Event Horizon (Hellgate) (79 page)

“It’s just debris, anywhere you look.” Jazinsky was running current data and the
Aenestra
feed, side by side. “Whoever these people were, they were all over their home system, mining, building, developing. At its height, this civilization would have been noisy, dirty – like Earth in the late twenty-second century, Richard, just before we broke out with the Auriga engine. Now … look at it.” The white-blonde head shook slowly. “You can see Zunshu paw prints everywhere. Their signature is easy to recognize. They mopped up everything, right down to orbital platforms, dockyards, any big ships that must have gotten out and played tag in the outer system. Damnit, Mark, this must be giving you the heebie-jeebies.”

“It is,” Mark confessed. “And I’m not the only one.” He was frowning at Midani Kulich, who had visibly changed color.

Lai’a was driving around the planet under power, scanning the inner system while it probed and imaged the world with a science platform more robust than the
Aenestra
’s
. The bottom line was not long in coming.

“There is no sign of Resalq presence in this system, Doctor Sherratt, either current or previous, and no sign of indigenous intelligent life on Orion 521-D. However, I am able to detect very faint, anomalous energy emissions from a point in the asteroid field beyond the sun.”

“Anomalous?” Tor echoed. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning,” Lai’a said coolly, “energy signatures which possibly indicate the presence of simple nuclear power cells. The
Aenestra
did not report this; the source is faint enough to be lost in the background interference off the Orion Drift. I detected it only because I am deliberately searching the system for such traces.”

“A hulk, drifting, decaying, engines corroding, toxic,” Dario guessed. “The Zunshu might even have missed one.”

“Or ruins on one of the asteroid mines,” Tor added. “A near miss implosion creates mayhem, decompression, total casualties, even though the facility still exists – again, toxic, corroding, decaying.”

“Worth a look?” Jazinsky wondered.

“On the way out.” Vaurien turned his back on the tank. “We’re leaving. If there were Resalq hanging on here, Mark, we’d have found them by now – it’d take machinery for life like us to survive here. The air’s too thin, the water’s too acid, almost all native life was obliterated in the Zunshu strike, so there’s no food, which means
everything
has to be recycled just to buy another week. A thousand years? Humans and Resalq wouldn’t last a thousand
days
without viable machinery. And we’d be seeing it right now.”

“Yes,” Mark said quietly. “Even if fugitives from the
Ebrezjim
did find their way here, their fight was probably over a long time ago. Or, if a handful of survivors eventually retired to the operable cryogen tanks, but didn’t dare set a comm beacon – well, they’ll keep. Another expedition will find them. It can’t be us.” He lifted his head, seemed to shake off some burden. “Lai’a, we’ll leave the system on a course to intercept this anomalous energy emission of yours. Low-level radiation, you say?”

“Probably only residue from an abandoned mine,” Lai’a warned. “Will I return directly to the Orion Drift?”

“We will.” Mark gave the whole company a tired smile. “Thank you for indulging us. There was only ever a faint chance.”

Lai’a was already moving, and Marin was unsurprised when it performed a micro-jump of just a few minutes in e-space before dropping back out on the fringe of a formidable asteroid field. Arago generators powered up at once; multiple objects were shoved aside as Lai’a drove through like any asteroid miner. The navtank was stygian, with just a handful of icons marking the positions of large bodies. This far from the dim sun, the cold was intense, the light levels so low, the vidfeed was almost unintelligible.

The visuals cleaned up with enhancement. Lai’a supplemented them with a graphical overlay, making sense of an image comprised mostly of grain and guesswork. Marin frowned over it – a minor planet, potato-shaped, too small for its mass to collapse it into a sphere, and yet –

“It measures just under 400 kilometers on its longest axis,” Lai’a reported, “and indications are, it is hollow.”

“What, all of it?” Travers was astonished. “That’s too big for the whole thing to have been a mine, surely.”

“Or to have
just
been a mine,” Vidal mused. “It might have started out as one … Lai’a, you getting a better look at that energy signature?”

“Stream the data to the tank,” Dario invited.

A moment later the information began to scroll, and Jazinsky swore softly. “That’s a boatload of residual heat, for an abandoned mine.”

The internal temperature of the hollow planetoid was around 2
^o
C, just above the freezing point of water. Too cold for humans or Resalq to thrive, but likely comfortable enough for a species that had evolved on the world of an orange dwarf.

“Nuclear generators,” Tor said softly. “See, here? That’s … damnit, Dar, tell me this isn’t the signature of fuel-grade plutonium.”

“It is,” Dario affirmed.

“That stuff’s bloody deadly,” Jazinsky looked up at Vaurien. “We haven’t used it in centuries.”

“But it’s low tech, simple, and it works.” Vaurien looked from Mark to Dario and back. “The kind of tech you could scratch together in a hell of a hurry, with your back against the wall.”

“Or,” Vidal added, “maybe these people were still using plutonium reactors when the Zunshu came. If this asteroid started life as a mine, it might easily have been powered this way.” He gave Mark a dark look. “Lai’a, you reading anything like liquid water inside?”

“And widespread machinery,” Tor said sharply.

“Yes, on both counts.” Lai’a streamed the pertinent data to the tank. “Large bodies of liquid water, measuring in the millions of
liters
. The heat blooms of heavy machinery, low-level activity. However, I am also reading pressures and temperatures which are at odds with the requirements of humans and Resalq.”

