Starrise at Corrivale

Chapter Eighteen

IT WAS NEARLY an hour before Gabriel was ready. He made his way through the caves and storage caverns, ignoring the frightened sesheyans as best he could while he used his little handheld portable imager-a leftover from their tourist time on Grith-to get the images he needed and then to prepare the messages that had to be stored and ready to go. At last he got back into Sunshine, got onto the Thalaassan Grid, and found the communications networks he needed. He arranged for a dual conversation-ruinously expensive though it would be- and set about getting in contact with the two people with whom he needed to speak.

It took him a long time to get connected with them. He had to start at a certain level of lackey on both Phorcys and Ino- otherwise they would just have cut him off, not knowing enough to understand what he was threatening them with-and then he had to argue with them, one after another. But he would not take no for an answer, and the work became slightly easier when Gabriel began reaching the level of lackeys who recognized him from his presence around the peace talks with Delvecchio. To each of these people, Gabriel said only one word: Rhynchus. Most of them went pale at the sound of it. Some of them blustered, some of them bluffed, some of them he had to show an image or two to get the desired result, but each of them finally passed him up a level, glad to be rid of the uncomfortable presence at the other end of the comm, the set face that seemed to promise somebody was in a world of trouble and if they acted correctly it might not be them.

Finally Gabriel had the two of them on one screen: flat-faced old Rallet, looking not a whit less dyspeptic than when Gabriel had seen him last, and ErDaishan with that mouth like a razor cut stretched tight as usual. Both were annoyed and disdainful-and both looked ever so slightly uncomfortable. They both started in on him at once. "I hope you understand the irregularity-"

"-little chance that you would have anything of import to-" "Rhynchus," Gabriel said. "Regarding the sesheyan colony here."

The two looked suitably shocked, but neither of them said a word.

"I know all about what's been going on here," Gabriel said, "and specifically, I know all about what's just happened. So will many others, shortly. I intend to inform the Concord. Lorand Kharls, the Concord Administrator in these parts, has been showing great interest in your system, as you know, subsequent to the signing of the treaty. He will be very interested to see all the physical evidence on Rhynchus of your long trade with the sesheyan colony on that world that somehow managed to go completely unmentioned while the negotiations were going on-as I know very well." Gabriel smiled nastily as something occurred to him. "That was possibly another reason for my 'not proven' verdict, wasn't it? A verdict designed to get everyone to lose interest, to go away and let you be. Either the 'guilty' or 'innocent' verdict might have produced further investigation in the system, and who knew what that might have turned up? All that used Phorcyn and Inoan hardware scattered here and there on Rhynchus, built into the caves where the sesheyans are living, all very incriminating. It could well be badly misunderstood, certainly by the Concord and possibly by others as well." Neither of the two former negotiators said anything.

"The sesheyans on Rhynchus are now in danger of their lives," Gabriel continued. "If things go the way they're going at the moment, you're going to be parties to a genocidal attack. I think once the investigations start, it'll take very little time for the investigators to turn up all kinds of proof. However, there's another way out of this that is much better for you. You don't want the sesheyans here any more? Fine. We can help you with that. They'll be more than welcome on Grith, eventually, but right now their planet is losing what little atmosphere it has. The sesheyans must leave, but they have no ships, and we only have two. So here's the plan. You send us enough ships to move them all to somewhere quiet on one of your planets-just for a few days-and after that we can arrange clandestine transfer out of the system for them so that VoidCorp won't be in any position to blame you."

"What guarantee have we that they'll leave again?" "Do you think they want to stay in this system?" Gabriel shouted. "Are you crazy? After the way you've treated them in the past? After the way you were willing to let VoidCorp 'erase' your little problem for you now?"

