The Starwolves

by Thorarinn Gunnarsson

  -13-

  Leaving Vinthra, the Methryn followed the freight lane directly to the Kalleth system. There she paused outside the system itself and far enough to one side of the freight lane to remain undetected. The Kalleth system was near to Vinthra, still very much in the inner systems even if it was not one of the rich inner worlds. Indeed it lacked a single world that could have been made even remotely inhabitable. It was just a system consisting of four gas giants and a wealth of ore-rich moons and debris, with a total population of nearly a billion divided between several large mining colonies and stations. Bulk freighters brought in all the necessary supplies and equipment, and left shifting all the mass they could manage in raw ores.

  Velmeran approached this run with as much apprehension as he had the last time. Instead of demoralized students and an older pilot who should not have been flying, he now had seven eager and possibly overconfident students and a girl he could not quite consider his subordinate. In truth he had little to fear for the younger members. After their last battle, they were out to prove themselves experienced pilots and the only danger was that they might try too hard. But Dveyella was another matter altogether, and one that he did not know how to approach.

  "Dveyella, we must be pack leader and pilot now," he reminded her gently, almost questioningly, as they rode the lift down to the bay.

  "Meran, for as long as I fly with you, we must always be pack leader and pilot to a certain extent," she answered. "For now, we must forget that we are anything else. I will follow your orders without question or condition. You must not be afraid to give me those orders."

  Velmeran smiled uncertainly. "Yes, I know. The problem is more likely to be with me, not you."

  "Why? Because there is love between us, or because I have been a pack leader myself."

  "Both, perhaps," he admitted.

  "If that is the case, then I will leave the pack," she told him. "There are other things that I can do aboard this ship. But there is no one else I love. I will never allow anything to come between us."

  The lift deposited them on the lower flight deck and they went directly to their ships. Time was running short, for their target ship would already be on the edge of the system before they could overtake it. Steena and Delvon would have as many chances at the freighter as time allowed before he let Dveyella pull it down – if necessary.

  The nine fighters thundered out of the bay, holding formation so tightly that even Velmeran was impressed. He did not know whether they were inspired by their past performance or if they operated under a collective urge to impress their new member, but he was grateful for the change. The last time he had taken this pack out for battle, he had been concerned that Vayelryn might bump wings in her nervousness. Now she snapped her fighter up into its running position above the pack with casual precision.

  Shayrn brought her own pack in close behind his own and the two formations moved as one into starflight. They were upon their prey almost immediately. Valthyrra Methryn had been flanking it as closely as she dared, every scanning device she had turned on it, remembering the misfired trap that had awaited them last time. She reported a crew of seven and a half-filled hold, mostly inexpensive bulk items and what appeared to be an uncertain number of very small ships, smaller even than fighters, but nothing that she could identify as dangerous.

  Velmeran intended to verify that at even closer range, bringing his own ship to within a thousand meters of the freighter to allow his own scanners to pick it over as best they could. There was something about this that seemed wrong, but he had no idea what. His own readings confirmed Valthyrra's. He lifted slightly above the freighter and dropped back a short distance.

  "Have at her!" he announced to the waiting pilots.

  Delvon came in first, quick but careful in his approach, and fired. His target was an easy one; he missed, but not by much. He dropped back to await his second pass as Steena took his place. She was just moving in when Velmeran realized what he did not like.

  "Scatter!"

  His cry sent every fighter of both packs heading as fast as they could directly away from the freighter. Hardly an instant later nine small shapes shot out of openings in the freighter's hull, curious little ships that seemed to consist only of a generator, a large star drive in rear and a slightly smaller one forward for braking, and a single turret that might have belonged on a destroyer. Their targets had been selected before their launch. Each shot unerringly after one of the nine fighters of Velmeran's pack. And their speed was terrifying.

