He cursed, the sweat running down his back and tickling, but there was nothing he could do about it. Slow down, Enda cried, make them count!He saw her take aim and fire at another of the ships as it plunged past them. She scored a hit, but not a killing one. The ship arced away, leaking atmosphere in a ghostly silvery veil, but its engines were untouched.How many now?The targeting software says sixteen, Enda said.Gabriel cursed again and tumbled the ship once more, wishing that he did not have to handle piloting as well as firing. The attack unfolding around them was a standard englobement with ten small vessels at the vertices and six stitching in and out of the defined space. The enemy craft held Sunshine at the optimum locus of the englobement.There were tactics for this kind of engagement, and Gabriel had tried all three kinds. He had used the "place holder," where you shoot from optimum locus because it's the best position. That had worked only as long as the gunnery power was at optimum power. He had then tried the pattern-breaker approach in which you killed enough of the englobers to make the number of ships at the vertices ineffective. Unfortunately, Sunshine's weapons had begun to run low just as this approach began to work.There were still sixteen of them and no realistic hope of reducing the numbers to the critical eight or below. There was nothing left but the rush-and-break, the set of moves enacted simply to escape. This Gabriel hated, first because he suspected these little ships could outrun them; second because he suspected they would chase Sunshine straight into the welcoming field of fire of the big ship that had dropped them out here in the distant dark of Corrivale's fringes. Also, he hated to run. Marines didn't run. They fought.
