Event Horizon (Hellgate) Read Online Free Page A

said darkly, “are unarmed, Neil.” He took a step away, in the direction of lock 9, but Travers’s gauntleted hand on his shoulder held him back.
    “No time to get in to the armory. Come this way.” Travers was already moving, and thanking the old soldier’s gods that he knew this ship as well as he had ever known the Intrepid .
    The loop hummed with data and he listened as the flock of pods raced up out of Hellgate with the speed and maneuverability that had always defeated the Resalq. The same tiny craft had dropped the Zunshu machines into Fridjof Prime, and the Fleet docks at Albeniz, absolutely without warning. They were so small, so fast, in almost every instance the target was overrun before defenses could come online.
    And for hours Oberon had been transmitting, loud and strong, in the very bands the Zunshu passive listening devices monitored. Nothing natural fired such pulses. Only industry or science used the comm bands close to the e-space horizon. The command traffic of military and industrial drones was loud there; the big AI freight haulers that cut time-saving slingshots through the safer quadrants of Rabelais Space bounced signals through the J-layer, where tachyon fields vibrated in and out of e-space. But nothing natural emitted such signals, and the noise Oberon had been making, right on the skirts of the Drift, seemed to Travers like blood in the water.
    Just aft of the rank of four-meter parabolic dishes was a code-sealed hatch. He had never actually handled it, but he had seen it on vidfeeds numerous times. Tech gangs often worked out here. Tully Ingersol was far more familiar with the Wastrel ’s outer hull, and as Travers dropped to one armoured knee beside the hatch he called,
    “Tully, you there?”
    “Engine deck,” Ingersol responded. “What d’you need?”
    “Give me the code for service hatch 68, aft of the four-meter dishes.” Travers adjusted the tint of his visor and surveyed an outsized keypad designed for massive, armoured hands.
    Ingersol did not even have to think about it. “Alpha-gamma-2-4-9-kappa-delta. You’re doing what I think you’re doing?”
    The gauntlets were thick enough, heavy enough, to make tapping in the code a frustrating exercise, though the keys were huge. “How long till the Wastrel can jump the hell out of here?” Travers whispered.
    “Fifty seconds, but sublight engines are already hot and all three reactors are throttled up. We can at least give them a run for their money.” Ingersol paused. “Shit, Neil, you, uh, you guys did this at Ulrand, right? You beat them?”
    “We beat them,” Marin said levelly. “In fact, we’ve beaten these bastards twice. And the Wastrel can jump out and escape, Tully – it’s the crew on Oberon that’ll be erased like they never existed. Ops room.”
    “We have tracks on all bogeys,” Jazinsky told him. “Two headed for us, four going for Oberon like a school of sharks.”
    “There’s almost fifty people on Oberon,” Travers said as he lifted the service hatch. A light flickered on in the trench beneath. “Bravo Company, where are you?”
    The voice answering belonged to Judith Fargo, as Travers would have expected. She had earned the promotion to lieutenant, and she took the rank seriously. “Armed and in the hardsuits, in Hangar 4, boss, starboard side. We can freakin’ see Oberon from here. You call it.”
    The Capricorn was parked in Hangar 4, and Travers took a deep breath, weighing the risk before he said evenly, “There’s a bunch of ignorant, dumb civvies on Oberon, and they’re getting fragged unless we get between them and a squad of automata. You want to go kill some more Zunshu?”
    “We can do that,” Fargo said without hesitation. “Perlman’s been prepping the Capricorn as a CYA fallback. She’s about one minute off flight ready. It’ll take another minute to get over there and dock. We got time?”
    “Just,” Travers judged. “Make it fast, Judith, and – be