Captain Tarrel was not completely certain what it all meant, except that a portion of her mind that was always devoted to business was thinking that, if the Union had this impulse scanner, the Starwolves would never again be able to slink about their systems unseen. All she could do was to remember everything that she possibly could of what she heard, for all the good it might do. The Union had trouble with the most basic achronic technology, so they could never reproduce this. She followed dutifully as Asandi and his flock of Starwolves made their migration through the station. Her presence had not, however, gone entirely unnoticed. When they entered the tram on the military level, Asandi joined her.
“You will tell me if you learn anything that you shouldn’t,” he said. “I have too much to worry about to remember to pay any attention to what you might be hearing. How many secrets have you dug up, by the way?”
Tarrel almost laughed, thinking that Asandi was good at pretending to be a kindly, doddering old fool. “Only one, really. We fool ourselves, back where I come from. The Union is completely out-classed. Your Starwolves could have made short work of us long ago.”
“No, not really,” he told her. “We have the technology, and you have the numbers. When we have pressed you to it in the past, usually without meaning to, you have been able to put together fleets large enough to pull down a carrier. Do you realize that you people have destroyed two-thirds of the ships we have ever built?”
“Just returning the favor,” she quipped, although she was surprised to hear that.
“This is some fine war that we’ve been fighting,” he continued. “We’ve been at it for thirty thousand years. Either side could end it at any time, and neither side wants to pay the price that would demand of us. I wonder if we might be able to keep the truce, once we get rid of this monster.”
“Unless it eats us both alive,” she commented.
The mood of the meeting in the Fleet Commander’s office was a strained, brooding one. Commander Gelrayen sat somewhat apart from the others, looking remarkably like someone who had found himself in trouble and did not entirely understand why. He was a young Kelvessan, in so far as they all looked young. Perhaps it was fairer to say that he seemed less experienced than the others. While the others wore command white, he was in the solid black of the fighter pilots. She recalled that his carrier was still in the construction bay, and she realized that he had probably never commanded a ship in flight before.
“There is no reason to make an issue of this,” Asandi declared as he took his own seat behind his desk. “This is not an emotional matter. We are here to discuss the merits of fitting the Methryn with the first of these pulse scanners. At issue, I suppose, is the question of whether or not a ship that has never even flown should become the spearhead of our attack against the Dreadnought.”
“ An inexperienced ship, and an inexperienced commander,” Gelrayen added. “I might point out the Methryn might still be the best choice. If we have only one ship with an impulse scanner, it might be tactically best to have that ship stand off from a distance and supply information to the others. They could then remain invisible to the Dreadnought.”
“Assuming that we move out now to attack the Dreadnought,” Daerran said. “First we have to test the impulse scanner to see if it works, and to what degree. Then we have to do something about finding a way to make that machine vulnerable to our weapons. The Methryn would have a lot of work to do. ” “Then you take the Methryn out,” Gelrayen told him. “You have good, solid battle experience, but you need a ship. Your experience, and that of your crew, makes up for Valthyrra’s lack.”
“Captain Tarrel, what do you think?” Asandi asked suddenly. She sat up straight, looking surprised. “Give the impulse scanner and anything else that comes along to the Methryn, and make Commander Gelrayen take her out to fight. He has no experience, meaning that he has no preconceived ideas of how a carrier should fight. You need your most inventive Commander running this ship, and inventiveness is the only thing that will make your new toys work for you.”
“That is a very remarkable statement,” one of the Starwolf Commanders said. “Could it be that, in your desperation to get help to your people as soon as possible, you have some motivation in having any carrier modified as soon as possible?”
“Are you accusing me of being devious?” Tarrel asked. “It is hardly in the Union’s best interest to send out a carrier that is going to accomplish nothing except get itself damaged or destroyed.”
“I am not questioning your honesty,” the Kelvessan insisted. “I only wish to suggest that desperation might be influencing your judgement without your being aware. We are not trying to be stubborn. As you say, it does no one any good to send out a carrier that cannot accomplish its mission as well as one of the other ships.”
Fleet Commander Asandi sat back in his chair. “I see no reason to question Gelrayen’s ability to command. He has been a very capable pack leader for nearly a hundred years, with something of a specialty in dealing with unusual and dangerous situations. The Alcaissa Disaster done—”
“You were responsible for Alcaissa?” Tarrel interrupted in surprise.
“Were you at Alcaissa also?” Gelrayen asked.
“At Alcaissa? It happened a decade before I was even bom.”
“Kelvessan tend to forget about time,” Asandi told her discreetly. “The point is that he can handle the Dreadnought as well as anyone. But the fact remains that he has a carrier that has never flown and a crew that has never before worked together. Can they give him what he needs of them? Commander Gelrayen?”
