Theralda did everything she could to keep her drives running at the best possible speed, keeping the phase rate for each of her two star drives calibrated for the greatest efficiency. She even tried shifting the frequency of her emissions in the attempt to convert some of that heat into a tremendous flare of visible light. In the end, she was finally forced to reduce her speed and keep it down, the one thing that she had not wanted to do. All such judgments were relative to the situation. Ordinarily, she would have considered her present speed to be fairly high, within her upper recommended limits. Now she felt that she was moving at barely a crawl.
More than anything, Theralda was feeling very helpless, and that was an unfamiliar experience for her. She was three kilometers of fighting machine and perfectly able to care for herself even without crew. Her speed was second only to that of her own fighters, and she had the power to destroy worlds. Now a thing that she could not even see was so much bigger, faster and stronger than herself that she could not hope to fight it. She hated to admit even to herself that she was doing nothing more now than making a constructive retreat, desperately struggling to stay ahead of a machine that would probably destroy her if it found her. The Union had come to the Starwolves, even proposed a truce that they would have never accepted otherwise, and the only thing she could do to protect them was to warn them to get out of the way of the engine of destruction following her. It was a lesson in humility. And frustration.
She entered the Norden system cautiously, not knowing what to expect, and so she ran with her shields at stealth intensity and her drives idle to reduce betraying emissions. Having made the run at much lower speed than she would have preferred, she almost expected to find that the Dreadnought had jumped ahead of her and was already attacking the system, or perhaps hiding silent and unseen to ambush her. Her first tentative scanner reports showed that the system was a scene of frantic activity, with hundreds of ships in flight at once, all seeming to be headed in different directions. But she could see no evidence of an attack. She opened a channel to the station. The response she received was unexpected.
“Attention Starwolf carrier. ’* The message was over one of the achronic bands normally reserved by the ships for communication between themselves. “Attention Starwolf carrier. This is the carrier Maeridan.”
“Khallenda?” Theralda asked in response, obviously mystified. “How did you know I was here?”
“Your drives are hot,” the other ship explained. “You might just as well forget stealth for now, since you are leaving the widest trail of secondary emissions I have ever seen. Do you never look behind you?”
“More and more, these days,” Theralda said. “So, when did you come into system?”
“Just a few hours ago. I caught the edge of your message and came running as fast as I could. The Karvand might be along in the next few hours. Are we going to have that much time?”
“I wish that I knew,” Theralda replied, then hesitated. “Could you excuse me for a moment. The System Commander is answering my call. Better yet, you should join us. Then I will only have to explain all of this once.”
“Would you find me a bother?”
“Oh no, not at all. I would consider it a pleasure.” She shifted her achronic channel to the Union’s short- range beams, remembering to speak the Terran language. “Commander? This is Theralda Vardon.”
“Yes, this is System Commander Carrel,” a man with a deep voice responded. “Do you have additional information on this Dreadnought? Is it really on the way here?”
“Yes, I left the Dreadnought eating a small system only sixteen hours ago. It might not be here for days yet. It might be right behind me. Or it might already be here, for all I know,” Theralda explained. “Things have turned out rather differently than we first expected. The Dreadnought is a much more sophisticated machine than we first anticipated, and it has now changed its tactics by attacking not only stations and traffic but major installations on the planet itself. I have also found evidence that it lingers hidden in system for some time after the first attack to ambush ships that might be coming to investigate. My belief is that it is now trying to destroy all the Starwolf carriers it can find.”
“What can we do?” Carrel asked, seemingly too surprised or appalled by what he had just heard to make sense of it.
“You can hardly evacuate the planet, but there is really no need. The Dreadnought has so far only attacked a relatively few planet-side targets. If you close down all major power sources and evacuate the large factories and all military bases, you should be all right. But it does seem to have a priority about military targets.”
“I understand. I will have all planet-side factories and military bases cleared immediately, although I want to continue a cautions evacuation of some important materials.”
“What have you been doing about the stations?” Theralda asked.
“The stations are being broken up into large components,” Khallenda Maeridan reported. “Battleships are being locked into the hulls of the components of the military station and linked by computer to carry those segments away. I am carrying away the segments of the commercial station by locking them down to my upper and lower hulls.”
“Is that a fact?” Theralda asked. “How is that working out?” “Fairly well, actually. I have just returned from my fourth run. If you help me, we could have this entire system carted away in only three more runs each.”
“Where are you hauling away your spoils?”
“There is a system with no inhabitable planet only two light years over where we have been unloading the components. I was able to transport a full load in little more than an hour, most of that acceleration and deceleration time. With any luck, the Dreadnought will never think to look for it there.”
“That monster is damned clever.” Theralda mused upon that for a moment. “We can put the station components there, but all the evacuated ships have to go somewhere else. If we leave a major emission trail all going to the same place, which is exactly what you will get from large numbers of Union drives, the Dreadnought is probably clever enough to wonder where everyone was going and if they could be caught.”
“Then you will help us move our stations?” Carrel asked eagerly.
“Unfortunately, being your beast of burden is probably the most help that I have to offer,” Theralda said, amused to think that they were chatting up like old friends, devoted allies that had recently been bitter enemies. She found it curiously easy to be sympathetic toward the Union; a very long lifetime of familiarity had led her to pity them.
She had kept the communication open, for the bridge crew to hear. Commander Schyrran was seated at his station on the upper bridge, looking very pensive. He glanced up at her as she brought her camera pod into the upper bridge. “What about your star drives? You will probably be moving your own weight again in station components. Can you manage that?”
“Yes, that should be no problem,” she insisted. “For a two light-year jump, I hardly have the need to push that load to any real speed as long as I can get it moving. My drives are not damaged, and I have all the time they will take to strap down those components for them to cool. Moving that load the final fifteen percent or so up to transition will be the hardest part.”
The Vardon settled herself into orbit quickly, then opened her transport bays and sent her own capture ships to manage the actual placement of the station components against her hull. Following the Maeridan’s orders, the station personnel had divided the stations into sections of fairly precise length so that three long rectangular sections could be carried both above and below the long axis of the hull, while wider sections were fitted above and below the carrier’s wings. The capture ships were narrow-waisted transports. With three pairs of long handling arms mounted to that long middle section, and powerful engines to move heavy loads; these agile little ships and their experienced pilots were perfectly suited to this task.
Under the expert guidance of their own capture crews, both the Vardon and the Maeridan were loaded for flight within an hour and a half. The crews of the capture ships were used to having to shift salvage quickly after a major battle, settling abandoned and disabled Union ships in the massive holding bays of the carriers. The station components were larger, but there were only ten of them to be settled against the flat outer hulls of the carriers. Large inflated shock cushions, that had already been fitted to the components, kept them from direct contact with the hull itself, and heavy straps of braided metal bands were used to tie them tightly to the ship. Having equal numbers and sizes of components above and below kept the carrier in reasonable balance while she struggled to carry her own weight in cargo.
The two Starwolf carriers moved out in nearly opposite directions, laying trails from their taxed engines toward false destinations with the intention of joining up later. The Vardon’s star drives had cooled considerably in the time needed to load her for the flight, and now it was her main drives, hidden under her wings, that had to do the hard work of getting some thirty million tons of carrier and payload up to transition. She was easing her way as
