Storm at Eldala

Chapter One

STRUGGLING INSIDE Sunshine's fighting field, Gabriel Connor flung himself and their small ship through space while the plasma bolts of their pursuers arrowed past on either side of him, so close he could have sworn he could feel the heat straight through the hull. He stared frantically around him into the darkness, but there was nowhere to go. They were surrounded.

This time, for sure, this time we 're going to die.

We cannot keep this up much longer, Enda's seemingly disembodied voice came to him from somewhere on the other side of the field. She was handling gunnery, having a talent for it, but the gift seemed not to be serving her well today.

There are too many of them left, she said, and we are running low on power. Gabriel glanced at the power readouts inside the gunnery field. They were down to ten percent on both sets of weapons. His big gun, the rail cannon on top of Sunshine, was recharging, but not quickly enough. It wanted another thirty seconds, and whether it was going to get them was uncertain. Gabriel tumbled the ship to make sure of the field of fire. One of the little ball bearing ships that had chased them out into the depths of the Corrivale system came plunging through his sights. He took aim with the plasma cannon and fired. Clear miss.

He cursed, the sweat running down his back and tickling, but there was nothing he could do about it. Slow down, Enda cried,make them count!

He saw her take aim and fire at another of the ships as it plunged past them. She scored a hit, but not a killing one. The ship arced away, leaking atmosphere in a ghostly silvery veil, but its engines were untouched.

How many now?

The targeting software says sixteen, Enda said.

Gabriel cursed again and tumbled the ship once more, wishing that he did not have to handle piloting as well as firing. The attack unfolding around them was a standard englobement with ten small vessels at the vertices and six stitching in and out of the defined space. The enemy craft heldSunshine at the optimum locus of the englobement.

There were tactics for this kind of engagement, and Gabriel had tried all three kinds. He had used the "place holder," where you shoot from optimum locus because it's the best position. That had worked only as long as the gunnery power was at optimum power. He had then tried the pattern-breaker approach in which you killed enough of the englobers to make the number of ships at the vertices ineffective. Unfortunately,Sunshine's weapons had begun to run low just as this approach began to work.

There were still sixteen of them and no realistic hope of reducing the numbers to the critical eight or below. There was nothing left but the rush-and-break, the set of moves enacted simply to escape. This Gabriel hated, first because he suspected these little ships could outrun them; second because he suspected they would chase Sunshine straight into the welcoming field of fire of the big ship that had dropped them out here in the distant dark of Corrivale's fringes. Also, he hated to run. Marines didn't run. They fought.

But you're not a marine any more.

Surprising, still, the access of fury that simple statement could provide him. He was not one of those people in whom rage clouded the vision. For Gabriel, things became clear — entirely too clear.

Three of the ships holding the vertices closest to Gabriel moved closer together to stop the break, but he could see that one of them was slightly out of alignment. He twisted Sunshine off to the left, and the enemy ship followed.

Mistake, Gabriel thought, as he flipped without warning, coasting backward on his inertia and letting the nearest ship have it with the forward plasma cannon. Enda, warned by who-knew-what touch of fraal precognition, was already firing that way. She hit another of the little round ships as Gabriel hit a third. From all the targets, metal cracked and splintered outward; vapor spit out under pressure and sprayed away as snow. More sluggish materials slopped out, went rigid and tumbled away in frozen lumps and gobbets with the shattered remains of the vessels that had emitted them. It was Gabriel's first close look at the destruction of one of these ships, and it confirmed what he had thought earlier.

Undead. The pilots had been people once. Humans, fraal, sesheyans, weren. . The important thing was that they weren't those people any more. This killing was a kindness.

Gabriel!

He barely reacted in time as the set-of-three came diving at them. The englobement had been reduced to thirteen and was less viable than it had been, but it was still all too effective. The ten vessels holding aloof were defining the interior again, this time on the vertices of paired pyramids.

There were more places for Sunshine to break out; the faces of the solid were wider now. Gabriel spun Sunshine on her longitudinal axis, raking all around with the plasma cannon. The set-of-three dived away but still in unison.

Got to break that up, Gabriel thought and glanced hurriedly at the indicator for the rail cannon. It was only up to sixty percent. It wouldn't even fire until eighty, Enda was firing. Gabriel fired too, his plasma cannons down to twenty percent now. Bolts from their adversaries shot right past him, blinding and scorching him. Gabriel preferred to work with the ship's sensors acting like his own nerves — there were times when the effect could mean the difference between being alive and dead. We'll see if it's enough this time, he thought. Maybe, just maybe—

The rail cannon was up to sixty-five. Just a few minutes, he thought. Come on,Sunshine, just a few minutes more—

It all happened at once. The three ships broke formation, two to the right and above, one below and to the left. Enda concentrated on the two. Gabriel fired at the one but missed. He felt the scorch raking up Sunshine's underbelly, and then he felt another bolt hit. He yelped, the ship lurched upwards, possibly saving them both from being killed right then, but another bolt lanced down from above, hitting the rail cannon.

