Dreadnought (14 page)

Carriers
were built for abuse, and this did not stress their limits except in trying to
meet the demands of time. Even the amount of dead weight they carried was not a
danger to their frames. Integrity fields, like the shields that protected the
ship from the outside, where projected through the frame itself, giving the
carrier the strength to survive tremendous forces of compression and torsion.
Theralda took twenty-two minutes to get herself up to transition, twice as long
as what she would have normally considered a gentle run. Once in starflight,
she was surprised to find that she did not feel the extra mass at ail.

The
Vardon arrived in the uninhabited system less than half an hour later, finding
the Maeridan there only a minute ahead of her. The segments of the station that
had already been brought through had been left in orbit over a rather dark,
cold planet fourth out in the system, and the two carriers left the components
they carried to be tied together with this first group. The unloading of the
components took considerably less time than the more careful process of
strapping them down to the hulls of the large ships, and the two carriers were
on their way back to Norden in only about twenty minutes.

The
complete transport of the commercial stations could be accomplished in two more
runs only by having both of the carriers strap one segment more than they had
hauled previously, braced by the components strapped onto the upper and lower
hulls, actually across the nose of the ship. Neither of the two carriers were
fond of that arrangement, since it completely blocked their forward batteries
and left them essentially defenseless. The fact that they were already
defenseless against attack from the Dreadnought was their only consolation, if
it could be called that. It seemed better than making another trip, considering
the time involved and the emission trails that they would be leaving.

While
they were being fitted with their final load, they were able to witness the
departure of the military station. Being a more solid and less sprawling
structure, it could be transported intact by having battleships attach
themselves to key points on the station’s frame. These ships were then linked
by computer, until they became in essence only the engines for a far larger
ship made up by the station itself. The result worked, but it was not very
fast, needing eight hours or more to get itself to transition speed. It would
not be going into safe-keeping in the same system as the commercial stations,
since spreading things about decreased the likelihood of any of them being
found.

Because
she had been delayed several minutes in getting away, the Vardon had to attend
to the duty of making their farewells to the System Commander. “We will not be
coming back, I am afraid. There is nothing we can do to help you now. We can do
the entire Union more good by keeping ourselves intact and ready to fight when
the time comes that we can do something about this Dreadnought.”

“Yes,
we understand that,” Carrel agreed. “You have already saved our stations. No
matter what the Dreadnought does to the planet, we can rebuild much quicker if
we have access to those stations. But I think that we will not bring them back
here until the Dreadnought has been destroyed.”

“Perhaps
that will be very soon now.”

Theralda
made her final run, feeling oddly alone and vulnerable now that the Maeridan was
nearly ten minutes ahead of her. That was also a very new experience for her,
and she thought that life would be much better when there were no more great,
mysterious Dreadnoughts around to frighten honest, hard-work-ing carriers. She
eased herself down from transition speeds, grateful to be free of this duty.
Her capture ships had been unable to return to their bays and had flown
alongside her, and they now flew on ahead to assist in the unloading of the
Maeridan.

“Is
that how I looked?” Khallenda asked as the Vardon came nearer. “How are the
humans taking it?”

“Stoically,”
Theralda said. “They just seem to be grateful to have had some warning. And
they are very understanding about the fact that we are unable to stay around to
try to protect them. I would have never thought that Unioners still possessed
any nobler qualities. That makes it harder for me simply to run away and leave
them.”

“They
were somewhat less understanding when I first arrived,” the other ship
remarked. “And I cannot forget all the times that I have seen them do to others
what the Dreadnought is doing to them. A little shaking up might just do them
some good.”

“Perhaps
. . . ,” Theralda paused. “I just recorded a scanner contact.”

“Are
you sure?”

“I
have been through this before. Blow yourself out of there.” She turned her
attention back to herself, putting her crew on alert at the same time that she
brought herself around, away from the direction of that scan. “Commander, we
might be doomed. I cannot dump this load. There is simply no way for me to cast
lose the straps that are holding down those station components.” “What about
the capture ships?” Schyrran asked.

“My
capture ships are already on their way back, and the Maeridan is sending me her
own since she is already unloaded. It all depends upon how much time we have.”

Schyrran
sat back in his head, both sets of his arms crossed. “That thing is a damned
nuisance. How did it find us?”

“I
suppose that it came into the Norden system, saw what we were doing, and
followed me here during our last run. We did not have stealth engaged, so it
probably executed an impulse scanner sweep just to be certain that we were
alone here.”

The
attack came only a moment later. But the Dreadnought seem focused only on the
orbiting station segments, blissfully ignoring the Maeridan as she made a very
hasty escape out of orbit, letting the one moving target get away while it
concentrated on targets that would be going nowhere. There were still times
when the Dreadnought behaved like a very stupid machine, and times when it was
only too clever. For the moment, it was content to chew away at the tight group
of station components drifting in orbit.

Theralda
was straining her main drives to work her way back up to light speed and the
safety of transition into starflight. She had already dumped nearly half of her
speed, and she would need at least six minutes altogether to work her way back
up. Barely a couple of minutes had passed before the attack on the station
components had ended, and she knew only too well that she was the next tempting
target. She was still bearing her full load of components, and that meant that
she could not even use her own main weapons. The capture ships had not yet
overtaken her, and the Maeridan was far away. She was beginning to wonder what
would happen to her if she engaged her star drives early. Ordinarily that would
have been no problem to either ship or crew, but those segments might break
loose and take large pieces of her hull with them.

