Another of the VoidCorp ships bloomed into brief flame and darkness. We may have to run. 1 didn't come here to run, Gabriel said. I came here to go to Rhynchus. The feeling had begun to dog him that something bad was happening and was likely to keep happening unless he got to the bottom of the situation on Rhynchus. Gabriel was beyond questioning the feeling now. We need to do whatever it takes to stay here, he said. If it takes getting them all- Let us be busy, then, Enda interrupted.
They fought. It went on for another fifteen minutes or so without pause, Enda throwing Sunshine back and forth through the VoidCorp ships' slowly decreasing numbers. They got several good shots and some that were positively lucky. Once the software took over from Gabriel and made a shot for him, blowing up a fighter, but the pressure was taking its toll. One plasma cartridge missed them simply because Enda made a mistake in the way she threw Sunshine. Otherwise everything would have been over for them right then. Through the link Gabriel could hear her breathing becoming labored, and it occurred to him that brilliance in fighting did not always mean endurance. How long could Enda keep this up? Come to think of it, how long can I ? he wondered. Gabriel was sweating terribly inside the e- suit. Even the suit's cooling equipment could not keep up with the fine mist of condensation inside the faceplate that was beginning to interfere with his view into the fighting field.
Maybe it was a dumb idea, trying to fight this many. Their opponents seemed to know it. Some of them were hanging back while two or three at a time concentrated on attack. They'll wear us down sooner or late, he thought to himself. Maybe we really should cut our losses and get out of here, we've been awfully lucky.
But if we do leave, they'll go on with-Gabriel was not sure even now exactly what he suspected, but he didn't think VoidCorp ships in the neighborhood of Rhynchus could mean any good. He was torn. Enda, what do you-
Another plasma cartridge went off, entirely too close. The ship shuddered and the hull began moaning in protest. Oh, not again! Gabriel said. Enda-
Something else coming in, Enda said between gasps. She was working hard, and one more VoidCorp ship had just gone down at her hands, but Gabriel didn't think she could keep it up much longer. Look at tactical. Not another VC. Different design. Gabriel searched in the fighting field for some indication of the other ship's ID, but nothing was showing. The ship was big, though, twice the size of Sunshine at least.
'Cutting in, Sunshine,' said a voice on local comms, and both Gabriel and Enda jumped. It was a gravelly voice, very matter of fact with a slight drawl. Practically as it spoke, that other ship dove in among the VoidCorp vessels and took two of them out with paired blasts from what appeared to be top and bottom mass cannons.
As the other ship flashed past them, the Insight fighting software identified her as carrying weapons the kind and size of which Gabriel had only been able to dream about when they were doing Sunshine's outfitting. He's an arsenal all to himself! Gabriel said. Who is he, where the hell did he spring from? I would not care, Enda said, firing again, and another VoidCorp ship spun away trailing fire and escaped air, but apparently we are not as 'on our own ' as we thought we were- 'Friend,' Gabriel said down comms, 'whoever you are, you're welcome!'
'Helm's my name,' replied a gravelly voice. 'Introductions can wait, but a lady name of Delde Sola suggested you were coming this way-thought you might be able to use some help.' 'Was she ever right. Forgive me for not going visual to greet you,' said Gabriel, 'but we've got our hands full at the moment.'
'No problem, plenty of time later after we finish off these Corpses.'
I wish I had your faith in your weaponry, or your deity, or whatever! Gabriel thought. 'These guys with the plasma cannon,' Gabriel said, 'I would dearly love to get rid of them.'
'We'll just get to work on that right now,' said the voice.
The ship executed an astonishingly tight turn, throwing itself back toward the main cluster of the remaining fighters. Gabriel could only stare at the maneuver in astonishment. Even with artificial gravity, there were limits to the stresses a ship and pilot could take. At the highest accelerations, even the artifical gravity would start to fail out, leaving a pilot with the acceleration-associated blackouts and other problems that had beset atmosphere pilots for hundreds of years. This pilot though, seemed not to care about such things, or else he had an iron vascular system. His ship twisted, aligned itself, and something shot away from him.