“Microwave transmissions?” Mark prompted.

“No. But there are many thousands of heat signatures consistent with cabling,” Lai’a told him. “It would appear the occupants broadcast nothing on-air. Their generators are heavily shielded to prevent radiation spill. The hollow interior of the planetoid is deep under the surface, with native rock providing efficient thermal shielding. My sensors are at maximum to detect heat blooms of machinery and life, even at this range. From what we know, a Zunshu probe would not recognize these values.”

“Hiding,” Alexis Rusch said quietly. “They’re just hiding, and they’re doing it efficiently. The Zunshu wouldn’t detect this – it’s not loud or dirty enough. Mark?”

“Yes.” Mark was aghast, astonished, horrified, fascinated, at once. “You said you see the heat signatures of living beings, Lai’a. How many?”

“Approximately two million,” Lai’a said calmly. “Body temperature is too low, body mass is too small, for these to be Resalq or human.”

“Besides which,” Tor added, “the escape pods are one-shot. They’d head for the only planet with an atmosphere and liquid water – they’d have to. They couldn’t have known this existed, it’s too well hidden. And once they’d set down on the planet, they weren’t going anywhere without transportation … and I
don’t
think they’d get help from the natives. These guys went to ground so efficiently, they never came up again. Which is the only reason they’re still alive.”

“Someone got away from the homeworld,” Dario whispered. “Maybe the Zunshu missed a couple of the mines, in the outer system? Or maybe there were crews on a fleet of big asteroid miners. They went dark fast enough, hid among the rubble – cannibalized the ships, brought in resources and survivors from the other mines and outposts. Hydroponic food, recycled air and water, minerals from the rock itself, plutonium generators … twelve centuries later, they’ve built a decent population.”

Mark laced his fingers at his nape. “But there’s nowhere to go. Their home planet will need terraforming before its liveable again. They don’t have the technology to do the job.”

“They might,” Jazinsky argued, “if they’ve had twelve
hundred
years to sit here and think about this, develop whisper-quiet, clean industry. They just don’t want to do it because it’ll only advertise their presence to the Zunshu.” She leaned both hands on the side of the tank. “Lai’a, can you get into their computers?”

“Their computers are not online.”

“Not what?” Travers wondered.

“Not networked,” Rusch told him. “Not connected to anything. Discrete units working in isolation, or a few of them cable-connected. So, Lai’a, we can’t get anything out of their computers?”

“That is correct,” Lai’a affirmed. “Also, this culture broadcasts
nothing
. All information is cabled. This is wise, since Zunshu probes are known to monitor for comm traffic.”

“Can they passively receive signals?” Vaurien wondered.

“Structures do exist which could serve as microwave receivers,” Lai’a allowed. “Did you wish to make contact?”

The question effectively stopped the Ops room. The silence was profound as the Sherratts, Jazinsky and Rusch shared a mute conference, and Lai’a simply waited. At last Mark said slowly,

“We could try. But you understand, the chances of being able to communicate will be small. We’ve no inkling of the morphology of these people, much less how their brains function – and these two factors govern the formation of language. We can’t even know if their comm works on similar frequencies to our own. It’s possible they wouldn’t even recognize a message from us as containing meaningful contents … and if they did know a message when they saw one, all it could cause is furore, at a time when we can’t stay here to offer anything from intelligent answers to assurances that the Zunshu won’t be back.”

The only outside contact this species had ever known, Marin thought, was Zunshu machinery and annihilation. If they were capable of identifying a message from an alien species, they were likely to prime every weapon they possessed, and open fire. Marin would not have blamed them.

“Leave it,” Vaurien decided. “We know exactly where they are. The Commonwealth can send an embassy, try fifty ways to make contact, decipher the language – God knows, terraform the planet for them if they can’t do it for themselves. But not now, and not us.”

“Agreed,” Shapiro said firmly. “Mark?”

“Oh, yes. This is unexpected, intriguing – and extremely dangerous. One could spend a whole career here! This is only the third intelligent species we’ve ever encountered. And most of us have one thing in common. We’re victims. We can return, leave a ship here for as long as it takes. For the moment … Lai’a, I believe we’re leaving.”

“Calculating a Weimann solution for the Orion Drift,” Lai’a responded. “Weimann exclusion threshold in 150 seconds.”

Chapter Fourteen

“It’s been so long.” Mark Sherratt mocked himself with a grimace as he scanned across the litter of handies, each displaying a different text, fragments, the flotsam of a language that might have been utterly alien.

As a linguist, Roy Arlott had a vested interest in the ancient form, but he was little less bemused than Sherratt, while Midani Kulich stood aside pensively, waiting to be asked. They were in the disused Chemistry 3, where the benches were still a clutter of unpacked cartons and the autochef was dark. Space was at a premium, and the crew lounge was organizing for dinner already. Vidal had come in with the elder Sherratt, when Arlott called for help. With time on his hands, Travers was curious about the work, and Marin knew just enough about the language to be intrigued by the ancient form.

The fragments were salvaged from the
Ebrezjim
’s archives, and even Travers saw the difference at once between the ancestral language and the contemporary Resalq. The older characters were more fluid; some were formed very differently. Worse yet, Arlott said, the terms they spelled out had changed. Contractions and abbreviations were quite different – and he was a linguist, not an engineer, while the fragments he was studying seemed to be service logs, filled with unfamiliar references.