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.
Commander Gelrayen called a last tactical council on the Methryn’s upper bridge, even though his group of experts was very limited in both size and experience. Janus Tarrel was there mostly on the basis that she had seen the Dreadnought more often than anyone else, human or Starwolf. Kayendel had also fought the Dreadnought, acting as helm aboard the Vardon. Valthyrra herself completed the group by rotating her camera boom into the upper bridge.
“What do you think?” Gelrayen asked her bluntly.
Valthyrra lowered her camera pod slightly. “Seriously? I believe that my objective should be to obtain as much information and sustain the least damage that I can, with information being the priority. I keep thinking that I can only play this as it comes, but I suspect that I will have to get in close to the Dreadnought and give it a sustained shot from my three forward cannons before I will see inside that shield.”
“Is there any hope of catching it by surprise?” he asked. “Could we hit it with those cannons from a greater distance if we knew where to expect it, possibly catch it with its shields at a lower intensity? If we just found out where to find it using a very low-intensity sweep, without giving away our own presence, we could hit it with a high-intensity beam before it could react. I am thinking of our success with the last testing of the impulse scanner.”
“I haven’t heard that the Dreadnought ever reduces that shield,” Tarrel said. “Part of its advantage as a weapon is that it’s able to maintain a battle-ready status at all times.”
“I fear that Captain Tarrel is correct,” Valthyrra agreed. “All the same, I still recommend that very tactic as our initial course of action. Certainly I will find it easiest to scan the Dreadnought before it begins shooting at me. I have little hope that the sensors for the impulse scanner will survive for very long once that discharge beam begins hitting my hull.”
“Yes, there is that,” Gelrayen agreed thoughtfully. “Then what we are facing is an engagement that will be very short in duration, simply because our own usefulness will probably deteriorate badly after the first minute or two.”
“I’ve seen a carrier try to engage the Dreadnought once before,” Tarrel said. “I would give you no more time than that, once it opens fire.”
“Could we get it to chase us, now that we can keep a careful track of its location?” Kayendel asked.
“It hasn’t seemed prone to giving chase before,” Tarrel remarked. “It moves in slowly and takes out everything within range.”
“Well, it has not been given much incentive to chase,” the first officer pointed out. “That situation might change once it knows that our impulse scanner works. If we could maintain contact at a certain distance, we could prolong our useful time for scanning that machine and minimize the effectiveness of its weapons.”
“All the same, I would not anticipate that we could encourage it to give chase to this ship,” Tarrel insisted. “Twice already it has allowed damaged carriers to move out of range, although it could have given chase and destroyed them both easily. Chasing would mean allowing itself to be distracted from its main goal. It’s probably programmed against chasing.”
“I have to agree with that,” Valthyrra added. “Even given that we cannot predict anything absolutely, the Dreadnought’s past performance gives us some indication of what we can expect. I do not expect that I could encourage it to chase me.”
“You seem to have a great deal of insight into how we can and cannot deal with this thing,” Kayendel remarked candidly.
Tarrel smiled. “That’s my advantage as a Union captain. I’m used to having to operate from a position of disadvantage. Starwolves are not.”
“Then what do you expect?” Gelrayen asked her.
“Well, you’re overlooking one important fact,” she began. “We already know that the Dreadnought makes routine scanner sweeps, just so that Starwolf carriers running under stealth cannot sneak up on it. The Methryn has the same stealth-intensity shields as any other carrier, so are our chances of sneaking up on it any better?”
“No,” Valthyrra admitted bleakly.
“Then, if sneaking is out, you can only make a very quick approach under stealth and try to be on top of it before it has a chance to see you coming,” Tarrel continued. “If you were the Dreadnought, loitering in system before or after an attack but not presently in battle, where would you be?”
Valthyrra brightened, lifting her camera pod. “I would stay in close to where the action is, or was. The inhabited planet is the focus of all traffic in and out of the system.”
That really was the best course of action they had. Very much depended upon whether or not the Methryn’s scanner actually could penetrate the Dreadnought’s unusual shield. Although that scanner had a proven ability to receive some impressions of a Starwolf carrier running under stealth, the shields of the Dreadnought were of a much higher intensity. They had little reason to expect that this attempt would be successful. But the Starwolves needed more information on the physical structure of the Dreadnought before they could fight it, even if they had to risk an entire carrier to obtain that information.
The problem was that they were very likely to get no return for the price they were prepared to pay.
Now that they were nearly five days behind the Dreadnought, they did not expect to encounter it in this first system. All the same, the Dreadnought had demonstrated a talent for doing the unexpected, based partly upon the fact that it was more clever than they had first thought and partly because most of their other guesses had been equally limited. After the Vardon’s report, they had no way of knowing if the Dreadnought might still be loitering somewhere in the system even after this amount of time. There was even the possibility that it had intercepted the communications to the Methryn and was preparing an ambush at that very moment. Theralda Vardon had certainly believed that it might already know about the Methryn’s modifications, a matter that had been discussed freely through the achronic channels when they had believed the Dreadnought too stupid to notice. Valthyrra was inclined to agree.
With the possibility of battle just ahead, Captain Tarrel wanted to be prepared for a fight and the sharp accelerations that would involve well in advance. While they were still a short distance out, she returned to her own cabin to put on her armor. Valthyrra’s automated equipment had completed it on schedule, exactly like the armor worn by the Starwolves except for having only one set of arms and certain structural modifications to allow for her physical differences. She was somewhat surprised to find that it had been constructed in command white, although it was the color of a ship’s commander.