Authors: Thorarinn Gunnarsson
"Hardly!" Trace declared, somewhat indignant. "It has
occurred to me that, with a live subject to study, we might finally discover
how Starwolves were made. So that we can make our own."
"Ah, I see," Lake said thoughtfully. "The ultimate weapon to
use against a Starwolf is another Starwolf."
"Of course," Trace agreed. "That is the premise behind
our Tracer missiles. But we already know that anything mechanical we build
would never equal the real thing. Therefore we need the real thing."
The Councilor nodded thoughtfully. "All right, then. If you can keep
him, and I emphasize the 'if,' then you will have all the help we can muster in
probing their secrets. But that is sort of out of your hands right now, I'm
afraid. They would have to get their prisoner situated somewhere long enough
for you to issue some orders on his handling. Right now we don't even know
where he is."
* * * *
Boulder was essentially just that, a big rock in the middle of open space,
not large enough to be a real planet, barely large enough to have served some
planet for a moon, and with no sun to warm it. How such a piece of basalt had
ever happened to end up in the middle of nowhere was uncertain, so it must
have been drifting about for quite some time. To the Starwolves, however, it
was a valuable piece of property indeed. It was just big enough to have the
gravity to hold a carrier in stationary orbit twenty kilometers out. It had a
hole in it just large enough for a damaged carrier to back into, the guns of
its forward battery facing out, and, best of all, the Union had no idea it
existed.
A ship was already waiting, not the carrier Delvon but one of the immense
Starwolf freighters. Although the size and general shape was the same, the
freighters had less than half the mass. They were not fighting ships, being
only lightly armored, and more than half their main hull was devoted to several
cavernous holds. The Union knew nothing of these ships, for they never showed
themselves.
"Hello, who is there?" Valthyrra called out as she approached.
There were, of course, official rules and procedures for recognition, but
the Starwolf ships tended to be more informal, since they were all old friends.
"This is Fyrdenna Lesdryn," the freighter responded. "Hello,
Valthyrra. Long time, no see."
"Hello, Feery. You look well. But what are you doing here, if I may ask
the obvious?"
"Thenderra transferred your call to me, and I was closer to Boulder at
the time than any of you. I'm on my way home, in fact, but I have plenty of
room for all the junk you have to give."
"You may have it with my gratitude, and especially Thenderra's,"
Valthyrra said. "She did not sound at all happy to have to take it off my
hands."
"I should say not! My bridge crew is still laughing at the sight of you
popping out of starflight with your transports and capture ships following
you like a brood!" Fyrdenna exclaimed, then became serious.
"Still, you do have more than Lyerrana Vyesden gave me."
"Lyerrana?" Valthyrra prompted, unsure whether she should have
heard this. The entire bridge crew paused to listen, since she was putting this
over audio.
"You were too far to one side to have caught the news on
achronic," the freighter continued. "Lyerrana was making her
usual rounds of the outer fringe when she came upon a Union invasion of a
nonaffiliated world. Balgan by name. It seems that they were just starting to
make a profit, and the Union decided that it wanted that profit for its own
trade companies."
"The old story."
"Yes, and Lyerrana said that she has been expecting it for the past
twenty years. But this was strange. It was only a small invasion force, a
battleship, three carriers and four troop transports. A force like that usually
just runs when they see Starwolves coming, but instead they turned and fought
like they had never heard of us. She caught the battleship and two of the
carriers – I have them in my hold right now – and sent the
survivors heading for home in the transports. Then she sent for me to haul home
the spoils so that she could stay and watch the system. I almost believe that
she would indeed have another load by the time I get this home."
"I heard that there is a new Sector Commander in my haunts,"
Valthyrra mused. "But that is not even an adjoining sector."
"I can understand an invasion," Fyrdenna continued. "But what
happened to you defies explanation."
"Oh, it did turn out to be a trap," Valthyrra said, and quickly
explained the details. Then she had to pause, since the channel was echoing
with the laughter of the Lesdryn's entire bridge crew.
