Battle of the Ring

by Thorarinn Gunnarsson

  Alkayja station was not the largest that Velmeran had seen, smaller in fact than the Rane Military Complex above Varmkarn, the difference being that this was a compact structure. The main body, twenty-five kilometers across, consisted of a thick ring studded by the large rectangular modules that were the carrier bays. Twenty-two were docking bays, their wide, low openings enclosed only by containment fields, while the two construction bays and four refitting bays had actual doors. Above this was a thinner ring with bays for ordinary freighters and regular military forces. The thick inner hub of the station, completely filling the rings, contained the city itself and an industrial complex. The hub tapered quickly to blunt ends above and below, housing generators and clusters of large engines. Home Base was a mobile station, although it had not left orbit after arriving from Terra fifty thousand years before.

  Valthyrra resumed direct control as the three ships closed on the station, each one moving toward its individual bay. She edged her shock bumper into the bracket designed to receive it, the meters-thick shock pistons attached to the frame of the station and those within her nose catching her tremendous mass and bringing it to a gentle stop. The pistons relaxed, pushing her into the parked position as two additional sets of brackets moved in from either side to lock into catches within the hull grooves at the tips of her blunt wings. Docking tubes telescoped out from the forward wall to fasten against her major airlocks.

  With docking complete, the Methryn began the process of shutting herself down for the first time in a hundred years. Some basic systems had to remain in operation, such as internal gravity and atmosphere, as well as all of Valthyrra’s essential computer systems. But she did shut down her generators to shift over to station power. This was the only painful part of the process, although strictly from a moral and philosophical point of view.

  “All secure,” Valthyrra reported.

  “That’s it?” Lenna asked, still at her station. “So what do you do now?”

  “Do?” the ship asked. “You leave. You do whatever you can find to keep yourself amused and out of trouble.”

  “No, I mean, what do we do?” the girl protested. “Where do we go?”

  She looked at Velmeran, but he only shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Aval den tras etrenon!” Valthyrra exclaimed. “You still live here, in your own cabins. The pilots are still answerable to their pack leaders – that includes you, two arms – and they are expected to practice. And the other crewmembers have their regular duties to perform This is not indefinite port leave.”

  That had not been directed solely at Lenna, and the young Starwolves who had not been through this before were relieved to hear it. They had somehow been under the collective impression that repairs and refitting meant that a carrier and her crew of Starwolves became a damaged machine and a couple of thousand unemployed Kelvessan.

  “However, you have all earned a vacation,” Valthyrra continued. “This is your first port leave, so you should have one of your new friends show you how to sell your trade goods.”

  “Trade goods?” Lenna asked, confused.

  “Yes. We support ourselves with acts of piracy, and our crewmembers are paid with various items taken from the capture cargo. Did Dyenlayk not pay you for your good work on the Challenger?”

  “Pay me?” Lenna asked, mystified. Then realization hit like an exploding star. “Oh, so that was why he gave me a silver tea service!”

  Valthyrra stared. “What did you think you were supposed to do with it?”

  “Hell, I was going to give a party!”

  Valthyrra’s camera pod shot up in surprise, then spun around in a complete circle and beat itself three times against the ceiling. Once that was out of her system, she brought it back to where Velmeran was standing. “Fleet Commander Laroose is on his way to the bridge.”

  “Fleet Commander?” Velmeran asked in obvious confusion.

  “Yes, the Fleet Commander,” the ship insisted. “Your superior. The guy who gives you your orders.”

  “My orders?” he asked, even more confused. “No one gives me orders.”

  “I doubt that he would dare to. Nonetheless, he does have the theoretical authority.”

  Velmeran had little time to speculate on the type of person who would undertake the task of directing the entire Wolf Fleet. He did have some idea of what he expected of such a person, something very different from the tall, broad-chested human of middle years who entered the bridge half a minute later. His initial surprise was seasoned with mild indignation that the Republic would keep a human in the position of leadership of its Starwolves like a gesture of ownership, coupled with his inner belief that a human was not morally or intellectually capable of such a task.

  Commander Laroose obviously knew his way around a carrier’s bridge. But he approached the middle bridge almost reverently, like an admirer in the presence of an idol for the first time.

  “Commander Velmeran?” he asked tentatively.

  “Yes?”

  “I cannot tell you how glad I am to meet you,” he said enthusiastically, shaking the Starwolf’s hand vigorously. He noticed but politely ignored the missing hand, indicating that he had read the report on the incident. “You’ve done some amazing things, and you’ll find that quite a reputation has preceded you. In fact, you’re the first true folk hero of the Kelvessan. And something of a hero of my own, as you might guess. Every Kelvessa I know has taken up playing cards with the faces down.”

  Velmeran smiled at the comic image that Laroose drew for him with such obvious enthusiasm. These tactics, even if they were not intended as such, were not without their results. Velmeran was not flattered, since his ego did not operate in that manner. But he was more than gullible enough to be taken in by such charm.

