Tactical Error

by Thorarinn Gunnarsson

  “Commander?” Venn Keflyn asked gently. She had been watching him closely.

  He looked up at her. “Your people created us, and then you set us free. It worked once before. It could work again.”

  “No, the situation is very different,” she assured him. “Commander Trace must take many things for granted that we never did. He has to contend with the truth that he must hide from them. How can he set them free, yet hide the truth from them forever?”

  Velmeran considered that, and after a moment he looked very surprised, even stricken. “No, he cannot, can he? Why would he exchange one set of Starwolves for another, unless he means to destroy both?”

  “But what can he do about it now, once he has sent his own Starwolves out on their own?” Lenna asked, understanding what he meant.

  “Trace has to destroy his own Starwolves as soon as they have completed the task they were created for,” Velmeran explained. “If I were him, I would have those Cruisers rigged to explode by remote detonation.”

  “Commander?” Venn Keflyn prompted him softly, sensing his growing concern and fear.

  “He is here,” Velmeran said. “He has been here all along, waiting for me to come to him.”

  “Oh, yes. That is the part I was coming to,” Lenna exclaimed.

  “I cannot say that he has necessarily been waiting,for you, but Donalt Trace has been here all along. Ever since his Mock Starwolves took off, which was only a matter of days before I arrived. That shadow of his, Maeken Kea, took off for Kanis on the very night I arrived.”

  - 9 -

  Velmeran was still pulling on his helmet as he hurried back to the landing bay, followed closely by Venn Keflyn and Lenna Makayen. This place had taken on all the characteristics of a trap, perhaps for just himself or for the Methryn, but quite possibly for them both. He would not feel better about it until he had himself off this planet, and had his ship well away from this system. Then he would have to decide what to do about his many problems, and in a hurry. But for right now, he was sure of just one thing. Donalt Trace had been waiting for him. That meant of course that Trace had intended for him to come.

  “Everyone to your ships,” he ordered as soon as he had access to his suits regular com link. “We will be getting out of here in a hurry. Val?”

  “Commander?” the ship’s distant voice responded.

  “If you see any ships coming at you, you are to break orbit and make your run into starflight as quickly as you can get there,” he ordered. “It could very well be something that you cannot fight.”

  “Of course, Commander,” Valthyrra agreed rather doubtfully. Velmeran knew that hell itself would not chase her out of orbit until he was back on board, but he did not have the time to argue with her.

  “That would be a damned fine thing if, after eighteen centuries, this old ship is destroyed by Starwolves,” Velmeran muttered furiously as he climbed the retractable boarding steps and pulled himself into the cockpit, strapping himself in as quickly as he could. “My friends, civilization as we know it really is about to end. To make matters worse, Donalt Trace is here waiting for us. We gain nothing by playing his game, so we are getting out of here now.”

  Velmeran sealed his canopy and brought the fighter up to operating power. He had thought that he had trained Lenna Makayen better, that she was too experienced to make such a simple mistake. For the entire time that she had been here, she had known that Donalt Trace had been here as well, waiting. Had she never asked herself what he had been waiting for?

  He brought his fighter up and swung around slowly, retracting the landing gear as he headed toward the entrance of the tram tunnels. The time had come to move quickly, to find themselves an open bay and get clear of this base. If Donalt Trace was going to dispute their departure, it would have to be now. Following unspoken orders, Baress moved in close behind his commander and then the more vulnerable transport took the middle position, protected from the rear by Baressa and finally Venn Keflyn’s flying tank.

  Velmeran turned into the tram tunnel and accelerated quickly, remembering that it was several kilometers beneath the ridge back to the main portion of the base. As his fighter shot down the half-lit passages of stone, his mind was occupied with the same relentless question. Why was Trace still here? Why did Trace expect to meet him here? And most importantly, why did Trace want to meet him? Vengeance was one of Donalt Trace’s greatest concerns in life, he did not doubt, yet that tall, strangely honorable man was driven primarily by his will and need to succeed. He possessed some hate born of his contempt for alien races, the Starwolves most of all, yet the man was not willfully evil. Indeed, he believed almost fanatically in the rightness of his own cause, a sentiment not completely shared by many of his own superiors. The motivations in Trace’s life were simple enough to define. He had once been assigned the task of fighting and defeating Starwolves by Councilor Jon Lake, one of the few men that Donalt Trace had ever admired and a man now long dead. And the role of righteous deliverer was one that Trace liked to wear.

  Velmeran was coming to realize that, unless he was very careful in every decision he made in the coming days, Donalt Trace might actually win their long battle of force and cunning.

  The tunnel began to make a series of regular turns, a warning that they had returned to the main area of the base. Velmeran slowed, looking for a side passage that would lead them to one of the freighter bays, and the way out. It was then that he began to realize just how much trouble they were in already. All of the side passages were closed by heavy metal doors, steering the Starwolves through the endless circuit of the main tram passages. Donalt Trace was aware of their presence, and he was not yet ready for them to leave.

  “Commander, we are being followed,” Venn Keflyn warned suddenly. “There are two large machines coming up slowly behind my ship, one on each of the two tram tracks.”

