Dreadnought (13 page)

The
Vardon responded in about the only way she could, engaging her main drives to
take her speed back up to a point where she could make a smooth, quiet
transition into starflight. Her actual distance from the Dreadnought was over
two light hours, since she had not penetrated very deeply into the system and
was now looping around to head back out. Theralda assumed, or at least hoped,
that she was out of the Dreadnought’s effective range. Achronic-based weaponry
could be fired across light-years without serious loss of power or definition;
the problem was finding the target precisely after the first few hundred
thousand kilometers. Given enough distance, a variation of even a millionth of
a degree became a significant miss.

“Impulse
scan contact,” Theralda warned, although the members of the bridge crew had
already noted her acceleration. “A second contact followed the first by several
seconds, so I have to assume that I have been seen. The attack on the planet
ceased at that same moment.”

“Is
it following us?” Commander Schyrran asked as he returned to the Commander’s
station on the upper bridge.

“I
have no way of knowing,” she admitted. “If it is, the best evidence will come
when it begins shooting at us.”

“You
have us accelerating back to starflight?”. Schyrran assumed. “Take us through
quickly, but try to be discreet about our course. Head somewhat away and then
change course fiVe minutes into starflight.”

“Moving
into starflight now.”

The
Vardon made a very smooth transition back into starflight. A carrier could make
an extremely abrupt transition, due partly to its superior drives and
acceleration dampers, but mostly because the Starwolves themselves were able to
handle harsh accelerations that would have killed anyone else. But a forced
transition, engaging the star drives while the ship was still well below light
speed, caused a very turbulent dispersion of emissions from the drives that was
easy enough to follow. The Vardon did not want to draw a line leading straight
to her destination, especially if the Dreadnought would not have been going on
to Norden otherwise.

Theralda
brought her camera pod into the upper bridge. “I will not say that I like that.
The Dreadnought was ahead of us with no more than a five hour lead, possibly
less. That means that it is at least as fast as my own best speed, and I was
running my drives to within two percent of risking permanent heat damage to the
crystals. How can anything that size be able to move so fast? I wonder what
manner of drive it uses?”

“Are
we away clear?” Schyrran asked.

“I
certainly hope so, but it seems a little early to promise anything.” She
lowered her camera pod slightly, a gesture of resignation or defeat. “I no
longer know what to make of that machine or just what it might be capable of
doing. We had assumed that it was slow because of the interval between attacks,
but we now have every reason to believe that it loiters in-system after an
attack to see what shows up, and that it actually travels at speeds a carrier
would find hard to match. And that is probably only its cruising speed. I
hesitate to think what it might be capable of doing in a pinch.”

Schyrran
nodded. “Do you know of any reason why we cannot relay that information on a
tight beam back to Alkayja station immediately?”

“A
tight beam should be safe enough.”

“Then
Norden is the next step. Get us there as fast as you can, and we should have
two or three days from this point to get things ready before the Dreadnought
shows itself.”

“I
will need sixteen hours at least to reach Norden,” Theralda warned him. ‘‘My
drives are hot. I knew that they would be, but I was anticipating a few hours
at least in this last system to let them cool. I will have to reduce power by
at least thirty percent to keep drive temperatures from going up any more.”

He
nodded. “Do the best you can, but do not damage yourself. If you have a drive
go down now, you could be out for months. It might seem like a harsh judgement,
but a single carrier in good fighting condition is worth more right now than
even a major system.”

Theralda
did everything she could to keep her drives running at the best possible speed,
keeping the phase rate for each of her two star drives calibrated for the
greatest efficiency. She even tried shifting the frequency of her emissions in
the attempt to convert some of that heat into a tremendous flare of visible
light. In the end, she was finally forced to reduce her speed and keep it down,
the one thing that she had not wanted to do. All such judgments were relative
to the situation. Ordinarily, she would have considered her present speed to be
fairly high, within her upper recommended limits. Now she felt that she was
moving at barely a crawl.

More
than anything, Theralda was feeling very helpless, and that was an unfamiliar
experience for her. She was three kilometers of fighting machine and perfectly
able to care for herself even without crew. Her speed was second only to that
of her own fighters, and she had the power to destroy worlds. Now a thing that
she could not even see was so much bigger, faster and stronger than herself
that she could not hope to fight it. She hated to admit even to herself that
she was doing nothing more now than making a constructive retreat, desperately
struggling to stay ahead of a machine that would probably destroy her if it
found her. The Union had come to the Starwolves, even proposed a truce that
they would have never accepted otherwise, and the only thing she could do to
protect them was to warn them to get out of the way of the engine of
destruction following her. It was a lesson in humility. And frustration.

She
entered the Norden system cautiously, not knowing what to expect, and so she
ran with her shields at stealth intensity and her drives idle to reduce
betraying emissions. Having made the run at much lower speed than she would
have preferred, she almost expected to find that the Dreadnought had jumped
ahead of her and was already attacking the system, or perhaps hiding silent and
unseen to ambush her. Her first tentative scanner reports showed that the
system was a scene of frantic activity, with hundreds of ships in flight at
once, all seeming to be headed in different directions. But she could see no
evidence of an attack. She opened a channel to the station. The response she
received was unexpected.

“Attention
Starwolf carrier. ’* The message was over one of the achronic bands normally
reserved by the ships for communication between themselves. “Attention Starwolf
carrier. This is the carrier Maeridan.”

“Khallenda?”
Theralda asked in response, obviously mystified. “How did you know I was here?”

“Your
drives are hot,” the other ship explained. “You might just as well forget
stealth for now, since you are leaving the widest trail of secondary emissions
I have ever seen. Do you never look behind you?”

