Nightfall_at_Algemron

"'Look at those," Helm said.
They looked down at the writhing remnants of the teln tangle, spilled out and writhing, all green and wet in the red wetness on the floor.
"Your boss there," Helm said, "assuming she is your boss—is nobody you want to be working for. Anybody you know have stuff like that in them?"
Rathbone and Bertin looked at each other. Rathbone turned away and began having difficulty controlling his stomach.
"Yeah," Helm said. "Delde Sota?" She handed him the flamer.
"Whatever she may have been before," Helm said, "she wasn't human anymore. Think a little housecleaning's in order."
He turned the flamer on Delonghi's remains until the ragged, oozing meat and green writhing worms scorched down to bubbling juices and finally to smoking black tar. Gabriel winced, hearing the death-shriek of the teln tangle and hearing it echoed elsewhere around the system, twice, twenty times, fifty times, a hundred, more.
To his astonishment, the others, both Marines and Gabriel's friends were wincing, too. "You heard that?" Gabriel managed to croak.
Plainly they had. Enda turned off to one side and began discreetly and genteelly to retch.
"Absolutely." Gabriel rubbed his face and went to get his helmet. "Helm, what's the story out there?"
"Gettin' hot," Helm said. "Everybody's gone completely bufu. Galvinites shootin' up Alitarins everywhere in sight and attacking the Concord vessels as well, but you saw that. You think these things are to blame?"
Gabriel shook his head. "Maybe some of them, but Helm, they were getting ready for this war anyway. This is a nice excuse." Still. Gabriel found himself thinking of the slightly dazed-looking man who had been sent back to Galvin by the Alitarins. Does he have a tangle inside him? He thought. Is there someone in particular they're trying to affect? Or some other plan—
His head was spinning. He put the thought aside for the moment, for it was too easy just now to let paranoia overwhelm common sense.
"The system is filling up with ships, Gabriel," Enda said. "The drivesat relay does indeed belong to the Lighthouse. They have been broadcasting to everyone who will listen about the incoming alien vessels—not that the Galvinites or Alitarins seem to care at the moment." Her expression was rueful. "There have been some peculiar arrivals as well. VoidCorps vessels, many of them."
"Doing what?"
"Nothing. That is the great mystery. Waiting, it seems, but for what? It seems as if everything else in near space is on its way here to fight."
"It may not be enough," Gabriel said. "Oh, gods, come on. We've lost too much time already!"
He got back into his helmet, not knowing for sure what might be farther inside the facility. He was afraid. Delonghi and her tangle might be dead, but that didn't mean that he was now safe—or by extension, the others with him. How exactly does telepathy travel? he wondered. How fast, and how far? Does being in drivespace stop it? Or speed it up? For even before Schmetterling had made starrise, Gabriel had felt the Precursor facility here waking up. Who knew what could be heard from what distance?
He thought of the teln and shivered briefly at the memory of the stroking, writhing thought buried inside Major Norrik, how it had looked at him. Are those things sensitive to the stone? Gabriel wondered. They
were all in contact with one another to a greater or lesser extent. at least that was what Delonghi's had intimated. Was word passed about that a "facilitator" was on the move, that something was happening?
There was no more time for to spend up here. He turned to the Marines, who were looking dubiously at Helm and Delde Sota.
"Who's CO now?" Gabriel asked.
"Me," Bertin said.
"Well, cousins," Gabriel said, using the old Marine affectionate name—and he meant it and didn't care what they thought about him using it, "you know what we were coming for, what the captain sent me to do. Do you want to come along? If you can't, if your oaths won't take the strain, my friends will hold you here." He looked at Bertin. "If you—"
He staggered and went to his knees, the stone flaming in his palm again, the vision overcoming him.
The shadow, the overarching shadow. Here. Now.
"Oh, gods," he whispered, "they're here."
Delde Sota and Enda went to him. "What?"
"Helmets," Gabriel said. "Quick. I need to have a look outside."
Everyone helmeted up again. Gabriel managed to get back to his feet and go after Helm, assisted by Delde Sota with Enda on his other side. He was weak. The shadow was in his heart as well as his mind—the cold of it, the pain struck him deep.
As they came near the exit, all of them slowed a little. The moonlet tumbled as usual, but it did so very slowly. This had been the bright end when they came in. It still should be, yet it was oddly twilit outside.
Followed by the Marines, they made their way hurriedly through the barrier and looked toward Algemron.
It was speckled and patched with many hundreds of little dark shapes, far into the system. a sick sun, a paling sun, which should have cast all their shadows sharp and black behind them, but now was only dim.
"When she said 'indeterminate,'" Helm whispered, "she wasn't kidding."
As they watched, starrise fire erupted in sickly purple-blue around a huge shape that slowly extruded up and out of drivespace: a great spherical ship, dark green, blooming up out of the nowhere into the here, and coming between them and the sun to blot it out entirely.
It was nightfall, but a kind that Gabriel had never thought to see and didn't want to see now. Behind him the others fell silent, horrified.
It slipped away, coming out of direct alignment with Algemron. The sun shone again, if weakly, and that image lasted not much longer, for the great mass of ships producing it was already making toward the outer planets. Gabriel was grimly amused by their bearing. It was so arranged that they would come in past the two inner planets first. They had apparently shared Gabriel's suspicion that this facility might have been planted there.
"They'll wipe out everything else that gets within range of them on the way here," he said, "but it's here they want." He did not say, And me.
The Marines were staring up at all this in horror.
"Buddy," Bertin said, "if you can do something to stop this,! we're with you." She looked around at her comrades. Heads nodded all around.
Gabriel swallowed hard. The emotion that seized his throat at her words had not been anything he had been prepared for. "Come on."
They went back inside. Gabriel stood in the midst of the front hall and once again clenched the stone in his fist, hissing at the pain. It had burned him when he screamed his rage and defiance. Got to find a way to teach you not to do that, he thought. Now stop stalling. Which way now?
This way…
He startled at that silent voice. Patterner?
One ofthe three. We are all one. Come! Be quick!
"Down here, troops," Gabriel said.
He went off down one of the left-hand tunnels without a moment's hesitation. After the first moment or so, the stone almost began pulling him along, as if someone's hand was in his, hurrying him. Enda went after Gabriel. The others and the five Marines brought up the rear.
"I heard you," Enda said softly as Gabriel paused at a turning and went right, "and with great clarity, greater all the time. If you are not a mindwalker now, I do not know what to call by such a name."
"I thought," Gabriel said, "you said you had little training in this art."
"No one ever has all they need of it," Enda said. "Gabriel, I told you the truth. I know enough to get by, but my family did not consider me much of a mindwalker. I was always the one who preferred to work with physical things—suits, ships and gardens. They despaired of me."