out,” Gelrayen told him. “You have good, solid battle experience, but you need a ship. Your experience, and that of your crew, makes up for Valthyrra’s lack.”
“Captain Tarrel, what do you think?” Asandi asked suddenly. She sat up straight, looking surprised. “Give the impulse scanner and anything else that comes along to the Methryn, and make Commander Gelrayen take her out to fight. He has no experience, meaning that he has no preconceived ideas of how a carrier should fight. You need your most inventive Commander running this ship, and inventiveness is the only thing that will make your new toys work for you.”
“That is a very remarkable statement,” one of the Starwolf Commanders said. “Could it be that, in your desperation to get help to your people as soon as possible, you have some motivation in having any carrier modified as soon as possible?”
“Are you accusing me of being devious?” Tarrel asked. “It is hardly in the Union’s best interest to send out a carrier that is going to accomplish nothing except get itself damaged or destroyed.”
“I am not questioning your honesty,” the Kelvessan insisted. “I only wish to suggest that desperation might be influencing your judgement without your being aware. We are not trying to be stubborn. As you say, it does no one any good to send out a carrier that cannot accomplish its mission as well as one of the other ships.”
Fleet Commander Asandi sat back in his chair. “I see no reason to question Gelrayen’s ability to command. He has been a very capable pack leader for nearly a hundred years, with something of a specialty in dealing with unusual and dangerous situations. The Alcaissa Disaster done—”
“You were responsible for Alcaissa?” Tarrel interrupted in surprise.
“Were you at Alcaissa also?” Gelrayen asked.
“At Alcaissa? It happened a decade before I was even bom.”
“Kelvessan tend to forget about time,” Asandi told her discreetly. “The point is that he can handle the Dreadnought as well as anyone. But the fact remains that he has a carrier that has never flown and a crew that has never before worked together. Can they give him what he needs of them? Commander Gelrayen?”
He considered that carefully. “The crew might be new to each other, but they are by no means inexperienced individually. When I asked the carriers for crew and packs, they sent me their best. I see no reason to doubt them. As for my ship, I can say only this, Valthyrra is no longer young. Methryn has been under construction for sixty years, and her core was engaged almost from the first. She has been able to interact with people and other ships for at least five decades, and she has settled into her personality completely. But I cannot deny that she has no experience in flight, much less battle. She might be slow in anticipating what is required of her.”
Asandi was watching the Kelvessan. “If the Methryn receives the pulse scanner, what would be your recommended course of action?”
Gelrayen already seemed to know what he would do. “I would like one day, possibly two for a trial flight. Then I would take the Methryn out to find the Dreadnought, test the impulse scanner from a safe distance and possibly play some slightly dangerous games. That first mission is to collect the information we need to find a weapon to fight that thing.”
Asandi turned to Commander Daerran. “Do you think that the Methryn can tease the Dreadnought into revealing more Secrets?”
“I cannot say,” he admitted. “The Dreadnought might be able to keep the rest of her secrets from us until we do find a way to strip her shield. My suggestion is that we test the pulse scanner, and put Dalvaen and his people to work finding a scanner that will see through that shield.”
“We need more information,” Dalvaen said. “The information we expect to collect from the reflection of the pulse will give us our first detailed information on the actual composition of that shield. We might be able to infer the total output of power expended in maintaining that shield, whether the ship’s hull is immediately below the shield or some distance within, even the number and location of shield projectors. We also expect to learn whether the Dreadnought possesses conventional drives or some other type, perhaps a non-reactive drive like a complex jump drive. Engaging any of those drives will affect the shield. In fact, the flare of conventional main and star drives require venting through the shield.”
“That sounds like a tall order,” Asandi observed.
“No, not at all,” Dalvaen insisted. “We have a series of experiments that we need done, and recommendations on the best and safest way to get the Dreadnought to respond properly. The Methryn can do it.”
Asandi turned back to the others. “I want Kelvessan input on this. You live and fight out there; let it be your decision. Consider this a vote, and give me your recommendation. Dalvaen, you seem to have indicated your judgment already.”
“I am not a Starwolf,” he reminded them. “I cannot say that I should get a vote. But as I have said, this is something that the Methryn should be able to do easily enough.”
“I understand,” Asandi assured him. “Commander Daerran?”
He nodded in agreement. “Gelrayen should make a very competent Commander. He can make up for his ship’s lack of experience with his own.”
“Commander Schyrran?”
“I agree,” she answered. “We could have the information for that next step Dalvaen spoke of by the time some other ship would only just be ready to go out.”
“Then make your vote unanimous,” the final Kelvessan added. “There seem to be more reasons for than against.” “Then I’ll put in that order for an impulse scanner for the Methryn right now,” Asandi concluded.
Captain Tarrel settled back in her chair, feeling very satisfied that Starwolves really did know how to do the right thing. In the Union, they would have only just gotten down to serious arguments toward a decision that would have been based as much upon personal ambitions, petty jealousies and prejudices as practical considerations. She had to admit to herself that her own judgement was based mostly upon her feeling that Gelrayen would make a very good Commander, but she was willing to place her complete trust in that judgement. If she could manage it in any way, and she suspected that it would not be hard, then she meant to go along.
4
Every time the Dreadnought changed its area of attack, every system in Union space seemed to tremble with fear of where it might appear next. In this matter, the independent colonies and the alien worlds were every bit as vulnerable as the Union itself. If anything, those worlds had the most to lose. An attack on one of the free colonies might mean the wreck of their ability to trade off-world, and eventually a loss of their independence. And for some of the smaller or less advanced alien races, just one attack could mean the collapse of their civilization. But if the Starwolves were unable to defeat the Dreadnought, or if it was able to defeat them, then all of known civilization was doomed anyway.
Part of the problem within Union space was the delay of information. News of an attack could spread only as fast as military couriers, and sometimes the commercial ships, could move through the lanes. No one except the Starwolves had effective long-range achronic communication, and their limited numbers of ships could not be everywhere at once. Usually only the sector capitals and a few other major worlds could expect a Starwolf carrier to pass through, and so most of the others were ordinarily aware only that they actually had been in danger several days afterward, and their current status could never be predicted. Some of the smaller or more remote colonies did not yet even know of the danger, as much as an attack on their system was likely to affect them.
Beyond that, the Dreadnought was not being selective. It would appear seemingly randomly at one system, take out the next system or two possessing a station or any significant traffic, and move on. The relative importance of the system, or the amount of traffic it contained, seemed not to influence the judgement of the Dreadnought in the slightest, just as long as it found something to destroy. That certainly suggested that the alien machine had not mapped Union space to any great degree, or at least it was not following any map of targets of strategic importance. It was designed to be unstoppable, meaning that it acted on the assumption that it could simply fight in its own good time until its enemy was utterly destroyed. And since, at least at this stage, traffic would return to a major system within days of an attack, there was no reason to expect that it would not return,