  “Before we begin work on the Methryn, there is an important matter that I must discuss with you and your ship,” Laroose continued, now serious. “There have been a lot of changes here at Alkayja Base these last two years. Your own exploits have forced us to realize that we have to do more to serve our own ships. I now have four refitting docks in full operation; we can now overhaul a carrier in two months. We can even have the Methryn repaired and back out in only three. And it is important for you to be back out as soon as possible.”

  “Of course,” Valthyrra answered pointedly before Velmeran could reply.

  “But I would like to convince you to stay six months. You see, we have a new generation of bright Kelvessan scientists. Mutant stock, I daresay. Anyway, since we started work on the new Delvon, they put their minds to the task and came up with improvements for our engines. Maximum power output is up by over one-third. We have dampening fields that work a full fifty percent better than before. And we have successfully tested an operational jump generator.”

  “What?” Valthyrra demanded breathlessly, in spite of her inability to breathe. “The Delvon is going to be a real terror.”

  “Yes, well, we have all these new engines and units ready to install two decades before we can put them in,” Laroose explained. “So, when I heard that you were coming in, I thought that we might want to strip out your old engines and give you all these toys, where they will do the most good. In fact, we mean to refit all the carriers and freighters as fast as we can bring them in. What do you say?”

  “I do not consider that my decision to make,” Velmeran replied, and looked up at the dazed lenses of the camera pod. “Val, do you agree?”

  “Do I agree?” she asked incredulously. “I beg!”

  -18-

  Commander Laroose’s assertion that Velmeran was becoming quite a hero to his people was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. Kelvessan had begun to arrive even before the Methryn was docked, watching the procedure through the wide bank of windows just above the docking bracket. The crowd continued to grow as hours passed, hundreds and then thousands. Velmeran was appalled, but finally felt obliged to put in an appearance. Kelvessan were very polite and quiet admirers, but they were
also very blunt with their affections. Since the crowd was constantly changing, he was required to make these appearances every four hours for the next three days. Someone observed this routine and actually posted a schedule.

  Actually, the term hero was not a completely accurate definition of what Velmeran represented to the Kelvessan. He was a leader, a symbol of Kelvessan presence and unity, a representative for a race that was emerging into its full maturity and looking at itself with a new sense of awareness. He came to accept this role because he believed in that and because, in a curious way, it comforted him. He had come away from this last battle feeling very much like someone whose gifts lay only in destruction. He was pleased to discover that, in the judgment of his own people, he was a builder of dreams and worlds.

  Curiously, the one who was most unhappy was Lenna Makayen. She was caught between three races, not entirely human, not really a Trader and certainly not a Kelvessa. She had been quietly depressed since learning of Consherra’s pregnancy. That reminded her only too sharply, for the first time in her life, that she was a sterile hybrid of two races and alien to both. She considered herself alone, a freak of nature. And yet her problem resolved itself very quickly; there was a perfect companion even for her.

  Repairs began on the Methryn at a pace that kept even Valthyrra happy. In spite of her professed dread of refitting, Velmeran soon began to suspect that she actually liked the attention. She was certainly enchanted with the thought of acquiring a functional jump generator, allowing her to throw herself vast distances interdimensionally. Earlier tests of jump ships had not been successful, the carrier Valcyr having leaped out of time and space in the early days of the Starwolves, never to return. The problem with the system had finally been solved, and Velmeran confirmed the data before installation began. He was, after all, the resident expert on interdimensional jumps, having the ability to do it himself without the aid of machines.

  After the first week Velmeran began to think that all the surprises were over. He was sitting alone in his cabin one evening, ship’s time, reviewing data on a new weapon he was trying to design to crack quartzite shielding. The door announced a visitor, for what seemed like the fiftieth time that day.

  “Come in!” he called without looking up, and the door slid open.

  “I am sorry to disturb you, but I have come very far,” a voice that was a rich, warm purr stated in Tresdyland, accented in a way that he had never heard. Velmeran glanced up.

  The Aldessan were the true parent race of the Kelvessan, but there had been little contact between the two since. In Union space they were dismissed as creatures of legend, and Velmeran was naturally surprised to have a legend pay him a call in his own cabin. She was large, dwarfing him in comparison. A long, snakelike body was supported by a spider’s cluster of appendages, four triple-jointed legs in back with four arms in front, each one longer than he was tall. She was furred in a plush brown velvet, a shaggy mane running from the top of her head to the tip of a thick tail two meters in length. A meter-long neck supported a fox’s head with a long, tapered snout, vast cat-slit eyes, and tracking ears. Three pairs of breasts lining her belly identified her sex, although there was a curious delicacy to this oddly graceful lady.

  She was also a Venn warrior-scholar, as he could tell by the body harness that was her only clothing. The harness supported two long swords and a clutch of throwing knives. As large and powerful as she was, she could not match a Kelvessa for strength and speed. Even so, she would be more than a match for twice as many Kalfethki.

  “No, please come in,” Velmeran insisted, hurrying to greet his guest. She towered over him on her long spider’s legs, so tall that she risked bumping her head on the ceiling.

  “I am Venn Keflyn,” she said simply. “I am very pleased to meet you, but in truth I must admit that I was sent.”

  “To me?”