Fyrdenna was laughing with the rest. "Wonderful! It was your good
fortune to spring the trap in halves."
"Oh, there was no mistaking that ship," Valthyrra insisted.
"They had it phasing so hard that it would have burned itself out in
twenty minutes of hard running. I got control of it and sent it on with my
compliments. I popped it right over their heads, just to give them a good
scare."
"The Union is getting mean, and I fear that we have some hard battles
yet ahead of us," Fyrdenna said. "I am beginning to wish that I had
been built a fighting ship. I would envy you, if I were not so thoroughly
pleased with myself. Now park yourself and start off-loading. Thenderra cannot
be four hours behind me."
The two ships met far enough out from Boulder to avoid the bother of its
feeble gravity. They drifted together bellies facing, upside down in respect to
each other, with just enough room between them for the Lesdryn's handlers to
shift the load. The Methryn opened every hold and bay she had, and her own
capture ships came in to haul away the intact ships as they were freed from her
holding bays. These were set in a row between the two larger vessels, for the
Lesdryn's handlers to look at and decide how best to pack them in her own vast
bays. Her largest bay had folding racks for transporting a large number of
ships, but this constituted a respectable fleet by Union standards. Some of the
destroyers might have to be secured in other bays.
"Bless my buttons, what a haul!" Fyrdenna exclaimed.
"You must have come away with just about everything they threw at
you. My compliments to your pilots. They must be the best."
"Thank you," Valthyrra replied graciously. "But the truth is,
I had only two packs out during most of the battle. They had things well under
control before I could get anything else out."
"You ironclad hulk of a bragging bitch!" Mayelna muttered under
her breath without looking up from her screen, privately glad that Velmeran had
not been present to hear all this. Valthyrra heard that, however, and quickly
cut the audio, keeping the conversation private at least on her end.
"Do you want this credited to your account?" Fyrdenna asked.
"Just make sure that they knew where it all came from," Valthyrra
replied. "I am going to be coming in for a complete overhaul before
long."
"Oh, ho! Valthyrra Methryn is getting old!"
"We are all getting old, my dear. Some of us simply do not show it. By
the way, do you know if Home Base might have any plans for these ships? Balgan
might be in the market for a few, if they are getting that rich."
"Balgan would get all they can afford, certainly," Fyrdenna
said. "Our prices are always low, and our rates reasonable. This
wealth of star drives will put a great many other ships in service as well. The
trouble is that we still do not have a fourth of the ships avadable for
delivery that are needed. Things should be improving, though, if I continue
fetching home loads like this. And that seems promising, with things heating up
all over."
"Of course, half of our carriers will be wanting overhauls in the
next few years," Valthyrra pointed out.
"No problem!" Fyrdenna insisted. "How long has it been since
you were home? Our support worlds have been prospering, and they are all behind
us. Home Base is expanding. There is going to be a new construction
airdock, and more carriers. There is even talk of a final push to defeat the
Union."
"The rest I can believe, but not that," Valthyrra said doubtfully.
"We lost too much when we lost Terra, and that was a long time before you
or I came out of the construction bay. We would have to get back what we
lost before we can seriously consider making an end to this war."
"So?" Fyrdenna asked. "You send your crack pilots into
Vannkarn after the Vardon's memory cell, and we would have Terra back in a year
to two."
Valthyrra hesitated in her response, since the idea had definite appeal. Of
all the big wolf ships, the Vardon had been the last to know the location of
Terra. She had been destroyed when Valthyrra had still been very young; one of
her memory cells, the big information storage units of her computer mind, had
been found by the Union centuries later. Their attempts to access that wealth
of information had proven futile, and at last the unit had been placed on
display in Vannkarn, the capital of the Rane Sector. The Starwolves had long
believed that they would one day get it back and find the way to Terra, where
the big carriers had first been built. Perhaps that time would be soon,
Valthyrra thought, if a certain pack leader could be trained to the task.
