He hated uncertainties like that as much as the certainty presently hanging over their heads. The cruiser was here now. There was no way to fend it off, certainly no way for the Ohmel government to do anything. They had no force sufficient to deal with the likes of the great dark over-weaponed monster that was falling toward them.Then the call came that he was fearing. "Sunshine" the cool voice said over comms, "This is VoidCorp vessel CL 7119. Land or be destroyed.""Not real wild about threats at the moment, VoidCorp cruiser," Gabriel growled."That hardly matters. If we can't have you, they won't." Of course he knew that "they" meant the Concord. "With us you stand a chance of staying free. We know you were set up. Let us get you out of here, and they'll never get their hands on you."To his horror, that struck home. The image of his father, bewildered and shamed as his son was arrested in Aegis, very likely tried there. he would never recover from it. Never. It was all too likely that Gabriel would have another life on his conscience, later if not sooner.The temptation was considerable.Gabriel swore.Helm cut in over the secure channel. "If we keep that thing busy for just a few moments, Gabe, you can slip by and run for it."Gabriel toyed with the idea, but he couldn't take the chances of the effect it might have on the city. "Helm," he said, "nice try, but the present version of 'keeping them busy' involves you and Angela being blown straight to hell while I escape. That's not an option." He took a deep breath. "Enda, give me control."She looked over at him, unnerved again. "You have control," she said."They're not going to take potshots at Charlotte," Gabriel said, leaving his virtual gun hovering in fieldspace off to one side in case he needed it. "The Ngongwes still have some pull—not enough to get rid of them maybe, but if they're going to take us, there are going to be witnesses." He opened the frequency to an open channel in the hopes that someone out there might be recording this. "VoidCorp vessel CL 7119, we are landing. Repeat: we are landing."With that, Gabriel streaked straight at the huge shadow that was falling at them from the sky. He had entirely too good a view of the terror of it, the gunports open and their conduits glowing, ready to fire. Suicide was not in the plan, if it ever had been—not knowing what he knew, not knowing where the news had to go now if the Verge was to be saved. Gabriel threw Sunshine aside at the last moment and dropped swiftly toward Charlotte Port.He understood now the cause of that silence from the port infotrade office. They did have starfall/starrise detectors. They had known that VoidCorp ship was coming. When the cruiser had come out of drivespace, Charlotte had been warned by VoidCorp not to alert Gabriel in any way to its presence. He had had a little warning but not enough.If I hadn't been resisting this process, Gabriel thought, this rewiring, reprogramming. would I have had more warning?It was a thought he hated to entertain, but now he had other problems. If VoidCorp got hold of him, and he didn't tell them what he had found, soon enough they would turn to other methods to get what they wanted. They had not turned from the worlds' biggest company into the worlds' biggest corporate stellar nation by being nice to their competitors, and as far as they were concerned, everybody was VoidCorp's competitor. They would turn Gabriel's mind inside out and find out everything they needed to know about the Precursor site on Ohmel and the one in the Algemron system.Except, said that silent commentator inside him, that you do not yet know exactly where that facility is.Gabriel blinked.It added, they might find that your mind has much more than it used to. Accessing it in an unfriendly manner might make them very, very sorry.There was something odd about that voice at the moment. Gabriel puzzled at it and then realized what it was. It was becoming more human.Change, it said, is rarely all one-sided. Physics militates against it. When even observation affects both observer and observed, how much more will interaction do?Gabriel swallowed, trying hard to keep from crashing and doing his best to lose the thread of this conversation. You 're the Patterner, he thought.Yes, and the programmer, the cool voice replied. While a program is being first run after being newly rewritten, or while still being rewritten, it behooves the programmer to oversee the process.That's nice of you, he thought. Is there anything you can do about that? In his mind, he indicated the VoidCorp cruiser now following close behind him.Here and now, it said, no, but you have little to fear from them.Great, Gabriel thought. On my own again.The port swelled below them. Gabriel was taking aim for his usual spot and wondering whether it would be possible to make a run into the city from there. But no, that might start them shooting at the place. No point in that."Not near the buildings, Sunshine" said the voice from the VoidCorp cruiser. "Out in mid field. It wouldn't be a good idea to try anything sudden."They're in a rush, it occurred to him. Why are they in a rush?In the back of Gabriel's mind, the chiming was briefly becoming noisy again. Can you hold that down a little back there? Gabriel thought in some annoyance, not knowing whether it would make any difference. The "program" was running at its own speed and with its own imperatives. Things were knitting together, reshaping themselves.As he dropped toward the landing spot in the middle of the field, suddenly one particular set of connections completed themselves, and Gabriel shivered all over and groaned, " Uh—!" with the force of it. Enda looked at him in concern, ready to take control if she needed to. Gabriel throttled back and settled Sunshine toward the spotty, cracked tarmac, trying to keep his vision straight over the one that was now overlaying it.The shadow, the second shadow falling over him and the third in company with it, shapes both desperately feared and very welcome, dropping toward the planet in a hurry."Take over!" he whispered to Enda as he struggled with his swirling vision and the twinkling cacophony in this mind. "I need a moment. Stall them, Enda! Don't let them hurt us, but stall every way you can!"The VoidCorp ship was landing a few hundred meters from them, settling its vast bulk down. Dust flew in all directions as it did, and the sky around the port, normally buzzing with a modicum of light air transport, suddenly became very quiet. A moment's pause, and then a couple of small armed shuttles came out of a bay near the cruiser's rear and flew toward Sunshine.Off behind them, Gabriel could see in the fighting field where Longshot and Lalique were coming down fairly close to Sunshine."Helm," Gabriel said over closed comms, "if you ever saw sense before, see it now. Don't come out!" "If you think I'm going to let them—"Gabriel closed his eyes and felt the shadow dropping lower. "They're not," he said. "Someone else will, though. Don't overreact, Helm. That's the big danger in this particular game."The two VoidCorp shuttles landed close to Sunshine. About thirty heavily armed men poured out of them, surrounding her." Sunshine," said another voice over comms, "open up right now and come out, unarmed, with your hands up."Gabriel got up, looking at Enda. His vision seemed to have a light, hazy pulse to it, but at least the world had stopped spinning."Gabriel," Enda said, "if you go with them, you know they will kill you sooner or later. Probably sooner.""They'll try," he said, "but Enda, we've got to play this out for the moment. Trust me."She sat very still for a moment, regarding him with those luminous blue eyes. "Of course I will go first," she said finally, then unstrapped herself and went over to the lift column. She touched the cycling control to unlimber it from inflight status and enable it for ground use, then reached for her breather gear, hanging nearby. The door in front of her slipped open. "What are you planning?" she asked.