Nightfall at Algemron

Wonderful, he thought, dazed, so now what?

He opened his eyes to see a troop of bigger kroath forcing their way past the ones who had been coming

in the first wave. Their armor was hugely broad across the shoulders, and their claws lanced out further. Grawl roared a terrible cry at the sight of them, realizing that as the other kroath had been made of men, sesheyans, or fraal, some of these were weren. With her scream, one of them launched itself at her—

Helm raised the D6, pulled the trigger, and the charge gave out. He dropped it, reached over his back, came up with something else, something squarish that he shook a handle out of.

An axe ?

Gabriel stared as Helm, in that battered armor, threw himself at the kroath, slashing, the axe whirling, seemingly appearing in several places at once. One of the kroath's arms fell away at the elbow. The kroath struck Helm with the other, but the claws made only marks on his armor. Helm was set like a rock, as if he were anchored into the floor like Gabriel and the Patterner.

Helm struck it and struck again, slashing off the other arm. It staggered at him, went down, oozing acidic slime. There were no other weapons nearby, nothing more effective to grab, but Helm spread his legs and planted himself firm and yelled, "Anybody else?"

Lacey had gone down next to where Delde Sota lay firing. The doctor grabbed the poor kid's mass rifle, yelled, "Helm!" and threw it to him. Helm caught it out of the air one-handed as he was hitting the next kroath with the axe. He slapped the axe back into carry position over his shoulder and used the mass rifle to stitch along the middle of the kroath, trying to cut it in half as he had with Delonghi. Gabriel could not see his face through the armor, but he could imagine what it looked like—that crazy grin that went halfway around his face, the teeth bared, the fiercely crewcut hair bristling. The kroath went down. Helm fired two long bursts into it, severing its legs at the knees.

"Walk away from that," he yelled. " Anybody else?"

He was tiring. He couldn't possibly keep it up, and the others had to be running out of charge or ammo. And there were still more kroath coming.

Gabriel was struggling in the crystal again.

Let me out! Let me fight! Where are the weapons?

There are no weapons here. Only information—

He screamed in frustration. Like an echo came the sound of screams and gunfire from farther up, echoing like thunder in the corridors above. We're all going to die, Gabriel thought, and I can't do anything. They're all going to die.

Confusion spread as the kroath blundered more quickly into the great room. Helm cut one more off at the legs, and then that mass rifle's change went out. MacLain went down but took another kroath with him. Helm snatched the axe from over his back and went for the next kroath, ducked the dark plasma blast that went past, and brought the axe down on arm and weapon together. The weapon exploded, throwing Helm backward and taking the kroath's arm off at the shoulder. With a crash of armor Helm went down, and kroath piled on top of him.

No! Gabriel cried. Let me out! Let me help! They'll all—

Enda came to them, casting her gun aside. "You are from Schmetterling?"

"The captain sent us," said one of the Marines. "She didn't want you to get away." He was looking over at Gabriel as he said it. "Maybe that wasn't a problem."

Through the crystal, he gave the man a bemused look. "Without you guys," Gabriel said, "getting away would not have been even slightly on the cards." He looked around at the fallen ones, Lacey, Dirigent and MacLain, their armor and bodies half-eaten away already by the kroath slime.

"But you're supposed to save everything now," said the young lieutenant. "That was the word."

"I'm so glad people tell me these things," Gabriel said. " I just wish I knew how!"

You do know, said the Patterner, as calm as if a major battle had not just taken place in front of her. Look within.

It took a little doing. Suddenly Gabriel found it much easier to hear the rest of this facility. What he could mostly hear at the moment was, They have come back! A terrible sound of rejoicing, a crash of martial music in his mind, guns and trumpets, drums beating.

They?

The makers. The creators.

Where?

You.

Gabriel would have looked over his shoulder, if he could have moved.

They said to us, "We will come back. We will use you again.. Where once we failed, we will rise up and succeed."

Some kind of reincarnation belief, Gabriel thought, yet the facility was deadly serious about it.

Well, fine, he said silently, but meanwhile there's a space battle going on out there, and my people's ships are being chopped in pieces, and it needs to stop!

There was not even a pause for access time. The enemies' ship defense.

Everything visual around him went away. In his mind, Gabriel found himself looking at something that was like a circuit diagram, but it was about a kilometer across. However, it was not a diagram; it was an equation. He could understand the terms but wasn't sure how they fit together.

He puzzled over it. The symmetry of the equation was strange. I don. 't see what this does, or how it works, Gabriel said. It looks like it makes something out of nothing!

Exactly, replied the Patterner. That is how everything was made at the beginning, out of nothing.

Gabriel knew as much about big bang theory as anyone else, but he had never thought of it in quite those terms before. If he was right, he was looking at some kind of intangible shield technology, and it seemed to have something to do with engines powered by darkmatter reactions, which every Concord and Star Force ship out there had.

Can we make this for our ships? he demanded.

Impossible, the answer came back. Installation requires more reconfiguration and rebuilding than can be managed at this time.

Gabriel felt like swearing, but it wouldn't have helped. It's not fair that they have this advantage as well as numbers! We're going to get slaughtered here!

The Others may be made to lose this advantage, the answer came back.

The imagery filling his mind was suddenly all directed toward one part of the equation. Gabriel realized abruptly that he was being shown its weak spot, the one part of the process of "making something out of nothing" that could feasibly be interfered with. A ship close enough to another one using this screen could just possibly generate the pulse of energy that would strike at this particular weak point and render the screen useless.

How do I get this to them in the middle of a battle ? Gabriel thought in desperation. Or in time for them to do anything with it? There was no way to get the information where it was needed, and people were dying out there.

Implementation does not have to be carried out remotely. Local implementation is possible on a limited basis.

Gabriel gulped. Define limited.

One pulse of the power necessary to disable all such operations in local space can be produced. Time to recharge: eight to the eighth hours.

Gabriel did the first few multiplications in his head and then gave up. Never mind that, he said. Get ready to do it!

Then he paused. What if it doesn 't work? There is no other remedy, came that cool reply.

He swallowed. It's just going to have to do, he thought, but at the same time I can't take the chance that this information might be lost. This could make all the difference in fights yet to come. It might mean the difference between our side's survival and its extinction, but I don't even understand it. How am I supposed to store it, share it.?

The idea came. "Delde Sota!" Gabriel shouted. "Are you still linked to Longshot's comms?" She tapped the remote transmitter at her belt. "Clear and operating."

That'll do it, Gabriel thought. This was a mechalus who had been able to sabotage Delonghi's ship by sliding her mind down into its computers via nothing but comms circuitry. At the time, it had seemed dangerously like magic. Now Gabriel was entirely happy to apply anything, up to and including magic, to the problem before him.

"How are you with figuring out schematics?"

She grinned, one of those slightly feral smiles she produced sometimes when someone asked her a question that was very much to her liking. "Admission: have been known to do such things every now and then."