Thenderra Delvon arrived slighty ahead of schedule, coming out of starflight
at Boulder barely an hour after the Methryn. Valthyrra Methryn turned
immediately and accelerated; she had given up every spare ton of cargo to
the Lesdryn and now felt light and quick and just a little mean. The second
carrier fell in behind her and began to close quickly. Two small ships shot out
from beneath her, a transport and a single fighter, both as black as space
itself. The two little ships shot along a straight line toward the Methryn, slowing
to match her speed as they dropped down slightly to pass below her star drives
as they approached her left landing bay.
Only a small group had gathered in the bay to welcome them. Most of the
crewmembers had to remain at their posts, with an immediate jump to starflight
coming. And none of the pilots, even the pack leaders, had dared to show
themselves in the past two days. Out of sight was not necessarily out of mind,
but it was a good deal safer.
Mayelna, in white armor, led the delegation. Consherra waited nearby,
wearing the white tunic and pants that were the general uniform of an officer.
Valthyrra was present in the form of a probe, a special type of remote, a
simple streamlined shape barely a meter long, with folding wings and a
retractable neck with a pair of cameras inside a protective cowling. Despite
its small size it could outfly and outshoot a Union fighter and yet hover
motionless on projected fields, and it even had a pair of arms folded inside
of narrow bays along its underside. Velmeran, uninvited but not unwelcome,
wore the black armor of a pilot.
Side by side, the two ships entered the bay. Flying with an easy precision
that would have put most ptiots to shame, they moved to the front of the bay
and landed gently. A rack was immediately lowered behind the fighter and locked
into place. Benthoran had the boarding platform folded down just in time
to assist the pilot out of the cockpit.
It was then that Velmeran saw that the pilot, who he assumed to be the pack
leader, was female. There was no guessing her age, since Kelvessan did not
change in appearance from early adulthood to old age three hundred years
later. But there was something about her that made him think that, however long
she had lived, she had seen and done quite a lot in that time. She looked to
him very capable and very dangerous. And his first reaction was one of shame,
that this was the type of leader he could only pretend to be.
She was joined by three others from the transport, one male and one female
in black armor, and another male in regular clothes who carried both of his
left arms in a sling. That, at least, was some indication that this group did
fight. The pilot was clearly the leader, for the others waited for her, and she
went first as they approached the waiting group from the Methryn. She stopped
before Valthyrra's remote and bowed her head in respect.
"Valthyrra Methryn, I am pack leader Dveyella of special tactics. This
is my second, Baress." She indicated the injured member first, then the
armored male and female. "Threl and Marlena."
Valthyrra dipped the probe's camera pod in response. "I welcome you.
This is Commander Mayelna, First Officer Consherra and pack leader
Velmeran. We are grateful for your assistance..."
Dveyella held up a hand to interrupt. "Please, before we go any
farther, I must tell you that my pack is temporarily shorthanded. Baress,
the only other fighter pilot I have, is recovering from a recent accident and
will not be able to fly for at least another week. His fighter was hit and damaged,
so that his field drive controls failed on approach..."
"I bounced twice," Baress admitted guilttly. "Once off the
Delvon's lower hull and again off the side of her landing bay. Thenderra
was so mad she almost begrudged sending out a capture ship to get me."
"I can imagine," Valthyrra remarked softly.
"Then you cannot fight?" Mayelna asked impatiently.
"I thought I made this plain when you contacted us," Dveyella said
with some surprise. "I said that we could fight if you could loan us a
good pilot to take the place of Baress. Valthyrra indicated that we could have
Velmeran, that he is the best you have."
Velmeran's surprise was nearly as great as Mayelna's. Both were greatiy
astonished that Valthyrra would go so far to have her own way, surprised that
she had managed to trick them both, and surprised at themselves for not expecting
it. Velmeran at least was spared Mayelna's indignation, since he obviously
had no prior knowledge of this. But he quickly decided that if fate, or a
conniving computer, was going to give him the opportunity, then he was
going to seize it. For herself, Valthyrra was glad that probes were practicatly
indestructible.