Nightfall_at_Algemron

"You'll all be free," Gabriel said, "so the captain says. I don't see why she would change her mind about that between now and then. If they'd seen cause to keep you when they first laid hands on you, they'd have said as much, but as to what else happens when we arrive." He shook his head. "It's a mess over there."
They had been reading the news too. They agreed with him, and dinner broke up in rather somber mood. Only Delde Sota paused just before going out and slipped her braid around his wrist to touch the medchip embedded (here and assess his condition for herself.
The look that crossed her face had struck Gabriel as unusual.
"What?" Gabriel asked.
Delde Sota's face could be difficult to decipher at times. The slightly slanted eyes and the high cheekbones always made her look slightly haughty, and her thoughtful expressions sometimes could be misread as unduly cool, but now she glanced up at Gabriel as the microfibrils interwoven with the prehensile end of the braid interfaced with the chip, and the look in her eyes was actually faintly envious.
"Possibly not as bad an outcome as expected," she said quietly.
"What makes you think that?" Gabriel said.
He had been nervous enough about going to sleep just the night before. This morning he had awakened feeling not much different than yesterday—but such were the events of the recent days that he mistrusted that judgment.
"Great increases in brain connectivity," she said, "as if hardware 'bandwidth' was increasing. Myelination in corpus callosum increasing."
"Is that good?"
"Assessment: it's impossible," she said. "Baseline: you are long past period for active brain growth. Good thing, head probably big enough already."
"Hmf."
"Nonetheless growth occurs but not in mass. Quality of brain tissue shifting somewhat. Balance shifting somewhat toward white matter, away from gray. Interconnectivity among neurons increasing considerably over early baselines. Considerable opportunity here for study, research. Possible useful spinoffs for various scholia of medical treatment. May get to write that paper after all."
"You'll get to be famous, finally."
Delde Sota drew her statuesque self up and gave him lordly look. "Fact: fame fleeting. Service lasts. Nice to get the occasional citation out of it, however." She undid her braid' from around his wrist, gave him a curious little half-nod, and went out.
Now, as usual, he sat wondering what she'd meant. His mind still felt as if it were his own. The nervousness he had felt the other day was easing off a little. Maybe it was just all so new.
He would have given a great deal to be able to live in time, oh, a year ago say, when sleep was just that, something you could depend on, something that happened at a fairly regular time, and after which you did not wake up and find out that your corpus callosum—whatever that was—was bigger or smaller or missing. That was another world, he thought as he lay down, and who knows what it'll all turn into tomorrow.
Chapter Sixteen
The next evening they were all at dinner in the common room of the brig when the door opened, and Elinke Dareyev came in.
She stood there looking cool and captainly. Bearing the timing in mind, she was almost certainly on her way to dinner in the officers' mess, and Gabriel's insides seized a little at the thought of the last time he could remember seeing her at such a time. It had been the party after the peace agreement between Phorcys and Ino was sealed, the night before it was signed, the night that that other Marine, long gone home now, Big Mil, had given him the stone.
The night before it all had changed.
Everyone looked up at her. Gabriel rose to greet her, a sudden access of the old reflex from his Marine days, and rather oddly, to Gabriel's turn of mind, so did Helm. Enda bowed her head a little to the captain, and Angela. She looked up at Dareyev, and there was an unusual flicker in her eyes. Gabriel saw the look pass between them, saw Dareyev turn away, frowning, and saw Angela do the same.
Jealousy was his immediate assumption.
Then he made a face. Come on, Gabriel thought. Elinke was right. This thinking you're the center of the universe can really get in the way of rationality sometimes. You may be a primed weapon, but that doesn't mean that every woman you see has her eyes on you.
"Captain," Gabriel said.
Elinke looked around at all of them. "I just wanted to let you know," she said, "that we'll be making starrise at Algemron in seventeen and a half hours. All of your ships will be returned to you, and you'll be free to pursue your business in the system once we make position and are secured. If I were you, I'd leave the area with all due speed. The indications are not good."
Gabriel looked at her. "Starrise indications?" he said.
"I did not feel it was fair to make this starrise without telling you," Dareyev said. "Before we left, the starfall indicators gave us positive indications of an indeterminate number of incoming vessels making for Algemron space. Most of them will arrive within the next hundred hours. Some will arrive sooner. Many of our own vessels and those of other friendly stellar nations are incoming as well, per orders from the Concord Administrators in the system, but that space is about to become a battleground, and you would be well advised to take yourself to safe haven immediately."
Helm looked at her and said, "Space around Algemron is not entirely controlled by Galvin and Alitar, or by the Concord either, for that matter."
She nodded. "I agree, but when the Concord passes this information on to the planetary governments, it will almost certainly cause both governments to go to their highest states of alert. They will both send their fleets out as soon as logistics enable them to do so, and they will start shooting at anything not identifiable as their own—as well as at one another, of course."
"They would have started this anyway," Gabriel said.
"I think you're right," Elinke replied. "The upcoming close approach was already appearing to be more active than the last. Now it is starting, and we are very unsure what will happen when their war—almost certain to be a rather smaller war—brushes up against the beginning of this big one."
She looked at them one by one, though not at Gabriel. "Those of you who are not under durance here, I say again that you're free to go. Please do so." She turned to leave.
"Captain," Helm said.
She paused and looked at him.
"We've come a long way with Gabriel," he said. "We're not going to drop him off in the middle of anybody's war and run away. I do not hire myself out to the military, but I have a suspicion which side in this war Gabe's going to wind up on. and I'll fight on that side and take my chances. After that, I want a chance to testify at his trial."
Grawl looked up at Dareyev as well and said, "Warrior-leader, he speaks for us as well. To our capacity, we will fight, but I reserve the right to make the songs afterwards."
Elinke produced a very dry expression. "In the middle of a major fleet engagement, I intend to decline the invitation to get involved in a copyright dispute. You'll have to handle that yourself. As for the rest of you. don't say I didn't warn you."
She nodded to them all and went out.
Enda looked over at Gabriel. "Not a lot of information there for you, was there?"
He shook his head. "I didn't expect there to be. I don't think she's entirely made up her mind what tack to take. There's always the question of what orders she may find waiting for her when she gets there. She may be reluctant to commit herself and then find herself having to do something else entirely."
Enda looked at him. "If things become hectic, this may be the last chance we all have to be together before having to take the ships out and decide what to do next."