"Young man, you will not address me in that tone!" Gabriel wished he had Delvecchio's cane. He would not have simply banged it on the table, either. It would have come right down on Rallet's head. "You can both stuff my tone right up-" Gabriel began. Both Rallet and ErDaishan paled with genuine shock. "Never mind. I'll start speaking to you like responsible statesmen when you start acting like them and not like cowards or thugs. The minute you earn my respect, you'll be addressed with respect. Meanwhile, I have a message ready for the Concord Administrator right now, and there are people down here gasping for breath. It's not going to go on that way for a moment more. You will give me an answer. Now."

There was silence at the other end. Then Rallet slowly said, "As Minister of State for Defense, this lies most easily in my remit. I will detach a small complement of ships-"

"I need transport for three thousand sesheyans as well as medical relief and food and drink for them," Gabriel said. "I need it in an hour. Before we break this communication, I need relay and comms information for the relieving ships, and when I contact their commanding officers in a few minutes, they had better confirm your orders to them. Otherwise Lorand Kharls gets this," he held up a data solid, "immediately, with no further communications from me to you. Granted there will be a delay in him receiving the message, but it won't matter. If anything happens to these people because of your inaction, he will come down on you anyway. But if you save them, you'll be heroes, and all will be forgiven." "I can persuade our emergency services to send ships out," said ErDaishan. "Much better equipped for an evacuation than theirs."

Gabriel could have laughed out loud to see the good old Phorcyn/Inoan hostility coming out here of all times, but he was too angry for laughter now. "Good. Send them. Send them now. I want their commcodes and the their captains' names. Now."

He got them. Within ten minutes Enda had contacted the commanders of seven different ships and was preparing hails for eight others. "One more thing," Gabriel said, as he finished sorting them out and went back to his connection to the negotiators. "How many of the ships are drive-capable?" There was some bemusement at that. "Maybe half," said the Phorcyn negotiator. "All of ours."

"We'll be loading them first," Gabriel said. "I'll advise them." "But you said you were bringing them to Phorcys-"

"I like to be prepared for accidents," Gabriel interrupted. "There have been too many of those lately. Get them out here. Now." And he held up the data solid one more time. "And when they arrive-?"

"When the sesheyans are safe," Gabriel said, "I will praise your statesmanlike response to the skies and to Lorand Kharls. You will look like heroes, shining examples of the newfound cooperation between Phorcys and Ino, a new era of peace and reconciliation, blah, blah, blah. I hope one or the other of you has an election scheduled sometime soon, because you'll do very well."

He saw the slightly gloating looks cross both their faces. They both have elections. Oh my.

"That's all for now," said Gabriel and reached out to cut the comm connection. "I'll speak to you later."

"You might at least say 'thank you,' " grumbled the Inoan negotiator.

"When I've seen the ships," Gabriel said as he waved the data solid at her and cut the link.

An hour later the ships began to drop into the Rhynchan atmosphere. There was already markedly less of it than there had been-less that was breathable, anyway. The sky was getting more pallid, a side effect of the clathrating nitrogen, Enda told Gabriel. When it reached its palest, all the oxygen would be inaccessible. Gabriel did not plan to be here that long.

The problem now was that the capacity of the ships that the Phorcyns and Inoans had sent was not terribly large. "It'll have to be two runs," Gabriel said to the captain of Orniol, one of the first ships to load-a drive-capable Phorcyn emergency vessel usually used for medical transport. "They told us only one," said Orniol's captain, a short stocky woman with what seemed a perpetually mournful look. "Out here and straight back to Phorcys."

"I hate to break this to you," Gabriel said, "but that will still leave something like fifteen hundred people down here while the rest of the atmosphere goes bad. It's not acceptable. I'll get on to your upper-ups again if I have to, but I tell you, if I have to do that I won't like it, and they won't like it. And I promise you, neither will you."

Gabriel turned and stomped off to supervise the loading of another of the ships, Glatha, which appeared from the condition of its cargo bays to have been doing garbage hauling. Beggars can't choose, Gabriel thought as sesheyans with small bundles of their personal belongings started to pile into it. Dear stars, when I think about what Hal had to go through putting fancy toilet seats in the shuttles for the Phorcyn and Inoan delegations. He tried to calm himself. It was not easy.

