Dreadnought (24 page)

A
drone was prepared and sent on its way to a much larger moon just outside the
disk of the ring, at present less than ten thousand kilometers away. By the
standards of the Methryn’s scanner, that was very short range indeed. Better
yet, the most direct approach path between that moon and the Direadnought’s
present position lay only three thousand kilometers out from the Methryn’s
cubby hole. Valthyrra hoped that static discharge against that very high-power
shield would give away its position as it passed through.

“Something
about this situation bothers me,” Captain Tarrel commented. “This entire plan
seems very unorthodox.”

“The
stupid idea is a favorite Starwolf tactic,” Gelrayen told her. “When nothing
else works, try something stupid. You always surprise your enemies, and you
often surprise yourself.” “I’m beginning to understand why you people were
never able to win the damned war.”

“My
drone has begun its first series of broadcasts,” Valthyrra reported. “It is
repeating a brief sequence on a low-power signal, very much like a transponder
or a distress beacon. In fact, I have it using Starwolf codes. If the
Dreadnought knows our language, as certain of my siblings have suggested, then
it should find that bait irresistible.”

“I
thought that you were going to be more subtle,” Gelrayen said, looking up at
her camera pod. “Just random achronic signals.” *

“The
Dreadnought is in the business of breaking things, and random signals would
already sound broken. It has destroyed a small mining station in these moons
already, and it might think that a transponder came from that wreckage. This is
designed to look like a surveillance drone trying to transmit data out of
system using the gas giant as a shield.”

Captain
Tarrel leaned back in her seat. “Now I get the feeling that you’re trying to
get this complicated.”

The
camera pod rotated quickly. “I am trying to be subtle. In my experience, subtle
and complicated look very much alike.” “The logic aboard this ship is amazing,”
Tarrel said, and sighed. “If it thinks it knows what it is, won’t it just leave
the thing alone and see what happens? If it looks like it belongs to
Starwolves, a Starwolf might come along and claim it.”

“Oh,
I never thought of that.” The camera pod dropped slowly, then lifted brightly.
“Well, I still believe that it will work. The Dreadnought will have to be
curious. What else does it have to do with its time?”

“Oh,
that’s logic again! It’s a machine. It has an untapped bounty of machine
patience.”

“I’m
a machine, and I can be very impatient.”

Tarrel
had to think about that for a moment. “You know, I suspect that you’ve just
invented a trap for catching yourself. What are you going to do if this doesn’t
work?”

“Something
else.”

It
took a while, but Captain Tarrel finally realized that she was being teased by
a machine. Unfortunately, that thought did not occur to her for another three
days. It amused Valthyrra to play harmless games of subtlety with Tarrel, who
obviously doubted her ability to be clever.

“Passive
scanner contact,” Valthyrra warned, again very serious. “I have identified
static discharge against a high-power shield approaching from six thousand
kilometers. No visual contact with any ship.”

“Is
it the Dreadnought?” Gelrayen asked.

“Well,
that is the only invisible ship I know. It is definitely moving toward the
drone.”

“How
did it get here so quickly?”

“I
have three theories about that,” -Valthyrra offered. “It might have been built
to handle routine accelerations of two or three thousand G’s, or else it might
employ some type of drive that either negates or avoids ail energy of
acceleration. Or it might have become aware of the drives from that unshielded
drone the moment it left my bay, and has been under way to this location for
some time.”

“Warn
the crew to prepare for immediate battle,” Gelrayen told her. “Have damage
control parties standing by throughout the ship. Surveillance?”

“Impulse
scanners and passive receivers standing by.” “Weapons?”

“All
power is diverted to the main battery,” the weapons officer on the middle
bridge responded. “Conversion cannon is at pre-stage warming.”

“Helm?”

“Manual
controls are at stand-by status,” Kayendel reported. “Captain Tarrel?” he
asked, glancing toward the upper bridge.

“I’m
counting all the ways that things can go wrong,” she answered as she tightened
the straps. “Standing by to pass out.” “Your confidence is reassuring.
Valthyrra, do you have visual contact of any form?”