  “Those are probably security trams,” Lenna Makayen warned, commandeering the transport’s communications. “They possess a pair of very nasty cannons mounted in a turret over their cockpits.”

  “I understand,” the Aldessan answered. “I am diverting all of my ship’s available power to the rear hemisphere of my shields. That should give us reasonable protection against anything they could mount on a small mobile platform.”

  “Can the rest of you manage a little more speed?” Velmeran asked.

  “We are doing quite well here,” Trel answered from the transport.

  “I can hold my own,” Venn Keflyn assured him.

  “You tell me if we are going too fast for you,” Velmeran said as he began pushing their speed up. “You have the largest ship.”

  “And the slowest reflexes of the group,” she added. “Besides, I am under very strict orders not to allow my ship, intact or otherwise, to fall into Union hands. I have no choice, have I?”

  The small group of ships steadily increased their speed, until they were whipping around the wide turns of the tram tunnels. Soon they were pushing past speeds of 250 or even 300 kilometers per hour, faster than even the best human pilot could have taken a ship through such tight quarters. All the same, Velmeran kept their speed somewhat less than he might have, mindful of Venn Keflyn’s limitations.

  However Venn Keflyn might have been holding up under the circumstances, the security trams were doing even better. They had been built for high-speed runs through the tunnels, although not so much for the chase as to get where they were needed as quickly as possible. All of the larger tram engines and their trailers were locked down to the magnetic tracks, and the security trams had additional restraints to keep them on the tracks during highspeed turns. This speed was certainly no problem for them. The security trams continued to close until they were within a couple of hundred meters, close enough to get off occasional shots during the longer straight runs. At least the corvette’s powerful shields were able to shed the bolts like the shell of a tortoise. “Venn Keflyn?” Velmeran asked.

  “No trouble,” she was quick to assure hi
m. “But I was wondering where we are going?”

  “We are going nowhere,” he explained. “We are thinking.”

  “From my position, we are encouraged to think a little quicker.”

  “Do you suppose that you might shoot them off the tracks?”

  “We will think about that.”

  Venn Keflyn apparently did not have to think about it for very long. Soon after they came around a final turn into a long straight section, she opened fire with her rear cannons. The first set of bolts went wild, as difficult as it was for her to aim to the rear and fly the large interceptor through the narrow tunnel at the same time. Then a lucky shot connected with the forward magnetic truck of one of the two trams. There was a small explosion well beneath the front of the tram and the truck disintegrated in a thick cloud of smoke and sparks, causing the cab of the tram to collapse heavily onto the track. Unable to push against the drag of this massive weight with only the rear truck in operation, the tram began to slow quickly.

  By the time they came to the next long straight section of tunnel, the crew of the remaining tram knew that they had to take out the Valtrytian ship before it destroyed them. They had no idea what they faced, for they had never seen a ship at all like the corvette and they likely would have dismissed any mention of the Aldessan as a myth. They opened fire in force as soon as they had a clear shot. Fortunately Venn Keflyn had a better feel for her ship and weapons by that time. Several of her own shots crashed through the cabin of the security tram, which disappeared in a series of explosions.

  “We are clear from behind for the moment,” she reported. “Are we still thinking, Commander?”

  “We are thinking that running through these tunnels will get us nowhere,” Velmeran responded. “They have closed all the doors on us. We will have to stop somewhere along here and... Varth!”

  He brought his fighter to a stop in a hurry, having to trust that the others had been paying more attention to their flying than himself and would not run over him. More doors were closed than he had anticipated, for a very solid, metal barrier now blocked their path, sealing off the entire tunnel. His fighter bobbed to a sharp halt, its nose hovering barely a meter short of that barrier. Hardly any more room separated the other ships.

  “Drop down, then follow me in order,” Velmeran ordered tersely as he spun his fighter around and accelerated quickly in the other direction.

  He did not go very far, but this time at least he was expecting it. He passed one of the occasional storage and maintenance areas for the large freight trams and then a last wide turn, finding himself almost on top of another of the barrier doors. If he had returned to their previous speed, he might have never stopped his ship before it crashed through that massive portal; at least the impact would have probably opened the way for the other ships to escape. Unfortunately, there were no side tunnels in the section where they were now trapped.

  Directing the other ships to move clear, he backed several meters away from the door and turned the full force of his fighter’s cannons against its thick metal. The lighter onboard cannons of his fighter had no effect, and he did not dare to use the powerful accessory cannon in such close quarters. A quick scan proved what he had expected, that there was an energy-absorbing shield in the metal of the door itself, just enough to drain away the power of the bolts as they hit. Nothing was meant to be simple, it seemed. Donalt Trace would stop the Starwolves from leaving, if he could. At the very least, he would slow them down.

  “Stay here for a moment,” he directed the others.

  Rotating his ship, he retreated back up the tunnel a short distance to the maintenance platform. A large, flatbed carrier sat alone in temporary storage on the side track. The cars were designed to take all the power they needed to levitate their magnetic trucks from the track itself, so they were always in a functional mode at any time they were on the track. Velmeran dropped the landing gear of his fighter and settled the small ship onto the bed of the carrier, applying some downward force through the fighter’s field drive to hold it down. Then he accelerated rapidly.

