Then came an intolerable glory of light off to one side, a burning pain all up and down Gabriel's side, as if someone had thrown burning fuel on him. He rolled Sunshine away from the pain. He had just enough power left in his emergency jets to do that. The first light had just been the "pilot" detonation. Now came the secondary one, and Gabriel squeezed his eyes closed tight.The little ships were fleeing in all directions, but six of them were caught together as the squeezed nuke went off. The remainder knew they had no chance against Sunshine even damaged as she was. They kept running.Space grew still and dark, and in it Sunshine drifted, tumbling gently and losing power. Gabriel sat there gasping in the darkness of the fighting field as the power ebbed away, the weapons losing what little charge they had left."Okay," said a gravelly voice from out in the darkness. "That went pretty well, I thought." "Helm," Enda said sternly. "You were not supposed to do that." "Aw, Enda, you're too rough on the two of you."Gabriel knew what the words meant, but he found them hard to believe at the moment. It's the software,he told himself. But his brain insisted that he couldn't let down his guard, that something terrible might still happen. Those little ships were only fighters. They could not have come all this way by themselves. Somewhere around here was the fortress ship or dreadnought that would have dropped them. It could not be allowed to find Gabriel and Enda, not alive—not even dead and in one piece. The pilots of those little ships were reminders enough that there were some fates worse than death."All the same, we cannot be constantly relying on overarmed allies to come sweeping in out of the darkness to save us!""I thought that was what you kept me around for."
