Dreadnought (34 page)

“Only
two, but I have every reason to expect that to be enough. The question of
pilots for those two ships remains. Granted that I expect you to claim one of
those ships for yourself, and I do not intend to protest that. This mission
will require your experience and judgement. Will you take Pack Leader Teraln
with you?”

Gelrayen
looked unhappy. “The problem in deciding is that we have never had a chance to
see our packs in operation, so all I have to judge them on is their records.
Teraln looks like the best choice.”

“I
am moving the fighters to the lower left bay and having them fitted with
auxiliary weapons,” Valthyrra told him. “We should be ready to launch in a
quarter of an hour.”

“I
want to go down to the bay now and have a look at that ship,” Gelrayen said,
then turned to Captain Tarrel. “Would you like to come with me?”

“Yes,
I’m very much interested in this great plan of yours,” Tarrel said as he helped
her from the seat. “My Starwolves seem to be keeping secrets these days.”

“Well,
you
are
the enemy,” he told her
as they descended the steps from the upper bridge. Gelrayen paused to collect
his helmet. “When Valthyrra observed that the Dreadnought is able to see by
extending probes and sensors through that shield, she began to wonder how that
was done. A shield that dense should seem completely solid to any physical
object, and its tremendous power should have fried any electronics being poked
through. And yet we know that the Dreadnought does extend some of its most
sensitive sensory devices through its shield. How?” “Good question,” Tarrel
agreed as they stepped aboard the lift.

“The
answer is so simple that Valthyrra only had to think about it for half a
minute,” Gelrayen explained. “Any shield is simply a projection of a great deal
of energy, and there would always be static discharge between the ship and the shield
except that the shield is grounded to the ship. Under those circumstances,
anything that is also grounded to the ship is grounded to the shield as well.
That tells you how to put something through a shield.”

“Yes,
I see,” Tarrel agreed. “Then modifying a fighter to penetrate that shield is
very simple. The tricky part is actually doing it.”

The
concept sounded reasonable enough and she believed that the Starwolves might
actually make it work. It involved some piloting that she would not have
attempted, but the flying skills of the Starwolves were legendary. There was
something about this business that bothered her a great deal, but she was not
going to mention anything to Commander Gelrayen at this time. By the time that
the lift had carried them all the way back through the ship to the bay, the
packs that had been launched earlier had already come back aboard. Two packs
had returned to that bay, and the overhead handling arms were lifting the large
black fighters into their racks for safe storage.

Gelrayen
went immediately to the pair of fighters sitting in their racks at the front of
the bay. The only difference in these two large ships, at least that Tarrel
could see, was that they had been fitted with some curious harpoon and cable
device under their long, tapered noses. Each ship also carried four featureless
black pods farther back along their extended forward hulls, things that looked
suspiciously like explosive devices. Pack Leader Teraln was already waiting for
them, standing beside the nearest of the two fighters while one of Valthyrra’s
probes hovered at his side.

“Has
Valthyrra explained the theory to you?” Gelrayen asked.

“Theory,
yes,” Teraln agreed. “What she has not explained is why I get to volunteer for
this.”

“Your
name started with a T,” Gelrayen offered. “If you have no interest in going
along, I can find another volunteer easily enough.”

Teraln
looked surprised and annoyed at the idea that he could be replaced. “Oh, yes?
Who?”

“Captain
Tarrel, for one.”

“Oh.
Then I certainly volunteer.”

“I
wonder if I should be offended?” Tarrel asked Valthyrra, but the remote
gestured “no” with its camera pod.

“Valthyrra,
what is the Dreadnought doing?” Gelrayen asked as he climbed the boarding
platform beside the cockpit.

“Absolutely
nothing, last time I looked,” she responded. “I have decreased my impulse scans
to one each minute, to avoid calling an excess of attention to myself.”

“Then
I believe that we should go immediately,” he decided. “If we wait until that
thing starts to move, we might never get a chance to attempt this maneuver. We
will be dependant upon your scans to lead us to it.”

