Take all this information, Gabriel said. Store it in every ship's computer in the fleet that you 're able to reach. If even one survives to bring this home, we may lose this battle, but we'll have a better than even chance of winning the war."After that?" she said aloud.We'll see if we can make this little change in the Externals' ships, Gabriel said, and even things up slightly.Query: chances of success? Delde Sota asked.Gabriel shook his head. We 're rolling double or nothing on this one. Do what you need to and hurry. I won't move until you're done.He was afraid, afraid that the pulse he felt from the "mind" of the installation, considering so calmly, might burn him out in its passing. He was also afraid that using the information in this way, targeting the External ships with the pulse meant to burn out their protective screen, might also tempt them to destroy the facility itself, no matter how much they wanted it. Gabriel knew little or nothing about the psychology of his enemy, except that it was inimical to everything human. He was moving in an information vacuum and was very afraid to move in any direction at all, yet at the same time he didn't dare not move. People were dying.Delde Sota had withdrawn from Gabriel, standing still for a moment, planning out how to handle her intervention, concentrating. Gabriel stood there and shivered, for the wash of terror and pain that he had picked up earlier was even stronger now. The battle was in full career, and it was not going well for the Concord. The External ships were slicing them up with great energy beams like blades, and the Star Force weapons were just sliding off them, unable to inflict any similar damage. Kroath were landing on Galvin and Alitar, killing people, stealing people. Here and there, bizarrely, were the VoidCorp ships, waiting, doing nothing, but everywhere else, local space was full of the silvery bloom of lost atmosphere as ships burst apart, spilling their crews into vacuum, exploding. One swung past with an External ship in pursuit as another ship akin to it blew not far away, and Gabriel got a sudden sense of familiarity."Schmetterling!" Gabriel cried."Schmetterling comms." There were screams in the background, sirens, a voice yelling "Get me that damage report! What the hell's happened to the main battery?""This is Gabriel Connor. Get me the captain. I think I can save her ship."A pause. Then that fierce voice. "I thought I would have taken help from one of them sooner than from you, but the ruthlessness of the situation makes liars of us all. What have you got? Did you find what you were after?"He had no immediate answer for that. "Listen, I think we can even up the odds a little. These guys have a shield—"She swore. "Tell me about it. I hit them with everything I've got and it makes no difference!""I think I can do something about that. If it works, they're going to lose those shields shortly. They may not even realize it's happened at first.""I'll pass the word, but you'd damned well better hurry up!"Gabriel felt around inside the installation and was shocked to feel the wave of power growing in it, beating against him like a wind felt from behind."It won't be long. There's information we'll be dumping to Schmetterling's computers—and to all the other ships in the fleet. It has to get back to the Concord. It's the hardware and software information for a similar shield.""Well do it, then! We have a few problems up here at the moment, and I don't have—" An explosion, and sudden silence. Gabriel frantically groped for the contact but couldn't get it back. "Delde Sota, go!" he screamed.In her mind, she fled down her contact with Schmetterling, still alive though her audio comms were gone. She had carrier; it was enough. Down into Schmetterling's computers, which resisted her for ages—several seconds at least—Gabriel could hear the doctor's cry of frustration as she worried her way through course after course of firewall meant to prevent just this kind of attack. Then she found a chink, slipped through, and was in.Now the tricky part. She was intent. She was also a doctor and was not distracted by the blood and screams that she could "hear" all around her. She was in the middle of a procedure. Doctor Sota ran down the circuitry and solids of the ship's computer, found memory empty there, and impressed the plans on it—the equations, the installation's own visualization of the hardware needed to manage the mass reactors and gravitic coils and all the other changes and tweaks that would be necessary to make the new shield work.All around Gabriel, the power of the Precursor facility was building to its peak. He was still afraid, afraid that it wouldn't be enough and that all these ships full of brave and desperate people were going to die.The power peaked."'Delde Sota!" Gabriel shrieked.She did not bother to answer with her voice. She knew he could feel her flashing out of the computers in Schmetterling and leaping to the computers of other ships in the fleet. In microsecond jumps, she printed the data in their computers' memories, firewalling them so they could not be accidentally overwritten or altered. A moment of approval and surprise, even for her, as she slipped into the Lighthouse's Grid and planted the data there. The sheer size of it impressed her. Then on to the rest, packing the data down into every one of even the tiniest ships. Some exploded behind her, but she did not stop. She kept up the dance from machine mind to machine mind until every one still extant had the data.The Precursor facility's power was beating harder against Gabriel, impatient to be let go, but he had to wait until Delde Sota had done what was needed. She was still in the midst of the dance, checking her work, making sure that none of the ships' computers had dumped the data."Done!" she cried.With the power of the Precursor facility rushing through him like the great waterfall on Danwell, Gabriel picked up one image he had not intended to. The landscape inside Elinke Dareyev's mind, now suddenly flooded with horror and grief as she saw the huge spheroid ship swing away from cutting up Tournant not twenty kilometers from her, then come in with that great blade of energy ready to slice Schmetterling in two. This is it, he heard her think. My people, my poor people, oh, my poor crew! She got ready to die, but shouted, "One more time! All weapons, fire!"" Go!" Gabriel said to the facility.The force blasted out around him, through him, whiting out Gabriel's world in a torrent of power and pain. He had no idea what kind of pulse was being generated. It seemed to him to be running around under the crust of the planet as if under a skin, then pouring out of from every crack and crevice, blasting into all neighboring space and propagating at lightspeed, possibly faster. Were there tachyons and other faster-than-light particles involved in this? No way to tell for sure. All he could do was concentrate on bearing this, not losing himself in it, for there were more things he would need to do afterwards. The pulse tore through all local space, and he could feel it begin to impact the Externals' ships. Where it touched them, something happened that he was not sure how to define. As the pulse touched those shields, he could feel them. They seemed to be in the process of creating subatomic particles that did not actually exist. Fire from the Concord ships hit the enemy vessels, creating patches of these not-really-existing particles, and the patches turned the ships' fire away—until the firestorm stopped, at which time they vanished.Except now, when the pulse hit the ships generating the screen. For a millisecond, the ships were completely screened—and then suddenly their screens could no longer generate the particles at all. The hulls of the Externals' ships were suddenly just so much metal and alloy.Gabriel felt Elinke watching hopelessly as that External ship swung toward her, swung in close with that blade of energy.