  For the Starwolves, this was a new and frightening experience, for they had never met anything in actual battle that could match the speed of their wolf ships and their own reflexes. These machines could not only pace them, but at first threatened to overtake their prey. The fighters dodged and twisted as best they could, but their deadly pursuers reacted with the barest instant of hesitation. These were obviously robots, the best automated missiles the Union could build. Nothing but a Starwoff could have survived aboard them.

  The Starwolves engaged their star drives at full thrust in an attempt to flee. Now the drives of the pursuing missiles flared like sustained explosions of raw energy, the roaring of those crystal engines filling the heads of the pilots and confusing them to an extent, their special senses blinded by that violence. The machines were tearing themselves apart, their drives unable to sustain more than perhaps a minute of that terrible abuse. But that minute was all they would need.

  Then, as the first few seconds passed, their responses began to deteriorate as their engines overheated both themselves and their on-board systems. Velmeran destroyed his with a shot from his tail cannon after luring it in. Dveyella took out her own, and the free ships then went after the remaining missiles. The one weakness of the machines, they soon discovered, was that once locked on target they appeared to be blind to all else.

  Steena was in the worst trouble. She had been in her run at the moment of Velmeran's warning. Three shots had glanced off the hull of her fighter before she was able to evade; the damage was not obvious, but the ship remained slow to respond.

  Dveyella went to her aid, moving in on the missile with careful deliberation. Perhaps her attack was too slow. The machine proved to be more alert than she had anticipated, and sensing this new danger, rotated its turret completely around. Dveyella was not even aware of her own danger until it fired directly into her ship's forward hull. The stricken fighter tumbled off to one side, engines flaring but out of control, as the missile circled around for the kill. An instant later it was ripped apart as Velmeran dived to her aid, too late.

  "Dveyella?" he called out questioningly as he fell in beside the damaged ship, but he could not wait for a reply. "Report!"

  "All clear!" Tregloran answered for the rest. "We have them all."

  "Valthyrra?"

  "Coming!"

  "Make certain of that freighter," he insisted.

  "I am already on it," she replied. A pair of powerful bolts lanced out of the darkness of space, locking with deadly accuracy on the bulk freighter that cruised seemingly unconcerned into system. The vast ship was vaporized by the explosion of its own generator.

  "Dveyella?" Velmeran asked again as he brought his fighter in close to her own. The damage was not extensive, but it was all concentrated on the right side of the cockpit. A gaping tear in the tough material of the hull ran from where the seat would have been to a point two meters back. The forward window as well as the one on that side were shattered but had not popped out.

  Had Dveyella survived that? Was she dead, stunned or simply too busy at the moment to respond? Even as he watched, the fighter righted itself and swung around on a new course, back to the Methryn. The remainder of Velmeran's pack gathered protectively about the two fighters, and Shayrn brought her own pack in close behind.

  "I have control of her ship," Valthyrra informed him. "I will bring her straight into the bay. Help will be waiting."

  At that moment Valthyrra was putting packs into
space with clockwork efficiency. In contrast with that, her bridge was a scene of confusion. She was silently giving special orders throughout the ship, but her conversation with the packs was open and the bridge crew was beginning to understand that something was very wrong. Mayelna stood tensely beside her seat, watching the main screen attentively. Valthyrra condensed her map of long-range scan to project a set of graphs beside it. They represented Dveyella's failing life, the vital readings from her suit.

  "Do you have that?" she asked of someone not on the bridge.

  "I do now," Dyenlerra, the medic, replied over inter-ship com. "Great Spirit of Space, what hit her? Valthyrra, I want total life support equipment moved to the bay immediately."

  Mayelna stirred for the first time, pouncing on the com controls in the arm of her chair. "Dyenlerra, answer me. Can you save her?"

  "I can save her, yes," the medic responded, then hesitated. "Commander, you know what tough little machines we are. To put it simply, that girl is dead right now. But I can save her yet, if we can get her in before she realizes that."

  "Velmeran?" That weak voice, as though echoing from the dead, brought instant silence.

