Diane Duane - Starrise at Corrivale

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?"