"Do you think you can link up with me?"

She strode over to him, keeping the gun in her hands, and leaned up against the column of wrapped and woven crystal in which he now stood imprisoned. Her braid slipped in through the interstices and wrapped its finest tendrils around his wrist, sinking into the medchip there as it had so many times before.

"Not just hardware," Gabriel said. "Software."

She looked at him. Just the barest spark of alarm in those eyes, but it was quickly gone. "Semantics," she said. "Rhetorical question: for a mechalus, is there a difference?"

"Are you sure?" he said. "I don't know if this—"

"Exhortation!" Delde Sota interrupted. "Try it and find out."

Gabriel closed his eyes and slipped into the webwork, into the crystal.

The connection, when it came, was overwhelming. Gabriel found himself looking across what seemed thousands of kilometers of space, all glittering with the constructs of thought, down to great depths, up to unguessed-at heights. Delde Sota had been a Grid pilot before she had been a doctor. Gabriel knew that, but he knew it casually. Now he looked down into her mind and saw that she was still a Grid pilot, for she carried huge amounts of the Grid inside her tailored memory, which she had had installed in herself, bit by bit over time. When she had come away from her medical work on Iphus Station, she had finished the last of that customization, feeling that she might need it sometime soon. All those trips back to Corrivale, he thought, ". to do some errands."

One has to do the shopping sometime, the answer came back, and Delde Sota laughed inside.

Gabriel gulped at the vastness within her. All minds were landscapes to some extent—at least that was the paradigm in which he found himself tending to think of them—but Delde Sota's was a landscape in more dimensions than most. It had directions and axes the existence of which he would never have suspected, stretching off through many star systems, encapsulating parts of their Grids down which she had run herself at one time or another. The textures were amazing. He saw the spit of electricity and the hot burn of nuclear particles as she came close to one power source or another, the caress of others' thoughts as she passed them in the Grid. Down the myriad networks she quested, hunting information about one subject or another that interested her. and nearly everything interested Delde Sota. Doctor she might be, but she was also technician, philosopher, and engineer—all necessary talents, since she had been building and rebuilding herself for years. The rebuilding, the redesigning of an existing design to some new and unexpected use was what chiefly delighted her.

What did you have in mind? She asked silently.

This, Gabriel said. He showed her the shield.

She slipped down into that schematic, wore it like a coat, looked at it all over, checked the fit, and then

started to look closely at the fabric. A torrent of imagery flooded over Gabriel, picked up second-hand from her. Whirling virtual shell-structures of atoms that did not yet exist but could if conditions were correct, the probability clouds of their attendant particles even more subjective and uncertain than usual, and other particles, exotic but easily enough produced for short periods if you gave them a chance. Then came a flood of equivalencies between the symbology at which Gabriel had been looking and her own.

A long pause. Even Delde Sota was briefly confused by what she saw. Then suddenly Gabriel felt her suck her breath in, and he felt a great cry of astonishment and hope go up inside her.

Sides balance, she said silently to Gabriel.

Of the equation?

Possibly of the battle as well. Possibly a little imbalance.

Take all this information, Gabriel said. Store it in every ship's computer in the fleet that you 're able to reach. If even one survives to bring this home, we may lose this battle, but we'll have a better than even chance of winning the war.

"After that?" she said aloud.

We'll see if we can make this little change in the Externals' ships, Gabriel said, and even things up slightly.

Query: chances of success? Delde Sota asked.

Gabriel shook his head. We 're rolling double or nothing on this one. Do what you need to and hurry. I won't move until you're done.

He was afraid, afraid that the pulse he felt from the "mind" of the installation, considering so calmly, might burn him out in its passing. He was also afraid that using the information in this way, targeting the External ships with the pulse meant to burn out their protective screen, might also tempt them to destroy the facility itself, no matter how much they wanted it. Gabriel knew little or nothing about the psychology of his enemy, except that it was inimical to everything human. He was moving in an information vacuum and was very afraid to move in any direction at all, yet at the same time he didn't dare not move. People were dying.

Delde Sota had withdrawn from Gabriel, standing still for a moment, planning out how to handle her intervention, concentrating. Gabriel stood there and shivered, for the wash of terror and pain that he had picked up earlier was even stronger now. The battle was in full career, and it was not going well for the Concord. The External ships were slicing them up with great energy beams like blades, and the Star Force weapons were just sliding off them, unable to inflict any similar damage. Kroath were landing on Galvin and Alitar, killing people, stealing people. Here and there, bizarrely, were the VoidCorp ships, waiting, doing nothing, but everywhere else, local space was full of the silvery bloom of lost atmosphere as ships burst apart, spilling their crews into vacuum, exploding. One swung past with an External ship in pursuit as another ship akin to it blew not far away, and Gabriel got a sudden sense of familiarity.

"Schmetterling!" Gabriel cried.

"Schmetterling comms." There were screams in the background, sirens, a voice yelling "Get me that damage report! What the hell's happened to the main battery?"

"This is Gabriel Connor. Get me the captain. I think I can save her ship."

A pause. Then that fierce voice. "I thought I would have taken help from one of them sooner than from you, but the ruthlessness of the situation makes liars of us all. What have you got? Did you find what you were after?"

He had no immediate answer for that. "Listen, I think we can even up the odds a little. These guys have a shield—"

She swore. "Tell me about it. I hit them with everything I've got and it makes no difference!"

"I think I can do something about that. If it works, they're going to lose those shields shortly. They may not even realize it's happened at first."

"I'll pass the word, but you'd damned well better hurry up!"

Gabriel felt around inside the installation and was shocked to feel the wave of power growing in it, beating against him like a wind felt from behind.

"It won't be long. There's information we'll be dumping to Schmetterling's computers—and to all the other ships in the fleet. It has to get back to the Concord. It's the hardware and software information for a similar shield."

"Well do it, then! We have a few problems up here at the moment, and I don't have—" An explosion, and sudden silence. Gabriel frantically groped for the contact but couldn't get it back. "Delde Sota, go!" he screamed.

In her mind, she fled down her contact with Schmetterling, still alive though her audio comms were gone. She had carrier; it was enough. Down into Schmetterling's computers, which resisted her for ages—several seconds at least—Gabriel could hear the doctor's cry of frustration as she worried her way through course after course of firewall meant to prevent just this kind of attack. Then she found a chink, slipped through, and was in.

Now the tricky part. She was intent. She was also a doctor and was not distracted by the blood and screams that she could "hear" all around her. She was in the middle of a procedure. Doctor Sota ran down the circuitry and solids of the ship's computer, found memory empty there, and impressed the plans on it—the equations, the installation's own visualization of the hardware needed to manage the mass reactors and gravitic coils and all the other changes and tweaks that would be necessary to make the new shield work.

