Nightfall_at_Algemron

There were few surprises at the trial, except that it took so long to actually happen. Finding someone to take Gabriel's testimony was the main difficulty, but finally the Concord authorities found a fraal working on Lucullus who was able to see into Gabriel's mind in enough detail to do the necessary documentation.
Gabriel's own written testimony, along with his elaboration of the material the fraal was able to elicit from him, was all entered into the record, and the evidence about Ricel was much argued.
"Everything Connor has given us independently," Gabriel's defense attorney argued, "matches exactly the records concerning the development and use of this clone group as we understand it. To earlier data, we have no access."
"It doesn't mean anything," countered the other prosecutor. "Just because this information is correct does not mean that the defendant is innocent of the actions of which he is accused. Indeed it could suggest, if looked at by an unfriendly eye, that the two were in even deeper collusion than the court originally thought."
"Nonetheless, the information is accurate, and this must be taken into account."
It went on for days like that, and Gabriel knew where it was all going, even without telepathy. The judges' minds were all too open a book. Kharls himself was not adjudicating, much to Gabriel's disappointment, but it was precisely because of the contact between them that he had disqualified himself.
When the discovery stage was over and the nonevidentiary phase began, Enda was the first one to request the right to testify before the panel. After that came Helm, Delde Sota, Angela, Grawl, and the Marines who had been present at Delonghi's killing (of which Helm had been acquitted days before in a separate proceeding). This was the hardest part for Gabriel, for he knew that, while the judges were listening, they had their minds made up already. The pain his friends were in affected him directly, despite his attempts to shut it out. He wound up taking lessons with the fraal who had taken his testimony on how to erect personal barriers.
"You know," the fraal said, after the last of four wearying lessons was done, "that you cannot keep your friends out of your mind, anyway."
Gabriel sighed at that and lay awake that night, listening to the others worrying down in their ships attached to the Lighthouse's spars. The next day was sentencing, and he knew what was going to happen. He had said nothing to them, because it would have depressed them. An extra day of hope is better.
The following morning he was brought in for the sentencing and received the only surprise of the proceeding. The judges announced that there was one more nonevidentiary statement to be made.
Elinke Dareyev walked in.
Gabriel sat there and, to his own astonishment, began to shake as Elinke spoke.
"Your honors," she said, "mental reservation does not protect one from charges of perjury. Maybe it would just be simpler to say that in the aftermath of the Falada shuttle disaster, I testified that Jacob Ricel was not working for Concord Intel in any capacity. That was true. However, I did know that he was VoidCorp. and I withheld this information from the court."
There were very few people in the courtroom, not enough for there to be a great ruckus of any kind, but the judges immediately retired to review all the evidence with an eye to this sudden new development.
Gabriel, for his own part, could only sit numbly as Elinke made her way out of the courtroom. The two of them would spend the next several days elaborating on the information behind that statement. She went past him, and Gabriel felt, like a cool draft, that terrible ambivalence in her, the division between kindness and cruelty, a line she always had trouble straddling. I might have known this could happen, he thought. There had been the matter of a door left open one night, without explanation, on Schmetterling. He had heard that awful, anguished thought, my poor crew. and later, I always said you were the devil himself. He had not done that favor for her. She would not have accepted it from him if he had, but for her crew.
She went by him, cool, composed, the uniform perfect, and glanced down as she passed. "Now all debts are paid," she said as she passed, and the security people went after her.
Four days later Gabriel stood up for the sentencing and heard the chief judge read the long statement that started out detailing the events on Falada and ended with those on Schmetterling. There was a brief dry mention of the extenuating circumstances and the great assistance the defendant had lent to the Concord forces at the Battle of Argolos.
"Of the first charge of murder and all subsequent charges relating thereto," the chiefjudge said, "we find the defendant not guilty. The circumstances require us, however, to find him guilty on twenty counts of manslaughter in the second degree. With mitigating circumstances considered, we sentence the defendant to ten years' confinement, to be served in the Marine confinement facility on the Galactic Concord vessel Lighthouse, beginning immediately and minus time served."
That was all. Everyone stood up, and the guards came for Gabriel. Enda, Helm, Delde Sota, Angela, and Grawl were waiting behind the bar separating court from spectators, and their faces were sad. Helm looked positively dour behind his new eyepatch.
"You knew it was going to happen," Gabriel told them.
"Well." Enda said. "I think Sunshine will be riding with the Lighthouse for a while."
"We'll come and go," Helm said, "but we won't be far, not for long." He looked around. "This is a nice place. good facilities here. You could get used to not roughing it for ten years or so."
Gabriel smiled at him and Delde Sota and then turned to Angela and Grawl.
"We'll be here," Angela said.
"I know," Gabriel said. "Thanks. thank you all."
They took him away to the comfortable but windowless cell that would be his home for the next ten years.
Chapter Twenty
Two evenings later, Lorand Kharls came by to see him. "So," Kharls said, "no surprises."
Gabriel lay on the bed in the small bare room. He nodded. This was Phorcys all over again, but at least there were Marines outside this cell. Also, Gabriel was not quite who he had been nearly three years before, and the walls seemed rather more transparent this time.
"None?" Gabriel said. "Not even Elinke?"
"Not at all," Kharls said. "When you have my job for long enough, you learn not to waste your time with platitudes or beliefs about human nature. Human beings in the specific, rather than the general are my study. Trends and large movements. yes, those, too, but separately. Lumping them all together, expecting human people to behave in a human way is always a mistake. We're much too, well, too personally Brownian a species to behave as expected. Great trends may move us. Great threats or inducements cause large groups of people to move one way or another, but there is always room for any particular particle to jiggle, and it tends to do so exactly in the way opposite from what one might reasonably expect. She jiggled, that's all."
Gabriel filed that away for later analysis, but said nothing in response.
Kharls sighed. "This will be my last visit for a while. I am moving on in a day or so."
"I suppose I should thank you," Gabriel said.
"For what?" Kharls said. "You must now spend ten years in confinement. Lives are longer than they used to be, but ten years is a long while for so young a man. Tools rust, talents go to hell." Kharls looked at him sharply. "I expect you not to let that happen."
And he was gone, just that suddenly, while Gabriel still was in the process of opening his mouth to say something cutting.
Too late. The door of the cell was shut. Gabriel looked at it and said silently, I'll get you for that some day.
Late that night something woke Gabriel up, a sense that he was being looked at. This happened often enough, especially now that a mere glance at his door by a passerby could cause Gabriel to come alert, but this time he genuinely was being looked at.