“Could it have been mines made to escape scanner detection?” Varnoy asked.
“There seemed to be no detonation of any mine, unless it could have been drawn to a ship and discharged. But the nature of the energy discharge did not suggest that.”
“Did any of the ships survive the attack?”
“As far as I know, only the Carthaginian,” she explained. “We were hit just as we were on the edge of transition, and we shook off the discharge by escaping into starflight. I’ve had the data from the event shunted over to your main computers.” They retired to a terminal for a couple of minutes while Commander Varnoy looked over the report. The data was completely raw, not yet organized in any fashion, but the message was plain enough. “That was a clever move on your part, but you were still lucky.”
“I know that,” Tarrel agreed. “I still don’t see what we can do to defend ourselves against this attack, or even detect it. There’s just not enough data to suggest how it is being done.”
“You’re actually being fairly generous in your estimation of just how much hard data we actually have.”
She nodded. “If I can stick out my neck a little farther, I have to admit some doubt that this is even a Starwolf attack.” Varnoy glanced at her. “Just a suspicion, or can you be specific?”
“Suspicions on specific observations at this time,” she said. “This seems to be a sudden and very big jump in Starwolf technology. At the same time, I have to admit that fairly simple adaptations of existing techniques might be giving very dramatic results.”
“Granted, on both counts.”
“The attack also seemed pointlessly cruel,” she added. “Starwolves can be very cruel, when they have the need. But they make very certain that you get the message of whatever lesson they want to make. And they can be very compassionate as well. This was very casual and undirected, almost like an automated weapon picking off our ships at random.”
“An interesting point,” Commander Varnoy admitted. “I still believe that we will find Starwolves behind this, and that the cold, brutal manner of the attack was to satisfy the requirements of a field test of some new weapon. But if we can’t pin it to them any time soon, we have to consider the possibility of a new enemy. Any more ideas of what to do about it?”
Tarrel shook her head. “We recorded no data that could have been used as an indicator of attack or the location of the attacking ship, and no way to trace or even estimate direction of fire. They might be right on top of us, and they might be sitting light-years away. I just don’t see any way to fight back.”
“We need more data, and I don’t see any way of getting it except the hard way.”
The station alarm lit up at that moment, red alert proximity three. Something out in the system was happening, probably dangerous. Captain Tarrel looked up, knowing already what it must be. One of the commercial vessels still out in the system had just come under attack. Commander Varnoy looked up at her, his steady gaze unreadable, before he turned to the communications monitor.
“What have we got?” he asked briskly.
“A pocket freighter coming into system just exploded,” the response came immediately. “No indication of attacking ship or weapons, but we treated it as an attack under the circumstances. Should we send out the system fleet?”
“Negative,” he answered without hesitation. “Have the entire fleet move off from the station and stand by, cargo ships and tenders as well. Order all private and commercial ships out of the system in the opposite direction from the last attack.” “Your orders understood and relayed.” There was a momentary pause. “Sir, we just lost another ship, this one much closer than the first. We have moved up the alert status to proximity two.”
“Give me a system map indicating the sites of the two attacks.”
They glanced briefly at the system schematic that came up on the monitor, enough to see that the line of attack was moving directly toward the inhabited planet and the station.
“Commander, evacuate the station,” Tarrel urged him. “Send everyone down in any life boat and small shuttle with minimal energy emissions that can take them as quickly as possible to the planet.”
“We have over four thousand people up here,” Varnoy protested, then nodded with great reluctance and turned back to the communication monitor. “Order all major power systems on the station shut down. Order all civilian personnel to evacuate the station immediately. They are to proceed to planet surface. No ships will be standing by to evacuate personnel; use emergency pods and shuttles only. Order all private ships at station and unable to disembark immediately to be abandoned.”
“Your orders understood and relayed.”
“Commander, I have to get to my ship immediately,” Tarrel insisted. “We might be able to buy some time…”
“The hell you will!” Varnoy declared, turning on her. “You have to get your ship the hell out of here as fast as you can move. You have the only direct records and observations on this enemy, so your only concern is to get yourself intact to Sector HQ by any means possible. I haven’t yet decided whether to use our own ships to buy time. For as little effect as it would likely have, I think that I would rather send all ships to safety now. Can you protect yourselves in any way?”
“No, all we have on line are drives and partial navigational shields. No scanners except some passive, and no battle shielding.”
“Then time is the one defense you have,” Varnoy told her.
“I’ll call ahead and have Carthaginian standing by to move the moment you come aboard. Now go.”
