Event Horizon (Hellgate) by Mel Keegan Page B

for effective railgun strike, and then – Michael, hit it.” Vaurien did not hesitate. “Let’s see how it likes the guns. If you see it stagger, bring a geocannon to bear.”
    The railguns began to stream blue-white lightning while he was still speaking, and Marin held his breath. He was watching the display where Jazinsky continued to monitor velocity, heading and the object’s distinctive energy signature. Zunshunium was as unique as a fingerprint.
    “The energy spike is subsiding,” she mused. “Looks like it doesn’t care for being hit. Energy levels are almost back down to the point where they began, and still falling.”
    “We might have hurt it.” Michael Vidal paused to recalibrate his weapons. “The geocannon is primed. Say the word, Rick.”
    “It’s powering down.” Jazinsky’s fists were clenched. “It’s going dormant, Richard.”
    “You’re guessing, and you can’t afford to,” Vaurien warned.
    She pushed away from the workstation and sent her data to the navtank. “ Look at it. What’s this look like to you?”
    She made a good point, Marin thought. If the object had been any machine built according to human or Resalq technology, one would have said it was damaged, perhaps even badly damaged. If nothing else, the comprehensive cloaking that had made it close to indistinguishable from the background noise of Hellgate was dwindling away, leaving the Zunshu thing very obviously a machine.
    But Vaurien was less sure. His eyes skimmed back to the weapons display, where the geocannon firing solution had resolved into a firm track since the jamming shut down.
    “Richard?” Vidal was waiting.
    “We need it,” Jazinsky insisted. “You know exactly what this is – we’ve never even seen one of these before, and we might never see one again! We can catch it in Aragos.”
    “It can turn on us,” Perlman rasped. “It can self-destruct and take this ship with it. The time Bravo chased a Hellgate ghost into the dark zone behind Ulkur –? We must have cornered it, or else the thing was damaged, like this one might be. It destroyed itself. Ask Neil. It sent itself to hell with the kind of blast you’d expect if a Prometheus generator fell so far out of line, it blew. Ask Neil!”
    The question was asked with a slight lift of one brow as Vaurien’s dark eyes turned to Travers, and Marin watched as Neil simply nodded, a mute response hinting at memories too horrible to be clearly recalled. Jazinsky was still determined, and Marin guessed she would make every argument about Wastrel and Resalq tech being far superior to anything Fleet possessed. Vaurien stalled her with a soft word. It was never more obvious that he was the captain of this ship, and command was not a democracy.
    “Deep image it,” he said quietly. “If its cloaking just failed, you can image it right down to the molecular level.”
    “Theoretically,” she said with forced calm. “To get down so deep would take ten, fifteen minutes at minimum safe distance. It’s not going to give us that kind of time.”
    “Get what you can, Barb – use the probe’s deep imaging platform and do if fast, because we’re about to back way off. Tully?”
    “Right here,” Ingersol responded from the engine deck. “You’re going to want the big handling drones.”
    “If you’ve got four operational, launch them all.” Vaurien reached into the threedee, sorting through menus, fishing for data.
    “We’ve got four,” Ingersol assured him. “They’re on the ramps … it’s going to be bloody tricky. The velocity of this thing –? Shit, Rick, you’re not asking for much.”
    “I know. Get the drones close enough to lock tractors on the object , and not one centimeter closer.” He gave Jazinsky an almost apologetic look. “And I know we need it, but I’ve a nasty feeling … as soon as it registers the pull of tractors, it’s going to self-destruct with the kind of implosion that was intended to leave smoking wreckage where