Dreadnought (23 page)

“Then
I suggest that you begin talking very politely.”

“Can
I just shoot them?” the ship asked. “I have never shot anyone in all my life.”

“Valthyrra,
behave yourself,” Gelrayen warned. “This is serious. Stand ready to run if
things turn nasty.”

“I
am not certain that I have room to run, with all of this debris. I should
probably just put up my best shields and push my way through.” She paused. “I
have an audio-only channel with the Fleet Captain.”

“This
is Fleet Captain Cullan,” he began, proud and belligerent. “I demand to know
your business here.”

“This
is the Starwolf carrier Methryn. I have been fitted with a special scanning
device and I am following the Dreadnought in an attempt to learn some way of
fighting it.”

“You
damned murderers don’t fool us,” Cullan shouted back. “We know that you’re
behind these attacks. This is all some great plan of yours, wrecking our
systems and pretending to be chasing some great, invisible enemy. Some of us
have decided to do something about this, and we might as well start with you.”

“I
am sending the packs to the bays,” Valthyrra announced privately before
returning to her communication. “Captain Cullan, you are badly mistaken on
three important points. First, the Starwolves are not behind these attacks, and
there really is a Dreadnought. Second, if we had wanted to destroy you in this
way, we could have done so at any time. We do not need sneaky plans. Third, you
do not have the firepower to confront me. If you do not get out of my way
immediately, I will release my packs.”

Captain
Tarrel rolled her eyes. “Valthyrra Methryn, you are the very soul of discretion
and tact.”

“It
is good to know that I have a soul,” she responded, turning her camera pod.
“Starwolf rule number one. No one threatens a Starwolf and gets away with it.”

“Then
will you get me a visual channel and let me handle this in my own way?”

Valthyrra
turned her camera pod to Gelrayen, who nodded. Captain Cullan came up on the
main monitor of the Commander’s station a few moments later. He looked exactly
like Tarrel had expected, arch-conservative traditionalist, old and thin and
going through life looking as if he had just eaten his shaving cream and could
not get the taste out of his mouth. Sector Command tried not to promote these
types to captain warships; they believed their own propaganda and were too
prone to make egotistical decisions in the field that cost the Union dear.
Which was what was about to happen here.

“Captain
Cullan, this is Captain Janus Tarrel,” she began quickly, giving him no chance
to talk. “I am the Union’s special diplomatic envoy and military advisor to the
Starwolves. I carry a special diplomatic pass and I am calling upon you to
honor it or face immediate charges of insubordination and high treason. You are
employing Union warships against direct orders.”

“The
very soul of discretion and tact,” Valthyrra remarked softly.

“You
seem to have gotten very cozy with your Starwolf friends in a hurry,” Cullan
observed disdainfully, noticing her armor.

“You
either wear the best protection you can get on this ship or you end up
plastered to a wall,” she answered. “I can tell you beyond any doubt that there
is a Dreadnought, and that it is not a Starwolf weapon. I’ve fought the
Dreadnought twice myself, and I was aboard the carrier Kerridayen when she
fought it and was severely damaged. I’ve seen Starwolf carriers with their
hulls ripped to shreds from trying to fight that thing. And now this ship is
going out to draw its fire in the hope of finding a way to fight it.”

“I
have no way of knowing that I can trust you,” Cullan responded, although he no
longer seemed quite so sure of himself.

“Yes,
you do,” Tarrel insisted. “Every ship’s captain and System Commander has been
told who I am. You know damned well what your orders are. You and your friends
aren’t as smart as you seem to think, because you don’t know what’s really
going on. You’ve already bought yourself a court martial, since I am going to
report this. Right now, I’m trying to save your damned life.”

Captain
Cullan suddenly looked very surprised and turned away after muting the channel,
leaving Tarrel to wait.

“Tactical
re-enforcement,” Valthyrra reported. “They were keeping most of their ships
behind us, away from my forward battery. The carrier Maeridan just moved in
behind them. Discretion and tact were losing ground.”

“You
have to hit an idiot like that right between the eyes or he doesn’t even hear
you talking,” Tarrel commented sourly.

