Nightfall_at_Algemron

The Patterner looked at her. "The assessment object, which was prepared for him alone and which he carries, has been in circulation for approximately a tenth of a galactic rotation. It was known that a being of the correct structure and qualifications would eventually manifest itself. This is the being."
Elinke stared at him. "Are you trying to tell me that you've been waiting for Gabriel Connor for—what? Five thousand years?"
"Fifty thousand," the Patterner replied.
"It wasn't me specifically that they were waiting for," Gabriel said. "I think I just sort of won the lottery." Even as he said it, he was not entirely sure that the Patterner hadn't meant exactly what it said.
Elinke closed her mouth and looked around. "I don't see why I shouldn't believe you're making all this tt
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The Patterner looked at her in complete bemusement, then, rather coolly, it said, "Do you mean 'falsehood'? That is an invention of the younger races."
Elinke flushed.
"Listen," Gabriel said. "This is obviously a Precursor facility, Captain. This"—he pointed at the Patterner—"is a member of a species engineered by the Glassmakers—or the Precursors—but it's a little late to fight over terminology. These people are in the literature. Explorers have run into them before and have been greatly assisted by them or greatly killed, depending on their behavior. I know you know all about it. Now here you are in the middle of a Patterner's interface, and you have the bald-faced gall to tell something ten million years old—"
"Fifty million," the Patterner interrupted.
"—Fifty million years old that you think maybe it's lying? Just to get me off some kind of hook?" He could read it in her clearly. In fact, the clarity of the notion shocked him.
Elinke flushed harder.
"Look," Gabriel said. "The proof is all around you. Now I tell you, as this good creature has told you, that the Externals are coming. It's going to be like it was at Danwell, but worse—much, much worse because we don't have the kind of weaponry that we had there. yet. If you don't want to be up to your nostrils in kroath and gods know what else, we need to get to Algemron."
Elinke looked at the Patterner.
"I would advise this course of action," it said.
After a brief silence, Elinke nodded. "All right. My people will have been questioning your friends, and unless they've found some evidence of wrongdoing on their part, there's no need for us to hold them. After you've said your good-byes to them, they can go about their business. and then we have a journey to make."
"Oh, no." Gabriel said. "They go, too, or I don't go."
Dareyev glared at him and said, "You don't have a lot of choice in the matter." "I have more than you think," Gabriel said.
Even now he could feel the slow strength swelling up inside this place, reacting to the greater threat that was coming. He had been drawn into synch with this facility so that the strength of the link between him and it could be tested and evaluated for the needed links of the next facility, the one at Algemron. Now it occurred to Gabriel that the link went both ways.
Patterner, he said silently, perhaps you might do me a favor?
The Patterner listened to the suggestion. That can be implemented.
Then please do.
"Captain," Gabriel said, "you had better call your ship." "What?"
"Call Schmetterling," Gabriel said, "if you'd be so kind."
She looked at him as if he was out of his head. Then she reached down to her belt and undipped the comms unit. " Schmetterling. Ops officer."
"Captain," the voice said urgently, "we've been trying to raise you. You're in a blackout area." "Not at the moment," Dareyev said. "What's the situation?" "We've just lost ship's lighting." She blinked. "What do you mean?"
"The lights are out. Also, the engines are down, though they shouldn't be. Their systems and all the others check out fine. There is no fault that we can find, but they are still inoperative. We can't budge."
Elinke shook her head and then saw the look on Gabriel's face.
"Stand by," she said and killed the audio.
"Your ship is not going anywhere," Gabriel said, "until you agree to this."
The Marines looked decidedly nervous. They had the discipline to remain perfectly still, but every one of them was looking at the captain for direction.
"You can't be doing this!"
Gabriel sighed and sat down with his back against a glass pillar, while from its shrouding of webwork the
Patterner watched. "Tell me when you would like me to turn it back on."
"You are so full of—"
Gabriel sat there quietly in communication with the Patterner, mentally looking to see what it was doing with the power management field that underlay and affected the whole canyon area, and incidentally, Schmetterling. Then he said silently, Here, let me do something.
Captain Dareyev's comm unit chirped. She pulled it out. "Yes?"
"Ma'am," said her comms officer, sounding rather confused. "Now ship's lights are blinking on and off." "Well, find out why they—" "They're blinking in code, ma'am." "What?"
"They're blinking the code pattern for the letters G and C. Repeating: G, C. G, C."
Elinke turned to stare at Gabriel. Then, very softly, she said, "You always did have a tendency to rub it in when you were right about something. One of your more unlikeable traits."
"We're wasting time," Gabriel said as he stood up again. "Every minute you make me sit here waiting for you to get sensible is a minute lost in the defense of the Verge. Potentially the best part of that defense is waking up right now, waiting for me to show up and tell it what to do. If anyone else gets near it, I can't vouch for what will happen next. The place has its own safeguards, and until I enable a level of response that's a little more flexible, it could do almost anything if approached by the wrong people."
"All this is going to happen if you don't get there?" she said. "Gabriel Connor, a couple of years ago, you were just another Marine, and then you turned traitor. Now you think you're the center of the universe—"
"Very occasionally," the Patterner interrupted, "someone who thinks that is right, whether it suits those around him or not."
There was a silence at that. Elinke looked from the Patterner to Gabriel.
"I can wait," he said, "but when we get to Algemron and find the system in flames, it won't take long for the word to get out as to whose action—or inaction—caused it to fall. You think my court-martial's going to be an event? I wish I could get the concession to sell the tickets to yours. except that we'll all be dead by then, and half the Verge will be a memory, which sort of cuts in on the number of spectators."
She looked at Gabriel, then let out a long breath. "All right," she said. "Your friends will ride inboard where I can keep an eye on them. I don't want them sitting outside Schmetterling in their ships, making who-knows-what mischief."
"I'm sure they'll find that entirely satisfactory," Gabriel said.
Elinke's comms unit cheeped again. "Ma'am," said the comms officer, "it's stopped. We have the lights back, and they're behaving normally."
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"The engines?"
There was a moment's pause, then, "All systems are functioning normally, Captain."
"Good. Secure the ship," Elinke told the officer. "We'll 'be leaving immediately upon recharge"—a long pause—"for Algemron."
"Thank you." Gabriel sighed.
"Let's go." She nodded to the Patterner. "A pleasure to meet you," she said, for all the world as if she had been invited along to tea and was now returning home. Then she turned and marched out, gesturing to a couple of the Marines to bring Gabriel along.