Dreadnought (28 page)

“I
was wondering, perhaps, what your opinion might be of my own performance,” the
ship began hesitantly. Even the set of her camera pod suggested shyness. “I was
aware from the first that you were uncertain about my ability to handle myself,
whether because of my lack of experience or just because I am a machine.”

“I
don’t trust anything that hasn’t proven itself,” Tarrel told her. “But you did
just fine. In fact, you surprised me. Your inventiveness and lack of hesitation
was very impressive. You knew what you had to do to save yourself and you did
it.” Valthyrra turned her camera pod away. “I admit that I am very embarrassed
about my loss of power. That was a careless and stupid mistake that should not
have happened.”

“I
agree, although it wasn’t your fault. Still, your professional pride forces you
to blame yourself. I know I would.”

“I
hardly know whether to feel good or bad about that battle,” the ship remarked.
“To tell you the truth, except for that whole affair with the fuel element
line, I thought that I did very well. I am now willing to take part in a
serious attack on the Dreadnought.”

“Yes,
I believe that you are ready for that.”

“I
just hope that Commander Gelrayen agrees,” Valthyrra complained. “He seems to
think that he has to tell me everything, as if I hardly know the first thing
about taking care of myself.” Captain Tarrel had to work at hiding her smile.
There was still something of a child left in Valthyrra Methryn. Which was
really just as well; Starwolf carriers had to grow up so fast.

Valthyrra
lifted her camera pod sharply, then rotated only the pod itself to face toward
the front of the bridge. Her reaction suggested that she had just become aware
of something that had happened somewhere off the bridge, her gesture with
camera pod being entirely a reflex. She turned the pod back again after a
moment.

“Captain,
I have experienced an unexpected problem,” she said. “There has been an
unpredicted decompression of an area within my hull. Automatic doors have
contained the pressure loss to that one area, but suit telemetry indicates that
there is someone trapped within.”

“Suit
telemetry?” Tarrel repeated. “Does that mean that this person is in no danger?”

“None
for the moment, Captain. I should add that the decompression seems to have been
a deliberate act. If I had been aware sooner, I could have used my overrides to
prevent it.”

Tarrel
nodded. “Where is this? Does it have anything to do with normal repairs?”

“Not,
it does not. It happened in a section well forward in the ship.”

“Can
you show me where?”

Valthyrra
cleared the main monitor on the Commander’s forward console and brought up a
schematic of that area of ship. It was like identifying a single block from a
large city; relatively speaking, the problem was contained in a very small
region. In fact, it was limited to a single chamber of unusual shape and size,
perhaps five meters deep but at least thirty meters wide. Even more unusual, a
dozen narrow passages or tubes led forward some distance until they emerged
through the lower hull of the ship.

“Val,
what is that cabin?”

“That
is one of four chambers giving access to my forward missile tubes,” she
reported. “The missiles are loaded from the storage bay by an automated
conveyor rack. When fired, the missiles are kicked down the tube and away from
the ship with a high-pressure blast of compressed carbon dioxide, and they do
not engage their drives until they are clear.”

“Did
you have missiles loaded?”

“Under
the circumstances, yes. I loaded a full spread of missiles capable of both high
sublight and short-range starflight speeds, directed through an achronic link
by my own tracking systems, and armed with conversion warheads of variable
intensity up to twenty megatons. One missile has been removed from its tube.”

“What,
inside the ship?”

“No,
it was pushed along the tube outside the ship. Both the inner and outer tube
hatches have been blown manually, so I cannot close them.”

“I
don’t have to ask who,” Tarrel commented to herself as she released the straps
from her seat and began climbing out. “I need a lift standing by to take me to
the point as close to that launch tube as possible, where I can leave the ship.
You need to warn Commander Gelrayen, and suggest having the repair crews get
themselves back inside. And launch a pack of fighters to stand by.”

“I
have no pilots on board,” Valthyrra told her.

