ve taken readings off the hull of the wreck – it’s nasty.”

“We’re gonna fry,” Hubler said bitterly.

“Not … necessarily.” Marin looked from Travers to Vidal and back. “Lai’a, can you catch them in handling tractors, perform braking … without damaging them or the cargo?”

“It can be done. Tractors online,” Lai’a acknowledged.

“Roark – hit it,” Vidal said sharply. “Burn everything – get some speed. Lai’a is going to catch you in tractors.”

“It’s gonna –
what
?” Hubler echoed. “Tell me you didn’t say something about a tractor catch.” But he and Kulich had kicked the suit jets to maximum and their speed was ramping up.

“Lai’a can calculate it,” Vidal said acidly. “This is a Resalq super-AI we’re talking about, not some hangar deck halfwit.” He gave Travers a humorless half smile. “Been here, done this … five broken bones between the two of us. Six, if you count the knuckle Roark broke on the jaw of the moron who almost ripped us apart in the Aragos.”

Humor aside, it was the best option, and Hubler knew it. Travers was watching the instruments, running swift calculations. “They’re going to do it,” he said to no one in particular. “The armor’s still sizzling, but if I remember how to do the math, they’ll be inside the safe zone.” He looked up at Mark, brows arched.

“With a margin of eight seconds to seal the hangar and start the decontamination process,” Mark said with a grim optimism. He puffed out his cheeks. “We really did
fudge
this one in mid-flight.”

“Learning process,” Dario said with deliberate pragmatism. “Us and Lai’a. All intelligent creatures have to learn … two minutes, Bill – you’re set up, ready to receive?”

And Grant: “The bay doors are open, I’m running five layers of Arago shielding between me and the
shitstorm
out there,
and
I’m in armor. Damnit, is anybody but me ready to get the hell out of this creepy place?”

It was Mark who said, “I think we all are, Bill. Start them on decon, get the cargo locked down safely. We’re going to take a minute to say
chelemlal
for the dead, and then – Lai’a?”

“The transspace drive is available,” Lai’a assured him. “Ignition sequencing is not possible before the habitation module is sealed. The course back to the exact point of horizon transit is pinpointed by the hyper-Weimann wake. Hyper-Weimann ignition is at captain’s discretion; potential transit in 66 minutes.”

“Wait for my word,” Mark said thoughtfully. “Richard … a short time only, for a memorial.”

“Take all the time you need, soon as they’re back aboard.” Vaurien was intent on the display. “Roark, Midani – tractor braking will begin in 20 seconds. Brace yourselves.”

The usual Arago brake was sudden, hard, like running headfirst into a wall, and injury was common even when the subject was armored. Hubler and Kulich could easily have ridden it out, but the
Ebrezjim
’s AI core was another matter. Lai’a treated it like a basket of eggs. Forty seconds out from the hangar, six gentle tractors caught the whole package of Hubler, Kulich and their prize, and the screens were so soft, so malleable, it must have been like falling into a deep stack of air cushions.

“I can see you,” Grant called. “Lai’a, can you hear me?”

“Of course, Doctor Grant,” the AI said with mild reproach.

“Well, pardon me,” Grant muttered. “Sling ’em around, I want ’em to slide on into the hangar boots-first, got it?”