“Exactly,” Gelrayen agreed. “Just how many carriers do we have here?”
“The Kerridayen, the Destaen, and the Mardayn are fully functional and ready for battle,” Commander Asandi explained. “We have nearly completed work on the Vardon’s hull, and the Methryn seems to think that she can be out again in four or five days. That gives us five fighting ships here at Alkayja, as well as the freighter Taerregyn to carry replacement components.”
“I should probably add at this point that we only have operational sets of auxiliary shield generators for four ships,” Dalvaen, the leader of the Kelvessan research team, told them. “At the same time, the Kerridayen is now fitted with a fully functional impulse scanner.”
“That settles matters for me,” Daerran said. “My own suggestion is that this group of five fighting ships should go out as soon as possible, locate the Dreadnought and try to arrange an ambush. The Kerridayen and the Methryn can direct the attacks of the other ships. If we feel like we need more help, we can call in two or three of the carriers on patrol near that area.” “Do you need the Methryn?” Commander Asandi asked.
“I honestly believe that we should pool our experiences before we go, and the Methryn’s experience fighting the Dreadnought will certainly be valuable. But I doubt that we are going to have any idea of just what is best to do until we find the Dreadnought. As for having the Methryn come along, I would certainly like to have her at hand.”
The other Starwolf ships and Commanders were quick enough to agree with his judgement, and that seemed to settle the matter. Commander Asandi looked thoughtful, but not necessarily upset or annoyed as he capitulated to their wishes. Still, Captain Tarrel was certain that he had his own ideas about the Methryn’s immediate future, and not necessarily just to have her in reserve, as he had said. But, whatever his real reasons might be, they were nothing that she could guess.
The final decision was to send out the main battle fleet con-sisting of the Mardayn, the Destaen, and the Vardon, supported by the Kerridayen and the Methryn. They would be able to direct the other carriers with their impulse scanners, since those three ships would actually be fighting blind. This arrangement was actually to their advantage, since the attacking ships would be able to correct the impulse images transferred to them by the surveillance carriers that would be standing off, but without betraying their own presence with beams. These three ships were to receive a pair of auxiliary shield generators each, with the Kerridayen receiving the last available pair in the event they were needed. The fact that the Methryn was passed over for receiving a pair seemed to indicate that she was held to be inferior in status to the older carriers. The Starwolf freighter Taerregyn would accompany this fleet, carrying a wide variety of replacement parts, extra drives and construction crews from Alkayja station, and she would be standing by to tow any carrier that could not be repaired in space.
Commander Asandi intercepted Tarrel in the hallway once the meeting had been concluded. “Captain, I was wondering if I might speak with you privately for a moment.”
“Certainly,” she answered, falling into step beside him. “First, I should tell you that I appreciate the difficulty of the decision you made when you ordered Valthyrra to fire that missile, and I commend your ability to act quickly and decisively,” he began, then hesitated. “If it is your intention, however, to go out with the Starwolves yet again, then I feel that I should warn you about the danger of tampering with their social self-image. ” “Danger?” Tarrel asked. “That was actually Valthyrra’s doing, and it began only as a joke. They were trying to call each other’s bluffs, and that young machine out-bluffed them all. I just happened to observe the results.”
Commander Asandi looked uncomfortable. “Those Starwolves are insidious. They can be so candid and good-natured that you find yourself compelled to love them. Even you, an honored Union Captain; you are beginning to love them yourself. You want to help them. I want to help them, and that makes it only that much harder to deny them. But the fact remains that we have been working to keep their self-image in balance for tens of thousands of years, and this is certainly not the time to upset things.”
“Pardon?”
“That happens to be my real job, you understand,” he told her. “What real good am I to the Starwolves otherwise, the human senior commander of a Kelvessan fleet? I supervise what they think and do, as far as I am able. I limit their numbers as best I can, and they do not seem inclined to reproduce when you send them down to a planet. I take their best scientific minds from the carriers and assemble them here, then I give them busy-work. We do not want them making technical advances, and their carriers are essentially the same machines they were thirty thousand years ago. They could have perfected the jump drive long ago, and any number of new weapons. We are satisfied that they have everything they need as it is.”
He indicated for her to precede him into the tram, then waited until they were away. “The Kelvessan were designed to be naked. The Aldessan of Valtrys meant things that way. That is all part of the balance, keeping them between two cultures and never really a part of any. They use the Aldessan language and names, but with the Terran alphabet. They do not look very human, but we encourage them to dress themselves as if they were human. Everything they have amounts to bits and pieces of other cultures, and very little is entirely their own.”
“But what possible danger could they be?” Tarrel asked, frankly shocked by what she was hearing. “The Kelvessan are the most amiable people I’ve ever met, at least to have as friends and allies. Would they ever have reason to turn on us?”
“Oh no, they would never be a danger to us in that sense, unless we do something to deserve it,” he agreed. “Captain, the Republic and the Union might be opposing camps, but consider this. Together our worlds define a very specific region of space, and we are not interested in looking beyond those boundaries. Although we are not the only civilized race within those limits, we are certainly the preeminent race in numbers, power and prestige. Neither side really wants to see that change.”
