The attack came only a moment later. But the Dreadnought seem focused only on the orbiting station segments, blissfully ignoring the Maeridan as she made a very hasty escape out of orbit, letting the one moving target get away while it concentrated on targets that would be going nowhere. There were still times when the Dreadnought behaved like a very stupid machine, and times when it was only too clever. For the moment, it was content to chew away at the tight group of station components drifting in orbit.
Theralda was straining her main drives to work her way back up to light speed and the safety of transition into starflight. She had already dumped nearly half of her speed, and she would need at least six minutes altogether to work her way back up. Barely a couple of minutes had passed before the attack on the station components had ended, and she knew only too well that she was the next tempting target. She was still bearing her full load of components, and that meant that she could not even use her own main weapons. The capture ships had not yet overtaken her, and the Maeridan was far away. She was beginning to wonder what would happen to her if she engaged her star drives early. Ordinarily that would have been no problem to either ship or crew, but those segments might break loose and take large pieces of her hull with them.
Of all the ways she might have met her end, this was too embarrassing.
The first shot came in, and the Vardon’s hull shook with the explosion. Theralda was already mobilizing her automated damage control when she realized that she had not herself been hit. The discharge beam had connected with the large segment over her left wing, and her evasive change of heading had shaken off the beam before it had eaten deeply into the mass of metal and plastics she carried. Theralda Vardon had become a turtle, slowed by the very burden that protected her. And that was just as well, since she was only able to engage her hull shields.
A second beam connected with the segment above her main hull, and she was able to shake it off before it cut through to her hull. It was not a perfect arrangement by any means, since some of the power from the discharge beam was getting through to her shields and leaking into her hull, giving hell to her major power systems and networks.
Theralda ordered the capture ships to move clear and make their own run into starflight. There was nothing they could do for her now that she was under attack. She would have to take this load along with her.
“Theralda, how are you doing?” Khallenda asked anxiously.
“Surprisingly well,” she responded. “The components are protecting me from the worst of the attack. Keep yourself clear. ”
“I could come in close and shoot the straps.”
“No, get yourself out of here. I can ride this through until I can make it into starflight.”
At least she hoped so. The backs of her drives were unprotected by anything except their own retractable armored plates. Even a light discharge there would leave her unable to engage her drives, and the Dreadnought would have her. Fearful of this, she brought herself around in as tight a turn as she dared and began to rotate slowly, turning first her upper and then her lower hull toward her enemy. The components were being battered to pieces by discharge beams, large areas breaking up or burning fiercely, and too much stray power was getting into her own systems. But it was keeping those beams away from her vulnerable drives. She thought that she might still make it, although she would be in no condition to fight without some repairs.
“Khallenda, you collect our capture ships as soon as you can and meet me at Boulder,” she said. “I am going to need help.” “What are you going to do?”
“Something drastic.”
She engaged her star drives as gently as she could, kicking herself into premature transition at the cost of nearly sixty G’s of acceleration past what her dampers were able to contain. The straps held and she carried the station components with her into starflight, the damaged sections shedding a cloud of debris.
5
Captain Tarrel decided that she wanted to go out on the first flight of the Methryn, and she was prepared to do all the begging and convincing she needed to be certain that she did. As it happened, the Starwolves had every intention of sending her. They had agreed to a truce with the Union which specified that they would do everything they could to destroy the Dreadnought, and they were apparently very sensitive to the accusation that they were not doing enough. And that accusation had indeed been made by certain elements within the Union, particularly those who had the most to lose, and who wanted the Starwolves to take a brute force approach with the Dreadnought by confronting it immediately. Some believed in the old myth, or perhaps more a fear in the Union, that the Starwolves were invincible. Others did not care what that battle cost the Starwolves, or else preferred to see both enemies of the Union fight to mutual destruction.
Janus Tarrel had known, even when Sector Commander Lake had first proposed a truce with the Starwolves, that it would come to this. Union attitudes both to others and to one’s self were two-fold. The individual, such as herself, was supposed to be devoted, noble and willing to make any sacrifice toward the greater good; but greedy, cruel and suspicious when representing the interests of the Union to outsiders. Tarrel was wise enough to have figured out long ago that those attitudes were largely designed only to protect the status quo, and that she was not, herself, a part of that status quo and never would be. She was a willing servant, even protector of that system, for the simple reason that she was cynical enough to believe that it probably was the best of all realistically possible systems for human society. She did subscribe without reservation to the popular Union belief that all human society was best served by sticking together. She looked upon the independent colonies, and all would-be independents, as traitors. And, as the captain of a Union battle ship, she was willing to treat them as traitors.
At this particular time, she could not yet decide how those philosophies affected her own relationship with the Starwolves. They had agreed to do a very dirty job that was not necessarily their problem, and it was probably going to cost them dearly before it was done. She believed that they deserved some consideration for that. She also believed in the practical wisdom of allowing the Starwolves to wait until they were ready to fight with some assurance of winning. The Starwolves were the lesser of evils by far; they were only an annoyance, while the Dreadnought would apparently be satisfied with nothing less than the destruction of Terran civilization. It was better to keep the Starwolves than risk losing them by forcing them to attack too soon.
