Dreadnought (17 page)

“Something
slipped?”

“Nothing
on my end,” she insisted. “The power levels should have held the impulse
cannons in stand-by condition. I cannot see yet how the fault could have been
at my end. The cannons discharged prematurely.”

“No
one is blaming you,” Gelrayen told her, since she sounded almost as if she was
on the edge of panic. “Forget the cannons for now; we should just consider
ourselves lucky that it was only the three forward cannons. Tell me about the
condition of the bay.”

“I
was not greatly damaged by the concussion itself, and my hull is open closest
to the blast,” she reported, calmer. “That suggests to me that the damage is
not great. I was hit by a hull plate that got away from a tender during the
concussion, but the plate defected off with minimal damage and has drifted
away. I cannot say what has happened to the construction crew because I am
blind to the front. Station control has called me, but I have not yet been
contacted by bay control or the observation deck. Would you like to go outside
and check conditions for me? I would appreciate it.”

“Yes,
I suppose that I should,” he agreed pensively. “I would not expect any response
from the observation deck, since those windows were only twenty meters or so
away from the primary impulse cannon. Do what you can.”

Although
she had not been specifically invited, Captain Tarrel followed quickly as the
Starwolf Commander stalked off toward the lift. Once the doors were closed,
Gelrayen looked far more annoyed and concerned that he could have afforded to
while his ship could see him. He was being protective of Valthyrra, trying to
be attentive and commanding enough to make up for her own deficiencies. That
made Tarrel even more concerned about what she had just seen.

“Commander,
your ship was rattled,” she told him. “Valthyrra was scared to death, and she
nearly froze up.”

Gelrayen
frowned fiercely. “She was just concerned that she might have been responsible
for damage and injury, all the more so because she knows how important time is
right now.”

“I
certainly hope so,” Tarrel said guardedly. “If that really is her reaction to
danger, then you cannot take this ship into battle. She has a lot of growing up
to do.”

The
first thing they discovered was that the docking tubes had been ripped away by
the concussion. Gelrayen stepped through the airlock and out to the broken end
of the tube, then gently propelled himself over the side. Tarrel followed his
example with only marginal hesitation; there was no gravity in the bay except
for the final two meters or so above the floor, and that final drop was small
enough that even she made it easily. At least that gentle descent of over a
hundred meters had given them both time for a good look about the bay.

As
Gelrayen had predicted, the concussion from the primary impulse cannon had
taken out the observation deck and the bay control room, although the nose
docking bracket was built heavily enough that it had survived unharmed. The two
secondary cannons had added their own power to the blast, and the concussion
had swept along the length of the bay and out the main doors. At least the
doors had been open at the time; the shock wave had been intense enough to blow
out the containment field for a brief moment. There had been two tenders in the
bay at the time. One, just coming in, had been kicked back out again. The
second tender had already collected one of the immense hull plates, but that
had been ripped from its hold by the concussion and had slid along the
Methryn’s upper hull until it too passed out the containment field. It had
already been collected by the first tender.

Most
of the bay crew had already gone to the construction facilities to help prepare
the Methryn’s armor. The dozen or so left had all been Kelvessan and hearty
enough to survive more than this. Some had very minor injuries due to being
tossed about by the concussion or else being hit by debris. There had
fortunately been no one in the bay control room or the observation deck at the
time; even Starwolves would not have easily survived that. All in all, things
could have been worse. If the bay doors had been closed, the entire concussion
would have been forced into the station corridors.

Of
course, things could have also been much better.

Tenders
continued to carry the hull plates out of the way, although a full hour passed
before two of the little ships returned with replacements for the docking tubes
which had been ripped away. These had simply been disconnected from another
bay, but another hour passed before these new tubes were rigged in place and
normal traffic in and out of the carrier could resume. By that time, most of
the debris from the misfire of the impulse cannons had been cleared away. That
was also more than enough time for Fleet Commander Asandi to arrive.

“Do
you know yet what happened?” he asked. “I was told that the scanner
malfunctioned.”

Gelrayen
nodded solemnly. “Valthyrra was powering up the system to see if everything was
responding. She says that the cannons pulsed at a much lower power level than
anticipated. They should have only been at stand-by status.”

Asandi
frowned at he stared up at the carrier. “I hope that this business does not
involve a long delay.”

“Valthyrra
says not. According to her expectations, some minor mechanical changes and a
primary computer control modification should correct the problem completely.
She says that we should close up the hull and take the ship out just as she is,
although she recommends certain design changes on the next impulse scanner we
build.”

“That
sounds promising,” Asandi agreed. “I still want to check everything through the
research and design team first, though. Better a delay at this phase than
having to bring the Methryn back in later to start over.”

Gelrayen
looked up at the new docking tube, which appeared to be complete. “I suppose
that I should go back aboard. We have to get to work on finding out just why
those cannons fired prematurely.”

“Tell
Valthyrra that we really do not need these delays,” Asandi declared. “Her first
battle damage, a result of shooting herself in her own construction bay. This
is not a promising beginning.”

“Send
Dalvaen and his friends in research over and have them tell us why their
cannons discharged this much energy at standby level,” Gelrayen responded.

As
it happened, Dalvaen had already taken his team of research scientists and
engineers onto the Methryn’s hull to look at the impulse cannons, and they had
their answer soon enough. The projection coils in the cannons were cooled to
very low temperatures within a matter of seconds by solid-state coolers, and
the designers had seriously underestimated the increase in efficiency from the
super-conductor coils. Power levels that should have held the cannons ready to
pulse on command, instead caused them to discharge. That was by no means bad
news. Any system that could deliver the same performance on half the power
input was an advantage to any ship, and especially so to a fighting ship.
Valthyrra simply had to reprogram the automatic systems in the scanner control
to feed a reduced power curve to the cannons.