All around Gabriel, the power of the Precursor facility was building to its peak. He was still afraid, afraid that it wouldn't be enough and that all these ships full of brave and desperate people were going to die.

The power peaked.

"'Delde Sota!" Gabriel shrieked.

She did not bother to answer with her voice. She knew he could feel her flashing out of the computers in Schmetterling and leaping to the computers of other ships in the fleet. In microsecond jumps, she printed the data in their computers' memories, firewalling them so they could not be accidentally overwritten or altered. A moment of approval and surprise, even for her, as she slipped into the Lighthouse's Grid and planted the data there. The sheer size of it impressed her. Then on to the rest, packing the data down into every one of even the tiniest ships. Some exploded behind her, but she did not stop. She kept up the dance from machine mind to machine mind until every one still extant had the data.

The Precursor facility's power was beating harder against Gabriel, impatient to be let go, but he had to wait until Delde Sota had done what was needed. She was still in the midst of the dance, checking her work, making sure that none of the ships' computers had dumped the data.

"Done!" she cried.

With the power of the Precursor facility rushing through him like the great waterfall on Danwell, Gabriel picked up one image he had not intended to. The landscape inside Elinke Dareyev's mind, now suddenly flooded with horror and grief as she saw the huge spheroid ship swing away from cutting up Tournant not twenty kilometers from her, then come in with that great blade of energy ready to slice Schmetterling in two. This is it, he heard her think. My people, my poor people, oh, my poor crew! She got ready to die, but shouted, "One more time! All weapons, fire!"

" Go!" Gabriel said to the facility.

The force blasted out around him, through him, whiting out Gabriel's world in a torrent of power and pain. He had no idea what kind of pulse was being generated. It seemed to him to be running around under the crust of the planet as if under a skin, then pouring out of from every crack and crevice, blasting into all neighboring space and propagating at lightspeed, possibly faster. Were there tachyons and other faster-than-light particles involved in this? No way to tell for sure. All he could do was concentrate on bearing this, not losing himself in it, for there were more things he would need to do afterwards. The pulse tore through all local space, and he could feel it begin to impact the Externals' ships. Where it touched them, something happened that he was not sure how to define. As the pulse touched those shields, he could feel them. They seemed to be in the process of creating subatomic particles that did not actually exist. Fire from the Concord ships hit the enemy vessels, creating patches of these not-really-existing particles, and the patches turned the ships' fire away—until the firestorm stopped, at which time they vanished.

Except now, when the pulse hit the ships generating the screen. For a millisecond, the ships were completely screened—and then suddenly their screens could no longer generate the particles at all. The hulls of the Externals' ships were suddenly just so much metal and alloy.

Gabriel felt Elinke watching hopelessly as that External ship swung toward her, swung in close with that blade of energy.

A line of fire from Schmetterling struck the ship.

The great spherical monstrosity cracked open, spilled atmosphere and bodies out into the void, then cracked again, flaming wider, and blew up in a dazzling array.

"It works!" Delde Sola cried and burst out laughing.

Gabriel laughed, too. It works!

"Captain," Gabriel shouted down the comms link, "it worked! It worked!"

"What did you do?" Elinke yelled, and over her shoulder yelled again, "Where the devil are my front batteries, someone's going to have their pay docked in a minute! "

"I can't explain right now," said Gabriel.

"Well, what do I care? Will it last?"

"For these ships, yes," Gabriel said. "They'll never screen again."

"We'll find out in a moment," Elinke muttered. "Here comes another one. Forward batteries, are you up now? That one, there, hit him!"

The torpedoes and the forward energy weapons both let go together. The energy weapons took the big approaching sphere amidships, and the torpedoes followed, hitting slightly off to one side. It exploded brilliantly.

There was a long pause. "You're the devil himself," Elinke Dareyev's voice said. "I've always said so. Are you sure this will last?"

"It's permanent, Captain."

"Good. Then all we have to do is deal with two-to-one odds," she said. Her voice was grimly pleased. "We'll all just have to shoot twice, that's all."

Inside the facility of which Gabriel was now a part, the battle now seemed to have begun happening inside everyone who watched. They were all being drawn in as the power turned its attention away from Gabriel and began to focus outward, as the facility witnessed what it had been placed here for, a great stroke against the enemy that had destroyed its makers so many millions of years before. Through Delde Sota it flowed into them from a thousand viewpoints, for she was in the system Grid and the tactical sub-Grid connecting the Concord vessels. For his own part, Gabriel was struggling for control, unwilling to be forced permanently into this status. Limiting that power too strictly now could mean the end of everything for the Verge, and so Gabriel walked the edge of that glassy razor with care, trying to keep a steady course and not to let emotion tip him over one way or the other.

The fear was still there. He could see, as his friends could see through him, the terrible carnage that the Externals' ships were wreaking—great blasts of energy lancing out, flowers of fire blooming in the night, carving up Concord, Galvinite, and Alitarin ships. Already something was happening. Something was beginning to shift. Ships that had fired again and again at their enemies without result were now getting results—those of them that had survived that long—and were throwing themselves feverishly into the offensive, looking to make up lost time. The biggest Concord ships, which had been cautious not to throw themselves too hastily into battle with the very biggest External ships, now went after them with a vengeance. Even the Lighthouse slowly moved into the center of the battle, its terrible weaponry lancing out and wreaking the same kind of destruction on the Externals that they had been meting out to the Concord fleet. The odds were still bad, but the tone of the fight had changed. People were still dying, Gabriel knew, but at least they were now doing so with the hope that it might make some difference.

They watched for a while, knowing that there was no danger of attack to them at the moment. As the minutes passed, slowly at first, then more quickly, the tide of battle began turning. The Concord ships took the battle to the Externals in earnest, and now the ships that bloomed fire and breathed atmosphere into the vacuum were more often those of the invaders. There was a long hesitation, an uncertain period during which the fighting went on much as before—but then slowly the External ships gathered together and started to make for the outer reaches of the system as if to regroup. The Concord ships pursued them, and even more of the External vessels made starfall as minutes and tens of minutes and an hour and two hours went by. .

The Marines inside the cavern were recouping themselves, dealing with their dead and binding up the wounded. Gabriel looked out of the pillar at where Grawl was working on Helm.

"What a song this will make," Grawl was saying as she bound up his face and eye with pressure tape. Gabriel sucked in breath as he watched her do it, for the eye clearly would never be the same, no matter what bionics could be installed in the ruined socket later. "Great was the slaughter. The kroath fell in

heaps. Then Helm Ragnar's son strode forth with the axe and paid the price for wisdom: an eye—" "The meter will need work," Enda said, "but you begin well."

Gabriel stretched, came up against the resistance of the crystal, and abruptly felt it bend in front of him. He was that crystal now. No need for this, he said silently, and slowly the glasslike substance started to retract, slipping back down into the fibril bed of the master facility.