  "I am here beside you," he answered. "Valthyrra is taking you home."

  "Where are you?" Dveyella asked weakly, uncertainly. "My windows are glazed."

  "I am just off your right side," he was quick to assure her.

  "Dveyella, do you hear me?" Valthyrra cut in gently.

  "Yes, of course."

  "Can you tell me how you are hurt? We need to know what to do for you."

  "There is a pipe... or a rod... that has come through the hull," she answered slowly. "It has penetrated the armor on my right side, just below my lower arms."

  "Is it in very deep?" the ship asked.

  "I suppose," she said uncertainly. "It... it comes back out the other side in about the same place."

  Mayelna closed her eyes and sat down wearily. Dveyella's hope was almost gone. Her body had tightened hard against the rod that had transfixed her, even torn veins and arteries, so that her blood loss was minimal. Ordinarily she would have survived an amazingly long time with such damage, but with ship and suit penetrated her wounds were exposed to the harsh emptiness of space. The terrible cold stabbed at her through the breaks in her suit and the rod, at first red hot, was now a spear of burning ice. She was quickly freezing, and she knew it.

  "It would seem that I was wrong, Meran, when I said that nothing could come between us," she said, seeming to gain both strength and awareness. "Nothing in our lives can be that certain."

  "Please, I wish that you would not say such things," Velmeran pleaded helplessly. "We will be back on board in a moment."

  "Oh, I have not given up all hope," she assured him. "I have a fairly good idea of what my chances are. Because they are not good, there are certain things that I would not have unsaid. Soon I may be only a memory to you. I want it to be a happy memory and not a bitter one. We did not have time for many happy memories, but I would prefer that you remember only those."

  Velmeran did not know what to say, if indeed there was anything that he could say. On the Methryn's bridge there was silence, a tense, fragile silence as they waited for fate to decide this desperate race. Consherra wept silently but stayed at her post. Valthyrra was running at her best sublight speed and wishing that she dared a short jump into starflight. But she could not bring Dveyella in any faster, not without killing the girl with stresses that she could no longer endure. All of her packs were out now, for all the good they could do, and she was closing quickly.

  "Commander Trace is to be complimented on his new weapon," Dveyella said after a long, uneasy moment. "He was so angry at you when he could not beat you at chess. And the balladeer's song was so beautiful. That night was worth a lifetime. I remember that you were so afraid... "

  "You were quite enough to frighten anyone," he said when she seemed to falter. "You asked me that night if I loved you, and I was too confused to know. That is something I do not believe I ever told you. I hope that I did not have to."

  Mayelna struck her armrest so hard that portions of it shattered. "Damn it, Valthyrra, you have to get that ship on board now!"

  "Do you think that I am not doing my best?" Valthyrra demanded, swinging her camera pod around. Then she paused. Mayelna had to wipe her eyes to glare fiercely at the staring lenses. An instant later the Methryn began braking hard to match speeds.

  "Meran, are you there?" Dveyella asked suddenly, urgently. "Meran? I have no control over my ship."

  "Valthyrra is bringing you in," he reminded her gently, although there was no mistaking the raw fear in his voice. "She is turning in front of us now."

  Valthyrra said nothing, but too many of the life signs that she had been monitoring were beginning to fail.

  "Meran, where are we?" Dveyella asked, only partly reassured.

  "We are coming up behind the Methryn fast now," he promised her. "She is perhaps fifty kilometers ahead now. If your windshield was clear you would be able to see her lights."

  But Dveyella did not hear him. Too many of her vital signs had abruptly ceased and others were failing quickly; whatever reserve of strength or fierce determination that had kept her alive was gone. Mayelna buried her face in her hands for the moment's indulgence in grief that she could spare, wondering at the same time how she could tell Velmeran. Valthyrra watched her for a moment of silent pity before turning away.