  “To instruct you,” she explained. “Word has reached us of mutant Kelvessan, and of the things that Velmeran can do. But after reading the report of your last battle, I think that you should instruct me.”

  “No, I need all the help I can get,” Velmeran insisted. “We have been bumbling along as best we can. If it is all the same to you, I would just as well start over again with someone who knows what is going on.”

  Keflyn nodded. “In truth, with all matters concerning the psychic arts, we must all be our own teachers. We learn by example, and an example is only a model, a pattern that is not complete until you learn how to adapt it to your own use. I profess to be a teacher of such things, which is to say that I am experienced at setting good examples. But even I do not have your powers, some we had not even believed could be possible. You have caused quite a stir in the hallowed halls of the Venn Academy.”

  “I am sorry... “

  “No need to be concerned,” she assured him. “It is, I assure you, a most delighted agitation. Such things I may not know, but I still hope to be of some service to you. As we say, those who cannot lead may at least stand behind and push in the right direction.”

  Velmeran was soon given to wonder if Aldessan were naturally given to understatement, or if Keflyn was simply too cautious to promise results. She knew exactly what was needed. He soon discovered that philosophy, not science or metaphysics, was the foundation for the study of the psychic arts. She never tried to explain how such powers worked. She was more interested in exploring the question of why.

  “Many have talent but lack the self-awareness to make use of it,” she explained once as they sat on a ledge overlooking the removal of damaged plates from the Methryn’s battered nose. “Some stumble through life only half awake, not aware enough of either themselves or life around them to make use of what they possess. We are all limited by our beliefs, and that applies to more things than just the exercise of any gifts we might possess. Indeed, it might be that belief is the only limitation that is placed upon us.”

  And so they spoke together, sometimes exchanging only a few words, sometimes conversing for hours on end. Sometimes they volleyed questions back and forth in gentle exchange. Sometimes they speculated together on the same question. She never gave him some repetitive psychic exercise to do or drilled him in use of his talents. But from time to time curiosity would lead him to try something new, or he would try something he had already done with greater ease and accuracy than ever before.

  “I assume, then, that our talents do not strengthen and grow with use,” Velmeran said. He was becoming used to Keflyn’s company. With her meter-long neck, it was not unlike talking tol Valthyrra.

  Keflyn curled the end of her tail forward and sat back, balancing a portion of her weight on its thicker, stronger upper half. “It seems that the only thing that strengthens and grows is our skill with the tool that is the individual talent, while the tool itself remains always the same. A psychic talent is not like a muscle that develops with use. Say, rather, that your talents are the eyes and ears – and in some cases the hands – of your soul.”

  “And is there such a thing?”

  “Oh, of course,” Keflyn insisted. “Anyone trained in his talents can feel the souls of those about him. Indeed, a person of your talent can manipulate a lesser spirit, although for obvious reasons we consider that the worst offense that anyone can commit by the use of talent. We may even transfer the essence of a person out of a broken body into a cloned replica. Even the body I wear is not the one I was born in.”

  Velmeran looked at her in open amazement. “You?”

  She smiled gently. “I am Venn. Like you, I fight whenever there is need. It happened that when I was still very young, some four centuries ago, I was not as cautious as I should have been, and not as lucky as I would have liked.”

  Another time, weeks later, they were standing in the vast cavern created by the removal of one of the Methryn’s four main drives. The repairs were proceeding in three steps. First the damaged portions and the old engines were removed, then the new field generators and jump generator were installed duri
ng the general refitting and overhaul, and finally the new engines would be installed and new hull plates set into place.

  “Did the Aldessan make us?” Velmeran asked quickly, the question that Kelvessan had pondered for hundreds of years. It took a certain amount of courage for him to ask that, and even so it was not the question that he wanted most to ask. The only question that he might not have the courage to ask, because he was so afraid of what the answer might be.

  Keflyn regarded him closely but without expression. “What do you think?”

  “I believe that you must have,” he replied. “But...”

  “But why?” she asked when he faltered, asking the question for him. “Again I ask, what do you think?”

  “I know only the obvious answer to that. Because the Terran Republic asked and the Aldessan agreed. Perhaps we were only an experiment, from your point of view.”

  “But you also know better than that,” she said, sitting back on her tail. “We did not make you for their use. This has only been your childhood, your time of maturing. Soon you will leave them to seek your own worlds and lives. We made you because we wanted you, as one might seek a friend in one’s loneliness. We made you because you are the thing in most ways like ourselves. Perhaps you are even what we wish ourselves to be.”

  “And that is the reason?” Velmeran asked.

  She smiled. “Were you expecting some great oratory to express some inescapable argument of logic and practicality? I have none. Your lives are your own, to live as you will.”

  “And the humans?”

  “They have problems that you cannot solve for them,” the Aldessa insisted. “They have found the best solution for their genetic deterioration, but even that cannot save them forever. We have seen too many races come and go for us to have much hope. There is a chance, but if they do survive they will be the first of half a hundred such cases we have observed. But that is not your problem. You cannot keep them alive, and you should not try to take their place when they are gone. Rid them of the Union before it begins the process of turning them into genetic machines, and that is all you can hope to do for them.”