Nightfall_at_Algemron

Gabriel knew where all this was taking him. "If we got the right AI," he said, "we would be able to manage."
"If we paid enough for it," Enda said, tilting her head sideways in a nod, "which would come to a considerable amount of credit—more expense added to that already applied to the new ship. We are talking about a hefty chunk of debt, Gabriel. Not that we have done so badly with servicing our present debt, but it would take some doing to find a financial institution out this way that would be willing to hold escrow for us when the amount has this many zeroes after it. And then there are the security concerns."
She glanced forward toward the pilot's compartment where Sunshine's registry lay. Gabriel knew what she was thinking. Sunshine's registry information had been most expertly tampered with some months back by Delde Sota in order to conceal the altered nature of Sunshine's weaponry so that they could hitch a ride with the Lighthouse. Such forgeries and alterations were done pretty routinely, it was true, but do them repeatedly and the odds of being caught began to increase at an unhealthy rate. Gabriel was already in enough trouble with the Concord. Adding fraud to the accusations of manslaughter and murder wouldn't help him.
Gabriel glanced up toward the pilot's compartment. Up there, hidden very discreetly in a place where it had been assumed he would not think to look, were a couple of broad-band listening devices hooked into ship's comms and her Grid access system—in simple terms, "bugs." Gabriel had not removed them for reasons of his own. There were times when allowing such listening to occur was to his advantage. There were other reasons more obscure, having to do with figures fairly high up in the Concord hierarchy, figures with which his relationship was ambivalent at best but—to Gabriel's way of thinking—useful.
He had had a word with Delde Sota about those tapping devices while she had been doing other work designed to conceal Sunshine's identity. Delde Sota had been a Grid pilot before she was a doctor, and she was unusually adept at the delicate art of subverting complex computer equipment into doing something for which it was not designed, or making it think it was doing what it had been designed for while it was in fact doing something else entirely.
"Yes," Gabriel said. "I had been thinking about that as well."
"There would be one other problem," Enda said, "the delay. It would take a month perhaps? Maybe even two to get transferred to the new ship and get everything sorted out. Once that was done, at least one trail will have become colder than it is already."
Gabriel nodded. He was still hunting the man (or possibly a number of men) called Jacob Ricel, the man who had handed him the innocent-looking little chip that ignited the bomb aboard the shuttle that took the ambassador to her death, along with several of Gabriel's friends. Without that man himself—or one of the men identical to him—to provide evidence that something unusual had been going on, Gabriel had no chance of avoiding a conviction for murder when the Concord finally caught up with him.
"It's cold enough already," Gabriel said, "though not exactly frozen. I've been looking into his whereabouts over the last couple of months, though not on the open Grid connection." He smiled slightly. "Those who notice such things will be thinking that most of my researches have had to do with a new ship and with matters farther out."
Though whether some of them will be fooled by appearances, Gabriel wondered, remains to be seen. He personally doubted it and hoped that the rather obvious gap in his Grid investigations would suggest to at least one observer what he meant to suggest.
"What about Ricel himself then?" Enda asked. "Will we now go hunting him directly? I confess, I would much like to catch up with him." Her expression went, for Enda, surprisingly grim.
Gabriel had to suppress his grin, for though Enda might look as small and delicate as most fraal, underestimating her strength or her temper when she was angry was a mistake. "So would I, but. Enda; you're going to laugh at me."
"Often," Enda said, "but not for the reasons you fear. Tell me your thought."
"I think we have more urgent business on our plates at the moment," Gabriel said, "or about to spill onto the table anyway. These kroath we've been running into, now we know they're not an isolated manifestation. They're around, and they're taking people and turning them into these undead creatures. They've been doing it for a long time—at least as far back as the destruction of the Silver Bell colony, but still no one knows what they are or where they're coming from. Why do we keep running into them? We've had a lot more than what I would consider the statistically likely number of encounters."
She looked uncomfortable. "I would have to agree with you there."
Gabriel looked at the pile of printouts and catalogues. "I hate to say it," he said, "but I think my own personal business has to wait for the moment. I may have been a Marine, but I was a Verger first. If this keeps on, it won't be safe to live out this way for much longer—maybe not anywhere else, either."
This last cost him some effort to say. He was afraid to sound foolish, but Enda looked at him and nodded slowly.
Gabriel continued, "I'm going to put the whole ship buying thing on hold until we get some results in other areas. I don't say that it'll stay on hold for a long time, though."
"This is your choice," Enda said. "I trust you with it. I trust you to take it up again when you feel there is need."
Gabriel nodded. "What I don't understand," he said very softly, "is why you trust me."
Enda stood up and stretched. "Because when I do, you prove yourself trustworthy."
"But when you first trusted me," Gabriel said, "when you first found me, I hadn't yet proved anything."
"One must start somewhere," Enda said, "and if, as some say, the One made a whole universe out of nothing, should we find it hard to do so with an item so small as trust?"
Enda got up from the pilot's seat and headed back toward the lavatory.
Gabriel sat there quiet, unable to find a response, especially in the wake of the memory of the dusty road on Tisane with a man's brains spattered all over it.
Chapter Two
It took Angela a while to reach the rendezvous point. Gabriel sat where he was, trying to relax, but he was twitchy. His eye fell on a particular spot on the deck plating—a little scorched pit, maybe five centimeters deep, a near-oval shape.
Gabriel frowned slightly, slipping his hand into his pocket. The ship had already been out of the manufacturer's warranty when we bought it, or I'd send them a letter about this. The deck plating was supposed to be proof against everything. Acid, abrasion, fire.
Not this, he thought, looking at the luckstone that lay in his hand: a little black oval pebble, matte-surfaced. Faintly, as if awakened by the heat of his hand, a dull dark-gold glow awoke in it.
A sudden stream of images jolted through him—
It had been happening more frequently of late, as if the events on Danwell had broken open some door inside him—or not precisely broken it open, but wedged it ajar so that images and sounds and experiences from some "other side" were coming through, more and more frequently. Sometimes they were benign or familiar. Some had to do with the edanweir people on Danwell and his contact there, Tlelai—images of day or evening, of his counterpart's working day as a hunter, a glimpse of greenery, some huge beast being carted home to the family lodges. More often those images would have to do with light and darkness, great gouts of fire being flung at a shadowy enemy. Increasingly those images were associated with a feeling of slightly desperate familiarity.
We have done this before. We are doing it again.