The Methryn was braking sharply now as she prepared to match speed with the mass of the ring, rising quickly below the ship. The Challenger cut her own acceleration but continued to drift at near light speed. But the race was lost already, if by mere seconds. The Methryn braked hard a final time before disappearing both visually and from scan. A moment later the Challenger fired a quick volley at the region where she thought the carrier to be for the few seconds that she remained within range, already braking with her forward engines as she shot past the large planet. She began a slow circle that would bring her back to the same area of the ring by the time she could cut her speed to orbital velocity.
“Now what?” Trace demanded, gasping for breath as he was held against the straps of his seat by a five-G deceleration.
Maeken spent a long moment studying her monitors before reporting. “The Kalvyn is holding her distance, apparently too damaged herself to fight us alone. On the other hand, the packs have destroyed our stingships and are coming in a hurry.”
“And your recommendation?”
Maeken frowned, but made her decision quickly. “Finding the Methryn in that place will be a real chore. Both ships can navigate the ring, but it will keep our speed limited to little more than orbital velocity of the ring itself And cut the range of our cannons. Neither ship will have effective scan. The Starwolves can keep us preoccupied with their fighters, but we have the undamaged ship. But she is leaving a trail for us to follow, And if she loses power again we’ll have her. And if we do not go after her now, before help arrives, she will get away. I say that we should go in after her now.”
“So do I,” Commander Trace agreed.
Maeken Kea gave the order for the Challenger to follow the Methryn into the ring. It was as Velmeran had foreseen. Donalt Trace could not resist the prize under any circumstance. But Maeken Kea was also tempted, beyond her better judgment.
Maeken Kea was unaware that she was chasing an intact, undamaged Starwolf carrier into a trap.
A large part of Velmeran’s success lay in his talent for conceiving and executing plans that his human opponents did not expect. Lenna Makayen, expressing it from the human point of view, declared it was the sort of thing that no one in their right mind would consider the first time she heard it. Velmeran thereby reasoned that it was also the sort of thing no one would expect and somehow saw a compliment in that remark, Either he knew a few things about humans that they did not themselves suspect or else he was, as Lenna implied, not entirely in his right mind. Whatever the case, it had certainly worked.
The execution of the plan had been simple enough. Valthyrra had made her run at a speed and heading that had put her in the general direction of the fifth planet, requiring only one course correction. The large explosion in her engine rooms had been in reality a quarter-megaton conversion device rigged from the salvaged generator of a fighter, and placed atop the tripod erected a hundred meters above her hull. The Fortress’s scanners were not accurate enough to detect the light structure or determine the fact that the explosion had actually been safely outside the Methryn’s shields. Marenna Challenger had assumed from misleading evidence that her main generators had been hit, and Maeken Kea had seen no reason to question that.
The rest had proceeded simply enough, although it had required careful timing. Valthyrra had simply shut down her engines to set herself adrift, idling her main generators, then gave herself a very slow nose-over roll. Everything, from her high initial attack speed to her one course correction and short bursts of power, had been carefully calculated to keep her just outside the Challenger’s reach.
If Maeken Kea had been at all suspicious, she would have easily seen that there were entirely too many convenient coincidences. But those suspicious coincidences had instead become enticing lures. After one piece of incredibly good luck followed by a string of near misses, neither Maeken Kea nor Donalt Trace could resist the urge to continue the chase. As prey, the disabled Methryn was simply too tempting to refuse.
Velmeran knew that the Challenger would attempt to follow the Methryn’s trail through the ring. The powerful static charge of the ring caused its relatively large fragments to repel each other enough for Starwolf fighters to slip through with ease; the larger ships would simply force a path with their debris shields, a path that could be easily followed for several hours before gravitational and static forces caused them to close again. Velmeran actually pointed out the Methryn’s corridor to the Challenger by having the returning fighters duck almost beneath the larger ship’s nose to fly down the open path.
“How long until the fighters come in?” Velmeran asked, removing himself at last from the Commander’s station.
“The first packs should be in about two minutes from now,” Valthyrra replied. “Baress and Baressa will be leading their packs in first. Do you want me to send them here as soon as possible?”
“Send me those two, and the rest of my special tactics team,” he decided. “What is the Challenger doing?”
“Casting about for the opening I left in the ring,” the ship replied. “She obviously means to follow.”
Velmeran spent the next few minutes reviewing the careful scan of that area of the ring that Valthyrra had made during her approach. She calculated that the giant Fortress would not be able to make better than two thousand kilometers per hour — relative, of course, to the speed of the ring itself. Within the ring, its floating mass of boulders and moonlets appeared as a motionless landscape to any ship sharing the same orbit… that is, traveling in the same general speed and direction. Actually, the Methryn could go little faster herself, since speed was determined by how fast rocks could be shoved away from an oncoming ship.
