Event Horizon (Hellgate) by Mel Keegan Page A

the time?” Vidal’s fingertips drummed on Jazinsky’s workspace. “What the hell is it, Barb? Time to make a judgment call while we still have the chance.”
    “A cloaked object,” Jazinsky said slowly. “I’ll tell you more in …” She flicked a glance at the chrono. “About 80 seconds.”
    Vaurien touched his combug. “Tully, do we have sublight?”
    From the engine deck Ingersol said without hesitation, “Yeah, no problem. Why, we going somewhere? I thought we were getting a Weimann tow back to Alshie’nya.”
    “We are … eventually.” Vaurien leaned on the side of the navtank, on both palms. “Pilots, confirm.”
    “Still on station,” Yuval Greenstein’s guttural voice said from the flightdeck, “and eavesdropping on you guys. You want to take off after the probe?”
    “Yeah.” Vaurien frowned deeply into the tank. “Yeah, I think we’d better. Keep a discreet distance, Yuval, but put us in strike range.”
    The words seemed to galvanize Vidal. “Let me take Tactical again.”
    And Hubler was moving, addressing his combug and Rodman, who was back on the Harlequin . “Askao, power up. We’re undocking.” He stomped away across the Ops room, slightly ungainly on the biocyber legs which infuriated him, and was framed in the doorway when he turned back to glare at Vaurien. “Where do you want us?”
    “Use us for cover,” Richard said slowly. “Just in case.”
    “In case of what, exactly?” Rodman’s voice demanded over the comm.
    “If I knew that, we’d probably be heading for Freespace with our tail feathers on fire.” Vaurien gave Hubler a wink. “Like I said, use us for cover. See what we get from the probe.”
    “Twenty seconds to intercept,” Jazinsky muttered as she pulled up a chair.
    “And the forward railguns are armed,” Vidal added. “Automatic targeting can’t even find a lock on this thing, so we’ll do it manually.”
    The airframe gave a telltale shiver as the tug began to maneuver. Marin registered the momentary falling sensation in the pit of his belly and looked into the tank. Etienne reconfigured the display in an instant as the ship came up close on the probe. At this range the datastream was instantaneous, no time lag, and Jazinsky pored over it while the tank switched over to a dizzying visual.
    “Barb?” Vaurien’s eyes never left the image in the threedee.
    “Definitely an object,” she said levelly. “Twenty meters or so … Zunshunium power source. I’m seeing split-second glimpses of stuff we can recognize among a torrent of gibberish – it’s just sensor jamming, but very, very sophisticated. Any of this look familiar, Gill?”
    Perlman had come to the side of the tank, but her big shoulders only shrugged. “We never got close enough to get a good look at them.”
    “Whoa … energy spike,” Jazinsky warned. “Power’s going off-scale. If I had to make a guess –”
    “Drive engines?” Vidal asked sharply. “Shit, Richard, if it’s getting ready to vanish into the cracks, you can bet your pension the next place it’ll show up is Borushek.”
    And this, Marin thought with stone cold rationale, was exactly the way so many of the Resalq homeworlds had been destroyed. This was what Mark Sherratt had been afraid of for a long time – the reason Saraine was dormant now, while for months Riga and Harrison Shapiro’s staff had lived poised on a five minute evacuation alert.
    “Richard?” Vidal’s voice was sharp. “We’re going to get one chance. Catch or kill?”
    “Catch,” Jazinsky said quickly. “Please – catch. We need this thing! Damn, you know what it is, don’t you?”
    It was almost certainly what the Resalq had come to term a planet-killer, Marin knew. A world-wrecker. Without much real doubt, this was the device intended for Borushek. It was the first time the Zunshu had targeted a major colony world, and the first high-intensity strike since the destruction of Albeniz.
    “Pilot, take us out to maximum distance