Dreadnought (11 page)

“That
sounds like a tall order,” Asandi observed.

“No,
not at all,” Dalvaen insisted. “We have a series of experiments that we need
done, and recommendations on the best and safest way to get the Dreadnought to
respond properly. The Methryn can do it.”

Asandi
turned back to the others. “I want Kelvessan input on this. You live and fight
out there; let it be your decision. Consider this a vote, and give me your
recommendation. Dalvaen, you seem to have indicated your judgment already.”

“I
am not a Starwolf,” he reminded them. “I cannot say that I should get a vote.
But as I have said, this is something that the Methryn should be able to do
easily enough.”

“I
understand,” Asandi assured him. “Commander Daerran?”

He
nodded in agreement. “Gelrayen should make a very competent Commander. He can
make up for his ship’s lack of experience with his own.”

“Commander
Schyrran?”

“I
agree,” she answered. “We could have the information for that next step Dalvaen
spoke of by the time some other ship would only just be ready to go out.”

“Then
make your vote unanimous,” the final Kelvessan added. “There seem to be more
reasons for than against.” “Then I’ll put in that order for an impulse scanner
for the Methryn right now,” Asandi concluded.

Captain
Tarrel settled back in her chair, feeling very satisfied that Starwolves really
did know how to do the right thing. In the Union, they would have only just
gotten down to serious arguments toward a decision that would have been based
as much upon personal ambitions, petty jealousies and prejudices as practical
considerations. She had to admit to herself that her own judgement was based
mostly upon her feeling that Gelrayen would make a very good Commander, but she
was willing to place her complete trust in that judgement. If she could manage
it in any way, and she suspected that it would not be hard, then she meant to
go along.

Every
time the Dreadnought changed its area of attack, every system in Union space
seemed to tremble with fear of where it might appear next. In this matter, the
independent colonies and the alien worlds were every bit as vulnerable as the
Union itself. If anything, those worlds had the most to lose. An attack on one
of the free colonies might mean the wreck of their ability to trade off-world,
and eventually a loss of their independence. And for some of the smaller or
less advanced alien races, just one attack could mean the collapse of their
civilization. But if the Starwolves were unable to defeat the Dreadnought, or
if it was able to defeat them, then all of known civilization was doomed
anyway.

Part
of the problem within Union space was the delay of information. News of an
attack could spread only as fast as military couriers, and sometimes the
commercial ships, could move through the lanes. No one except the Starwolves
had effective long-range achronic communication, and their limited numbers of
ships could not be everywhere at once. Usually only the sector capitals and a
few other major worlds could expect a Starwolf carrier to pass through, and so
most of the others were ordinarily aware only that they actually had been in
danger several days afterward, and their current status could never be
predicted. Some of the smaller or more remote colonies did not yet even know of
the danger, as much as an attack on their system was likely to affect them.

Beyond
that, the Dreadnought was not being selective. It would appear seemingly
randomly at one system, take out the next system or two possessing a station or
any significant traffic, and move on. The relative importance of the system, or
the amount of traffic it contained, seemed not to influence the judgement of
the Dreadnought in the slightest, just as long as it found something to destroy.
That certainly suggested that the alien machine had not mapped Union space to
any great degree, or at least it was not following any map of targets of
strategic importance. It was designed to be unstoppable, meaning that it acted
on the assumption that it could simply fight in its own good time until its
enemy was utterly destroyed. And since, at least at this stage, traffic would
return to a major system within days of an attack, there was no reason to
expect that it would not return, perhaps again and again to some place it had
found rich in prey. Even if it was not planning ahead, no one doubted that it
was at least keeping some record of where it had been and what it had seen.

The
situation was hardly any more comfortable for the Starwolves, who now found
themselves assigned the duty of guarding Union space. They were facing an enemy
they could not see and could not fight, advantages that they had themselves
always enjoyed in the past. The carriers were also under orders not to risk
serious damage in a fight they could not win anyway. The best they could do was
to find evidence of an attack as soon as possible and rush their warning to the
surrounding systems in the hope of getting there before the Dreadnought. None
of the carriers had actually encountered the Dreadnought since the battle with
the Kerridayen, and so the Starwolves on patrol had not yet faced the question
of what they would do with it if they did find it. Or face the question of how
ready they were to fight to protect their old enemy.

Theralda
Vardon, one of the younger carriers, was handling the situation as best she
could. Her standard patrol route had been trimmed of every system unlikely to
be attacked, and now she was running every six days a patrol that used to take
her weeks. In most systems she would drop out of starflight for no more than an
hour, just long enough to present the reassuring sight of herself to local scan
and to exchange news, and then she would go on again. Once the Dreadnought
appeared somewhere else, she would conclude her present round of patrols at the
sector capital and give her engines a chance to cool. Fortunately the carriers
had in fact been built for this type of abuse, even on an unlimited basis.

Once
this was over, however, every carrier was going to submit herself for refitting
as quickly as bays became available, for all that carriers were usually
extremely reluctant to agree to the prolonged confinement of the bays. Some
would probably have to wait. The refitting bays were very likely to be filled
for some time to come with unlucky ships like the Kerridayen, in need of
refitting whether they wanted it or not. The carriers that were still sound and
capable of flight would have to take the others patrols until those ships were
ready to go out again. No one willingly considered the possibility that there
would be ships that might never fight again.

The
subject of what would happen when the Dreadnought was destroyed was, however,
an intriguing one to Theralda Vardon.

She
brought the boom of her camera pod around and then forward into the upper
bridge. “Commander Schyrran?”

He
glanced up from his main monitor, as edgy as any of them about sudden
interruptions, then relaxed. “What is it?”

