“No, damn it all,” the ship snapped, cursing in Terran now. “I just ran out of fuel.”
“Varth!” Gelrayen exclaimed. “Valthyrra, you happen to be a new ship. You could not have run your entire supply of water through your conversion generators in just the last few days.”
“No, I have twenty tons of distilled water in my main tanks,” the ship said. “Unfortunately, no one back at the station ever thought to switch me over from my reserve tank to the main line. Right now, all I have is just enough power to hold my shields at stealth intensity for a few minutes more, and some field drive maneuvering left over. The line has to be switched manually. It is not something I can do for myself.”
“Oh, this really is stupid,” he commented, then turned to the engineering officer. “Gheldyn, do you know where to find this reserve tank and switch the line over?”
“Yes, I believe that I do,” she answered, with slight uncertainty.
“I will deliver your lift as close as possible, then talk you through it over your suit com,” Valthyrra told her, and Gheldyn hurried to the waiting lift.
“Val, this is going to take time,” Gelrayen reminded her. “What do you propose to do with yourself until then? Can you call the Maeridan back to cover us?”
Valthyrra brought her camera pod back around. “No, I sent her away. For some reason, the Dreadnought has not attempted to open fire or even to track me by impulse scanner. I might have hurt it more than I thought, or else it has some programmed priority to secure any damage before continuing to fight. I can still see its shadow following my original escape path. It has not yet noticed my change of course.”
“Well, where are you going now? We seem to be descending back into the ring.”
“I am taking us back to that moonlet where we were. I intend to back myself into that cubby and sit there until I have full power.”
Commander Gelrayen did not have to think about that for very long. “Val, is that really a good idea?”
“No, but it is the best idea we have.”
Whether it was a good idea, a bad idea, or just, plain stupid, this was what Valthyrra intended to do. It seemed like a longterm solution to what sounded like a fairly simple problem, but no one felt like taking her to task over the matter. Her plans seemed complex, unorthodox and rather extreme, as Captain Tarrel had pointed out, but they did work fairly well. She had taken on the Dreadnought and actually seemed to have gotten the better of the argument, and she was the only carrier who’d managed that. It was hard to fault her after that.
She was still able to track the Dreadnought as its shadow passed over the stars and minute sparks discharged against its shield, which led her to wonder why, with a very large and colorful planet just below, it did not see her own black hull. Of course, both ships were right on the very edge of the plane of the ring. Her shape might not have been quite as obvious as it passed just above that clutter. Then she realized that the Dreadnought was blind. That shield swallowed light, so there was nothing coming through for visual identification. The only thing it seemed to have was its impulse scanner, and yet she knew that it employed that only at rare intervals. It had to be using some type of common scanner, passive and active, although less effective than her own because of the difficulties of seeing through that shield. It had not used impulse scan since her attack, which led her to wonder if she had damaged it more than she would have expected.
She reached the moonlet, braking very gently with her field drive, both to spare her very limited power resources and to avoid detection as the Dreadnought passed only sixteen hundred kilometers above her. As it happened, both ships were actually moving opposite the orbit of the planet, so that the use of braking thrust actually increased the Methryn’s speed to match that of the moonlet.
“Gheldyn reporting,” said the chief engineering officer. Valthyrra kept the message on bridge audio so that the others could hear.
“What do you have?” Valthyrra asked.
“A problem. All of the tubes are here, but the actual line leading from the main tanks to the pump, and the distribution grid to the ship’s conversion generators was never built. I have several hours of work here, if I try to do it myself. Perhaps half an hour or less if you send me an engineering team to assist. I could certainly use another pair of hands.”
“Where would you keep them,” Tarrel asked quietly, finding the thought amusing even under the circumstances.
“I anticipated the need, and a damage control team will be there to assist you any moment now.”
“I will be as quick as I can,” Gheldyn promised.
“Did you know that line was not completed?” Gelrayen asked.
Valthyrra brought her camera pod around. “I knew that it would have been done in the last few hours before my launch, and I do not recall it happening. Considering our situation, I had good reason to suspect that it might not be. Anticipating the other part of your question, that is also why I wanted some place where I could hide for some time.”
They noticed then that Captain Tarrel was easing herself down the steps from the upper bridge. The actual weight of the armor was less a problem to her than the fact that she found it more awkward then she had expected, at least descending the steps when she could not see where she was going. Once on level ground, she was able to carry herself fairly well.
“Do you feel safe?” Gelrayen asked.
“I was given to understand that this ship could not generate the power to send herself anywhere if she had to,” Tarrel answered. “I thought that I had better move about a little while I can. And I’m dying of curiosity. What did you do to the Dreadnought? I was blinking too much to see anything.”
“It lost its shield for a moment when my cannons matched frequency and were able to penetrate,” Valthyrra said. “That serves as an important lesson on the virtue of stupid ideas. It was a risk, but it worked. If I had had power for my conversion cannon, and a little more time, I could have destroyed it.” “Remind me never to play cards with any of you people,” Tarrel commented. “The gods smile upon fools and Starwolves with stupid ideas.”
“They also play their little tricks,” Gelrayen added. “Valthyrra, I hope that you were able to record what you saw.”
“I did get a good contour scan of what I could see, which was unfortunately only about twenty percent of the Dreadnought’s total area,” she answered. “The fact that it began to swing around before the shield went back up was the only thing that allowed me to see more than just its tail end.”
“I could sense its conversion generators while that shield was down,” Gelrayen said. “Apparently the shield itself is able to suppress even that psychic response.”
“Psychic? Are you trying to tell me that you Starwolves are mind-readers? I had assumed that your ability to sense high-power systems was a function comparable to ordinary scanner.” She paused a moment, thinking about the matter carefully. “No, pardon my skepticism, which was misplaced. Nothing you could tell me about Starwolves would ever surprise me again.” Gelrayen wisely treated the matter as settled. “I did not, however, sense any drives in operation. Is that because they simply were not engaged at that moment?”
“No, not entirely,” Valthyrra said. “I simply did not see any main drives or star drives of any conventional sense. In fact, I saw nothing that I would consider an external drive of any type. Of course, that is not a surprise.”
“No?” Tarrel looked surprised.
“We had already guessed that the energy flare of conventional drives could not be contained within that shield,” the ship explained. “I do not have to remind you that our own shields must have openings for the drive flare, or the wash will overload and bum out the shield itself. That is part of the reason why our packs almost always attack a ship at the drives first.”
“That, and to take the ship mostly intact,” Tarrel added. “Yes, there is that. If the Dreadnought had conventional drives in any sense, it would have had shield vents. If such drives were vented through the shield, the Starwolves would have been able to sense them, and shoot through those vents.”
“Do you have any better idea of just what sort of drive it must possess?” Gelrayen asked. “Would it be a highly refined jump drive?”
“That is my best guess at this time,” Valthyrra said. “I cannot believe that even the most powerful field drives would be able to take a ship into starflight, unless it also employs an acceleration damper of almost flawless efficiency. It might also use a type of drive unlike anything we know. All I do know now with any reasonable certainty is that it does not use conventional drives.” “Well, it’s a shame that we weren’t able to destroy it while that shield was down,” Tarrel remarked. “Do you think that we might be able to use that same trick again?”