It blew. Gone, the rails twisted all askew; it wouldn't fire anything now.

The englobement dissolved as the other little vessels registered the destruction of the one weapon that had been keeping them at a distance all this while. It was gone now; they could swarm in and take Sunshine at their pleasure.

Enda was firing nonstop. Gabriel was firing at anything he could see, and the fury was helping again. Along with the utter terror, he was burning with the knowledge that they were both about to be killed. It was amazing how life became not less intense at such a time, but more so, a fury of life, ready to burn itself out but not give up.

One hit, then another, blowing up so close toSunshine that the entire ship shook, but it was not going to be enough. More plasma bolts came stitching in from behind, and Gabriel cried out in agony and rage as one of them hit the engine compartment.

Then came an intolerable glory of light off to one side, a burning pain all up and down Gabriel's side, as if someone had thrown burning fuel on him. He rolledSunshine away from the pain. He had just enough power left in his emergency jets to do that. The first light had just been the "pilot" detonation. Now came the secondary one, and Gabriel squeezed his eyes closed tight.

The little ships were fleeing in all directions, but six of them were caught together as the squeezed nuke went off. The remainder knew they had no chance againstSunshine even damaged as she was. They kept running.

Space grew still and dark, and in itSunshine drifted, tumbling gently and losing power. Gabriel sat there gasping in the darkness of the fighting field as the power ebbed away, the weapons losing what little charge they had left.

"Okay," said a gravelly voice from out in the darkness. "That went pretty well, I thought." "Helm," Enda said sternly. "You werenot supposed to do that." "Aw, Enda, you're too rough on the two of you."

Gabriel knew what the words meant, but he found them hard to believe at the moment. It's the software, he told himself. But his brain insisted that he couldn't let down his guard, that something terrible might still happen. Those little ships were only fighters. They could not have come all this way by themselves. Somewhere around here was the fortress ship or dreadnought that would have dropped them. It could not be allowed to find Gabriel and Enda, not alive — not even dead and in one piece. The pilots of those little ships were reminders enough that there were some fates worse than death.

"All the same, we cannot be constantly relying on overarmed allies to come sweeping in out of the darkness to save us!"

"I thought that was what you kept me around for."

Even through the fear, Gabriel had to grin. "He's incorrigible," Gabriel said, still gasping for air. "You should know that by now."

"Maybe I should," Enda said with a sigh. "Meanwhile, let it go now, Gabriel. This has been enough exercise for one day. Shut it down."

Gabriel reached out in the fighting field to the glowing collection of virtual lights, indicators, and slider controls that appeared within his reach. One slider well off to his right was pushed right up to the top of its course. He reached out and pulled it down.

Reality ebbed out of everything. The blackness of space melted away to the virtual gridlines of the system's training mode. . and it was all a dream. Gabriel's muscles unknotted themselves for the first time in about five minutes.

"Better?" Enda said.

"Much."

"Then come out of it, now. I do not see why you feel you must drive yourself so hard, just for an exercise."

"It's a human thing," he said, taking another breath for the appreciation of it not being his last. "You wouldn't understand."

He could sense Enda putting her eyebrows up. A couple of moments later Gabriel was alone in the field. He took his time about getting out, shutting down instruments, making gunnery safe, and checking the pieces that purported to have been made safe. It was not that he didn't trust Enda, but partners checked one another's work when weapons were involved. Besides, said that nasty hard-edged part of his mind, someday you might have to do all this yourself. Get used to the possibility now so that when it catches you by surprise, you will survive. She would want it that way.

He finished his checks, then made the small movement of mind that folded the fighting field away from him. A moment later he was sitting in the normal lighting ofSunshine's narrow cockpit looking over at Enda.

"Helm," she said as she unbuckled her restraints, "do not change the subject." "I got tired of fighting for their side," Helm said. "Besides, you were winning."

"You should have let the business take its course regardless," Enda said. "That is the purpose of these exercises, so I am told." She glanced over at Gabriel, who was wiping the sweat off his face.

"How did we do?" he said to the air.

"Twenty-six minutes," said Helm. "You should be pleased with yourself. It's precious few engagements that run much longer than fifteen these days, especially with numbers like that. You're getting a better tactical sense, that's certain."

