'You don't seem to have a lot of definite information about any of this,' Gabriel said.
'In this regard, that is not my job,' Enda said. 'Ask the universe. I merely live in it, like everyone else.'
She got up and took the water bottle off to refill it, leaving Gabriel to stare at the Grid screen full of stars and wonder whether someone saying, 'Find out about this,' and setting him on a course of action that involved so many people getting killed could possibly have been some larger force moving.
Ridiculous.
He dismissed the idea out of hand. Just fraal mysticism, cutting loose without warning in the middle of a boring period. Lots of people went off into philosophical reveries while in drive-space. The Orlamu sat around 'contemplating the void' for hours on end, hunting through it for ultimate truth. It must take a lot to find it in a world of solid black.
He sighed, got up, and went forward to the cockpit to sit down and work with the JustWadeln software again. There would certainly be a reception committee waiting for them at the Thalaassan side. Gabriel would be ready for it.
Chapter Sixteen
WHEN THEY MADE starrise at Thalaassa, they were both in the pilots' seats, both suited, both ready. All Sunshine's diagnostics had been ran and reported her ready. The program remained running where Gabriel could get at it quickly if he needed it, and the JustWadeln software was running in standby, waiting for real space in which to work.
Normally Gabriel despised countdowns, having endured too many of them in some armored shuttle while in the marines. But now he watched the clock with fierce interest as the digits in the tank decremented themselves. When the 'one' finally slipped into 'zero' and vanished, the tank went black and he could barely contain his excitement. Starrise washed upwards around them in something unexpected, the brightest pure white Gabriel had ever seen, with not the slightest admixture of any other color. Is that lucky? he said, staring into the fighting field while waiting for it to bring up tactical. We should hope so, Enda said. Look.
The image of surrounding space in the tank and in the fighting field shimmered and resolved itself. There was a whole swarm of small arrowlike shapes, sleek and deadly, approaching them fast on system drive from about a thousand kilometers out.
Those designs Gabriel knew all too well: the Insight-designed software went out of its way to describe them and their fighting capabilities in gleeful and malicious detail. VoidCorp, he said. Sesheyan Employee ships.
There were a lot of them, too many of them. Sixteen, the fighting software said. But what Gabriel did not fully understand was that some of them seemed to be avoiding the potential fight. They kept on going, heading away, heading out-system.
They think they can take us with just this many, Enda said, sounding surprisingly annoyed at the prospect.
They can! Gabriel thought but didn't say. It wasn't so much a question of massed armaments as it was numbers. When that many people engaged you, sooner or later you would miss someone coming up from behind, move a little more slowly than you should-and that would be the end of it. Maybe so, he said, but it seems we're not the only reason they're here. Anyway, damned if I'm going to be mobbed by these people when there's someone in the system who's supposed to prevent this kind of thing from happening. He asked the tank for another view, a wider one of the system, specifically concentrating on larger ships present there. There was some in-system freight traffic, ships that Gabriel had learned to recognize from their previous stays here-but not what he was looking for. Where the hell is Schmetterling? he asked.
Not here, apparently, said Enda. At least it does not show anywhere in system scan.
They could be anywhere, dammit. Gabriel was fuming as he scanned the software, trying to sort out all the VoidCorp ships' positions in his head. Bloody Galactic policemen, all over you like a cheap suit when you don't want one, and when you do want one, they're nowhere to be found!
But there was no more time for that. Twelve of the VoidCorp fighters were now moving in on Sunshine in a standard englobement, which was nice for the JustWadeln software-it had intervention routines for that-but there weren't enough guns aboard Sunshine to handle that kind of attack effectively, and the software was plaintively asking for more.
This is going to be a problem, Gabriel heard Enda say softly.
Do you trust the software intervention routines? Gabriel inquired.
I trust them to take care of easy shots and point out difficult to me, but you will notice, if you read the manual, that the Insight performance warranty does not extend to those routines. They stopped insuring them when a few pilots' families sued them after the pilots were killed. It was impossible to prove that the software was not somehow at fault.
Gabriel shook his head. We 're on our own, then.
More or less.
He still could not understand how Enda could sound so cheerful even when they were outnumbered and outgunned. Do you know something I don't know?
You mean, do I have a hunch? No, but I am not sure any of us is ever alone. Philosophy, Gabriel thought helplessly. Well, if it helps you to shoot straight.
The englobement completed itself around Sunshine, the VoidCorp ships disposing themselves roughly on an dodecagon's vertices, preparatory for an inward push and firing run. The JustWadeln software's fighting field shimmered around them both and displayed best dispositions for gunnery, hit percentages for each gun, suggestions for maximum fire result and optimum firing distance.
Enda ignored it, picked a direction and threw Sunshine that way in a spinning, corkscrewing path, then started shooting.
Gabriel began firing too, picking the closest target and trying to get a sense of windage, but the craft slipped aside as he fired and then came in on a line for him again, firing right back. Enda twisted them out of range, hammering again at the first ship she had targeted, trying to break their formation globe and slip through. It was a standard response: get the englobing group to lose their cohesiveness and the value of their attack formation disintegrates almost immediately. However, these ships' pilots seemed not to be even slightly interested in losing their attack's cohesiveness, and as they slipped aside from Enda's attack and reformed, Gabriel began to think that the only thing going to disintegrate was Sunshine. The globe came after them as Enda broke through, mostly firing their lasers. Not a terribly effective attack, but bad enough if you blinded out the software or smoked some component that your enemy ship's manufacturer had not thought important enough to shield adequately. Enda concentrated on putting some distance between Sunshine and the attackers. Little ships like those could not have infinite power capacity, and they were often more poorly provided for power storage than a less well-armed but more mundane mining ship might be. They might be able to make the fighters expend enough power for drive that they would have none to spare for lasers and would have to fall back on whatever other armament they had, using it up and forcing an early return to base-wherever 'base' might be. In this case, it probably meant a big VoidCorp ship. Though they could have come all the way from Iphus or one of the other VoidCorp facilities back at Corrivale, that seemed unlikely. And if these fighters failed in what they were supposed to do, it struck Gabriel as all too likely that their base ship would come looking for them.
Are we going to keep running forever? Gabriel asked.
Odd that you should mention that, Enda said as she flipped Sunshine end for end and began firing at the approaching globe of fighters. They split apart to reform around Sunshine as they came back in, but as they split, Enda kicked in the system drive hard and shot straight through them, firing en passant. One bloom of fire burst out as she tore through, and Gabriel fired ahead of them at one fighter that seemed unwilling to get out of their path.
It side slipped at the last moment, and sweat broke out all over Gabriel at the nearness of the passage. He caught a glimpse of nuzzleflare as they passed, but Enda saw it too and threw them sideways, so hard that the artificial gravity flickered and Gabriel's teeth banged together.
This is not a tactically advantageous situation, Enda said as she spun Sunshine around and fired again.