She
responded by sending a highly magnifiedf image to the main viewscreen, although
the only thing it showed was a light shower of minute sparks as the
Dreadnought’s shield reacted with ionized particles charged by the gas giant’s
magnetic field. But at least they had direct visual evidence of its presence,
and not just in that discharge of sparks. The Dreadnought itself, or rather the
light-absorbing cloak of its powerful shield, appeared as a vast black shape
passing before the stars. It was a curiously frightening vision, for Captain
Tarrel even more so than those times when she had not been able to see it at
all, like the shadow of a ghost.

“The
Dreadnought is at closest approach,” Valthyrra reported. Even she spoke softly,
as if fearful of being overheard. “No scanner contact yet, so I assume that it
is not aware of my presence. Stand ready.”

“Whenever
you think best,” Gelrayen told her.

Valthyrra
moved out of her hiding place on the moonlet, rushing forward with a quiet,
steady acceleration from her main drives. At these distances, relatively small
increases in speed covered a great deal of distance in a hurry. The carrier
moved in a sweeping, graceful glide, actually meant to minimize her reliance
upon field drive for navigation.

“I
will probably have only the one chance, so I should make the most of it,” she
reported. “I am going to throw as much power as I can into a forward impulse
sweep.”

Being
in the shadow of the planet was a mixed blessing. It was essential to her decoy
and it allowed her to see the fairly small flashes of discharge against the
Dreadnought’s shield. On the illuminated side of the planet, she would have been
able to track the Dreadnought with far greater accuracy as its black shadow
passed over the bright bands of the gas giant. At least she could locate it
easily enough by the discharge flashes of its shield. She had not warned the
others that she had actually not been completely certain that there would be
any visible static discharge, knowing that it might have been absorbed into
that light-eating shield.

She
dropped in quickly behind the Dreadnought, then moved cautiously forward until
she followed at only fifteen kilometers, five times her length and only
slightly more than its own. As far as she knew, this was as close as anyone had
ever come to the Dreadnought. Even at this range, all she could see was a
featureless black shape passing before the stars. One portion of her
multi-layered mind was aware that at some point in the next minute or two, that
vast machine was going to turn and begin ripping her apart. She was new, still
bright and shiny, and she did not want to submit herself to the damage she expected
to take. But the rest of her mind was very much on business, aware that her
time was very limited. She aimed every impulse cannon that could be brought to
bear and fired, standing ready with her primary attention to the scanner
receivers, her main drives and defensive systems, and a very close electronic
eye she kept on the Dreadnought’s response.

“I
have the results of my first close-range impulse scan,” Valthyrra said.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I cannot see through that shield. I would have to
be able to match frequencies to get a scanner beam through, and I cannot do
that at random.”

“Well,
we expected that,” Gelrayen remarked, then looked up. “Hold on. Are we running
like hell?”

“No,
the stupid thing still has no idea that I am here. I wonder if it really is
blind to the rear. It seems like such a waste, sitting here right on the
monster’s tail and not able to do anything about it.”

“We
could try shooting it, I suppose,” Gelrayen mused. “What would happen if we
gave it our conversion cannon at this range?”

“It
would probably do it no more harm than when the Kerridayen shot it at somewhat
longer range, considering that shield,” the ship replied. “But the backwash
would, however, fry us.” “Yes, I had forgotten about that. Stupid idea.”

“I
thought Starwolves like stupid ideas,” Tarrel called from the upper bridge.

Gelrayen
glanced in her direction. “We have to draw the line somewhere.”

“Would
anyone want to listen to a good idea?” Kayendel asked. “Since we seem to have
the time, what about keeping an impulse beam on that shield and changing
frequencies rapidly until you have a match?”

“That
might just work, if I can find that frequency before the Dreadnought turns
around and kicks me in the nose,” Valthyrra agreed. “Even if I get through that
shield, I will probably only get a moment at best . . . Hold on.”

“Trouble?”
Gelrayen asked, noticing that the Methryn still had not run.

