Nightfall_at_Algemron

People, he thought. There was no one living here when it was last active a few minutes ago. or a hundred years. He shook his head.
"There," he said to the navs officer, pointing as exactly as he could toward the heart of that awakening, testy energy. "Can you work with that, Mr. Viipunen?"
"I think so."
He opened his eyes again and watched the young man work briefly at his console. The starrise/starfall indicator next to him went briefly dark, then filled with a system schematic for Algemron. One small white
light, slow-moving, indicated Schmetterling. From it, a white line ran outward, down into the plane of the ecliptic and into the space between the little white globes marking the small gas giant Dalius and the icy planet Reliance. Between the two worlds, a faint band of representative glitter lay.
"The asteroid belt," Gabriel said. and suddenly smiled slightly, for things were now starting to make sense. "Can you go higher definition on this?"
"Yes, sir, I can," replied Viipunen, doing it, "but there's hardly any need, because I know what you're pointing at already." The tank shimmered, and the white line now ran in through its top, out through its bottom, and very nearly speared a small irregular shape tumbling through the sparks of light that represented the rest of the belt.
"Argolos," Viipunen said. "Is that what you're after?"
"Has to be," Gabriel said. "Has to."
Argolos was one of two big fragments left over from the destruction of the planet that had once occupied this orbit. The astronomers said that another star with its own system of planets had come straight through this system, millions of years back. One of the planets of the other star had managed somehow to collide with Havryn. Havryn had nearly been torn apart but had managed to resettle itself, though at the price of the loss of most of its kinetic energy. It was now just about the slowest-rotating gas giant known. After the dust settled—literally and figuratively—the space between Dalius and Reliance had filled up with the wreckage of the collision, the remains of the other planet. Two big pieces remained: Wreathe and Argolos, both of them rich in heavy metals and big enough to be mined.
How old was the star that passed through here? Gabriel thought. How old were its planets? He grinned more broadly. Accidents did happen in space, but not accidents like this, and not where the Precursors were concerned.
"That's it," Gabriel said.
"Argolos, Captain," said the navs officer.
"Damnation!" Elinke said. "You mean we're going to have to run all the way out there, when right here we've got—"
Alarms began to go off, and people changed stations in a hurry. Gabriel heard several of them say to one another, "Casting gunnery loose. I have your weapon. I confirm it hot—"
Captain Dareyev pointed at part of the starry display englobing her and beckoned it bigger. It ballooned until she was in the midst of a three-meter globe of stars and tiny globes, the globes moving in a pattern, each tagged with a small letter-and-number label that followed it.
"We have a Galvinite fleet coming at us, fifteen vessels in quarter-englobe. Six corvettes, six cutters, three frigates, no problem."
Gabriel swallowed. He had heard reports of this kind from Elinke before, but the numbers had been smaller.
"Navs, shape us one thirteen on the ecliptic, best solution for Dalius. I'm going to go in low and shake up our little friends' gravity grids a little, and then we'll consider our options. Comms, warn that fleet off and tell them my rules of engagement now allow their destruction, and I think that would be a real pity. Then get me Namur—my compliments to Captain Estevan. I think we should get together and have a little shooting match right now. Give her the coordinates—"
"Captain!" Gabriel interrupted.
"It's kind of a shame, since there are other things we're all probably going to be shooting at," Elinke said, wheeling in her display to bring the neighborhood of Dalius up big, "but I have a job to do, and if these people put themselves in my way, too bad."
"Captain!"
She looked at him with annoyance that for once was not directed at him. "Sorry, Connor," she said. "No time for your side trip at the moment. We're going to be busy."
"If I don't get out there, Captain, it's going to be disastrous for everyone. You know why. Please let me."
She frowned at him through that cloak of stars, while she touched one after another of the enemy ships with a finger, targeting them for her gunnery crew in one color, marking those for Namur in another. "If you think I am going to let you depart custody at this point, Connor, you had better think again."
He was getting desperate. "Look, I'm glad to give you parole, but you've got to let me get out there, or there won't be any trial."
"Let me take him out, if there's a problem," said a soft voice from one side.!
Gabriel turned. Aleen Delonghi was standing there, not in Intel uniform to Gabriel's surprise, but kitted out as a Star Force commander. She looked over at Dareyev, who raised her eyebrows.
"If you lose him." Dareyev warned her.
"Oh, no," said Delonghi, "not at this point. Our people have too many questions they want to ask him."
Captain Dareyev studied both of them. "Kharls trusts you," she said after a moment. "That's good enough for me." She turned to Gabriel. "Go with her. Comms, have a small detachment of Marines go with them—a shuttle's worth."
"Thank you, Captain." Gabriel said.
"Don't thank me yet," said Elinke with a dry look, "and don't get killed. You're needed for that trial you seem so eager to save us all for."
"I'll keep him safe for you," Delonghi said, "never fear."
They headed off the bridge together, on the egde of another blast of klaxons.
"They're really coming this time, aren't they?" she said as they ran down the corridor toward the lift for the shuttle bay.
"They really are."
In the bay, half a dozen Marines joined them. "Get him suited, and give him some armor," said Delonghi. "He's going to need it where we're going."
"Eighteen on the chiton, forty-four inseam on the greaves," Gabriel said, and the other Marines looked at him in brief surprise. then some faces changed as they remembered who he was.
He blinked. The wash of discomfort and distrust that came to him from them was very hard to take. This
gift of mindwalking, he thought, if it is a gift, is not all it's cracked up to be. There was no time to waste wishing it gone. He needed it now, and anyway, Gabriel thought, it's too late. I'm hardwired.
One of them, a young woman with a mass cannon slung over her back, returned from an armory cabinet at the side of the shuttle bay with a breastplate, apron and leg pieces, and Gabriel's suit. Gabriel suited up and strapped on the armor with the speed of long practice, noticing the names on the chitons around him. Lacey, Dirigent, Rathbone, MacLain, and on the young woman's chiton, Bertin. It sounded familiar.
"You were on Falada" Gabriel said, very quietly.
She looked at Gabriel. "Yes."
"Well met, shipmate," Gabriel said, knowing all too well what response he was likely to get.
He got it. Bertin turned away without a word. Gabriel finished checking his armor then looked up at Delonghi, who had been watching this. She had a gun. Everyone else had a gun.
"Well?" he said.
Delonghi looked at him then shook her head. "I gave parole."