The Patterner, too, was coming undone from its shackles and came over to Gabriel. Harbinger, it said, your initiation is done.

Gabriel stretched. then felt something odd in his glove. Or rather, something odd that was not in his glove. The stone was gone.

I am the stone now, Gabriel thought. Everything that it had been, directional source, ancient personality, power feed, information storage core, all of that was part of Gabriel now, wound into his DNA, engraved on his genes. I am what it was, he thought, a map. a guidepost. The harbinger. The one who shows the way. And if there were ever children at some point down the line, they would carry the same map in their genes. They would always know the way to wonder.

He glanced idly at Angela.

She looked up at him from an injured Marine whose head she was holding in her lap. Well, who knows? He heard her think. Maybe just once.

Gabriel swallowed.

He turned his attention silently upward and outward. The battle had plainly reached that moment when the enemy says to itself, "This is not fun any more. We aren't winning." The system was almost empty of External ships now, except for the remnants of those that had been destroyed. A few of the great spherical ships still lingered in the outer regions of the system, but one by one they were vanishing into drivespace as the Concord vessels took control of the area, most massing over and around Argolos. The VoidCorp ships that had turned up also took themselves out into the darkness, vanishing into the darkness beyond the farthest fringes of the Algemron system.

"They're going to have some explaining to do about that," Gabriel said softly.

He would be interested in hearing them. Probably they would make the excuse that they had initially been as over-gunned as the Concord ships had been. He would have loved to hear how they explained leaving just as the Externals lost their shields and became vulnerable.

That would keep. He would probably have plenty of time to see their reaction in the Grid news to that. while spending all his time in custody, before the trial and afterward.

Helm came over to him, the dislocated left arm bound against his side at the moment. Delde Sota had done a field relocation but would want to do more work on it later.

"You know." Helm rasped.

Gabriel looked at him quizzically.

Helm gave Gabriel a one-eyed look of amusement. "Aw, it didn't work. I thought we could all just sort of think at you now."

Enda came up beside him. "That is a sure way to give him a headache," she said, "assuming he doesn't have one already."

Gabriel smiled at her somberly. "I ache all over, and my head feels like it might fall off shortly, but there are other things to do first."

"Yeah," Helm said. "I was thinking."

Gabriel heard the thought but said nothing about it for the moment. "We should get suited up," he said, "and get the hurt people out of here."

Helm looked at him a little strangely.

You know what he has in mind, Enda said silently.

I do, Gabriel said. I won– 't do it.

He turned to the Patterner, which stood nearby, watching the others prepare to leave. This facility is too dangerous to leave open, Gabriel told the creature. There are inhabitants of this system who would attempt to make inappropriate usage of it.

This facility has no further use, the Patterner said. When you depart, it will be destroyed.

That shocked Gabriel a little. Don'tyou think it would be wise to keep a backup?

It felt around in his mind for his meaning and then made a simple sense of negation in reply. The data was not copied but transferred. It was always intended to be held inside a life form. It had been hoped that we might serve that purpose, but it seems life is more than intelligence and free will. When there were no more of our makers left and our prototype program was discontinued unfinished, that data was stored solid, but such storage is merely static and is seen as far more insecure than that in living beings.

Oh?

That was their way, it said. That is the way the programming was laid in. You must now see to the propagation of the data yourself.

Gabriel laughed a little, seeing that what he was going to have to do with Jacob Ricel's memories for his testimony was the same thing he was going to have to do with the mapping information of which he was now the sole bearer. More homework, he thought. Is the testing stage ever going to end?

The Patterner gave him a dry look with all those eyes.

What about you, Patterner? Gabriel asked.

I and my other selves are done, it said. We have fulfilled our programming and our purpose. Go well., Harbinger. Fulfill your programming as well.

It fell silent. Gabriel felt for its mind. and found that it was gone.

He looked at Enda, sad and a little shocked. "That was sudden."

She shook her head and turned to look at the others.

The Marines, suited and waiting, stood a little distance away, regarding Gabriel with expressions of which

he could make little. There was horror in some of them and awe in others. Some seemed afraid to look at him. Others seemed unable to take their eyes off him.

Gabriel could only shake his head and wonder what they saw. He had seen too much of the insides of others' minds for the moment. For the next little while, the only mind he wanted to see the inside of was his own. It would take a while to get a sense of what it looked like these days, but he would have plenty of time for that.

He turned to Enda again. "Let's get my cousins here into Longshot and Lalique." Helm looked thoughtfully at Gabriel.

"Give them a ride back to Schmetterling, but you and I will go in first." He put his arm through Enda's, and they headed toward the corridor entrance. "I have an appointment to keep."

Chapter Nineteen

They were aboard Schmetterling for several days before anything significant happened. Mostly everyone in the system was preoccupied with repairing damage done during the battle, helping add their own information to the master report that was being assembled, and simply recovering.

Gabriel was returned to the same cell where he had previously been kept, and Enda and the crews of Longshot and Lalique were allowed to visit him pretty much at will. Gabriel spent his first day aboard in collapse, and the next couple of days trying to sort out what had happened to him. For one thing, he understood the strange looks on the faces of Bertin and the other Marines. When he had finally had strength to get up and have a shower and a shave, the first look in the mirror shocked him. The hair had a little ways yet to go before it became completely white, but the eyes, his eyes, were now silver-pale, gone white as Precursor glass. That he had not expected. Shaving had taken a long time that day.

Longer still would be the business of sorting out everything he now had in his head—a task Gabriel began to despair of ever completing before he died of old age. I was so bloody worried about not being human at the end of this, he thought late one night, and it turns out the problem was the reverse. I'm still too human. I'm terrified of losing this data.

It seemed to be safely esconced inside him for the time being, and by the third day he found himself able to start to relax. That was his error, for he came out of the little head down at the end of the cell corridor that evening to find the door to the living area open. Gabriel went toward it, smiling slightly.

Inside, sitting on one of the pulldown sofas and looking at the wall display, was Lorand Kharls.

He stood up to greet Gabriel, which he did not have to do, and saw him seated first, as he might have done with an honored guest. Then he sat down and looked at him for a while.

"Are you surprised to see me back here?" Gabriel asked at last.

"Oh, no," the administrator replied. "I was expecting you."

Gabriel looked at him. "I could have left."

"I didn't expect that," Kharls said, "but indeed, here you are back. So I came partly to ask whether you have the proof you went for."

"Not in any form that is likely to be useful," Gabriel said, "but I have it all."

Kharls looked at him strangely. "What form is it in?"

"Telepathic. Jacob Ricel dumped me the story of his life before he died."

Kharls blinked. "No, you don't make this easy, do you?"

"That doesn't seem to have been the story of my life recently," Gabriel said, "no."

Kharls nodded and said, "Well, I would imagine that we should be able to find someone in the Concord Legal Service who's also a mindwalker, one certified highly enough that he would be empowered to assess your evidence. seeing that this is the only form in which it can be provided."

