Battle of the Ring (21 page)

“So do I,” Commander Trace agreed.

Maeken Kea gave the order for the Challenger to follow the Methryn into the
ring. It was as Velmeran had foreseen. Donalt Trace could not resist the prize
under any circumstance. But Maeken Kea was also tempted, beyond her better
judgment.

Maeken Kea was unaware that she was chasing an intact, undamaged Starwolf
carrier into a trap.

A large part of Velmeran’s success lay in his talent for conceiving
and executing plans that his human opponents did not expect. Lenna
Makayen, expressing it from the human point of view, declared it was the sort
of thing that no one in their right mind would consider the first time she
heard it. Velmeran thereby reasoned that it was also the sort of thing no one
would expect and somehow saw a compliment in that remark, Either he knew a few
things about humans that they did not themselves suspect or else he was, as
Lenna implied, not entirely in his right mind. Whatever the case, it had
certainly worked.

The execution of the plan had been simple enough. Valthyrra had made her run
at a speed and heading that had put her in the general direction of the fifth
planet, requiring only one course correction. The large explosion in her engine
rooms had been in reality a quarter-megaton conversion device rigged from the
salvaged generator of a fighter, and placed atop the tripod erected a
hundred meters above her hull. The Fortress’s scanners were not accurate
enough to detect the light structure or determine the fact that the
explosion had actually been safely outside the Methryn’s shields. Marenna
Challenger had assumed from misleading evidence that her main generators had
been hit, and Maeken Kea had seen no reason to question that.

The rest had proceeded simply enough, although it had required careful
timing. Valthyrra had simply shut down her engines to set herself adrift,
idling her main generators, then gave herself a very slow nose-over roll.
Everything, from her high initial attack speed to her one course correction and
short bursts of power, had been carefully calculated to keep her just outside
the Challenger’s reach.

If Maeken Kea had been at all suspicious, she would have easily seen that
there were entirely too many convenient coincidences. But those suspicious
coincidences had instead become enticing lures. After one piece of incredibly
good luck followed by a string of near misses, neither Maeken Kea nor Donalt
Trace could resist the urge to continue the chase. As prey, the disabled
Methryn was simply too tempting to refuse.

Velmeran knew that the Challenger would attempt to follow the
Methryn’s trail through the ring. The powerful static charge of the ring
caused its relatively large fragments to repel each other enough for Starwolf
fighters to slip through with ease; the larger ships would simply force a path
with their debris shields, a path that could be easily followed for several
hours before gravitational and static forces caused them to close again. Velmeran
actually pointed out the Methryn’s corridor to the Challenger by
having the returning fighters duck almost beneath the larger ship’s nose
to fly down the open path.

“How long until the fighters come in?” Velmeran asked, removing
himself at last from the Commander’s station.

“The first packs should be in about two minutes from now,”
Valthyrra replied. “Baress and Baressa will be leading their packs in
first. Do you want me to send them here as soon as possible?”

“Send me those two, and the rest of my special tactics team,” he
decided. “What is the Challenger doing?”

“Casting about for the opening I left in the ring,” the ship
replied. “She obviously means to follow.”

Velmeran spent the next few minutes reviewing the careful scan of that area
of the ring that Valthyrra had made during her approach. She calculated
that the giant Fortress would not be able to make better than two thousand
kilometers per hour – relative, of course, to the speed of the ring
itself. Within the ring, its floating mass of boulders and moonlets appeared as
a motionless landscape to any ship sharing the same orbit... that is, traveling
in the same general speed and direction. Actually, the Methryn could go little
faster herself, since speed was determined by how fast rocks could be shoved
away from an oncoming ship.

They had entered the ring near its outer edge, and had been working their
way steadily inward ever since. Because of the low speed, they could expect to
confine their chase to a relatively small area. At this rate, it would
take nearly two full days just to pass completely through the ring and reach
the outer atmosphere of the planet below. They were in fact spiraling slowly
inward, moving ‘downstream’ with its motion.

