Dreadnought (20 page)

“Take
us back to the bay,” Gelrayen told her. “The sooner that we get the experts to
work on this problem, the sooner we can try again.”

Lt.
Commander Pesca was not in his cabin when Captain Tarrel went to check on him,
and he did not return for several hours. She had wondered about him briefly
during the Methryn’s test run, since there were no acceleration seats in their
cabins and the bunk was a poor substitute. Either the Starwolves had remembered
him and taken him somewhere for safe-keeping, or else he had survived well
enough and he had gone out into the ship in his quest to learn the secret
Kelvessan language. Tarrel’s ability to be concerned for him was limited to the
hope that he would do nothing to embarrass them both.

She
was busy enough herself before long. As soon as the Methryn was safely back
inside her bay, the first officer Kayendel took Tarrel down to one of the
carrier’s workshops where automated machinery, under Valthyrra’s very precise
guidance, fitted armored suits. This was Tarrel’s own turn to get naked, and
quite a number of Starwolves came to witness that as measurements were taken
for her new suit. Being career military, she was used to being undressed even
in social settings; she was not used to being put on exhibition for the
curiosity of four-armed aliens who used to be her mortal enemies, but she
endured it gracefully. Valthyrra set the machines to work, promising to have
the suit prepared by the next day.

Captain
Tarrel returned to her own cabin, and was reading when Pesca did finally
present himself. He looked rather worn and somewhat beaten up, as if the
Methryn’s test flight had been harder on him than it had been on her. She
suspected that he had not been adequately protected during the accelerations.

“Are
you keeping yourself out of trouble?” she asked without looking up.

“Actually,
I’ve been looking for trouble,” Pesca said. “Unfortunately, the joke was on
me.”

She
glanced at him over the top of her book. “Didn’t they warn you about the test
flight?”

“Well,
they did,” he admitted reluctantly. “I’ve flown in couriers so often, I wasn’t
worried. I spent the first part of the test flight on the floor in various
parts of the ship near the fighter bays. Then the Starwolves found me and put
me in one of the fighters.”

“Did
you learn anything from the controls?”

He
shook his head. “No, the power was completely shut down. Besides, I passed out
again.”

Tarrel
was interested to know that he had passed out, while she had taken those
stresses very much in stride. “What did you do after that? Or did the
Starwolves let you sleep?”

“Actually,
they took me up to the group of cabins shared by their pack,” he explained. “I
was hoping to have a look at the books they keep. They do keep books, but every
last damned one was in Terran.”

“There
probably aren’t enough Kelvessan in existence to justify the printing of books
in their own language,” she speculated. “Anything of their own would be kept in
the computers, and Valthyrra Methryn has absolute control over those. At this
rate, you’re going to get yourself flattened in some back corridor of this ship
before you learn a single word. Valthyrra Methryn wants to measure you for a
suit anyway, since we didn’t think to bring our own.”

“Have
them look in some hold where they throw their loot,” Pesca complained. “They’ve
stolen at least a dozen of everything the Union has ever made.”

Tarrel
was inclined to laugh. “Now, now. The Starwolves are our good friends, and the
only damned thing that can save our butts. You can go back to criticizing their
habits once they destroy the Dreadnought, but not one moment before.”

She
sent him immediately to present himself to be fitted for his suit, although he
seemed curiously reluctant to go for reasons that she could not imagine, as if
he considered the suit a threat aimed at him personally. But she was beginning
to find his presence increasingly troubling. Since their arrival at Alkayja
station, and especially since coming aboard the Methryn, Pesca was becoming
increasingly suspicious and sullen. Perhaps it was only his frustration at
failing to learn the Kelvessan language. The Starwolves were conspiring against
him, and he knew it.

What
she found alarming was the degree of his resentment, which seemed to be turning
quickly to hate and paranoia. She considered once again whether it would be
best to put him off the ship. The Starwolves would take him home soon enough,
and he would have human company until then.

