“Are we hit?” Gelrayen asked anxiously..
“No, damn it all,” the ship snapped, cursing in Terran now. “I just ran out of fuel.”
“Varth!” Gelrayen exclaimed. “Valthyrra, you happen to be a new ship. You could not have run your entire supply of water through your conversion generators in just the last few days.”
“No, I have twenty tons of distilled water in my main tanks,” the ship said. “Unfortunately, no one back at the station ever thought to switch me over from my reserve tank to the main line. Right now, all I have is just enough power to hold my shields at stealth intensity for a few minutes more, and some field drive maneuvering left over. The line has to be switched manually. It is not something I can do for myself.”
“Oh, this really is stupid,” he commented, then turned to the engineering officer. “Gheldyn, do you know where to find this reserve tank and switch the line over?”
“Yes, I believe that I do,” she answered, with slight uncertainty.
“I will deliver your lift as close as possible, then talk you through it over your suit com,” Valthyrra told her, and Gheldyn hurried to the waiting lift.
“Val, this is going to take time,” Gelrayen reminded her. “What do you propose to do with yourself until then? Can you call the Maeridan back to cover us?”
Valthyrra brought her camera pod back around. “No, I sent her away. For some reason, the Dreadnought has not attempted to open fire or even to track me by impulse scanner. I might have hurt it more than I thought, or else it has some programmed priority to secure any damage before continuing to fight. I can still see its shadow following my original escape path. It has not yet noticed my change of course.”
“Well, where are you going now? We seem to be descending back into the ring.”
“I am taking us back to that moonlet where we were. I intend to back myself into that cubby and sit there until I have full power.”
Commander Gelrayen did not have to think about that for very long. “Val, is that really a good idea?”
“No, but it is the best idea we have.”
Whether it was a good idea, a bad idea, or just, plain stupid, this was what Valthyrra intended to do. It seemed like a longterm solution to what sounded like a fairly simple problem, but no one felt like taking her to task over the matter. Her plans seemed complex, unorthodox and rather extreme, as Captain Tarrel had pointed out, but they did work fairly well. She had taken on the Dreadnought and actually seemed to have gotten the better of the argument, and she was the only carrier who’d managed that. It was hard to fault her after that.
She was still able to track the Dreadnought as its shadow passed over the stars and minute sparks discharged against its shield, which led her to wonder why, with a very large and colorful planet just below, it did not see her own black hull. Of course, both ships were right on the very edge of the plane of the ring. Her shape might not have been quite as obvious as it passed just above that clutter. Then she realized that the Dreadnought was blind. That shield swallowed light, so there was nothing coming through for visual identification. The only thing it seemed to have was its impulse scanner, and yet she knew that it employed that only at rare intervals. It had to be using some type of common scanner, passive and active, although less effective than her own because of the difficulties of seeing through that shield. It had not used impulse scan since her attack, which led her to wonder if she had damaged it more than she would have expected.
She reached the moonlet, braking very gently with her field drive, both to spare her very limited power resources and to avoid detection as the Dreadnought passed only sixteen hundred kilometers above her. As it happened, both ships were actually moving opposite the orbit of the planet, so that the use of braking thrust actually increased the Methryn’s speed to match that of the moonlet.
“Gheldyn reporting,” said the chief engineering officer. Valthyrra kept the message on bridge audio so that the others could hear.
“What do you have?” Valthyrra asked.
“A problem. All of the tubes are here, but the actual line leading from the main tanks to the pump, and the distribution grid to the ship’s conversion generators was never built. I have several hours of work here, if I try to do it myself. Perhaps half an hour or less if you send me an engineering team to assist. I could certainly use another pair of hands.”
“Where would you keep them,” Tarrel asked quietly, finding the thought amusing even under the circumstances.
“I anticipated the need, and a damage control team will be there to assist you any moment now.”
“I will be as quick as I can,” Gheldyn promised.
“Did you know that line was not completed?” Gelrayen asked.
Valthyrra brought her camera pod around. “I knew that it would have been done in the last few hours before my launch, and I do not recall it happening. Considering our situation, I had good reason to suspect that it might not be. Anticipating the other part of your question, that is also why I wanted some place where I could hide for some time.”
They noticed then that Captain Tarrel was easing herself down the steps from the upper bridge. The actual weight of the armor was less a problem to her than the fact that she found it more awkward then she had expected, at least descending the steps when she could not see where she was going. Once on level ground, she was able to carry herself fairly well.
“Do you feel safe?” Gelrayen asked.
“I was given to understand that this ship could not generate the power to send herself anywhere if she had to,” Tarrel answered. “I thought that I had better move about a little while I can. And I’m dying of curiosity. What did you do to the Dreadnought? I was blinking too much to see anything.”
“It lost its shield for a moment when my cannons matched frequency and were able to penetrate,” Valthyrra said. “That serves as an important lesson on the virtue of stupid ideas. It was a risk, but it worked. If I had had power for my conversion cannon, and a little more time, I could have destroyed it.” “Remind me never to play cards with any of you people,” Tarrel commented. “The gods smile upon fools and Starwolves with stupid ideas.”
