“That depends upon how well the Dreadnought learns from its mistakes. We might be able to set up some variation of that same trick that might fool it.” She paused, lifting her camera pod slightly as if listening to some distant sound. “Gheldyn, do you have any estimates for me?”
“Another five minutes at least,” the engineering officer responded over the bridge audio.”
“Do the very best you can. We are running out of time.” She turned her camera pod back to the others. “The game begins again. The Dreadnought seems to have recovered from whatever I did to it and is moving through the outer edge of the ring detonating some manner of concussion discharges.”
“Trying to shake us loose?” Tarrel asked.
“Perhaps. Those concussions are creating some very intense plasma shock waves that would react sharply with my armor, producing a very clear signature on passive sensors. They are not a direct danger to me, however.”
“But if it finds us, we should be able to run,” Gelrayen added.
“I certainly hope so,” the ship agreed. “If I pull myself well back into this hole, the moonlet will shield me from any shock wave unless both the concussion and the Dreadnought itself were somewhere in front of the opening. We might just be able to ride this out.”
“Famous last words,” Gelrayen remarked to Captain Tarrel.
She nodded. “I think that I’m going back to your seat before anything else happens.”
Tarrel took herself back to the upper bridge and strapped in for battle, fairly certain that it would come without warning. She could not believe that they were going to get out of this one. The Dreadnought was a weapon that possessed tremendous abilities, and she doubted that the Methryn’s one lucky shot had damaged it all that much. For that matter, she did not entirely trust Valthyrra’s belief that it was only trying to chase them out with concussion discharges. It knew, within a relatively specific area, just where they were hiding, and it probably meant to destroy everything along that portion of the ring to have them.
She strapped herself into the seat on the upper bridge and watched as the Starwolves continued about their business with a frustrating lack of concern. For the first time in what seemed like a long while, Tarrel was reminded of the rumors and legends about Starwolves that she had lived with all her life. They were said to be nothing more than coldly efficient weapons of war, incapable by design of either compassion or fear. Since meeting them, she had lain aside all of those old beliefs and suppositions. There was certainly no reason why they would be risking their lives and their ships to protect Union worlds, except compassion. But she wondered now if their calm reaction to danger was something they had by design, or if it was something they had learned with experience.
Their first warning that the Dreadnought was close was the sound of the concussion discharges, rolling along the hull of the ship like distant thunder. The lack of an atmosphere meant that they were hearing the passing of the shock wave itself, and the absence of air also allowed the shock wave to travel farther before dissipating. Just the same, if those shock waves were still rolling through, then their point of origin must be very close.
“Gheldyn, we really do need to be going,” Valthyrra said.
“Another minute,” the senior engineer answered.
“We really do not have a minute,” the ship insisted.
“You also do not have a complete main line.”
Captain Tarrel decided at that point that they were in serious trouble. The next concussion thundered in, this one strong enough to shake the immense carrier. Valthyrra was turning her camera pod from one station to the next, where members of the bridge crew waited patiently at consoles controlling systems that still lacked the power to respond.
“Gheldyn, are you accurate in your estimate?” she asked at last.
“Yes. We are making the final connections now.”
“Then I am going to move the ship quickly, even if it uses all the fuel elements left in the lines. You keep working straight through this, since I am going to need that power immediately. This tactic will not get us out of danger, but it will buy you that time.”
“I understand,” Gheldyn promised her.
“Commander, I am going to do something stupid,” she said, turning toward Gelrayen. “Stupid times demand stupid gestures. May the gods pity us one more time.”
Before he could reply, another concussion struck the ship violently. The moonlet was caught on the leading edge of a powerful shock wave and sent tumbling slowly by the force of that explosion, and the Methryn was carried with it. Only the fact that Valthyrra had maintained the hull integrity shields at battle intensity saved the carrier from damage as her wings and upper hull were dragged along the interior of the cubby. After the first few seconds, the moonlet settled into a predictable roll that Valthyrra could match.
“Scanner contact,” Valthyrra reported. “It knows where we are. I no longer have any choice.”
The ship engaged her main drives at full power without bothering to first move clear of her hiding place in the moonlet, hurtling herself out into open space and well beyond the Dreadnought. Even then she did not let up, switching from one conversion generator to the next to pull every remaining bit of water from each line in the distribution grid. By the time the last generator gave all it had, barely half a minute later, the Methryn was nearly two million kilometers out from the gas giant and drifting at a third the speed of light. Captain Tarrel had reacted to an abrupt twenty-seven G’s of sustained acceleration predictably. When she did come around, she was going to regret it. The stress drugs had her stirring weakly almost immediately.
“Gheldyn?”
“I still need just a moment.”
“Hurry,” Valthyrra insisted, then lifted her camera pod toward the main viewscreen as it shifted to show the image behind the ship. “Stupid idea to buy time, part two.”
The moment that the Methryn had left cover, Valthyrra had re-established contact with the drone that she had hidden earlier, ordering it to keep pace with her. Although she did not yet know it for certain, she had every reason to believe that the Dreadnought was somewhere behind her, in spite of the fact that it had never before pursued a fleeing ship. She had made herself particularly annoying, if not an actual threat, and her sudden loss of power probably made her a very tempting target. Even if it had not been following her from the start, it had almost certainly taken up the chase by now. And considering the display of speed that she had seen earlier, that was a disquieting thought indeed.
Valthyrra wished that she still had power enough to bring up her shields at stealth intensity — all she had left was battery power for environmental systems and herself — then the Dreadnought would have been forced to give itself away by targeting her with an impulse sweep. She was surprised and very gratified when that sweep came anyway. Perhaps the Dreadnought, fearful of yet another trap, was wondering what had become of the Maeridan, the first carrier that had attacked it. That sweep gave Valthyrra the very information she needed most. The alien weapon was indeed behind her, and coming up fast.
Fearful of being fired upon while she lacked the protection of shields, Valthyrra responded in the only way she could. Under her direction, the drone unit that had been standing idle just beside her raised its own shields to stealth intensity, a function very important to a reconnaissance probe. Then it turned and began to accelerate rapidly toward the Dreadnought, rapidly even by Starwolf standards. Being a fairly simple machine, it lacked the capacity to question any order it was given, as long as that order came from a valid source. It made its run directly toward the Dreadnought, which responded very predictably with another scanner sweep. It might have tried to open fire, but its discharge beams were barrage weapons and not designed for tracking such a small, swift target. Riding those impulse beams to their source, the drone rammed the Dreadnought at a combined speed over half that of light.
In a way, this was more than just a delaying tactic, but an experiment in itself. Normal shields were of three types. Defensive shields were designed to deflect or absorb energy weapons but could be penetrated fairly readily by solid objects, while navigational shields caught up any solid objects in a series of projected waves, clearing a safe path ahead of the ship, but were completely transparent even to delicate nuances of information in returning scanner beams. The Dreadnought’s powerful shell was, of course, a defensive shield, but one of such great intensity that it should have seemed solid to any physical object striking it. Valthyrra wanted to know that for certain, rather than simply continue to assume that it worked that way.
If the drone went through, the combined energy of impact at that speed would have to be measured in megatons of force. Indeed, it would have simply vaporized a very large portion of the Dreadnought and probably shattered the rest, and that would have been the end of their problems all the way around. Unfortunately, Valthyrra