Perhaps
that, she thought, was the root of his problem, something that she had even
seen in the past. Some people simply reacted sharply to a prolonged stay in an
all or mostly alien environment, even aliens as human in appearance and habits
as the Kelvessan. Then again, she reminded herself, the Starwolves might appear
far more alien to Pesca’s eyes. She honestly liked them and enjoyed their
company, but Pesca was still very loyal to Union ideals. He had been brought up
to hate and fear Starwolves, and a sudden change of policy was not going to
influence his deep-seated prejudices that quickly.

The
testing of the Methryn presented Tarrel with far more interesting problems to
consider, and she forgot about her companion soon enough. Dalvaen and his
engineers had come back aboard the^carrier the moment she settled into her bay,
and they had the answer to the problem quickly enough. The supercooling of the
impulse scanner emitter coils was indeed the problem, as it had been before. lust
as superconductivity had caused the cannons to fire prematurely, it was also
causing the crystals that those coils influenced to continue to radiate
achronic signals even after the coils themselves were no longer under power.
The answer was simple. The solid-state super-coolers were removed, and the
power needed to fire the impulse cannons was increased to the previous level.

The
Methryn was ready to go out again only a few hours later. For the purposes of
this second test, she had remained isolated in her bay while the two functional
carriers and the Starwolf freighter that were presently in port took themselves
to separate portions of the system hidden by stealth-intensity shields. In that
way, Valthyrra could not have the slightest idea of where to look for them, and
her ability to locate those three ships would be entirely dependant upon the
effectiveness of her impulse scanners.

The
Methryn backed out of her bay, this time with much greater speed and certainty,
and moved slowly into the system to begin her search. If this test was not
successful, she would begin to fall behind the schedule that she had been given
to keep.

If
it was successful, she would not be returning to the station but would turn her
long nose toward Union space. Captain Tarrel was once again at the Commander’s
station on the bridge, while Gelrayen watched from the surveillance station
below.

“The
ship is clear and away,” Valthyrra reported. “No contact on normal scan. Are
those ships out there?”

“They
should be,” Gelrayen told her. “I do not sense them, so they must have their
drives shut down and their major power systems at low level.”

“Pardon?”
Tarrel asked, mystified, although she had not meant to ask that question out
loud.

In
fact, she did not know about the hyper-sensitive hearing the Starwolves
enjoyed. Seated at the helm station just below, Kayendel had heard her and
turned to look up over her shoulder. “We have the ability to sense the size,
direction and range of drives and large conversion generators, and without the
lag of real-time. It saves us the trouble of having to consult our scan when we
fly. We always know where all the ships around us are, even carriers running
under stealth.”

“Well,
you learn something every day around here,” Tarrel remarked. “That must mean
that you cannot sense the Dreadnought, or all of this business would be
unnecessary.”

“Exactly.
Either its shields defeat even that, or else it uses a type of drive that we
cannot sense. We had wondered if it could be a jump drive, but we are supposed
to be able to sense even that.”

“You
would be able to sense its generators at least,” Tarrel speculated. “It must be
the shield.”

That
completely upset any hopes she might have had about the possibility of Union
warships with stealth-intensity shields. The Starwolves seemed to have answers
for everything, except the Dreadnought.

“We
are well away from the station,” Valthyrra reported. “I am ready to begin the
first level of testing.”

“Have
at it,” Gelrayen told her.

The
Methryn leveled herself with the plane of planetary orbits and sent out a
low-level pulse from all of her perimeter impulse scanners. A long, tense
moment passed before they knew that the system schematic on the main viewscreen
was not going to simply fuzz out in a backlash of radiation as it had before.
Then, one by one, three additional contacts revealed themselves to the impulse
scanner. One had been sitting idle, well above the planetary plane, where a
perimeter scan had been expected to have trouble finding it.

“The
target ships were supposed to report the moment that they detected my impulse
beam,” Valthyrra said.

“They
have not?” Gelrayen asked.

“No,
at least not yet. That might be some indication that I use a less powerful beam
than the Dreadnought. Then again, once it locates a ship with a general scan,
it might be locking on a tighter beam to make a more detailed identification.”