"He is also running himself ragged," said Enda, watching Gabriel mop himself up with the cleaning cloth that he had started to keep by his seat for these exercises. "Are you all right?"

"I was nearly dead, I thought," Gabriel said, still finding it hard to talk without gasping for air."Boy, is that real. It's worth it, even if I do hate it more than anything."

"Well, you were the one to discover how effective it is," Enda said, levering herself out of the left-hand seat and standing up to take a good long stretch. "It is not my fault if the 'deep limbic' implementation of the fighting software deprives you of any sense that this is a simulation. If you have a problem with that, take it up with the programmers at Insight."

"They'd probably just say that there's no difference between a simulation and the real thing if the simulation's real enough," said Helm. "Like to see some of them out here testing the software under conditions like this."

Gabriel made a face.

"It might be amusing," Enda said to Helm. "Anyway, I do not see that it makes the experience of fighting any less useful for Gabriel if, during the fight,he feels as if is real. Surely that should sharpen one's reactions. The more frequently that particular reaction is sharpened — the terror and coping with it — the easier it should get for you, or so it seems, from what I know of human habituation training. Am I wrong?"

"Not in the concrete sense," Gabriel muttered. "I just don't like to have to do the laundry after every session."

"You do the laundry after every session anyway," Enda said, wandering out of the pilot's cabin and back toward the little living area, "whether we work out in limbic mode or not. Sweat, you keep telling me, is something no marine can ever put up with."

"The problem's not the sweat," Gabriel said, more or less under his breath. Then he laughed and pried himself out of his seat.

Even though he had been using the fighting field every day for six months now, it still sometimes came as a shock to Gabriel how cramped the cockpit felt by comparison when he came out. The beauty of the Insight "JustWadeln" weapons management system was to make you feel as if youwere the ship — moving freely in space with your weapons available to you in the form you liked best.

At any rate, Gabriel was becoming more expert withSunshine's gunnery software all the time. He thought he would probably never master the cool grace-in-fire that Enda displayed. It constantly bemused him how someone so peaceful and serene could be so very good at gunnery.

"Guns are the soul of rationality," Enda had said to him late one night. "They have a certainty of purpose, and they fulfill it— when they don't jam — and like any other fine weapon, they pass on some of that certainty to their users, if the user is wise enough to hear what the gun has to say to him."

To hear this coming from a delicate ethereal-looking fraal who might mass forty-five kilos if she put on all the clothes she owned, turned Gabriel's brain right around in his head. What guns mostly said to him was,Shoot me, shoot me! Yes, oh yes! — with various appropriate sound effects. Nonetheless, Enda's communion with her gunnery was something to be envied, and Gabriel occasionally listened to see if the guns had anything further to say to him on the subject.

He walked down into the living area and found Enda already ensconced in one of the two fold-down chairs in the sitting room, talking to Helm again over comms and looking as fresh as if she had not been in battle for the better part of half an hour.

"How do you do it?" he asked her.

She looked at him with amusement. "I pull the chair down, like this—" "Never mind," Gabriel said. "When did he say he was coming?"

"Twenty minutes. We can finish debriefing as soon as you're done playing with the new hardware."

"Good," Gabriel said, grinning, and walked on down to the little laundry room to get rid of his present shipsuit, which smelled as if it had seen better days.

Gabriel shoved his clothes down the chute, clamped the hatch closed and hit "Cycle." Straightening, he looked at the newly installed shower cubicle and dallied with the idea of a real water shower. Might as well do it while we're close to someplace where water's cheap. If it everreally was, when you were part owner in a spacecraft, when mass cost money to lift, and noncompressible mass twice as much.

Finally, he opted for a steam-and-scrape cycle, with ten seconds of water at the end. Gabriel punched the options in, let the machine get itself ready. To save time, he stood over the sink, wet his head, and took a squirt of shampoo out of the in-bulkhead dispenser.

Getting grayer, Gabriel thought, scrubbing for a few moments in front of the mirror. And why not? The last six months would probably be enough to gray anybody out a little bit. Still, his father hadn't gone gray this fast, and he couldn't remember his mother ever saying anything about early gray running in her family. Gabriel had never thought about this before, but now that he was interested, there was no way to ask — or maybe no one to ask. He hadn't heard from his father since before. .

The shower chimed, letting him know it was ready for him. Gabriel got in, closed the door tight, and hit the control for the steam.

After a few minutes, through the ship's structure Gabriel could feel the very faint bump and rock, which meant someone was at the airlock. He's early, Gabriel thought, turning to catch the steam. Probably wants to chat with Enda without me in the way.

