“I wonder why they left all of this?” Keflyn asked. “Did they think at the time that they had defeated us, or did it just get overlooked in all of the confusion?”
“Chaos, I should say,” Addesin remarked in a rather staid voice. “The destruction of Terra would have been a very unpopular military action under any circumstances. It was also probably the most heavily defended corner of your Republic at that time, so it was probably like hitting the nest of some nasty stinging insect with a stick. And that also helps to explain why they would have done something so drastic in the first place. They probably just launched their bombs and made a run for cover.”
Keflyn did not feel it necessary to point out to him that she had figured all of that out for herself long ago. But the war had been more evenly matched at that time, and the Union had been on the attack more often than on the defensive. The Republic had nearly been defeated, suffering from the loss of first Terra and then Alameda, retreating to a handful of uninhabited worlds so recentiy discovered that the Union had known nothing of their existence. The Union may have assumed that it had won the war, since the Starwolves had disappeared for centuries to recover from their losses.
“I have seen enough,” Keflyn declared, turning to march away at a pace that Addesin found difficult to match in his bulky suit.
She might have done more investigating if she had been alone, but she thought that Jon Addesin had suddenly seen more than was good for him. He was going to have to start plying his trade in Republic space now. He knew the location of Earth herself, to use the odd name that Quendari had for that world. The Union would have taken him apart for that knowledge, and the Starwolves would have been forced to kill him to keep that secret. Fortunately, she believed that he would not object to that restriction. He probably had a very good idea of exactly what his life was worth.
“So now what?” he asked.
Keflyn paused and turned so that she could see him, curious about the desperate tone in his voice… and in his mind. “Now we go home. I will have Quendari contact the Methryn, and we will have carriers here in a matter of days.”
Addesin said no more on the subject. At least the lifts were still in operation, and they returned to the surface in a matter of minutes. Addesin maintained a calm facade, but Keflyn sensed that his thoughts were on the very edge of exploding in both fury and fear. She thought that his mood would improve once he was out of the claustrophobic suit, but it did not. And during the long journey back, her own thoughts were increasingly overshadowed by the feeling that something was about to happen. She could not completely dismiss such premonitions out of hand, since a certain clairvoyance did run in the family.
“Solar activity is up,” Addesin explained as the shuttle orbited down, already biting into the upper atmosphere. They had been watching an unusual amount of sheet lightning during the entire trip home. “That always plays havoc with the planetary magnetics.”
“Induction shields over the poles would get rid of that, and supply you with a tremendous amount of power in the bargain,” Keflyn mused.
“It would be a shame to see it go,” he reflected, leaning back in his seat. “But I suppose that it would have to go, if you were trying to conduct serious business here.”
Addesin was so distracted by his own thoughts that he had never noticed that Keflyn had taken the controls of the shuttle upon their return. He sat in the copilot’s seat, still brooding furiously, as Keflyn flipped the little ship over to use the engines to slow the shuttle, allowing gravity to draw them down. He was staring absently out the window when the sky outside suddenly flashed blinding white. He had been unfortunate enough to have been staring directly at the sheet lightning at the moment it hit, and the searing glare left him blinking like an owl and unable to focus.
“What was that, high-altitude sheet lightning?” He rubbed his watering eyes on his sleeve. “That was close.”
“It went right over us,” Keflyn told him. “All of our main power systems are going down.”
“I never felt it hit,” Addesin protested.
“Lightning is not like a bolt from a ship’s cannons. Unless there is an explosive discharge of electricity, which is not going to happen in an ungrounded spacecraft, then it just quietly fries your electronics. How do I get main power back up?”
“If the regular generator startup procedure does not work, then you just ran out of options.”
Keflyn was beginning to get the idea that they were in a lot of trouble. The atmospheric shields were not much, but they did protect the shuttle from more than half of the heat of entry. They had also been down for the better part of half a minute, and she had no sensor information coming in to tell her how the ceramic alloy hull plates were handling the matter. Ships were not built to take the heat of entry directly against their hulls; it was much too inefficient, requiring extensive heat shielding, insulation, and bracing, and far too risky. At least the shuttle had a fair amount of ceramic shielding to take the heat that bled through the atmospheric shields, or they would not have still been contemplating the matter. The question now was whether or not the shuttle would survive the rest of the trip down.
“You should go get back into that suit of yours,” she said; she was still wearing her own armor. “It would be good protection against the heat, and I cannot promise that we will keep our atmosphere.”
From the curve of the planet emerging just under the nose of the shuttle, she guessed that they still had the better part of sixty kilometers to go. At this altitude, she thought that most of the sheet lightning had actually passed far beneath them. She suspected that they had only been caught in a discharge arc, bringing additional energy down from the magnetosphere.
