The truth was that Velmeran had no idea just how effective a fighter would be, but he had little hope that this was the answer to his problem. That depended more than anything on how fast and accurate the Challenger was at tracking a target as small as a twenty-meter fighter. To destroy a cannon, the pilots were required to put a bolt through the small opening in the turret for its tracking lenses, a task complicated by the fact that they had to align their entire ship to fire their own cannons. That might prove impossible even for Starwolves, between dodging rocks and enemy fire. Still, he thought it was worth a try.
Velmeran allowed another hour’s rest before the next attack. Kelvessan, because of the tremendous demands of hypermetabolism, had surprisingly little endurance, but they also recovered very quickly. That was Lenna Makayen’s peculiar advantage over her fellow pilots. But when she did tire, she was much slower to recover. That was part of the reason why she did not protest when Velmeran told her that she would not take part in this attack. She really did know what she could and could not do; she could easily navigate the ring, something no true human would attempt, but not fight there.
The problem of endurance was also very much on Velmeran’s mind. He knew that his pilots were only good for about ten or twenty minutes of this kind of work. If this attack did show reasonable promise, it would take hours of picking away at the Challenger’s guns and engines to leave the ship vulnerable to the Methryn’s conversion cannon. He would have to divide his twenty packs into four groups of five each, each group attacking for fifteen minutes and then resting at a safe distance for forty-five.
“There simply are no easy answers,” Valthyrra had concluded when he had discussed his ideas with her. “The question, of course, is do we really have to defeat this thing as long as we can keep it here?”
“I have not forgotten that,” Velmeran said. “But this Maeken Kea is smarter than anyone I have fought before, and she is going to be hard to fool. I am sure that she expects me to put up a stiff fight, even if she also expects to win. It seems to me that there is little difference between doing my best and doing enough to keep her satisfied, so I might as well try to win.”
“And what if you do too good, and she decides that it is time to leave?” Valthyrra asked.
Velmeran smiled. “The Challenger is as penned inside this ring as they believe we are. She cannot open the shields on her engines to run without leaving them vulnerable to our attack. But I actually want them to run at the end. We certainly cannot use the conversion cannon here. We would blast away half the ring and ourselves with it.”
Valthyrra’s cameras had a decidedly shocked expression. “Funny I had not thought of that.”
“Then I suppose that I might as well get on with what I can do,” Velmeran said, already on his way down the steps from the upper bridge. “Call the pilots to their ships and have the capture ships stand by.”
Velmeran collected the packs just above the ring and backtracked along the Methryn’s path until he was sure that he was behind the Challenger. Returning to the ring, they quickly found the five-kilometer-wide corridor left by the Fortress’s passage. Velmeran sent two groups of six packs each into the ring to either side, then waited with the remaining eight packs until they were in place. When all was ready, he took his group down the length of the corridor in a high-speed run.
They came upon the Fortress suddenly, taking out the exposed engines quickly before the giant ship had time to react, then skimmed just meters over the surface of her hull and catching as many targets as they could as retractable turrets began to emerge from their protective sockets. This move was less effective than it might have been, since Velmeran had expected the cannons to be extended and ready for battle. As it was, the first wave of fighters was nearly past before any targets became available, and none was destroyed. The fighters separated immediately, disappearing into the ring before the Challenger’s forward battery could orient on them.
At that instant the other two groups of fighters attacked from either side. These fighters did not rush in but, paralleling the Fortress, used the cover of the ring as they darted back and forth on evasive paths, dipping in every few seconds for a shot volley of bolts before retreating. Their advantage was that the Challenger’s scanners could not identify and lock on individual targets, but had to direct its cannons at each ship as it appeared momentarily from the confusing background of static-laden debris. On the other hand, the Fortress had the advantage of just over eleven guns for each fighter.
These odds impressed themselves upon Velmeran very quickly, as if he had not been aware of it before. In the first half-minute the Challenger lost one cannon, and he lost one fighter. A bolt seared completely through the right wing of the ship, sending it tumbling through the ring to bounce off several large rocks, although never actually hitting because of its inner shields. After a third such impact the pilot regained some control, and a capture ship snapped up the fighter only seconds later.
Just over a minute into the attack the Methryn’s corridor turned sharply and began to head at a steep angle inward, and the Challenger began to accelerate quickly as she fell toward the planet. It was Velmeran’s hope that the vast ship would have to open her forward engines for short blasts of braking thrust rather than risk accelerating beyond her limit. Although there was an alternative that would spare her engines that risk.
Unfortunately, it seemed that Maeken Kea knew exactly what to do. For half a minute the Challenger began to gain speed, then turned abruptly to her right, looping around until she was heading back out. Within another minute she pulled to a stop, braking with field drive aided by the pull of gravity and the resistance of the material of the ring itself pushing against her shields. She corrected her course a final time and settled into a stationary orbit, motionless in respect to the movement of the ring, and turned her full attention to the attacking fighters.
Coming to a stop in the ring not only solved the Challenger’s problem of drift, it had the unfortunate effect of increasing her advantage tremendously. When she had been in motion, her scanners had been overturned with trying to distinguish real targets from countless metallic rocks shooting past; now they only directed the guns at anything that moved. Three ships were clipped in as many minutes, while the raiders destroyed only nine more guns. The odds remained in the Challenger’s favor, since Velmeran would run out of ships before she ran out of cannons.
Velmeran was just about to order a retreat when he saw a fighter just about a kilometer ahead take a bad hit that sent it tumbling end over end away from the Fortress. He accelerated and moved to intercept the stricken fighter, for a quick scan showed him that it was drifting without the protection of any shields and unlikely to survive a major impact. He was momentarily unaware of another ship following his own.
“Captain?” Tregloran asked uncertainly, identifying the pilot of the damaged ship.
“Hold on a moment, Treg,” Velmeran said as he dived in beside the tumbling fighter and used his auxiliary cannon to blast a small boulder in its path. “Who is behind me?”
“Steena?”
“Help keep the path cleared,” he ordered. “Baressa?”
“Here, Commander.”
“Order a very hasty retreat and collect the packs just above the ring,” he instructed quickly. “Treg, can you get your ship under control?”