The steam stopped. Gabriel lathered up in a hurry from the scrub dispenser set in the wall and peered through the steamy glass at the mirror where he could see nothing. He knew what would be visible there. He was looking more lined than he ought to at twenty-six. The stress. We've been through a lot in the last half-year. When things even out, when we find work we like better, when the money settles down to a steadier income.

When I find out who framed me.

That was the underlying problem, the one not likely to be solved any time soon. That was what they were probably already settling in to discuss out in the sitting room, Enda over a tumbler of kalwine, and Helm over something stronger.

Gabriel shook his head, scattering water and lather. The water spat down from the shower head above, and he started counting so as not to be caught with soap all over him when it ran out. Every drop would be recycled, of course. It had not been like this on his old ship, which had water to spare. Whole bathtubs full of it, Gabriel thought. Hot. You could splash it around. There had been times over the past six months when, while hunted from one world to the next, shot at, driven into hiding, kidnapped and attacked with knives and guns and God knew what else, the thing that hadreally bothered Gabriel was that he couldn't have a real bath.

The shower warning chimed. Gabriel scrubbed frantically, turning to rinse himself.Bang! The water valve slammed itself shut, unforgiving. Gabriel stood there, steaming and wistful, trying to see over his shoulder whether he had gotten the last of the soap off his back.

He got out, pulled a towel out of the dispenser, dried himself, and put the towel down the chute as well. In the delivery-side hatch was his other shipsuit, rigorously clean and a little too stiff for his tastes. Gabriel shook it out, slipped into it, stroked the seam closed, and did a couple of deep knee-flexes to let the fabric remember where he bent. He paused before the minor to make sure the nap of his hair was lying in the right direction before walking out.

The place smelled of hot food — something Helm had brought over fromLongshot with him. "I swear," Gabriel said as he came up the hall, pausing by one of the storage cabinets to get out a tumbler, "I don't know where you get that stuff from. It's not like you don't shop in the same places we do. Why does your food always smell so terrific?"

"It doesn't dare do otherwise," said the rough gravelly voice in the sitting room. There was Helm Ragnarsson, sitting immense in the foldout guest chair, which had extended itself valiantly to its full extent in both dimensions but was sagging under Helm's massive and muscular bulk, originally engineered for heavy-planet and high-pressure work. "Here you are finally," Helm said. "Still wet behind the ears."

"Yeah, thanks loads," Gabriel said. "I'm going to have to fix that thing again, you know that? We should make you bring your own chair." He turned to Enda, picked up the kalwine bottle sitting by the steaming covered casserole on the table, which was now folded down between the chairs. "Refill?"

"Yes, thank you, Gabriel," she said, and held out her glass.

Gabriel poured for them both, then lifted the lid of the casserole. "What is this?"

"Eshk in red brandy sauce," Helm said.

"Now you did not buy that at the package commissary at Iphus Collective," said Enda. "Helm, confess. You cooked it."

Helm grinned, and the look made Gabriel think that the top of his head might fall off. There was always something unexpected about this huge, near-rectangular brick of a man with his meter-wide shoulders and his iron-colored hair, suddenly producing one of these face-wide grins. It was the kind of smile you could imagine a carnivore producing at a social gathering of prey animals. "And if I did?" Helm said. "Then I think we should eat it," Gabriel said. "Plates?" Enda reached under the table. "I have them here. Helm, tongs or a fork?"

It's so longs, please.

Gabriel went and got the third freestanding folding chair from his bunk cubicle, came back, set it up, and fell to with the others. There was not a lot of discussion during this period, except about the sauce, which had even Helm breaking out in a sweat within a matter of minutes.

"I thought you said humans developed a resistance to this kind of spicery," Enda said, looking from one to the other of them. "Eventually," Helm said.

Gabriel was unable to speak for the moment and resigned himself to suffering in silence and drinking more wine.

Finally the edge of their hunger was blunted enough to talk over the afternoon's simulation, its high points and low, and the ways in which Gabriel and Enda's reactions could improve to deal with the combat situations — particularly those little ball bearing ships that had been attacking them. Ships of the same kind had pressed Gabriel and Enda here in Corrivale and over in Thalaassa as well. All this side of the Verge was buzzing with rumors of them now, ships of a strange construction, appearing from nowhere, vanishing again. Nothing more had been seen of them around here, but this did not make Gabriel feel any better about the area or their prospects in it.

"You didn't call me in for this practice session so close to our last one without reason," Helm said, wiping his mouth with a paper cloth and folding it carefully.

"No," Gabriel said. "I think we should be thinking about leaving."

