With the Mardayn unwilling to withdraw, the other carriers had to hold their own positions for fear that any movement might alert the Dreadnought to their presence, if it did not know already. Distances within a system were deceptive; a system looked like a relatively small and crowded space, with no part of it more than a few minutes away to a fast ship like a Starwolf carrier. But those distances were still great enough that none of the five carriers could have moved quickly to assist another. Tracking with cannons would have been impossible at that range, and a missile would need minutes of flight time.
“Commander, I can see the flaw in this plan,” Valthyrra warned. “As the Mardayn comes closer to the Dreadnought, we will have to terminate our tight beam transmission of scanner images or the other ship is going to detect that signal for certain. And that is going to leave the Mardayn blind. I am now ordering the Mardayn to break off.”
“She can simply ignore you,” Gelrayen remarked. “Keep feeding her all the data you have, no matter what.”
“The Kaeridayen is supporting my decision to terminate the attack, and the Mardayn seems likely to agree. This is the very reason why I should have been the one to go in after the Dreadnought.”
Unfortunately, by the time the Mardayn agreed that it was time to retreat, it was already too late for her. The Dreadnought made no change in either course or speed; it simply attacked. The Starwolf carrier suddenly found herself caught in a broad, pale beam that was stripping away power from her shields faster than she could pour more energy into them, leaving her nothing left over for her weapons or drives. She called for help, loudly and directly, and the other carriers hurried to her rescue. The Methryn hurtled herself in through the system so quickly that Captain Tarrel lost consciousness during the first few moments.
If any of the other ships could have drawn a part of that fire or made a distraction of themselves, it would have helped. Unfortunately, they were simply too far away to be a threat. Even as the Mardayn struggled under that first assault, a single beam of intense power struck her in the nose and began to eat steadily along her length through the core of her main hull. After only seconds, that narrow beam had cut into her engineering regions and the powerful conversion generators already struggling to meet the demands placed upon them to maintain the shields. The Mardayn was lost in a blinding flash, like that of the explosion of a small star; an explosion so great that it knocked even the Dreadnought from its course a thousand kilometers away.
The other carriers reacted furiously to the sudden, violent death of their sister, turning to strike without hesitation. As soon as the Methryn was able to resume her transmission of impulse images, the two closer carriers hurtled in to attack while the Dreadnought was still disoriented from the force of that explosion. Captain Tarrel admired their determination. The absolute destruction of a Starwolf carrier was such a rare event that she found herself shaken almost beyond the ability to think clearly. Granted, the Starwolves and their ships were probably designed to always keep going, no matter what.
“I am advising the other carriers to keep themselves moving constantly and quickly,” Valthyrra reported with deceptive calm. “These new weapons are obviously effective only if they can be locked on target for several seconds. We can counter that by darting in and making rapid strikes with our main batteries.”
“Do the other carriers understand?” Gelrayen asked.
“They have acknowledged,” Valthyrra said, bringing her camera pod around to face where he stood behind the Commander’s station. “No doubt in response to its failure in its battle with me, the Dreadnought determined the need to increase its effectiveness. Either it had these more powerful weapons in reserve, it adapted weapons it already had, or it created new ones.”
“Trendaessa Vardon was right,” the Starwolf commented sourly, watching the impulse scan on the main monitor. “That machine does have more tricks than we gave it credit for.”
“You people seem to be missing the whole point,” Captain Tarrel declared, sounding rather desperate even to herself. “That machine just took out one of your carriers. What can you do now but throw bolts at a shield that you know you can’t penetrate this way?”
“Yes, you have a perfectly valid point,” Valthyrra agreed, lifting her camera pod slightly. “Commander, I am ordering the packs to the fighter bays. This is what we should have done from the start.”
Gelrayen nodded slowly. “I can see no other way that we might salvage this situation.”
