After a quick conversation with Trendaessa Kerridayen, Valthyrra began braking somewhat early. Since she was the only carrier that lacked auxiliary shield generators, she would stand off a short distance and provide accurate impulse scans of the Dreadnought to help the other ships to coordinate their own attack. That also gave her the opportunity to get her fighters moved down to the bays and launch her packs, something the other carriers could not manage while they were engaged in quick evasive maneuvers.
“Commander, the first packs are moving into the bays now,” Valthyrra said. “The Kerridayen has joined the Vardon and the Destaen in battle.”
“Are they having any success?” Gelrayen asked.
“That is extremely hard to measure. The objective now is to blind the Dreadnought completely by depriving it of all external sensors, and we can only judge whether that plan is effective by the deterioration of the Dreadnought’s tracking control. I am not yet certain that we have had any success, but it will take time. ” As Captain Tarrel interpreted that, the Starwolves would know that their attack was effective if the Dreadnought failed to destroy them. They knew, or assumed with very good reason, that the Dreadnought was able to see by means of sensors extended through the shield, and that it could be blinded by burning off those sensors with cannon fire. She agreed with Valthyrra that the fighters, quicker and far more maneuverable than the carriers, and much smaller targets, were better suited to this task. The carriers had been doing the fighting so far on the assumption that they were more durable than the fighters, but that assumption was possibly in error. The Dreadnought had the weapons to destroy a carrier, but the fighters might have a superior defense in their ability to evade.
But even if the Starwolves did succeed in blinding the Dreadnought, and silencing its weapons, that still did not mean that they had won the battle. As Captain Tarrel saw it, the Dreadnought could either run blind or simply sit tight where it was like some creature safe in its shell. When their first trick had failed, she felt that it was time to clear out before things got worse and send the Starwolves back to their drawing boards to work on some new weapons for cracking that shield.
“Commander, the Kerridayen is down,” Valthyrra warned.
“What happened to her?” Gelrayen asked, hurrying to consult the scanner image.
“The Dreadnought was able to lock on her with a discharge beam,” the ship explained. “Her main generators seem to be down; no doubt the discharge was powerful enough to disrupt her main power grid. She is trying to retreat on secondary power, but the Dreadnought is chewing her to pieces.”
“Move in to intercept,” Gelrayen told her. “We have to give her time to get away.”
“I am moving in now, and the Freighter Taerregyn is coming into system to assist in towing. I am launching my first packs now.”
The first group of four packs hurtled out of their bays on the Methryn’s belly, drives flaring as they emerged beneath the carrier’s nose. Guided by Valthyrra’s scanner images, they moved off quickly to intercept their prey, assuming their standard Vee formation before each ship at the end of the wings moved to take positions one above and the other below the pack. As soon as the bays were clear, Valthyrra moved away the empty racks and began bringing forward the next groups of fighters.
At the same time she was holding herself on a course to intercept the Kerridayen, ready to do whatever she could to distract the Dreadnought. The Destaen was there ahead of her, sitting off to one side of the Kerridayen and turning the full power of her main battery against the Dreadnought, heedless of the discharge beams ripping apart her enhanced shields. The alien weapon continued to focus the greatest part of its attention on the stricken carrier, blasting away sections of her unprotected hull. A large portion of her nose and wings were gone already, tom apart by internal explosions and burning furiously.
“Valthyrra, be careful!” Gelrayen warned her sharply. “If you lose your impulse scanners, then we will be the ones who will be blind and helpless. The Kerridayen has to have lost her own already.”
“Trendaessa Kerridayen is dead,” Valthyrra said softly. Gelrayen looked up at her camera pod. “What do you mean?”
“Her main computer grid is destroyed. What remains of her crew is trying to abandon ship, and we have to buy them time.” Valthyrra turned her camera pod to the main viewscreen. “I am ordering the packs to stand clear of the Dreadnought, and I am charging my conversion cannon. Transports from the Vardon and the Destaen as well as my own are standing by to collect escape pods from the Kerridayen.”
“Conversion cannons have no effect on the Dreadnought,” Captain Tarrel reminded her. “The Kerridayen tried that one before.”
Valthyrra turned her camera pod. “I do not anticipate damaging it.”
Before she had a chance to act, the Destaen also took a very bad hit in her main engineering regions and was shaken by a series of explosions that disabled her drives and most of her main conversion generators. The damage was very serious, but not a threat to the survival of the carrier as long as she was protected from further harm. That left only the Methryn and the Vardon in any condition to fight; the Taerregyn was a freighter and possessed only minimal weapons. Valthyrra rotated about, locked her conversion cannon on target and discharged the stellar reserve of energy that she had assembled in her conversion holding chamber. She released that flood of searing power slowly, pouring it over the Dreadnought’s shield for as long as she could.
Valthyrra cleared her impulse scanner as quickly as she could, as soon as she had exhausted her reserve of energy, fearful of how the Dreadnought would respond. Perhaps she had done in one stroke what the other carriers had been unable to manage, blinding the Dreadnought by burning away the sensor array and other detection devices extended just outside its shield. The immense machine remained drifting on its previous course, deflected slightly by the Methryn’s conversion discharge, its weapons still. Valthyrra doubted that this condition would last for long; she instructed the other ships to hurry in their rescue efforts, and ordered the packs to keep clear of the Dreadnought for fear of provoking a response.
Now that the Destaen was crippled, the Taerregyn had no choice but to tow it to safety, leaving the burning hulk of the Kerridayen’s remains behind. If the Dreadnought left the wreckage alone, perhaps they could return later to discover if any of Trendaessa’s memory units remained intact and could be salvaged. The Taerregyn moved in directly above the Destaen and settled until the two ships were nearly touching, and the freighter locked onto the carrier’s hull magnetically with retractable grappling units. Once the two ships were secured, the Taerregyn engaged her main drives and began moving them both to safety. The Methryn and the Vardon remained behind, waiting for their transports and capture ships to gather in the Kerridayen’s escape pods.
“Judging by the number of escape pods I have counted, I believe that we can hope to recover one third to one half of the Kerridayen’s crew,” Valthyrra reported. “I have ordered the packs to return to their bays, since there is no hope in continuing this fight. The Dreadnought is still distracted with her own condition.”
“Are we giving up?” Gelrayen asked.
“No, but we are going to do this the way I knew it should be done from the first. As soon as we have all survivors aboard, then we are going through that shield to destroy that monster.” “According to the plans we have discussed?” Gelrayen asked, although he knew what her answer would be. “How many fighters do we have modified so far?”
“Only two, but I have every reason to expect that to be enough. The question of pilots for those two ships remains. Granted that I expect you to claim one of those ships for yourself, and I do not intend to protest that. This mission will require your experience and judgement. Will you take Pack Leader Teraln with you?”
Gelrayen looked unhappy. “The problem in deciding is that we have never had a chance to see our packs in operation, so all I have to judge them on is their records. Teraln looks like the best choice.”
“I am moving the fighters to the lower left bay and having them fitted with auxiliary weapons,” Valthyrra told him. “We should be ready to launch in a quarter of an hour.”
“I want to go down to the bay now and have a look at that ship,” Gelrayen said, then turned to Captain Tarrel. “Would you like to come with me?”
“Yes, I’m very much interested in this great plan of yours,” Tarrel said as he helped her from the seat. “My Starwolves seem to be keeping secrets these days.”
“Well, you