Gabriel nodded. His main fear was that whatever mindwalker they found would either not be able to work out what had happened to the inside of his head and synchronize successfully with it or to clearly perceive all the nuances that Gabriel had acquired from Ricel while going over his memories. But it was a better outcome than he had hoped for, and all he could hope for, under the circumstances.

"Where will the trial be held?" Gabriel asked.

"On Lighthouse," Kharls said. "It's here now, and I will be moving my administrative work there for a while. If I can, during my own part in these proceedings, I will suggest to the adjudicators that your sentence, for I assume there will be one, should be served on Lighthouse as well. It strikes me that we might be able to use your services should you be inclined to give them."

The man's presumption was amazing, Gabriel thought. "If you think that after everything I've been through, the way I was set up, that I would—"

Then he stopped himself, for he knew that he would do exactly that.

Damn it, Gabriel thought.

"Oaths," Kharls said, "are an annoyance sometimes, but once taken, they seem almost impossible to remove. I see you have been unable to remove yours."

"Kharls," Gabriel said, "are you a mindwalker?"

He shook his head. "Heavens, no, and I resist any attempt to turn me into one, so keep your distance." "Then how do you always know what's going on around you?"

"I keep my eyes open. Most people don't, Connor. They look but don't see, listen but don't hear—the great fault of our age, I think, and probably of most ages before it. The mind that already is made up and sees only what reinforces its own beliefs, no matter what else it perceives. that's our greatest enemy. Me, I don't have any beliefs. I just look at people."

"And judge them."

"That's what I'm paid for, partly."

"There's something I want to talk to you about in that regard." "Your friend Ragnarsson," said Kharls, "and Delonghi."

"Possibly I shouldn't say this without counsel present."

Gabriel said, "but I very much wish I had killed her myself." "If I understand the circumstances correctly, you were trying." "And now Helm's going to take the blame for it."

"Well," Kharls said, "there are some aspects of this business with which I can involve myself without there being a conflict of interest. This was a battlefield situation."

"But it—"

"Those who understand the issues," Kharls interrupted, "are already calling this not the Battle of Algemron, but the Battle of Argolos—with good reason, especially after we started to analyze the inbound data tracks on the External vessels. We realized that, excepting the sweep past Ilmater and Calderon, all of them were heading in your direction—right past Galvin or Alitar or anything else of interest in that part of the system, so a battlefield situation. Witnesses saw that Delonghi was infected with something clearly identifiable as not part of a normal human organism. Those witnesses will later be able to identify this as a teln, when we remove a tangle to show them from one of the sources we've acquired. Further investigation will, I believe, show that if the organism had succeeded in what it intended, then the whole battle would have been lost with tremendous equipment and personnel losses to the Concord and the associated stellar nations. I rather think all that will be set in the side of the scales containing acts to your friend's credit—not to mention his exploits later on down deeper in the facility, where he apparently bought you the time needed for reserves to arrive. An amazing feat, really. If he were in any of the services, I would have thought they would have decorated him so heavily he could barely stand, though plainly that would take a cartload of medals." Kharls stretched his legs out in front of him. "So I think you can put your mind to rest on that account."

Gabriel nodded.

"As for Delonghi." Kharls said, then fell silent a moment. "You know, I think the standard treatment for a spy when you know that one has been placed in your organization is the fungal treatment. Keep them in the dark, feed them." He smiled.

"Waste products," Gabriel said.

"It can be very difficult to do that," Kharls said. "I have suspected such emplacements in my own organization for a long while. It can be very hard to let them continue doing damage while trying to contain the larger damage they might do otherwise. or which might be done if they were forcefully removed. Off the record, I will thank you for doing me a favor. As for the others"—he shrugged—"there is no doing everything at once. These Externals are not a problem to be so lightly solved. We have won an engagement with them, but it will be many years, I think, before we have enough intelligence about them to know how major or minor an engagement it was. Meantime, good intel practice at my end involves leaving their present agents in place. and making sure I have a big enough bag of waste products handy."

Gabriel nodded at that, too.

"So," Kharls said. "I'll be moving over to Lighthouse for at least a few weeks. Meanwhile, you will be held here, in what I hope you will find reasonable comfort. I would have preferred something a little less spartan, but the Marines—"

"I just saved a whole lot of their asses," Gabriel said, rather more hotly than he had intended, " and half the Verge, as an incidental. You'd think that would count for something."

"Well, I would," Kharls said, "but you should know, as a former Marine yourself, that the lives of your own people count for more than anything else. If you don't take care of yourselves, who will? The deaths of the Marines from Falada and the pursuit of this trial remain important to the organization, and I am unwilling to do anything that might impair morale at this point. such as show undue favor to the accused."

Gabriel made a rueful face. "Well, yes, I do understand, even though at the moment I don't much care for • , tt it.

"That said," Kharls continued, "I am willing to listen to anything for which you might personally ask me." Gabriel looked at him quietly for a few moments then shook his head. "No," he said at last.

"Unusual," said Kharls, after a pause nearly as long. "Maybe not," Gabriel said.

Kharls was quiet for a moment. "You have given us," he said, "perhaps the one tool that will turn this struggle in our favor. It may take years yet to tell, but this kind of defense leaves us freer than we would have thought possible to turn our attention to offense."

"Always my preferred mode," Gabriel said.

Kharls gave him a look. "I wonder. I was about to accuse you of mellowing, but possibly that's premature. It's probably just as well, for you have a lot more searching ahead of you after you serve your sentence. and that edge will help keep you alive."

Gabriel nodded. "One question, though."

"Certainly."

"VoidCorp."

"Yes," said Kharls. He stood and stretched again. "There is a situation that will want to be looked at closely in the coming weeks and months. It was interesting to note"—he looked sideways at Gabriel—"that during the battle, though there were a surprising number of them there, none of their vessels seemed willing to do anything on either side. It is. suggestive."

"Yes," Gabriel said. "Almost as if they were unwilling to annoy a potential ally, before they knew which way things seemed to be going."

Kharls nodded, then he seemed to stand indecisive for a moment. A strange sight, one which Gabriel had never seen. "Tell me something. You have apparently been through something. very strange. Who were they? The Precursors, I mean."

It was a question that had been on Gabriel's mind. "Administrator," he replied, "I wish I knew. The Patterners seem to have been built to be very like them, and the Patterners have almost no sense of self as such. In what I have inside me now, which is everything that was there—a great library of practical science material mostly, and directions to other facilities—there are no images of them. Either they had a

religious injunction against it, or"—he laughed once, softly—"or we are them come back again after a great failure for another chance at success. Who knows? The Patterner seemed to think so, but even it was unsure."

Kharls nodded slowly.

"And you," Kharls said. "Who are you, now?" "You mean, 'What are you?' " Gabriel said. "No," Kharls said. "Who?"