The loading seemed to take forever, and a couple of the ships were still not here. One more landed while he watched. Gabriel kept looking up at the sky, and finally there came a moment when it seemed to be getting no paler. What was that flicker? he wondered. "I think night is coming," Enda said softly from behind him.

Gabriel shivered. Something worse was coming. "Get them in," he said. "Hurry! We have to leave." "What? Gabriel-"

He could only look at her and run for Sunshine.

That was when the plasma fire began raining down around them.

Screams and roars of fear broke out. The sesheyans caught in the open dove for the caves. Those nearest the ships crowded into them, and the ships sealed up. Engines began to heat-the ships' captains had no desire to be on the ground for a second longer. Ships began lifting. Gabriel pelted toward Sunshine with Enda hard behind him.

As he ran, he yelled into his handheld, "Helm, heads up! The body snatchers are here!" "What?"

"Ball bearing-shaped ships! Fire on them! Hit everything you can, and for all sakes don't let any of them hit you! Then follow us. We've got to get out of here!"

"Where?"

It's going to have to be drivespace, Gabriel thought, horrified. We're not ready, but there's nowhere else to go. "Grith!" he yelled. "Make for Grith! But we need cover!"

"Can do," Helm said, very calmly. "Boy, Delde Sola's gonna owe me for this one when we're done." Gabriel and Enda dove into Sunshine, strapped in, and closed her up. In the back areas were several frightened sesheyans, all of them rather young, who had been sightseeing while the loading was going on. Now they were locked in for good or ill.

"Hang onto things, kids," Gabriel yelled as he fastened the final strap, "and whatever you do, don't let go!" He had to stop. Sunshine's lifters were shaking him all over the place.

"All ships, all ships, drivespace as soon as you're out!" Gabriel yelled into the public comms as Enda flung them upward into the atmosphere. "Make for the homeworld! Make for the sesheyan sanctuary!" He could only hope they understood. He was not going to mention names or coordinates over public comms at this point.

A scream and babble of answers came back, terrified, confused. "Affirmative, understood." "-can't do it, we don't have stardrive!" "-no supplies, we're-" "-stay and fight-"

"Just go!" Gabriel shouted. "We'll lead! Those of you that can't follow, make for Phorcys, full speed! Don't let them get you out in the dark. Make them do it in the sunlight where people can see! Go on, run for it! The rest of you with stardrive, follow us!"

Sunshine leaped upward into the middle atmosphere. The swarm of enemy ships was only a few kilometers above them now. Oh, dear heaven, the other sesheyans- For there were perhaps another thousand of them fleeing back into the caves. Would they be safe there? Would the body snatchers decide there was nothing left to lose and simply wipe them out, taking them all to make soldiers? Cut their wings off, steal their souls-

Gabriel wiped his wet face and cursed. The JustWadeln software was already up, and Enda was already in it. Gabriel pulled the fighting field down over him, picked one of the small round targets that was hurtling at them, cursed it soundly, and fired. It sidestepped. He fired again-

He did not remember much of that fight afterwards. Gabriel kept hearing screams and was uncertain where they were coming from: comms on the ground, comms in space, perhaps from the other four ships that had lifted with them, and that were clustered in very loose order around Sunshine, heading into the upper atmosphere. That paling sky was stitched with plasma fire, ships were diving in all directions, and Gabriel fired and fired at small round ships that would not stay still. Then suddenly a gravelly voice said, "Sunshine, I've got one more cherry." Gabriel ungritted his teeth. "Pop it. When?"

iir-p 1 ii

Ten seconds.

"All ships," Gabriel said down comms, "cluster close on me, five seconds, then scatter. Afterwards, head for atmosphere's top and make starfall. Don't wait!"

More screaming erupted. But suddenly the view around Sunshine's cockpit had entirely too many ships in it, entirely too close. Around them, he could see ballbearings closing in. Don't let them shoot, he thought. For them, it doesn't matter if we're dead, and oh, I don't want to be dead that way. He kept firing. "Now," Gabriel said softly down comms. The other ships scattered outwards, and suddenly he was left surrounded by too many of the spherical ships. Enda held them there. Gabriel glanced briefly at her then said, Now's the time.