“Try
locking onto a single ship.”

Valthyrra
turned slightly, aiming the beam of her main impulse scanner at the most
distant target.

“No
response from target at low intensity,” Valthyrra reported. “Scan indicates
that this ship is a Starwolf carrier. I do get a response at medium intensity.
The ship identifies herself as the carrier Baldaen.”

Gelrayen
looked up at her camera pod. “What do you make of that?”

“I
suspect that she is trying to trick me,” the ship insisted. “That scan
indicates a ship that is much too light to be a carrier. There is no muffled
return from contact with the heavy plate armor of the hull. I still believe
that ship to be a freighter.” “Tell her that and find out what she says,” he
suggested. Valthyrra paused. “She admits that she is a freighter. My
interpretation of the impulse scan is accurate.”

“Congratulations,”
Gelrayen said, and everyone seemed relieved. “Do you feel that the impulse scanner
is operating efficiently enough to conclude your testing now?”

She
rotated her camera pod fully toward him. “Yes, I do.” “Then contact the station
and tell them that the tests have been concluded successfully, and that we will
not be returning,” he said. “Tell them that the Methryn is going out to hunt.”

Captain
Tarrel found herself again in familiar territory. The Rane Sector had borne the
first series of attacks by the Dreadnought, and chances were good that the
Methryn would find it there again. A Starwolf freighter, taking a patrol run to
help support the limited carrier fleet, had found the Dreadnought taking apart
a lesser system and had been forced to run after being fired upon from a
distance. Since the Dreadnought had attacked a system two sectors over only two
days earlier, there was reason to believe that it had only just changed its
location according to its habit and would strike at least one more system in
the immediate area before moving on. Since the Methryn had nearly crossed the gulf
separating Union space from the Republic, she was actually the closest fighting
ship at hand.

Because
the Starwolves had no time to spend on being subtle, they were admitting to a
lot of things that they probably would have otherwise wanted to have kept
somewhat more secret. Given all that she had been able to infer so far, Captain
Tarrel was fairly certain that she could have taken her own ship, set a course
out from the Rane Sector, and found herself in Republic space in two or three
weeks, even if finding Alkayja and the Starwolf base would not have been so
easy. She had serious misgivings about what she should do with that
information. The Starwolves were letting slip these clues for the sake of
sparing her own people from the destruction of the Dreadnought as quickly as
possible; they could have spent extra days to make this journey, giving the
sense that the distance was greater, or swung around wide to approach from a
different direction.

That
left her with the uncomfortable feeling that she owed them a very great favor
in return. Knowing the location, size and capabilities of the secret Starwolf
base was a major tactical advantage, one that could possibly be exploited as
the first step in their eventual destruction. And they knew what she could do
to them with that information. But, because the Starwolves had willingly
surrendered that information for the sake of protecting the Union, it seemed to
her that they were due some equal consideration. At least the decision was
entirely her own to make. She doubted very much that Wally Pesca could have
found his way back to Starwolf space even if she had told him where to look,
and he had no way of knowing much that she did.

The
problem for now was finding the Dreadnought and learning some more of its secrets,
which they fully intended to exploit. The Methryn changed course immediately
for its last known location, increasing her speed even more to try to close the
distance between herself and her enemy before it could get ahead of her. The
Methryn fully expected to be engaging the Dreadnought in the next two or three
days, perhaps as little as four hours if she found it still loitering in that
first system.

Tarrel
tended to forget that they were not actually going into battle, and that the
Dreadnought, unless they were unexpectedly very lucky indeed, would not be
destroyed in this round of the contest. All the Methryn proposed to do was to
use her impulse scanner to learn more of the Dreadnought’s secrets, its size,
its power capabilities and the true nature of its drives, even if she had to
present herself as a target just to get in close. In a way, it hardly seemed
fair to Valthyrra Methryn. She was the newest ship in the Starwolf fleet, sleek
and proud. And yet she was certain to come away damaged from this encounter,
perhaps seriously, just for the hope of securing information.