Tactical Error

by Thorarinn Gunnarsson

  The probe paused at the edge of the pool where the two had sat. A pair of long, narrow bays opened in its lower hull, and a set of mechanical arms unfolded slowly. One small, slender mechanical hand reached down to take up the length of flowered vine that Keflyn had forgotten, the machine’s camera pod bent low, a gesture that was gentle, yet somehow sad. For ages she had slept, desiring never to awaken. The coming of first the Union and then the Feldenneh had caused her to stir, but she had slept again unconcerned. But the coming of a Kelvessan was something that she could not ignore, stirring memories as old and deep as the stars. She lifted her pod and quickly looked around a second time, watching the pair as they retreated over the edge of the dale and disappeared into the forest and the night. Slowly her gaze drifted back to the vine, which she laid gently back into the bed of grass and leaves, withdrawing the probe’s hands into itself. So she stood, hovering motionless in the night.

  “This is it,” Jon Addesin said, stopping in the middle of the trail halfway up the ridge to block her path. “Are you prepared to be astounded?”

  “Just go ahead,” Keflyn answered impatiently. She still had no idea of just what waited on the other side of that low hill, but she knew that Addesin was excited and extremely pleased with himself. At least he did not presume upon their one, rather brief intimacy. It had satisfied her curiosity, and his was the attitude of a man who had gotten rather more than he had bargained for. She followed him to the top of the ridge, and stopped.

  She was every bit as surprised as Addesin could have hoped.

  Previously hidden by the dense forest, the towering face of the glacier suddenly soared before her, a crumbling cliff of ice well over a kilometer in height and stretching away to either side in a broken line that eventually disappeared into the distance. The glacier was bordered closely by a string of long, narrow lakes, sometimes extending several kilometers away from the base. A thin layer of soil that had collected over the centuries had covered large areas of the top, bearing carpets of grass and occasional trees. The very sheer face of the glacier was characteristic of its present state of retreat, a condition also born out by the thin ribbons of waterfalls that spilled over the top.

  The surprising thing was what she saw embedded in the dark ice. Protruding from the very center of the glacier was the black nose of a Starwolf carrier. Although only a small fraction of the ship was visible, over a hundred meters of the forward hull hung out like a dark ledge.

  “Varth! Val traron de altrys calderron!” Keflyn exclaimed.

  “Yes, I had thought so,” Addesin remarked, grinning hugely. “Now you know why the Feldenneh are so nervous about having something like that lying about. Even wrecked, a ship like that is something that the Union would give a lot to get in their possession, but they would have to be extremely secretive about it. They would probably eliminate all the colonists on this planet to maintain security.”

  “But that is not a wrecked ship,” Keflyn insisted as she started down the hill toward the glacier.

  “What?” he demanded as he hurried after her. “But that thing has to have been trapped in the ice for tens of thousands of years.

  “There are carriers in space right now that are tens of thousands of years old,” she told him. “Even so, although we might build those ships to last, that one has been under half a kilometer or more of ice for a very long time, and even continental glaciers will slide and flow for vast distances. She would have been ripped to much smaller pieces than that a long time ago. She must be powered up, with structural shields in her hull and space frame.”

  “Where are you going?” Addesin demanded, almost having to run to keep up with her.

  “Since she is still alive, there might be a way in.”

  He expected that she would have to stop when she reached the edge of the lake that stretched along the base of the glaciers for some distance to either side of the carrier’s nose. After all, it was at least half a kilometer across and the water was just barely above freezing... with nothing but ice waiting on the other side. Starwolves, however, could take worse than that in stride. Keflyn immediately began removing her clothes.

  “Oh, be practical!” Addesin exclaimed irritably. “I’ll go get the skyvan. It can hover well enough, and it certainly floats.”

  “I will get the skyvan,” she said. Although she did not explain herself, he had to agree with her reasoning. She seemed determined to run all the way back to camp some three times faster than he could, assuming that he could have even run the entire distance.

  The skyvan hovered well enough for their purposes, and there was also a narrow beach of rounded stones and boulders of broken ice where they could land. They did not have to look for very long. There was evidence of old, collapsed caverns in the ice in the glacier to either side of the stranded carrier, and they soon found one that was very recent. It was obvious that new access caverns were constantly being cut as soon as the old ones were crushed by the shifting ice.

  Unfortunately, the cavern – like all of the others – was four hundred meters up the side of the glacier. Addesin held the skyvan in a hover while Keflyn leaped overboard, then he landed the machine on a ledge some distance below and let the Starwolf haul him up with the length of rope she carried. He was even less enthusiastic when he found that the tunnel was fairly small, so that he had to walk slightly bent over.

  “Is this entirely safe?” he asked as he followed her into the depths of the tunnel. The ice cavern seemed much colder on the inside than outside. “I mean, how do we really know who is living at the far end of this passage?”

  “Starwolves, I imagine,” she answered. Then she realized what he was thinking and paused to turn to him. “In truth, I expect only to find the ship itself. You see, our carriers have sentient computer systems. They can take care of themselves.”