"I suppose it will come as something of a wrench for the locals," Enda said. "They have been coming to depend on our custom. ."

"And on us paying their outrageous prices," Gabriel muttered. "Well, no more."

"You have decided, then."

"Since when is it 'I'?" Gabriel asked.

Enda leaned back and sighed, giving him a look that might have translated as affectionate exasperation. "Gabriel, I have been wandering around this part of the worlds for a long time. My opinion about where we takeSunshine is simple. I don't care. I am delighted to defer to you in this regard. Where shall we go?"

"Someplace with work," Helm said. "I mean, there's not much money in staying here. If work were the only problem, you'd have angled your jets and moved right after we got back from Thalaassa, since I don't think you want to work in this system any more. Well, about time, is all I can say."

"I'm surprised you haven't said anything about it before now," Gabriel said.

"Before you made up your mind?" Helm said as he put his feet up. "No point. You're still a typical shiphead — all strong-and-silent stuff until it's actually time to move. Then get up and do it with no warning. Which is smart. The best starfall is the unadvertised one."

"A masterly summation," Enda said. "Perhaps, Helm, you will tell us as well what Gabriel now has in mind, for this has been a matter of interest to me also."

Helm snickered. "I'd go into futures trading if I could do that." He leaned back and looked at Gabriel. "What's the word?"

Gabriel shook his head. "I haven't found out anything further here about the people responsible for getting me cashiered," he said, "and the money in this system isn't worth the trouble of staying. At the same time I hate getting too far away from the Grid, but it's also occurred to me that the need to be close to the data had obscured a possibility. . and I thought we might look into doing some infotrading." Enda bowed her head, a "thinking" gesture. Gabriel glanced at Helm.

"Big profit margins there," said Helm. "Big risks, too. You have a software or hardware crash while you're transiting with live stuff from a drivesat relay, or you run into some kind of transportation problem, miss a starfall, drop the data, and suddenly there are people suing you from here back to the First Worlds."

"Not somewhere I'd been planning to go at this point," said Gabriel.

"Not someplace you'd ever go again," Helm muttered, "if you lose a load of data. Lawyers. ." He shivered. "But the profit margins. ." He looked as thoughtful as Enda. "Twenty to fifty percent on a load, if you pick somewhere just opening up. 'Course places like that are dangerous too." "I had thought," Gabriel said, "about hiring some armed backup."

Helm grinned from ear to ear. His ship was full from core to shell with weaponry of all kinds. But then Helm was a mutant, and unless you were a mutant who was also tired of life, armament out in these less than perfectly policed spaces was a good idea. Too many humans considered being a mutant some kind of treason against the human genotype to be punished in any way that wouldn't get you caught. Helm clearly did not intend to be caught assisting anyone in this kind of rough justice by lacking the kind of hardware that would dissuade them.

"Where were you thinking of going?" Helm said. "Got to consider fuel, victualling—" "Terivine," said Gabriel.

Enda nodded sidewise. "It would make sense," she said. "Terivine has become a common enough waystation for ships doing the runs between Corrivale and Aegis, and Lucullus as well, but the place is not heavily populated. ."

"That's not a huge problem," Gabriel said. "Besides the colonists, there's a considerable presence of scientists studying the riglia, those avian sentients they found. They need to move their data back and forth at something better than the crawl they'd get from using unscheduled infotraders. Tendril and Aegis both have to move administrative information pertaining to their colonies there. It looks like a good small market for a beginning infotrading business."

"You have obviously been doing your research," Enda said, "so you will know what kind of competition is there."

"Not much," Gabriel said. "Two firms work the system at present. One's native, a one-ship company called Alwhirn. Another is a licensee, Infotrade Interstellar Aegis."

Helm's eyebrows went up. "Isn't Infotrade Interstellar a subsidiary of VoidCorp?"

"These days, what isn't?" Gabriel said wearily.

"Us," said Enda. She pursed her lips in an expression that made her look unusually like a disapproving grandmother.

"You think they don't know it?" said Helm. "But here you sit in the system, bold as brass plate, as if they didn't dare touch you."

