Event Horizon (Hellgate) (96 page)

Jo Queneau’s voice surprised Travers: “Don’t waste no time on me, Billy-boy. I’m fine. I took a lick off the implosion, it whanged my lights right out and knocked my power couplers out of alignment. I just can’t move properly, even with this repulsion unit on me … I’ll fix up easier than the suit. I think I’m bleeding from the back of the skull, is all.”

“Okay,” Grant said acidly, “I’m trusting you, Big Jo. You just put yourself on the end of the line … all right people,
go
!”

Chapter Seventeen

The sled trundled out first, with Grant ahead of it Travers and Marin behind. Over the loop they heard voices from the suiting room which had just flooded with decontaminant foam for the third time. The whole compartment would flood again before high-pressure jets hosed it down, and humans and Resalq were free to leave.

The habitation module remained at zero pressure, and the passages were lit only by sporadic emergency lights. Travers was haunted by the last hours of the
Intrepid
. The halls were an eerie melange of red and blue lamps in deck and walls, with gargoyle shadows writhing in every corner. He heard Marin swear softly over the comm, and Grant cursing fluently in an Australian accent which seemed to thicken by the moment, but Neil was intent on Mark Sherratt’s voice, and Harrison Shapiro’s – the only feed of external data, on relay from Lai’a, since Ops was destroyed.

The AI was as imperturbable as always; nothing could be inferred from its tone, and he forced himself to listen as Lai’a said, “I have scanned the remainder of the planet, and have detected five facilities, three in the upper atmosphere, with the profile of comm relay buoys, two so deep in the atmosphere, they are on the edge of resolution, with the profile of mines and smelters. All are dormant and appear to be abandoned, in advanced states of decomposition. Three are heavily contaminated; none is transmitting.”

“Like the installations on the moons,” Marin said quietly as they stepped into the Infirmary right behind Grant and the sled. “Everything’s shut down – and it’s been that way for a long time.”

The lights fluttered on across the whole Infirmary as Mark mused, “All societies leave behind obsolete industry, and we seldom bother to clean up our mess. Consider the Omaru system. It’s a clutter of abandoned smelters, not all of them even beacon-marked. Goldman-Pataki should have taken them away by now, but they’ll wait till someone gets killed in a collision and the insurance claim turns into a major drama. Lai’a, does anything, anywhere, read like an ordnance bunker, a gun platform, a military installation?”

“Two moons,” Lai’a told him, “small bodies little more than large asteroids in captured rotation. I detect no signs of life on them, though each body appears hollow and is likely filled with industrial facilities. I have clearly detected the energy signatures off viable machinery, plus the chemical signatures of many weapons which are currently offline.”

“You interpret these installations as military?” Shapiro asked sharply.

“I do.” Lai’a had no hesitation.

“Then, you have my authorization to task a swarm to destroy each. Launch when range is optimal.” Shapiro’s voice was dark, bitter. “Mark?”

“My authorization also,” Mark agreed. “Report at time of launch, Lai’a. How long from launch till strike?”

“From optimal launch position, 16 minutes,” Lai’a estimated. “I am laying down a chain of comm buoys as I circuit 161-D. I will maintain a constant datastream from all global points.”

“Update on Number 3 generator?” Shapiro wanted to know.

“Restart in 21 minutes. Work continues.” Lai’a paused. “Doctor Sherratt, do you wish to transmit comm signals to the atmospheric platform where life forms are detectable?”

As they spoke the Infirmary had sealed tight and repressurized, and as Travers saw tolerable pressures and temperatures he cracked the seal on his helmet, lifted it off. Marin and Vidal were doing the same, and Grant was ahead of them all. He had taken off his helmet when the pressure was still low enough to make him grimace in pain as his ears adjusted. The gauntlets came off next. He dropped them carelessly, and with bare hands attacked the seals of Vaurien’s smashed armor.

“Some of these aren’t going to work so well,” Travers warned. “They’re twisted all to hell. What do you want off first?”

“Get the easy segments off … I need access to skin. I have to transfuse him, fast, and diffuse the old blood before a clot gets into his lungs or his brain.” Grant had pulled the big scanner into place right over the sled.

It was working as the viable seals began to open down the right side of Vaurien’s armor. While Travers, Marin and Vidal lifted the segments away, Grant was tasking a bevy of meddrones. Travers watched as life support functions began – Vaurien could no longer perish, but the body’s ability to damage itself was profound. While drones took over every bio-function, Grant stomped across to the lab and returned with several color-coded flasks of medical nano.

A hypogun thudded against Vaurien’s right arm, the moment Travers and Marin lifted off the armor segment; another shot fired into his right leg as the boot, shin, knee and thigh segments came free. The breastplate was not so simple; it was fouled at the shoulder, where the tale of woe began.

Coherent data was scrolling on the scanner display now, and Marin muttered an oath as he saw it. “Left arm is broken in eight places, plus twice as many breaks in the hand bones and fingers … six broken ribs, and they’re broken in several places each … and the collar bone’s broken in four places.”

“But the lung didn’t puncture,” Grant added. “He’s a lucky boy. From what Tully Ingersol’s told me, he always was. You know he was caught between two tractors in a collision, five or six years ago? Smashed both his legs, almost severed the right one. And he burned his left hand to a stump in a lab fire – it’s a clone, it and the forearm.” He stood back to aim a handy at Vaurien, and grunted at what he saw. “The nano’s working. I don’t
think
we’ll see thrombosis.”

“And if you do?” Marin wondered.

“Cryogen,” Grant said harshly. “I’m not qualified to tackle anything in his head. He can sleep his way home, and I’ll let Colonel Rusch or General Shapiro recommend a specialist.” He paused to watch the nano work. “But I don’t think it’ll come to that. The ’bots are doing good. He’s shocky as all hell. Thank Christ he’s on life support – the bottom fell right out of his BP, his heart’s tried to stop twice since we got him in here!”