She wrenched them sideways. White hot beams of plasma scalded past the cockpit windows as Sunshine tumbled and dove out from under the crowd of ships. Then Enda kicked the system drive in at full power, the air screaming in protest against her skin as Sunshine fled upwards. Behind them, the world went white.

They were at nearly twenty kilometers. A squeezed nuke shouldn't do too much harm at this altitude, Gabriel thought rather desperately. Nothing that the atmosphere becoming useless in a few hours wouldn't do anyway.

To the thousand people down there that we couldn't get off before they came. A thousand people!

"Starfall," Enda said to the other ships, "now!" A thousand people.

The next five days were less easy to bear for Gabriel. They were full of fear. Aboard Sunshine, there was not that much physical discomfort. They were carrying enough supplies to feed the sesheyans who had been on board when takeoff became imperative, but there was no contact with the other ships to see in what condition they had made their own starfalls, whether the people aboard them were mostly well, or how they were now. Gabriel knew for a fact that three of the four ships that had arrived had only a little food and water on board, despite his demands. Someone had messed up, or there had been no time, or ... There had been little time for explanations. They would be getting hungry over in the other ships, and thirsty. They would not know what awaited them on the far side when they made starrise at Corrivale.

Gabriel had his own fears about that. VoidCorp loomed large in them. He doubted that the body snatchers would turn up near Grith. They did seem to prefer the dark. Had there been more of them waiting to descend on Rhynchus after the escape? Even if there had not, would the other ships get there in time to remove the remaining sesheyans before the air ran out?

There were no answers. There would be none until they made starrise, and perhaps not for a good while after that. Gabriel, for the time being, could only spend as much time with the sesheyan youngsters as he could, showing them how to play the non-Grid based games on the entertainment system and trying to comfort them when they were afraid- which was fairly often. They did not know where their parents were and without that basic certainty, they would not talk about much of anything else. Gabriel came to recognize the sound of sesheyan weeping, a kind of breathy gasp. It kept him up at night. Five days, though, eventually passed. Gabriel strapped himself back in and looked somberly looked over at Enda as the digits on the clock in the tank slipped away. Despite the fact that another possible fight loomed ahead, they were both unsuited. Even if they had sufficient e-suits for everyone to wear, their models would not fit the sesheyans in size or design and it didn't seem right to ensure their own safety while leaving their passengers in danger.

"How are your hunches running?" Enda asked. Less than a minute remained on the countdown.

Gabriel shook his head. "Not a whisper. You?"

"Mine have been regrettably silent."

"Do your people think that means something bad?"

"Some of my people," she said, smiling just slightly-a very sad smile-"think it means you are already dead. Granted, those people would mostly be mindwalkers to whom my normal state of mind would be a pitiful thing indeed. So I do not take them too seriously."

Gabriel nodded. "Enda," he said. "If those body snatchers ever get close to us-"

"I will not be a willing participant," she said, "believe me."

"I don't want to be either," Gabriel said.

She looked at him and blinked slowly, hiding the great blue eyes for a moment. "I will see to it," she said. "Thirty seconds," Gabriel called to the youngsters in the back. "Get strapped in." "Right," they said, more or less in chorus. They had not been speaking in staves, and Gabriel found himself wondering whether they usually did so at home and whether he was going to have to pay some kind of outrageous faceprice to their parents for teaching them awful habits.

The seconds ticked by. Twenty . . . ten. There was nervous shuffling in the back of the ship. Gabriel tried to swallow, finding his mouth too dry.

Zero.

Light sheeted down around them as they made starrise. It was red, red as blood that light, and surely it was an illusion that it seemed to run more slowly than usual, slicking down from the cockpit windows to show Corrivale's welcome blast of sunlight off to the left. And off to the right-darkness.