In any case, they were not going to survive unless she did something to slow this ship. The shuttle was beginning to hum and buffet slightly, an indication that they were beginning to bite into denser air. Getting as much response as she could from the atmospheric control surfaces, she brought the nose of the shuttle up sharply, not to present heavier belly shielding to the heat — which she doubted they had — but to simply present a larger surface to the air to act as a brake. Then she noticed a series of switches in the bank of emergency controls, four to provide added thrust and four for brakes. She assumed that these would be either solid or liquid fuel boosters, and she triggered the first shot of braking thrust. There was a small explosion somewhere in the nose of the ship as access covers were blown away, then perhaps half a minute of muted roar as the small engines burned.
At least it had some effect. Keflyn had precious few emergency readouts for her use; all of the monitors were down, and the airspeed indicator had already burned away. By the time Jon Addesin returned, again wearing the bulky suit, she was firing the third braking shot.
“There’s some smoke coming up from beneath the cargo deck,” he reported. “It’s a good thing we have suits. The ship must be full of toxic fumes.”
“Are there any water tanks on board this ship?” Keflyn asked. “If anything like that gets too hot, steam or other expanding gasses can cause the container to explode like bombs.”
“No, nothing like that.”
Long, tense minutes passed, and the cargo hold became so filled with smoke that Keflyn was given to wonder if she might find some way to vent it before it ruptured the hull. The tires of the left main landing gears exploded, to judge from the distant thuds she felt through the fabric of the ship, and she could only hope that the blast had not ripped open the doors. Then they were down in the widely-scattered clouds, losing speed quickly in the heavy air. They were about twenty thousand meters up, in a shuttle that had no engines and was starting to burn.
“We need off this ship as soon as possible,” Keflyn announced. “And it seems that the closest place we can get off is straight down. I think that I should get us there in as direct a path as I can manage. I think that you should get yourself into the passenger cabin and strap yourself into one of the seats with its back facing forward. When
we hit, that should keep you from being thrown.”
“When we hit what?” Addesin asked.
“The ground, I should imagine. We will have no landing field, and I doubt that we have any landing gear anyway. All I hope is to hit something soft.”
She certainly did her best, but she had her doubts at first. As she came lower, she could see that her earlier guess was correct. The landscape below was rugged and heavily wooded, but there were several grassy meadows to be seen. She fired the remaining braking charge, dropping the shuttle’s speed to perhaps half that of the speed of sound, then she turned the rudder in one direction and the ailerons in the other, causing the huge machine to crab sideways, slowing even more in the sideslip.
She reached in the open chestplate of her suit, switching her communication channel. “Quendari Valcyr, do you hear me?”
“I hear you quite well,” the ship answered immediately.
“I am about to crash this shuttle in the middle of nowhere,” Keflyn explained quickly. “Could you send a message to Derrighan at the Feldenneh settlement and have him come in Mr. Addesin’s van to fetch us? We will be coming down about eight hundred kilometers short of the field.”
“I will send a probe immediately,” Quendari assured her. “And I will send another to meet you, in the event you need help. A probe may not be much, but it is the best I can do.”
“It will be appreciated,” Keflyn replied.
She selected her landing place quickly, one of the larger meadows where she could bring the shuttle down on the very crown of a hill, then allow the ship to slide downhill to a stop. That, she thought, would help prevent the shuttle from burying its nose in the ground and jerking to a violent stop. She was not entirely certain about all that; she was not used to ships this size, nor any that flew entirely on atmospherics.
The shuttle settled in on the hilltop very smoothly and slid some 300 meters to the base of the hill. Then it did bury its nose in the soft ground and came to a very sudden and violent stop. The straps of Keflyn’s seat broke and she left the ship very quickly by the nearest way, with an involuntary leap through the forward window. The shuttle gave a final heave as if broken apart at the seams by some internal explosion that was not quite enough to break it apart, and it settled with a sigh and a cloud of dust. Then it began to burn furiously.
Jon Addesin had himself out of his seat in moments and hurried back to the pilot’s cabin to check on Keflyn, only to find to his very great surprise that she was gone. When he saw the broken window, he knew what had happened. He rushed back to the interior cabin and opened the emergency hatch, then tossed out several survival packs and himself. Fortunately most of the lower nose had collapsed or been buried, and it was only two meters down into loose soil. He was still wearing half his own weight in the engineering suit, and the fall nearly left him stunned.
He pulled off his helmet as quickly as he could, then hurried to find Keflyn. As it happened, he nearly ran over her as he turned. She was standing there beside him, looking much less the worse for wear than himself. Starwolves in their armor enjoyed a high degree of invulnerability.
“I think that we should get away from this monster, just in case there is something inside that might explode,” Keflyn said, helping him to gather up the survival packets.
“So now what?” Addesin asked. “Do you have any idea where we are?”
“I have a very good idea where we are,” she insisted. “I have also made arrangements to have someone here to rescue us in a few hours. Trust me to arrange things better than that.”
They retreated to the edge of the woods, where they would have some cover from the wind and wood for a fire. It was late afternoon and Keflyn doubted that Derrighan would arrive before midnight, assuming that he left as soon as Quendari’s probe reached him and did not wait until the next day. She could use her com as soon as they were settled to inform the Valcyr of their condition, and the burning shuttle should provide an excellent beacon for several hours yet.