Responding to her own instincts, Tarrel decided that there were separate levels to her loyalty. As long as the Starwolves were fighting the Dreadnought, she would do anything to help them. But if she learned any secrets that would help her to fight them, even to destroy them, when this was over, that was quite another matter. She suspected, however, that her greater loyalty to the Starwolves would never be an issue. They guarded their true secrets very well, for they actually had very few weaknesses that she could ever hope to exploit. Their strengths were in things that she could never have and could not take away from them.
Her interests in being aboard the Methryn were therefore honest ones. The Methryn would be going out to hunt the Dreadnought in Union space, and she believed that the Starwolves would benefit by having her along. She could invoke the highest level of diplomatic passes, for the Combined Council itself had granted her extreme emergency powers in giving her the authority to override any Fleet or System Commander in any Sector. She could get the Starwolves any support and cooperation they needed. She had also been instructed to give them any Union secrets she felt would benefit the Starwolves in their attempt to destroy the Dreadnought. Of course, she was also given to wonder if the Union actually kept as many secrets from the Starwolves as it preferred to believe.
She certainly did not expect to be taken aboard the Methryn until the carrier was ready to go out, and so she was surprised when Commander Gelrayen himself came to collect her a week before their scheduled launch. She had seen little of th
is young Starwolf since the meeting in which it had been decided to fit his new ship with the scanner, and she had been curious about him ever since. Because Starwolf Commanders were chosen from among the pack leaders, he had very little previous command experience on the bridge of a full ship. In their last meeting, Tarrel had noticed that he did not yet seem entirely comfortable in his new role, but she had quietly predicted that he would learn quickly. She was curious to find out if she was right.
“Are you sure that I won’t be in your way?” she asked. He seemed to have more trouble than usual with her use of contractions, something that seemed to be lacking from Kelvessan syntax logic. No Kelvessan would normally use a contraction, but they usually seemed to understand the use. He seemed to lack that much familiarity with the Terran language.
“No, not at all,” Gelrayen insisted. “In fact, I would rather have you become a familiar element on the ship before we go out. With our collective inexperience, I want to eliminate as many uncomfortable elements as possible now. Would you like a quick tour of the ship? You can come back for your things later.”
Captain Tarrel was not about to turn down that invitation, knowing that he might be too busy to make that offer except in his own good time. They descended to the observation deck level for the carrier bays, where Gelrayen was able to show her the work being done on the Methryn. A surprising amount of the hull about her tapered nose was still open, considering the fact that she was due to leave her bay in only a week. Tarrel could make little enough sense of the equipment she saw exposed within the hull, although she was impressed with the scale of that machinery. Components that she would have probably been able to hold comfortably in her hands from the ships she knew were larger than herself within the carrier.
“Those are the impulse transmitters, there in the shock bumper, one to either side of the main lights, and the primary cannon dead center,” Gelrayen pointed out. “We call them cannons for good reason. At extreme range, that achronic pulse would probably knock a small ship right out of space. There are also side-directed cannons in the ventral grooves of the wing tips, that groove which runs the entire length of the ship where the upper and lower hulls meet.”
“Why does a carrier have a ventral groove?” Tarrel asked. “Mostly because of the size of the ship. The upper and lower hull are actually large pieces of armor built over the actual ship, and a ventral groove gives them room to flex. Also, the heating and cooling exchanges, the scanner receivers and the smaller remote cannons are protected from attack by being set back within the groove.”
“And what about the shock bumper?” she asked. “It seems designed to be a separate component from the ship.”
“Oh, that serves several purposes. The shock bumper is somewhat isolated from the rest of the ship, which cuts down on nuisance vibrations when aiming the cannons. The navigational shields are in the bumper, and that acts to reduce the shock of sudden large impacts against that shield. The entire assembly with the complete forward battery can be replaced as a single unit in a very short time. And it also gives the ship a bumper to push with. That comes in more useful than you might imagine.” “You are not worried about your secrets?” Tarrel asked. “This scanner is new technology for you.”
“And absolutely worthless as a technical advantage in our affairs with the Union,” he pointed out. “Our old scanners could locate your ships effectively enough, and you are unlikely to develop stealth-intensity any time in the foreseeable future. Besides, the objective is to avoid going back to war when this is over.”
Tarrel was obviously amused. “If you expect a lasting peace between us, it means that one of us is going to be whipped so badly that we will no longer be able to fight.”
“That is my expectation,” Gelrayen admitted. “You first encountered the Dreadnought more than six weeks ago. I fully expect another two to five months before we finally destroy it, if we are lucky and very efficient. What is going to happen to the Union in that time? How much more damage will Union shipping and the military fleet take in that time? And how many of our own carriers will be sacrificed fighting the Dreadnought?”
