“I haven’t heard that the Dreadnought ever reduces that shield,” Tarrel said. “Part of its advantage as a weapon is that it’s able to maintain a battle-ready status at all times.”
“I fear that Captain Tarrel is correct,” Valthyrra agreed. “All the same, I still recommend that very tactic as our initial course of action. Certainly I will find it easiest to scan the Dreadnought before it begins shooting at me. I have little hope that the sensors for the impulse scanner will survive for very long once that discharge beam begins hitting my hull.”
“Yes, there is that,” Gelrayen agreed thoughtfully. “Then what we are facing is an engagement that will be very short in duration, simply because our own usefulness will probably deteriorate badly after the first minute or two.”
“I’ve seen a carrier try to engage the Dreadnought once before,” Tarrel said. “I would give you no more time than that, once it opens fire.”
“Could we get it to chase us, now that we can keep a careful track of its location?” Kayendel asked.
“It hasn’t seemed prone to giving chase before,” Tarrel remarked. “It moves in slowly and takes out everything within range.”
“Well, it has not been given much incentive to chase,” the first officer pointed out. “That situation might change once it knows that our impulse scanner works. If we could maintain contact at a certain distance, we could prolong our useful time for scanning that machine and minimize the effectiveness of its weapons.”
“All the same, I would not anticipate that we could encourage it to give chase to this ship,” Tarrel insisted. “Twice already it has allowed damaged carriers to move out of range, although it could have given chase and destroyed them both easily. Chasing would mean allowing itself to be distracted from its main goal. It’s probably programmed against chasing.”
“I have to agree with that,” Valthyrra added. “Even given that we cannot predict anything absolutely, the Dreadnought’s past performance gives us some indication of what we can expect. I do not expect that I could encourage it to chase me.”
“You seem to have a great deal of insight into how we can and cannot deal with this thing,” Kayendel remarked candidly.
Tarrel smiled. “That’s my advantage as a Union captain. I’m used to having to operate from a position of disadvantage. Starwolves are not.”
“Then what do you expect?” Gelrayen asked her.
“Well, you’re overlooking one important fact,” she began. “We already know that the Dreadnought makes routine scanner sweeps, just so that Starwolf carriers running under stealth cannot sneak up on it. The Methryn has the same stealth-intensity shields as any other carrier, so are our chances of sneaking up on it any better?”
“No,” Valthyrra admitted bleakly.
“Then, if sneaking is out, you can only make a very quick approach under stealth and try to be on top of it before it has a chance to see you coming,” Tarrel continued. “If you were the Dreadnought, loitering in system before or after an attack but not presently in battle, where would you be?”
Valthyrra brightened, lifting her camera pod. “I would stay in close to where the action is, or was. The inhabited planet is the focus of all traffic in and out of the system.”
That really was the best course of action they had. Very much depended upon whether or not the Methryn’s scanner actually could penetrate the Dreadnought’s unusual shield. Although that scanner had a proven ability to receive some impressions of a Starwolf carrier running under stealth, the shields of the Dreadnought were of a much higher intensity. They had little reason to expect that this attempt would be successful. But the Starwolves needed more information on the physical structure of the Dreadnought before they could fight it, even if they had to risk an entire carrier to obtain that information.
The problem was that they were very likely to get no return for the price they were prepared to pay.
Now that they were nearly five days behind the Dreadnought, they did not expect to encounter it in this first system. All the same, the Dreadnought had demonstrated a talent for doing the unexpected, based partly upon the fact that it was more clever than they had first thought and partly because most of their other guesses had been equally limited. After the Vardon’s report, they had no way of knowing if the Dreadnought might still be loitering somewhere in the system even after this amount of time. There was even the possibility that it had intercepted the communications to the Methryn and was preparing an ambush at that very moment. Theralda Vardon had certainly believed that it might already know about the Methryn’s modifications, a matter that had been discussed freely through the achronic channels when they had believed the Dreadnought too stupid to notice. Valthyrra was inclined to agree.
With the possibility of battle just ahead, Captain Tarrel wanted to be prepared for a fight and the sharp accelerations that would involve well in advance. While they were still a short distance out, she returned to her own cabin to put on her armor. Valthyrra’s automated equipment had completed it on schedule, exactly like the armor worn by the Starwolves except for having only one set of arms and certain structural modifications to allow for her physical differences. She was somewhat surprised to find that it had been constructed in command white, although it was the color of a ship’s commander.
She was also surprised to find that Lt. Commander Pesca was in his own cabin. He was almost always off somewhere, wandering about the ship and talking with Kelvessan in the hope of learning their language. He was trying to meet every member of the crew. The Starwolves had discovered very quickly that he could not tell any of them apart. He seemed to have a bad memory for people. He would come up to each of them as if they had never met before, even if it was their third or fourth encounter, and the Starwolves would pretend to be someone different each time. If Pesca ever paid attention to such details, he would have been beginning to think that there must be four or five thousand Starwolves aboard this ship, when in fact there were hardly a thousand due to stripped ranks and the lack of any non-active personnel.
