well, it depends, if you take the route which takes you through the motherload of xenon with an armada of ships, you will be able to avoid dying, but they of course will get the shite blown out of them- on the other hand, if you take the longer but safer route, you will be sitting happy, because any ships you take with you will still be with you (that is, if they havent lagged behind).

Basically- if you are lucky enough to have a save that far back, choose to go with bret on the longer but safer route with a small//medium/large/motherload/holy crap amount of ships with you (i.e nova, titan if you can afford it, etc etc, basically fighters and maybe a corvette or two), set all of the fighters to protect the slower ships, and the slower ships to protect you (or follow bret), this way all of you get there pretty much at the same time.

Once there, simply get the slower ships (which might i add- helps just a BIT if they have all their turrets equipped with SOME form of weaponry! also- might be an idea to equip them with some missiles, and set their missile fire probability to something high such as 90% or 70%)

get the fighters to follow you or to ''attack all enemies'' and you are sorted!

if you don't feel like going all macho ''look at me and my fleet of shiney shooty ships'' then you can also get just a few fighters and also some SQUASH mines, and set them a little way away from the gunner so if anything DOES get close, it will die a humiliating, quick and gibb filled death ^.^

Oh yes- and as it says in the manual- if a job can be done with 2 ships- send 10!

No, go away