Dreadnought (35 page)

“Well,
that explains a lot,” Gelrayen commented aloud.

“That
explains what?” Teraln asked.

“This
ship has no physical hull. The shield must be intended to stay up at all times;
the power assembly must be designed to feed it constantly without taking power
from any other systems. Under the circumstances, an armored hull would be ten
or fifteen million tons of superfluous weight. Of course, it does have one
serious defensive flaw that we just exploited. I wonder if their original
enemies ever figured that out.”

“Perhaps
the Dreadnought has a software problem,” Teraln suggested. “They could have
prevented this kind of little problem by having it shoot anything of any size
that came within a certain range. But, if they did, that feature is
malfunctioning. There is one thing I do wonder about, Commander.”

“Yes?”

“All
of these lights. Could this machine be an inhabited ship, or might it have been
one originally? We knew already that it is nothing more than a giant, automated
hazard to navigation. Perhaps it was meant to have supervision in handling more
complex problems.”

“I
suspect that these auxiliary lights are meant for visual inspection of the ship
by its own maintenance remotes,” Gelrayen answered. “Nothing about the
Dreadnought is a flaw or deficiency if you consider that this machine was
probably built to destroy an enemy whose almost infinite numbers made up for an
inferior technology, less complex than our own. If they had been on about the
same level as the Union, they never would have been able to track it, much less
fight it.”

He
disconnected his fighter from the harpoon, jettisoning the entire winch
assembly now that the device had served its function, keeping only the rack of
auxiliary lights, anticipating a future need for those. Then he rotated his
fighter around and began to move slowly forward along the length of the
Dreadnought, using only field drive. The fact that the Dreadnought did not have
a physical hull made their task a great deal easier, and the effectiveness of
their attack potentially considerably greater. The machinery was built on a
scale that was vast even by the standards of the Starwolf carriers, with enough
room to navigate the fighters slowly through the interior of the ship. The conversion
devices could be planted deep inside, where they would do the greatest damage.

As
they moved along the length of the Dreadnought, they came soon to the first of
four areas that were the most brilliantly lit. This was the result of long rows
or grids of crystalline lights set into long, rectangular recessed areas in the
side of the ship, obviously designed to serve some function other than simply
providing illumination for the maintenance of the ship.

“Radiant
intercoolers,” Gelrayen observed.

“You
expected to find something like this?” Teraln asked.

“Valthyrra
checked her archives and found that radiant intercoolers were associated with
experimental jump drives. You might notice that these grids are surrounded by
reflective pans designed to direct the light outward into the shield, where it
is likely absorbed as energy and directed back into the power grid. Very
efficient. Considering the fact that these drives are idle at the moment, I
would not want to be here when they are engaged. We would be fried.”

Since
he had seen enough of the exterior of the ship, Gelrayen directed his fighter
inward, finding an opening around the radiant intercoolers. The passage was
often tight or dimly lit, but they were always able to find a way through. The
maze of machinery meant little in itself, but Gelrayen was able to begin
piecing together a general design of the Dreadnought. He found that it was
built in segments; four short segments that appeared to contain the jump drives
with their intercooler grids facing outward. To either side of each drive
segment was a power segment, containing nothing except stacked arrays of scores
of vast conversion generators. The Dreadnought was perhaps ten times the size
and weight of a single Starwolf carrier, but its generating capacity was at
least a hundred times greater. The armored double tube of the power core ran
along the center length of the ship, distributing and directing that tremendous
power to where it was needed. The power core was itself surrounded by the
bundled tubes of the flux coils that generated the powerful shield.

Gelrayen
was able to plot his pattern of destruction easily. He was fearful of trying to
destroy any of the conversion generators themselves, knowing that an overload
could cascade through that entire array of generators with the power to destroy
a large part of that entire system. Instead the two fighters moved along either
side of the power core, placing their conversion devices between the shield
flux coils and the jump drives. The detonation of those relatively weak devices
would wreck the drives and destroy that section of both the flux coils and
probably the power core itself, leaving the Dreadnought disabled and fairly
harmless. At five second intervals, each of four pair of conversion devices was
set to detonate. The shield would almost certainly come down with the first
blast, and that would give the two fighters time to get away.

Once
the conversion devices were in place, the two Starwolves retreated as far as
they could to the back of the Dreadnought, using the ship’s bulk to protect
their fighters from the explosion. They had no way back through the shield on
their own. Even if they could have reattached the grounding cables, there was
no way to pull the fighters back through. And taking an active drive through
that shield would have been disastrous.

“Be
ready to run the very moment the shield comes down,” Gelrayen warned. “There is
still a chance that the generators will overload.”

“It
seems a shame to destroy this machine,” Teraln commented.

“The
shame is that we did not try this plan sooner. I should have been more
supportive of Valthyrra, but too many elements of this plan sounded
impractical. I would have never expected the Dreadnought to simply sit still
and allow us to destroy it. Coming up on the first round of detonations,”

They
engaged the primary generators of their fighters and brought forward engines to
hold the ships stationary. As long as the drives were at least idling and warm,
they would respond much more quickly to a sudden demand for full power. If the
Dreadnought did happen to explode in a massive overload, a blast that would
likely be measured in billions of megatons, then the Starwolves would have to
race a double shock wave. The first would be a mass of radiation across a wide
spectrum, the greatest and most deadly amount being a seemingly solid wall of
intense light and heat, and an electromagnetic flare that would wreck a ship’s
electronics. This shock wave would be moving at or very near the speed of
light, meaning that the fighters would have to get into starflight to outrun
it. Pushed to its limits, under an acceleration that even Kelvessan would find
hard to endure, a fighter could kick itself over threshold prematurely after a
thirty second run. The second wave, superheated plasma—the vaporized remains of
the Dreadnought itself—would be much slower and would dissipate fairly rapidly,
and so was of no consequence.

