Battle of the Ring (22 page)

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?”

“I am trying to get auxiliary power,” the younger pilot replied.
“The main generator is cycling back into itself, and building slowly to
an overload.”

“Forget it, then,” Velmeran said, and paused as he and Steena
concentrated their fire on a larger rock. The boulder shattered at the last
moment, and the fighter rolled through the opening as its pieces flew apart.
“Treg, can you eject?”

“Sorry, Captain. The canopy locks are jammed by hydraulic back
pressure, and I cannot get the leverage to force it. All I can hope for is
auxiliary power.”

“Be quick about it, then,” Velmeran said. “You are about
to come up on a group of very large rocks.”

That was something of an understatement. The larger pieces of debris,
moonlets of several hundred meters to several kilometers across, tended to
gather in small groups, drawn together by their own feeble gravity but never
touching because of their tremendous static charge. If Tregloran’s ship
was on a collision course with one of these massive rocks, nothing short of the
Methryn would get it out of the way. And there were no capture ships free.

Two massive rocks, hundreds of meters across, emerged out of the background
haze and grew quickly in size as the stricken fighter hurtled toward a deadly
meeting. Tregloran remained blissfully unaware of the situation. He was busy at
the keyboard of his on-board computer trying to force a reluctant auxiliary
generator to start while trying to keep a damaged generator from exploding.

Velmeran had been watching the matter closely, however. It soon became
apparent that the damaged fighter would catch the outer edge of the second,
smaller rock, less than a kilometer behind the first. A small moonlet, six
kilometers across, stood unavoidably ten kilometers behind that. Velmeran
cautiously moved backward and to one side, using the inner shield of his ship
to deflect Tregloran’s slightly.

Tregloran suddenly found enough power to halt the tumble of his fighter, and
for the first time he became aware of the trouble he was in. He passed within a
hundred meters of the larger rock, and barely two seconds later skimmed over the
surface of the second with only five meters to spare. Velmeran, who continued
to push from that side of his ship, barely cleared the surface. Tregloran put
all the steering control of his own ship into turning away from the moonlet
directly in his path.

The damaged fighter was sluggish and unresponsive. Velmeran never gave
up, all but carrying the wrecked ship on the back of his own, even in the final
seconds when it was obvious they had failed. But at the last instant Tregloran
gained much more control and cleared the surface of the small moon through a
pass between two ragged projections.

“Captain, can you lead me back to the corridor?” he asked
immediately. “My main generator is going to explode at any moment.”

“You do that and I will back up along my corridor to intercept
you,” Valthyrra insisted. “Can you hold out for another three
minutes?”

“I am sure of it,” Tregloran said. “I am holding it by
sheer will right now, and it is going to explode seconds after I let go of
it.”

“Long enough for us to pry you loose and throw it overboard,”
Valthyrra asserted. “Just pop your wings and slip in on the deck, gears
up so that we can get to you.”

Tregloran’s ship had no drive power, just steering. The power lines of
his main generator were burning now, as much as they could in the absence of
air, leaving a trail of hot gasses and glowing particles behind the fighter.
The Methryn, moving quickly up her own corridor, intercepted them as they
reached it and began to accelerate forward to match the speed to that of the
fighters approaching from behind.

Tregloran tripped the explosive bolts in the wings of his fighter as he
moved behind the Methryn’s tail, and small, gas-filled pistons inside the
downswept wings lifted them into a level position. Valthyrra matched his speed
carefully so that he entered the bay at hardly more than a very fast run.
Velmeran and Steena accelerated now, passing through the bay and out the
forward door. Tregloran allowed his own fighter to travel half the length of
the bay before lowering it gently to the deck, leaving a trail of sparks and
thick smoke as it slid to a stop only five meters from the forward door.

Benthoran and an assistant were there immediately, and at the same time a
pair of handling arms moved in from overhead to seize the damaged fighter.
Flames and sparks shot out of every opening in the shattered hull as burning
power lines exploded under the stress of a generator building quickly to an
overload. The two crewmembers ripped loose the locked canopy and threw it
aside, while Valthyrra gently lifted the fighter barely a centimeter from the
floor and began to move it slowly toward the open door. While Benthoran helped
the nervous pilot free himself from his ship, other crewmembers aimed a frigid
blast of carbon dioxide into the fighter’s engine compartment to cool the
faulty generator and delay its explosion.

