Dreadnought (29 page)

“I
can’t, Captain,” he answered, almost hysterical. “The controls aren’t in
Terran. I was trying to fire it, and I don’t know what I did.”

After
weeks of trying to find any clue to the secret language of the Starwolves, he
had to do it the hard way.

“I
can direct him to key in the manual override to lock out the controls and
return the missile’s systems to inert status,” Valthyrra said softly over
Tarrel’s com.

“Wally,
Valthyrra Methryn is going to tell you how to turn the thing off. Will you
listen to her?”

“Where
is she?”

“Walter,
this is Valthyrra,” the ship said. “We use the standard Terran character set,
so you will recognize that much. To deactivate the missile, type in the
characters and numbers in reverse order of the access code that you will see
inside the lid of the control panel. Can you do that?”

“I
can’t see the numbers!” Pesca insisted, deeply frightened. “I don’t have a
light. I can only see the keyboard because the keys are illuminated from the
inside.”

“Walter,
I will read you the sequence from my inventory. But you have to hurry, because
you have only twenty seconds.” Valthyrra paused. “Damn. I suspect that he just
fainted. ” “Give him back his oxygen,” Tarrel suggested.

“I
did when I realized that he was willing to deactivate the missile. You will
have to do it. The missile is only twenty meters ahead of you now.”

She
looked up, but she could barely make out the black form of the missile drifting
above the outer edge of the ventral groove. Pesca must have pushed against it
as he passed out, for the tapered nose of the missile was swinging slowly out
away from the ship. “Val, I’ll never get there in time. Do you have enough
control of that missile to fire it away?”

“Yes,
I do.”

“That’s
the only way you can save yourself now. The nose of the missile is pointing
away into open space, so get it the hell away from here now.”

“Walter
Pesca might be caught in the drive wash,” the ship protested.

“Perhaps
his suit will protect him,” Tarrel insisted. “Val, you gave me temporary
command of this ship, and now you listen to me. I’m ordering you to fire that
missile. The decision and the responsibility are entirely my own.”

The
missile suddenly disappeared in a blinding flash of light that streaked away to
disappear into the distance. Tarrel was still blinking from the flare of that
drive when a second flash of brilliant light filled the blackness of space
several kilometers out from the ship. She wondered at first if it had gotten
away in time, when it seemed that the explosion was reaching out to take them,
but the shock wave that moved across the ship seconds later was hardly enough
to rock it gently, a light pressure that did not even threaten her hold on the
hull. She turned and hurried to find Walter Pesca, fearful as Valthyrra had
been that he had been caught in the tremendous energy of its drive wash.

“Captain,
your companion did not make it,” Valthyrra said softly.

She
stopped short. “He’s dead?”

“His
suit telemetry stayed with the missile. I must suppose that he had fastened
himself to it with a short tether.”

“Then
he died in the explosion?”

“He
did not survive the acceleration of the missile,” the ship answered. “I tracked
his telemetry until the explosion. He was dead already.”

With
nothing left to do, Captain Tarrel returned to the airlock and took the lift
back to the bridge. She hardly knew what to think, the situation had arisen and
was gone again so quickly. Her thoughts at the time had been only practical
ones, above all her awareness that the survival of the Union, if not human
civilization itself, could depend upon the welfare of these two ships. With the
danger past, she now had time to realize that she had given an order that had
caused the death of a junior officer under her command. Oddly, she felt vaguely
disappointed with herself, with Walter Pesca, and with her own kind in general;
having to face aliens after a demonstration of the violent failings of her own
race. She did not know if the Starwolves would ever be able to understand the
fear and suspicion that had driven Pesca mad, or if they agreed with her
decision to sacrifice him to save the two carriers. They possessed the strength
and speed to have gotten to that missile in time.

Commander
Gelrayen had returned to the bridge by the time she arrived. He met her at the
lift and led her into the corridor leading behind the bridge. “Are you well?”