Gabriel smiled slightly. "I am a man. Maybe not just another human,' but definitely a man, and very confused."

"And not guilty."

"Of murder," Gabriel said, "no. Not guilty."

Kharls made for the door, paused there. "After this is all over, I think I can tell you that, should your oaths guide you in that direction—as they seem to have done for the last year—the Concord would deeply appreciate your service."

"After this is over, Administrator," Gabriel said, "I would certainly meet you in the gym of your choosing and attempt to knock your block off for all the trouble you've caused me." He smiled, but it was one of those smiles he had borrowed from Grawl, with fangs showing. "After that we'll discuss service."

"Yes," Kharls said, "that I did expect. I would say we will certainly have some dealings outside the judicial process." He went down to the door at the end of the corridor, rapped on it, and the guard let him out.

The trial happened about a month and a half later and lasted for several weeks. They did not try to rush it. There was too much attention being paid to it in the media, for whom interest in Gabriel had greatly increased after news of the events at Argolos got out. Gabriel tried to contact his father during that period and got the expected response. Silence. It would be a while before that particular disjuncture in his personal universe would be healed, if ever.

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.

Blue eyes. Big blue eyes, almost luminous even in this near darkness.

Will you come with me? Enda asked.

Gabriel sat up in the bed, half confused by sleep. How'dyou get in here? Where's the guard? Gabriel, be still and come on!

They made their way swiftly out of the cell and through the dimmed corridors of the security area. Not a soul was to be seen. The one duty officer who routinely manned the desk down at the corridor's end was not there.

Gabriel came out at the end of the corridor, and someone slipped near him from around a corner and threw a cloak over him, the kind of thing an Orlamu based on the station might wear.

"Come on," said Delde Sota's voice as she fell into step beside him. "Window of opportunity only so wide. Put these on." She pushed a pair of shaded glasses into his hands, something like a vacationer might wear on a sunny Bluefall day. "Will help to hide your eyes."

They do attract attention. Enda smiled at him apologetically as he donned the shades.

Ten minutes later they were on the public transport that led down to the main lifts serving the docking spars. The transport was full of a group of people coming back from a party, laughing and joking. No one had time to spare a glance for a fraal, a mechalus, and a sleepy Orlamu, all clinging together like the punchline from some offcolor joke.

The three of them got off the lift and headed down spar five. As they passed a port, Gabriel could see four ships berthed together there. Sunshine, Lalique, Longshot, and another ship he didn't know. To his astonishment, Enda pushed him past the lock serving Sunshine's tube and into the next one along, the one for the larger sleek ship he didn't know, the one as large as Lalique.

"But Enda—!"

"Grawl is handling Sunshine at the moment," she hissed. "Hurry!"

She pushed him into the new ship, shut the outer door and the inner door behind them, slapped the control to disconnect the tube, and headed forward to the pilot's cabin.

"Go, Helm!" she called.

"Grapples away," Helm said down comms, "starfall in one minute. Last one away gets to cook when we come out."

"Enda!" Gabriel raced after her, ditched the cloak and glasses in passing, and slid into the pilot's seat across from her. They were in a cabin that had to be three times the size of Sunshine's. "How did we.? Helm ?"

"Someone died and left it to you," Helm answered. "Who?"

"Bald guy with a funny staff. Just an opinion, of course. Can't swear to it. I didn't see anything. Can we get out of here before he changes his mind?"

"Where are we going?"

"Away out where you can look for all these other strange places you've been told about," Enda said, "and where we can use up all those staples you bought!" She tsked softly. "I really am going to have to find a way to get some more exercise. I shall put on weight, otherwise."

We will certainly have some dealings outside ofthe judicial process, Kharls had said.

The ships arrowed away from the docking spars, and Gabriel looked over his shoulder at the great bulk of Lighthouse. The side turned toward Algemron shone brilliantly. The battle scars from the battle had been thoroughly cleaned, though a few rents in the hull were still being repaired. The vast ship's darker half sparkled with dozens of lights, any one of which could have come from the viewport of the Concord Administrator's office. Perhaps.

You son of a bitch! Gabriel thought as loudly as he could.

Four vessels soared away briefly on system drive, then made starfall.

And all the starfalls were black.

Aboard the Lighthouse, a man in the act of packing his few belongings stood up straight, suddenly possessed of a roaring headache.

I've brought this on myself, he thought.

The Concord Administrator stood there with his head throbbing. The pain was probably only a harbinger of things to come. The events of the past weeks were going to take a good while to settle, and he expected a fair amount of recrimination from his superiors over exactly how his plans had worked out. It was the cross he routinely bore that they usually did not understand what he had been doing, even when he explained it in mind-shattering detail.

Results, though. those they understood. eventually. They would be weeks digesting the ones that had resulted from the events at Algemron. It would give him time to marshal his thoughts and recuperate a little. It never took him long, for completing any piece of work always lent him energy. Then he would start the next plan of action, which would also have to be explained to the people above him in the hierarchy, and which despite the explanation, they also would not understand.

He was used to that, though. Such situations often provided their own refreshments—such as beings who were not his superiors but did understand.

He paused, went out to the window, and looked out into the darkness. There was a greater darkness coming, one with its own terrible agenda and possessing power much greater than had recently been seen. Humanity and its cousins would need all the help they could find in the fight against that encroaching darkness.

If there was anything he was sure of, it was that bureaucracy and governments and armies and mighty weapons were not the force that would finally win that fight. Individuals would do it, people who walked their own road, lifting their single weapons against the night and refusing to be cowed by the darkness around them. They were his kindred spirits, the ones who understood the old saying, "The lifting of the single sword will keep the whole world in peace." He would help them as he could, knowing that their swords and his were lifted in the same cause. Eventually they or their successors would triumph. Months or lifetimes. it did not matter to him. Together they would get the job done, though some of them walked strange roads to do so.

In the meantime, Lorand Kharls smiled to himself, enjoying the headache, for he knew where it came from. Then he picked up his tri-staff and headed off toward his next job.

Glossary

Aegis – A G2 yellow star. The metropolitan center of the Verge.

AI – Artificial Intelligence. Sentient computer programming whose sophistication varies from model to model.

alaith – A tropical tree native to Bluefall. Aleerin – see mechalus. Algemron – A G5 yellow star.

Alitar – Fourth planet of the Algemron system, and home to the Imperial State of Algemron. Angolas – A large asteroid of the Algemron system. AU – Astronomical Unit. 150 million km

Austrin-Ontis Unlimited – A corporate stellar nation that is the strongest arms dealer in the Stellar Ring. Most Austrins view themselves as strong individualists with a deep sense of altruism.

Beranin – Once the largest and most beautiful city of Alitar, Beronin was nearly destroyed by the Galvinites in 2461. It has since been rebuilt as a fortress city.