“As
long as she can place us to within twenty kilometers,” Teraln amended as he
hurried to his own fighter. “From that range, you can actually see the beast.
That shield is actually a shade darker than background space.”

“Then
do not alter your scan interval, unless it begins to move again,” Gelrayen
added as he settled himself into the cockpit, while a bay crewmember helped him
with his straps. “If it stays in one place, we already know all we need about
where to find it.”

“I
understand,” Valthyrra said.

“Complete
your rescue efforts quickly, and then you and the Vardon should begin to
withdrew slowly. I will need you back immediately once that shield goes down,
so put Captain Tarrel back in her seat. Teraln and I will get ourselves well
clear before you come into range. If, by chance, this does not work and I do
not come back, then you are to have sole command of the ship, but listen to
Kayendel and Captain Tarrel. Your first duty is save yourself and the other
ships. Anything else?”

“Take
good care of yourself,” Valthyrra called to him. “I love you.”

Gelrayen
paused and stared. “What?”

“Hey,
bear with me. This emotional stuff is all very new to me.

The
two fighters sealed their cockpits, and began to power up their major systems.
Valthyrra and Captain Tarrel joined the bay crew in retreating a short
distance, as blast barriers came up from the lower deck to protect the ships
farther back in the bay from the drive wash. The two pilots signaled that they
were ready and Valthyrra gave them a count with the lights above the forward
bay door. The two fighters engaged their main drives at the final green light,
but left their racks and moved out of the bay relatively slowly, dropping down
to avoid the transports and capture ships bringing escape pods to the transport
bays near the front of the carrier.

“Well,
what are their chances?” Tarrel asked.

“Very
good, I should think.”

Tarrel
glanced down at the probe. “Valthyrra, did you ever have a chance to discuss
this plan with Fleet Commander Asandi?”

“Yes,
I discussed it with him by com during my approach to Alkayja station after my
last battle with Dreadnought. He said then that the plan was too dangerous,
that the packs would not survive in close range to the Dreadnought. We have
already seen that they can. Commander Asandi told me that I should not discuss
this plan with the other carriers.”

“I
see.” Tarrel turned toward the lift, expecting the probe to follow her. “Did it
ever occur to you that Commander Asandi deliberately sent this fleet into a
battle that he knew would be too dangerous? To phrase things a little more
plainly, do you suspect that it might have been in his interests to commit a
portion of his fleet to their own destruction?”

“Is
there any reason to suspect why he should?”

“Commander
Asadi indicated to me that the Republic fears the Kelvessan and has reason to
make certain that they do not prosper. I am betraying his trust in me, but I
believe that he has failed in his trust with the Kelvessan and their ships.”

“I
had suspected that the Republic, or at least the Fleet Commanders, had a
history of failing to encourage Kelvessan scientific and cultural development.
I am not convinced that Commander Asandi contrived the destruction of this
fleet, only that he displayed poor judgement in refusing to consider my plan
more seriously. I must discuss this privately with the other ships.”

Tarrel
stepped inside the lift that opened at her approach, then moved aside as the
probe drifted in behind her. “You carriers can make up for the lack of support
from the Republic.”

Valthyrra
looked up. “How?”

“You
seem to have made a good start. Don’t let them wear their clothes. Do whatever
it takes to keep them thinking about their own racial identity. Talk them into
altering their appearance. Just do what you think best.”

The
two fighters moved cautiously into position, engaging their main drives no more
than absolutely necessary. They really did not believe that they were fooling
anyone with such subtlety; least of all the Dreadnought, with its proven
instinct for seeking out and destroying any machine it found in space,
including many smaller and less obstructive than a Starwolf fighter. Their only
hope was that the Dreadnought would remain drifting on its present course and
continue to stubbornly ignore anything going on about it, and they simply
wanted to encourage that condition to continue for as long as possible by being
reasonably discreet.