Valthyrra Methryn was taking herself into the system as quickly as she could, building her speed steadily to take herself just barely into starflight for the few moments she needed. The Vardon and the Destaen were trying to engage the Dreadnought by themselves, since neither the Kerridayen nor the Methryn would come into range for another couple of minutes. They were trying to fight a ship that they could not track directly, through the impulse images being relayed to them by Valthyrra. Their attack so far had proven to be completely ineffective, but at least the Dreadnought seemed unable to lock its new, more powerful weapons on the carriers as long as they kept moving.
After a quick conversation with Trendaessa Kerridayen, Valthyrra began braking somewhat early. Since she was the only carrier that lacked auxiliary shield generators, she would stand off a short distance and provide accurate impulse scans of the Dreadnought to help the other ships to coordinate their own attack. That also gave her the opportunity to get her fighters moved down to the bays and launch her packs, something the other carriers could not manage while they were engaged in quick evasive maneuvers.
“Commander, the first packs are moving into the bays now,” Valthyrra said. “The Kerridayen has joined the Vardon and the Destaen in battle.”
“Are they having any success?” Gelrayen asked.
“That is extremely hard to measure. The objective now is to blind the Dreadnought completely by depriving it of all external sensors, and we can only judge whether that plan is effective by the deterioration of the Dreadnought’s tracking control. I am not yet certain that we have had any success, but it will take time. ” As Captain Tarrel interpreted that, the Starwolves would know that their attack was effective if the Dreadnought failed to destroy them. They knew, or assumed with very good reason, that the Dreadnought was able to see by means of sensors extended through the shield, and that it could be blinded by burning off those sensors with cannon fire. She agreed with Valthyrra that the fighters, quicker and far more maneuverable than the carriers, and much smaller targets, were better suited to this task. The carriers had been doing the fighting so far on the assumption that they were more durable than the fighters, but that assumption was possibly in error. The Dreadnought had the weapons to destroy a carrier, but the fighters might have a superior defense in their ability to evade.
But even if the Starwolves did succeed in blinding the Dreadnought, and silencing its weapons, that still did not mean that they had won the battle. As Captain Tarrel saw it, the Dreadnought could either run blind or simply sit tight where it was like some creature safe in its shell. When their first trick had failed, she felt that it was time to clear out before things got worse and send the Starwolves back to their drawing boards to work on some new weapons for cracking that shield.
“Commander, the Kerridayen is down,” Valthyrra warned.
“What happened to her?” Gelrayen asked, hurrying to consult the scanner image.
“The Dreadnought was able to lock on her with a discharge beam,” the ship explained. “Her main generators seem to be down; no doubt the discharge was powerful enough to disrupt her main power grid. She is trying to retreat on secondary power, but the Dreadnought is chewing her to pieces.”
“Move in to intercept,” Gelrayen told her. “We have to give her time to get away.”
“I am moving in now, and the Freighter Taerregyn is coming into system to assist in towing. I am launching my first packs now.”
The first group of four packs hurtled out of their bays on the Methryn’s
belly, drives flaring as they emerged beneath the carrier’s nose. Guided by Valthyrra’s scanner images, they moved off quickly to intercept their prey, assuming their standard Vee formation before each ship at the end of the wings moved to take positions one above and the other below the pack. As soon as the bays were clear, Valthyrra moved away the empty racks and began bringing forward the next groups of fighters.
At the same time she was holding herself on a course to intercept the Kerridayen, ready to do whatever she could to distract the Dreadnought. The Destaen was there ahead of her, sitting off to one side of the Kerridayen and turning the full power of her main battery against the Dreadnought, heedless of the discharge beams ripping apart her enhanced shields. The alien weapon continued to focus the greatest part of its attention on the stricken carrier, blasting away sections of her unprotected hull. A large portion of her nose and wings were gone already, tom apart by internal explosions and burning furiously.
“Valthyrra, be careful!” Gelrayen warned her sharply. “If you lose your impulse scanners, then we will be the ones who will be blind and helpless. The Kerridayen has to have lost her own already.”
