Dreadnought (7 page)

“I
do see the pattern in its movement,” the ship confirmed. “This machine really
is not very clever. I know exactly where to look.”

Daerran
nodded, then turned to Tarrel. “Captain, we have to release your ship to
prepare the Kerridayen for battle. I can put your ship out here, or when we
reach our destination. But I invite you to stay with us as an observer and
adviser. I warn you that the ride will be rough.”

Tarrel
nodded. “Thank you. I believe that I would like to go along, but I would like
to send the Carthaginian back to Vinthra now and have my first officer advise
Sector Commander Lake of our progress.”

She
hurried back to her own ship, knowing that the Kerridayen was delaying her own
flight for her. She still needed to pack, uncertain just how long she would be
among the Starwolves. And she wanted warm clothes; having asked, she had been
told that they preferred a fairly cool environment to counteract the greater
heat their fierce metabolism produced. She meant to compose a very hasty
report, relay her instructions to Chagin, and send the Carthaginian on her way.
The prospect of being aboard a Starwolf carrier during a major battle was an
exciting and rather intimidating matter indeed. Lt. Commander Pesca ran to
match her determined stride as they hurried down the long boarding tube.

She
glanced at him over her shoulder. “Are you planning to stay with me?”

“That
is my assigned mission, Captain,” he said. “Is there some reason why I should
not stay?”

“No,
as long as you keep quiet and out of the way.” She glanced at him a second
time. “How are the language lessons going so far, Wally?”

Pesca
frowned fiercely. “I have yet to hear a single one of them speaking their own
language. Even their monitors had been converted to read Terran. They plan to
keep their secrets.”

“Then
is there any reason to come along?”

“They
have to let something slip eventually,” he insisted. “Besides, you need at
least one person about who has to do what you tell him.”

Pert
boy!

Kerridayen
moved into the system cautiously, her hull shields at stealth intensity. She
made her changes of speed slowly, braking herself with her forward main drives
as little as possible to contain their energy emissions. The Dreadnought’s
apparently slow changes of speed and direction during its previous attacks
suggested that it employed very much the same tactic . The  objective of this
first round was to attempt to determine whether the alien ship could hide
itself from Starwolf scanners—something they did expect—and see if it could see
the Kerridayen even with her shields hiding her—something no one could guess.
Whatever happened next would depend upon the results of this experiment. If the
Dreadnought saw and attacked the carrier, they would have to fight immediately.
If not, they would eventually have to show themselves. Trendaessa assumed that
the enemy was here, but she could not be absolutely certain unless it attacked.

“Either
the Dreadnought has been here already, or else this entire system has been
closed down completely,” Trendaessa said. “There is not a single drive or major
power source in operation anywhere in nearby space. However, I do detect
unexplained radiation residues, suggesting the explosion of conversion
generators. I wish that I could tell you more, but active scanner signals would
give away our position.”

‘‘Take
us in closer toward the inhabited planet,” Daerran said. “If we do not find the
station, then we know that the Dreadnought has been here. ”

“Right
now, we could use just one more of those drones I had a few days ago,” Captain
Tarrel remarked. She had been given a jump seat installed on the upper bridge,
specially padded to protect her from the hard accelerations that the Starwolves
considered normal.

“Yes,
that is an idea.” Trendaessa brought her camera pod into the upper bridge. “I
could release one of my drones and have it run through the system. If the
Dreadnought is here, it will snap at that bait.”

“That
would also give us the opportunity to observe its attack from a safe distance,”
Daerran agreed. He turned to Tarrel. “Captain, how long should we expect to
have, assuming it can see us?”

“The
first time, it found us within five minutes. In that case, I suspect that it
must have followed us into the system, since it had not attacked anything there
before our arrival. In the second case, it was on top of us within the first
minute. Either we were very unfortunate about where we came out of starflight,
or else it engaged its own stardrives to maneuver in quickly behind us.”

“It
probably saw you coming before you left starflight and entered the system, and
it was waiting for you,” Trendaessa told her. “My own scanners are capable of
that.”

If
nothing else, Tarrel was coming to have a greater appreciation about just where
her side had always stood in the silent war they had been fighting with the
Starwolves. Their technology made the best Union battleships seem very
primitive in comparison. And yet the Starwolves themselves seemed to believe
that they would find themselves helpless to deal with the Dreadnought. As
Trendaessa had once said, it was stupid but powerful enough to have its way.
Certainly the Union forces could never hope to fight that monster entirely on
their own.

They
made their pass of the single inhabited planet at speeds which were still a significant
portion of the speed of light, coasting at that very fierce pace. Because of
her speed, the Kerridayen did not actually come that close to the planet, but
aimed her best optical sensors in that direction in the few seconds that they
were passing near. She continued in on her trajectory, executing a series of
wide parabolic loops about the local star to brake her speed without engaging
her drives. At the same time, she was busy processing the information she had
received.

“The
Dreadnought has been here,” she said. “I detect no station, no ships and no
orbital power sources. There are some rather large pieces of scrap orbiting the
planet, probably the remains of the station itself.”

She
directed a recording of the enhanced images she had received. The first was in
motion, red-shifted on approach and then blue-shifted as the carrier had sped
past, and it showed very little. She then displayed a small series of captured
images from that sequence, further enhanced and magnified, showing a vague
cloud of debris drifting in close orbit.

“I
wonder if they had time to get out,” Daerran said quietly.

“That
depends upon whether or not a general evacuation order has been sent throughout
this area,” Tarrel answered. “If it wasn’t for our present need for stealth, I
could invoke my diplomatic pass and call down to the planet.”

“We
might get a chance yet,” he said. “Trendaessa, is there any way to know how
long ago that attack came? What about dispersal patterns for that radiation you
detected?”