In all the years that Captain Tarrel had been fighting Starwolves, or at least trying to avoid them, she had never anticipated their possession of such a mischievous sense of humor.
Commander Pesca looked miserable. He looked somehow like a kitten that had been left out in a cold rain, forlorn and weary and badly in need and want of comforting. Tarrel noticed that especially, not because she was able to feel any sympathy for him but because of her complete lack of pity. That was what surprised her. Since she had become a senior officer, she had always been very parental toward those who served under her, especially her junior officers. She knew that Pesca was in trouble with his obsession to learn the Kelvessan language, and that he was having a very xenophobic reaction to being trapped in alien company. He deserved pity, and yet she could not find it in herself to pity him. She realized that she had been ignoring him so far, rather than face the question of just what it was about him that bothered her. Perhaps he was simply too stupid and self-centered to develop any honest social graces, like a child who was too dull to be able to stop acting spoiled.
“Put on your armor and find yourself a safe place to ride,” she told him. “The Methryn is looking for trouble.”
“The Starwolves locked me on one of the escape pods,” he told her.
Oh? How very clever. “The escape pods have good acceleration seats, I’m sure. I can have you put off, but probably not before this first fight.”
“I’m not getting my work done,” he said, a vague and rather hopeless complaint. She took that to mean that he was not ready to be put off.
“Then what’s bothering you now?” she asked. “You’ve been in battle before. You were there aboard the Carthaginian, and the battle between the Dreadnought and the Kerridayen. You’re practically an old hand at this. And the objective of this mission is to survive. The Methryn will turn away as soon as she learns everything she can. The ship will survive, whatever else that thing does to her.”
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br /> “Yes, but something can go wrong,” Pesca reminded her. “I just realized that I’m not ready for that. There’s so much I haven’t done.”
“What, made a will?”
“It’s not funny, Captain,” he complained, then put on the most dejected face he had. “You might laugh to hear this, Captain, but I’ve never. . well, you know. I just thought I had more time, but I don’t like to think that I might have lived my entire life without doing it.”
Tarrel did not laugh, simply because she was not surprised. It was the old line about going into battle and being afraid to die a virgin. Either he really was a virgin and he meant this, or else he was naive enough to think that he could try such lines on his Captain. She could believe either case. “I’m sorry, Wally. There are only Starwolves aboard this ship, and I don’t expect you to have any luck propositioning them.”
“We’re not all Starwolves on this ship,” he suggested with an amusing lack of subtlety. “Since the two of us are alone among aliens, it just seems to me that we should stick together.” This time she nearly did laugh. “Wally, I have absolutely no interest in sticking to you that closely. I’ll give you two warnings. First, its safer to proposition Starwolves. Second, if you don’t straighten up and act like a good little trooper, I’ll have you put off this ship at the first opportunity. And if you ever get familiar with me again, I’ll ask the Starwolves to confine you to quarters until I can have you brought up for misconduct. Understand?” Pesca looked pale enough to faint. “Yes, Captain.”
“I’m not picking on you,” she told him. “That’s just the way the rules work for everyone aboard ship, although maybe it’s less formal when you work behind a desk.”
“Yes, Captain.”
She returned to the bridge, hoping that she was not late. The armor was somewhat heavy, usually an irrelevant matter since even such weight was of no consequence to Starwolves compared to the value of added protection and durability. But it was heavy to her, and she did not want to be caught in the corridors once the Methryn began two or three extra G’s of braking. She was appreciative that Commander Gelrayen was willing to surrender his seat to her, knowing that he welcomed the excuse to remain on the main bridge. He was still a pilot at heart; he wanted to be in the middle of things, not sitting on high and giving occasional directions to a ship that flew herself.
“We are ten minutes out,” Valthyrra told her as she walked carefully onto the bridge, still getting used to the weight of her armor. “What about your young friend?”
“He’s afraid of dying a virgin,” Tarrel commented sourly.
“There is nothing wrong with virginity,” the ship said. “I am a virgin, and I expect to stay one for a very long time. Monks die as virgins, and they are called holy. To be more specific, I was wondering if he is preparing himself for our transition out of starflight.”
“He was when I left him. If his sense of normal caution should become overwhelmed by baser instincts, it might do him good to spend some time on the floor. Or even the wall.”
“He seems to be having a hard time of it,” Gelrayen said, joining them at that moment. “I have told the crew to be gentle with him. His behavior is becoming rather odd.”
“I can have him put off the ship, as soon as we find someone to take him,” Tarrel offered. “I think it would be better for him if he does go. He seems to be a paranoid xenophobe.”
“Is he?” Kayendel looked up from her helm station. “Why would he want to become a linguist if he is afraid of aliens?” “Some morbid fascination to the unbalanced mind, I suppose. Half of all mental health professionals I’ve ever met were worse off than most of their patients.”
“I am bringing the ship up to full battle alert,” Valthyrra announced. “We have to be ready for anything. If this is the time, then we must move very quickly and get away.”