“No, I suppose not,” Tarrel admitted. “Still, I don’t see how they can be a threat to us even in that sense. They aren’t prolific and I don’t see them as being interested in establishing commercial empires.”
Asandi nodded. “Yes, but consider this. Our interplanetary systems of commerce are dependant upon trade and travel through space, and space is the element the Kelvessan were designed to conquer. If they were free to pursue their own future, they would control a large portion of interstellar space because their ships are larger and faster than anything we have. They would take the responsibility of seeing that the space lanes and the frontier are safe. In addition to that, all new technology would be coming from Kelvessan researchers. We would come to be dependant upon the Kelvessan. Although we would prosper under their leadership, our prosperity would be dependant upon their leadership.”
“Is that so bad?” Tarrel asked, watching the corridors of the station pass by the tram’s windows.
“Perhaps not, but would we be able to accept that?” he asked. “One of our greatest strengths, and also one of our greatest needs, is to command our own destinies. We are human. However much you might like them, the Kelvessan are still only highly advanced biological machines. Perhaps some day they might evolve into a real sentient, free-willed race. But right now they are still guided by the instincts of compassion and duty that they were given. Their eagerness to defend even their old enemies from the Dreadnought is proof of that. I certainly was not in favor of that. I knew that they would need new weapons to fight that thing, and I knew that it would be difficult to maintain the old balances through all of this. The Starwolves are happy with what they are.”
“Slaves,” Tarrel commented sourly.
“Slaves are people held in bondage against their will,” he told her. “The Kelvessan are satisfied to be exactly what they are, fulfilling the needs and goals that they were given. Do not teach them expectations of themselves tha
t they are not yet ready to confront.”
“No, I don’t feel qualified to teach them anything; it just seemed to me that the process was beginning naturally,” she said, and smiled wryly. “That was certainly the last thing I expected to find. ”
“What is that?”
She glanced at him. “I was just thinking how alike your side and mine really are. We both seem willing to nominate someone else to make sacrifices for our benefit.”
11
Once the Starwolf fleet had found the Dreadnought, preparing an ambush for it proved to be simple enough. After determining which system it was most likely to strike next — and they had certainly proven their ability to predict its movements — they had hurried to arrive first. The Methryn and the Kerridayen positioned themselves well out at opposite sides of the system where they could sweep it with their impulse scanners very efficiently, and the Methryn had already shown that low-intensity pulses were effective at showing up the Dreadnought’s location without alerting it that it was being scanned. The other three carriers had hidden themselves behind planets deeper within the system, where one of them might easily be able to slip in close behind the Dreadnought on its sub-light approach. Captain Tarrel had used her authority to order the local station abandoned, but not removed or powered down, with the Union’s System Fleet of twenty-three large ships still moored at their docks. With bait like that to hold its attention, the Dreadnought would run straight in to attack.
Once the carriers were in position, they had no way of knowing if they would be waiting hours or days for the Dreadnought to arrive. At this point, there was little else for them to do. Once the alien weapon was identified, and assuming that it was not alerted to their presence in the process, then one of the three carriers deeper in the system would try to move in close behind it and match the frequency of its shield with her impulse cannons, repeating the Methryn’s successful attack earlier. This time, however, that trick would be attempted from a greater distance, at least a thousand kilometers, so that the attacking carrier would have time and room enough to hit the Dreadnought again with either missiles or a low-intensity discharge from her conversion cannon. That would surely disable the Dreadnought long enough for the other carriers to move in for the kill. If everything went according to plan, the Methryn and the Kerridayen would never even enter the fight.
Neither of those two ships were pleased with that arrangement, and not because it failed to include them as anything except surveillance platforms. Trendaessa Kerridayen was convinced that they were again underestimating the Dreadnought’s strategic abilities. She believed that it had already proven itself too clever to make the same mistake twice. Valthyrra Methryn agreed with her completely. She strongly believed that she knew just how to attack the Dreadnought; she believed that they had been making the same mistake from the first, trying to fight it as one large ship against another. Captain Tarrel believed that Valthyrra was taking the right approach, but she did not have a vote in the matter and the other three carriers had overruled Valthyrra Methryn and Trendaessa Kerridayen. The Starwolves themselves seemed reluctant to interfere with the authority of their ships, allowing the carriers to decide the matter among themselves.
In the two weeks since these battle plans had been made at that meeting at Alkayja station, Janus Tarrel had kept her counsels very much to herself. She found herself having to do something that she had never expected: she was having to reconsider her personal beliefs. What she could not figure out was why Fleet Commander Asandi’s little speech about the Republic’s secret attitude toward its Starwolves should be so upsetting to her, since it supported everything that she had always believed. The Starwolves were property, genetically engineered weapons of war to be used and discarded; her own kind came first. Justice had to be weighed against the greater good, and even towering injustices were sometimes necessary for the benefit of the greatest number. Those whose rights and welfare needed most to be sacrificed for the benefit of a larger society most often needed that judgement forced upon them, since they were not likely to accept such sacrifices willingly. As a Union Captain, she had enforced that very philosophy often enough in the past, always reluctantly, but always comfortable in the belief that it was proper and necessary.
