Nightfall_at_Algemron

She shook her head. "Your stone—"
"It's up to its tricks," Gabriel muttered, "but don't ask me why."
She turned her attention back to the field, and so did Gabriel, ignoring the itch as well as he could, while they made their way in closer to Galvin. There was no sign of anyone or anything in the neighborhood, no telltales of approaching vessels, no nothing. If you stumbled in here by accident—fortunately an unlikely occurrence—you would probably not realize that this was one of the most heavily militarized systems in the Verge.
"Quiet around he—" Gabriel said. WHAM!
Sunshine pitched violently to one side, thrown that way by Enda to avoid the energy bolt that had just torn through the vacuum past them. Little auroral rainbows of ionized particles writhed and danced where the beam had passed, like dust in a sunbeam, but with much more energy. Back in Sunshine's body, things finished falling off shelves, banging onto the floor, and rolling around.
"You never do put everything away before one of these exercises," Enda said, "no matter how many times I advise you to."
"Invading vessels," said an angry voice down comms, "this is FSA interdiction control. Cut power and prepare to be boarded. If you power up again, we will fire with intent."
"What was that supposed to be," Helm muttered down private comms, "an accident? Assholes." "Understood, interdiction control," Enda said calmly. "Complying."
Gabriel was already reaching into the drive-control display, and he killed Sunshine's drive immediately. Lalique and Longshot did the same, and the three of them drifted along in careful formation while the other ships swooped out of the darkness and formed up around them.
There were six of them, all long smooth ovals in shape, and all of them had what Helm liked to call
"chunky and exciting detail"—meaning guns and weapon ports made as obvious and nasty-looking as possible. Gabriel was aware that there was a science to it—the business of making a weapon look so aggressive and unfriendly that the person on the wrong end of it would never do anything to provoke you to use it—but he was not happy to see how very highly that particular science seemed to be esteemed in this part of the Verge. These ships looked even more aggressive than Longshot, which until now Gabriel wouldn't have thought was possible. They were positively warty with weapons; plasma cannons were glued all over them like growths.
The comms receiver bank of controls in the central display tank between Gabriel and Enda came alive. Before Gabriel could reach out to activate it, a face appeared there: a shining black helmet with the goggles pushed up, partly hiding the Galvinite emblem, and under the helmet a face with narrowed eyes, a long thin nose, and a mean thin mouth.
Gabriel opened his mouth to say hello.
"If you make any movement toward weapons, we will fire instantly," said the officer. "Identify yourselves."
We've been doing that for the past twenty minutes, Gabriel felt like growling, but instead he said, "Infotrading vessel Sunshine, registered out of Phorcys."
''Longshot," Helm growled, "Grith registry."
''Lalique," said Angela, "out of Richards."
"ID confirms that," said a voice from behind the officer.
"Oh, does it?" he said. "Well, infotraders we don't mind." He sounded somewhat as if he personally preferred they didn't come anywhere near him. "What are you two here for?"
"Armed escort," Helm said.
"Same here," said Angela.
The officer glanced slightly to one side and guffawed. "Him, maybe, or so scan indicates, but you? "
"I carry a modicum of useful weapons," Angela said. "Look, if it makes you more comfortable, just consider me to be social services." Her voice curled in a naughty way around the last two words.
Oh wonderful! Gabriel thought, and began to sweat.
The officer snickered. "We'll see about that. Two, three, five, board 'em."
Gabriel tried not to swallow. If they boarded Sunshine and nosed around sufficiently, they would be likely to find that her gunports concealed weaponry rather larger and deadlier than they seemed to. That might lead them to other searches—
"Don't much care for boarders," Helm said, sounding unusually casual.
"I don't care what you care for," said the officer, starting to sound rather nastier than he had to begin with. "I don't care much for your tone, either, now that you mention it. Maybe boarding isn't called for. Impoundment and ground search might be more to the point."
Enda looked thoughtfully at Gabriel and the control panel. He could not precisely hear her thinking, but he knew that there was a starfall setting laid into the panel, and he strongly suspected that she wished she
could activate it.
Fraal could be mindwalkers, and Enda had said often enough that she had some slight talent that way but no training. I wish we could starfall too, but we're not charged and we won't budge. Anyway, even if we could, I wouldn't want to leave the other two here. I got them into this, I have to get them out—
"I have little experience of being boarded," Enda said mildly. "Do we send the tube out to you, or does your vessel call it?"
"What the—? Sir!"
It was a shout from one of the other ships, which had been holding comm silence until now. Gabriel looked up in the field, which was still around him, trying to see what had made the other Galvinite officer react.
The new ship was coming in at considerable speed. It was a rather small ship, but not the kind that Gabriel would normally have thought of under that title. It was in fact bigger than Lalique, which was saying something. It looked like a long stun-baton, slender, with flaring fins at the end, jutting out of a broader area that apparently held the drive. It was armed, as discreetly and handsomely as the Galvinite ships were armed noisily and tastelessly. There was money in that ship, and better—or worse—access to very expensive weaponry, the kind of thing that only the Concord military could get its hands on.
In the field, Gabriel could see several of the ships surrounding them turn to angle themselves better toward the incoming vessel.
"Ready to fire," someone said from one of the ships.
"Belay that!"
It was the officer in the display tank, presently looking off to one side as if seeing something that seriously upset him.
"Commander Aronsen," said a female voice, "thank you kindly for delaying." Gabriel started. That voice was familiar.
Enda glanced at him. "It would appear that more interesting things are to happen to us than mere boarding today."
Gabriel gulped.
Another face appeared in the tank, which subdivided itself to handle the image and Gabriel found himself looking at Aleen Delonghi. "Is there a problem with these vessels?" she asked.
He cursed softly under his breath. After what I did to her last ship, he thought, she gets this one instead. Is she related to somebody?
"They're unauthorized," said the officer leading the interdiction control. "Didn't come in with escort—"
"While I will grant you that vessels doing so enter these spaces at their own risk," Delonghi said, "registered and recognized infotraders with escort might be allowed to do their business without undue interference, I would think."
Gabriel watched the officer bristle. Amazing how it managed to show even though he had a helmet on.
"Your ID says Concord, lady, but I—"
"It says more than just that," Delonghi said. "I'm attached to the Neutrality Patrol, just in with the new cruiser doing relief duty for Pariah Station. I sent my IDs and clearances ahead of me. They should be in front of you at the moment."
A few seconds' silence followed. "They're genuine," said someone from out of range of the pickup.
"They look genuine, but I've never seen this ship before," growled the commander of the holding force. "Get it confirmed from the base at Palshizon."