“Trendaessa Kerridayen is dead,” Valthyrra said softly. Gelrayen looked up at her camera pod. “What do you mean?”
“Her main computer grid is destroyed. What remains of her crew is trying to abandon ship, and we have to buy them time.” Valthyrra turned her camera pod to the main viewscreen. “I am ordering the packs to stand clear of the Dreadnought, and I am charging my conversion cannon. Transports from the Vardon and the Destaen as well as my own are standing by to collect escape pods from the Kerridayen.”
“Conversion cannons have no effect on the Dreadnought,” Captain Tarrel reminded her. “The Kerridayen tried that one before.”
Valthyrra turned her camera pod. “I do not anticipate damaging it.”
Before she had a chance to act, the Destaen also took a very bad hit in her main engineering regions and was shaken by a series of explosions that disabled her drives and most of her main conversion generators. The damage was very serious, but not a threat to the survival of the carrier as long as she was protected from further harm. That left only the Methryn and the Vardon in any condition to fight; the Taerregyn was a freighter and possessed only minimal weapons. Valthyrra rotated about, locked her conversion cannon on target and discharged the stellar reserve of energy that she had assembled in her conversion holding chamber. She released that flood of searing power slowly, pouring it over the Dreadnought’s shield for as long as she could.
Valthyrra cleared her impulse scanner as quickly as she could, as soon as she had exhausted her reserve of energy, fearful of how the Dreadnought would respond. Perhaps she had done in one stroke what the other carriers had been unable to manage, blinding the Dreadnought by burning away the sensor array and other detection devices extended just outside its shield. The immense machine remained drifting on its previous course, deflected slightly by the Methryn’s conversion discharge, its weapons still. Valthyrra doubted that this condition would last for long; she instructed the other ships to hurry in their rescue efforts, and ordered the packs to keep clear of the Dreadnought for fear of provoking a response.
Now that the Destaen was crippled, the Taerregyn had no choice but to tow it to safety, leaving the burning hulk of the Kerridayen’s remains behind. If the Dreadnought left the wreckage alone, perhaps they could return later to discover if any of Trendaessa’s memory units remained intact and could be salvaged. The Taerregyn moved in directly above the Destaen and settled until the two ships were nearly touching, and the freighter locked onto the carrier’s hull magnetically with retractable grappling units. Once the two ships were secured, the Taerregyn engaged her main drives and began moving them both to safety. The Methryn and the Vardon remained behind, waiting for their transports and capture ships to gather in the Kerridayen’s escape pods.
“Judging by the number of escape pods I have counted, I believe that we can hope to recover one third to one half of the Kerridayen’s crew,” Valthyrra reported. “I have ordered the packs to return to their bays, since there is no hope in continuing this fight. The Dreadnought is still distracted with her own condition.”
“Are we giving up?” Gelrayen asked.
“No, but we are going to do this the way I knew it should be done from the first. As soon as we have all survivors aboard, then we are going through that shield to destroy that monster.” “According to the plans we have discussed?” Gelrayen asked, although he knew what her answer would be. “How many fighters do we have modified so far?”
“Only two, but I have every reason to expect that to be enough. The question of pilots for those two ships remains. Granted that I expect you to claim one of those ships for yourself, and I do not intend to protest that. This mission will require your experience and judgement. Will you take Pack Leader Teraln with you?”
Gelrayen looked unhappy. “The problem in deciding is that we have never had a chance to see our packs in operation, so all I have to judge them on is their records. Teraln looks like the best choice.”
“I am moving the fighters to the lower left bay and having them fitted with auxiliary weapons,” Valthyrra told him. “We should be ready to launch in a quarter of an hour.”
“I want to go down to the bay now and have a look at that ship,” Gelrayen said, then turned to Captain Tarrel. “Would you like to come with me?”