"They do not," Enda said, "for the moment. Not after we put so sharp a thorn in their side at Thalaassa and Corrivale, and Gabriel became the hammer to drive it in. They would be eager enough to repay him the trouble. The Concord would be quick to lay that at their doors if they tried that now. However, once we move elsewhere… "

That was always the problem. Since the vast expanse of the Verge began to reopen, the stellar nations had been moving in with various degrees of eagerness, acquisitiveness, or plain old-fashioned greed. Trade was opening out again, or for the first time. The wars that had cut off the Verge from the rest of humanity for so long had kept major trade routes and infrastructure from being established. Now what should have happened a quarter century earlier was beginning to happen again and in a rush. Every stellar nation or multistellar-national with the funds to spare was expanding into this area, hunting markets to master and resources to exploit. Systems that were backwaters ten years ago had become trading crossroads of considerable wealth and power. Through such systems, like Corrivale, Terivine, and Aegis, the huge cruisers of the stellar nations passed, both to trade and to find ways to extend their own influence. Mutual-assistance treaties, joint-use agreements for planets or whole systems, "understandings" and "gentlemen's agreements" could result in a world becoming the property of a stellar empire or company based thousands of light-years away. VoidCorp was probably the least principled of these. Once a software company, VoidCorp was now an interstellar power with many systems under its domination and many more becoming increasingly entangled in its web of interlocking corporate affiliations, treaties, and licensing agreements.

Gabriel sighed. "If we try to force ourselves into a position where we don't go anywhere that VoidCorp goes, we won't have a lot of choices. I don't like them any better than either of you do, especially considering that some part of VoidCorp Intelligence may have had something to do with setting me up. There are millions of VoidCorp Employees scattered across space who've never heard of us, won't have a clue who we are, and even if they're told, they may not care."

Enda frowned. "I would not be too sure. We only liberated about a thousand sesheyans that the Corporation is sure should be Employees. That the Concord declared them not to have been so is fortunate, but it will not count for much with VoidCorp."

"I.I. Aegis is just a licensee," Gabriel said, "local people running the business with VC equipment and contracts. It's a common enough arrangement, and licensees don't necessarily agree with the Company's overall policies."

Enda nodded. "It is too easy, I suppose, to become paranoid, and see Corpses hiding behind every asteroid, plotting our downfall. Have you done initial price-estimates as well? We would have to make alterations to the hold. The armoring we installed for mining work would need to be removed, and the new data storage facilities would not come cheap."

"Depends where you get them," Gabriel said and reached out to touch the part of the wall that hid the display forSunshine's Grid access. It came alive with imagery from the ship's internal Grid handling computers — a vast green plain rippling with some kind of long grass, a favorite image of Enda's. "Data trading," Gabriel said, and the display flickered into an image of many rows of text and columns of figures.

"Oh, brother," Helm said, reaching down under his chair. "Half a moment while I get something to strengthen me."

"Why, Helm," Enda said, "surely so acute a businessman cannot look on a sight such as this unmoved." "Yes I can," Helm said. "Wake me when we get to the weapons allocations."

Gabriel threw a sidewise glance at the bottle Helm now held. "How can you drink that stuff?" Gabriel asked, for the bottle was one of those squat square ones that Bols Luculliana came in.

Helm poured out two fingers of the thick clear stuff and shrugged. "It clears the mind. Want some?"

Gabriel shuddered at the thought and looked at the screen again. For a few minutes he went over the figures with Enda. She looked cautiously at the ones for the installation of the data tanks, which Gabriel suggested should be done by a small independent firm at Diamond Point on Grith.

"It is close by," Enda said, "and would be convenient for maintenance on return runs, but the firm has not been in business for long "

"It comes with good recommendations," Gabriel said. "Ondway told me about it."

Enda blinked at that and smiled. "Indeed. He would have some interest in seeing that our money is well spent, and in distributing business to the local community."

Gabriel nodded. They had met Ondway in Iphus Collective. The meeting had been an unusual one. In these spaces where VoidCorp's influence was strong, it was almost unheard-of to run into a sesheyan who did interplanetary work and was not an Employee. Ondway had put Gabriel and Enda in the way of some unusual business opportunities and also had given them hints about conditions on one of the supposedly uninhabited planets in the Thalaassa system — hints that had led Gabriel to investigate farther and get them into trouble. After the dust settled, Gabriel and Enda had been awarded a small public bounty from the Concord civil liberties fund. What had amused Gabriel immensely was the notion that, while one arm of the Concord government wanted him imprisoned, another was giving him grants for catching VoidCorp with its Corporate pants down. However, there had also been a less public award, not so much a bounty as a thank you from a sesheyan interest group of which Ondway was a prominent member — a group of native activists profoundly moved at Gabriel's single-handed rescue of more than a thousand of their kind from the Thalaassan world where VoidCorp was attempting to quietly exterminate them. Gabriel had insisted that there had been nothing single-handed about it. Enda had been in the thick of things with him, and he had merely been well positioned to intimidate some people whom he loathed. The sesheyans were not interested in his excuses, and they insisted on crediting Sunshine's expense accounts with a considerable sum. Between these two awards, Gabriel and Enda were in a position to live less marginally than they had when they first went into business together.

