“Yes, I left the Dreadnought eating a small system only sixteen hours ago. It might not be here for days yet. It might be right behind me. Or it might already be here, for all I know,” Theralda explained. “Things have turned out rather differently than we first expected. The Dreadnought is a much more sophisticated machine than we first anticipated, and it has now changed its tactics by attacking not only stations and traffic but major installations on the planet itself. I have also found evidence that it lingers hidden in system for some time after the first attack to ambush ships that might be coming to investigate. My belief is that it is now trying to destroy all the Starwolf carriers it can find.”
“What can we do?” Carrel asked, seemingly too surprised or appalled by what he had just heard to make sense of it.
“You can hardly evacuate the planet, but there is really no need. The Dreadnought has so far only attacked a relatively few planet-side targets. If you close down all major power sources and evacuate the large factories and all military bases, you should be all right. But it does seem to have a priority about military targets.”
“I understand. I will have all planet-side factories and military bases cleared immediately, although I want to continue a cautions evacuation of some important materials.”
“What have you been doing about the stations?” Theralda asked.
“The stations are being broken up into large components,” Khallenda Maeridan reported. “Battleships are being locked into the hulls of the components of the military station and linked by computer to carry those segments away. I am carrying away the segments of the commercial station by locking them down to my upper and lower hulls.”
“Is that a fact?” Theralda asked. “How is that working out?” “Fairly well, actually. I have just returned from my fourth run. If you help me, we could have this entire system carted away in only three more runs each.”
“Where are you hauling away your spoils?”
“There is a system with no inhabitable planet only two light years over where we have been unloading the components. I was able to transport a full load in little more than an hour, most of that acceleration and deceleration time. With any luck, the Dreadnought will never think to look for it there.”
“That monster is damned clever.” Theralda mused upon that for a moment. “We can put the station components there, but all the evacuated ships have to go somewhere else. If we leave a major emission trail all going to the same place, which is exactly what you will get from large numbers of Union drives, the Dreadnought is probably clever enough to wonder where everyone was going and if they could be caught.”
“Then you will help us move our stations?” Carrel asked eagerly.
“Unfortunately, being your beast of burden is probably the most help that I have to offer,” Theralda said, amused to think that they were chatting up like old friends, devoted allies that had recently been bitter enemies. She found it curiously easy to be sympathetic toward the Union; a very long lifetime of familiarity had led her to pity them.
She had kept the communication open, for the bridge crew to hear. Commander Schyrran was seated at his station on the upper bridge, looking very pensive. He glanced up at her as she brought her camera pod into the upper bridge. “What about your star drives? You will probably be moving your own weight again in station components. Can you manage that?”
“Yes, that should be no problem,” she insisted. “For a two light-year jump, I hardly have the need to push that load to any real speed as long as I can get it moving. My drives are not damaged, and I have all the time they will take to strap down those components for them to cool. Moving that load the final fifteen percent or so up to transition will be the hardest part.”
The Vardon settled herself into orbit quickly, then opened her transport bays and sent her own capture ships to manage the actual placement of the station components against her hull. Following the Maeridan’s orders, the station personnel had divided the stations into sections of fairly precise length so that three long rectangular sections could be carried both above and below the long axis of the hull, while wider sections were fitted above and below the carrier’s wings. The capture ships were narrow-waisted transports. With three pairs of long handling arms mounted to that long middle section, and powerful engines to move heavy loads; these agile little ships and their experienced pilots were perfectly suited to this task.
Under the expert guidance of their own capture crews, both the Vardon and the Maeridan were loaded for flight within an hour and a half. The crews of the capture ships were used to having to shift salvage quickly after a major battle, settling abandoned and disabled Union ships in the massive holding bays of the carriers. The station components were larger, but there were only ten of them to be settled against the flat outer hulls of the carriers. Large inflated shock cushions, that had already been fitted to the components, kept them from direct contact with the hull itself, and heavy straps of braided metal bands were used to tie them tightly to the ship. Having equal numbers and sizes of components above and below kept the carrier in reasonable balance while she struggled to carry her own weight in cargo.
The two Starwolf carriers moved out in nearly opposite directions, laying trails from their taxed engines toward false destinations with the intention of joining up later. The Vardon’s star drives had cooled considerably in the time needed to load her for the flight, and now it was her main drives, hidden under her wings, that had to do the hard work of getting some thirty million tons of carrier and payload up to transition. She was easing her way as much as possible with her damping field, which converted the energy of acceleration that would have otherwise arrested her speed into additional acceleration. No ship would have flown much past half of light speed without energy dampers. They were as essential as the drives themselves. But dampers could only do so much. Even if she could remove all the energy of acceleration, Theralda still had to set that bulk into motion.
Carriers were built for abuse, and this did not stress their limits except in trying to meet the demands of time. Even the amount of dead weight they carried was not a danger to their frames. Integrity fields, like the shields that protected the ship from the outside, where projected through the frame itself, giving the carrier the strength to survive tremendous forces of compression and torsion. Theralda took twenty-two minutes to get herself up to transition, twice as long as what she would have normally considered a gentle run. Once in starflight, she was surprised to find that she did not feel the extra mass at ail.
The Vardon arrived in the uninhabited system less than half an hour later, finding the Maeridan there only a minute ahead of her. The segments of the station that had already been brought through had been left in orbit over a rather dark, cold planet fourth out in the system, and the two carriers left the components they carried to be tied together with this first group. The unloading of the components took considerably less time than the more careful process of strapping them down to the hulls of the large ships, and the two carriers were on their way back to Norden in only about twenty minutes.
The complete transport of the commercial stations could be accomplished in two more runs only by having both of the carriers strap one segment more than they had hauled previously, braced by the components strapped onto the upper and lower hulls, actually across the nose of the ship. Neither of the two carriers were fond of that arrangement, since it completely blocked their forward batteries and left them essentially defenseless. The fact that they were already defenseless against attack from the Dreadnought was their only consolation, if it could be called that. It seemed better than making another trip, considering the time involved and the emission trails that they would be leaving.