  The carrier moved willingly, floating effortlessly on a thin cushion of magnetic force. The barriers that sealed the sections of this tunnel were shielded against energy weapons, but that shielding did not protect it against physical harm. The flatbed carrier was large and weighed several tons. Accelerated to over 200 kilometers, it made a very effective battering ram. Velmeran lifted his fighter from the deck and slowed, allowing the carrier to hurtle on past. Riding frictionless, magnetic rails, it lost very little speed before it crashed into the barrier.

  Velmeran followed cautiously, bringing his fighter close to the shattered barrier. The force of the impact had ripped the massive door completely clear of its mounting, wrapping itself around the front of the carrier. At least the tunnel itself was completely clear, although it took a fair amount of caution and some directions from the others before Venn Keflyn was able to slip her larger ship between the wreckage and the low ceiling. Once they were all clear, Velmeran led the way forward through the tunnel.

  They came within a couple of hundred meters to a major junction of two tram tunnels, one track disappearing down a tunnel that branched away to the right. That left the tunnel much narrower than it had been, causing enough concern for the Starwolves but nearly closing in upon the tapered wings of the Valtrytian ship. The slightest mistake now would have been disastrous, and still Velmeran could find no side tunnels leading into one of the bays. He thought that they must be in another long passage between the various sections of the installation.

  “Commander, we have visitors again,” Venn Keflyn reported. “They are keeping a respectful distance this time, but they are still there.”

  “You will have to deal with them eventually,” he told her. “We will need a few minutes of peace, if we are to find a way out of here and get it open. Lenna?”

  “Nothing I can do,” she insisted. “I didn’t have to navigate the tunnels often, and then I always had a map and a guidance computer. Besides, they have control of the place.”

  Velmeran had not been wondering how things might have gotten worse, but he found out anyway. Every light in the tunnel suddenly went out. The pilots had to navigate on scan and blind chance for a moment as they dropped their landing gear to bring up their landing lights. And even that was inadequate, illuminating only the ghostly edges of the walls, the tunnel disappearing into a well of darkness. They dared not reduce their speed for fear of the security trams closing on their tails. The trams were locked to their tracks, a guarantee of their safety even if they ran without any guidance in the dead of darkness. Their only danger lay in actually bringing down one of the ships, since they would then have the wreckage on the track ahead and no way to stop in time. Velmeran was not about to test that vague insurance of their own safety; he did not trust the Union crews of the trams – assuming there were any – to be aware of their danger.

  Velmeran was about to give Venn Keflyn further instructions when they suddenly burst upon a chamber of vast size and the darkness exploded in a storm of bolts. Velmeran ignored fitful sight and trusted for the moment to scanner images, and even then it took a long moment for him to realize where they were. They were in what seemed to be a large central switching depot for the entire tram system, a maze of intersections and loops of elevated tracks, and dozens of security trams were taking aim at them from every direction. For the moment, the abilities of the Starwolves to sense the crystal engines of other ships had prevented collisions. But that could not go on for long, and Venn Keflyn did not have that ability under any circumstances.

  “Scatter!” he ordered sharply. “Duck down any tunnel you can find. We will have to trust Valthyrra to find our way for us.”

  He turned and headed down the nearest tunnel, hoping that a majority of the others would be able to follow either himself or each other into the same tunnel. Valthyrra would be able to scan a map of the tunnels and the locations of the ships themselves, directing th
em to a rendezvous. Then he would be able to put Venn Keflyn in the lead, using the greater power of the corvette’s weapons to clear a passage through any barrier.

  “Commander, Donalt Trace has been calling for you for the past couple of minutes,” Valthyrra reported. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “I happen to be very busy at the moment,” Velmeran answered impatiently. He also happened to be very frustrated.

  “He says that he will let you go, if you just talk to him.”

  “I wonder... as if I do not know,” Velmeran muttered to himself as he considered the situation furiously. It was not so much that they were at Trace’s mercy; they could force their way out. But Trace obviously had a secret that he wanted very much to share. He brought his fighter to a complete halt, hovering above the tracks. “Very well. Put him through.”

  “You have a through channel,” Valthyrra reported.

  “Ah, yes. Commander Velmeran. It’s been – what? – twenty years or so. It is so good to hear from you again.”

  “Not many are that glad to see me,” Velmeran answered. “Then again, you did extend the invitation, did you not?”

  “It was still very good of you to come. Will you speak with me on neutral ground?”

  “Does such a thing exist in this place?”

  “Relatively neutral ground,” Trace corrected himself. “The observation deck of landing bay twenty. I will be alone.”

  “You will let the others go?”

  “Do we have a private line?”

  “You do now,” Valthyrra answered for him.

  “Proceed forward at a moderate pace,” Trace instructed. “I will guide you, and also make arrangements to divert the others to an open bay. Whether or not they leave is entirely up to them, and being Starwolves they probably will not. But they are not invited to our little meeting.”