"Diane Duane - Harbinger 2 - Storm At Eldala" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

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.

But you're not a marine any more.

Surprising, still, the access of fury that simple statement could provide him. He was not one of those
people in whom rage clouded the vision. For Gabriel, things became clearтАФentirely too clear.

Three of the ships holding the vertices closest to Gabriel moved closer together to stop the break, but he
could see that one of them was slightly out of alignment. He twisted Sunshine off to the left, and the
enemy ship followed.

Mistake, Gabriel thought, as he flipped without warning, coasting backward on his inertia and letting the
nearest ship have it with the forward plasma cannon. Enda, warned by who-knew-what touch of fraal
precognition, was already firing that way. She hit another of the little round ships as Gabriel hit a third.
From all the targets, metal cracked and splintered outward; vapor spit out under pressure and sprayed
away as snow. More sluggish materials slopped out, went rigid and tumbled away in frozen lumps and
gobbets with the shattered remains of the vessels that had emitted them. It was
Gabriel's first close look at the destruction of one of these ships, and it confirmed what he had thought
earlier.

Undead. The pilots had been people once. Humans, fraal, sesheyans, weren . . . The important thing was
that they weren't those people any more. This killing was a kindness.

Gabriel!

He barely reacted in time as the set-of-three came diving at them. The englobement had been reduced to
thirteen and was less viable than it had been, but it was still all too effective. The ten vessels holding aloof
were defining the interior again, this time on the vertices of paired pyramids.

There were more places for Sunshine to break out; the faces of the solid were wider now. Gabriel spun
Sunshine on her longitudinal axis, raking all around with the plasma cannon. The set-of-three dived away
but still in unison.
Got to break that up, Gabriel thought and glanced hurriedly at the indicator for the rail cannon. It was