The crewmembers he had requested, and some he had not, arrived on the bridge
within minutes. Baress and Baressa arrived with Trel and Marlena, the
other two official members of the special tactics team, and Tregloran, who had
been an unofficial member for over a year. Lenna Makayen, none the worse
for her first turn as a combat pilot, quietly brought up the rear.

“How did it go?” Velmeran asked as they approached.

“Quite well,” Baress replied. “We did not get a scratch.
And at this point, the only stingships they have left are any the Challenger
herself might be carrying.”

“I got three!” Lenna proclaimed proudly. Since she had not had
time to remove her makeup, Velmeran had recognized her by the fact that the
black armor she wore had only one set of arms.

“Three what?” he asked. “Ours, or theirs?”

“Stingships, of course,” she said indignantly. “Like
shooting fish in a barrel.”

Velmeran glanced at Baress, who shrugged helplessly. “I got only three
myself. Valthyrra cut down the phasing of her engines so that we would
always know where she was. And, to tell the truth, we were flying in such close
quarters that you could not tell her from the regular pilots.”

Velmeran regarded the girl for a moment and shrugged. “That should not
be surprising, I suppose. Just tell me when your ears begin to point. How did
the attack transports work out?”

“It was a simple matter of overkill, shooting at stingships,”
Trel replied. “They were designed for bigger game.”

Valthyrra steered her camera pod in behind Velmeran. “I thought you
would like to know that the Challenger has indeed entered the ring and is
following my corridor at such an alarming pace that I have had to increase
my own speed. I have a probe following her at a discreet distance.”

“Then we really are in business,” Velmeran muttered to himself,
and turned back to Valthyrra. “How soon can the packs go out
again?”

“Back out?” the ship asked in desperation. “I only just
finished getting them all in. But you can head out immediately, if you
must.”

“That might seem a little extreme. We need to make it look like we had
to take stock of what we have and hold an emergency conference on the
subject first. We will start putting fighters back into space in exactly one
hour. Right, Lenna?”

“Right, Captain.”

“I will lead twelve packs after the warships,” Velmeran continued.
“Baressa, you will take twelve packs after the supply convoy.”

“What about me?” Lenna demanded.

“You will...,” Velmeran began sternly, but paused when he saw
her look of determination, “ ...need all the practice you can get. I do
not have a pack for you to fly with this time.”

“She can go with us,” Trel offered. “We should be easy to
keep track of, since she has to depend upon scan entirely to know who she is
with.”

“Good enough,” Velmeran agreed. “Lenna, if you can hold
your own against stingships, you can certainly handle the warships.”

“And if you do not come back, I am only out a fighter,”
Valthyrra teased.

Donalt Trace arrived on the bridge at a run, only to find that no one was at
the Captain’s station. He paused just long enough for a quick look
around, and found Maeken Kea bending over the shoulder of the officer at the
main communication console. She turned to meet him just as he arrived.

“The support fleet and the convoy are both under attack,” she
explained quickly.

“Is there anything we can do?” Commander Trace asked.

“It is already over, as far as I can tell,” Maeken answered.
“That fool of a fleet commander thought that he could handle the problem
himself; he didn’t call for help until he realized that he had lost. The
last ship went silent only a moment ago. We cannot scan accurately from inside
the ring, but the answer is plain enough. We have no support fleet, and we can
no longer repair this ship.”

“We have no damage now, do we?”

“No, nor could the support fleet do us much good inside the
ring,” she answered. “Stingships could not begin to navigate this
mess, although it seems that Starwolves can.”

“Do you consider this a major setback?” Trace asked as they
turned toward the Captain’s station.

“No, a relatively minor one, under the circumstances.” Maeken
had to run every few steps to match his long-legged stride. She wondered if he
had really come to value her judgment so much that he would agree to retreat on
her recommendation. She decided to test that. “As I see it, we can risk
another twenty-four hours to try to fish the Methryn out of the ring. I am only
guessing that we will be fairly safe until then, but any time after that
we’re likely to be up to our necks in carriers. We can only hope that the
Methryn will either have to shut down for repairs or else simply break down
again, and we have to overtake her during that time.”

