They noticed then that Captain Tarrel was easing herself down the steps from the upper bridge. The actual weight of the armor was less a problem to her than the fact that she found it more awkward then she had expected, at least descending the steps when she could not see where she was going. Once on level ground, she was able to carry herself fairly well.
“Do you feel safe?” Gelrayen asked.
“I was given to understand that this ship could not generate the power to send herself anywhere if she had to,” Tarrel answered. “I thought that I had better move about a little while I can. And I’m dying of curiosity. What did you do to the Dreadnought? I was blinking too much to see anything.”
“It lost its shield for a moment when my cannons matched frequency and were able to penetrate,” Valthyrra said. “That serves as an important lesson on the virtue of stupid ideas. It was a risk, but it worked. If I had had power for my conversion cannon, and a little more time, I could have destroyed it.” “Remind me never to play cards with any of you people,” Tarrel commented. “The gods smile upon fools and Starwolves with stupid ideas.”
“They also play their little tricks,” Gelrayen added. “Valthyrra, I hope that you were able to record what you saw.”
“I did get a good contour scan of what I could see, which was unfortunately only about twenty percent of the Dreadnought’s total area,” she answered. “The fact that it began to swing around before the shield went back up was the only thing that allowed me to see more than just its tail end.”
“I could sense its conversion generators while that shield was down,” Gelrayen said. “Apparently the shield itself is able to suppress even that psychic response.”
“Psychic? Are you trying to tell me that you Starwolves are mind-readers? I had assumed that your ability to sense high-power systems was a function comparable to ordinary scanner.” She paused a moment, thinking about the matter carefully. “No, pardon my skepticism, which was misplaced. Nothing you could tell me about Starwolves would ever surprise me again.” Gelrayen wisely treated the matter as settled. “I did not, however, sense any drives in operation. Is that because they simply were not engaged at that moment?”
“No, not entirely,” Valthyrra said. “I simply did not see any main drives or star drives of any conventional sense. In fact, I saw nothing that I would consider an external drive of any type. Of course, that is not a surprise.”
“No?” Tarrel looked surprised.
“We had already guessed that the energy flare of conventional drives could not be contained within that shield,” the ship explained. “I do not have to remind you that our own shields must have openings for the drive flare, or the wash will overload and bum out the shield itself. That is part of the reason why our packs almost always attack a ship at the drives first.”
“That, and to take the ship mostly intact,” Tarrel added. “Yes, there is that. If the Dreadnought had conventional drives in any sense, it would have had shield vents. If such drives were vented through the shield, the Starwolves would have been able to sense them, and shoot through those vents.”
“Do you have any better idea of just what sort of drive it must possess?” Gelrayen asked. “Would it be a highly refined jump drive?”
“That is my best guess at this time,” Valthyrra said. “I cannot believe that even the most powerful field drives would be able to take a ship into starflight, unless it also employs an acceleration damper of almost flawless efficiency. It might also use a type of drive unlike anything we know. All I do know now with any reasonable certainty is that it does not use conventional drives.” “Well, it’s a shame that we weren’t able to destroy it while that shield was down,” Tarrel remarked. “Do you think that we might be able to use that same trick again?”
“That depends upon how well the Dreadnought learns from its mistakes. We might be able to set up some variation of that same trick that might fool it.” She paused, lifting her camera pod slightly as if listening to some distant sound. “Gheldyn, do you have any estimates for me?”
“Another five minutes at least,” the engineering officer responded over the bridge audio.”
“Do the very best you can. We are running out of time.” She turned her camera pod back to the others. “The game begins again. The Dreadnought seems to have recovered from whatever I did to it and is moving through the outer edge of the ring detonating some manner of concussion discharges.”
“Trying to shake us loose?” Tarrel asked.
“Perhaps. Those concussions are creating some very intense plasma shock waves that would react sharply with my armor, producing a very clear signature on passive sensors. They are not a direct danger to me, however.”
“But if it finds us, we should be able to run,” Gelrayen added.
“I certainly hope so,” the ship agreed. “If I pull myself well back into this hole, the moonlet will shield me from any shock wave unless both the concussion and the Dreadnought itself were somewhere in front of the opening. We might just be able to ride this out.”
“Famous last words,” Gelrayen remarked to Captain Tarrel.
She nodded. “I think that I’m going back to your seat before anything else happens.”
Tarrel took herself back to the upper bridge and strapped in for battle, fairly certain that it would come without warning. She could not believe that they were going to get out of this one. The Dreadnought was a weapon that possessed tremendous abilities, and she doubted that the Methryn’s one lucky shot had damaged it all that much. For that matter, she did not entirely trust Valthyrra’s belief that it was only trying to chase them out with concussion discharges. It knew, within a relatively specific area, just where they were hiding, and it probably meant to destroy everything along that portion of the ring to have them.
She strapped herself into the seat on the upper bridge and watched as the Starwolves continued about their business with a frustrating lack of concern. For the first time in what seemed like a long while, Tarrel was reminded of the rumors and legends about Starwolves that she had lived with all her life. They were said to be nothing more than coldly efficient weapons of war, incapable by design of either compassion or fear. Since meeting them, she had lain aside all of those old beliefs and suppositions. There was certainly no reason why they would be risking their lives and their ships to protect Union worlds, except compassion. But she wondered now if their calm reaction to danger was something they had by design, or if it was something they had learned with experience.
Their first warning that the Dreadnought was close was the sound of the concussion discharges, rolling along the hull of the ship like distant thunder. The lack of an atmosphere meant that they were hearing the passing of the shock wave itself, and the absence of air also allowed the shock wave to travel farther before dissipating. Just the same, if those shock waves were still rolling through, then their point of origin must be very close.
“Gheldyn, we really do need to be going,” Valthyrra said.
“Another minute,” the senior engineer answered.
“We really do not have a minute,” the ship insisted.
“You also do not have a complete main line.”
Captain Tarrel decided at that point that they were in serious trouble. The next concussion thundered in, this one strong enough to shake the immense carrier. Valthyrra was turning her camera pod from one station to the next, where members of the bridge crew waited patiently at consoles controlling systems that still lacked the power to respond.