  The most important question in Keflyn’s mind was not so much what she was going to find but how it even got there in the first place. A Starwolf carrier was a versatile ship. Although it had never been meant for atmospheric flight, its armored hull was certainly streamlined enough even without atmospheric shields and its field drive was powerful enough to bring it down slowly, even hover. The problem then, of course, was that a carrier had no landing gear. On level ground, the main body would be supported by the tips of the down-swept wings and the forward edge of the nose. She did think that the ship was leaning slightly nose-down, but it was hard to tell with so little of the hull exposed.

  She still could not imagine why anyone would want to land a Starwolf carrier in the middle of a glacier. The best place to park a ship of any great size was in space. And while the inside of a glacier was perhaps the last place where anyone would look for three kilometers of starship, it would take hundreds if not thousands of years to bury anything that size.

  The tunnel had so far been following a long, gentle curve inward toward the buried ship, although they could see only a very short distance ahead in the absolute darkness. Glacier ice was not very translucent, and a kilometer thickness of the stuff might as well have been a kilometer of rock. Keflyn’s small torch suddenly illuminated a blackness at the end of the tunnel that was the hull of the ship itself, centering on a sealed airlock.

  “So now what?” Addesin asked. “We knock?”

  “There is hardly any need,” a precise female voice declared from behind them.

  They turned quickly to see a carrier’s probe hovering in the tunnel some ten meters behind them, at the very limit of Keflyn’s weak light. Jon Addesin had never seen anything like it in his life, and he drew back fearfully as the strange machine drifted noiselessly closer, its snake-like head with two large, bright eyes bent to watch him. It was a very disconcerting thing to find blocking the only way out at the end of a long tunnel inside a glacier, especially when it was watching him in such a baleful manner.

  “You knew that we were coming?” Keflyn asked.

  “I have been watching,” the machine answered vaguely.

  Well,
this was certainly a Starwolf carrier. Keflyn recognized that very typical manner well enough. Certainly well enough to know that she was facing a very perturbed and anti-social example of the species.

  ‘I am Keflyn, daughter of Velmeran, Commander of the Carrier Methryn and of the combined Starwolf fleet,” she offered, realizing that she was expected to make the first overtures. “This is Jon Addesin, Captain of the Free Trader Thermopylae.”

  “What is a Starwolf?” the ship asked.

  “Oh, my,” Keflyn muttered to herself, suddenly aware of the incredible antiquity of this ship. “Starwolves are those Kelvessan who still live on board the ships. There are still twenty-three carriers. We believe that we are in the final days of the war, although we have no idea how much longer the Union can hold out. From your point of view, it has to be just about over.”

  “The Republic survives, and the Kelvessan are still fighting the war?” she asked, her camera pod dipping reflectively. “I had never expected that.”

  The airlock door suddenly snapped open, the warm, bright light of the corridor beyond flooding out in welcome. Whatever this ship thought of her unexpected visitors, she had apparently decided to trust them enough to ask them in. Keflyn realized that the poor ship probably had no idea what to think, as long as she had been in isolation.

  “I am Quendari Valcyr,” she introduced herself simply.

  Keflyn stopped short, and turned abruptly to stare. “But the Valcyr was lost a very long time ago, in the earliest days of the Starwolves. You were the first jump ship.”

  “That is a very long story,” the ship said, drifting slowly forward to encourage them to enter the airlock. Keflyn suspected that she was unwilling to speak before Jon Addesin.

  The airlock closed behind them. Addesin was enormously relieved to be out of the intense cold of the cavern, although his joy was short-lived when he discovered the pronounced chill inside the ship. Starwolves required a cool environment for comfort, and Quendari had dropped her internal temperature even more to save power and preserve her electronics against heat decay. Then, as the inner airlock door closed, he seemed to realize where he was. For the first time since Keflyn had met him, he appeared impressed and even just a bit frightened by Starwolves.

  Keflyn found the corridors familiar so far, and headed toward the nearest lift. She assumed that Quendari would then direct the lift to whatever part of the ship she meant to keep her uninvited guests, probably to put Jon Addesin into safekeeping so that they could speak privately.

  “Why have you come?” Quendari asked as she hovered behind them. “If you did not know that it was me, then what were you seeking?”

  “Another ship that had been destroyed centuries ago was recently restored to life through her remaining memory cell,” Keflyn explained briefly, speaking in Tresdyland to protect her secrets. “She possessed vague memories that brought us here, to the lost colony of Alameda, where we had hoped to find additional clues that would lead us to Terra. You see, we lost the location of both worlds a long time ago, after they were abandoned. I know that Terra is supposed to be unlivable... “

  “Then none of the older ships survived?” Quendari interrupted.

  “No. All that survived the time before was the former Alameda station, which is now at Alkayja.”

  “Well, you people did get rather lost,” the ship remarked as they moved into the lift that stood open, waiting for them. “This is Terra.”

  - 7 -

  Invisible to sight and scan, the Methryn slipped silently into the small, remote system. She launched drones immediately, and they reported back within two hours with a detailed survey of the system, giving Valthyrra the location of the main surveillance network on the planet and every hidden detector within the system. That provided a surveillance map of the complete area, allowing the Starwolves to know the strengths and weaknesses of the Union’s position and indicating their best avenues of approach.