“Yes, I’m very much interested in this great plan of yours,” Tarrel said as he helped her from the seat. “My Starwolves seem to be keeping secrets these days.”
“Well, you are the enemy,” he told her as they descended the steps from the upper bridge. Gelrayen paused to collect his helmet. “When Valthyrra observed that the Dreadnought is able to see by extending probes and sensors through that shield, she began to wonder how that was done. A shield that dense should seem completely solid to any physical object, and its tremendous power should have fried any electronics being poked through. And yet we know that the Dreadnought does extend some of its most sensitive sensory devices through its shield. How?” “Good question,” Tarrel agreed as they stepped aboard the lift.
“The answer is so simple that Valthyrra only had to think about it for half a minute,” Gelrayen explained. “Any shield is simply a projection of a great deal of energy, and there would always be static discharge between the ship and the shield except that the shield is grounded to the ship. Under those circumstances, anything that is also grounded to the ship is grounded to the shield as well. That tells you how to put something through a shield.”
“Yes, I see,” Tarrel agreed. “Then modifying a fighter to penetrate that shield is very simple. The tricky part is actually doing it.”
The concept sounded reasonable enough and she believed that the Starwolves might actually make it work. It involved some piloting that she would not have attempted, but the flying skills of the Starwolves were legendary. There was something about this business that bothered her a great deal, but she was not going to mention anything to Commander Gelrayen at this time. By the time that the lift had carried them all the way back through the ship to the bay, the packs that had been launched earlier had already come back aboard. Two packs had returned to that bay, and the overhead handling arms were lifting the large black fighters into their racks for safe storage.
Gelrayen went immediately to the pair of fighters sitting in their racks at the front of the bay. The only difference in these two large ships, at least that Tarrel could see, was that they had been fitted with some curious harpoon and cable device under their long, tapered noses. Each ship also carried four featureless black pods farther back along their extended forward hulls, things that looked suspiciously like explosive devices. Pack Leader Teraln was already waiting for them, standing beside the nearest of the two fighters while one of Valthyrra’s probes hovered at his side.
“Has Valthyrra explained the theory to you?” Gelrayen asked.
“Theory,
yes,” Teraln agreed. “What she has not explained is why I get to volunteer for this.”
“Your name started with a T,” Gelrayen offered. “If you have no interest in going along, I can find another volunteer easily enough.”
Teraln looked surprised and annoyed at the idea that he could be replaced. “Oh, yes? Who?”
“Captain Tarrel, for one.”
“Oh. Then I certainly volunteer.”
“I wonder if I should be offended?” Tarrel asked Valthyrra, but the remote gestured “no” with its camera pod.
“Valthyrra, what is the Dreadnought doing?” Gelrayen asked as he climbed the boarding platform beside the cockpit.
“Absolutely nothing, last time I looked,” she responded. “I have decreased my impulse scans to one each minute, to avoid calling an excess of attention to myself.”
“Then I believe that we should go immediately,” he decided. “If we wait until that thing starts to move, we might never get a chance to attempt this maneuver. We will be dependant upon your scans to lead us to it.”
“As long as she can place us to within twenty kilometers,” Teraln amended as he hurried to his own fighter. “From that range, you can actually see the beast. That shield is actually a shade darker than background space.”
“Then do not alter your scan interval, unless it begins to move again,” Gelrayen added as he settled himself into the cockpit, while a bay crewmember helped him with his straps. “If it stays in one place, we already know all we need about where to find it.”
“I understand,” Valthyrra said.
“Complete your rescue efforts quickly, and then you and the Vardon should begin to withdrew slowly. I will need you back immediately once that shield goes down, so put Captain Tarrel back in her seat. Teraln and I will get ourselves well clear before you come into range. If, by chance, this does not work and I do not come back, then you are to have sole command of the ship, but listen to Kayendel and Captain Tarrel. Your first duty is save yourself and the other ships. Anything else?”
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