Now she was beginning to wonder if there was ever any hidden justice in injustice, and if any society that demanded the innocent to pay the price for someone else’s benefit was inherently corrupt. She understood now why the Starwolves believed in that philosophy, blissfully unaware that they were enforcing a moral belief that was secretly denied to them. She could also understand why that was such a driving force in luring the Terran colonies, raped of the little wealth they generated, into making ill-advised attempts at independence.
Absolute justice was always preferable, but she still had to remind herself that it was not always possible. Although she was tempted to warn the Kelvessan about how they were being used, she could not yet convince herself that it would be best even for them if she did. Commander Asandi had warned her against teaching them to expect something that they were not equipped to have, and in this case there was indeed some justice in denying them the right of freedom and self-determination because such things were meaningless to their present existence. For good or bad, they were exactly what they were designed to be.
Of course, the matter could well be out of her hands. Valthyrra Methryn had become deeply fascinated with the Kelvessan and the development of their racial consciousness. She had turned up her thermostats and ordered her crew out of their clothes again as soon as they had left Alkayja, and she was now trying to convince them to make that a permanent condition. Tarrel suspected that her goal was to undress the entire Starwolf fleet, encourage them to think about their racial identity, and eventually suggest that they should attempt some additional, purely cosmetic tampering with their genetics. Valthyrra obviously believed that external appearances were the key to encouraging the Kelvessan to develop greater self-awareness and social independence, and she was most likely correct.
But, with battle threatening at any time, the ship’s temperatures went down more than usual to cool the electronics and the Starwolves kept themselves inside their armor at all times. Captain Tarrel stayed inside her own armor as well, having developed an instinctive fear of being caught without it. When the time came, it happened suddenly and sooner than they had expected. The Dreadnought entered the system along the predicted approach and passed almost directly over the Methryn, at least in relative distances. In fact, the two ships missed each other by half a million kilometers. Valthyrra identified it even before it dropped sub-light.
“Contact,” she warned, sending the members of the bridge crew hurrying to their stations. Then she spun her camera pod around in a circle. “Perdition! I never thought about that.” “Thought about what?” Gelrayen asked as he helped Tarrel with the straps of her seat. “This is no time for anyone to be making a mistake.”
“I cannot warn the ships deeper in the system even with a tight beam, not without the Dreadnought intercepting it.” She paused a moment. “I am relaying my information to the freighter Taerregyn. Since she is sitting well outside the system, she can relay the report to the other ships by tight beam from a different angle.”
“Is everything going according to plan?” Gelrayen asked as he descended the steps to the main bridge level.
“It does seem to be. The Dreadnought is going straight in toward the one inhabited planet. Because I am closer than the Kerridayen, she has signaled that I should provide the only surveillance contact for now. I am using a very low-level sweep every twenty seconds, and I am now feeding the scanner images to the main carrier fleet through my link with the Taerregyn. The Mardayn is beginning her maneuvers that will eventually bring her slowly in behind the Dreadnought.”
“No impulse beams from the Dreadnought?” Gelrayen asked.
* “None that have been detected so far. The other carriers are now much closer, and might be able to detect an imp
ulse sweep on their own passive impulse scanners. However, the Mardayn reports that she cannot detect my sweeps even knowing that they are there, but she does not have sensors.”
“Then you need to watch very carefully,” he reminded her. “Those ships are depending upon you to tell them when to run.” Over the next few minutes, the Mardayn fell in directly behind the Dreadnought and began to close the distance quickly as the alien weapon continued to brake on its approach toward the colony. Valthyrra was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. The Dreadnought was not using its impulse scanner on routine sweeps, as it had in the past. She knew that it would never simply forget and she could not believe that she had damaged its impulse scanners beyond repair during their last encounter. That led her to the uncomfortable conclusion that it was up to something. Could it have refined its own sensors so greatly that it was reading the achronic echoes of her own sweeps? Even as the Mardayn moved in to attack, with every outward indication that she remained undetected, Valthyrra felt certain that the ambush was about to turn back on them.
“Commander, we have to decide something immediately,” she said at last. “I want to terminate this attack right now, before we get into trouble. This is not right. The Dreadnought is not making regular precautionary impulse sweeps, as it has been seen to do in the past. It knows.”
“How could it know anything specifically?” he asked. “Even if it is aware of us, how can it know the present location of our ships?”
“I suspect that it might be reading the echoes from my own sweeps. I also suggest that a Starwolf carrier puts a fifteen million ton dent in the fabric of space, a very small gravity well, but made very conspicuous by the fact that it is moving.”
Gelrayen made his decision quickly, and nodded. “Relay your suspicions to the Mardayn.”
“I am, Commander,” Valthyrra reported. “She agrees with my judgement of the situation, but she refuses to break off yet. She still wants a shot at the Dreadnought, in the hope that it is not entirely certain of how matters stand.”
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