Then had come the question of what to do with the money. Their first indulgence had been a shower for Sunshine, and there had been no argument about that, but such a small luxury had not made much of a dent in their new funds. Enda, conservative as a fraal in her second century might be expected to be, was all for investment of the rest. So was Gabriel, but there had been little agreement about the kind of investment to do. Now, though, Enda was looking interested.

"All right," she said. "I concede that installation may as well be done on Grith. But the general risk still gives me pause in comparison with, say, mining." She reached out to pour another glass of kalwine. "A cargo of ore does not go stale, nor does it have value until one delivers it to the processor. This kind of cargo is more sensitive and needs to be better protected." Helm looked up at that. 'The weapons allocations," he said. "We need more guns," Gabriel said, "or upgrades on the old ones." Helm grinned.

Gabriel brought up another page of price lists, and Helm commented at length on the virtues and vices of the weaponry available in this part of the Verge.

"I have my own preferences," he said, "and you don't have to go all the way to Austrin-Ontis for decent weapons any more. You should think about upgrading that rail cannon, at the very least. It would be even better to get rid of it. What I'dreally like to see you get would be a mass cannon, but—" Gabriel laughed. "Oh, sure, let's just stop the next passing Star Force cruiser and pull one off!" "Some day," Helm said, "the cost of the things will drop so that people who aren't military can get their hands on one." His expression suggested that he intended to be the first. "Meanwhile, those upgrades. I have a friend who knows where you could get a discount."

"Delde Sota," Gabriel and Enda said in chorus. Enda chuckled. "Helm, is thereany business in this system that mechalus does not have her braid or her brain plugged into?"

"You want good machinery," Helm said, "go to a mechalus. Who would know it better? The good doctor collects favors from everyone she fixes up. She put me onto somebody who's done fairly well by me. Any more figures?"

Gabriel looked over at Enda and said, "I don't think this is a decision I should make by myself, no matter how you insist that the things I did got us the awards that would make this possible." Enda merely produced one of those demure little fraal smiles.

"You were a marine too long," Helm said to Gabriel. "You were good at taking orders, but now you have other problems— staying alive, mostly. That means making decisions, not taking orders." "What made it hard," Gabriel said, "was the prospect of moving too far from where my trouble happened."

"You haven't had much luck with tracing the ones responsible, have you?" Helm said. "Not much. The trail leading back to 'Jacob Ricel,' or whatever his name was before he boarded Falada, is cold. There's no way for me to go where it might still be warm without being arrested. The marines have never been happy with the outcome of my trial. They'd prefer to do it again their way." Gabriel shook his head. "Grid information's cold as well, or getting that way, and getting at it is expensive."

"Whereas if you were hauling data," Helm said, "you would have periodic access to the drivesat relays from which you were hauling. .and hauler's discount on data access, while spending a lot of safe time away from the Conkers."

Gabriel nodded. He had no desire to spend time closer to Concord space than he had to. There were bounty hunters who would be willing to turn Gabriel in for the reward. Yet outside of Concord space there was no resolution of his problem. Sooner or later, Gabriel would have to go back with what evidence he was able to garner and take his chances with Concord justice. "As regards 'riding shotgun' for us," Enda said, "would you be available?"

When Helm looked up from pouring another splash of Bols, there was an odd expression in his eyes. Gabriel thought it looked like gratitude, but it sealed over quickly into the old no-nonsense humor. "Been waiting for you to make up your mind. My schedule's wide open. When do we leave?" "About a week," Gabriel said. "Getting the data tanks installed will take most of the time." "And arranging to see what kind of first load we can acquire," Enda said. "I will see to that." "I'll talk to the doctor in the morning," Helm said. "Meanwhile, I could use a nap, and I have to clean up after myself. Cooking!" He stood, looming over Enda, huge and amused. "I did it with an autolaser. In a pot."

"You do most things with an autolaser," Enda said mildly. "The pot was doubtless added in a moment of inspiration."

Helm laughed, picked up his bottle and put it on the table for them, and went off down toward the airlock. "Call me in the morning," he said to Gabriel, "when you get your schedule sorted out."

"I will."

The airlock cycled shut behind Helm, and Gabriel got up to help Enda clean up after their meal. It was something they were both punctilious about — a ship in which some parties are tidy and some are sloppy soon turns into a little hell. Once the table was uncovered and folded away and the plates and utensils were washed and stowed, Gabriel folded a chair down and just sat there looking at the screen, which had defaulted to that view of the green field under some alien sun, the long grass rippling silkily as water in the wind that stroked it.