“Yes,
fine,” she insisted. “Is something else wrong?” “Valthyrra is taking it very
hard,” he explained. “She has never had to kill anyone before. Fighting the
Dreadnought was one thing, since its actual sentience is in doubt. But she had
not anticipated that she would have to take a life deliberately anytime soon,
no matter how necessary it was.”

“The
choice was mine,” Tarrel answered. “I had been given the bridge, and it was my
order as temporary commander of this ship. I told her that.”

“Even
I cannot order Valthyrra against her will,” Gelrayen said. “She made the
decision to do what you told her, and she was the one who actually fired that
missile. She just needs a little time to adjust.”

“Is
there anything that I can do?”

“Valthyrra
will feel better when we get her repaired and under way on her own power. We
have begun moving the main drives, and I need to get back to the repair crews.
Will you watch the bridge for a while yet?”

Tarrel
was surprised by that request. “Yes, I suppose. If you still trust me with your
ship.”

Gelrayen
smiled. “You have taken good care of her so far.”

After
nearly three days of hard work, the Methryn was ready to get underway again
under her own power, if only barely. She had half as many main drives working
as she should have, and her star drives were expected to operate at only
one-third of normal capacity, if that. A part of her sensor array remained out,
along with her rear battery and some of her perimeter cannons, as well as
several external cameras and a section of her heat exchange. All the same, she
had been very lucky in many important respects. Her armor was completely
intact, and her main battery and her shields were both fully operational, even
at stealth intensity. Her star drives could be restored with only a modest
amount of work, and the phasing crystals and major components could be salvaged
from her four damaged main drives. Four or five days of work in a construction
bay would have her in fighting condition once again.

The
most serious problem she faced was being able to beg those repairs when she did
return to Alkayja station. Opinions varied greatly aboard ship about whether
she would be returning in favor or disgrace. She did not have detailed interior
scans of the Dreadnought, but she had proven that it could be fought
successfully. Valthyrra herself was very pessimistic. She remained very
embarrassed over the incident with the incomplete water line that fueled her
conversion generators, even if that had been the responsibility of the station
construction crew. And that was directly responsible for the damage that she
had suffered.

She
also felt that she was very much to blame for the sabotage attempt and Walter
Pesca’s subsequent death. She had known that he had been wandering the remote
areas of the ship, spying, but she had assumed that it had been a part of his
linguistic research and she had not anticipated that he would do her any harm.
He certainly should not have been able to steal an entire conversion-warhead
missile from out of her own launch tube. She saw that as giving her very bad
marks for carelessness.

Captain
Tarrel was delighted to point out that there was one advantage to the Methryn’s
lame condition: The carrier was no longer capable of crushing accelerations.
Valthyrra was herself polite enough not to" respond that she could still
make at least one person’s life very miserable, even on only two main drives.
They eventually made something of a running joke about it, which helped to
restore a better mood aboard the ship. Although Tarrel was somewhat annoyed
when the Kelvessan were so endlessly fascinated to find that she did indeed
have a sense of humor.

She
had accompanied Commander Gelrayen on a final inspection of the major
comppnents of the ship. The star drives had been ready for some time and the
functional main drives had not needed repair in the first place; they had only
been moved. The two damaged main drives had been mounted into the two empty
forward slots, being too valuable as salvage under the circumstances. Although
the Starwolves never said a word on the subject, Tarrel suspected that they
were also reluctant to leave large pieces of their machinery drifting about in
Union space. With the inspection complete, they took a lift directly to the
bridge to prepare for immediate departure.

“Well,
everything worked well enough when we powered up for a static test earlier,”
Gelrayen remarked as the lift hurtled along the length of the ship. “Of course,
we will know nothing for certain until we are actually underway, especially
where those star drives are concerned.”

“We
have to take the chance,” Tarrel commented. “Just as long as there were not too
many parts left over, we should be all right.”

Gelrayen
looked uncertain. “Actually, there were about a hundred thousand parts left
over. I wonder if that is relevant, considering the size of the task.”