The
Methryn had been somewhat more damaged by the concussion than she had first
thought, although that damage was still not serious. She was designed to take
far worse punishment than she had just received, and the damage was mostly
limited to some of the more delicate equipment exposed by the missing hull
plates. Wiring and major power leads had been ripped loose from several shield
projectors, scanner receivers and perimeter cannons set in retractable turrets
within the ventral groove. None of the machinery itself, however, had been
damaged, and everything was easily repaired by reconnecting or laying down new
wiring.

If
no one else was pleased with what had happened to the Methryn, it did at least
put Theralda Vardon in a better mood. If nothing else, it encouraged her to
hope that everyone else would be too impressed with Valthyrra’s embarrassment
to pay much attention to her own stupidity. She was quite mistaken, especially
so if she had ever believed that the sight of a Starwolf carrier coming into
port with the wreckage of a Union commercial station still strapped to her hull
could be ignored. Her crews had actually cut away large parts of the station
components already, given the amount of time they were allowed, but nearly
every piece of the station she carried had been fused to her armor in several
places by the Dreadnought’s discharge beam. And with her shield projectors
gone, the wreckage of the station components offered the best protection she
had against attack.

Fleet
Commander Asandi took one look at her and walked away shaking his head,
muttering that the survival of known civilization was in the hands of idiots.
Captain Tarrel was beginning to find it all very educational. She had
discovered that not only were the Starwolves capable of making mistakes,
sometimes they were also just plain unlucky.

“What
I regret most, I suppose, is that it happened when we were actually doing so
well,” Theralda remarked during an open conference between the carriers. “We
were finally doing something constructive, even if we could not fight the
Dreadnought itself.”

Although
Fleet Commander Asandi had already gone aboard the Vardon to view the damage, Daerran
had joined Tarrel and Gelrayen on the Methryn’s bridge for the conference.
Valthyrra had channeled images of the Vardon to her main screen as well as the
monitors at the Commander’s station on the upper bridge where the group was
gathered. It was hard to tell that a Starwolf carrier was actually hidden
beneath that wreckage. Theralda had removed only the segment that had been
strapped across her nose. Tenders and crews working in suits were working to
remove the wreckage as quickly as possible, although the process made some
think of old stories they had read about sailing ships, and the removal of
barnacles.

“Could
you just run through your observations about the Dreadnought step by step,”
Commander Asandi suggested.

“Well,
the first thing we discovered was that the Dreadnought has begun attacking
major surface targets,” Theralda began. “The damage that I observed was
relatively limited, although the Dreadnought does identify and destroy all
surface military targets. I have also found evidence that the Dreadnought
lingers in system for a time to see what might come along responding to calls
for help. That suggests to me that the Dreadnought moves more quickly between
systems than we have first anticipated, and that it is capable of more
sophisticated planning than suspected. My personal suspicion is that it is
loitering about waiting for Starwolves.”

“But
I already knew that it was waiting in system,’’ Tarrel added. “When I first
encountered the Dreadnought, it attacked the convoy my battleship was escorting
hours before it struck the station.”

“We
had not forgotten that, even if Theralda had,” Trendaessa Kerridayen remarked.

“There
is additional evidence that the Dreadnought is more than just a simple
automated weapon,” Theralda continued.

“When
I entered the system where I first encountered the Dreadnought, I was
discovered when it made a routine impulse scanner sweep. It was looking for
Starwolf carriers running with stealth-intensity shields, perhaps as a result
of its battle with the Kerridayen. It definitely is more clever than we had
assumed, or at least hoped. And being that clever, it is certainly capable of
intercepting our achronic transitions and being prepared for what we plan to
do.”

“We
have to make plans for that possibility,” Asandi agreed, “Anything else?”

“Just
more evidence of its intelligence,” she continued. “It followed me to Norden
within hours, rather than loiter in the last system it attacked. A change in
its usual methods. And when it came into the Norden system and saw the Maeridan
and myself carrying away segments of the commercial stations, it followed us to
see where we were going before it attacked. Those might all be automatic
functions, but they are also evidence of a higher level of sophistication than
we had first expected. But, when it did attack, it went after the station
components rather than myself or the Maeridan, which gave me time enough to get
away. That does not suggest careful planning, and that brings us back to
assuming it is an automated machine rather than sentient.”

“I
suspect that your assumptions are very accurate,” Asandi agreed. “Perhaps the
Methryn can answer those questions more accurately in a couple of weeks. But we
do have to be prepared for the fact that we are indeed fighting an enemy that
is not just far more technically advanced than ourselves, on a scale of power
far beyond ours, but clever enough to anticipate us.”

The
wide door at the rear of the Methryn’s upper right fighter bay opened,
revealing the open doors of the construction bay more than half a kilometer
behind. Captain Tarrel stood well to the front of the bay with Commander
Gelrayen, waiting for the arrival of the Methryn’s first pack of fighters. The
packs were the most well-known of the Starwolves; the pilots in their black
armor the only Starwolves that most people of Union space were likely to see.
Certainly the packs were the most infamous, the most feared and also the most
romanticized of all Starwolves; some believed, without really stopping to think
about it, that Starwolves were all pilots.

Since
coming aboard the Kerridayen, Tarrel had discovered that most of the massive
carriers kept only ten to twelve packs each, ninety to a hundred and eight
pilots. Of the carrier’s complete crew of about two thousand, only half were
active crew-members and most of these existed to serve the packs. The ship
largely took care of itself, employing a small army of remote units. Each pack
was commanded by a pack leader, that being in fact the most commonly-used name,
although the official rank was that of Captain. The pack leader always ran in
the center of the standard V-formation of the pack, with four fighters sitting
to either side in each wing of that formation.