  At Valthyrra's silent command the nine packs broke their running formation to thunder past the two lead fighters, engines flaring as they broke away to either side, the ancient final salute of the wolf ships. Then Velmeran's own pack broke away in pairs, one to either side, leaving the two lead ships alone in their hurtling approach toward the waiting bay.

  Mayelna rose and shifted her suit into place. "Valthyrra, prepare a new heading into system. We will be going to low starflight speeds."

  Valthyrra stared at her in disbelief. "Commander..."

  "This has all been too fast for Velmeran from start to end. It is best, for his sake, to be done with it now." She stepped to the edge of the upper bridge to address the crew. "All officers to the bow deck. Consherra, do you think that you can come with me?"

  The second in command nodded quickly, wiping her eyes, and paused only to collect her gloves and helmet from their rack behind her seat. Valthyrra called a lift to the bridge and held it for them, ready to rush them to the landing bay. If Velmeran was comforted by their presence, and if he drew from them the courage to do what he must, then they must be there. Later, she knew, he would want to be alone.

  The two black wolf ships hurtled through the rear portal of the bay, still wing to wing. The front landing gear of the damaged fighter would not respond. Valthyrra brought it in gear-up, blowing the bolts so that the down-swept wings folded up flat.

  Velmeran was out of his ship almost the moment it touched the deck, leaping from under a half-open canopy. A single bound took him completely over the second fighter, so that he was the first to arrive. He pulled open a small panel in the hull and keyed the canopy release. The lock mechanism released and the canopy clicked open a fraction, but the damaged struts would not lift it. Impatient with the delay, he took hold of the edges of the canopy and pulled back until it ripped loose, then threw it well to one side. Benthoran and an assistant, hurrying to his aid, hesitated at that unaccustomed display of violent strength.

  But Dyenlerra was undaunted. She had her head beneath the canopy even as he was pulling it loose, removing the helmet from Dveyella's suit and opening the chestplate for the leads of her own diagnostic equipment. She waved Velmeran aside, then took the leads offered to her by the silent automaton. But she did not need the judgment of the medical scanner, not after all the battered ships that she had attended in the Methryn's bays. She could save almost any life, but she could not give one back.

  Velmeran waited so patiently, she wondered if he really understood that death was irrevocable. Dveyella's
eyes were shut and her face was pale, but she seemed only to be asleep, leaning back in her seat. The rod had penetrated the suit by only two small holes, and the armor hid the terrible damage that it had done. Dyenlerra turned to the medical scanner for its verdict, only to wonder that Dveyella had stayed alive and alert for as long as she had. She looked up at Velmeran and shook her head slowly. This was not the time for excuses or regrets.

  His reaction to that was the same calm acceptance, as if he had already surrendered any hope he might have had to the inevitability of fate. Then the Methryn thrust herself into starflight and he glanced about, confused. Mayelna stood silently behind him, unnoticed until then, Valthyrra hovering at her side in the form of a supple-necked probe. Consherra, standing farther away, would not turn to face him. No one spoke a word, but he understood that a final task remained.

  Turning back to Dyenlerra, he nodded gravely. She bent to remove the leads of the medical scanner, and together they unstrapped the suit from its restraints. Velmeran carefully lifted Dveyella's body from the ruined cockpit, holding the lifeless form in his four arms for the medic to extract the deadly rod that had transfixed it. Then he started toward the lift, not looking back to see if the others followed.

  That ride up to the Methryn's bow was the longest that he had ever known. The others could only guess what thoughts filled his mind as he held the body of his mate in his arms for the last time. Grief, certainly. Rage, or as much of that emotion as his Kelvessan nature would allow, and frustration at a fate he could not control. He was alone, left with only a handful of memories of the short time that he had shared with Dveyella, and vague, fearful visions of a future without her. But beneath all the hurt was something he could not yet recognize, something that was strong and reassuring. He thrust it from his mind, offended by something good in the depth of his misery. And yet it remained, the force underlying his will, giving him the strength to do what must be done and to face the future that would follow. Later, perhaps, he would try to discover what it was.