In spite of the best efforts of the computer grid to maintain the convoy in perfect formation, the ships running in that widely spaced configuration were of various sizes, types and stages of disrepair. Some were so decrepit that their engines and generators surged and faded, some constantly and others at unpredictable intervals. As far as Captain Tarrel was concerned, that was just as well. The Dreadnought appeared to respond to high-energy emissions, and this sad lot was making all manner of tempting noise.
“Disperse the convoy to wide formation,” she ordered as soon as the group of ships had settled in from their transition from starflight. “Arm all self-destructs except our own. Wally, stand by with your communication.”
Lt. Commander Pesca had learned to bear his nickname with good grace, assuming it to be a compliment or term of affection.
He remained blissfully unaware that the Captain simply found it difficult to afford him the dignity of a military title.
“Communication standing by,” he responded. “Do you still wish to send on the light-speed bands as well?”
“Let’s not leave any stones unturned,” Tarrel answered. “Broadcast your communication now.”
Pesca had put together a rather competent first-contact communication, repeated in every major language he knew, including some that were entirely mathematical in nature and transmitted on both achronic and standard radio bands, as many as the ship could handle. They did not expect an actual dialogue with the Dreadnought, but any response might give them a fix on its location and possibly reveal something about its nature. At least they would know where to look.
“We already have a response,” Pesca announced only a few seconds after the transition began. “One brief message on a single achronic band. Less powerful than a Starwolf achronic carrier, but more distinct.”
“What about the message?” Tarrel asked impatiently.
“The computer can’t identify anything familiar about it.” “Any guesses?”
Pesca considered that briefly. “It is a machine code and very brief. I suspect that we have just been hailed with a recognition code. If we respond properly, we get to talk. If not, we get blown away. That suggests to me that the Dreadnought is entirely machine-driven.”
“Clever boy,” Tarrel remarked to herself, thinking that Wally might just win back his rank at this rate. “Do you have a direction on that signal?”
“I’m putting it up on the navigational grid now, Captain.” Tarrel glanced at the navigational monitor, a large screen between the helm and navigator’s stations just before her. To her alarm, the source Of that signal was nearly directly behind and slightly above their own flight path. It was probably moving in to intercept. Carthaginian was following the convoy. At this point, they were the most tempting target.
“Move us quickly up through the convoy until we are leading,” she ordered frantically. “I want a safe lead on those ships as quickly as we can get it. Stand by the self-destructs.”
“We can’t detonate those ships while we’re anywhere within the convoy,” Chagin reminded her.
“Yes, I know that. I just hope that we can get through before that thing takes out too many of our ships.”
She did not add that, with the Carthaginian accelerating quickly through the convoy, her powerful main drives would be giving out some very appealing emissions. She considered the risk to be worthwhile. Indeed, they were almost through the convoy before the first of the ships suddenly exploded.
“Are we clear?” she asked.
“Give me thirty seconds more and we should be able to ride out the shock wave without damage,” Chagin reported.
“Make that forty seconds more,” the surveillance officer added. “We might not get a reading if we’re too close, and we need the lead time to make a good identification.”
“I’ll give you every second I can. Just stand ready.”
A second ship was taken out before the minimum time to safely detonate the convoy. Captain Tarrel counted the seconds to herself, but the loss of a third ship just short of the surveillance officer’s mark convinced her that it was time to go. The delay in executing the order would take care of the rest, with some to spare. If she lost too many ships, the plan would not work.
Every ship in the convoy exploded its generators from a forced overload at the same moment, the combined blast enough to destroy a planet but spread over a fairly large area of space. And the leading edge of that blast was coming right up Carthaginian’s tail. Fortunately the battleship was already traveling nearly fast enough to outrun even the flash, and she had begun moving to the very edge of transition threshold since the order to detonate. She needed every second she could get to stay ahead of the shock wave, which would be just as deadly to her systems as the Dreadnought’s high-energy weapon unless it had some time to dissipate.
“I have it!” the surveillance officer announced. “Positive contact!”
“Blessed be!” Tarrel declared. “Take us on into transition. We might be lucky enough to avoid the shock wave completely. ”
As soon as Carthaginian was safely into starflight, she joined Chagin and Pesca at the surveillance station for a look at what the scanner had been able to detect. Even Carthaginian’s most accurate and powerful active scanners had been unable to identify any trace of the Dreadnought. But the explosion of the convoy and the tremendous energy involved had acted like a powerful flash or strobe, briefly illuminating the mysterious ship, and the passive scanners had been aimed past the flash to capture the reflection from the Dreadnought. The information collected had not amounted to much, the most intriguing item being the visual representation of achronic scattering of tachyons emitted by the blast. To their frustration, all it showed was a featureless gray cylinder with rounded ends.
“Is that the ship?” Pesca asked.
Chagin shook his head. “That’s just the reflection from her hull shields, if I had to guess. I don’t like guessing anything about the monster, but I have seen that often enough to be certain.”
“That’s it,” the surveillance officer agreed.
“Do we have a size on that?” Tarrel asked.
“I can give accuracy to within ten percent. We have a length of twelve kilometers by just under three across. No indication of just how large the ship inside that shield might be, unfortunately. The Dreadnought’s visual and electronic invisibility is probably some function of the shield, which must be extremely powerful. Otherwise we should have had some reflection from the ship itself.”
“Perhaps five times the length of a Starwolf carrier, but wider and much thicker,” Chagin mused. “Probably several times the mass.”
“I really don’t believe that it could be Starwolves,” Tarrel said. “Well, we know a lot more than we did, but not enough.”
“What do you think, Captain?” Pesca asked.
“We obviously can’t handle this ourselves. Let’s get our information to a courier, and then we’ll go find ourselves a Starwolf. ”
The first problem in finding a Starwolf was knowing just where to look. The Union knew only that there was at least one carrier to every sector, and that each carrier ran a regular patrol through that sector. The actual course of that patrol varied according to need, and the patrol changed regularly so that the presence or absence of a carrier could not be anticipated. There had always been some suspicion that the Starwolves employed drones or reconnaissance flights of smaller ships, and that they kept surveillance devices in some of the more important systems, but that had never been proven. All that could be said for certain was that the Starwolves were well aware of just about everything that went on in Union space, while their own habits remained very obscure and their comings and goings were largely unpredictable.