He considered that carefully. “The crew might be new to each other, but they are by no means inexperienced individually. When I asked the carriers for crew and packs, they sent me their best. I see no reason to doubt them. As for my ship, I can say only this, Valthyrra is no longer young. Methryn has been under construction for sixty years, and her core was engaged almost from the first. She has been able to interact with people and other ships for at least five decades, and she has settled into her personality completely. But I cannot deny that she has no experience in flight, much less battle. She might be slow in anticipating what is required of her.”
Asandi was watching the Kelvessan. “If the Methryn receives the pulse scanner, what would be your recommended course of action?”
Gelrayen already seemed to know what he would do. “I would like one day, possibly two for a trial flight. Then I would take the Methryn out to find the Dreadnought, test the impulse scanner from a safe distance and possibly play some slightly dangerous games. That first mission is to collect the information we need to find a weapon to fight that thing.”
Asandi turned to Commander Daerran. “Do you think that the Methryn can tease the Dreadnought into revealing more Secrets?”
“I cannot say,” he admitted. “The Dreadnought might be able to keep the rest of her secrets from us until we do find a way to strip her shield. My suggestion is that we test the pulse scanner, and put Dalvaen and his people to work finding a scanner that will see through that shield.”
“We need more information,” Dalvaen said. “The information we expect to collect from the reflection of the pulse will give us our first detailed information on the actual composition of that shield. We might be able to infer the total output of power expended in maintaining that shield, whether the ship’s hull is immediately below the shield or some distance within, even the number and location of shield projectors. We also expect to learn whether the Dreadnought possesses conventional drives or some other type, perhaps a non-reactive drive like a complex jump drive. Engaging any of those drives will affect the shield. In fact, the flare of conventional main and star drives require venting through the shield.”
“That sounds like a tall order,” Asandi observed.
“No, not at all,” Dalvaen insisted. “We have a series of experiments that we need done, and recommendations on the best and safest way to get the Dreadnought to respond properly. The Methryn ca
n do it.”
Asandi turned back to the others. “I want Kelvessan input on this. You live and fight out there; let it be your decision. Consider this a vote, and give me your recommendation. Dalvaen, you seem to have indicated your judgment already.”
“I am not a Starwolf,” he reminded them. “I cannot say that I should get a vote. But as I have said, this is something that the Methryn should be able to do easily enough.”
“I understand,” Asandi assured him. “Commander Daerran?”
He nodded in agreement. “Gelrayen should make a very competent Commander. He can make up for his ship’s lack of experience with his own.”
“Commander Schyrran?”
“I agree,” she answered. “We could have the information for that next step Dalvaen spoke of by the time some other ship would only just be ready to go out.”
“Then make your vote unanimous,” the final Kelvessan added. “There seem to be more reasons for than against.” “Then I’ll put in that order for an impulse scanner for the Methryn right now,” Asandi concluded.
Captain Tarrel settled back in her chair, feeling very satisfied that Starwolves really did know how to do the right thing. In the Union, they would have only just gotten down to serious arguments toward a decision that would have been based as much upon personal ambitions, petty jealousies and prejudices as practical considerations. She had to admit to herself that her own judgement was based mostly upon her feeling that Gelrayen would make a very good Commander, but she was willing to place her complete trust in that judgement. If she could manage it in any way, and she suspected that it would not be hard, then she meant to go along.
-4-
Every time the Dreadnought changed its area of attack, every system in Union space seemed to tremble with fear of where it might appear next. In this matter, the independent colonies and the alien worlds were every bit as vulnerable as the Union itself. If anything, those worlds had the most to lose. An attack on one of the free colonies might mean the wreck of their ability to trade off-world, and eventually a loss of their independence. And for some of the smaller or less advanced alien races, just one attack could mean the collapse of their civilization. But if the Starwolves were unable to defeat the Dreadnought, or if it was able to defeat them, then all of known civilization was doomed anyway.
Part of the problem within Union space was the delay of information. News of an attack could spread only as fast as military couriers, and sometimes the commercial ships, could move through the lanes. No one except the Starwolves had effective long-range achronic communication, and their limited numbers of ships could not be everywhere at once. Usually only the sector capitals and a few other major worlds could expect a Starwolf carrier to pass through, and so most of the others were ordinarily aware only that they actually had been in danger several days afterward, and their current status could never be predicted. Some of the smaller or more remote colonies did not yet even know of the danger, as much as an attack on their system was likely to affect them.
Beyond that, the Dreadnought was not being selective. It would appear seemingly randomly at one system, take out the next system or two possessing a station or any significant traffic, and move on. The relative importance of the system, or the amount of traffic it contained, seemed not to influence the judgement of the Dreadnought in the slightest, just as long as it found something to destroy. That certainly suggested that the alien machine had not mapped Union space to any great degree, or at least it was not following any map of targets of strategic importance. It was designed to be unstoppable, meaning that it acted on the assumption that it could simply fight in its own good time until its enemy was utterly destroyed. And since, at least at this stage, traffic would return to a major system within days of an attack, there was no reason to expect that it would not return, perhaps again and again to some place it had found rich in prey. Even if it was not planning ahead, no one doubted that it was at least keeping some record of where it had been and what it had seen.