Massive, an elongated teardrop shape with VoidCorp insignia, lazing in toward Hydrocus. It could not have been more than ten kilometers away from them, and it still looked immense. Gabriel tried one more time to swallow, then gave it up. There were five other smaller vessels with it, gaudier in their livery- reds and golds and gunfire blues-but all of them wore that insignia, and all their guns were shivering with the electrostatic discharge that suggested they were ready to fire.

Around Sunshine, first one other of the refugee ships made starrise in a blast of purple, and then a second, mostly green streaked with yellow. The third did not appear. Timing error? Gabriel whispered in the fighting field. Or did it jump at all? Never mind, and he cried to the other ships, "Scatter!" They did, possibly knowing it was the only way to save their lives. The smaller VoidCorp ships went off in pursuit of them severally; one held its place, the biggest of them, hanging above Grith, waiting. Have you got another of your little toys aboard?

Gabriel thought. He watched that ship carefully to see if it started anything like the maneuver he had seen the earlier VoidCorp ship practicing above Grith. I don't have a weapon that would make a dustgrain's worth of difference against that. . . but if necessary, Sunshine could punch a real good hole in her updecks, possibly destroy her bridge, certainly leave her in no position for any fancy maneuvering. Enda ... he said in the field.

Gabriel, Enda said, sometimes you are very audible indeed, or rather, your imagery radiates well. She shivered. Possibly I am having some contaminating influence upon you. At any rate, if you think you must exercise such an option for the lives at stake, the price is more than fair, I would say. Gabriel swallowed hard, twice. Always nice to have support from a partner, he said, and as the VoidCorp vessel started to move slowly toward Grith, Gabriel started to choose his target, getting ready to tell the computer what to do.

The fire of starrise broke out not five kilometers away, sheeting down in ferocious blues around a sleek shape that Gabriel knew more than well. Falada's twin, with premonitory corona discharge shuddering around her weapons, all primed and ready to go: Schmetterling. She rose out of the darkness. Along with her, five other smaller ships, cutters or light cruisers with all their gunports shivering with blue-black fire, ready to go.

Gabriel looked at Schmetterling and gulped again, then he said down the comm connection to the other ships in his group, "People, get back here quick! Close up around me in a hurry and don't move after that!"

They obeyed him, coming in on system drive as quickly as they could, and parked themselves around him no more than a few hundred meters away. Gabriel would have been astonished by the skill of their captains at any other time. Now he just suspected that, as for him, terror was making competence unusually accessible. The four little ships lay close together around Sunshine, and around them in turn the six Concord ships swiftly arranged themselves into an open tetrahedron and closed in around the refugee ships at less than a thousand meters.

Gabriel breathed out, but not exactly in relief. There might be time for that later, after this all played itself out. "Schmetterling," he said, "are we ever glad to see you."

"Not my idea, Connor," said Elinke Dareyev's voice. "Not my idea in the slightest, but orders are orders . .. and when did a ship carrying marines ever run away from the opportunity for a good fight?" Her voice was grim. "You want a link to incoming drivespace detection, speak to your computer, have it squawk ours on four-four-nine-nine-three. Now shut up and let us get on with saving your hides." Gabriel swallowed and started hitting frequency controls. "Schmetterling," said a third voice, "you and your companion ships are to withdraw and release the englobed ships to us. This is VoidCorp company business."

"Regret we can't comply, VC ship," said Elinke's voice.

"These vessels are our affair, none of yours. Suggest you withdraw before you find yourself with a situation."

"The situation would appear to be yours, Schmetterling," said the voice of the commander of the biggest VoidCorp ship. "You are badly outnumbered and outgunned."

"Outgunned possibly," Captain Dareyev said, "but as for outnumbered, the only way for you to find out is to give it a try and see what happens." There was a cheerful note in her voice that Gabriel had heard often enough before. He found himself feeling almost sorry for the VoidCorp ships. Almost.

"We'll give you five minutes to reconsider, Schmetterling," said the voice from the big VoidCorp ship. "This position is untenable."