They had entered the ring near its outer edge, and had been working their way steadily inward ever since. Because of the low speed, they could expect to confine their chase to a relatively small area. At this rate, it would take nearly two full days just to pass completely through the ring and reach the outer atmosphere of the planet below. They were in fact spiraling slowly inward, moving ‘downstream’ with its motion.
The crewmembers he had requested, and some he had not, arrived on the bridge within minutes. Baress and Baressa arrived with Trel and Marlena, the other two official members of the special tactics team, and Tregloran, who had been an unofficial member for over a year. Lenna Makayen, none the worse for her first turn as a combat pilot, quietly brought up the rear.
“How did it go?” Velmeran asked as they approached.
“Quite well,” Baress replied. “We did not get a scratch. And at this point, the only stingships they have left are any the Challenger herself might be carrying.”
“I got three!” Lenna proclaimed proudly. Since she had not had time to remove her makeup, Velmeran had recognized her by the fact that the black armor she wore had only one set of arms.
“Three what?” he asked. “Ours, or theirs?”
“Stingships, of course,” she said indignantly. “Like shooting fish in a barrel.”
Velmeran glanced at Baress, who shrugged helplessly. “I got only three myself. Valthyrra cut down the phasing of her engines so that we would always know where she was. And, to tell the truth, we were flying in such close quarters that you could not tell her from the regular pilots.”
Velmeran regarded the girl for a moment and shrugged. “That should not be surprising, I suppose. Just tell me when your ears begin to point. How did the attack transports work out?”
“It was a simple matter of overkill, shooting at stingships,” Trel replied. “They were designed for bigger game.”
Valthyrra steered her camera pod in behind Velmeran. “I thought you would like to know that the Challenger has indeed entered the ring and is following my corridor at such an alarming pace that I have had to increase my own speed. I have a probe following her at a discreet distance.”
“Then we really are in business,” Velmeran muttered to himself, and turned back to Valthyrra. “How soon can the packs go out again?”
“Back out?” the ship asked in desperation. “I only just finished getting them all in. But you can head out immediately, if you must.”
“That might seem a little extreme. We need to make it look like we had to take stock of what we have and hold an emergency conference on the subject first. We will start putting fighters back into space in exactly one hour. Right, Lenna?”
“Right, Captain.”
“I will lead twelve packs after the warships,” Velmeran continued. “Baressa, you will take twelve packs after the supply convoy.”
“What about me?” Lenna demanded.
“You will…,” Velmeran began sternly, but paused when he saw her look of determination, “…need all the practice you can get. I do not have a pack for you to fly with this time.”
“She can go with us,” Trel offered. “We should be easy to keep track of, since she has to depend upon scan entirely to know who she is with.”
“Good enough,” Velmeran agreed. “Lenna, if you can hold your own against stingships, you can certainly handle the warships.”
“And if you do not come back, I am only out a fighter,” Valthyrra teased.
Donalt Trace arrived on the bridge at a run, only to find that no one was at the Captain’s station. He paused just long enough for a quick look around, and found Maeken Kea bending over the shoulder of the officer at the main communication console. She turned to meet him just as he arrived.
“The support fleet and the convoy are both under attack,” she explained quickly.
“Is there anything we can do?” Commander Trace asked.
“It is already over, as far as I can tell,” Maeken answered. “That fool of a fleet commander thought that he could handle the problem himself; he didn’t call for help until he realized that he had lost. The last ship went silent only a moment ago. We cannot scan accurately from inside the ring, but the answer is plain enough. We have no support fleet, and we can no longer repair this ship.”
“We have no damage now, do we?”
“No, nor could the support fleet do us much good inside the ring,” she answered. “Stingships could not begin to navigate this mess, although it seems that Starwolves can.”
“Do you consider this a major setback?” Trace asked as they turned toward the Captain’s station.
“No, a relatively minor one, under the circumstances.” Maeken had to run every few steps to match his long-legged stride. She wondered if he had really come to value her judgment so much that he would agree to retreat on her recommendation. She decided to test that. “As I see it, we can risk another twenty-four hours to try to fish the Methryn out of the ring. I am only guessing that we will be fairly safe until then, but any time after that we’re likely to be up to our necks in carriers. We can only hope that the Methryn will either have to shut down for repairs or else simply break down again, and we have to overtake her during that time.”
“And we have no idea how fast she’s moving. She might be gaining on us, or we might be gaining on her.” Trace started to seat himself in the Captain’s chair, but remembered and quickly stepped aside. “You are right, I suppose. But what good does it do him to go after those targets?”
“It’s just what I would have done,” Maeken said. “At least he now has his problems limited to just one big one. And now we have to ask what he intends to do about that problem.”