Wham! He went blind as the first jolt of plasma hit him. Ranging, the first one was just ranging, Gabriel thought, staggered, staring around him sightlessly as he tried to get some kind of reference from the program. While he asked for diagnostics from it, Gabriel fired around him blindly with his own plasma cartridges, just two or three times. "Better not to feel helpless even when you are," his weapons instructor had told him. But he did not have unlimited armaments. Enda! I cannot see-
Gabriel's own "vision" was clearing a little. Tactical at least was coming back, showing him the widely divided shapes arcing around to have another pass. Diagnostics were showing some hull damage- microcracks and stress fractures in the hull shielding, but mostly in the aft section. Fortunately atmosphere was not leaking out-yet, anyway-though through the JustWadeln software, the hull was moaning like a beaten animal.
Show me which one hit us with that big blast, Gabriel said, and the computer obligingly highlighted that ship. It was another ball-bearing shape, a tumbling sphere, the farthest one away from Sunshine at the moment. It seemed to be slightly larger than its companions. Watching its almost erratic tumbling, Gabriel thought that perhaps its weapon left the craft with a bigger energy consumption curve than the pilot might have wished. That's something to play with. Concentrate on that one, Gabriel told the computer. Work out its trajectory. I want plenty of warning before the next pass. Enda?
It is better, she said and then paused. Ah!
WHAMl Another huge impact. A few seconds later something bounced hard off the cockpit windows and left a white smear that froze instantly to opaque ice. What the heck was that? Gabriel wondered. Ah-ha, Enda said, and there was another WHAMl-but no impacts this time. Tactical showed them two of the ships gone with various large fragments left spinning about.
Interesting, Enda said, sounding very satisfied indeed. / did not notice that this software had a specifically fraal-oriented implementation.
Didn't read the manual before this? Gabriel said. Shame. Look out, here they come again. And here comes that big one. I don't want to take another hit from that. He felt behind him briefly for the "shotgun." He would not power it up just yet, preferring to save it as his ace in the hole. Here came the larger ship again, finishing its big slow swing away and starting to slide back toward them. Recharging, I would say, Enda said. Let us see what it has in the way of passive defense. He got a sense of Enda stitching down the length of it with her own plasma cartridge weapons, but Gabriel had his own problems and could not spare her much attention. Another of the little ships was diving in close, and his own plasma cartridges shot out toward it-and missed as it jumped abruptly sideways. What the- It was not specifically a nonrelativistic type of movement, but it was not one likely to be produced by any drive Gabriel had ever heard of. Jump!-and it went sideways again, missing another cartridge. Analyze that, Gabriel said hurriedly to the computer. Give me a hint on how to do "windage" for that kind of motion.
The computer signaled acquiescence, but Gabriel began to wonder whether it was going to come up with an answer in time to do him any good. He began firing slightly scattershot, thinking, No use conserving ammunition if we're going to be too dead to use the leftovers next time. The ship arrowing in toward him jumped again sideways, and Gabriel suddenly thought, The other way!-and fired to one side of it. The ship jumped, bloomed into sudden fire, then sudden darkness as air and liquid sprayed away, spattering Sunshine's cockpit windows as the wreckage plunged by. "Now," Enda said.
WHAM!
Sunshine rocked and wallowed, and both of them were blind again, virtually and tactically. Desperate, Gabriel felt around behind him for the "shotgun," determined not to go down without one last shot. But he felt someone pull it out of his hands, taking control of the system, and then he felt something he could not understand, a great peculiar roar, like blood in the body shouting defiance before spilling itself or being spilled. And a faint echo of that cry from somewhere else, he could not tell where, but it froze him with a sense of great age and fear--and after that came a strange sudden silence in the software, as if the computer had come up against some response it had not been expecting.
Slowly their vision cleared. Gabriel looked around hurriedly to determine the location of the remaining craft and caught sight of nothing but one hasty starfall off in the distance, red-golden fire sheeting over the surface of another of the little ball-bearing craft. Then it was gone.
"I really must send a nice note to Insight about that software," Gabriel said softly.
"You might want to wait," Enda said, rubbing her eyes. "Void-Corp has been known to monitor drivespace comm relays before this, and they routinely scan for mail that is intended for their enemies."
"So it can wait. How many hostiles was that?" Gabriel asked the computer.
Six, the computer replied.
Gabriel swallowed hard. "Did you count six?" he said to Enda. "I thought there were five." She told the computer's virtuality field to lift from around her, and she sat back in her seat, tilting her head from side to side. Not, Gabriel thought, as a gesture of negation, but because she was wondering whether she might hear the brains slosh when she did so. His own certainly felt wobbly enough, and there were other parts of him that might need drying off as well.
"Five, I thought," Enda said. "Obviously we both missed something in the heat of the moment." Gabriel rubbed his face and looked again at the computer's diagnostics. "You're not going to like this," he said, "but I think the cargo bay may have taken another hit. Look at the stress schematic back there." Enda glanced at it and made an annoyed face. "One more problem," she noted, "but there is another that interests me more. Our shooting was better this time." "Just barely," Gabriel said. "Yours was what saved us."
"Leaving that aside," Enda said, but Gabriel noticed that she did not contradict him, "look out there. Bodies."
They both bent closer to the computer tank, looking at the slowly spinning outline. "Body, anyway," Gabriel corrected. "At least I don't see more than one. And it looks more or less intact. Human?" "So it would seem, but you were the one who suggested you wanted to see who or what had been shooting at you."
"So let's go get it and take a look."
Gabriel brought the system drive back up from standby and nudged Sunshine toward the floating shape. "Probably won't be recognizable," he said, "after explosive decompression."
"Are you expecting to see anyone you recognize?" Enda asked, getting up to go aft and check the seals between the main section and the cargo bay.
"Hard to say at this point, but no one knew we were going to be here. Or at least no one should have known."
A brief silence. "You did not file a starfall plan, then? Or an insystem flight plan?"
"No," Gabriel said as he inched Sunshine closer to the spinning, tumbling form. As they got closer, the tactical display in the tank was better able to show a shape. Definitely humanoid, Gabriel thought. There was something odd about the head though. Even an e-suit helmet would not be quite that big, as a rule. Enda looked out into the darkness. "Well, we knew there was surveillance of some kind going on, did we not? Now we know that it is not merely random or casual. Something quite sophisticated is being used on us."