"Presently," Elinke said, and she would say nothing more.

The thought had been on Gabriel's mind as well, for in the tank he had finally managed to call up the drivespace relay data detector from Schmetterling. It was more than active. There's incoming, Gabriel said. It's something big. They have to know.

They are bluffing it out, said Enda, waiting to see if they can frighten us into resolving this before whatever that is gets here. Starrise detection has a plus/minus five percent time error depending on the mass of the incoming vessel.

Gabriel knew the equation well enough but he rarely had so much reason to curse it, since the bigger the ship, the larger the on-time error. It had something to do with the way the ship's stardrive interacted with the ship's mass and with drivespace. Come on, he breathed.

Why are you so eager to see it? Enda said. It could be anything. A VoidCorp dreadnought, some other of their big ships carrying someone whom they are eager to have see that this situation was resolved before they got here. It's not.

How do you know?

Hunch, Gabriel said, and then he added, Besides, why would the Star Forge ships be here if they weren't expecting help? They knew something big was about to happen, I'm sure of it. And this group is too small to make a difference in a major engagement, especially knowing the kind of VoidCorp ships that have been routinely cruising around in this system. The Concord would never send too small a force to intervene. Too small a force would invite failure. Failure would imply that it could happen somewhere else. Therefore there's more help coming- and that's it.

I hope indeed that you are right, said Enda, since if you are not, in very short time we will experience the delights of existence as clouds of ions floating about in the noble void.

And you tell me I get graphic, Gabriel muttered, turning his attention back to the tank. I bet you'll make a terrific bright streak in a nebula somewhere. The display in the tank remained stubbornly the same, though. Whatever the new ship was, there was no sign of it. Gabriel was much tempted to thump the tank as if it were the uncooperative waste recycler back in the hygiene suite. Come on, show me something I want to see.

The VoidCorp ships closed in, the corona discharge around their guns flickering hotter. They're afraid, Gabriel thought suddenly. They're afraid. They don't quite know-

White fire went off so close to Gabriel, out the cockpit window, that for a moment he thought it was Helm again, appearing to drop one last cherry bomb. But this was somehow much bigger. Gabriel turned in his seat to see, not a kilometer from him, such a blaze and fury of starrise as Corrivale had never witnessed. Whole oceans of white fire streaked and rolled around a shape many times larger than even the biggest of the VoidCorp ships. It was tremendous, the kind of size that makes you think it is going to fall over on you even though you're in zero-g. Sunshine was a bumble bee beside her bulk, a huge behemoth with six outriggers supporting weapons pods themselves the size of the smaller VoidCorp vessels. It took something like a minute before the fire of her starrise drained and vanished away. "This is the Concord dreadnought CSS Trader Dawn," said a calm voice down comms. "We are here to assist the Phorcyn and Inoan ships Glatha, Orniol, Enryn and Meshugga and the Phorcys-registered ship Sunshine with their emergency relocation of the free sesheyan colonists of Rhynchus. We are carrying the final thousand free sesheyans, evacuated just before the last of the planet's atmosphere became unbreathable. Under Concord statute, a disaster of planetary proportions automatically invokes General Order Eighteen, requiring all vessels within one starfall to render assistance. Do you wish to render assistance, VoidCorp vessels?"

The silence that followed the question was eloquent. Gabriel took what he thought might be his last couple of breaths before becoming superheated plasma.

"Concord vessel," said the VoidCorp vessel after a moment, "these ships are carrying sesheyans who are former undocumented VoidCorp Employees. The Treaty of Concord requires that they be turned over to the Company for reassignment or cancellation of contracts forthwith." Gabriel swallowed, knowing what "cancellation of contracts" meant in this context. "On the contrary," said another voice, and Gabriel's mouth abruptly went dry. "This is Lorand Kharls, Concord Administrator for this area, aboard Trader Dawn. I regret to inform you, Flag Captain Nil 47 01GBH, that your claim over these sesheyans is unsubstantiated. If you had knowledge of such a group of 'escaped' Employees, you should have previously filed a request with the Council for their recovery and repatriation under the appropriate articles of the Treaty of Concord. Unfortunately you have filed no such request, not so much as a request for the assignment of a fact-finding team, which the Concord would certainly have honored and investigated through the correct channels. Instead, you have merely turned up in this system and begun attempting to bully independent operators from another system who have been engaged in a massive and difficult humanitarian effort organized in response to an appalling natural emergency that will itself require investigation. Perhaps you would like to assist us with that?" Another of those silences. "Administrator," said the voice from the biggest ship finally, "we contest your claim."

