Gabriel nodded and finished the last couple of spoonfuls of his soup. He thought Enda probably meant "tomorrow," but she was not going to say it. Probably with reason, he thought as he glanced around him. All around was a darkness full of smoke, drink fumes, and oblivious people shouting or singing at each other. Yet who knew what technology was hidden away in quiet corners, recording chance words that might be sold to a willing bidder?
He sighed, pushed back in his seat, pulled out the little pocket-stone, and began fiddling with it while letting the food settle.
"One thing we must settle by tomorrow morning," Enda said after a moment, glancing up from the wineglass that she had been refilling, "is the matter of the ship's name. They will not let us lift without something." She saw Gabriel pause and added, "You could always simply let them generate a letter and number combination, if you prefer. Something meaningless and non-connoted. Certainly there are species that are suspicious about such things."
Abruptly, Gabriel got the shudder. It had been some time since he had felt that: what his mother, when he was very young, had called "somebody walking over my grave," and then laughed and shrugged it off. It never seemed to have anything specific to do with something bad happening, but the two sometimes came together.
He raised his eyebrows, put the feeling aside for the moment, and said, "No, it can have a name, there's no problem with that."
"What, then? I have no gift for this kind of thing," Enda said. "You will have to choose." Gabriel leaned forward on his elbows and thought, twiddling the stone idly as he did so. The image came to him, abruptly, of that thin patch of sunshine that had shone down on them as they walked through the gates of Gol Leiysin's place. "Sunshine," he said.
Enda tilted her head at him. "Simple, perhaps childlike. No matter. Naming the light is always a good thing. It attracts its attention. 'Sunshine' let it be. We will both have to sign title, but you may as well take care of making the actual registry application, or rather completing it, at the spaceport in the morning. I will take care of the last of the victualling, and when I get back I will go over the final parts manifest with the people from Leiysin's to make sure the inventory is complete. Can you think of anything else that needs doing?"
Gabriel tried to think but couldn't. It was possibly understandable. This h ad been one of the fullest days he'd had in ages, and he felt much more tired than he should have. He began to wonder whether the trial had taken more out of him than he would have otherwise suspected.
"Not a thing," he said at last. "Though as a second thought, sleeping would be nice."
Enda chuckled. "I thought you might come up with that one eventually. All right. Let me finish this, and then we'll go."
She drank her wine, and Gabriel gestured through the singing for the bartender to send someone over to collect what they owed. Drink was cheap enough here, and Gabriel was glad to get rid of his last few pieces of Phorcyn hard currency. Only bills were left, and the people at the spaceport would readily enough put credit on his chip in exchange while they left. When the bill was paid, Enda got up and headed for the door, Gabriel coming after her through the noise and the smoke. "Here," he said, "let me get that for you." It was an old habit, but one he should begin to rediscover, he thought. Enda gave him a dry look as Gabriel opened the door for her, then she started past him. The sound was what hit him first, that low buzz.
His hand shot out almost before he knew what he was doing. He grabbed Enda by the shoulder and snatched her violently back. As she staggered backwards into him, a slug trailing superheated plasma went by directly in front of her, not more than a few centimeters in front of her nose. The slug slammed into the door frame, spraying splinters of wood and stone into their skin.
Gabriel pulled Enda past him, thrust her behind him back into the Dive, and dove out of the doorway. He hit the concrete in the dark. Good thing we've been this way a couple of times before, he thought as he rolled and broke out of the roll sideways. As the charge pistol's fire stitched the concrete behind him, he heard the shuffle of footsteps made brighter than normal by their echo against the nearby wall. He targeted that sound, rolled again, came up and dove straight at the dim shape he saw heading just a little to the left of the dim pink light of the weapon's aiming eye. Wham! His head hit something that should have been softer than it was. A battle vest maybe but not full attack armor. Too bad for you, buddy, Gabriel thought as he came down on top of the man, grabbed his head, and banged it on the ground with one hand while feeling with the other for the outstretched arm. Just out of reach, yes, there it was, an M12 charge pistol, full clip. Nasty. Didn't plan to leave much of her, did you? He pushed up and away from the momentarily inert body, grabbed the pistol, twisted the lanth cell's safety out of its socket, and paused as he heard something. A rustling sound came from the other side of the wall. Oh really, he thought. He immediately selected for "overcharge," then chucked the pistol over the wall after its safety, hard.
Motion underneath him, then a groan. The man probably had some internal injuries and certainly was bleeding badly from the back of his head. This briefly became much clearer in the flare of sudden light from inside the wall. The exploding charge pistol lit everything like a sheet of lightning for a few seconds and rocked the ground. There was a scream from not far away, and the wall shook as something, several somethings, impacted into it with a slightly wet sound.
Gabriel stood up. Enda was standing just outside the doorway, looking with some bemusement into the Dive, from which not so much as a nose had so far put itself out, nor seemed likely to in the near future. "Somebody here doesn't like you much, I think," Gabriel said as he dusted himself off and stood up. "Any thoughts as to who?"
Enda shook her head, looking around. The street in which the Dive was located was very dark, very quiet, and to Gabriel's senses getting darker and quieter by the moment. Even the barroom was deathly silent. He felt oddly elated. That was it, then. Marines had a sense of when trouble, physical trouble anyway, was going to break out. They might take his uniform and throw him off the ship and out of the Corps, but the instinct was still there. Gabriel produced a rather wolfish grin as he looked at the former attacker lying on the ground. "Should we call the police?" he asked.
Enda gave him a wide-eyed look, and Gabriel thought to himself once more that the illusion really was amazing. If he hadn't known better, he would have sworn that those eyes glowed in the dark.
"Gabriel," she said with some humor, "you are an optimist indeed if you think the police would come here at this time of night! Let us be away swiftly before the acquaintances of these miscreants come for them. For tonight the hotel will be secure enough. In the morning, swiftly with us to the spaceport where the ship will by now be lying in bond. We have business to finish, perhaps a whole day's worth-but I for one want to do every bit of it under official eyes, even the last of the shopping, even at field prices. Then we lift."
"But what if the ship's not ready?"
"Then we sleep in her, in bond. We could not get much more secure-and we are paying so much at the hotel that there would not be much difference!" There was a faint sound of footsteps in the distance.
Gabriel raised his eyebrows. Their fighting instructor at Academy had always said, "Gentlemen, after dealing with the baddies, do not depend on the local constabulary or anyone else to understand that you were only defending yourself. Have it away on your heels, and live to fight another day." He grinned at Enda. Together they ran, and the shadows swallowed them.
The next morning they called a flycab to come and get them. Gabriel was in reaction and knew it, but he was unable to do much about it. He felt almost uncontrollably jumpy and couldn't understand why. "I can think of a couple of reasons," Enda said to him in the cab. "One having to do with where I found you. The other . . ." She shrugged a little and plucked at the sleeve of the pilot's smartsuit that she had insisted on buying him after the sale was initiated yesterday. "Your uniform has changed." "Oh." He nodded. "Yes, the old one was protection of a kind, I guess."