“We
are in no danger,” the ship insisted. “They carry a light compliment of very
ordinary weapons, and my defensive battle shields can turn aside anything they
have to throw at me. If they do attack, I will simply push through them.”

She
shook her head impatiently. “Cullan has not attacked, and he has not returned
to his monitor. I believe that he has just collapsed into complete indecision.
Let’s make the decision for him and push on out of here very slowly.”

“That
sounds fair to me,” Gelrayen agreed.

The
Methryn turned toward an opening through the wreckage and the smaller ships
surrounding her, then began to move forward slowly with her running lights
engaged. It was a move that was as bold as it was casual in appearance. Captain
Tarrel had guessed right, knowing her own people better than the Starwolves or
their ships ever could. Whatever Captain Cullan and his cronies had been
telling themselves, she had been certain that most of the junior captains were
not as willing to believe Cullan’s rather simplistic conspiracy theory. They
were certainly hesitant to join in deliberate mutiny on such an insubstantial
excuse.

“We
are free and clear to run,” Valthyrra reported. “I am taking the ship out of
orbit and beginning the climb to threshold. We might as well press on to our
next projected target system.” “Yes, we should stay on top of it,” Gelrayen
agreed. “Is the Maeridan away as well?”

“Right
behind us.” Valthyrra brought her camera pod closer. “Khallenda Maeridan wants
to follow us. She says that she will stay well out of system while we do our
work, but she would still be there to come running if we got into trouble. I
can even share impulse scanner images with her. After she corrects the image
from her own perspective, she will see as well as we can.” “If you both like
the idea, then I agree,” Gelrayen said as he ascended the steps to the upper
bridge. “Captain, we owe* you something for that.”

Tarrel
shook her head. “I should have warned you when I heard that our ships were in
the system. We’ve been at war for so long that suspicion of Starwolves has
become almost an instinct. Hell, my first job was to make sure that the new
threat wasn’t Starwolves. Small minds are going to react to their fears. ”

“Well,
I hope that is the end of it,” Valthyrra said as she brought her camera pod
into the upper bridge. “I would hate to think that the first enemy I ever
engaged was the wrong one.”

The
Methryn dropped out of starflight well inside the system, keeping her speed
nearly to that of light, in a manner that was becoming standard in the task of
stalking the Dreadnought. The only difference was that this time she expected
to find it. Unless it had broken its latest pattern and moved on to its next
target, or had moved at random, then it had attacked this system the day before
and was still lurking about to see what else might show up. If it indeed was
waiting here, then Valthyrra Methryn knew that it would sweep space at
unpredictable intervals, looking for Starwolf carriers like herself that were
running under stealth. She had to find it before it found her.

On
the Methryn’s bridge, the tension was like a storm threatening to break at any
moment. Captain Tarrel was again at the Commander’s station on the upper
bridge, watching the preparation for battle with the calm objectivity of an
observer. The Starwolves were all experienced and professional; they knew what
to expect and what was expected of them. The concern was for the ship herself,
for they knew beyond any doubt that the Methryn would certainly take a beating
in the coming battle. Tarrel wondered if, like herself, they were worried
whether Valthyrra Methryn was ready for this battle. The ship was like a
half-grown child, sometimes very mature and complex, sometimes uncertain and
fearful, occasionally sullen or defensive. She had handled the situation with
the Union fleet well enough, but that had involved an enemy she had no reason
to fear. The Dreadnought had a proven ability to hurt her, and there was no way
to predict how she would react when she was actually fired upon.

When
the time came, Valthyrra would have to be calm, clever, and brave; qualities
that she had never had to demonstrate in her life.

She
tried a new tactic, one that she had discussed with her Commander and Helm as a
suitable alternative for her present situation. Taking the risk that she could
slip in during the interval between the Dreadnought’s routine sweeps, she kept
her impulse scanners silent as she made a quick run toward one of the larger
planets in the system. She began braking fairly hard at the last moment,
knowing what the stress was doing to her human passengers, and began her first
low-intensity scanner sweep just as she was looping in for a tight orbit. Then
she swung abruptly out from the planet, engaging her main drives until she had
matched speed for a more or less synchronous orbit.

“Contact,”
she announced. “The Dreadnought is here, sitting off a short distance from the
inhabited third planet. I have moved quickly to place this gas giant between it
and myself. I have detected no impulse scanner contact so far.”

