perhaps again and again to some place it had found rich in prey. Even if it was not planning ahead, no one doubted that it was at least keeping some record of where it had been and what it had seen.
The situation was hardly any more comfortable for the Starwolves, who now found themselves assigned the duty of guarding Union space. They were facing an enemy they could not see and could not fight, advantages that they had themselves always enjoyed in the past. The carriers were also under orders not to risk serious damage in a fight they could not win anyway. The best they could do was to find evidence of an attack as soon as possible and rush their warning to the surrounding systems in the hope of getting there before the Dreadnought. None of the carriers had actually encountered the Dreadnought since the battle with the Kerridayen, and so the Starwolves on patrol had not yet faced the question of what they would do with it if they did find it. Or face the question of how ready they were to fight to protect their old enemy.
Theralda Vardon, one of the younger carriers, was handling the situation as best she could. Her standard patrol route had been trimmed of every system unlikely to be attacked, and now she was running every six days a patrol that used to take her weeks. In most systems she would drop out of starflight for no more than an hour, just long enough to present the reassuring sight of herself to local scan and to exchange news, and then she would go on again. Once the Dreadnought appeared somewhere else, she would conclude her present round of patrols at the sector capital and give her engines a chance to cool. Fortunately the carriers had in fact been built for this type of abuse, even on an unlimited basis.
Once this was over, however, every carrier was going to submit herself for refitting as quickly as bays became available, for all that carriers were usually extremely reluctant to agree to the prolonged confinement of the bays. Some would probably have to wait. The refitting bays were very likely to be filled for some time to come with unlucky ships like the Kerridayen, in need of refitting whether they wanted it or not. The carriers that were still sound and capable of flight would have to take the others patrols until those ships were ready to go out again. No one willingly considered the possibility that there would be ships that might never fight again.
The subject of what would happen when the Dreadnought was destroyed was, however, an intriguing one to Theralda Vardon.
She brought the boom of her camera pod around and then forward into the upper bridge. “Commander Schyrran?”
He glanced up from his main monitor, as edgy as any of them about sudden interruptions, then relaxed. “What is it?”
“I was thinking that we are just taking it for granted that the war will resume once the Dreadnought is destroyed,” she said. “I have realized that does not necessarily follow. Certainly the Republic will wish to see if the truce can be extended into a permanent peace. Does the Union have any reason to accept peace?”
“That might depend most upon just how badly the Dreadnought wrecks their interplanetary travel,” he answered after reflecting upon that question briefly. “If they lose quite a few stations, especially the large ones, and a significant portion of their ships, they could be left hurting very badly. And if they lose their ability to make war altogether, they would have to keep the truce for quite some time. If the peace lasts for several years, they might actually learn that peace is at least as profitable as war, something we have been trying to tell them from the start. I wonder…”
“Commander?”
“If they do lose the ability to make war, we could actually take advantage of that,” Schyrran explained. “We could keep their military reserves at a very low level by constant, selective raids. We might even be able to force a formal surrender on them.”
“I cannot see Starwolves harassing an enemy that cannot fight,” the ship observed. “And we might be at a disadvantage ourselves. We cannot guess how many carriers we will have left when this is done. They are presently fitting the Methryn with a special scanner that should be able to target the Dreadnought, but the news out of Alkayja is not otherwise encouraging and we must still actually fight that machine to destroy it.”
“That is true enough.”
“And we have so far talked as if we are very confident that we will find a way to defeat the Dreadnought,” Theralda added. “As things stand now, even with this new scanner, I cannot believe that we will destroy it. We might yet be forced to abandon the Union and escape with what we can of Kelvessan and Terran civilization.”
Schyrran seemed doubtful. “Before it comes to that, we would probably send one of the carriers as an envoy to the Aldessan. They will know of some way to destroy this thing.”
“They might,” Theralda agreed uncertainly. The Aldessan of Valtrys had done the actual genetic engineering to create the Kelvessan, who still spoke the Aldessan language and used their names. And the carriers were themselves Aldessan technology, not Terran. The Kelvessan looked upon the Valtrytians as their all-wise, all- knowing parent race; almost as gods. “Commander, we will be dropping out of starflight in two minutes.”
“What, so soon?” he asked, meaning that in jest. The Vardon was making her patrol at such tremendous speed that most of her jumps were only a few hours in length. “How soon will you have scanner contact?”
“Coming up now, Commander,” the ship replied. She was moving so fast that the effective range of her scanners in terms of distance corresponded to a much smaller amount of time than it usually did. Her achronic scanners had only just reached into the system when she suddenly whipped her camera boom around out of the upper bridge.
“All crewmembers stand by,” she announced to the entire ship. “This is a class two battle alert. All on-duty personnel to their posts. All pilots and damage-control parties stand by. All nonactive personnel will remove to the inner sections.” “Trouble?” Commander Schyrran asked, while the bridge crew waited to hear the worst. The fact that Theralda had issued a class two alert meant that the ship was not immediately threatened.
“Trouble has been here,” she explained. “There is no station in this system, just orbiting debris. Emission patterns indicate many destroyed ships concentrated in one area only a short distance out from the inhabited planet, so the system fleet must have put up a fight to buy time. I cannot yet say whether or not the Dreadnought has had time to move on. That will depend mostly upon the length of time since this attack, and it has not been very long.”
“Recommendations?” Schyrran asked. Since this affair had begun, he had been depending far more upon her centuries of experience. Of course, their command of the ship was a joint one.
“I say that we should go straight in,” she said without hesitation. “I must know how long it has been since the attack, and if the Dreadnought is still here. That will tell me whether or not I might be able to beat that beast to its next destination.”
“Do you know where it is likely to go next?”
“I have reason to be very certain,” Theralda said. “A likely target system is only eleven light years from here. The next closest targets are at least three times as far. I am sending my first achronic message out to the other carriers now.”
A long moment passed as they waited for the Vardon to enter the system. Theralda brought her camera pod around sharply. “Commander, we have the first variation in the Dreadnought’s pattern of attack. Locations on the surface have been hit as well.”
“The poor devils would have never expected that,” Schyrran commented. “What did it hit? Was there anything on that planet that would have attracted special attention?”
“Nothing that it has not seen before,” the ship answered. “Comparing the locations of attacks with my maps of this planet — which is sometimes all I have left for identification— there is a pattern of high-energy installations that have been destroyed. Three planet-side military bases are gone, and almost two hundred manufacturing, mining and power-production facilities have been hit as well.”
Commander Schyrran glance up at the viewscreen as the Vardon dropped out of starflight and began braking sharply. They had come in relatively close, although the planet was still too far a way to be seen. “Then the Dreadnought has changed its tactics to wreck the planet as well as system traffic?”
“No, I would not say that it has wrecked this planet,” Theralda insisted, “Two hundred or so major targets might seem like quite a lot, especially for a lightly populated colony. But out of the whole, that amount of damage is more like a threat or warning. What it all suggests to me, unfortunately, is that the Dreadnought is capable of a great deal more planned thought and subtlety than we first anticipated. Even so, I am not yet convinced that it is fully sentient.”
“Sentience is not an indication of a machine’s ability to plan its own strategies, even fairly complex ones,” Schyrran pointed out. “A machine that is not self-aware can still be very dangerous.”