“You do not encourage me,” Tarrel said as she looked out across the vast expanse of the Methryn’s smooth, black hull. She had been feeling very safe, thinking that she would be aboard a Starwolf carrier, even though she had been aboard the Kerridayen during its own fight with the Dreadnought. Methryn would be going out to find the enemy, sticking her figurative head into the mouth of a beast with a proven history of snapping.
“I do not feel encouraged myself,” Gelrayen admitted. “Is this what it has been like for you people?”
“What do you mean?”
“Having to fight Starwolves when we possess all of the advantages.”
Tarrel laughed, mostly because he was so sincere. “No, it was never like this. We always knew where we stood with the Starwolves, and how we could expect you to respond when we pushed. Your objective was never to destroy us, and that limited the scope of our war. This thing is merciless.”
“Whoever designed it was merciless,” the Kelvessan corrected her. “Would you like to go aboard and meet Valthyrra?”
“Yes, certainly.”
He led the way to one of the two main docking tubes, a walk of some considerable distance just to board a ship. Captain Tarrel had to get used to everything involving the Starwolf carriers, operated on a very different scale, including the time it took to get anywhere. Since these ships were quicker and more agile than anything she knew, it was hard for her to think of them as being so incredibly large while she was aboard one in flight. Only seeing one in the enclosed space of a bay, standing at the nose and seeing that black hull stretch away into the distance, did its actual size become inescapable. Tarrel wondered how it even flew the way she knew it would and stay in one piece; she would have given a lot to have been in this bay six decades earlier and seen the ship’s space frame standing alone.
“Do you know, I find myself feeling sorry for Valthyrra,” Gelrayen commented as they walked the length of the docking tube. “Other carriers get centuries of light duty before they are given their first patrol. But Valthyrra has to go straight out from this bay and find the Dreadnought. This is no way for her to begin her life. But do not tell Valthyrra that I ever said such a thing.”
“I understood that she is actually quite a bit older than I am,” Tarrel said.
“She has been up and running for that long, but a carrier’s life really does not begin until she leaves the construction bay and flies for the first time,” the Starwolf insisted. “If you were locked in one place, unable to move and always seeing the same thing, would you consider that life?”
Tarrel smiled fondly. “Starwolves are secretly incorrigible romantics. Who would have ever thought? But I do see your point.”
Gelrayen glanced at her. “You might not have been told; I do not know. The sentient systems aboard a carrier are not just a very big computer that you can turn on and have a person. They are given the means of developing a complete personality and a set of basic traits, but it takes time and a great deal of interaction with others before they become a complete personality like Trendaessa Kerridayen. Valthyrra still seems just a little remote and not always very spontaneous compared to other carriers.” “Have you been with her long?”
“No, I came aboard three months ago. We were supposed to have half a year together to get comfortable before we were to go out for the first time. It seems that I was chosen to be the Commander of the Methryn some time ago, but I only learned about it myself when I was transferred aboard.”
“Why were you chosen?” Tarrel asked.
He seemed amused. “I was the Commander-designate aboard the Vardon, and Valthyrra must have been impressed with my record as a pack leader. But you will have to ask her yourself. I never have.”
“Pardon?”
Gelrayen glanced at her a second time. “Carriers are allowed to make their own choices for their Commanders, including the Met
hryn. Theralda had already chosen me to be her Commander-designate six years ago. The Commander-designate is always chosen from among the pack leaders, of course. The two ships had gotten to know each other very well when the Vardon was in for refitting a few years ago, and I suppose that Valthyrra trusted Theralda’s judgement on that subject.”
They entered through the main lock and took the lift just within to the bridge, which was in fact not a particularly long ride from the point where they had come aboard. Captain Tarrel knew that they were indeed back aboard a Starwolf ship when she found herself suddenly pressed against the wall as the lift made its typically fast lurch forward. At least she had remembered to be certain that she was comfortably close to the wall when she had stepped aboard the lift.
They entered the bridge from the right wing, stepping slowly and carefully to avoid the various tools, cables and components scattered about the deck. Technicians and members of the Methryn’s own bridge crew were all hard at work fitting the final adaptations for the impulse scanner, the work here involving the installation of a new surveillance console with an additional monitor and main keyboard. Images from the impulse scanner could of course be transferred to any monitor on the bridge, including the main viewscreen. Tarrel paused for a moment, having noticed that the main viewscreen was indeed engaged, but divided into a dozen segments to show images from various points within the construction bay.
Valthyrra, who had been watching the work on her surveillance station very closely, brought her camera pod around and rotated the dual lenses to focus on the newcomers. She seemed particularly interested in Captain Tarrel, who had considered it a point of honesty to wear her Union uniform. “Are you the enemy?”
“Not at the moment, no,” Tarrel responded. “Right now, someone else has that job.”
“Val, that is not entirely polite,” Gelrayen warned his ship quietly.
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