Captain Tarrel left without a word of farewell or a glance back, and she did not even think to ask until it was too late whether he meant to join the evacuation or stay at his post. So much probably depended upon whether or not there was time to clear the entire station of inhabitants. The halls of the station were filled with people hurrying to find shuttle bays and life boats, many of them struggling to carry small children or valuable records. All in all, this was a relatively small station serving a limited colony. They might just all get away, especially if the unseen enemy was having to maneuver or decelerate to attack. And if the major power systems were shut down, there was some reason to hope that the station would be spared destruction. She still held to her pet theory that high-level emissions drew attention from the automated attack systems of their adversary.
She made it to Carthaginian’s nose lock quickly enough, in spite of the confusion in the station. She sealed the lock herself and released the docking grapples manually, and the battleship began sliding backward out of her berth only a few seconds later, drawing back somewhat faster than her usual habit. Tarrel approved completely, although she was given to wonder just who had the helm at that moment.
By the time she reached the bridge, they were already pulling clear of the station and turning about to maneuver clear. The area was full of ships; even the Sector Fleet was running, so there was no doubt that Commander Varnoy had considered them ineffective in covering the evacuation. The ships were moving up from the station, away from the planet below, while the shuttles and pods were dropping away quickly toward atmosphere. Anything else would have made navigation completely impossible.
“What does it look like outside?” she demanded, hurrying to her seat before accelerations put her against the walls.
“We have nothing absolutely certain since the station stopped relaying active scanner data,” the surveillance officer reported. “I have recorded the destruction of two more ships, one within two light-minutes of the planet and one just outside of orbit.”
“What the hell do they want?” Tarrel asked quietly. The Starwolves would never wantonly take out a tactically unimportant station, just for the sake of destruction. “Take us out of this system as fast as this ship will move. Our destination is Sector Headquarters.”
“Still maneuvering for room to run, Captain,” the helm responded. “The local traffic is rather heavy.”
“Make it quick. And give
me the station centered on the main viewscreen.”
There was no indication of attack at first, until a small freighter pulling away from the far side of the station suddenly flashed like ball lightning for a prolonged moment before it exploded. At least the little ship’s destruction was relatively feeble, since her generators had not yet been brought up to power to feed her drives. A second freighter exploded, then one of the ships of the system fleet and a freighter still at dock. The explosions continued to intensify, until Tarrel was certain that they had come under multiple simultaneous attack. That had not happened during the earlier attack. The ships had been taken out one by one. Beneath her awareness of this change in tactics and demonstration of new abilities, she realized that it meant they had probably just lost their only chance of escape.
“Get us under way if you have to go through something,” she snapped.
Carthaginian began to move forward rapidly, still swinging around her nose in the process. But the viewscreen remained fixed on the station, and Tarrel could see clearly the moment the assault was turned upon the station itself. Great arcs and branches of lightning began to leap over the far end of the station, as small portions of its components began to explode in a series of sustained blasts. Tarrel thought the effect was much the same as if the beams of some powerful weapon were being played across the surface of the immense structure, pouring in raw energy until metal exploded, white-hot, nibbling away at the five mile long station. In spite of that concentrated barrage, ships still fleeing the station were still being taken out at regular intervals. If this attack came from a single ship, then it could divide its attention and, firepower among many targets.
Moments later, the members of the bridge crew were pressed into their seats as the Carthaginian began to accelerate rapidly toward her transition into starflight.
The Carthaginian arrived at the military complex of Vinthra five days later, the best speed that the rather abused battleship could manage. At least the time allowed her crew to make what repairs they could, so that she did not limp into port nearly a derelict. Captain Tarrel did not know until later, but her proud ship was in fact severely scorched from the discharge of energy that had nearly destroyed her. At least the active scanners were mostly back into the grid by the time they arrived, and the hull shields were fully operational after extensive rewiring. Carthaginian was an old ship, her frame and most of her hull over two hundred years old, although she had seen no less than five complete refittings in her life. After switching out some damaged components, the old battlewagon could easily go out for another two hundred years, assuming that Starwolves and other mysterious things bumping about the stars did not make short work of her.
Carthaginian was a lucky ship. She had fought Starwolves, minor encounters to be true, twenty-one times in her long career, five of those encounters resulting in her unscheduled refittings. Once she had even been captured and sold back, that being one method Starwolves had for earning their living. Now she had survived two brushes with this new, devastating weapon. Captain Tarrel considered that to be nothing short of a miracle, failing to credit that this matter was largely due to her own cleverness and her uncanny ability to know when it was time to run.
A meeting of the Sector’s senior coordinating officers was scheduled as soon as Carthaginian came into the system, the data she carried and the personal observations of her captain very much in demand. Although Janus Tarrel was young, she did possess a gift of listening to, understanding and remembering everything she heard, and that gave her a wealth of experience to call upon that was not necessarily her own. She knew what to expect from this meeting, so she was not taken by surprise. The minds of armchair admirals with policies cast in stone followed predictable paths. They accused her first of fabricating the whole affair to excuse her incompetence in losing the entire convoy. They questioned her resourcefulness in failing to find a way to protect her convoy against this new weapon, although they could think of none themselves. Finally, having failed to discredit her, they politely asked her advice. Which they largely ignored.
