Event Horizon (Hellgate) (91 page)

“Dangerous.” Vaurien’s tone was bleak. “Have they seen you, Lai’a?”

“It is difficult to be certain,” Lai’a said in an almost musing tone. “I had expected to be sensor-painted at this time, with a high probability that weapons would have target-locked me, or would already have been launched. I am registering no such sensors, Captain. The Zunshu installations may be aware of my presence via passive monitoring – for example, instruments keying on the fallout from the transspace drive – but I certainly have not been actively scanned.”

Vidal demanded hoarsely, “No weapons acquisition?” He swore softly over the comm. “Richard, this is – this is too weird.”

“Is it possible …” Travers’s mind was racing. “Could they have developed some kind of sensors we don’t even register? Some targeting system we just don’t see?”

“Possible,” Lai’a admitted, “but highly unlikely. I am aware of every radiation band from sub-audible sound waves to emanations in the higher bands of transspace. There is no sensor signal I would not detect. And yet I have located four installations which can only be Zunshu, and they appear to be entirely passive.”

Electricity seemed to crackle across the Ops room, and Vaurien turned to Mark Sherratt now. “Your decision, Mark. This one’s way beyond anything I’m qualified to call. Are these Zunshu
objects
passive, or are we like a bunch of bugs crawling on the outside of a landmine that’s about to explode?”

The question was barbed and Mark did not take it lightly. He drew together with Dario, Tor and Midani Kulich, and it was Kulich who said, “Never been seeing nothing like.”

“Never been flying nowhere like in Zunshu space,” Tor muttered in Kulich’s odd wording. “Damnit, Mark, what
is
this?”

“I don’t know,” Mask said honestly. “But I’ll have to agree with Lai’a. There’s no such thing as an active sensor that doesn’t put out a ping and read a pingback, and there’s no frequency Lai’a can’t read.” He paused, breathing audibly over the comm pickup. “I’d be lying if I said I knew what’s going on with those installations … but they’re
not
scanning us. They’re
not
acquiring Lai’a as a target.”

“And there’s an old, old saying,” Ernst Rabelais added. “Let sleeping dragons lie. Don’t go poking ’em with no sharp sticks, and maybe they’ll just stay right where they are. Lai’a, how close are they?”

“Between five and 15 light minutes,” Lai’a reported. “They cannot launch a weapon with any element of surprise. Even Zunshu gravity weapons would be clearly visible, were they to launch. However, no such devices have been deployed.”

Marin was pacing, light-footed in the armor with his apparent mass set to only fifty kilos. “Gatekeepers? They observe … they report. They sit there, passive as any twig on a tree, and call home with the news of intruders dropping out of the Drift.”

The idea was interesting. “Lai’a, are they transmitting?” Vaurien asked.

“No, Captain, not on any band I can detect. And I am monitoring all bands we know the Zunshu utilize.”

“Still your call, Mark,” Vaurien said bleakly.

For one more moment Mark hesitated. “Sleeping dragons,” he said in quiet, level tones. “If they’re gatekeepers, and if they’re using a frequency we can’t detect – which, by the way, is incredibly unlikely – then we also have no element of surprise. The Zunshu will know we’re coming.”

“Well, shit,” Vidal muttered, “we always knew they’d hear us banging on their front door.”

“All right.” Mark’s armored figure stepped closer to the navtank. “Lai’a, bypass the platforms. Continue to monitor them for any transmission.”

Roark Hubler and Asako Rodman were standing well back, till now content to be spectators. It was Hubler who asked in a harsh tone Travers remembered from the Omaru blockade, “You don’t want to target ’em and blow ’em away, while they’re easy, sitting targets? Take care of the bastards now, and we won’t have to run through ’em on the way out.”

It was a soldier’s tactic, but Travers was aware of deep misgivings. “Unprovoked attack … it could be the very thing they’re waiting for, Roark. We hit a bunch of passive, possibly civilian science platforms, and maybe ten thousand nasty little devices hidden in the Drift come online.”

“Remember Colonel Carvalho?” Rodman sounded disgusted. “Brought a battle group into Jagreth space, and the first thing he did was total the comm beacon transmitting the keep-out signal.”

“We might not be wanting to shoot the gatekeepers,” Vaurien said slowly. “All right – go on by, Lai’a. In your own time. If they start to transmit when we put ourselves between them and their home base, don’t keep it to yourself.”

“Of course, Captain,” Lai’a responded, and then added as if it were an afterthought, “I have located the G7 star identified by the
Ebrezjim
as the Zunshu home sun. Do you wish to proceed there at once, Captain Vaurien, Doctor Sherratt?”

“How far – how long?” Vaurien wondered.

“At Weimann safe overrun, just eight hours,” it told him.

Vaurien’s helmet turned toward Mark and Shapiro. “Other than a sudden attack of spastic shakes, do we have a reason to wait?”

For a long moment they both seemed to hesitate, and Travers’s heart thudded against his ribs. At last Shapiro said, “Now it’s come to the very moment, I’d like nothing more than to give you a fine reason to delay. But there isn’t one. Mark?”

“We’ll learn no more by staying here,” Mark said grimly. “Lai’a is just as capable of charting this region en route. Lai’a?”

“I have charted and cataloged all parts of the Zunshu Drift that are visible from this vantage point,” it reported. “Do you wish to chart it all before proceeding to the Zunshu system?”

“Or chart it on the way back?” Jazinsky’s voice was no more than a rasp. “None of it matters, Mark, until we come back.” The word
unless
hung on the air like a sword suspended overhead.

“Lai’a,” Mark said very quietly, “proceed to the Zunshu system. Richard?”

