Event Horizon (Hellgate) Read Online Free Page B

careful.”
    He was still speaking when Etienne counted down to five, and Danny Ramesh’s voice exploded into the loop. “Fuck you, Vaurien – we’re shut down, going dark. You’ll never work in the Deep Sky after this – you better take off for Freespace and keep running!”
    Vaurien was far too busy to deal with Ramesh, and it was Jazinsky who answered. “Save the squealing for later, you little twerp, and while you’re at it, look at your bloody sensor displays. You should be seeing six marks, coming in from the Drift on a vector of 159/280, almost in line with Naiobe itself.” Ramesh began to bluster, and she cut him off with a roar. “You want to stay alive long enough to file your report, look at your goddamned data!”
    A pause, and he was back, angry, surly. “We’re tracking a bunch of sizzling Hellgate meteors, four headed this way. So what? The AI already ramped up the Arago screening, it’s not an issue, Jazinsky.”
    “You think? Get your people in their hardsuits,” Jazinsky said tartly, “or tell them to drop what they’re doing and head back to the Tycho .”
    As Ramesh began to argue, Travers stopped listening. In the service trench under hatch 68 was an assortment of tools – not weapons, as such, but industrial tools became terrible weapons with a shift of intent.
    He moved back to let Marin see the resources they commanded, and deferred to Dendra Shemiji experience in the selection of them. An hour a day, often more, he was still studying the resources Mark Sherratt had made available, and his grasp of Resalq triple-think was deepening rapidly. Half an hour every day, he and Curtis were in the gym, and the time was gone when Marin could bounce him off the mats with impunity, with the fluid, economical moves of the Aramshem, one of the most ancient Resalq martial arts. Travers was catching up fast, and as Marin chose the tools which would become weapons, Neil saw the affirmation of his own judgment. He had chosen the identical selection. For himself, a plasma torch with a five liter tank of nentane gas – it would cut or weld, on command. For Marin, a bolt gun with the fat cylinder of a ten-round magazine, which would double as a fearsome projectile weapon.
    Over the comm Vidal’s voice was even with a surreal calm. “They’re close enough for me to get reliable target acquisition. Neil, Curtis, watch yourselves. Railguns are primed. Richard?”
    “Take your shot,” Vaurien invited. “Etienne, switch gun control to the main navigation tank. Let’s see this.”
    First the helmet armorglass darkened to midnight black, then the whisker-thin Zunshulite visor dropped down, completely screening the faceplate. A faintly distorted vid image replaced the live-eye view of the Wastrel ’s hull, and Travers held his breath, waiting for it.
    The railguns opened up in dazzling nine round bursts. Every third round was tracer, the first two armor-piercing and Demolex-7, but at 30 rounds per second the muzzles of the cannons mounted right above the holds seemed to pour streamers of pure, blue-white light. Vidal had a delicate touch on the triggers, locked onto two targets and releasing discrete bursts, a third, a fourth, before he paused to look at the data.
    “Targets still inbound,” Etienne reported.
    “And I’m reading powerful energy signatures off them,” Jazinsky added, “enough like our own Arago fields for me to recognize halfway similar tech. We’re not going to knock them down, Richard. They’re way too well screened.”
    “ Merde ,” Vaurien said softly. “Save your ordnance, Michael. We’re not going to take them that way.”
    “Railguns on standby.” Vidal hesitated, then, “Forty seconds, Neil … they’re coming into range of your suit sensors. You ought to be seeing them very soon. Get out of there.”
    “We have to lure them – bring them to us,” Marin corrected. “Let them get inside the ship, and it’s odds-on we’ll wind up as wreckage. We’re going to