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“Are you ready, old friend?” asked Fey at his side.

“No. Let’s go.”

Their first leap took them within firing distance of the Reluctant. Before she could bring their guns to bear, they were gone. Sen angled his next jump to place him between that vessel and the next in the metallic swarm. He hopped, created a ghost of himself, and hopped again, this time to a safe place where he could watch.

Reluctant belied her name and fired! The powerfully huge bolt, a recent Imperial development, sliced through the false Oswaft, scoring a deep and crippling hit on her sister vessel, who had fired only slightly behind the other ship. This bolt was a near miss, but it caught an escort fighter and vaporized him instantly. The Oswaft outline dissolved and was gone.

Sen jumped again, creating another threatening image of himself. It had much the same effect as the first: the enemy counted on a target to absorb the lethal force of his guns before they struck a sister vessel. They were wrong, and discovering it too slowly. A million Oswaft followed Sen and Fey, repeating the same actions. Space was lit with thousands of fierce, futile bolts. Men died by the hundreds until the trick was finally puzzled out.

By then it was too late. Shouting at the top of his voice, Sen crumpled a pair of fighters, then concentrated his energies on a cruiser. Lando was right: her shields were too dense to have any effect. He stopped shouting at everything but the gnatlike fighters, and hopped and hopped, making sure each time to place himself between two capital ships.

For their part, as they saw the destruction of their own numbers by their own guns, the navy slowed even more, trying to aim its fire so as not to endanger the fleet. This was useless: either there was nothing to shoot at, or the bolt would knife through the observed enemy, blasting a cruiser or a dreadnaught instead.

In fifteen minutes, the fleet was reduced by 11 percent. Then the shooting stopped.

By that time, Shanga’s diminished squadron had made two more runs against the Falcon, losing another fighter. With Vuffi Raa at the controls, the freighter had gradually drawn them nearer where the fleet was busily destroying itself. Fire leaped here and there, lighting up the eternal night. Navy fighters blew up, showering their mother vessels with debris, spreading damage further. The Oswaft darted in and out, their numbers very slightly diminished, too, as the sentients grew tired or careless.

Aboard the Falcon, Lando bore down on the quadgun once again, turning a small spacecraft into drifting junk.

“Say, that wasn’t one of our bandits! That was a navy fighter. Where the Core are we, Vuffi Raa?”

From the control room, the robot replied. “Entering the zone of conflict between the Oswaft and the fleet. I’ll try to keep us clear of any large ships, since we—There! Got another one!—since we can’t maneuver like the spacepeople.”

A cluster of fighters swooped past the Falcon, ignoring her while blasting toward a cruiser that was breaking up. Three Oswaft, concentrating all their power, had done that when one of her shields was down momentarily, due to a collision with a fighter.

Suddenly, Shanga’s men were back, diving on the Falcon by turns, drawing her fire, getting in shots of their own. There was only one of Lando, and his arms were getting weary from their constant work at the quadguns. The Falcon looped and soared, outmaneuvering the fighters again and again. Weapons flared, men died.

Without warning, all action ceased among the fleet. The blast and brilliance of shooting stopped as if someone had turned a switch. Every fighter was recalled.

At the center of things now, Lando and Vuffi Raa and Lehesu watched as a broad corridor was cleared among the ships. Shields up, they were immune to the Oswaft, and, as long as they didn’t fire on the vacuum-breathers, they suffered no more losses.

“Something on the scope, Master.”

“Keep me advised.”

Through the space cleared by the fleet,