"Contest away," said Kharls, "but do so through channels, because, by my oaths, if you attempt to do it here and now, my judgment of all the parties involved is already on file with the Concord. In implementing that judgment, I would not leave one of your ships' atoms sticking to another, or those of anyone in your ships, either. Just so that you understand my intentions. I would dislike having to implement a judicial decision on someone incapable of understanding it." You could just hear the cold smile. "Not that I would fail to implement such a decision, I would simply dislike doing so. You do understand?"

A long silence. "I believe we do, Administrator."

Another long silence. Gabriel waited for the shooting to break out.

"Then get out of here," Lorand Kharls said, "and go file your forms. I'll see you in court-if you dare." The pause that followed was very long indeed, and Gabriel wondered whether someone on board the biggest ship was thinking, Oh, why not? This is as good a day to start a war as any other. Then the biggest ship made starfall. Slowly it sank into drivespace, the light sheeting violet-blue around it as it vanished, a subdued color of retreat, of defeat.

Not permanent, Gabriel thought. No one would be so foolish as to think that. But right now, even temporary was better than nothing.

"Refugee vessels," said Trader Dawn comms, "you are invited to make planetfall on Grith at Diamond Point where immigration formalities will be completed. And welcome."

There was a muted cheer from the backmost sections of Sunshine where the young sesheyans were not quite clear what was happening, except that it sounded like they had won.

Gabriel sat back in his chair and breathed out a breath he realized he had been holding for a long, long time.

Enda collapsed her side of the fighting field and got up, looking out at the great ruddy disk of Hydrocus. "If you need me," she said, "I will be using the sanitary facilities."

Gabriel laughed and turned back to the tank-then blinked, for the symbol for incoming comms from a Star Force vessel was there. He reached into the tank and told it "go." The tank cleared. A moment later, Elinke Dareyev was looking at him.

Gabriel stood up. Partly from respect, partly ... He glanced over his shoulder, saw Enda was still standing there. "Captain," she said.

"I see he hasn't gotten you killed yet," Elinke said.

"I do not expect that outcome," said Enda. She bowed politely and took herself away down the hall. "I just wanted you to be clear about something," Elinke said. "It was none of my intention to save you. None whatsoever, and I wish to God I had had no part in this operation or in saving your lying, guilty skin. If I had my druthers, you would be roasting in whatever hell is reserved for marines who betray their brothers and sisters."

"Your druthers aside, Elinke," Gabriel said, "if you're suggesting that you grudge the rescue of three thousand sesheyan refugees just because I happened to be involved, then you are in need of professional help. Better go find some while you still have time." With some satisfaction he watched her bristle, but the satisfaction was sad.

She just looked at him for a moment, then finally said, "From now on, stay out of my way." "I was doing my best," Gabriel said, "but I can't help it if you keep following me around." She reached out to cut the connection.

"That night in Diamond Point," Gabriel said. "After the restaurant. You were there in the street." Elinke stared at him. "So?"

"Thanks," Gabriel said, "for checking to see if I survived." She sniffed and cut the link.

A few minutes later, Enda came back into the room behind him. "Well," she said, "I suppose that was unavoidable."

"Maybe so, but there's still one problem." "What would that be?"

"I didn't see her there that night. I see her there now-that is, I remember her being there as if I'd seen her, but that night-I never saw her at all." Enda looked at him thoughtfully.

"Interesting," she said. "Now just where have you put my squeeze bottle?"