Bluefall – Capital planet of the Aegis system. Ruled by the Regency government.

Builder – A segment of fraal society that believes in integration with other species and cultures.

Calderon – The innermost world of the Algemron system.

caulia – A red vegetable from the Stellar Ring noted for its rich flavor.

cerametal – An extremely strong alloy made from laminated ceramics and lightweight metals.

charge weapon – A firearm in which an electric firing pin ignites a chemical explosive into a white-hot plasma propellant, thus expelling a cerametallic slug at extremely high velocity.

Churgalt Insurgency – A force of rebels on Galvin who claim that the Federal State of Algemron is in league with unknown aliens.

Churgalt region – A densely forested area of Galvin's equatorial regions. CM armor – cerametal armor. Concord – see Galactic Concord.

Concord Survey Service – A division of Star Force dedicated to scouting, surveying, and first contacts. Conker – A derogatory term for citizens of the Galactic Concord.

Connor, Gabriel – A former Concord marine lieutenant, now freelance explorer and infotrader.

Corpse – A derogatory term for a VoidCorp Employee.

Corrivale – An F2 yellow-white star.

Coulomb – A red dwarf star near the edge of the Verge.

CSS – see Concord Survey Service.

Dalius – A small gas giant and the fifth world of the Algemron system.

Danwell – The only hospitable world of the Eldala system; homeworld of the edanweir.

Dareyev, Elinke – Captain of Star Force vessel Schmetterling.

David, Lemke – A Star Force second lieutenant navigator, usually called "Lem." Now deceased. Delonghi, Aleen – A member of Concord Intelligence.

DeVrona, Mara – A Concord Administrator currently assigned to the Algemron system. drivecore – The central engine core of a stardrive.

drivesat – A communications satellite that drops into drivespace in order to transmit and receive messages.

driveship – Any spaceship that is equipped with a stardrive.

drivespace – The dimension into which starships enter through use of the stardrive. In this dimension, gravity works on a quantum level, thus enabling movement of a ship from one point in space to another in only 121 hours.

durasteel – Steel that has been strengthened at the molecular level. edanwe (pl. edanweir) – A sentient species native to Danwell. Eldala – A newly discovered system past Mantebron.

Enda – A fraal.

Erhardt Field – The main spaceport and airport of Galvin. Located about 20 kilometers from the city center in the Verdant Mountains.

e-suit – An environment suit intended to keep the wearer safe from vacuum, extreme temperatures, and radiation.

External – A term used to describe anything that originates beyond known space. Falada – A Concord Star Force Heavy Cruiser.

flechette gun – Any firearm that utilizes bundles of tiny, razor-sharp aerofoils as projectiles.

Fort Drum – The capital city of the Federal State of Algemron on Galvin.

fraal – A non-Terran sentient species. Fraal are very slender, large-eyed humanoids.

Galactic Concord – The thirteenth stellar nation, formed by the Treaty of Concord. Concord law and administration rule in the Verge.

Galactic Standard – The lingua franca of known space.

Galvin – Home planet of the Federal State of Algemron.

gillie – A small gamefish native to Bluefall noted for its seventeen gill-slits.

gravity induction – A process whereby a cyclotron accelerates particles to near-light speeds, thereby creating gravitons between the particle and the surrounding mass. This process can be adjusted and redirected, thus allowing the force of gravity to be overcome. Most starships use a gravity induction engine for in-system travel.

Grawl – A weren poetess.

Grid – An interstellar computer network.

Grith – A moon of Hydrocus and the only habitable world in the Corrivale system. gurnet – A quadripedal species native to Kurg favored for its meat. Gyrofresia ondothalis fraalii – see "Ondothwait" Halo – A small gas giant of the Algemron system.

Hammer's Star – A yellow G5 star. Site of the outermost Concord outpost in the Verge.

Hatire Community – A theocratic stellar nation founded on the founded on the general anti-technology religion of the same name.

Hatire faith – A religion that preaches ascendance through union with the spirit of the Cosimir, a Precursor deity that the Hatire adopted as their own. Most Hatire hold attitudes antagonistic to technology and abhor all forms of man-machine integration.

Havryn – A gas giant of Algemron and largest planet in the system. High Mojave – The only inhabited world of the Mantebron system. Also the site of the best-preserved Glassmaker ruins.

holocomm – holographic communication.

halodisplay – The display of a holocomm that can be viewed in either one, two, or three dimensions, Ilmater – A lifeless world of Algemron. Inseer – A citizen of Insight.

Insight – A subsidiary of VoidCorp that broke away to form a separate stellar nation. Citizenry is dominated by freethinking Grid pilots who believe that humanity can reach its destiny only in Gridspace.

Iphus – A planet in the Corrivale system.

Iphus Collective – A mining facility run by StarMech Collective on Iphus.

JustWadeIn – A software program developed by Insight that allows the user to learn space combat at ever-increasing levels of difficulty.

Kendai – A planet of the edge of the Stellar Ring that houses the drivespace relay that connects communications between the stellar nations and the Verge.

Kharls, Lorand – A Concord Administrator.

kraath – A hostile external species of unknown origin.

Lalique – Angela Valiz's driveship.

lanth cell – The standard lanthanide battery used to power most small electronic equipment and firearms. lighthouse – A huge space station, capable of 50 light-year starfalls, that roams the Verge. Lightning Nebula – An unexplored region of space beyond Hammer's Star. Longshot – Helm Ragnarsson's weapon-laden driveship.

Long Silence – That period of time when the Stellar Nations lost contact with the Verge because of the Second Galactic War.

Mantebron – One of the outermost star systems of the Verge, mass weapon – A weapon that fires a ripple of intense gravity waves, striking its target like a massive physical blow.

mass reactor – The primary power source of a stardrive. The reactor collects, stores, and processes dark matter, thus producing massive amounts of energy.

mechalus – The most common term used for an Aleerin, a sentient humanoid symbiote species that has achieved a union between biological life and cybernetic enhancements.

mindwalker – Any being proficient with psionic powers.

Monitor Mandate – The mandate of 2497 that granted both Alitar and Galvin full independence from the Thuldan Empire and Austrin-Ontis Unlimited.

neurocircuitry – Cybernetic implants intended to fuse electronic or mechanical systems with a living biological entity.

Norrik. Garth – Deputy Chief of Field Operations for the Federal State of Algemron's Intelligence

Directorate.

ondothwait – A plant. Scientific name: Gyrofresia ondothalis fraalii.

orbweaver – A sentient organism, whose body is made of living crystal and glass, believed to have been created by the Glassmakers. Though highly intelligent and curious, no orbweaver encountered thus far has ever displayed any inherent sense of self.

Orion League – A heterogenous stellar nation founded on principles of freedom and equal rights for all sentients.

Palshizon – A planet of Algemron on which the Concord keeps a permanent installation in order to enforce the Monitor Mandate.

