very short in duration, simply because our own usefulness will probably deteriorate badly after the first minute or two.”
“I’ve seen a carrier try to engage the Dreadnought once before,” Tarrel said. “I would give you no more time than that, once it opens fire.”
“Could we get it to chase us, now that we can keep a careful track of its location?” Kayendel asked.
“It hasn’t seemed prone to giving chase before,” Tarrel remarked. “It moves in slowly and takes out everything within range.”
“Well, it has not been given much incentive to chase,” the first officer pointed out. “That situation might change once it knows that our impulse scanner works. If we could maintain contact at a certain distance, we could prolong our useful time for scanning that machine and minimize the effectiveness of its weapons.”
“All the same, I would not anticipate that we could encourage it to give chase to this ship,” Tarrel insisted. “Twice already it has allowed damaged carriers to move out of range, although it could have given chase and destroyed them both easily. Chasing would mean allowing itself to be distracted from its main goal. It’s probably programmed against chasing.”
“I have to agree with that,” Valthyrra added. “Even given that we cannot predict anything absolutely, the Dreadnought’s past performance gives us some indication of what we can expect. I do not expect that I could encourage it to chase me.”
“You seem to have a great deal of insight into how we can and cannot deal with this thing,” Kayendel remarked candidly.
Tarrel smiled. “That’s my advantage as a Union captain. I’m used to having to operate from a position of disadvantage. Starwolves are not.”
“Then what do you expect?” Gelrayen asked her.
“Well, you’re overlooking one important fact,” she began. “We already know that the Dreadnought makes routine scanner sweeps, just so that Starwolf carriers running under stealth cannot sneak up on it. The Methryn has the same stealth-intensity shields as any other carrier, so are our chances of sneaking up on it any better?”
“No,” Valthyrra admitted bleakly.
“Then, if sneaking is out, you can only make a very quick approach under stealth and try to be on top of it before it has a chance to see you coming,” Tarrel continued. “If you were the Dreadnought, loitering in system before or after an attack but not presently in battle, where would you be?”
Valthyrra brightened, lifting her camera pod. “I would stay in close to where the action is, or was. The inhabited planet is the focus of all traffic in and out of the system.”
That really was the best course of action they had. Very much depended upon whether or not the Methryn’s scanner actually could penetrate the Dreadnought’s unusual shield. Although that scanner had a proven ability to receive some impressions of a Starwolf carrier running under stealth, the shields of the Dreadnought were of a much higher intensity. They had little reason to expect that this attempt would be successful. But the Starwolves needed more information on the physical structure of the Dreadnought before they could fight it, even if they had to risk an entire carrier to obtain that information.
The problem was that they were very likely to get no return for the price they were prepared to pay.
Now that they were nearly five days behind the Dreadnought, they did not expect to encounter it in this first system. All the same, the Dreadnought had demonstrated a talent for doing the unexpected, based partly upon the fact that it was more clever than they had first thought and partly because most of their other guesses had been equally limited. After the Vardon’s report, they had no way of knowing if the Dreadnought might still be loitering somewhere in the system even after this amount of time. There was even the possibility that it had intercepted the communications to the Methryn and was preparing an ambush at that very moment. Theralda Vardon had certainly believed that it might already know about the Methryn’s modifications, a matter that had been discussed freely through the achronic channels when they had believed the Dreadnought too stupid to notice. Valthyrra was inclined to agree.
With the possibility of battle just ahead, Captain Tarrel wanted to be prepared for a fight and the sharp accelerations that would involve well in advance. While they were still a short distance out, she returned to her own cabin to put on her armor. Valthyrra’s automated equipment had completed it on schedule, exactly like the armor worn by the Starwolves except for having only one set of arms and certain structural modifications to allow for her physical differences. She was somewhat surprised to find that it had been constructed in command white, although it was the color of a ship’s commander.
She was also surprised to find that Lt. Commander Pesca was in his own cabin. He was almost always off somewhere, wandering about the ship and talking with Kelvessan in the hope of learning their language. He was trying to meet every member of the crew. The Starwolves had discovered very quickly that he could not tell any of them apart. He seemed to have a bad memory for people. He would come up to each of them as if they had never met before, even if it was their third or fourth encounter, and the Starwolves would pretend to be someone different each time. If Pesca ever paid attention to such details, he would have been beginning to think that there must be four or five thousand Starwolves aboard this ship, when in fact there were hardly a thousand due to stripped ranks and the lack of any non-active personnel.
In all the years that Captain Tarrel had been fighting Starwolves, or at least trying to avoid them, she had never anticipated their possession of such a mischievous sense of humor.
Commander Pesca looked miserable. He looked somehow like a kitten that had been left out in a cold rain, forlorn and weary and badly in need and want of comforting. Tarrel noticed that especially, not because she was able to feel any sympathy for him but because of her complete lack of pity. That was what surprised her. Since she had become a senior officer, she had always been very parental toward those who served under her, especially her junior officers. She knew that Pesca was in trouble with his obsession to learn the Kelvessan language, and that he was having a very xenophobic reaction to being trapped in alien company. He deserved pity, and yet she could not find it in herself to pity him. She realized that she had been ignoring him so far, rather than face the question of just what it was about him that bothered her. Perhaps he was simply too stupid and self-centered to develop any honest social graces, like a child who was too dull to be able to stop acting spoiled.
“Put on your armor and find yourself a safe place to ride,” she told him. “The Methryn is looking for trouble.”
“The Starwolves locked me on one of the escape pods,” he told her.
Oh? How very clever. “The escape pods have good acceleration seats, I’m sure. I can have you put off, but probably not before this first fight.”
“I’m not getting my work done,” he said, a vague and rather hopeless complaint. She took that to mean that he was not ready to be put off.
“Then what’s bothering you now?” she asked. “You’ve been in battle before. You were there aboard the Carthaginian, and the battle between the Dreadnought and the Kerridayen. You’re practically an old hand at this. And the objective of this mission is to survive. The Methryn will turn away as soon as she learns everything she can. The ship will survive, whatever else that thing does to her.”
“Yes, but something can go wrong,” Pesca reminded her. “I just realized that I’m not ready for that. There’s so much I haven’t done.”
“What, made a will?”
“It’s not funny, Captain,” he complained, then put on the most dejected face he had. “You might laugh to hear this, Captain, but I’ve never. . well, you know. I just thought I had more time, but I don’t like to think that I might have lived my entire life without doing it.”
Tarrel did not laugh, simply because she was not surprised. It was the old line about going into battle and being afraid to die a virgin. Either he really was a virgin and he meant this, or else he was naive enough to think that he could try such lines on his Captain. She could believe either case. “I’m sorry, Wally. There are only Starwolves aboard this ship, and I don’t expect you to have any luck propositioning them.”
“We’re not all Starwolves on this ship,” he suggested with an amusing lack of subtlety. “Since the two of us are alone among aliens, it just seems to me that we should stick together.” This time she nearly did laugh. “Wally, I have absolutely no interest in sticking to you that closely. I’ll give you two warnings. First, its safer to proposition Starwolves. Second, if you don’t straighten up and act like a good little trooper, I’ll have you put off this ship at the first opportunity. And if you ever get familiar with me again, I’ll ask the Starwolves to confine you to quarters until I can have you brought up for misconduct. Understand?” Pesca looked pale enough to faint. “Yes, Captain.”
