Dreadnought (26 page)

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
responded 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.

“The
main line is in place,” Gheldyn reported.

“I
am still getting no water into the pre-chamber,” Valthyrra said. “Have you
checked every valve?”

“We
checked the valves a final time before I called you.”

“Try
it again.” She paused to make a quick check of her operational plans and
information on the matter. “Oh hell, each intake chamber has a valve that
closes automatically if it detects anything except water coming in. You have to
bleed the air from the line at the intake to each generator. There will be a
simple manual cock-valve in the end of each line.”

“I
am already on my way,” Gheldyn assured her.

“Be
sure to start with the big ones. I need all the power I can get.”

“What
about the Dreadnought?” Gelrayen asked.

“At
least it stopped for a moment to take an accounting of itself,” the ship
replied. “I did buy us a little time there. It would have been on top of us
already otherwise.”

“Just
what did you do to it, anyway?”

“I
had the drone ram it,” Valthyrra explained, then turned her camera pod toward
the aft image on the main viewscreen. “Another sweep. One last look around for
hidden dangers, and here it comes.”

“Valthyrra,
you should be getting power now,” Gheldyn told her.

“Yes,
the first conversion generator is coming up. And here comes the second.”

Before
Valthyrra could do anything with that power, the first discharge beam hit her
from behind, connecting squarely on the back of her twin star drives.
Unfortunately, she did not have either defensive shields or even her hull
integrity shields in place to make some attempt to deal with that wash of
tremendous energy; her only protection was the fact that the armored drive
doors had been closed. Actual physical damage was limited to simple scoring and
burning of the metal. The danger to the Methryn was that the discharge itself
was running through her frame and power systems in the form of searing bolts of
electrical energy. She brought up her integrity shields first, getting that discharge
under control, then engaged her defensive shields at stealth intensity as she
accelerated quickly into an evasive path.

“How
are we doing?” Gelrayen asked, glancing quickly in Captain Tarrel’s direction.
A twenty-two G acceleration had put her out again.

“I,
at least, am not doing well,” Valthyrra reported. “Both of my star drives are
down. The damage is entirely limited to the power conduits and the main phasing
control, but it is nothing that can be repaired quickly and I cannot compensate
with redundant systems. My rear battery is down and I have lost almost all
ability to scan behind.”

“Can
we stay ahead of the Dreadnought long enough for it to lose interest in chasing
us?” he asked.

She
brought her camera pod closer. “I cannot out-run the Dreadnought in sublight
speeds. Indeed, I can only assume that it will lose interest if I can achieve
starflight. Commander, I want to try one last stupid idea. It will probably put
me down entirely, but it might save this ship and my crew.”

Gelrayen
frowned. “I already do not like it.”

“How
do you suppose I feel about it?” Valthyrra asked. “I have already overridden
the safety lock-outs and I am going to take myself into starflight with my main
drives. We do not need to go far. But if I can just get myself past threshold,
the Dreadnought will probably break off.”

“We
have no choice, do we?”

The
lock-out devices that Valthyrra had removed were those intended to prevent
feeding too much power to the main drives and burning them out. She knew that
she would be damaging herself by this. The drives themselves would probably
survive the punishment as long as she did not hold them at this level more than
a few minutes; the worst damage would occur after, while they were cooling
down. As long as she still had at least one functional drive on each side of
the ship, she would still have enough thrust balance to maneuver. But she would
never pass threshold if she lost a drive now. The ship began to shake and buck
from uneven phasing.

“Coming
up on threshold,” Valthyrra reported. “That will be the hardest. Once in
starflight, things will smooth out.”

“How
are your drives?” Gelrayen asked.

“Doing
well. It seems that the Dreadnought cannot target those discharge beams
effectively at higher speeds. I have not taken a serious hit since that first
time.” She paused. “Ready for transition into starflight. Hold on to something
solid, Commander, and kiss Captain Tarrel good-bye. This might be very rough.”

After
all of that, her actual transition was not nearly as violent as she had anticipated.
The carrier lunged sharply forward for several seconds as it was being pulled,
then settled out into fairly smooth starflight.

“We
have made it,” Valthyrra reported. “The ship is maintaining extremely low
starflight speeds. I will try to hold this for another five minutes and then
bring us down. Unfortunately, we might not be underway again any time soon, at
least not under our own power.”

“Well,
we did survive and even came away knowing more than we did when we started,”
Gelrayen said. “I hope that it is worth it.”

“I
suppose that it was,” the ship agreed dubiously. “I still wonder about just one
thing. Whose stupid idea was all this anyway?”

When
Captain Janus Tarrel first became aware of the fact that she was still alive,
she was forced to approach that discovery with a certain ambivalence. One of
the objects of the previous exercise had been to survive, so it had been
successful in that regard. At the same time, she wondered how anyone who hurt
as much as she did could have lived through it. High G accelerations were an
enormously successful form of torture.

She
tried to open her eyes and made two important discoveries. The first was the
fact that her eyes were curiously unwilling to open. And even when she was able
to open them, she was unable to see anything and was given to wonder if they
had survived the ordeal. The eyes were very vulnerable to hard accelerations,
second only to bad hearts and full bladders, and her own eyes certainly hurt
enough. Then she discovered by touch that there were some type of medicated
pads over them. She was relieved to discover that she really was not blind,
although it did mean that she would have to earn her pension the hard way. No
early retirement with benefits for her.

“The
medic gave you something for the pain,” a female Starwolf told her.

“It
didn’t work,” she insisted. “Who is there?”

“Kayendel.
The medicated pads are to keep you from getting black eyes. You have only been
out for about half an hour, and the medic said that you can take off the pads
when you come around.”

“I
don’t want to look. ” Tarrel removed the pads, then discovered that she was
doomed to spend the next few moments contemplating a very blurry view of the
ceiling. “It was a stupid idea, anyway.”

“What?”

“Coming
aboard this ship,” she explained. “Starwolves were specifically made to
function under conditions that are deadly to creatures like myself. That should
have been a strong warning to me about the advisability of trying to exist in
your environment. Who took off my clothes, by the way?”

“Oh,
we drew lots for that.”

Ask
a stupid question, get no satisfaction. “What are you doing nursing the invalid
anyway? Don’t you have duties to attend to?”

Kayendel
shrugged both sets of arms. “What good is a helm officer in a ship that has no
functional drives? We lost both of the star drives to the Dreadnought there
near the end, and Valthyrra was able to get us away into starflight with the
main drives. Were you still with us up to that point?”

“That
was when I decided to take a nap.”

“There
is not much else to tell. Valthyrra knew that she might ruin her main drives by
running them past their tolerances, and she was correct. We lost three drives
to burn-out. The fourth is damaged, and that drive is on the outside. If we try
to engage that one, the ship would be pushed so hard on that one side that the
field drive steering would not be able to correct the uneven balance. So you
see, Valthyrra actually came through this worse off than you did.”

“Serves
her right. So, what happens now? Is there any hope of getting the ship repaired
enough to take her home again under her own power, or are we waiting for a
tow?”

“Well,
we do have some hope of getting the star drives running again,” Kayendel
explained. “The Maeridan is standing alongside and we have her repair crews on
board. They expect to know something very quickly. Unfortunately, pulling off
and replacing those damaged main drives will take a couple of days. ” Tarrel
glanced over at the Kelvessan. “You have replacements?”