“Do
you suppose it did not detect your own sweep?” Gelrayen asked.

“If
it had, I believe that it would have reacted immediately with a sweep of its
own.” She rotated her camera pod to glance into the upper bridge. “Commander,
will you attend to Captain Tarrel? She was not able to stay with us through
that braking.” “What did you puli, twelve G’s?” he asked as he hurried up the
steps.

“Fifteen.
Telemetry from her suit indicated that she went under fairly early on, so I
took advantage of the situation.” Captain Tarrel had passed out in her seat,
which had been inclined about halfway in anticipation of this event. For the
same reason, the supply of drugs that had been selected was close at hand. Now
that they had found the Dreadnought, she could be given the drugs used by the
Union that gave humans a higher tolerance to stress, allowing them to recover
almost immediately if they did pass out. For the moment, simple smelling salts
brought her back instantly.

“Vile
stuff. Take it away,” Tarrel commented, making a face. “How goes the war?”

“Valthyrra
found the Dreadnought,” he told her, giving her the additional drugs. “It
apparently did not sense her scanner pulse, and she was able to put the planet
between us before it could discover us. We are waiting now to begin our next
move, once we know what to do. Any ideas?”

“Based
upon past experience, run like hell comes immediately to mind. The trouble is
that hiding from the Dreadnought does us absolutely no good, beyond offering
the chance to choose our own time and method of acting. Is there any way to
sneak in closer before it knows that we’re here?”

“There
is none that I can envision,” Valthyrra said, bringing her camera pod well back
into the upper bridge. Kayendel had joined them as well.

“Two
thoughts come to mind,” Tarrel mused. “We do something that hints of our
presence without giving it away absolutely, and then we see if we can lure the
Dreadnought into coming here. Or we can use the Maeridan as bait. If the
Dreadnought chases her, we might be able to slip in behind. Is she blind to the
rear, I wonder?”

“I
am not,” Valthyrra said. “I would not expect that plan to work. I would have to
use my impulse scanner to track its position, and it will become aware of that
too soon.”

“Then
we should bring it here,” Kayendel declared. “Valthyrra, correct me if I am
wrong. Like most gas giants, this one probably has a very large and powerful
magnetic field, which serves to hold in an invisible cloud of ionized particles
that will interact with a ship’s shields and cause stealth to become
ineffective.”

“Yes,
I have already dropped my own outer shields altogether,” Valthyrra agreed. “I
was looking like a distant thunderstorm with all that discharge over the shell.
Anticipating the point of your question, the answer to that part is also yes.
If the Dreadnought comes through here, we will be able to see it from static
discharge even if the ship itself remains invisible. That probably offers the
best chance we will ever have to get an extremely short-range scan.”

“Before
it turns around and kicks our ass,” Tarrel added. “The only real alternative is
to wait for it to make a regular scanner sweep and then move in on it quickly.
But that doesn’t work, does it?”

“If
we detect the sweep, then the sweep detects us,” Valthyrra agreed.

“The
other plan is best,” Gelrayen agreed. “What do we need to do?”

Valthyrra
was already considering that. “Supplying the bait should be simple enough. I
will simply have one of my drones hide itself on a small moon and begin making
random achronic noise. The Dreadnought will have to come here to see what it
is, something that it can only destroy at very close range. The only real
problem is hiding myself. Where does a fifteen-million-ton fighting ship hide
itself?”

“Anywhere
it wants?” Captain Tarrel asked innocently.

“Cute.”

A
solution to the second problem presented itself very quickly. Once Valthyrra
had a look about with a very short-range scan, she was able to find any number
of small shepherding moons in the gas giant’s band of rings. One of these
moons, an irregular rock about twenty kilometers across, had a very convenient
hole like a very deep impact crater that was just the right shape to hold a
Starwolf carrier. Her construction bay at Alkayja station had been smaller. The
Methryn was able to back into this, ready to move forward just enough to expose
her main battery and her sensitive forward scanner array. The moonlet did
posses a trace of gravity, just enough to pull the carrier slowly to her left.
Since the rate of fall was only about a tenth of a meter every minute, her
field drive was able to counteract that pull.