Her one, curious ally through all of this was Victor Lake, the young Sector Commander. They had served together in their earliest days as junior officers, including that first assignment aboard the Carthaginian, and at one time they had been quite close. Lake had come from what was now a rather obscure branch of the ruling Sector Family, unimportant enough to think that the only favors his connections would gain him had already been granted in his commission in the Sector Fleet. But he was clever, earning for himself first a ship, then the post of System Commander, and finally the unexpected title of Sector Commander.
He was not loved by his senior commanders. Coming from the Sector Family, he did not believe the propaganda and hollow beliefs that his seniors worshiped, but he was more capable for his more realistic views, and so respected for his abilities. He was very well-liked by his commanders and captains in the field, largely because he was no more cruel to the colonies than policies he could not control forced him to be, and also because he did not expect heroic, futile gestures in facing the Starwolves.
Captain Tarrel had actually not seen him in the two years since his sudden and unforeseen promotion to Sector Commander. His new duties had brought him to Vinthra, and she had immediately been given command of the Carthaginian by his order. She often wondered if that had been compensation for a relationship that was no longer expedient, both excuse and reward for making herself scarce.
Commander Lake had remained largely silent during those times when the mood of the council had turned hostile toward her. They had both recognized the importance of allowing the matter to blow over by itself, although that did not help to sweeten her opinion of him. When all was said and done, he had decided upon the course of action, although his decisions were in certain respects surprising. The council had recommended attempting contact with the unknown attackers, using a small fleet of drone cruisers as bait. Tarrel did not expect to be given command of that mission herself.
She hurried out into the corridor the moment the meeting adjourned, hoping to demand some word from Commander Lake on several subjects. She was almost surprised to find that he had waited for her; in her own philosophies, she had believed that he had been trying to shun her company since his promotion.
“You wanted to talk?” he asked casually, almost daring her to be angry.
“I want to talk business at least,” she responded. “If nothing else, I would like a better idea of what you expect of me. ”
“That is not unreasonable,” he agreed. “We can speak privately in my station office. Will you accompany me?”
“Is that an order?”
“If this is business, then it is an order.”
They walked together, for his offices were only a short distance down the corridor on that same level. Tarrel refused to be intimidated by any man she had taught to be half-way good in bed; she had never kept his company for the sake of his sexual abilities, but because they were like minds. While his response so far seemed to argue otherwise, she was satisfied that he was not going to pull rank on her simply as a ploy to keep her silent. They could still talk. Once she felt certain of that, she found that she was no longer so anxious or annoyed over the matter.
Despite his words, Lake took her not into his office, but into his private quarters. The Carthaginian’s shuttle bays were no larger than this suite of apartments, its decor rich but understated. He watched her as she looked about. When she saw him staring, he smiled wryly as if sharing some subtle jest.
“Would you like something to drink?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not while I’m working. You know me better than that.”
“Are you working?”
“I’m thinking about business. You pay me to think, remember?”
“I suppose I do,” he agreed. “So, what are you thinking?” “First of all, I’m thinking that you might be using me as bait.”
Lake considered that briefly, and decide
d that he should pour himself a drink. “Do you know, the trouble with my new job is that I often have to think like a mercenary. I wish that there was no need of mercenary thinking in the military, but there it is.” “You propose to send me out to face that thing again, and you expect me to be understanding?”
“No,” he agreed simply. “It might not be fair to ask you to stand up to that thing one more time. If cannon fodder would get the job done, I would send those fossils I have to keep around as resident experts. You seem to have some idea of how to handle this situation.”
“I keep running away?” Tarrel asked.
“You do have to survive long enough to learn something.
And that is very much the point. I’m going to give you a small convoy of old ships, anything we can find in a hurry that is nothing but scrap. We can have those slaved to your navigational system so that they will fly in formation around your own battleship, and then we’ll send you to locate the area where that thing was last known to be. When it starts nibbling away at your convoy, you’ll know that you’ve made contact and you have a few moments to attempt communications. If they don’t answer, then you get the hell out.”
“You seem to believe that this is not Starwolves.”
Lake shook his head. “Starwolves don’t behave like that. They can be damned dangerous, especially if they catch you doing something they don’t like. But they do live by certain rules of their own making. I can’t say that I really give you much hope of success, but we might learn something more by provoking another attack. If they don’t talk, and if you don’t find some way to fight them, then find yourself some Starwolves and discover what they have to say on the subject.”
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