“Is
that supposed to be funny, Starwolf?” Tarrel asked. She was still very worried
about those star drives, knowing that the carrier would be going nowhere
without those.

“I
am very sure of my drives,” Valthyrra assured them over the lift com. “Captain
Tarrel, the entire bridge crew wishes to express its delight that you do not
need the protection of your armor due to my incapacitated state.”

Tarrel
was not allowed time to wonder why the Starwolves would have been concerned
about that, since the lift drew to a stop in the next moment and the doors
snapped open. When she stepped out onto the bridge with Gelrayen, they could
both see what the bridge crew had in mind. They were all seated at their
stations, ready for duty, except that each and every one was completely naked.

“Kelvessan
do appreciate a good joke,” Gelrayen said very softly as they went directly to
the upper bridge, ignoring the dozen and more naked Starwolves who were
studiously pretending that nothing had happened.

“I
suppose that they must, considering the great lengths they will go to for the
sake of a bad one,” Tarrel observed. She lifted herself into the seat at the
Commander’s station. No matter how lame the Methryn might be, she would not try
to ride out any acceleration standing up.

“Valthyrra,
are you ready to get underway?” Gelrayen asked. She brought her camera pod
around. “I am as ready as I can be.”

“Secure
all bays and locks for flight and begin warming up your main line of
generators.”

Kayendel
glanced over her shoulder. “Commander, the members of the bridge crew would
like very much to step outside for a moment to collect our proper uniforms.”

“No,
I need for you people to stand by your manual controls until we see how those
main drives are going to handle,” Gelrayen replied, as if refusing them with
great reluctance. “We have a long haul ahead of us, and every minute counts.
You can certainly understand that.”

They
understood that he was taking advantage of the situation. “Commander, the
Maeridan is moving clear,” Valthyrra reported. “Khallenda Maeridan reports that
she will stand by until she knows that we are away, before she returns to her
patrol. I have sent her and her crew my regards, in the innocent hope that I am
going somewhere.”

“Well
then, feed some power to those drives and we will see what happens,” Gelrayen
told her.

There
was really no reason to worry that the main drives would not work properly
unless the Starwolves had not put them together right, and the static tests
would have detected that. As it happened, everything functioned exactly as
expected. The two rear drives engaged and built thrust to cruising power
smoothly, phasing flawlessly all the way across that range. Although the
Methryn did not leap forward with her usual vigor, she was still moving out
smartly by Captain Tarrel’s standards.

“No
worries or surprises,” Valthyrra reported. “I am increasing power slightly to
move us on up toward threshold.”

“If
you feel that you can handle it,” Gelrayen agreed. “The real test, of course,
will be those star drives.”

“Commander,
if the ship is performing well...” Kayendel began, turning in her seat to look
up into the upper bridge.

Gelrayen
motioned for her to turn around. “I understand your desire to maintain proper
appearances, but I believe that we really should not leave the manual controls
unsupervised until the Methym is safely in starflight. You do agree,
Valthyrra?” “Oh, most certainly,” the ship insisted, swinging her camera pod
around to the upper bridge. “I would feel better about it. Besides, Kelvessan
hardly need to wear clothes in the first place. I doubt very much that you
could be cold.”

“Well,
I was thinking about Captain Tarrel,” Kayendel remarked.

“Are
you bothered, Captain Tarrel?” Valthyrra asked.

“Not
in the slightest,” she replied. As a matter of fact, about the only thing she
could see of the Starwolves at the moment was the backs of their seats. But as
far as it went, she did not think that the curious frames of the Kelvessan
looked ail that human in the first place. Since they were without exception
powerfully muscled, and were by design incapable of carrying any real fat, the
natural state was actually quite becoming to them.

“The
ride home is going to be a long one, “Valthyrra observed in a softer, less
contrived tone of voice. “We will need fourteen days at our present speed to
reach Alkayja. I do hope to adjust phasing on the star drives to run them
slightly hot, which will give us an extra ten to fifteen percent. That might
cut things to nine or ten days.”