the trouble of having to consult our scan when we fly. We always know where all the ships around us are, even carriers running under stealth.”
“Well, you learn something every day around here,” Tarrel remarked. “That must mean that you cannot sense the Dreadnought, or all of this business would be unnecessary.”
“Exactly. Either its shields defeat even that, or else it uses a type of drive that we cannot sense. We had wondered if it could be a jump drive, but we are supposed to be able to sense even that.”
“You would be able to sense its generators at least,” Tarrel speculated. “It must be the shield.”
That completely upset any hopes she might have had about the possibility of Union warships with stealth- intensity shields. The Starwolves seemed to have answers for everything, except the Dreadnought.
“We are well away from the station,” Valthyrra reported. “I am ready to begin the first level of testing.”
“Have at it,” Gelrayen told her.
The Methryn leveled herself with the plane of planetary orbits and sent out a low-level pulse from all of her perimeter impulse scanners. A long, tense moment passed before they knew that the system schematic on the main viewscreen was not going to simply fuzz out in a backlash of radiation as it had before. Then, one by one, three additional contacts revealed themselves to the impulse scanner. One had been sitting idle, well above the planetary plane, where a perimeter scan had been expected to have trouble finding it.
“The target ships were supposed to report the moment that they detected my impulse beam,” Valthyrra said.
“They have not?” Gelrayen asked.
“No, at least not yet. That might be some indication that I use a less powerful beam than the Dreadnought. Then again, once it locates a ship with a general scan, it might be locking on a tighter beam to make a more detailed identification.”
“Try locking onto a single ship.”
Valthyrra turned slightly, aiming the beam of her main impulse scanner at the most distant target.
“No response from target at low intensity,” Valthyrra reported. “Scan indicates that this ship is a Starwolf carrier. I do get a response at medium intensity. The ship identifies herself as the carrier Baldaen.”
Gelrayen looked up at her camera pod. “What do you make of that?”
“I suspect that she is trying to trick me,” the ship insisted. “That scan indicates a ship that is much too light to be a carrier. There is no muffled return from contact with the heavy plate armor of the hull. I still believe that ship to be a freighter.” “Tell her that and find out what she says,” he suggested. Valthyrra paused. “She admits that she is a freighter. My interpretation of the impulse scan is accurate.”
“Congratulations,” Gelrayen said, and everyone seemed relieved. “Do you feel that the impulse scanner is operating efficiently enough to conclude your testing now?”
She rotated her camera pod fully toward him. “Yes, I do.” “Then contact the station and tell them that the tests have been concluded successfully, and that we will not be returning,” he said. “Tell them that the Methryn is going out to hunt.”
7
Captain Tarrel found herself again in familiar territory. The Rane Sector had borne the first series of attacks by the Dreadnought, and chances were good that the Methryn would find it there again. A Starwolf freighter, taking a patrol run to help support the limited carrier fleet, had found the Dreadnought taking apart a lesser system and had been forced to run after being fired upon from a distance. Since the Dreadnought had attacked a system two sectors over only two days earlier, there was reason to believe that it had only just changed its location according to its habit and would strike at least one more system in the immediate area before moving on. Since the Methryn had nearly crossed the gulf separating Union space from the Republic, she was actually the closest fighting ship at hand.
Because the Starwolves had no time to spend on being subtle, they were admitting to a lot of things that they probably would have otherwise wanted to have kept somewhat more secret. Given all that she had been able to infer so far, Captain Tarrel was fairly certain that she could have taken her own ship, set a course out from the Rane Sector, and found herself in Republic space in two or three weeks, even if finding Alkayja and the Starwolf base would not have been so easy. She had serious misgivings about what she should do with that information. The Starwolves were letting slip these clues for the sake of sparing her own people from the destruction of the Dreadnought as quickly as possible; they could have spent extra days to make this journey, giving the sense that the distance was greater, or swung around wide to approach from a different direction.
That left her with the uncomfortable feeling that she owed them a very great favor in return. Knowing the location, size and capabilities of the secret Starwolf base was a major tactical advantage, one that could possibly be exploited as the first step in their eventual destruction. And they knew what she could do to them with that information. But, because the Starwolves had willingly surrendered that information for the sake of protecting the Union, it seemed to her that they were due some equal consideration. At least the decision was entirely her own to make. She doubted very much that Wally Pesca could have found his way back to Starwolf space even if she had told him where to look, and he had no way of knowing much that she did.
The problem for now was finding the Dreadnought and learning some more of its secrets, which they fully intended to exploit. The Methryn changed course immediately for its last known location, increasing her speed even more to try to close the distance between herself and her enemy before it could get ahead of her. The Methryn fully expected to be engaging the Dreadnought in the next two or three days, perhaps as little as four hours if she found it still loitering in that first system.
Tarrel tended to forget that they were not actually going into battle, and that the Dreadnought, unless they were unexpectedly very lucky indeed, would not be destroyed in this round of the contest. All the Methryn proposed to do was to use her impulse scanner to learn more of the Dreadnought’s secrets, its size, its power capabilities and the true nature of its drives, even if she had to present herself as a target just to get in close. In a way, it hardly seemed fair to Valthyrra Methryn. She was the newest ship in the Starwolf fleet, sleek and proud. And yet she was certain to come away damaged from this encounter, perhaps seriously, just for the hope of securing information.
Commander Gelrayen called a last tactical council on the Methryn’s upper bridge, even though his group of experts was very limited in both size and experience. Janus Tarrel was there mostly on the basis that she had seen the Dreadnought more often than anyone else, human or Starwolf. Kayendel had also fought the Dreadnought, acting as helm aboard the Vardon. Valthyrra herself completed the group by rotating her camera boom into the upper bridge.
“What do you think?” Gelrayen asked her bluntly.
Valthyrra lowered her camera pod slightly. “Seriously? I believe that my objective should be to obtain as much information and sustain the least damage that I can, with information being the priority. I keep thinking that I can only play this as it comes, but I suspect that I will have to get in close to the Dreadnought and give it a sustained shot from my three forward cannons before I will see inside that shield.”
“Is there any hope of catching it by surprise?” he asked. “Could we hit it with those cannons from a greater distance if we knew where to expect it, possibly catch it with its shields at a lower intensity? If we just found out where to find it using a very low-intensity sweep, without giving away our own presence, we could hit it with a high-intensity beam before it could react. I am thinking of our success with the last testing of the impulse scanner.”
“I haven’t heard that the Dreadnought ever reduces that shield,” Tarrel said. “Part of its advantage as a weapon is that it’s able to maintain a battle-ready status at all times.”
“I fear that Captain Tarrel is correct,” Valthyrra agreed. “All the same, I still recommend that very tactic as our initial course of action. Certainly I will find it easiest to scan the Dreadnought before it begins shooting at me. I have little hope that the sensors for the impulse scanner will survive for very long once that discharge beam begins hitting my hull.”
“Yes, there is that,” Gelrayen agreed thoughtfully. “Then what we are facing is an engagement that will be