“We will have to get you a new pair of shuttles,” Keflyn remarked as they were setting up a temporary camp. Jon Addesin had come out of his heavy suit immediately, and she was now shedding her own.
Addesin looked up in surprise. “What?”
“Well, you lost that shuttle on Starwolf business,” she explained. “And we do owe you a few favors in exchange for what we are about to do to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that this planet just became Starwolf property. We will keep it secret if we can, but it is too dangerous for you to ever return to Union space. Perhaps you will be able to have the supply run between our own home world and here.”
Addesin seemed to be at a complete loss. “The Union already considers this world as their own. Do you really think that the Starwolves can chase them away?”
Keflyn was amused as she began sealing up the suit for storage. “The Union has never been able to take from us any property that we have claimed as our own. Are you worried?”
Addesin shrugged. “I just have a much higher opinion of what the Union is capable of doing compared to you Starwolves.”
Keflyn laughed aloud. “You cannot be serious! Based on what evidence?”
Then she had to admonish herself for thinking that she was any better. She had never been honestly in love in her life, and yet she had to reluctantly admit that she was becoming very fond of Derrighan indeed. Perhaps absence did make the heart grow fonder, and her present company only cast the contrast between the two into a bright, cold light. Despite her quiet sympathies for the man, she was also growing very tired of Jon Addesin’s sullen suspicions. She was eagerly looking forward to Derrighan’s arrival, and his quiet, undemanding love.
For any number of reasons, the time had come for Keflyn to go home.
11
The Methryn dropped out of jump into high starflight speeds, a great shuttering crash running through her frame as it adjusted under the tremendous stress of that shift. The members of the bridge crew looked up expectantly for a long moment, then turned back to their work when there were no additional noises or warning lights. The big ship had survived one more time.
“We are doing better than expected,” Valthyrra announced, the lightness in her voice denying that everyone knew she was tearing herself apart.
“I do not need for you to do better than expected,” Velmeran told her. He leaned back carefully against the console of central bridge, the injury to his left shoulder complex still bothering him slightly. “I need for you to get there on schedule and intact. If you break down somewhere along here, then we lose Alkayja.”
“I do keep that always in mind.”
“You just find it easy to ignore,” he finished for her. “Any response from Keflyn’s portable transceiver?”
“Nothing so far,” Valthyrra responded, her camera pod moving ahead of him as he rose from his own station on the upper bridge and descended the steps. “Trel and Marlena are still asking to take their transport to get her.”
Velmeran shook his head sadly. “No, we will need every pilot we have. She has that Free Trader, and quite literally anything can outrun a Fortress. I just hope that they get clear in time. I wonder if she has any idea of where she really is.”
That thought amused Valthyrra as much as himself, but Velmeran’s thoughts were always on business. Just one more day, and they would reach their destination two days ahead of Donalt Trace’s Fortresses and Mock Starwolves. Then his greatest juggling act ever would begin, and he would have to find last minute answers to twenty years of careful planning.
He saw that the chief medic Dyenlayk had entered. He moved quietly to one side of the bridge to meet her, but both Valthyrra and Consherra the Everpresent saw him and invited themselves.
“How is Lenna?” he asked softly, knowing well why she had come.
Dyenlayk looked tired and at the end of hope. “The same as always. I can keep her alive forever, but I have to ask myself why. There is certainly n
othing that I can do to put her back together, and I doubt that anyone can. All the same, I still plan to keep her alive until I can hand her over to the human medics at Alkayja. They know their own kind better than I ever will. If they say that nothing can be done, then we have to let her go.”
“I never thought that she would make it back to the ship,” Velmeran said, mostly to himself. “What can I possibly say to Tregloran?”
“What can you possibly say to Bill?” the medic asked. “That big, stupid automaton is just standing there beside her bed like a ghost.”
“Throw him out, if he gets in the way.”
“I do not have the heart,” Dyenlayk said as she turned toward the lift.
“I would have never thought that Bill was that aware,” Valthyrra remarked.
“Bill exists for a very limited purpose,” Velmeran said. “His existence is measured by his service to Lenna Makayen.”
He glanced up at Valthyrra’s camera pod, and she turned away in a haughty gesture. “I most certainly will not at this time attempt to council a grieving automaton.”
“Unfortunately, Lenna’s was only the first life of a friend that I might have to throw away to save this war,” Velmeran said as he turned to stare absently at the main viewscreen. “I just hope that the price buys us what we want.”
“Could they really win?” Consherra asked.
“That depends very much on those Mock Starwolves,” Velmeran admitted. “The one thought that occurs to me is that Donalt Trace fears the very sight of Kelvessan, to the extent of an actual phobia. I am responsible for that, I fear. I doubt very much that he would have trusted his own Starwolves enough to give them as free a hand as he said. I expect — and hope — that they will be very carefully directed only into very specific parts of the battle. I am also remembering that they will have no actual battle experience, and they are flying ships, no matter how good, that were still built by Union technology. With all of those factors combined, I still expect that one of our pilots should be as good as two or possibly three of their own.”
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