Pariah Station – The Concord installation orbitting Palshizon whose job it is to enforce the Monitor Mandate.

Phorcys – A planet of the Thalaassa system.

phymech – An automated emergency medical system with a fairly sophisticated AI system. Most phymechs come with fairly specialized medical supplies—skinfilms, bandages, antiseptics, painkillers, etc.

plasma weapon – A weapon that converts an electro-chemical mixture into white-hot plasma and then utilizes a magnetic accelerator to throw a blast of the plasma at the target. The super-heated plasma explodes upon striking its target.

prassith – A genetically enhanced sweet root first introduced in the Stellar Ring by the Orlamu. Ragnarsson, Helm – A human mutant.

rail cannon – An electromagnetic accelerator that fires projectiles at extremely high velocities. Rand – Lorand Kharls's assistant.

Red Rain – A bioweapon that converts any kind of organic matter into a lethal mycotoxin. Reliance – A world of Algemron. rhin – A weren lap-harp.

rlin noch'i – The common garb of the mechalus. Consists of a multi-pocketed smartsuit and soft boots. RS201 67LEK – A VoidCorp intelligence officer.

sabot weapon – A firearm that uses electromagnetic pulses to accelerate a discarding-rocket slug at hypersonic speeds.

Schmetterling – A Concord Star Force Heavy Cruiser.

Sealed Knot, the – A mechalus symbol favored by medical practitioners of that species. seeker – The formal term given to initiates of the Orlamu faith.

sesheyan – A bipedal sentient species possessing long, bulbous heads, large ears, and eight light-sensitive eyes. Most sesheyans are about 1.7 meters tall and have two leathery wings that span between 2.5 – 4 meters. Sheya, the sesheyan homeworld, has been subjugated by VoidCorp. However,

a substantial population of "free sesheyans" live on Grith. Silence, the – see the Long Silence.

skinfilm – An artifical polymer membrane, usually only a few molecules thick, that is often used for sanitary protection or containment.

Sota, Delde – A mechalus doctor and former Grid pilot.

spaceport – A planetary landing zone for driveships.

spee-g – short for specific gravity.

Standard – see Galactic Standard.

stardrive – The standard starship engine that combines a gravity induction coil and a mass reactor to open a temporary singularity in space and thus allow a ship to enter drivespace. All jumps take 121 hours, no matter the distance.

starfall – The term used to describe a ship entering drivespace. Star Force – The naval branch of the Concord military. starport – A zero-g, orbital docking zone for driveships. starrise – The term used to describe a ship leaving drivespace.

stellar nations – The thirteen sovereign governing the Stellar Ring, the center of which is Sol (Earth). Stellar Ring – The systems that make up the thirteen stellar nations, the center of which is Sol. STG shuttle – Space-To-Ground shuttle. Stricken –A large island in Bluefall's northern hemisphere.

stutter cannon – A powerful but nonlethal weapon that uses blasts of compressed air to render targets unconscious without causing serious harm.

sunfish – A shallow water fish native to Bluefall.

Sunshine – Gabriel Connor and Enda's starship.

system drive – Any form of non-stardrive propulsion used for inner system traffic. Thalaassa – An F2 yellow star. Also the name of the system.

Thuldan Empire – A militaristic, fiercely patriotic stellar nation that considers the unity of humanity under the Thuldan banner to be its manifest destiny. The largest of the stellar nations.

Tisane – A small settled island near Stricken.

Tlelai – An edanwe hunter.

Treaty of Concord, the – The Treaty that ended the Second Galactic War and formed the Galactic Concord.

tri-staff – The traditional weapon carried by Concord Administrators.

Valiz. Angela – A human freelance trader and explorer.

Verdant Mountains – A chain of small mountains near Fort Drum on Galvin.

Verge, the – A frontier region of space originally colonized by the stellar nations that was cut off during the Second Galactic War.

verjuice – A beverage made from the berry of the verrillia plant in the Borealis Republic.

Void Corp – A corporate stellar nation. Citizens are referred to as Employees and all have an assigned number.

Wanderer – 1.) Fraal: A term used to describe that segment of fraal culture that prefers life aboard their wandering city-ships rather than settling down to mingle with other species. 2.) Sesheyan: Weyshe the Wanderer, a sesheyan deity.

Welsh, Rina – An officer of the Department of Hospitality at Erhardt Field.

weren – A sentient species native to the planet Kurg. Most weren stand well over 2 meters tall, are covered in thick fur, and have sharp claws. Male weren have large tusks protruding from the bottom jaw.

weren – A sentient species native to the planet Kurg in the Stellar Ring. Most weren stand well over two meters tall, are covered in thick fur, and have sharp claws. Male weren have large tusks protruding from the bottom jaw.

werewisp – An electromagnetic creature, usually aggressive, that is most often found on High Mojave. whilom – A quadripedal species native to Kurg, favored for its meat. whitetails – An arboreal bird native to Bluefall.

Wreathe –A large asteroid of Algemron. The planetoid possesses a thin but very toxic atmosphere.

Adventure beyond the stars with Diane Duane

The Harbinger Trilogy

Starrise at Corrivale Volume One

Gabriel Connor is up against it. Expelled from the Concord Marines and exiled in disgrace, he's offered one last chance by the Concord to redeem himself. All it involves is gambling his life in a vicious game of death.

Storm at Eldala Volume Two

Gabriel and his fraal companion are scratching out a living among the dangerous stars of the Verge when they stumble onto new, unknown forces. Only their deaths seem likely to avert disaster. But an astonishing revelation from the depths of time makes the prospect of survival even more terrible than a clean death.

Nightfall at Algemron Volume Three

Gabriel Connor's quest to save the Verge and clear his name leads him to a system ravaged by war and to the ruins of a long-dead alien civilization. Along the way, he discovers that to save himself and all he holds dear, his one salvation may also be his ultimate destruction.

Available April 2000

STAR*DRIVE is a registered trademark owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. ©1999 Wizards of the Const, Inc.

About the Author

DIANE DUANE was born in Manhattan in 1952, a Year of the Dragon. She was raised on Long Island, in the New York City suburbs. She wrote her first unpublished novel when she was eight, illustrating it herself in crayon. After many years of study and struggle, she stormed into the science fiction world in 1979 with The Door into Fire, published by Dell Books.

Duane now lives with her husband in County Wicklow in Ireland, along with four cats and several seriously overworked computers. A Campbell Award nominee, Duane is the author of nineteen acclaimed novels of science fiction and fantasy. Five of these were from the New York Times best-selling STAR TREK novels. She also authored a very popular "Wizard" series of young adult fantasies published by Delacorte/Dell. In her spare time, Duane travels (Switzerland being a favorite destination), studies German, dabbles in astronomy, and spends time weeding the garden.

Star*Drive and the Star*Drive logo are registered trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.