“More
and more, these days,” Theralda said. “So, when did you come into system?”

“Just
a few hours ago. I caught the edge of your message and came running as fast as
I could. The Karvand might be along in the next few hours. Are we going to have
that much time?”

“I
wish that I knew,” Theralda replied, then hesitated. “Could you excuse me for a
moment. The System Commander is answering my call. Better yet, you should join
us. Then I will only have to explain all of this once.”

“Would
you find me a bother?”

“Oh
no, not at all. I would consider it a pleasure.” She shifted her achronic
channel to the Union’s short-range beams, remembering to speak the Terran
language. “Commander? This is Theralda Vardon.”

“Yes,
this is System Commander Carrel,” a man with a deep voice responded. “Do you
have additional information on this Dreadnought? Is it really on the way here?”

“Yes,
I left the Dreadnought eating a small system only sixteen hours ago. It might
not be here for days yet. It might be right behind me. Or it might already be
here, for all I know,” Theralda explained. “Things have turned out rather differently
than we first expected. The Dreadnought is a much more sophisticated machine
than we first anticipated, and it has now changed its tactics by attacking not
only stations and traffic but major installations on the planet itself. I have
also found evidence that it lingers hidden in system for some time after the
first attack to ambush ships that might be coming to investigate. My belief is
that it is now trying to destroy all the Starwolf carriers it can find.”

“What
can we do?” Carrel asked, seemingly too surprised or appalled by what he had
just heard to make sense of it.

“You
can hardly evacuate the planet, but there is really no need. The Dreadnought
has so far only attacked a relatively few planet-side targets. If you close
down all major power sources and evacuate the large factories and all military
bases, you should be all right. But it does seem to have a priority about
military targets.”

“I
understand. I will have all planet-side factories and military bases cleared
immediately, although I want to continue a cautions evacuation of some
important materials.”

“What
have you been doing about the stations?” Theralda asked.

“The
stations are being broken up into large components,” Khallenda Maeridan
reported. “Battleships are being locked into the hulls of the components of the
military station and linked by computer to carry those segments away. I am
carrying away the segments of the commercial station by locking them down to my
upper and lower hulls.”

“Is
that a fact?” Theralda asked. “How is that working out?” “Fairly well,
actually. I have just returned from my fourth run. If you help me, we could
have this entire system carted away in only three more runs each.”

“Where
are you hauling away your spoils?”

“There
is a system with no inhabitable planet only two light years over where we have
been unloading the components. I was able to transport a full load in little
more than an hour, most of that acceleration and deceleration time. With any
luck, the Dreadnought will never think to look for it there.”

“That
monster is damned clever.” Theralda mused upon that for a moment. “We can put
the station components there, but all the evacuated ships have to go somewhere
else. If we leave a major emission trail all going to the same place, which is
exactly what you will get from large numbers of Union drives, the Dreadnought
is probably clever enough to wonder where everyone was going and if they could
be caught.”

“Then
you will help us move our stations?” Carrel asked eagerly.

“Unfortunately,
being your beast of burden is probably the most help that I have to offer,”
Theralda said, amused to think that they were chatting up like old friends,
devoted allies that had recently been bitter enemies. She found it curiously
easy to be sympathetic toward the Union; a very long lifetime of familiarity
had led her to pity them.

She
had kept the communication open, for the bridge crew to hear. Commander
Schyrran was seated at his station on the upper bridge, looking very pensive.
He glanced up at her as she brought her camera pod into the upper bridge. “What
about your star drives? You will probably be moving your own weight again in
station components. Can you manage that?”

“Yes,
that should be no problem,” she insisted. “For a two light-year jump, I hardly
have the need to push that load to any real speed as long as I can get it
moving. My drives are not damaged, and I have all the time they will take to
strap down those components for them to cool. Moving that load the final
fifteen percent or so up to transition will be the hardest part.”

The
Vardon settled herself into orbit quickly, then opened her transport bays and
sent her own capture ships to manage the actual placement of the station
components against her hull. Following the Maeridan’s orders, the station personnel
had divided the stations into sections of fairly precise length so that three
long rectangular sections could be carried both above and below the long axis
of the hull, while wider sections were fitted above and below the carrier’s
wings. The capture ships were narrow-waisted transports. With three pairs of
long handling arms mounted to that long middle section, and powerful engines to
move heavy loads; these agile little ships and their experienced pilots were
perfectly suited to this task.

Under
the expert guidance of their own capture crews, both the Vardon and the
Maeridan were loaded for flight within an hour and a half. The crews of the
capture ships were used to having to shift salvage quickly after a major
battle, settling abandoned and disabled Union ships in the massive holding bays
of the carriers. The station components were larger, but there were only ten of
them to be settled against the flat outer hulls of the carriers. Large inflated
shock cushions, that had already been fitted to the components, kept them from
direct contact with the hull itself, and heavy straps of braided metal bands
were used to tie them tightly to the ship. Having equal numbers and sizes of
components above and below kept the carrier in reasonable balance while she struggled
to carry her own weight in cargo.

The
two Starwolf carriers moved out in nearly opposite directions, laying trails
from their taxed engines toward false destinations with the intention of
joining up later. The Vardon’s star drives had cooled considerably in the time
needed to load her for the flight, and now it was her main drives, hidden under
her wings, that had to do the hard work of getting some thirty million tons of
carrier and payload up to transition. She was easing her way as much as possible
with her damping field, which converted the energy of acceleration that would
have otherwise arrested her speed into additional acceleration. No ship would
have flown much past half of light speed without energy dampers. They were as
essential as the drives themselves. But dampers could only do so much. Even if
she could remove all the energy of acceleration, Theralda still had to set that
bulk into motion.