Nightfall_at_Algemron

"Don't know if my trust extends that far," Delonghi said. "Let it lie for now. We'll see how you behave. Get in."
They piled into the shuttle.
"Captain's done us a favor," Delonghi said as she slipped into the pilot's seat and started heating the shuttle up. "When she swings past Dalius, she'll have brought us a lot of the way we needed to go anyway. Time to Argolos won't be more than, oh, twenty minutes from there."
Gabriel nodded and gulped. He could feel some kind of large shadow moving over him, and he wasn't sure he liked the feel of it, for he didn't know what it was.
Yes I do, he thought then. It was like this on Ohmel when the VoidCorp cruisers turned up. Something coming out of drivespace. Something big.
But it hadn't happened yet. It would happen soon, though. He wished he was somewhere that he could see, but soon enough they would be on Argolos, and he ought to be able to get a glimpse from there.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Enda ?
Nothing.
Enda?
Very faintly he heard the answer. I hear. Argolos, Enda!
So I thought. I am glad, Gabriel! I thought I caught an image, a white line— That was me. Can you feel the stone?
It is faint. There is an anger that interferes—
That's on Argolos, Gabriel told her. This facility doesn 't feel like the other one. This may not be as
easy—
I did not think that one was particularly easy, she replied. The stone was like a live thing then—and an angry one. What it may become like now.
Gabriel started to shake his head then stopped himself. Gods only knew what the Marines would think. Got to make some conversation here, Enda, he said. Tell the others—
Helm knows. We follow.
Tell him I'm with a bunch of Marines. He's not to try anything dumb, like a snatch. I need to work with these people. Some ofthem are friends. Gabriel felt like laughing at the next thing he needed to tell her and had to stifle that too. Delonghi is here.
Is she indeed?
She's the one who pried me out ofthere, Gabriel said. I tell you, I don't know what to think of my fellow human beings any more. You think you know them, and then…!
Ironic laughter from the other end of the tenuous thread of communication. If you—
Snapped. Gone, as Delonghi lifted the shuttle out of the bay, and all around him Bertin and Lacey and the other Marines sat and fingered their weapons.
"Cent for your thoughts, Connor," said Delonghi. She brought the shuttle around in a big curve away from Schmetterling, and once again Gabriel got to appreciate the big deadly curves of her from underneath, the gunports open and hot, Algemron's light on her sleek sides. Good luck, he thought.
A sudden sense of shock from a mind very ordered, very excited, very ready inside Schmetterling. but not ready for this, not for hearing him when he wasn't even there, like a sudden pang of a overactive or overburdened conscience.
Elinke—
Gabriel shied away from that contact. He had already learned too much from his first one. He didn't want any more right now.
"Wouldn't know that they're worth that much at the moment," he replied.
She glanced at him from the pilot's couch, bringing the shuttle around expertly and bringing up the navigation display. Argolos showed in it, tumbling gently some ten thousand kilometers away. Delonghi locked the ship onto it and touched the autopilot to life.
"Keep an eye on it," she said to Rathbone, who was co-piloting.
tf\7 t tt Yes, maam.
They rode in silence for a while, as Delonghi checked her own weapons and slung them about her. Then she looked over at Gabriel.
"I suppose," she said, "that all this comes as a surprise to you."
He nodded.
"Look," she said, "if I was wrong the last time we met, maybe this is my chance to put it all right." "All of it?" Gabriel said. "You were going to blow my ship up. You were going to shoot me." "You threw me in a meat locker," she said, "and assaulted me telepathically." The other Marines were looking at her in some bemusement as she said this. "All right," Gabriel conceded, "it's true about the meat locker."
Lacey, Diligent and even Berlin turned their faces away from Gabriel, but this did nothing to hide their smiles. He could "hear" them from the inside in perfect clarity. He was not going to say anything about the telepathic "assault."
Well, it was assault, maybe, he thought, but she was lying to me. I had no choice.
She was hiding something. She was working with someone else. gods know who. I never did find out.
Just for that moment the thought tempted him. He might have refrained from using this technique on Elinke, but Delonghi was no friend of his, and whatever favors she did him, Gabriel was sure she was doing for her own reasons.
The stone was inside his suit glove. That had seemed the simplest way to stay in contact with it. Now he considered how best to proceed. Reach out very carefully and—
"Ma'am," said Rathbone, "we've got company."
Delonghi looked away from Gabriel and said, "What?"
"Three ships. Looks like the ones we were carrying in Schmetterling."
She looked at the tactical display and saw the ships' IDs displayed.
"Yes indeed," Delonghi said. "I was wondering if they would turn up. Thought they would have cut and tt
run.
Gabriel opened his mouth to say, "You don't know them very well," and then closed it again. For the moment he put aside the thought of "leaning" on her and merely said, "Look, Commander, I've told them they're not to try anything dumb. I have no desire to leave custody at the moment, no matter what you might think."
"If they come near you," she said, "if they try to come near me, I will personally fry them. Do you hear me? Even if I believed your bona fides, which is a moot point right now, I don't believe in theirs. I promised the captain I would bring you back for trial in good condition, and I will." She smiled slightly.
Gabriel fell quiet for a moment. Enda, he thought.
A faint response. Query?
Stay out of sight. She's not going to be reasonable. She 'll shoot if she sees you come near. Noted.
Feel for the stone.
Yes. A shiver. Gabriel felt slightly guilty making her expose herself to it, but it was the only way for her to be sure where he was.
They skimmed low over Argolos. It was a good-sized fragment of rock that was a little embedded ice. Several small domed mining facilities were scattered here and there over the moonlet's surface. Along with the scratches and gouges of many abandoned attempts and many more scars caused by crashed ships were several destroyed facilities dating back to earlier times—places that had been wiped out by attacks.
"All right, Connor," said Delonghi, looking down at the scarred surface of the place with a skeptical expression. "Where's what you're looking for?"
"Can I get Mr. Rathbone to hover for a bit," Gabriel said, "so I can get a directional fix?"
Rathbone reached into the central display and made a couple of adjustments. A few moments later, the shuttle was proceeding in a path identical to the moonlet's, nearly stationary above it, as the moonlet tumbled very slightly below.
"Good," Gabriel said. "Hold that, please."
He closed his eyes and felt down below him. At first he expected a stronger-weaker-stronger pattern, like the one he had gotten from the site at Ohmel, but this time it seemed less straightforwardly directional, more diffuse.
He opened his eyes again, startled by the conclusion. Nearly the whole moonlet was full of this particular Precursor facility.
In fact, he thought, that might be what held the thing together when it hit the gas giant all that while ago. He swallowed and had hard work of it; his mouth had gone dry at the thought of how much Precursor material might be buried in such a place. It also amazed him slightly that no mining operations here had managed to come up against any Glassmaker material.