weeping, a kind of breathy gasp. It kept him up at night. Five days, though, eventually passed. Gabriel strapped himself back in and looked somberly looked over at Enda as the digits on the clock in the tank slipped away. Despite the fact that another possible fight loomed ahead, they were both unsuited. Even if they had sufficient e-suits for everyone to wear, their models would not fit the sesheyans in size or design and it didn't seem right to ensure their own safety while leaving their passengers in danger.
'How are your hunches running?' Enda asked. Less than a minute remained on the countdown.
Gabriel shook his head. 'Not a whisper. You?'
'Mine have been regrettably silent.'
'Do your people think that means something bad?'
'Some of my people,' she said, smiling just slightly-a very sad smile-'think it means you are already dead. Granted, those people would mostly be mindwalkers to whom my normal state of mind would be a pitiful thing indeed. So I do not take them too seriously.'
Gabriel nodded. 'Enda,' he said. 'If those body snatchers ever get close to us-'
'I will not be a willing participant,' she said, 'believe me.'
'I don't want to be either,' Gabriel said.
She looked at him and blinked slowly, hiding the great blue eyes for a moment. 'I will see to it,' she said. 'Thirty seconds,' Gabriel called to the youngsters in the back. 'Get strapped in.' 'Right,' they said, more or less in chorus. They had not been speaking in staves, and Gabriel found himself wondering whether they usually did so at home and whether he was going to have to pay some kind of outrageous faceprice to their parents for teaching them awful habits.
The seconds ticked by. Twenty . . . ten. There was nervous shuffling in the back of the ship. Gabriel tried to swallow, finding his mouth too dry.
Zero.
Light sheeted down around them as they made starrise. It was red, red as blood that light, and surely it was an illusion that it seemed to run more slowly than usual, slicking down from the cockpit windows to show Corrivale's welcome blast of sunlight off to the left. And off to the right-darkness.
Massive, an elongated teardrop shape with VoidCorp insignia, lazing in toward Hydrocus. It could not have been more than ten kilometers away from them, and it still looked immense. Gabriel tried one more time to swallow, then gave it up. There were five other smaller vessels with it, gaudier in their livery- reds and golds and gunfire blues-but all of them wore that insignia, and all their guns were shivering with the electrostatic discharge that suggested they were ready to fire.
Around Sunshine, first one other of the refugee ships made starrise in a blast of purple, and then a second, mostly green streaked with yellow. The third did not appear. Timing error? Gabriel whispered in the fighting field. Or did it jump at all? Never mind, and he cried to the other ships, 'Scatter!' They did, possibly knowing it was the only way to save their lives. The smaller VoidCorp ships went off in pursuit of them severally; one held its place, the biggest of them, hanging above Grith, waiting. Have you got another of your little toys aboard?
Gabriel thought. He watched that ship carefully to see if it started anything like the maneuver he had seen the earlier VoidCorp ship practicing above Grith. I don't have a weapon that would make a dustgrain's worth of difference against that. . . but if necessary, Sunshine could punch a real good hole in her updecks, possibly destroy her bridge, certainly leave her in no position for any fancy maneuvering. Enda ... he said in the field.
Gabriel, Enda said, sometimes you are very audible indeed, or rather, your imagery radiates well. She shivered. Possibly I am having some contaminating influence upon you. At any rate, if you think you must exercise such an option for the lives at stake, the price is more than fair, I would say. Gabriel swallowed hard, twice. Always nice to have support from a partner, he said, and as the VoidCorp vessel started to move slowly toward Grith, Gabriel started to choose his target, getting ready to tell the computer what to do.
The fire of starrise broke out not five kilometers away, sheeting down in ferocious blues around a sleek shape that Gabriel knew more than well. Falada's twin, with premonitory corona discharge shuddering around her weapons, all primed and ready to go: Schmetterling. She rose out of the darkness. Along with her, five other smaller ships, cutters or light cruisers with all their gunports shivering with blue-black fire, ready to go.
Gabriel looked at Schmetterling and gulped again, then he said down the comm connection to the other ships in his group, 'People, get back here quick! Close up around me in a hurry and don't move after that!'
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
