Nightfall_at_Algemron

"Our drives won't be charged yet—" "You will be confined in your ships until they're charged, then you'll depart immediately."
"Uh, fine," Gabriel said, "no problem with that." He paused a moment then said, "What will happen to that poor man?"
"Reaction mass," said Norrik. "The parasitic heat from handling his remains will go to help our war effort. Not a hero's death, possibly, but a fate that all good Galvinites approve."
Gabriel nodded.
There followed a prolonged silence, then Major Norrik stood up. "The transport will be waiting to take you to your ships," he said, "and when your drives are charged, an escort will see you up to space and out to your starfall point."
Gabriel nodded to him again, trying to look suitably abashed for having caused trouble. Inside him, so many feelings were roiling that he hardly dared try to focus oh any one of them.
"I should mention," Norrik said as Gabriel turned to the door, "that you should not return to this system. You are now classified as a person under suspicion to be detained by any of our forces that come in contact with you. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Gabriel said.
"That will be all."
Gabriel went out of the room.
Inside his head, faintly, he could feel something writhing, stroking against itself in the warm green darkness, watching him in a thoughtful way.
The others were standing around in a windowless holding area, while two armed Galvinite Army staff watched them. Gabriel was put into this room with them.
Enda came to him, looked at him closely, and asked, "Are you all right?"
Gabriel nodded. "A long day," he replied, knowing she would understand.
After a moment another officer, a policeman, came through the door and looked around at them. "All right," he said, "there's a shuttle waiting for you people." He glanced up briefly at the humming sound of the covered stretcher with Ricel's body on it as it passed the door. He looked over at Gabriel. "Was it quick?" the policeman asked. "Did that guy suffer much?"
"It was pretty quick," Gabriel said softly. As regarded the suffering, he preferred not to go too deeply into it. No one here would understand. He barely understood himself.
"Right. Come on. The shuttle's waiting for you."
They were herded out to it and sealed in—the back of the shuttle being a windowless affair of the kind that the Marines would have used to transport prisoners or corpses. For all of that, the return was less stressful for Gabriel than the outward journey, partly due to having other things to think about. Once out on the landing pad again, Gabriel walked toward Sunshine with the greatest relief, practically ignoring the Galvinite soldiers that flanked him and Enda.
A couple of bored soldiers were standing by Sunshine's lift column. They looked at Gabriel and Enda's ID chips, exchanged a few words with the armed escort, and then nodded unconcernedly as they stepped aside for Gabriel to hit the lift control. It came down, and he and Enda stepped in and let the door close behind him.
When they were on Sunshine's deck again, Gabriel merely turned to Enda and said, "Let's dump our data."
Enda got the transfer going, and Gabriel called Helm.
"Gonna be fun sitting here cooling our heels for two days," Helm said. "They won't even let us socialize ship to ship."
"We'll cope," Gabriel said. "Doctor Sota around?" "Identification: present," her voice said. "Handling comms at the moment?"
It was a quiet way of telling Longshot that Gabriel was about to encrypt transmissions at his end, using the algorithms that the mechalus had installed in Sunshine and later in Lalique.
"Affirm," Delde Sota replied.
Gabriel reached into the display and shifted intership comms into encrypted mode. "Change of plans," he said. "When we leave, we're still headed for Coulomb, but we need to make one stop on the way. Crow."
"Crow?" Helm said. "What the devil's at Crow that we need to go that far out of our way?"
"'Lighthouse," Gabriel answered, "as I see from the schedule we picked up passing through Aegis. It's getting there next week, and it'll still be there when we turn up in three weeks. We won't be hitching or staying longer than it takes to recharge our drives, but there'll be stuff I very much need to drop off."
Gabriel could hear Helm shrugging. From Lalique, Angela said, "Always wanted to see that thing, even if there's no time to stop and shop. You're on."
Chapter Seven
Two days later, Sunshine, Lalique, and Longshot lifted with ten small FSA ships surrounding them. Together, the three ships made starfall, Lalique in a blaze of blue, and Longshot all flowing with crimson. Sunshine went into drivespace in a rush and flow of a deep purple almost ranging into the ultraviolet—the fabled lucky "black starfall."
That first night in drivespace, Gabriel was desperately weary, but there was something he felt he had to do before he slept. He stayed up into the wee hours, making a recording of absolutely everything he could recall from his prolonged, final brush with Ricel's mind. He was terrified that he would forget it, but more, he was terrified that if he did not immediately report his version of what had happened to someone in a position to do something about it, he would be lost. It was all just too convenient that Ricel should die here and now before Gabriel was about to embark on business during which Kharls certainly knew Gabriel wanted no tails or trails on him. If explanations weren't made now, the ones required later might
take forever. or prove fatal. The last thing Gabriel needed, was another murder rap hung on him by a Concord Marine prosecutor already suspicious of Gabriel's semi-acquittal on Phorcys and unwilling to accept the assessment of the police on Galvin.
Gabriel had originally thought the task would take him only a couple of hours. He was mistaken. Every time he would start unravelling a particular memory of Ricel's to detail it fully, other buried or unexpected details associated with it would come rushing back. Again and again this startled and frightened him, so he would have to stop, get his breath back, and start again. If there was one thing he didn't want, it was Jacob Ricel's memories stuck in his head.
What if they are, now? he wondered. What can I do about it? His memory, he had noticed, was already a lot better than it used to be—one of those changes Delde Sota had told him about, a kind of side-present from the stone. Useful enough for everyday things. but this, this was another story.
Please let these memories fade, he pleaded inside him, on the off chance that some passing spacer's deity might be listening. Please let it go away like a normal memory, go vague.
About four in the morning, he was finally finished—or rather, he couldn't bear to continue—and his voice was faint and hoarse.
He canned the message into Sunshine's data tanks as an encrypted mail addressed to Lorand Kharls. It would go out to the drivesat relay aboard Lighthouse, and once that was done, Gabriel could continue on his original course out into the dark. A last fling, he thought. For when he next returned to the more populated parts of the Verge, he was going to have to face up to the Marines at last.
I'm so tired of running, Gabriel thought.
After a little while, Enda appeared from her quarters, to which she had retreated after their takeoff and starfall to have a nap. Carrying the little squeeze bottle she used to water her ondothwait plant, she looked into the living area and said, "I would have thought you'd have taken some rest by now."
Gabriel shook his head slowly and replied, "I won't be able to sleep for a while, but I'm glad you're up. I have to tell you what happened down there."
Enda blinked. "But I was with you, for all but the questioning anyway."