Considering
the fact that the Dreadnought had just devastated a fleet of Starwolf carriers,
destroying two and severely damaging a third, the ability of two lone fighters
to face and destroy that beast seemed very unlikely.

The
Methryn’s scan gave them the Dreadnought’s position easily enough, bringing
them slowly in with perfect accuracy, behind the target that they could not
see. Eventually as Pack Leader Teraln had said, the Dreadnought could be seen.
At very close range, it was darker than background space, and no stars could be
seen through that blackness. It had been very considerate so far, staying on
course and ignoring their presence if it knew they were there at all. Even
Valthyrra had been unable to offer any explanation on what the Dreadnought
could be doing while it drifted, seeming to have closed itself tightly inside
its shield. It might have been contemplating strategies, believing that it had
failed in its mission because it had been unable to destroy all the Starwolf
carriers. It might have simply been repairing a wrecked sensor array. Whatever
it was doing, it certainly went about it with single-minded determination and
an absolute belief in its own invulnerability.

Commander
Gelrayen brought his fighter in close behind the Dreadnought, so close that the
fighter’s forward lights diffused into the shield only three meters away. The
plan now depended completely upon their finding a sensor or scanning device
protruding through the shield. Valthyrra had insisted that the Dreadnought
would never leave itself completely blind unless it was-trying to protect its
array from direct attack. After several moments of frantic search, fearful that
the Dreadnought would move away at any time, he finally saw the slender whip of
a receiver extended barely half a meter outside the shield. It was black and
difficult to see, even in the flood of the fighter's auxiliary lights.

Gelrayen
moved quickly, activating the remote device that Valthyrra had designed and
built, now attached below the nose of his ship. A long probe extended forward
of the ship, far enough that he could see the simple clawed end, and he moved
his fighter forward until that claw touched the sensor probe just above the
point where it disappeared within the shield. The claw rotated, sharp edges
cutting away the insulation until it sensed contact with bare metal, then
detached itself from its arm so that the fighter was tethered by a short cable.
Gelrayen waited until Teraln’s fighter attached itself in the same manner, and
the two ships pivoted carefully until they were facing the shield.

The
next step had to be done quickly and nearly in unison, for fear that the
Dreadnought might react to the intrusion. The harpoon device under each
fighter’s nose opened into a spread of four long, slender legs, each one ending
in an electromagnetic pad. The harpoons were launched, driven through the heavy
resistance of the shield by their own small solid-fuel engines, but they did
pass through and signaled back through the heavy cable trailed behind them that
they had locked onto the ship within. The pilots hastily shut down the drives,
main generators and major electronic systems of their fighters, then activated
the powerful winches that pulled the small ships through the darkness of the
shield. There was some static discharge—pale lights that raced along the sharp
edges of their hulls—but nothing of consequence. And then they were through.

The
device that Valthyrra had designed had included a powerful array of auxiliary
lights, enough to flood vast areas of the interior of the Dreadnought’s shield.
She had never anticipated that the ship itself would have been illuminated, and
yet large areas of the Dreadnought were brilliantly lit. Even the darker
regions of the immense ship, especially near the end, were partially lit by icy
white sheets of light from small, powerful lamps.

And
there was certainly enough to see. After the Methryn’s previous encounter with
the Dreadnought, their one brief glimpse inside the shield had been enough to
show them a complex array of shapes, rather than the smooth, armored hull they
would have expected. Now they could see for the first time that the Dreadnought
had no outer hull, and that it was in fact only a sweeping spaceframe
containing the ship’s various generators, reactionless drives and other components.
The outside of the frame bristled with countless slender towers or projections,
no doubt the supports for sensors and probes that could be extended through the
shield, and a scattering of machines as large as a Starwolf fighter that were
built onto pivoting stands, probably the discharge cannons. The shield itself
fit up close against the shell of the Dreadnought, averaging no more than
twenty meters of clearance, although somewhat more at the end where the two
fighters had penetrated. They were standing almost nose-down against the frame
as it was.