“Well,
I suppose that you can fly at least one remotely,” Tarrel said as she collected
her helmet and hurried down the steps. “Can you control that missile remotely?”

“Yes,
but it can still be fired and detonated manually,” Valthyrra said, swinging her
camera pod around to follow while she still could. “What are you going to do?”

“This
is my problem,” Captain Tarrel insisted just before she moved out of range,
then waited until she was inside the lift. “Val?”

“I
can still hear you,” she said through the lift com.

“Wally
Pesca is my responsibility,” Tarrel continued. “I brought him on board this
ship. I knew that he was having problems, but I was too busy playing with the
Starwolves to pay him enough attention. Don’t you try to talk to him through
his suit. I’m the only one he might listen to now, and I doubt even that.”

“I
will leave him to you, Captain,” Valthyrra promised. “I might remind you that
you do not have a weapon.”

“Is
he likely to have one?”

“Aside
from a conversion missile? No. All of the ship’s small weapons are accounted
for, and he did not come aboard with anything.”

Tarrel
said nothing, but she wished very much that she did have a weapon of some type.
She really did not anticipate that she would be able to save Lt. Commander
Pesca unless he surrendered to her voluntarily, and she did not believe that he
would. The fact that he was using a conversion device against the Starwolves
indicated that he did not expect or intend to survive his own attack; he
probably meant to move it into a position where it would do the most damage and
detonate it manually. Although she did not know for certain, she suspected that
anyone willing to make a suicide attack was probably too devoted to his cause
to be talked out of it very easily, or could even be forced to surrender. If
threatened, he would simply set off the device immediately.

The
fate of entire worlds could well depend upon the survival of these two carriers,
two of only sixteen fighting ships left in the Starwolf fleet. In that balance,
Walter Pesca’s life was a small concern. If she had had a gun and could have
taken him by surprise, Captain Tarrel would have shot him without the slightest
hesitation to get him away from that missile. But aside from the rather obvious
problem that she did not have a weapon in the first place, Pesca was wearing
the best armor there was. Dispatching him quickly and easily was more a problem
than it seemed. That was why she wanted heavy firepower in the form of a
fighter to back her up, if she could direct the fighter into position before he
saw it.

“Captain,
this is Valthyrra,” the ship said after a long moment. “I have considered the
matter carefully and I have decided not to warn the crews that are working
outside, or make any attempt to secure the ship. That would warn your companion
that we know what he is doing, and he might be frightened into detonating the
device. I have discussed this with Commander Gelrayen and he agrees. We will
leave this for you to handle.”

“I
appreciate you confidence,” Tarrel said, uncertain whether she intended that
sarcastically. “I need some firepower at hand immediately?’

“A
fighter is too large and obvious,” Valthyrra explained. “I am sending you a
probe, the smallest of my surveillance remote units. It operates entirely by
field drive, and it has a mobile camera pod with an attached small cannon.”

“Enough
to pierce Starwolf armor on the first shot?”

“It
should.”

The
lift, which had made four changes of direction already, pulled to a smooth stop
and the doors snapped open. Captain Tarrel found herself facing a narrow,
dimly-lit corridor in what looked to be a very remote portion of the ship.

“Listen
to me quickly,” Valthyrra told her. “The corridor you see gives access to the
minor airlocks along the ventral groove, and you are only about three hundred
meters back from the nose of the ship. Walter Pesca is moving the missile along
the ventral groove a short distance back from your present position, no doubt
using the groove as the only effective cover. He probably expects to fire the
missile before he begins moving outward along the wing, and I suspect that he
intends to target the open bays along the Maeridan’s lower hull.”

“Can
he fire that missile with any accuracy?” Tarrel asked, surprised.

“He
can try pointing it in the general direction. Considering the range, he has a
very good chance of hitting something. Go down the corridor to your left and
take the first passage to your right. That will put you at a small airlock
leading out into the ventral groove.”