Captain Tarrel obediently hauled her armored self up the steps to the Commander’s station, allowing the Starwolves to attend to their last-minute duties. She was just a little annoyed that she was unable to wear her armor with the complete disregard of the Starwolves; they made it seem easy to look grand and powerful in their suits. The armor itself was only half the weight, covering the pressure suit, pressurization equipment, and a self-contained atmosphere designed to satisfy Starwolf needs for up to ten hours using a carbon dioxide converter system and solid oxygen supplement canisters. The heating was a simple wire mesh inside the pressure suit, and cooling — a more important matter under most circumstances — was a solid state unit assisted by a microcirculation network. The power, enough to supply auxiliary weapons or to run a companion’s damaged suit, came from a self-contained total conversion generator.
Her greatest problem with the suit was getting herself into the seat at the Commander’s station. In order to have the consoles with their controls, keyboards and monitors as close as possible, the station was enclosed. The seat could only be reached using the pair of bars built into the overhead console; it was a simple enough matter for a Starwolf to lift himself and his armor into that seat, even under hard accelerations, but not for her. Once she was in, her armor settled very comfortably into the seat, and the alternate set of straps attached directly to the chestplate. She set her helmet in its own rack, close at hand in case the hull lost pressure.
“Beginning deceleration from starflight,” Valthyrra announced a short time later. “Six minutes to sublight transition.” Changes of speed within starflight, although actually far greater, were far less stressful than those below light speed. The reason was simple enough; matter cannot be taken past the speed of light, but the acceleration dampers let the ship cheat by never allowing its bulk anywhere near that speed. Once the ship was moving through space faster than light, its relationship with the universe was altered and changes of speed and direction resulted in a greatly reduced energy of acceleration.
“Have you been looking at the system map?” Gelrayen asked. Valthyrra brought her camera pod around. “Let me put it up on the main viewscreen.”
She cleared the current image and installed a map of the system ahead as it appeared in her library, correcting the orbits of the seven planets by mathematical interpretation and laying in her own approach path. Like most of the systems in Union space, it was moderate in population, industry and importance. But if the Dreadnought had taken it by surprise, the damage could have been devastating.
“Captain Tarrel, do you know this system?” Gelrayen asked, looking up at her.
She found the button that released the pressure on the straps and leaned forward in her seat to look down over the front of the console. “I’ve been here a few times, but I really don’t know all that much about the system. I don’t recall anything unusual. ” He turned to Valthyrra, who had the advantage of knowing what every other ship had seen and filed. “Mining, both metals and hydrocarbon. The debris in this system is very rich. And there in a very large gas giant, which has two very large moons heated by gravitational stress, that have actual seas of hydrocarbons. Most of the plastics and other hydrocarbon products for the Rane Sector come out of the bulk processing plants in orbit here.”
Captain Tarrel made a vile face; it helped to keep her from saying certain things out loud. She remembered this system only too well now. Those orbiting bulk processors turned raw hydrocarbons into the base material for the making not only of regular plastics but hydrocarbon-based ceramics, many other synthetic materials and a variety of solvents and combustion fuels, so that only the finished products had to be shipped out of system. The Dreadnought would have ripped apart more orbital hardware here than it would have found in any ten normal systems, and the economy of the Rane Sector could well feel the effects for a century to come.
“Captain Tarrel, you seem to recall where you are now,” Valthyrra said, having witnessed her reaction.
“I do indeed,” she agreed. “You just don’t think about such places as being that important until you realize what will happen when they’re gone.”
“It could be even worse,” Valthyrra said. “My files indicate that two million people lived in orbit here. That is the reason why Starwolf attacks have been so selective here for centuries. ” “I doubt that any of them got to safety,” Tarrel said, settling her armor back into the seat. “The facilities for rapid evacuation just aren’t there. Station life is so completely free from hazard. ” Valthyrra called their attention back to the viewscreen. “If that is the case, then we must expect that major attacks took place on the second planet, the only inhabited world in this system, and at the stations on the moons of the fourth and fifth planet. This was a very slow-firing star in its early development, allowing gas giants to form close in, where lighter gasses are generally swept farther out by solar wind. Some two-thirds of the orbital facilities were located around the fourth planet, which had larger moons and warmer conditions as well as relative proximity to a belt of debris very rich in rare elements.” “What about the inhabited planet?” Gelrayen asked.
“Very little interstellar traffic was going in and out of there,” the ship explained. “There was quite a lot of specialty manufacturing, but most of that went out to the stations for shipment out of system. Most of the planet was colonized to feed the stations. As large as stations can be, it is still much easier and cheaper to farm planet-side.”
“And what if it is still in system?” Gelrayen asked. “If you were the Dreadnought, where would you be?”
“We have discussed the subject once already,” Valthyrra answered. “As it happens, that is more difficult to predict. Most of the system traffic and a large portion of the orbital hardware was at the fourth planet. We must now assume that those stations are gone and the personnel dead. A rescue mission is probably expected to press on to the only place where there is still anyone alive, the second planet.”
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