“On
the mark . . . now!” Gelrayen warned.

There
followed a distant flare of light and a deep shudder passed along the frame of
the Dreadnought, imperceptible to the fighters isolated in the vacuum of space
within the shield. Because that first set of detonations was some ten
kilometers up the length of the ship and contained deep within its machinery,
the effects were outwardly deceptively restrained. The only drastic result was
the abrupt failure of the shield, which collapsed without even an instant of
hesitation. As soon as the two pilots could see the stars, they engaged their
main drives and accelerated away. They were already well beyond visual range
before the next set of explosions wrecked the second jump drive assembly.

“Commander,
were you successful?” Valthyrra asked as soon as she was able to identify the
two fighters and establish contact.

“Valthyrra,
are you anywhere near?” Gelrayen asked in turn. “That machine has an array of
generators that could feed an entire Union sector with power, and I cannot say
whether or not they will explode.”

“I
will maintain a safe distance,” she agreed. “I am detecting a series of major
explosions within the Dreadnought.”

“There
will be four in all,” he told her. “We set our conversion charges to explode in
pairs every five seconds, with the objective of destroying the Dreadnought’s
four major reac-tionless drive units as well as the power core and shield
coils. That should be the end of it.”

“I
am happy to hear that,” Valthyrra commented. “The. Dreadnought is beginning to
move, using the drives it still has in operation.”

“Where
is it going?” he asked.

“Toward
this system’s sun. This might be a self-destruct gesture.”

Perhaps
anticipating the loss of self-control, the Dreadnought had set itself on a
course that would carry it to certain destruction. Even if it now shut down
entirely, leaving it a half-wrecked and drifting hulk, Gelrayen wondered if
they would be able to deflect its path in time to avoid that act of
self-immolation. Perhaps it would be best to simply let it go. Aside from the
mystery of its origin and purpose, there was nothing of the Dreadnought’s technology
they wanted except the secret of its reactionless drives. And he had already
wrecked those.

“Commander,
I have detected your final explosion,” Valthyrra announced. “The Dreadnought is
completely disabled unless it still possesses field drive, and it has
accelerated itself to nearly the speed of light. At this speed, it will destroy
itself in less than three minutes.”

“I
forgot how fast we expected it might be,” Gelrayen said. “It might have been
able to match your best speed using only one of those four drive assemblies. It
appeared to have been designed to have a reserve capacity for power and speed
several times what it could actually use. Do we have time to attempt to capture
that ship and turn it away?”

“It
might not be able to move, but it can still fight,” Valthyrra reminded him.

“There
seem to be very few actual cannons. The fighters will be able to go in and
destroy those in reasonable safety, and then we could shut down that weapon
while it is still reasonably intact.”

“I
cannot believe that we have the time,” Valthyrra answered. “You know how hard
it would be to target those weapons on a ship moving that fast, and then I
would still have to come in and attempt to turn it aside. That is not something
I care to try at that speed.”

“No,
there is not enough time,” Gelrayen agreed. “I was able to collect detailed
interior scans. Perhaps that will tell us all that we need to know.”

“Just
what are you interested in?” the ship asked. “Are you lusting after
reactionless drives?”

“Why
not? You are not too new to refuse a refitting.” “Commander, the Dreadnought
has begun building power,” she interrupted him. “Entirely too much power for a
ship that has no drives.”

“I
should have gone after the generators after all,” Gelrayen commented to
himself. “Does it seem to be doing anything with that power?”

“No,
just holding it.” She paused, and when she spoke again she seemed honestly
frightened. “Commander, can you anticipate the power involved if every
generator in that machine was forced to overload?”

“Yes,
I warned you about that already.”

“Then
can you imagine what would happen if the Dreadnought brought every generator it
has to a level just below overload and then hurtled itself into that star at
nearly the speed of light? It would be bad enough just to throw a hundred
million tons of machinery into a star at that speed, but I had calculated that
the star would have survived that. The power of those generators alone would
explode that star, but the combined energy will create a shock wave that will
destroy the closer planets in this system. I am moving to intercept.”

“Val,
what can you do?” he demanded. “Can you get yourself in range in time?”

“I
doubt that very much,” she admitted. “But I still have to try. There are two
hundred million colonists in this system who are not out of range of that
blast.”

“If
you cannot stop it, then you will never get yourself out of range in time,”
Gelrayen told her as he brought his fighter around. “Take yourself and your
crew to safety. I will ram that monster.”

“Commander?”

“The
sacrifice of one is preferable to that of an entire carrier, and I have a
better chance of getting there in time. Teraln?” The other fighter had already
pulled ahead of his own, moving quickly to overtake the Dreadnought from
behind.

“You
save yourself, Commander,” Teraln answered. “Valthyrra Methryn needs you. This
is work for peons.”

Valthyrra
interrupted the discussion. “If you gentlemen are finished being noble and
self-sacrificing, you might be interested in knowing that the Dreadnought is
changing course.”

Now
that the Dreadnought no longer had its concealing shield, it was open to even
common scanners. Before any of them could respond, or even begin to wonder why
the Dreadnought was turning away, the massive machine had used its own limited
resources and the pull of the star’s gravity to take itself close enough to
speed of light to kick itself through threshold and into actual starflight, if
at extremely low speed. Once it was into starflight, however, the greatly
reduced drag of acceleration permitted it to build its speed more rapidly.
After everything that had happened, the Dreadnought was still about to escape.
And it almost certainly had the ability to repair itself, even after so much
damage. Although it had lost several vital systems, it had only suffered
destruction of well under a quarter of its total machinery.