“And we have no idea how fast she’s moving. She might be gaining
on us, or we might be gaining on her.” Trace started to seat himself in
the Captain’s chair, but remembered and quickly stepped aside. “You
are right, I suppose. But what good does it do him to go after those
targets?”

“It’s just what I would have done,” Maeken said. “At
least he now has his problems limited to just one big one. And now we have to
ask what he intends to do about that problem.”

Velmeran was contemplating that very question during his return to the Methryn.
As far as he could tell, he had only three options. He could either lead his
packs against the Challenger and see what their cannons could do against her
guns, take the Methryn in for a real battle, or else go immediately to his reserve
plan. He did not doubt that he would have to resort to that third plan, but he
preferred to try something simpler and more direct first.

The truth was that Velmeran had no idea just how effective a fighter would
be, but he had little hope that this was the answer to his problem. That
depended more than anything on how fast and accurate the Challenger was at
tracking a target as small as a twenty-meter fighter. To destroy a cannon, the
pilots were required to put a bolt through the small opening in the turret for
its tracking lenses, a task complicated by the fact that they had to align
their entire ship to fire their own cannons. That might prove impossible even
for Starwolves, between dodging rocks and enemy fire. Still, he thought it was
worth a try.

Velmeran allowed another hour’s rest before the next attack.
Kelvessan, because of the tremendous demands of hypermetabolism, had
surprisingly little endurance, but they also recovered very quickly. That
was Lenna Makayen’s peculiar advantage over her fellow pilots. But when
she did tire, she was much slower to recover. That was part of the reason why
she did not protest when Velmeran told her that she would not take part in this
attack. She really did know what she could and could not do; she could easily
navigate the ring, something no true human would attempt, but not fight there.

The problem of endurance was also very much on Velmeran’s mind. He
knew that his pilots were only good for about ten or twenty minutes of this
kind of work. If this attack did show reasonable promise, it would take hours
of picking away at the Challenger’s guns and engines to leave the ship
vulnerable to the Methryn’s conversion cannon. He would have to divide
his twenty packs into four groups of five each, each group attacking for
fifteen minutes and then resting at a safe distance for forty-five.

“There simply are no easy answers,” Valthyrra had concluded when
he had discussed his ideas with her. “The question, of course, is do we
really have to defeat this thing as long as we can keep it here?”

“I have not forgotten that,” Velmeran said. “But this
Maeken Kea is smarter than anyone I have fought before, and she is going to be
hard to fool. I am sure that she expects me to put up a stiff fight, even if
she also expects to win. It seems to me that there is little difference between
doing my best and doing enough to keep her satisfied, so I might as well try to
win.”

“And what if you do too good, and she decides that it is time to
leave?” Valthyrra asked.

Velmeran smiled. “The Challenger is as penned inside this ring as they
believe we are. She cannot open the shields on her engines to run without
leaving them vulnerable to our attack. But I actually want them to run at the
end. We certainly cannot use the conversion cannon here. We would blast away half
the ring and ourselves with it.”

Valthyrra’s cameras had a decidedly shocked expression. “Funny I
had not thought of that.”

“Then I suppose that I might as well get on with what I can do,”
Velmeran said, already on his way down the steps from the upper bridge.
“Call the pilots to their ships and have the capture ships stand
by.”

Velmeran collected the packs just above the ring and backtracked along
the Methryn’s path until he was sure that he was behind the Challenger.
Returning to the ring, they quickly found the five-kilometer-wide corridor left
by the Fortress’s passage. Velmeran sent two groups of six packs each
into the ring to either side, then waited with the remaining eight packs until
they were in place. When all was ready, he took his group down the length of
the corridor in a high-speed run.