The situation was hardly any more comfortable for the Starwolves, who now found themselves assigned the duty of guarding Union space. They were facing an enemy they could not see and could not fight, advantages that they had themselves always enjoyed in the past. The carriers were also under orders not to risk serious damage in a fight they could not win anyway. The best they could do was to find evidence of an attack as soon as possible and rush their warning to the surrounding systems in the hope of getting there before the Dreadnought. None of the carriers had actually encountered the Dreadnought since the battle with the Kerridayen, and so the Starwolves on patrol had not yet faced the question of what they would do with it if they did find it. Or face the question of how ready they were to fight to protect their old enemy.
Theralda Vardon, one of the younger carriers, was handling the situation as best she could. Her standard patrol route had been trimmed of every system unlikely to be attacked, and now she was running every six days a patrol that used to take her weeks. In most systems she would drop out of starflight for no more than an hour, just long enough to present the reassuring sight of herself to local scan and to exchange news, and then she would go on again. Once the Dreadnought appeared somewhere else, she would conclude her present round of patrols at the sector capital and give her engines a chance to cool. Fortunately the carriers had in fact been built for this type of abuse, even on an unlimited basis.
Once this was over, however, every carrier was going to submit herself for refitting as quickly as bays became available, for all that carriers were usually extremely reluctant to agree to the prolonged confinement of the bays. Some would probably have to wait. The refitting bays were very likely to be filled for some time to come with unlucky ships like the Kerridayen, in need of refitting whether they wanted it or not. The carriers that were still sound and capable of flight would have to take the others patrols until those ships were ready to go out again. No one willingly considered the possibility that there would be ships that might never fight again.
The subject of what would happen when the Dreadnought was destroyed was, however, an intriguing one to Theralda Vardon.
She brought the boom of her camera pod around and then forward into the upper bridge. “Commander Schyrran?”
He glanced up from his main monitor, as edgy as any of them about sudden interruptions, then relaxed. “What is it?”
“I was thinking that we are just taking it for granted that the war will resume once the Dreadnought is destroyed,” she said. “I have realized that does not necessarily follow. Certainly the Republic will wish to see if the truce can be extended into a permanent peace. Does the Union have any reason to accept peace?”
“That might depend most upon just how badly the Dreadnought wrecks their interplanetary travel,” he answered after reflecting upon that question briefly. “If they lose quite a few stations, especially the large ones, and a significant portion of their ships, they could be left hurting very badly. And if they lose their ability to make war altogether, they would have to keep the truce for quite some time. If the peace lasts for several years, they might actually learn that peace is at least as profitable as war, something we have been trying to tell them from the start. I wonder ...”
“Commander?”
“If they do lose the ability to make war, we could actually take advantage of that,” Schyrran explained. “We could keep their military reserves at a very low level by constant, selective raids. We might even be able to force a formal surrender on them.”
“I cannot see Starwolves harassing an enemy that cannot fight,” the ship observed. “And we might be at a disadvantage ourselves. We cannot guess how many carriers we will have left when this is done. They are presently fitting the Methryn with a special scanner that should be able to target the Dreadnought, but the news out of Alkayja is not otherwise encouraging and we must still actually fight that machine to destroy it.”
“That is true enough.”
“And we have so f
ar talked as if we are very confident that we will find a way to defeat the Dreadnought,” Theralda added. “As things stand now, even with this new scanner, I cannot believe that we will destroy it. We might yet be forced to abandon the Union and escape with what we can of Kelvessan and Terran civilization.”
Schyrran seemed doubtful. “Before it comes to that, we would probably send one of the carriers as an envoy to the Aldessan. They will know of some way to destroy this thing.”
“They might,” Theralda agreed uncertainly. The Aldessan of Valtrys had done the actual genetic engineering to create the Kelvessan, who still spoke the Aldessan language and used their names. And the carriers were themselves Aldessan technology, not Terran. The Kelvessan looked upon the Valtrytians as their all-wise, all-knowing parent race; almost as gods. “Commander, we will be dropping out of starflight in two minutes.”
“What, so soon?” he asked, meaning that in jest. The Vardon was making her patrol at such tremendous speed that most of her jumps were only a few hours in length. “How soon will you have scanner contact?”
“Coming up now, Commander,” the ship replied. She was moving so fast that the effective range of her scanners in terms of distance corresponded to a much smaller amount of time than it usually did. Her achronic scanners had only just reached into the system when she suddenly whipped her camera boom around out of the upper bridge.
“All crewmembers stand by,” she announced to the entire ship. “This is a class two battle alert. All on-duty personnel to their posts. All pilots and damage-control parties stand by. All nonactive personnel will remove to the inner sections.” “Trouble?” Commander Schyrran asked, while the bridge crew waited to hear the worst. The fact that Theralda had issued a class two alert meant that the ship was not immediately threatened.
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