much as possible with her damping field, which converted the energy of acceleration that would have otherwise arrested her speed into additional acceleration. No ship would have flown much past half of light speed without energy dampers. They were as essential as the drives themselves. But dampers could only do so much. Even if she could remove all the energy of acceleration, Theralda still had to set that bulk into motion.
Carriers were built for abuse, and this did not stress their limits except in trying to meet the demands of time. Even the amount of dead weight they carried was not a danger to their frames. Integrity fields, like the shields that protected the ship from the outside, where projected through the frame itself, giving the carrier the strength to survive tremendous forces of compression and torsion. Theralda took twenty-two minutes to get herself up to transition, twice as long as what she would have normally considered a gentle run. Once in starflight, she was surprised to find that she did not feel the extra mass at ail.
The Vardon arrived in the uninhabited system less than half an hour later, finding the Maeridan there only a minute ahead of her. The segments of the station that had already been brought through had been left in orbit over a rather dark, cold planet fourth out in the system, and the two carriers left the components they carried to be tied together with this first group. The unloading of the components took considerably less time than the more careful process of strapping them down to the hulls of the large ships, and the two carriers were on their way back to Norden in only about twenty minutes.
The complete transport of the commercial stations could be accomplished in two more runs only by having both of the carriers strap one segment more than they had hauled previously, braced by the components strapped onto the upper and lower hulls, actually across the nose of the ship. Neither of the two carriers were fond of that arrangement, since it completely blocked their forward batteries and left them essentially defenseless. The fact that they were already defenseless against attack from the Dreadnought was their only consolation, if it could be called that. It seemed better than making another trip, considering the time involved and the emission trails that they would be leaving.
While they were being fitted with their final load, they were able to witness the departure of the military station. Being a more solid and less sprawling structure, it could be transported intact by having battleships attach themselves to key points on the station’s frame. These ships were then linked by computer, until they became in essence only the engines for a far larger ship made up by the station itself. The result worked, but it was not very fast, needing eight hours or more to get itself to transition speed. It would not be going into safe-keeping in the same system as the commercial stations, since spreading things about decreased the likelihood of any of them being found.
Because she had been delayed several minutes in getting away, the Vardon had to attend to the duty of making their farewells to the System Commander. “We will not be coming back, I am afraid. There is nothing we can do to help you now. We can do the entire Union more good by keeping ourselves intact and ready to fight when the time comes that we can do something about this Dreadnought.”
“Yes, we understand that,” Carrel agreed. “You have already saved our stations. No matter what the Dreadnought does to the planet, we can rebuild much quicker if we have access to those stations. But I think that we will not bring them back here until the Dreadnought has been destroyed.”
“Perhaps that will be very soon now.”
Theralda made her final run, feeling oddly alone and vulnerable now that the Maeridan was nearly ten minutes ahead of her. That was also a very new experience for her, and she thought that life would be much better when there were no more great, mysterious Dreadnoughts around to frighten honest, hard-work-ing carriers. She eased herself down from transition speeds, grateful to be free of this duty. Her capture ships had been unable to return to their bays and had flown alongside her, and they now flew on ahead to assist in the unloading of the Maeridan.
“Is that how I looked?” Khallenda asked as the Vardon came nearer. “How are the humans taking it?”
“Stoically,” Theralda said. “They just seem to be grateful to have had some warning. And they are very understanding about the fact that we are unable to stay around to try to protect them. I would have never thought that Unioners still possessed any nobler qualities. That makes it harder for me simply to run away and leave them.”
“They were somewhat less understanding when I first arrived,” the other ship remarked. “And I cannot forget all the times that I have seen them do to others what the Dreadnought is doing to them. A little shaking up might just do them some good.”
“Perhaps. .,” Theralda paused. “I just recorded a scanner contact.”
“Are you sure?”
“I have been through this before. Blow yourself out of there.” She turned her attention back to herself, putting her crew on alert at the same time that she brought herself around, away from the direction of that scan. “Commander, we might be doomed. I cannot dump this load. There is simply no way for me to cast lose the straps that are holding down those station components.” “What about the capture ships?” Schyrran asked.
“My capture ships are already on their way back, and the Maeridan is sending me her own since she is already unloaded. It all depends upon how much time we have.”
Schyrran sat back in his head, both sets of his arms crossed. “That thing is a damned nuisance. How did it find us?”
“I suppose that it came into the Norden system, saw what we were doing, and followed me here during our last run. We did not have stealth engaged, so it probably executed an impulse scanner sweep just to be certain that we were alone here.”
The attack came only a moment later. But the Dreadnought seem focused only on the orbiting station segments, blissfully ignoring the Maeridan as she made a very hasty escape out of orbit, letting the one moving target get away while it concentrated on targets that would be going nowhere. There were still times when the Dreadnought behaved like a very stupid machine, and times when it was only too clever. For the moment, it was content to chew away at the tight group of station components drifting in orbit.
Theralda was straining her main drives to work her way back up to light speed and the safety of transition into starflight. She had already dumped nearly half of her speed, and she would need at least six minutes altogether to work her way back up. Barely a couple of minutes had passed before the attack on the station components had ended, and she knew only too well that she was the next tempting target. She was still bearing her full load of components, and that meant that she could not even use her own main weapons. The capture ships had not yet overtaken her, and the Maeridan was far away. She was beginning to wonder what would happen to her if she engaged her star drives early. Ordinarily that would have been no problem to either ship or crew, but those segments might break loose and take large pieces of her hull with them.
Of all the ways she might have met her end, this was too embarrassing.
The first shot came in, and the Vardon’s hull shook with the explosion. Theralda was already mobilizing her automated damage control when she realized that she had not herself been hit. The discharge beam had connected with the large segment over her left wing, and her evasive change of heading had shaken off the beam before it had eaten deeply into the mass of metal and plastics she carried. Theralda Vardon had become a turtle, slowed by the very burden that protected her. And that was just as well, since she was only able to engage her hull shields.
A second beam connected with the segment above her main hull, and she was able to shake it off before it cut through to her hull. It was not a perfect arrangement by any means, since some of the power from the discharge beam was getting through to her shields and leaking into her hull, giving hell to her major power systems and networks.
Theralda ordered the capture ships to move clear and make their own run into starflight. There was nothing they could do for her now that she was under attack. She would have to take this load along with her.
“Theralda, how are you doing?” Khallenda asked anxiously.
“Surprisingly well,” she responded. “The components are protecting me from the worst of the attack. Keep yourself clear. ”
“I could come in close and shoot the straps.”
“No, get yourself out of here. I can ride this through until I can make it into starflight.”
At least she hoped so. The backs of her drives were unprotected by anything except their own retractable armored plates. Even a light discharge there would leave her unable to engage her drives, and the Dreadnought would have her. Fearful of this, she brought herself around in as tight a turn as she dared and began to rotate slowly, turning first her upper and then her lower hull toward her enemy. The components were being battered to