“I
was thinking that we are just taking it for granted that the war will resume
once the Dreadnought is destroyed,” she said. “I have realized that does not
necessarily follow. Certainly the Republic will wish to see if the truce can be
extended into a permanent peace. Does the Union have any reason to accept
peace?”

“That
might depend most upon just how badly the Dreadnought wrecks their
interplanetary travel,” he answered after reflecting upon that question
briefly. “If they lose quite a few stations, especially the large ones, and a
significant portion of their ships, they could be left hurting very badly. And
if they lose their ability to make war altogether, they would have to keep the
truce for quite some time. If the peace lasts for several years, they might
actually learn that peace is at least as profitable as war, something we have
been trying to tell them from the start. I wonder ...”

“Commander?”

“If
they do lose the ability to make war, we could actually take advantage of
that,” Schyrran explained. “We could keep their military reserves at a very low
level by constant, selective raids. We might even be able to force a formal
surrender on them.”

“I
cannot see Starwolves harassing an enemy that cannot fight,” the ship observed.
“And we might be at a disadvantage ourselves. We cannot guess how many carriers
we will have left when this is done. They are presently fitting the Methryn
with a special scanner that should be able to target the Dreadnought, but the
news out of Alkayja is not otherwise encouraging and we must still actually
fight that machine to destroy it.”

“That
is true enough.”

“And
we have so far talked as if we are very confident that we will find a way to
defeat the Dreadnought,” Theralda added. “As things stand now, even with this
new scanner, I cannot believe that we will destroy it. We might yet be forced
to abandon the Union and escape with what we can of Kelvessan and Terran
civilization.”

Schyrran
seemed doubtful. “Before it comes to that, we would probably send one of the
carriers as an envoy to the Aldessan. They will know of some way to destroy
this thing.”

“They
might,” Theralda agreed uncertainly. The Aldessan of Valtrys had done the
actual genetic engineering to create the Kelvessan, who still spoke the
Aldessan language and used their names. And the carriers were themselves
Aldessan technology, not Terran. The Kelvessan looked upon the Valtrytians as
their all-wise, all-knowing parent race; almost as gods. “Commander, we will be
dropping out of starflight in two minutes.”

“What,
so soon?” he asked, meaning that in jest. The Vardon was making her patrol at
such tremendous speed that most of her jumps were only a few hours in length.
“How soon will you have scanner contact?”

“Coming
up now, Commander,” the ship replied. She was moving so fast that the effective
range of her scanners in terms of distance corresponded to a much smaller
amount of time than it usually did. Her achronic scanners had only just reached
into the system when she suddenly whipped her camera boom around out of the
upper bridge.

“All
crewmembers stand by,” she announced to the entire ship. “This is a class two
battle alert. All on-duty personnel to their posts. All pilots and
damage-control parties stand by. All nonactive personnel will remove to the
inner sections.” “Trouble?” Commander Schyrran asked, while the bridge crew
waited to hear the worst. The fact that Theralda had issued a class two alert
meant that the ship was not immediately threatened.

“Trouble
has been here,” she explained. “There is no station in this system, just
orbiting debris. Emission patterns indicate many destroyed ships concentrated
in one area only a short distance out from the inhabited planet, so the system
fleet must have put up a fight to buy time. I cannot yet say whether or not the
Dreadnought has had time to move on. That will depend mostly upon the length of
time since this attack, and it has not been very long.”

“Recommendations?”
Schyrran asked. Since this affair had begun, he had been depending far more
upon her centuries of experience. Of course, their command of the ship was a
joint one.

“I
say that we should go straight in,” she said without hesitation. “I must know
how long it has been since the attack, and if the Dreadnought is still here.
That will tell me whether or not I might be able to beat that beast to its next
destination.”

“Do
you know where it is likely to go next?”

“I
have reason to be very certain,” Theralda said. “A likely target system is only
eleven light years from here. The next closest targets are at least three times
as far. I am sending my first achronic message out to the other carriers now.”

A
long moment passed as they waited for the Vardon to enter the system. Theralda
brought her camera pod around sharply. “Commander, we have the first variation
in the Dreadnought’s pattern of attack. Locations on the surface have been hit
as well.”

“The
poor devils would have never expected that,” Schyrran commented. “What did it
hit? Was there anything on that planet that would have attracted special
attention?”

“Nothing
that it has not seen before,” the ship answered. “Comparing the locations of
attacks with my maps of this planet—which is sometimes all I have left for
identification— there is a pattern of high-energy installations that have been
destroyed. Three planet-side military bases are gone, and almost two hundred
manufacturing, mining and power-production facilities have been hit as well.”

Commander
Schyrran glance up at the viewscreen as the Vardon dropped out of starflight
and began braking sharply. They had come in relatively close, although the
planet was still too far a way to be seen. “Then the Dreadnought has changed
its tactics to wreck the planet as well as system traffic?”

“No,
I would not say that it has wrecked this planet,” Theralda insisted, “Two
hundred or so major targets might seem like quite a lot, especially for a
lightly populated colony. But out of the whole, that amount of damage is more
like a threat or warning. What it all suggests to me, unfortunately, is that
the Dreadnought is capable of a great deal more planned thought and subtlety
than we first anticipated. Even so, I am not yet convinced that it is fully
sentient.”

“Sentience
is not an indication of a machine’s ability to plan its own strategies, even
fairly complex ones,” Schyrran pointed out. “A machine that is not self-aware
can still be very dangerous.”

“That
is true enough,” the ship agreed. “Even so, I still believe that self-awareness
and even some emotional responses are necessary for a machine to be truly
devious. That might be our advantage.”

“If
so, that machine must be programmed for deviousness,” he said. “I do not know
what else to say about a ship that develops one impression of its abilities and
tactics and then abruptly changes. That is devious.”