Tarrel
found the passage quickly enough, a narrow tube sealed at the inner end by a
heavy hatch in the event that the passage between the inner and outer hull was
damaged. The airlock itself was hardly more than a service port, small enough
that she had to bend slightly to get her helmet under the top. The ventral
groove was familiar territory from her visits while the Methryn had still been
in her construction bay, larger than the slender line that it looked to be from
a distance, with the massive heat-exchange bars of the solid-state cooling
system at top and bottom. There was hardly any more detail to be seen, since
they were in the smothering darkness and bitter cold of intersteller space. The
brilliant floodlights illuminating the area of work about the main drives was
still nearly a kilometer away.

“Where
is he?” Tarrel asked.

“About
fifty meters back from where you stand, moving away from you,” Valthyrra
reported. “Since he is carrying the missile, he is moving much slower than you
will.”

“Carrying?
How large is that missile?”

“Perhaps
I should have said that he is pulling it in freefall, since that missile is
five meters long and weighs two tons under one standard G. If you stay well
back in the darkness of the groove, he might not see you until you are fairly
close. Unfortunately, your armor is Command white. His armor will be white with
black trim, but the missile itself is dull black.”

“What
about that firepower you promised?” Tarrel asked. “Right behind you.” .

Captain
Tarrel turned and was startled to see the dark shape of the probe drifting
immediately behind her. This machine was much smaller than she had anticipated,
an armored, wedge-shaped remote with its folding wings fully extended so that
it looked now like some curious flying or aquatic creature. Its camera pod,
lifted to regard her, was in a protective flare at the end of a flexible
snake-like neck. The focusing lens of a comparatively small gun was located
beneath the camera; with power coming up from within the main hull of the
machine, it could be a great deal more dangerous than it looked.

“How
can I talk with him?” she asked.

“You
are aware of the switch for the external speaker on your collar?” Valthyrra
reminded her. “When you press that, I will shunt the signal to a second audio
channel. It will only work while you are holding the switch, so you will
control what you want him to hear. ”

She
had to weigh her options very quickly, trying to decide whether to give Pesca a
chance to surrender, or if she should take the safest course by simply allowing
Valthyrra to ambush him with the remote. But if Valthyrra shot and missed, he
would still have time to detonate the missile.

“Val,
can you control his suit remotely?” she asked as she hurried along the deep
ledge of the ventral groove.

“Yes,
it was designed to allow me to care for an injured pilot as best I could, by
adjusting temperature and oxygen content.” “Can you vent the suit and suffocate
him?”

“No,
there was no foreseen value in that function.”

“But
you can cut his oxygen completely?”

Valthyrra
considered that briefly. “I can certainly cut down the oxygen content to a
level at which a human could not remain conscious. Believe it or not, that
really is a useful function with Kelvessan. It will be as much as a couple of
minutes before he goes under.”

“Do
it, then. Leave all other levels where they are. He might not even notice for
some time.”

Tarrel
hurried the best that she could; there was no artificial gravity outside the
ship, and her boots held to the hull only by an electromagnetic device that was
pressure-sensitive to each step. The hold seemed to stick for just a fraction
of a second with each step, until the sensors registered the lifting of her leg
and released the lock, but it was just enough to slow her down. The probe
drifted silently behind her, its lenses glittering in the reflection of the
distant lights between the two carriers.

“The
missile just began a one-minute delayed count,” Valthyrra reported. “The overload
level is full power, twenty megatons or more. Lieutenant Commander Pesca seems
to have panicked. His respiratory and cardiac rates are climbing rapidly, and
he is pressing buttons on the missile’s manual control apparently at random.”

“He
scared himself,” Tarrel observed. “Can I have a channel to him now?”

“The
second audio channel is ready.”

“Wally,
can you hear me?” she asked, trying to sound both authoritative and strongly
reassuring. “Wally, you have to turn the damned thing off. You have it set to
overload in less that a minute.”