  The most difficult part of landing unseen on any planet was the last two hundred kilometers. Then an approaching ship was within the effective range of radar and almost on top of scanners, its own speed cut to a relative crawl and leaving a fiery trail through the upper atmosphere with its shields. Over their long history, the Starwolves had explored a variety of methods for getting their fighters undetected to within striking range of a ground-based target. The most effective method was a sudden burst of speed on the final run, hitting hard before defenses could be brought into order. That was not, of course, at all possible when the objective was a secret landing.

  That was the problem that Velmeran faced, complicated by the fact that he really did not have the time to spare on any complex plans. He needed to get in, find Lenna, and get back out again in a hurry. He still had to stand the Republic on its head and get a pack of petty tyrants out of power, before they did something unforgivable to his people. He was fighting two wars now, and he only hoped that Lenna did not have something to show him that would demand precedence. Then his life was going to get impossibly complicated, and they might have to start the revolution without him.

  He stopped pacing and looked up to see that the entire bridge crew was watching him expectantly. He knew what they were waiting for. It was time for Velmeran to do something bold and unexpected, and save the day. He had a lot of days to save in the time to come, but he had no magic schemes to suddenly make the impossible happen. This time, he was going to have to do things the hard way.

  He glanced up at Valthyrra’s camera pod. “I need for you to get in touch with Bill. Tell that mechanical moron to keep quiet until the two of them are someplace where they can talk without being overheard.”

  “Right, Chief,” the ship agreed uncertainly.

  “And use the achronic channels,” he reminded her.

  “At this distance, I would anyway,” Valthyrra said, then remembered that the Union had no way to intercept achronic transitions. “Right away, Chief.”

  “I was hesitant when you had Bill fitted with an achronic transceiver,” Consherra said, stepping down from the middle bridge to join him. “It has had its uses, I must admit, but I worry about the Union getting their hands on it.”

  “Do not tell Lenna, but Bill also has an automatic self-destruct triggered to detonate if he is dismantled or tampered with past a certain level by anyone he does not know,” Velmeran said quietly. “Besides, they get their hands on our technology often enough. So far, they have never been able to reproduce it.”

  “Bill says that they are alone in their apartment,” Valthyrra interrupted. “Lenna Makayen is standing by.”

  “Their apartment? She says that this is the end of civilization as we know it, and the two of them have set up housekeeping in the middle of a secret Union installation,” Velmeran commented as he ascended the steps to the commander’s station on the upper bridge, swinging himself into the seat with the overhead supports. “Lenna? What are you doing?”

  “Talking to you?” her voice returned through his private com.

  Velmeran rolled his eyes. “Smartass. What have you found down there? Are you ready to come up to the ship, or do we really need to come down?”

  “I think that you really should come down, if you can at all manage it.”

  “Is that going to be easier said than done?”

  Lenna had to think about that for a moment. “Commander, the bad news is that this is a very, very large base. The good news is that the place is all but deserted. Things have been hopping here, but that came to a sudden end right before I arrived, and they are still in the process of shutting down their operations. This place is going back to sleep, but there is still quite enough for you to see. I think that you should see this for yourself. You might see something more in it than I do.”

  “Lenna, things are very bad out here,” Velmeran said. “We now have a whole new war to fight.”

  “You have just lost both wars, if you do not get down here.”

  Velmeran sat back and saw Valthyrra looking down at him, h
er camera pod moved well back into the upper bridge. He thought about it only briefly. “Lenna, could you arrange a distraction?”

  “I just love distractions. Can I make a really big one?”

  “Do you have something in mind?” Velmeran asked.

  “There is all manner of havoc down here, just waiting to happen,” she replied. “I could find something to entertain myself easily enough.”

  “How soon? We need to get this done.”

  “Get in your fighters in two hours and be ready to move as soon as things begin to happen,” Lenna told him. “I will have Bill tell you where to find me when you get here.”

  Velmeran sat back, looking up at Valthyrra. “That girl worries me. She reminds me of a bomb with a very eccentric detonator.”

  “Well, yes,” Valthyrra agreed uncertainly, then glanced up hopefully. “Of course, she is also very efficient.”

  “What about that time two years ago? She stole a bulk freighter, then scattered its entire cargo of magnesium canisters overboard in the path of the Union fleet following her as if they were space mines. At a quarter light speed.”

  “Yes, there is that. Then again, it did work.”

  “A major freight lane is useless because two-thirds of the things are still floating around out there,” Velmeran reminded her as he pulled himself out of his seat. “Have Baressa and my special tactics team ready for flight, including accessory cannons on the fighters. Three fighters and a transport should be quite enough. Any more than that and we will just be getting in each other’s way. Have all the other packs standing by, also with accessory cannons. Yourself as well. I will determine what I can about the situation, and then we will simply blast that installation out of existence.”

  “You plan to go along?” Consherra asked, waiting for him as he descended the steps from the upper bridge.

  “I suppose that I have to,” he answered. “Lenna seems to think that this is very important, and that I should see it for myself. This is another dragon that I am going to have to face myself and look straight in the teeth.”