“They also play their little tricks,” Gelrayen added. “Valthyrra, I hope that you were able to record what you saw.”
“I did get a good contour scan of what I could see, which was unfortunately only about twenty percent of the Dreadnought’s total area,” she answered. “The fact that it began to swing around before the shield went back up was the only thing that allowed me to see more than just its tail end.”
“I could sense its conversion generators while that shield was down,” Gelrayen said. “Apparently the shield itself is able to suppress even that psychic response.”
“Psychic? Are you trying to tell me that you Starwolves are mind-readers? I had assumed that your ability to sense high-power systems was a function comparable to ordinary scanner.” She paused a moment, thinking about the matter carefully. “No, pardon my skepticism, which was misplaced. Nothing you could tell me about Starwolves would ever surprise me again.” Gelrayen wisely treated the matter as settled. “I did not, however, sense any drives in operation. Is that because they simply were not engaged at that moment?”
“No, not entirely,” Valthyrra said. “I simply did not see any main drives or star drives of any conventional sense. In fact, I saw nothing that I would consider an external drive of any type. Of course, that is not a surprise.”
“No?” Tarrel looked surprised.
“We had already guessed that the energy flare of conventional drives could not be contained within that shield,” the ship explained. “I do not have to remind you that our own shields must have openings for the drive flare, or the wash will overload and bum out the shield itself. That is part of the reason why our packs almost always attack a ship at the drives first.”
“That, and to take the ship mostly intact,” Tarrel added. “Yes, there is that. If the Dreadnought had conventional drives in any
sense, it would have had shield vents. If such drives were vented through the shield, the Starwolves would have been able to sense them, and shoot through those vents.”
“Do you have any better idea of just what sort of drive it must possess?” Gelrayen asked. “Would it be a highly refined jump drive?”
“That is my best guess at this time,” Valthyrra said. “I cannot believe that even the most powerful field drives would be able to take a ship into starflight, unless it also employs an acceleration damper of almost flawless efficiency. It might also use a type of drive unlike anything we know. All I do know now with any reasonable certainty is that it does not use conventional drives.” “Well, it’s a shame that we weren’t able to destroy it while that shield was down,” Tarrel remarked. “Do you think that we might be able to use that same trick again?”
“That depends upon how well the Dreadnought learns from its mistakes. We might be able to set up some variation of that same trick that might fool it.” She paused, lifting her camera pod slightly as if listening to some distant sound. “Gheldyn, do you have any estimates for me?”
“Another five minutes at least,” the engineering officer responded over the bridge audio.”
“Do the very best you can. We are running out of time.” She turned her camera pod back to the others. “The game begins again. The Dreadnought seems to have recovered from whatever I did to it and is moving through the outer edge of the ring detonating some manner of concussion discharges.”
“Trying to shake us loose?” Tarrel asked.
“Perhaps. Those concussions are creating some very intense plasma shock waves that would react sharply with my armor, producing a very clear signature on passive sensors. They are not a direct danger to me, however.”
“But if it finds us, we should be able to run,” Gelrayen added.
“I certainly hope so,” the ship agreed. “If I pull myself well back into this hole, the moonlet will shield me from any shock wave unless both the concussion and the Dreadnought itself were somewhere in front of the opening. We might just be able to ride this out.”
“Famous last words,” Gelrayen remarked to Captain Tarrel.
She nodded. “I think that I’m going back to your seat before anything else happens.”
Tarrel took herself back to the upper bridge and strapped in for battle, fairly certain that it would come without warning. She could not believe that they were going to get out of this one. The Dreadnought was a weapon that possessed tremendous abilities, and she doubted that the Methryn’s one lucky shot had damaged it all that much. For that matter, she did not entirely trust Valthyrra’s belief that it was only trying to chase them out with concussion discharges. It knew, within a relatively specific area, just where they were hiding, and it probably meant to destroy everything along that portion of the ring to have them.
She strapped herself into the seat on the upper bridge and watched as the Starwolves continued about their business with a frustrating lack of concern. For the first time in what seemed like a long while, Tarrel was reminded of the rumors and legends about Starwolves that she had lived with all her life. They were said to be nothing more than coldly efficient weapons of war, incapable by design of either compassion or fear. Since meeting them, she had lain aside all of those old beliefs and suppositions. There was certainly no reason why they would be risking their lives and their ships to protect Union worlds, except compassion. But she wondered now if their calm reaction to danger was something they had by design, or if it was something they had learned with experience.
Their first warning that the Dreadnought was close was the sound of the concussion discharges, rolling along the hull of the ship like distant thunder. The lack of an atmosphere meant that they were hearing the passing of the shock wave itself, and the absence of air also allowed the shock wave to travel farther before dissipating. Just the same, if those shock waves were still rolling through, then their point of origin must be very close.
“Gheldyn, we really do need to be going,” Valthyrra said.
“Another minute,” the senior engineer answered.