Of
all the ways she might have met her end, this was too embarrassing.

The
first shot came in, and the Vardon’s hull shook with the explosion. Theralda
was already mobilizing her automated damage control when she realized that she
had not herself been hit. The discharge beam had connected with the large
segment over her left wing, and her evasive change of heading had shaken off
the beam before it had eaten deeply into the mass of metal and plastics she
carried. Theralda Vardon had become a turtle, slowed by the very burden that
protected her. And that was just as well, since she was only able to engage her
hull shields.

A
second beam connected with the segment above her main hull, and she was able to
shake it off before it cut through to her hull. It was not a perfect
arrangement by any means, since some of the power from the discharge beam was
getting through to her shields and leaking into her hull, giving hell to her
major power systems and networks.

Theralda
ordered the capture ships to move clear and make their own run into starflight.
There was nothing they could do for her now that she was under attack. She
would have to take this load along with her.

“Theralda,
how are you doing?” Khallenda asked anxiously.

“Surprisingly
well,” she responded. “The components are protecting me from the worst of the
attack. Keep yourself clear. ”

“I
could come in close and shoot the straps.”

“No,
get yourself out of here. I can ride this through until I can make it into
starflight.”

At
least she hoped so. The backs of her drives were unprotected by anything except
their own retractable armored plates. Even a light discharge there would leave
her unable to engage her drives, and the Dreadnought would have her. Fearful of
this, she brought herself around in as tight a turn as she dared and began to
rotate slowly, turning first her upper and then her lower hull toward her
enemy. The components were being battered to pieces by discharge beams, large
areas breaking up or burning fiercely, and too much stray power was getting into
her own systems. But it was keeping those beams away from her vulnerable
drives. She thought that she might still make it, although she would be in no
condition to fight without some repairs.

“Khallenda,
you collect our capture ships as soon as you can and meet me at Boulder,” she
said. “I am going to need help.” “What are you going to do?”

“Something
drastic.”

She
engaged her star drives as gently as she could, kicking herself into premature
transition at the cost of nearly sixty G’s of acceleration past what her
dampers were able to contain. The straps held and she carried the station
components with her into starflight, the damaged sections shedding a cloud of
debris.

Captain
Tarrel decided that she wanted to go out on the first flight of the Methryn,
and she was prepared to do all the begging and convincing she needed to be
certain that she did. As it happened, the Starwolves had every intention of
sending her. They had agreed to a truce with the Union which specified that
they would do everything they could to destroy the Dreadnought, and they were
apparently very sensitive to the accusation that they were not doing enough.
And that accusation had indeed been made by certain elements within the Union,
particularly those who had the most to lose, and who wanted the Starwolves to
take a brute force approach with the Dreadnought by confronting it immediately.
Some believed in the old myth, or perhaps more a fear in the Union, that the
Starwolves were invincible. Others did not care what that battle cost the
Starwolves, or else preferred to see both enemies of the Union fight to mutual
destruction.

Janus
Tarrel had known, even when Sector Commander Lake had first proposed a truce
with the Starwolves, that it would come to this. Union attitudes both to others
and to one’s self were two-fold. The individual, such as herself, was supposed
to be devoted, noble and willing to make any sacrifice toward the greater good;
but greedy, cruel and suspicious when representing the interests of the Union
to outsiders. Tarrel was wise enough to have figured out long ago that those
attitudes were largely designed only to protect the status quo, and that she
was not, herself, a part of that status quo and never would be. She was a
willing servant, even protector of that system, for the simple reason that she
was cynical enough to believe that it probably was the best of all
realistically possible systems for human society. She did subscribe without
reservation to the popular Union belief that all human society was best served
by sticking together. She looked upon the independent colonies, and all
would-be independents, as traitors. And, as the captain of a Union battle ship,
she was willing to treat them as traitors.

At
this particular time, she could not yet decide how those philosophies affected
her own relationship with the Starwolves. They had agreed to do a very dirty
job that was not necessarily their problem, and it was probably going to cost
them dearly before it was done. She believed that they deserved some consideration
for that. She also believed in the practical wisdom of allowing the Starwolves
to wait until they were ready to fight with some assurance of winning. The
Starwolves were the lesser of evils by far; they were only an annoyance, while
the Dreadnought would apparently be satisfied with nothing less than the
destruction of Terran civilization. It was better to keep the Starwolves than
risk losing them by forcing them to attack too soon.

Responding
to her own instincts, Tarrel decided that there were separate levels to her
loyalty. As long as the Starwolves were fighting the Dreadnought, she would do
anything to help them. But if she learned any secrets that would help her to
fight them, even to destroy them, when this was over, that was quite another
matter. She suspected, however, that her greater loyalty to the Starwolves
would never be an issue. They guarded their true secrets very well, for they
actually had very few weaknesses that she could ever hope to exploit. Their
strengths were in things that she could never have and could not take away from
them.

Her
interests in being aboard the Methryn were therefore honest ones. The Methryn
would be going out to hunt the Dreadnought in Union space, and she believed
that the Starwolves would benefit by having her along. She could invoke the
highest level of diplomatic passes, for the Combined Council itself had granted
her extreme emergency powers in giving her the authority to override any Fleet
or System Commander in any Sector. She could get the Starwolves any support and
cooperation they needed. She had also been instructed to give them any Union
secrets she felt would benefit the Starwolves in their attempt to destroy the
Dreadnought. Of course, she was also given to wonder if the Union actually kept
as many secrets from the Starwolves as it preferred to believe.