Travers’s belly turned over with sudden nausea. He had been in Fleet when Richard’s legs were smashed – and again, like the hand, Vaurien had never mentioned it to him, as if it did not matter once the injuries were healed. It
did
matter, and Travers was sick to his gut as he said, “Curtis, Mick, give me a hand here. We’ll have to jimmy the seals to get him out of the rest of armor.”

And the injuries were inside the ruined segments. Marin was watching the display as the scanner rolled on, reaching the pelvis and legs, and he whistled. “His left leg’s in about a million pieces, Bill.”

“I know. And his pelvis is broken,” Grant added, “But look on the bright side. He rode the hit way off-center. His nuts didn’t even take a bruise.” He looked up at Vidal. “The luck of the draw, Mick, my old son.”

“Tell me about it,” Vidal muttered, and hunkered down beside the sled to work on the seals around Vaurien’s shoulder while Travers and Marin tackled the leg segments.

All hardsuit seals could be opened manually, but the failsafes were multiple, redundant and annoying. These were worse – fouled, on minimal power, and unresponsive to the signals aimed at them from almost zero distance by a powerful handy. Travers swore as he tugged off his gauntlets and attacked them bare handed.

“Careful,” Vidal whispered. “There’s still a bunch of residual radiation on the suit surface.”

“Tell that to Bill,” Travers grunted as he worked the seals. “And Richard’s lying in a bloody puddle of it. I’ll scrub up later.”

Piece by piece, the armor came off. The medical nano were working, synthetic blood was pumping into Vaurien now. Grant took a few moments to dump his own armor. He threw a hazmat blanket over it and summoned a drone to take it away. The gaudy shirt he had worn beneath it was sweat soaked, like his hair. He tied a bandana around his brow, shrugged out of the shirt and threw it away before fetching a pair of surgical scissors.

The breastplate and arm segments lay on the deck now, and Vaurien’s left side was propped on a second sled. As Vidal stepped back to make space for him to work, Grant methodically cut through Vaurien’s shirt to lay bare his skin. Travers swore bitterly. He was black with bruising, ruddy with internal bleeding from neck to fingertips, and the arm and hand were distorted with swelling. The leg, Neil knew, would be much worse.

“That looks bad,” Marin said softly.

“It
is
bad.” Grant reached for the hypogun, reloaded it with fresh nano and punched several shots into shoulder, upper arm, forearm. “These bones will have to be welded, soon as I’ve got rid of the old blood. There’s a load of internal bruising … spleen, heart, liver. He was crushed. Looks like he was hit by a truck.”

“Fixable?” Travers heard the hoarseness in his own voice as he looked down into Richard’s face. He was pale, waxen, but not blue about the lips and the life support monitor swore his heart and lungs were functioning, even if it took mechanical support to make them behave.

“The organs? Sure.” Grant stepped back to watch as Marin lifted off the left boot and moved on to the shin and knee segments. “Be very,
very
careful,” he warned. “The leg is … well, I’ll give it a crack.”

“Give what a crack?” Vidal had thrown a hazmat blanket over Vaurien’s ruined armor, and picked up a handy to take readings off his own hardsuit.

“Putting the puzzle back together,” Grant said candidly. “The arm and hand – I’m pretty sure I can weld the bone properly. The leg – it’s not so simple. It’s not just bone. He has neural damage, too. See this?” He gestured at the monitor, where data was accumulating, resolving, with each pass of the machine. “There’s stuff in here that I wouldn’t dare mess with.”

Vidal’s brow clenched as he frowned at the display. “Micro-surgery.”

“Yeah. I’m not there yet.” Grant sighed heavily. “I’m still about six weeks short of final exams, if you want the gods’ honest truth, and the license they’ll hand me at the end of it doesn’t qualify me as any kind of neurosurgeon! Which is what he needs right now.” His head shook slowly. “I got three choices. One: I try it, and stuff it up, wind up making a mess and taking his leg off. Prosthesis, cloned limb. Two years to get a fresh leg grafted into place – and Richard would just love that. Talk to Roark! Two: I don’t even try, I just take the limb, start the clone culture, and scan him for the prosthesis. Ditto. Three: I shove him headfirst into cryogen and hand the job to specialists back home … but we need him, don’t we? Right here, right now.”

“Yeah,” Travers said grimly. “We do. I don’t think tanking him is a valid option, Bill, unless something’s so wrong, he won’t make it.”

“Okay.” Grant ran both hands through the shaggy mass of his hair, massaged his scalp, worked his neck around. “So, do I try to mend the leg, or just take it off and start the culture?”

The question was barbed. Travers, Marin and Vidal were silent for several moments in mute conference, and it was Jazinsky’s voice, over the loop, which said, “I’m his partner, Bill … in a lot more than business. If you’re asking anyone
except
Richard, I’m the one to make the decision. But why don’t you wake him, ask him?”

She made a good point, but Grant was emphatic. “Ibrepal. He won’t know where he is, what day it is, what’s happened to him. Sorry, Barb, but this is one you’ll have to carry yourself.”

“I bloody knew you were going to say that,” Jazinsky said resignedly. “We’re decontaminated, Bill. The ship’s still at zero pressure, but the drones are cleaning up the passages and the service lift. You mind if I come into the Infirmary? Jude and Tim have the other two out here.”

“Clean?” Grant demanded. “Be sure!”

“As a whistle,” she assured him, “or we wouldn’t be here. And according to Mark and Harrison, the Zunshu stopped shooting a while ago … they’re just sitting there, like they threw everything they have at us, and there’s either nothing left or they’re busy rolling out their doomsday bomb.”