“Someone
is shooting at the Dreadnought, and it is not me.” Actually, it was not
particularly hard to figure out just what was going on. Her passive scanners
did not detect the approach of any ship, just a series of high-power bolts just
like those from her own forward battery. The shots were actually going somewhat
wide. It was,, of course, the Maeridan, but she was still too distant to target
accurately on the visual reference of the black shape of the Dreadnought’s
cloaking shield moving over the brightly colored bands of the gas giant. A hail
of short-duration bolts was coming down at random over a radius of about twenty
kilometers. Valthyrra was faced with the need to consider raising her own
battle shields to protect herself from her own sister ship. Like the Maeridan,
she had her own outer shields at stealth intensity, so that the other carrier
would have been able to locate her only by visual identification, and her dull
black hull was designed to defeat that. Considering how relatively tiny she was
compared to the Dreadnought, she could easily be overlooked.

“What
the hell does Khallenda Maeridan think that she is doing?” Valthyrra asked
herself. “She was supposed to keep herself hidden unless I found myself in
serious trouble.”

“She
probably thinks that you are,” Kayendel reminded her. “I suspect that you must
have set that drone to broadcast a Starwolf distress code. Your own, no doubt.”

Valthyrra
rotated her camera pod to look at the ceiling. “Damn my hull! Of course. I
forgot that she was sitting out there waiting, and I did not think to warn her
to ignore that distress code. She is trying to rescue me, and that drone led
her right here.” “None of us thought of that,” Gelrayen told her. “Do not blame
yourself.”

“I
have just received scanner return,” Valthyrra reported, returning to business.
“The Dreadnought has just taken the Maeridan’s range by scan. I do not believe that
it is aware of me, since I detected no direct scanner pulses aimed in my
direction.”

“If
you try to warn the Maeridan, you will give away your own position,” Gelrayen
warned her. “Do you want to try backing away from that monstrosity first?”

“No,
I like it best right where I am. ”

The
Dreadnought opened fire on the Maeridan, although it seemed to be having some
trouble getting the carrier’s range by impulse scan alone. It was firing a
series of sustained bolts of moderate power, obviously hoping to lock with the
carrier’s shields and force an overload that would cause the carrier to lose
her stealth capabilities. The Maeridan was responding by throwing everything
she had in the direction of the Dreadnought, making herself an easy and
obnoxious target. Her intention, no doubt, was to give a damaged Methryn a few
moments to collect herself and get to safety any way she could.

Of
course, Valthyrra Methryn was alive, well and ready to employ one of those
complicated plans that so annoyed Captain Tarrel. She opened fire with all
sixteen of the larger cannons in her forward battery, directly into the back of
the Dreadnought’s shield. She could not hope to do any damage. Rather than the
usual short, rapid bursts from her cannon, she maintained a steady fire as she
tried to match frequencies with that shield, each cannon searching a different
band of frequencies. Long seconds passed, and with each instant she feared that
the Dreadnought would discover her before her experiment proved itself. Then
one of the cannons found the right frequency and penetrated the shield. In only
a fraction of a second she had matched the frequencies of all the other cannons
with the first, and she poured all the raw power she could channel inside that
shield.

The
result was spectacular. The Dreadnought’s shield collapsed in a sudden,
blinding flash, and for a single long moment the immense machine stood fully
revealed before them, obscured somewhat in the flare as the Methryn’s powerful
cannons continued to rip across its bulk. Surprisingly, its hull did not seem
to be a massively armored shell like that of a carrier, as they would have
expected, but a maze of machinery of tremendous size. If her conversion cannon
had been ready, even at partial power, she could have destroyed it at that very
moment. The Dreadnought began to turn slowly and then that black shield was up
again, locking out the Methryn’s destructive beams and cloaking the alien
weapon in the blackness of space.

Valthyrra
knew when it was time to leave, and this was certainly the time. She pivoted
herself about sharply until she was facing back the way she had come, then
engaged her main drives in a single, sharp burst of speed. But the drives
failed after only the first instant, leaving her drifting at a speed that was
not taking her away from her enemy fast enough.