Of course, things could have also been much better.
Tenders continued to carry the hull plates out of the way, although a full hour passed before two of the little ships returned with replacements for the docking tubes which had been ripped away. These had simply been disconnected from another bay, but another hour passed before these new tubes were rigged in place and normal traffic in and out of the carrier could resume. By that time, most of the debris from the misfire of the impulse cannons had been cleared away. That was also more than enough time for Fleet Commander Asandi to arrive.
“Do you know yet what happened?” he asked. “I was told that the scanner malfunctioned.”
Gelrayen nodded solemnly. “Valthyrra was powering up the system to see if everything was responding. She says that the cannons pulsed at a much lower power level than anticipated. They should have only been at standby status.”
Asandi frowned at he stared up at the carrier. “I hope that this business does not involve a long delay.”
“Valthyrra says not. According to her expectations, some minor mechanical changes and a primary computer control modification should correct the problem completely. She says that we should close up the hull and take the ship out just as she is, although she recommends certain design changes on the next impulse scanner we build.”
“That sounds promising,” Asandi agreed. “I still want to check everything through the research and design team first, though. Better a delay at this phase than having to bring the Methryn back in later to start over.”
Gelrayen looked up at the new docking tube, which appeared to be complete. “I suppose that I should go back aboard. We have to get to work on finding out just why those cannons fired prematurely.”
“Tell Valthyrra that we really do not need these delays,” Asandi declared. “Her first battle damage, a result of shooting herself in her own construction bay. This is not a promising beginning.”
“Send Dalvaen and his friends in research over and have them tell us why their cannons discharged this much energy at standby level,” Gelrayen responded.
As it happened, Dalvaen had already taken his team of research scientists and engineers onto the Methryn’s hull to look at the impulse cannons, and they had their answer soon enough. The projection coils in the cannons were cooled to very low temperatures within a matter of seconds by solid-state coolers, and the designers had seriously underestimated the increase in efficiency from the super-conductor coils. Power levels that should have held the cannons ready to pulse on command, instead caused them to discharge. That was by no means bad news. Any system that could deliver the same performance on half the power input was an advantage to any ship, and especially so to a fighting ship. Valthyrra simply had to reprogram the automatic systems in the scanner control to feed a reduced power curve to the cannons.
The Methryn had been somewhat more damaged by the concussion than she had first thought, although that damage was still not serious. She was designed to take far worse punishment than she had just received, and the damage was mostly limited to some of the more delicate equipment exposed by the missing hull plates. Wiring and major power leads had been ripped loose from several shield projectors, scanner receivers and perimeter cannons set in retractable turrets within the ventral groove. None of the machinery itself, however, had been damaged, and everything was easily repaired by reconnecting or laying down new wiring.
If no one else was pleased with what had happened to the Methryn, it did at least put Theralda Vardon in a better mood. If nothing else, it encouraged her to hope that everyone else would be too impressed with Valthyrra’s embarrassment to pay much attention to her own stupidity. She was quite mistaken, especially so if she had ever believed that the sight of a Starwolf carrier coming into port with the wreckage of a Union commercial station still strapped to her hull could be ignored. Her crews had actually cut away large parts of the station components already, given the amount of time they were allowed, but nearly every piece of the station she carried had been fused to her armor in several places by the Dreadnought’s discharge beam. And with her shield projectors gone, the wreckage of the station components offered the best protection she had against attack.
Fleet Commander Asandi took one look at her and walked away shaking his head, muttering that the survival of known civilization was in the hands of idiots. Captain Tarrel was beginning to find it all very educational. She had discovered that not only were the Starwolves capable of making mistakes, sometimes they were also just plain unlucky.
“What I regret most, I suppose, is that it happened when we were actually doing so well,” Theralda remarked during an open conference between the carriers. “We were finally doing something constructive, even if we could not fight the Dreadnought itself.”
Although Fleet Commander Asandi had already gone aboard the Vardon to view the damage, Daerran had joined Tarrel and Gelrayen on the Methryn’s bridge for the conference. Valthyrra had channeled images of the Vardon to her main screen as well as the monitors at the Commander’s station on the upper bridge where the group was gathered. It was hard to tell that a Starwolf carrier was actually hidden beneath that wreckage. Theralda had removed only the segment that had been strapped across her nose. Tenders and crews working in suits were working to remove the wreckage as quickly as possible, although the process made some think of old stories they had read about sailing ships, and the removal of barnacles.
“Could you just run through your observations about the Dreadnought step by step,” Commander Asandi suggested.
“Well, the first thing we discovered was that the Dreadnought has begun attacking major surface targets,” Theralda began. “The damage that I observed was relatively limited, although the Dreadnought does identify and destroy all surface military targets. I have also found evidence that the Dreadnought lingers in system for a time to see what might come along responding to calls for help. That suggests to me that the Dreadnought moves more quickly between systems than we have first anticipated, and that it is capable of more sophisticated planning than suspected. My personal suspicion is that it is loitering about waiting for Starwolves.”
“But I already knew that it was waiting in system,’’ Tarrel added. “When I first encountered the Dreadnought, it attacked the convoy my battleship was escorting hours before it struck the station.”
“We had not forgotten that, even if Theralda had,” Trendaessa Kerridayen remarked.
“There is additional evidence that the Dreadnought is more than just a simple automated weapon,” Theralda continued.
“When I entered the system where I first encountered the Dreadnought, I was discovered when it made a routine impulse scanner sweep. It was looking for Starwolf carriers running with stealth-intensity shields, perhaps as a result of its battle with the Kerridayen. It definitely is more clever than we had assumed, or at least hoped. And being that clever, it is certainly capable of intercepting our achronic transitions and being prepared for what we plan to do.”
“We have to make plans for that possibility,” Asandi agreed, “Anything else?”
“Just more evidence of its intelligence,” she continued. “It followed me to Norden within hours, rather than loiter in the last system it attacked. A change in its usual methods. And when it came into the Norden system and saw the Maeridan and myself carrying away segments of the commercial stations, it followed us to see where we were going before it attacked. Those might all be automatic functions, but they are also evidence of a higher level of sophistication than we had first expected. But, when it did attack, it went after the station components rather than myself or the Maeridan, which gave me time enough to get away. That does not suggest careful planning, and that brings us back to assuming it is an automated machine rather than sentient.”
“I suspect that your assumptions are very accurate,” Asandi agreed. “Perhaps the Methryn can answer those questions more accurately in a couple of weeks. But we do have to be prepared for the fact that we are indeed fighting an enemy that is not just far more technically advanced than ourselves, on a scale of power far beyond ours, but clever enough to anticipate us.”
6
The wide door at the rear of the Methryn’s upper right fighter bay opened, revealing the open doors of the construction bay more than half a kilometer behind. Captain Tarrel stood well to the front of the bay with Commander Gelrayen, waiting for the arrival of the Methryn’s first pack of fighters. The packs were the most well- known of the Starwolves; the pilots in their black armor the only Starwolves that most people of Union space were