At the last moment Benthoran bodily lifted Tregloran out of the cockpit and
threw him to safety, then leaped over the fighter’s wing just before it
swept him through the containment fields into open space. Valthyrra carried the
ship free of the deck, as far out as her handling arms would reach, and gave it
a firm push downward. Then she thrust herself forward, barely clearing the
fighter before it exploded.

Benthoran walked over to where Tregloran’s motionless form lay on the
deck, under the attentions of three crewmembers who had removed his helmet.
“Are you all right?”

Tregloran glanced up at him. “Just glad to be here.”

“I can imagine.” Benthoran laughed softly, then gestured impatiently
to one side of the bay. “Clear this wreckage from the deck. We have to
land the damaged fighters before the packs can come in.”

“Damnation!” Maeken Kea muttered as she fell back into her seat,
then immediately pushed herself back up again. “Marenna, give me a
report. Are they really gone?”

“They appear to be,” the ship responded noncommittally.
“All fighters have disappeared from scan.”

That did not mean much; inside this orbital rock quarry, everything
disappeared from scan within a few kilometers. But Maeken Kea did not have long
to decide. After a moment she launched herself from her seat and began to pace
the edge of the central bridge. “Return to the Methryn’s corridor
and follow her. Damage report.”

“I have lost two complete engine clusters, fourteen engines in all,
although the loss will not seriously affect my speed even in starflight. I have
also lost seventeen cannons.”

“Keep the units that still have functional generators so that we can
have their power on the grid, and pitch the rest overboard,” Donalt
Trace said as he joined her. “It occurred to me during the design of this
machine that they would shoot up through the damaged units to get at the
interior of the ship, so the module sockets have the same quartzite shielding.”

“Eject the malfunctioning units,” Maeken told the ship.

“Yes, Captain.”

Maeken Kea resumed her nervous pacing for a moment, then hurried back to her
seat to consult the monitors on her console. Trace smiled privately. Except
when penned to her seat by accelerations, Maeken fought her battles with a
display of physical rage and strength equal to her amazing mental agility.

“Well done, Captain,” he said, moving to one side of her chair.

Maeken glanced up at him. “Whatever for? Velmeran called the shots.
Brilliant moves, but he left an answer for every problem. This was just to
see how well his fighters work against this ship. Now he knows better.”

“Will he be back?”

Maeken frowned. “I really suspect that he is just trying to slow us
down until the Methryn can be repaired... which indicates that we must be
gaining on her. This attack bought him a little time, but not all that much. He
has to come back. I just wonder what he plans to do next.”

Velmeran called a meeting in the Methryn’s smallest council room the
moment he returned to the ship, and for as soon as the requested members could
arrive. This was no problem for most, although Lenna had been trying to sneak
in her required eight hours of an activity that Kelvessan did not need, and she
had only just started the third. And Dyenlerra had caught Tregloran before he
was able to escape; only a direct request from Velmeran was able to get
him out of the medical section.

“Well, I would not exactly call it an exercise in futility,”
Velmeran began suddenly. He had been sitting at the table, deep in his own
thoughts, waiting for the others to arrive. Lenna had just sat down at the
table, propped her chin in one hand, and appeared to go to sleep. He regarded
her briefly and continued. “I did have my first good look at the
Challenger and I know what she can do. Obviously the Methryn cannot fight her,
and the packs are not much good either. I guess that I will have to do it
myself. Damage report.”

When Valthyrra did not respond, he reached over and gave her camera pod a
sharp rap. She turned to look at him. “Damage report. What was the
final score? I left before the game was over.”

“You did not miss a thing,” Valthyrra answered. “We have
six wrecked fighters and two injured pilots... slightly injured, but they will
not be flying again for a few days. You trimmed the Challanger of seventeen
guns and fourteen engines. Ordinarily I would say that you came out
slightly ahead.”

“No, not this time,” Velmeran agreed. “Don designed his
ship entirely too well, and Maeken Kea is every bit as smart as I was afraid
she would be. Not only did my plan to force them to expose their engines fail,
but she used it against me.”