“One
moment, Commander. Something is happening,” she said, then lifted her camera
pod slightly in a gesture of alarm. “Val traron! We are being fired upon.”

Two
words of Starwolf, and Wally was not there to hear it.

“What
do we have?” Daerran asked.

“It
is all very vague,” the ship explained. “The weapon beams leave a very distinct
trail of emissions after they have passed, probably leakage from their
undischarged energy. My immediate guess is that the Dreadnought knows we are
here, but she cannot scan us clearly enough to get a distinct weapon lock. ”
“Stand by your main batteries and ready your conversion cannon,” Daerran said.
“For now, try contacting that monster. ”

“No,
wait!” Tarrel ordered sharply. Both the Starwolf and his ship turned to stare
at her. “This might be your chance to get in one clean shot at that monster.
Have your best weapon standing by. When you hail it, the Dreadnought might
respond like it did for my ship. If it does, you trace the source of that
transmission for a weapon lock.”

“Whatever
they say, humans are not all stupid,” Trendaessa commented, with remarkable
lack of tact for a machine. “Commander, this might be important, and we still
collect the information we want if it fails. But if that ship has learning
capabilities, which it surely must, then it might only work once. Either we try
now, or we wait until we have several carriers ready to fire all at once.”

Daerran
looked up at Trendaessa’s camera pod thoughtfully. “You still want to try
this?”

“Of
course. It is going to fail anyway. The Dreadnought is not going to lower that
shield until we can give the proper code. But the blast of the conversion
cannon against that shield might give scanner reflections of the interior. That
is very important.” He nodded. “Charge your conversion cannon, then.”

Before
Trendaessa could prepare her most lethal weapon, one of the beams from the
Dreadnought connected with her own shields. The discharge exploded like a storm
of lightning over the surface of her shields for several long, tense
moments—too long while her position was illuminated to her enemy—but the power
couplings were finally able to handle the excess energy that was ripping
through her shields. Once again hidden in stealth mode, the Kerridayen
immediately shifted her position several kilometers down and one side, while a
volley of new discharge beams lanced through the place where she had been only
a moment earlier.

“Conversion
cannon charged to eighty-five percent,” she reported. “Ready to fire on
command.”

“Transmit
the code,” Daerran told her. “If it replies, then fire on it the moment you can
fix the source of its signal.”

The
Kerridayen transmitted her message, and the Dreadnought replied in a gesture
that seemed almost automatic. Trendaessa identified the source, took the range
and fired. The conversion cannon, already charged from a quantity of matter
converted directly into a tremendous amount of energy, extended a narrow
containment beam toward its target and released that energy in a sustained
stream deadly enough to destroy a world. For. a few brief seconds, the alien
ship was engulfed in that blinding torrent of raw energy.

“No
effect,” Trendaessa declared only a moment after the firing of the conversion
cannon ended. “The shield of that machine has some mechanism for shedding
energy. It deflected the entire blast out into space. Needless to say, I did
not get a scanner image of its interior.”

“Has
it opened fire again?” Daerran asked.

“No,
I must have blinded it. But it will probably have its scanners cleared and
recalibrated in a matter of seconds. I am taking advantage of the time for a
close pass.”

The
Dreadnought opened fire sooner than Trendaessa would have liked; as the
Kerridayen came nearer, her position was easier to determine. A pair of
discharge beams connected with her shields in rapid succession.

“That
was too much for my power couplings,” Trendaessa reported. “I can no longer
hold my shields at stealth intensity, and it can see us clearly.”

“Cut
off if it becomes too thick,” Daerran told her. “It might step up the power on
those beams any time now, and you are making threatening gestures.”

“If
I could, I would make rude gestures,” the ship replied. Unfortunately, the
situation had become hopeless with the loss of stealth. Trendaessa stepped up
her speed, but the beams were now discharging into her shields at regular
intervals. The power load of any one beam was easy enough for her to bear, but
the combined effects were beginning to tell. Since her close pass was not going
to give her more than she already knew, she abandoned that tactic without
consulting her Commander and began a very hasty retreat. She returned fire with
the cannons of her rear battery, less in the hope of damaging the Dreadnought
than to give her somewhere to shunt the tremendous load of power her shield
projectors were trying to contain.

“The
battle shields just failed,” she reported. “All I have now are the main hull
integrity shields. Those should bring us out of this.”

“Time
to starflight?” Daerran asked.

“Let
me build my speed another fifteen percent or the acceleration will kill our
passengers.”

Tarrel
glanced at the Starwolf Commander, but he did not even seem tempted to
sacrifice her to save his ship greater harm. The Kerridayen was already
accelerating so sharply that Tarrel was pinned to her protective seat, unable
even to lift her arms. Her ears were ringing dully, and her vision was dim
about the edges.

The
release of pressure came suddenly at the same moment that the carrier took a
particularly bad hit. They could actually hear the discharge boom and sizzle
against the hull. Then the hull shields failed as well, allowing that energy to
run directly through the systems of the ship. The monitors and console panels
failed, while lights flashed dangerously. Trendaessa’s camera pod began to
droop, settling slowly to the floor.

Daerran
spat some oath in his own language. “Trendaessa just went down. Engineering,
get power to the drives any way you can. Helm, take us out of here the first
moment this ship responds.”

Perhaps
the only thing that saved them was that the Dreadnought hesitated in its
attack, an apparent response to the sudden loss of power on the Starwolf ship.
The distance between them had grown steadily until it might have no longer been
able to track the carrier accurately without generator and drive emissions to
guide its scanners. Kenidayen’s systems began to clear as the discharge faded.
The main generators returned first, and that power was immediately directed to
the main drives. The carrier moved away quickly on an evasive course, escaping
another hit from the devastating weapons of the Dreadnought until she was able
to escape into starflight moments later.