“We really do not have a minute,” the ship insisted.
“You also do not have a complete main line.”
Captain Tarrel decided at that point that they were in serious trouble. The next concussion thundered in, this one strong enough to shake the immense carrier. Valthyrra was turning her camera pod from one station to the next, where members of the bridge crew waited patiently at consoles controlling systems that still lacked the power to respond.
“Gheldyn, are you accurate in your estimate?” she asked at last.
“Yes. We are making the final connections now.”
“Then I am going to move the ship quickly, even if it uses all the fuel elements left in the lines. You keep working straight through this, since I am going to need that power immediately. This tactic will not get us out of danger, but it will buy you that time.”
“I understand,” Gheldyn promised her.
“Commander, I am going to do something stupid,” she said, turning toward Gelrayen. “Stupid times demand stupid gestures. May the gods pity us one more time.”
Before he could reply, another concussion struck the ship violently. The moonlet was caught on the leading edge of a powerful shock wave and sent tumbling slowly by the force of that explosion, and the Methryn was carried with it. Only the fact that Valthyrra had maintained the hull integrity shields at battle intensity saved the carrier from damage as her wings and upper hull were dragged along the interior of the cubby. After the first few seconds, the moonlet settled into a predictable roll that Valthyrra could match.
“Scanner contact,” Valthyrra reported. “It knows where we are. I no longer have any choice.”
The ship engaged her main drives at full power without bothering to first move clear of her hiding place in the moonlet, hurtling herself out into open space and well beyond the Dreadnought. Even then she did not let up, switching from one conversion generator to the next to pull every remaining bit of water from each line in the distribution grid. By the time the last generator gave all it had, barely half a minute later, the Methryn was nearly two million kilometers out from the gas giant and drifting at a third the speed of light. Captain Tarrel had reacted to an abrupt twenty-seven G’s of sustained acceleration predictably. When she did come around, she was going to regret it. The stress drugs had her stirring weakly almost immediately.
“Gheldyn?”
“I still need just a moment.”
“Hurry,” Valthyrra insisted, then lifted her camera pod toward the main viewscreen as it shifted to show the image behind the ship. “Stupid idea to buy time, part two.”
The moment that the Methryn had left cover, Valthyrra had re-established contact with the drone that she had hidden earlier, ordering it to keep pace with her. Although she did not yet know it for certain, she had every reason to believe that the Dreadnought was somewhere behind her, in spite of the fact that it had never before pursued a fleeing ship. She had made herself particularly annoying, if not an actual threat, and her sudden loss of power probably made her a very tempting target. Even if it had not been following her from the start, it had almost certainly taken up the chase by now. And considering the display of speed that she had seen earlier, that was a disquieting thought indeed.
Valthyrra wished that she still had power enough to bring up her shields at stealth intensity — all she had left was battery power for environmental systems and herself — then the Dreadnought would have been forced to give itself away by targeting her with an impulse sweep. She was surprised and very gratified when that sweep came anyway. Perhaps the Dreadnought, fearful of yet another trap, was wondering what had become of the Maeridan, the first carrier that had attacked it. That sweep gave Valthyrra the very information she needed most. The alien weapon was indeed behind her, and coming up fast.
Fearful of being fired upon while she lacked the protection of shields, Valthyrra respon
ded in the only way she could. Under her direction, the drone unit that had been standing idle just beside her raised its own shields to stealth intensity, a function very important to a reconnaissance probe. Then it turned and began to accelerate rapidly toward the Dreadnought, rapidly even by Starwolf standards. Being a fairly simple machine, it lacked the capacity to question any order it was given, as long as that order came from a valid source. It made its run directly toward the Dreadnought, which responded very predictably with another scanner sweep. It might have tried to open fire, but its discharge beams were barrage weapons and not designed for tracking such a small, swift target. Riding those impulse beams to their source, the drone rammed the Dreadnought at a combined speed over half that of light.
In a way, this was more than just a delaying tactic, but an experiment in itself. Normal shields were of three types. Defensive shields were designed to deflect or absorb energy weapons but could be penetrated fairly readily by solid objects, while navigational shields caught up any solid objects in a series of projected waves, clearing a safe path ahead of the ship, but were completely transparent even to delicate nuances of information in returning scanner beams. The Dreadnought’s powerful shell was, of course, a defensive shield, but one of such great intensity that it should have seemed solid to any physical object striking it. Valthyrra wanted to know that for certain, rather than simply continue to assume that it worked that way.
If the drone went through, the combined energy of impact at that speed would have to be measured in megatons of force. Indeed, it would have simply vaporized a very large portion of the Dreadnought and probably shattered the rest, and that would have been the end of their problems all the way around. Unfortunately, Valthyrra knew immediately that the intensity of the actual explosion indicated the destruction only of the drone, although the shield continued to flash with great sheets and flares of discharge for several seconds afterward. That had probably been the result not just of the explosion itself but the distortion of the shield under that impact. A ton of spacecraft hitting at over a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers a second has a lot of force behind it.
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