Valthyrra was even prepared to suggest that they would be well served by some additional genetic modifications that would be passed through their entire race over the next few generations and slowly alter their appearance, perhaps changing the complete shape of their faces and giving them a full coat of fur.
The Methryn was assigned a construction bay, the very same where she had spent the first six decades of her existence. Once she had dropped her great speed coming down from starflight and had installed herself in orbit, getting herself back inside the bay was simple enough. Such maneuvers were accomplished entirely on field drive, and that was her one function that was not impaired. Valthyrra settled herself into the docking brackets quickly and deftly.
“Secure the ship, and stand by to switch over to external power as soon as the connections are complete,” Gelrayen ordered, then glanced up at the camera pod with a sour expression.
“You might also decrease the ship’s temperature to the normal levels and ask the crew to dress for company.”
“Perhaps they should,” Valthyrra agreed grudgingly. Captain Tarrel accompanied Commander Gelrayen and Valthyrra Methryn into the station only a few minutes later, giving them all just enough time to dress for the occasion. For the sake of convenience, Valthyrra had transferred one aspect of her awareness into a probe, one of the small remotes just like the one that had gone outside the ship with Captain Tarrel in the hopeless attempt to stop Walter Pesca from detonating the missile he had stolen. Valthyrra kept the small machine’s wings fully swept back, making it less cumbersome in the corridors of the station.
Fleet Commander Asandi was waiting for them outside the meeting room, where the Commanders of the other carriers in system and many other Kelvessan had begun to gather as soon as the Methryn had arrived. “Captain Tarrel, I cannot tell you how sorry I am about your young companion.”
“It was entirely my own fault,” she insisted. “I should have been more aware of his condition, but my thoughts were on other problems. I knew that he was having trouble, but I never realized how much.”
“Well, we do appreciate what you have done for us,” Asandi assured her. “Valthyrra, I still feel very bad about asking you to go out and risk such damage on your first flight.”
“It is my job,” the ship replied simply.
“I will get you replacement components as soon as they become available,” he promised her. “Commander Gelrayen, I hardly recognized you.”
Kelvessan did not blush, but Gelrayen still managed to look embarrassed. “That was actually Valthyrra’s idea.”
“And a long story, no doubt. Perhaps it can wait until after this meeting is concluded.”
They were hurried into the meeting room and took their seats; Valthyrra settled her probe on the arms of her own chair, having observed that the remotes sent by several of the other ships had done the same. Captain Tarrel was led to wonder about this apparent change of policy, since none of the ships had themselves been present at any meetings during her previous visit to Alkayja station. Valthyrra began the discussion with a detailed account of her own experiences with the Dreadnought, concluding with a display of the single image of the machine that she had captured when it had lost its shield.
“I was given the opportunity to acquire additional information concerning many of those questions about the Dreadnought that we have been trying to answer,” she said. “I still do not believe that it is fully self-aware, or many of its actions would have been more subtle. But just how clever is it? None of its actions during this incident indicated that it is very clever at all. It responds most often in a very simple, automatic manner. But we have in the past seen it function in a more clever, even unpredictable manner. My own conclusion is that it is a machine, but one that we must be careful not to underestimate.
“How fast is it, and just what type of drive can it be using inside that shield? My captured images show the back end of the Dreadnought, assuming that it even has a back or front in any conventional sense, and we can clearly see that it does not employ main drives or star drives as we know them. But I did observe evidence of unexpected speed. My own guess is that the Dreadnought uses a very refined version of a jump drive, technology that we do possess but never bothered to refine.”
“But not a very powerful version of a field drive?” one of the Kelvessan engineers asked.
“Even a field drive has a very strong static power emission, but I did not detect anything. Any final speculation about that drive must wait for one piece of information that my files do not possess. Can Kelvessan sense a jump drive in operation? My crew was able to sense the Dreadnought’s generators while its shield was down, but not a drive.”
Not even any of the ships knew the answer to that question, but somewhere in that station were the records dating back to the time when the first jump drive had been tested aboard the carrier Valcyr, which had disappeared on her first flight.
“There is one observation that I certainly would not have expected to have found,” Valthyrra continued. “I believe that the Dreadnought is nearly blind. Now it is only logical to realize that it is receiving no visual information through that light-consuming shield, but I now suspect that its ability to receive common scanner information is very limited. Once it had restored its shield, the Dreadnought pursued me at a following distance of less that a thousand kilometers. I was open to passive scan as well as being very visible against that planet, and yet it seemed unable to see me.”
“Do you have any theories on that subject?” Asandi asked. “For that matter, I believe that I have proof. Meaning no criticism, I suspect that our scientists here at Alkayja invented an explanation for why it could use its scanners through its own shields, when in fact it cannot,” She began feeding images to the main viewscreen. “Because I did have the Dreadnought targeted clearly against the planet, I was able to get some detailed images of its shield. In these images, you can in fact see several relatively tiny objects protruding through the Dreadnought’s shield. Several are knob-like projections about a meter across coming only just through the shield, which I believe are scanner beam projectors. There are also dozens of whip antennas, coming through the shield to a length of four or five meters, which are probably active and passive scan detectors. When the Dreadnought is under attack or trying to evade detection, it draws these units back until they are obscured from scan by that shield, but this severely limits the effectiveness of these devices.”
“In that event, if the Dreadnought was attempting to avoid detection by one carrier, a second carrier might be able to slip in close enough to fire cannons through those shields?” Trendaessa Kerridayen observed.
“Yes, I believe so,” Valthyrra agreed. “And that brings me to one very encouraging observation about the Dreadnought. I suspect that it might not be as tough to crack as we feared. Once a cannon bolt finds a way through that shield, it seems to take damage very easily, if only temporarily. It also seems to get shaken, as if it cannot decide whether to take an offensive or defensive stance. These are things that we can exploit to our advantage.”
Asandi nodded slowly. “Since you have fought the Dreadnought with reasonable success, what do you recommend?” “Is the Kerridayen fitted with an impulse scanner?” Valthyrra asked.
“Yes, but the ship is not yet fully repaired.”
“Then my suggestion is that the Kerridayen and myself coordinate an attack, luring or driving the Dreadnought within range of an ambush. Once it has come within moderately close range, two or three carriers could match frequencies with their main batteries until they pierce that shield, standing by with either missiles or conversion cannons when it fails. Once we know where it is, we should be able to find a place to arrange an ambush easily enough. I will admit that this plan is not perfect, but it is the best that we have at this time.”
“And you believe that you should be allowed to fight the Dreadnought?” Asandi asked.
“I believe that I should be allowed to coordinate the attack,” Valthyrra declared frankly. “I have a feel for how the Dreadnought operates and reacts. I think that I have proven that.” “One might also argue that you were lucky,” Asandi remarked. “It was my thought that we should have you repaired but held in reserve, in case our first major attack against the Dreadnought should fail. Captain Tarrel, what has been your impression of Valthyrra’s performance?”
“Actually, I believe that she has done very well,” Tarrel insisted. “I hesitate to speak plainly in her presence, however.” “I prefer that you should,” Valthyrra told her.
“Then the bad news first,” she continued. “Valthyrra still seems to be getting used to stressful situations and dealing with events beyond her own control, experiences she could not get sitting inside a construction bay. At the same time, she allows nothing to interfere with duty. When the time comes to act, she never foils to act cleverly and decisively. Although I must admit that my experience with the Starwolf carriers is limited, it did seem to me