“Yes.” Vaurien paused to swallow, the sound audible over the comm. “Eight hours, Lai’a … and drop us out of e-space well outside the system. Don’t go anywhere near the heliopause till you’ve reconnoitred the zone.” Into the loop he said, “Everything we’ve got goes online in
seven
hours, people. Take the chance to get some rest. If there’s anything you need to fix, fix it now. Lai’a, report on your new firewall.”

“It is impossible to validate it, Captain, without testing it,” Lai’a told him. “I had expected to be assaulted as we exited the Zunshu Gate.”

“Yeah,” Vaurien said not much above a whisper, “that’s what we all expected.”

“Object match.” Lai’a announced. “Colonel Rusch, Doctor Jazinsky, you might like to see the data streaming to Tech 2. I have identified the Trinity system, on the extreme edge of resolution.”

A collective groan breathed from Rusch, Jazinsky and Mark. Travers took a step closer to Marin and asked, “What?”

“Edge of resolution,” Jazinsky said acidly. “Trinity is a triple star system, three super-luminous, supergiant stars, very short-lived, violent, locked in orbit around each other. They’re like a lighthouse. Using Velcastra as your vantage point, Trinity’s about 18
^o
off Orion 359 and just a few degrees off the starfields in the Resalq constellation of
Cornova
– what’s it mean, Mark? The Hourglass, is it? Trinity’s brighter than a whole gaggle of giant stars. If it’s on the edge of resolution, it means we’re so far out, I’ll give you short odds, Neil, Lai’a won’t even be able to identify another object. Anything we know will be in a swatch of sky so small, you won’t pick it out of the
Cornova
starfields. Those starfields,” she added, “are only visible from Deep Sky observatories using gravity lensing. The
Aenestra
charted them very roughly, using extreme deep scan, from Orion 359. ”

“Oh, fuck,” Vidal said succinctly. “Lai’a, using line-of-sight – Velcastra to the trinary to us – and figuring distance based on the apparent magnitude of a known object … how far out are we?”

“Precision is impossible, Colonel,” Lai’a warned. “I estimate we are likely 45,000 light years from the Deep Sky.”

“That’s – that’s halfway across the galaxy,” Rabelais whispered.

“It’s about 40, maybe 50 years to get home,” Queneau added, “if we can’t get back into transspace. Sweet Christ.” It was a prayer, not a profanity.

Vaurien’s voice was taut. “Anything else, Lai’a, from the deep scan?”

“Nothing, Captain,” Lai’a said without a thread of regret. “To dispel Captain Queneau’s concerns, the transspace drive is functioning perfectly.”

“Sure it is,” Queneau muttered. “And remind me of exactly where we’re heading.”

“To Zunshu 161,” Lai’a responded.

It had already charted the region, Travers thought with acid rationale. The black hole at the heart of the Zunshu Drift and its supergiant stars were the first objects cataloged, followed by the giant stars, the pulsars and more exotic systems where two, three, four stars danced around each other in a waltz of mutual attraction – and at last the mundane systems where life could arise and civilization might flourish.

“All right,” Vaurien said tersely, “we’re safe in e-space – nothing’s going to touch us for seven hours. Joss, blow us back up to pressure and temperature. I’m going to get out of this goddamned hardsuit. I’ll be in the crew lounge, if you need me …
don’t
need me, people. Not for a couple of hours.”

In the navtank, a clock began to count down. Minutes later Joss announced full pressure across the habitation module, and with a muttered oath Travers cracked the seals, rotated the helmet a few degrees left and lifted it off. The air was cold, fresh, and he was not surprised to find his skin sweated.

Jazinsky’s face was grim, an expression Mark mirrored. They would spend the next hours trying to make sense of dormant weapons, passive installations, sensor probes that did not happen, weapons that were not launched. Travers had no inkling of an answer – the soldier’s perspective was useless here.

The navtank was bright with the charts of the region, and the transspace pilots were drawn to it irresistibly. The navigators, Travers, Queneau and Rodman, were less fascinated. The world in which they worked was Elarne itself, a realm which had little in common with the stars and distances of normal space.

Without comment Vaurien was stacking his armor just inside the Ops room, where the blastdoors had opened. Beyond, Marin had begun to set his own, piece by piece, in the corner of the half-lit crew lounge. Sweat prickled Travers’s back as he joined Curtis there. Less than a minute to break the seals and mound up the armor, and he was at the ’chef, wanting no more than a bottle of water, which he drank without pause for breath. His mouth was still dry as he dropped the empty into the recycle chute.

Pale faces appeared in the lounge and voices were hushed. Vaurien took the recliner in the corner by the door, set his head back and closed his eyes. Travers might have envied him the ability to rest, but Richard’s mouth was a compressed line and his hands were knotted.

“Neil.” Marin beckoned him to the couch under what would have been viewports on a normal cruiser. “Take a breath. If there’s an answer that can be dug out of what we know, the Resalq and Barb and Lex will find it. If there isn’t … it’ll find us soon enough.”

At a place arbitrarily called Zunshu 161. Travers dropped onto the couch beside him, but relaxation was alien territory. He listened to the loop instead – Bravo were playing folgen, bantering between themselves, indulging in veeree, listening to music. The routine was familiar to anyone who had served with a Marines unit. The hours before deployment were the hardest to get through, frequently much harder than the action itself. Travers listened to them bickering over the folgen, and smiled. Grant, Fargo and Inosanto had gone back to Grant’s quarters, right by the Infirmary, and their comms were off. Travers knew exactly what they would be doing; it was almost a ritual on the night before battle. Down on the
Harlequin
, in the big hangar, Hubler and Rodman were doing the same. Shapiro and Kim sat in the corner by the bar, talking softly, sharing old memories over cognac and slender
Cutty
Sark cigars, rolled in the city of Sark itself.