Free Event Horizon (Hellgate) by Mel Keegan Page A

crunch the numbers, and I’ll go where they send me when the time comes.”
    “Us,” Marin corrected. “Could you handle another drink?” He stooped and pressed a kiss to the hollow of Travers’s throat, right over the pulsebeat. Travers was still stretching when he shuffled to the side of the bed. He got his feet on the deck and worked his back to and fro before he went to fetch the bottle.
    “Why not?” It was Neil’s turn to yawn, and he rolled over to watch with heavy lids as Marin reached for the Flynn’s Red Label.
    The whiskey was Irish in character, from a distillery in the north of Velcastra’s big continent, where glacier water flowed over peat and limestone to produce unique piquancy. They had not bothered with glasses, and Marin took a swig before passing the bottle over. His eyes were drawn irresistibly to the threedee, and he blinked at the data.
    “Here’s to us,” Travers toasted in a slightly hoarse voice. “Lucky to be alive, and smart enough to know it.”
    “You got that right.” Marin frowned as he looked into the blue and green threedee. “Well, now, that’s … interesting.”
    “Business?” Travers set the bottle down by the bed and reached for the slacks and underwear he had abandoned minutes before. He was not even looking at the threedee. “They actually got some useful data from Oberon, from the AI? It’ll keep Jazinsky amused.”
    Marin’s head shook slowly. “No. Half of this is Wastrel stuff – Tully doesn’t want to risk a Weimann start, and if they put it to a vote, I’m with him. We might be a few percent out of alignment – looks like the impact of the detonation was close enough to the engine deck to give the drive unit a shakeup. Who in his right mind wants to take chances? This says Richard’s going to send a courier to Alshie’nya, get us a tow. But Etienne is tracking … something else.”
    Legs already fed into his shorts Travers stood. “What, something out of Hellgate?” He peered into the threedee, took a moment to skim what Marin had already seen. “Now, what in the hell is that?”
    “They’re asking themselves the same question.” Marin circuited the bed and leaned into the closet for fresh clothes. A crushed silk tunic in abstract patterns of deep burgundy and even deeper green, a pair of gray slacks which fluoresced subtly as the light shifted.
    “Ops room,” Travers decided as he reached for his own slacks with one hand and slipped a combug into his ear with the other.
    The loop was quiet by comparison with the turmoil of an hour before, but Operations was still fully manned and half of Bravo Company seemed to have gathered around the three meter navigation tank, where Etienne was displaying tracking information. Michael Vidal had pulled up a chair, and as usual lately he was eating steadily.
    He still looked like an apparition, but Marin could see the difference in him. He was in the gym twice a day, lifting flea weights, and his muscle mass had begun to increase. He could walk the length of the Wastrel ’s habitable decks three times before exhausting, but Marin was sure he was not sleeping. The remarkable blue eyes were still sunken, with a haunted, haunting look about them. His hair had begun to grow back, disguising the hollows of his skull, and he was going to be lucky. It was all growing back. He might have discovered himself with thin wisps where the more typical thick, lush Pakrani hair had been – the genetic legacy of his mother’s side of the family.
    “Yo,” Vidal said by way of greeting as Travers dropped one hand on his shoulder. His eyes passed on to Marin, and he nodded. “You’re a lucky boy. I took a look at the hardsuit when Roark brought it back up to the lab. The micro-pellet of Orion trash that hit you was about the size of a grape. The size of a grape fruit , and it would have taken your head right off.”
    “You pay your money, you take your shot,” Marin said darkly, with a sidelong glance into