Down in her cubicle, Gabriel could hear Enda moving around, putting her bed in order for the night. A year ago he had known nothing of her, known no fraal at all and precious few aliens of any kind. Now he could hardly imagine a world without her — a world circumscribed by these scrubbed gray walls and floors— the fire of starrises and starfalls, some new primary burning golden or blue-white or green through the front viewports, the tierce sky-blue of Enda's huge eyes.

Once the world had been different, not gray-walled but white-walled, the color of marine country in a Star Force ship. Life had been simple, explicable, neatly circumscribed. You went where you were ordered — or were taken there. You fought who you were told to, and you cleaned up afterwards.Ready to fight. . He had been, but the nature of the enemies had changed overnight, and the conflict had become difficult to understand. Too difficult for the marine he was then — and Gabriel had found himself cashiered, cast loose on a world he didn't know, alone and friendless.

Then Enda had turned up. There were aspects of their first meeting and their subsequent dealings that Gabriel still did not understand. But he was certain that it was a better world with her in it, and that he owed her most of what he had now. He was partner in a ship, half of a business, and had come through some difficult times getting used to it. He had survived, but there was always the question of how long he could keep on doing it.

"You are thinking harder than usual," Enda said. Gabriel glanced up. "Does it show?" "I heard you. You are still unsure. ."

Gabriel chuckled. "Mindwalkers. I can't even brood without being overheard any more." She pulled down the chair opposite him. "I have had much less training in the art than most. However, if you think loudly, I cannot help it. You also must not think I desire to pressure you in any direction. If I have been doing so, you must tell me so."

Gabriel shook his head. "You misheard me. You can be pretty forceful, but not that way. In fact, it's hard to get you to tell me what to do even about little things."

"Perhaps I refuse to be lured into a role that you would accept too easily," Enda said. "Gabriel, is your choice firm?"

"Yup. Let's get out of here."

Enda tilted her head to one side, one of the fraal versions of the human nod.

"We had not discussed how we will leave. Do we make starfall to Terivine by ourselves, or hitch a ride with some larger vessel?"

"Maybe not on the first leg," Gabriel said. "If you set out on your own, sometimes people assume you're going to keep going that way. If we picked up a hitch after we make our first starfall…" He shrugged. "This deviousness," Enda said, "suits you well enough, you who were such an innocent only six months ago. Beware lest you lose track of who you are beneath all the twists and turns." She smiled as she said it, but Enda's look was more than usually thoughtful. Gabriel had never had a living grandmother to look at him in this particular way. Now it occurred to him that this was how one might look if she were about a meter and a half tall and so slender that she looked like you could break her in half like a stick.

"There are times," Gabriel said, "when I've considered that." Enda blinked at him. "What exactly?"

"Losing track, of who I am, or was. A little discreet cosmetic surgery, maybe… a change of look, a change of name. Let Gabriel Connor have an accident somewhere. Change the name appearing on Sunshine's registry. Become someone else. ." "It would be a logistical problem to change our registry," Enda said. "Not impossible, but expensive, and itis impossible to do such things without leaving an electron trail. Additionally, for those who are determined to know where you are, and who you are… I question whether the stratagem would work for long."

"More to the point," Gabriel said at last, "is whether I really want to hide. I don't want to throw away my name. I want to clear it."

"But you are finding that hard," Enda said, "and potentially harder as time goes on."

"Without the evidence I need to prove I didn't kill those people willingly, yes."

"The frustration," Enda said softly, "can wear a soul down, if allowed to do so."

"Even a stone wears down under water," Gabriel said. "Every time someone hears the name 'Gabriel Connor' and looks at me that way—'Oh,that Gabriel Connor, you were on the Gridnews, you murdered your best friend and got away with it, some legal loophole or other. Aren't you proud of yourself?' Every time I see that look, it's another drip on the stone. Is it so strange to wish it would just stop?"

He tried to look steadily at her. Even now, even with half a year of time between him and the deaths of his comrades in that shuttle explosion, it was hard to talk about it, even with someone as coolly compassionate as Enda.

"It is one of your people's sayings," Enda said, "long ago I heard it. 'When Heaven intends to confer great office upon a man, it sheds disaster upon him and brings all his plans to naught; reduces him in the sight of the world, and confounds all his undertakings. Then it is seen if he is ready.' " Gabriel laughed. "That's all very reassuring if you know that you're intended for some 'great office.' Otherwise, it just seems delusional, a way to rationalize the act of the universe doing what it usually does — crapping on the ordinary guy."

"In this then," Enda said, "plainly there is universal justice. The great and the lowly are treated the same. Perhaps what makes the difference is in how they react to it."