Wham! Wham!-and two spectacular plasma bolts lanced out of the ship and took the two VoidCorp ships with the plasma cannon out, neat as could be. The ship arced away and 'downward,' heading toward the oncoming ships.
'By the way, sorry I was late,' said the gravelly voice on the other end, 'but I'm always late. I was born that way.'
Gabriel shook his head, uncertain what to make of that. 'You're on time enough for us.' 'Just,' said Helm. 'Looks like you have some more incoming.'
Gabriel checked his tactical. Sure enough, there were the remaining VoidCorp fighters coming back fast. 'They passed us by earlier,' Gabriel said, 'possibly on the way to do something else.' 'Looks like maybe they don't want witnesses to their embarrassment,' Helm said. 'All right, we can do a little something about that. Look at that, so nice and tight.'
He nudged his ship toward them. It was so unlike the quicker acceleration of a moment before that Gabriel stared. 'Are you all right?'
'Fine, no problem,' Helm said. 'Just waiting for them to fall into the right configuration. Computer wanted a read on their pattern, since the egg I'm about to lay is a little expensive. Saves time, though. They keep trying to englobe. Good.'
He was right. They were englobing again. 'Too bad for them,' Helm said very cheerfully. 'Don't get close, now. Mind your eyes.'
Something leaped away from his ship too fast to see, mass-driven, possibly. It shot into the center of the approaching globe formation-
Space whited out from the detonation there. Gabriel was blinded. Enda cried out. ' 'Cherry bomb,' ' Helm said. 'Squeezed nuke. Don't have many of those, but they sure lend a little excitement to a large party. Would use more of 'em, but the damned cost-accounting program screams too much.'
Gabriel, gazing into the field and calling for detailed tactical, could only agree. There seemed to be nothing left of the ships that had been attempting that new englobement except drifting wreckage, much of it white hot or molten. 'Uh oh,' Helm said.
Gabriel saw what he saw: the last two of the ships fleeing in opposite directions, one of them vaguely toward Rhynchus, one of them away. 'He's mine,' Gabriel said, indicating the one heading toward Rhynchus.
'Take him. I'll have this boy.'
The two of them arced away in different directions. Gabriel threw Sunshine after his quarry at high speed. It was necessary. His quarry was running as if gone wild and blind, not even evading, just shooting away like an arrow. Gabriel curved down under him, caught him as he finally tried to change direction, and put a plasma cartridge right into his belly. The ship blew up most satisfactorily. Panic, he said to Enda, as he brought the ship around and headed back to the scene of the main combat. I wonder, Enda said.
A blast of light from up ahead suggested to Gabriel that Helm had caught up with his own target. 'You all right?'
'No problem,' said the gravelly voice.
'That's a relief,' Enda said as she let the fighting field up from around her, unclasped her helmet, and took it off. 'Perhaps we have time for introductions now?'
The tank lit. 'Helm Ragnarsson.'
'Gabriel Connor.'
'Enda,' the fraal said.
'A pleasure.'
They all studied each other for a moment. Though it was hard to tell when someone was sitting down, Helm looked short. He was dark-skinned and amazingly heavy-boned. His shoulders were huge, and his waist might have looked narrow enough for his own build, but it was bigger across than Gabriel's shoulders. A build, in all, much too heavy to have grown that way normally.
'Yes, I'm a mutant,' Helm said, in a voice that was just faintly weary. 'My 'family' went in for heavy planet work. Generation before last, they started working on engineering some specialty genes into our line. Some people don't like it.' He shrugged. 'We don't care. We take ourselves where the work is, together or singly.'
He was casual enough about it, but Gabriel wondered how long that shell of nonchalance had taken to grow. Mutants were very much a minority among the Concord worlds and were routinely seen as dangerously different- peculiar and dangerous creatures at best, outcasts at worst. For his own part, this man had just saved his life, and
