“Come on,” Baress urged her gently. “He has done this type of work often enough to have learned how to stay out of trouble. And the sooner we finish our work, the sooner we can all get out of here.”
Consherra agreed with the logic in that and reluctantly joined him as they hurried on their way.
Velmeran retreated back up the corridor about a hundred meters, where he had seen an access tube, and quickly descended five levels toward the center of the ship. The plan of the Challenger was as complicated as the map of several cities stacked one on the other, but he had committed the basic mechanical design to selective recall and he knew the trick of navigating the major corridors. Soon after reaching the lower level, he happened upon a sentry unfortunate enough to be facing the wrong direction and quietly slipped a heat charge on its back. That should be enough to shift any pursuit down to this new level.
After that he dropped two more levels and located a corridor that took him laterally toward the interior of the ship and the mechanical core that ran through the very center of its length.
All the power lines from the engines and turrets met here, merging with eighty additional generators before being channeled into the field drive and shield generators. Centermost, a hexagonal chamber two hundred meters across and running twenty-five kilometers from one end of the vessel to the other, it was the spine of the ship, a power core capable of containing and channeling the power of a small star.
Velmeran had to force the access doors to the power core, intentionally allowing an indicator to light on the bridge. He followed the core forward, looking for mischief. Soon the power core began to branch off, feeding field generators clustered on groups of four about the core in chambers large enough to serve as hangers for cargo shuttles. He began ducking into these chambers, setting heat charges on vital control mechanisms. He doubted that he was doing the Fortress any real damage, for there was too much redundancy for that limited damage to have any serious effect. On the other hand, the results of his handiwork should have the bridge in a frenzy.
Frenzy was a very good description of the state of affairs on the bridge. Marenna Challenger began to report damage to her innermost drive units. Maeken Kea pondered only long enough to establish exactly what was going on, then began shouting orders as she ran to her own console on the central bridge.
“Tie me in with Commander Trace’s personal communicator!” she ordered as she ran up the steps.
“Maeken?” Trace inquired even as she arrived at her station. “Captain Kea, what is it? My sentries just took off at a run.”
“Follow them!” she shouted into the com. “Starwolves are in the power core. I’ve relayed specific directions to your sentries, so they will take you straight there.”
“Right!” Trace agreed simply. The destruction of a section of the core might not affect the ship, since that power could be recircuited through the outer power network. But it was better to take no chances. If the Challenger was unable to shield herself, even the damaged Methryn could rip her apart.
Then all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place with shocking suddenness, instantly and unbidden. Momentarily stunned by that revelation, Maeken sat down heavily in her seat to review the facts she knew. Nothing was certain, and she still did not know the full truth. But she was so sure that she was willing to gamble the success of the entire battle on it.
“Marenna Challenger!” she ordered sharply, leaping from her chair. “Reduce speed gradually to a full stop. Do you understand me? Ready all guns and stand by to shield engines.”
“I understand,” the ship responded. “Beginning deceleration now. All offensive and defensive systems standing by.”
Not even Velmeran was aware for some time that the Fortress was slowing. The sudden shift of power from the rear engines to an equal number of forward engines running at the same level went unnoticed. His first hint came when he suddenly realized that the Methryn’s own sustained, high-pitched pulse was almost on top of them. In the next instant the Challenger braked hard before executing a quick end-over pivot to face back the way she had come.
But it was already too late. Valthyrra Methryn had been skirting one of the larger moonlets, five kilometers across and large enough to have been rounded under its own gravity. When Tregloran’s warning came, she began braking hard to stop. Suddenly the Challenger was there before her, emerging black and threatening behind the satellite. She opened fire on the smaller ship with every gun she could bring to bear. From a hundred kilometers, only four times her own length, she could not miss.
And from that distance the Methryn’s shields had little effect against those powerful bolts. A hail of brilliant shafts of energy slammed against her shields, and she could not turn them all. One and sometimes two scored every second, cutting deep into her hull and discharging with tremendous explosions. The entire ship rocked violently under the unrelenting impacts.
“They are trying for the bridge!” Valthyrra shouted above the confusion as she readied herself for the flight. With her own pack members clinging to the hull of the Fortress, she could not fight back. It would have been foolish, futile effort anyway.
Mayelna glanced at her impatiently. “They seem to have a damned good idea where it is.”
A single bolt tore screaming with raw energy through the ceiling above the bridge, cutting through the heavy plating barely a meter behind the main viewscreen and striking at the front of the upper bridge, slicing through the front of the Commander’s console and into the deck below. It discharged into the structural supports on the next level, and the force of the blast traveled upward, ripping out most of the upper bridge. Cargin, at the weapons station, was pitched from his seat and landed unharmed on the forward console to the right of the navigator’s station. Mayelna was thrown against the ceiling with such force that her armor snapped as easily as the bones within. She fell amid the wreckage of plating and her own console in the center of the bridge.
Valthyrra’s camera pod was nearly ripped free by the blast, and it turned reluctantly when she tried to bring it back around. Reacting to falling pressure, doors were slamming shut throughout the area to contain the break in the hull. Cargin, recovering quickly, hurried to the dented helmet he spied amid the wreckage. With this in hand, he rushed to Mayelna’s inert form and gently lifted her up so that he could set the helmet over her head and clip it in place even as the last trace of air and smoke fled through the gaping hole overhead. Another crewmember arrived with pressure tape to seal the breaks in the Commander’s armor, in case the suit underneath had not sealed itself.
Oblivious to the continued assault she was taking, Valthyrra forced her damaged camera pod around until she was looking down at Mayelna’s silent, battered form. Cargin opened her chestplate for a reading. In spite of all their fears, it showed a feeble pulse of life.
“Dyenlerra to the bridge, now!” Valthyrra all but screamed over the ship’s com. Then, almost as an afterthought, she opened a line through every speaker and suit com. “Stand by to abandon ship.”
Mayelna stirred weakly. Surely she had heard! Valthyrra bent even closer, hoping that her suit com remained intact. “Commander?”
“Save yourself, you old fool!” Mayelna admonished in a thin, harsh whisper.
Valthyrra glanced up abruptly at the main viewscreen, a cold, determined gesture. The Challenger lay to her right and slightly above barely twice her length ahead, pounding the smaller ship with unrelenting fury. Swinging her nose around to face her enemy head-on, the Methryn opened fire with deadly accuracy as she accelerated straight toward the larger ship. Valthyrra concentrated her fire on the cannons of her very nose, kilometers forward of where Tregloran and the others watched in stunned terror.
The results were as she had anticipated. Neither the Challenger nor her captain knew whether the Methryn meant to ram or to fire her conversion cannon so close that nothing could deflect the flood of raw energy, even if it meant the destruction of both ships. Maeken Kea had to decide in a hurry. She diverted one quarter of the ship’s power to the hull shields, enough to minimize the damage of a direct impact, sending the rest into the outer shield. The Challenger disappeared within its protective white shell of static force.
The Methryn struck that barrier nose-on and it parted around her in a fantastic display of blue and white
