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.
Trendaessa lifted her camera pod and looked about, her gesture one of confusion and possibly some embarrassment. “I must have fallen asleep. Did I miss anything important?”
“Possibly your own destruction,” Daerran told her drily as he lifted himself from his station. “Engineering, get repair crews onto our power systems and put everything back into the grid. I want a list of every damaged system divided into those things we can fix and those we cannot. Trendaessa?”
“Our worst damage is to our power systems,” the ship answered. “We have no shields. The main drives are down to sixty percent, and I can get enough power to the star drives for only forty percent. We will not be going anywhere very fast unless we can replace quite a few power couplings. At least the generators are strong.”
Daerran nodded. “Set a course for Home Base.”
