"Valthyrra Methryn seems to have plans for me," Velmeran remarked as he chose a sturdy connecting rod to sit on.
"Valthyrra obviously thinks a great deal of you, and I trust what the ships think. They have been around so long, and have seen so many people come and go, that they can tell," Dveyella said, keeping her real thoughts to herself. She wondered how much he really knew about the plans that Valthyrra had for him; somehow she suspected that he knew more about what was going on than anyone thought. This was the most interesting ship that she had been on in years. "And do not think that you would fly in my pack if I did not trust you."
"How did you come to lead a special tactics team?" Velmeran asked.
"By being as good as they say you are," she explained. "I was asked to fill a vacant place — just like you — and I was asked to stay. After fifty years I am now the senior member of the pack."
"They all died?"
Dveyella shook her head. "Some, but mostly they retire back to the regular packs. Marlena plans to go soon, so I might keep you if you do well enough, and if you want. Have you thought about it?"
Velmeran considered that a moment, and shook his head slowly. "No, I have not. I have a pack… I might not be the best leader, but I have a responsibility to my pack." But then he paused as a new thought occurred to him. "Maybe that is what Valthyrra has in mind for me, though."
"Why would you think that?"
"I have been a source of dissension lately," he explained. "After our last battle, part of the crew has come to look upon me as something of a hero, while others — a few others — only resent me. Valthyrra and the Commander have problems enough without me in the middle of it."
"I have been told something about pilots who refused to go out until they were certain that the trouble was real," Dveyella said. "Would it surprise you to hear that this is not the first time in recent months?"
"No, I suppose not."
"I also heard that you were indeed something of a hero…"
"According to Consherra!" Velmeran said accusingly.
"By Consherra, yes," she agreed reluctantly. "The pilots think otherwise?"
"My opportunity for heroism arose because I was out there alone, unsupported by pilots who did not want to trouble themselves until they were sure that they were needed," Velmeran explained hotly. "Two packs against a system fleet, and it was mostly over before the Methryn could get a single fighter out. Management is by no means prepared to allow them to forget it. You can surely see how that could cause resentment."
"Envy is the seed of resentment."
"Witticisms do not run the starship," Velmeran said. "This comes as a good opportunity to get rid of me gracefully. I can leave the hero, to a task more suited to my abilities."
"You think they want to be rid of you?" Dveyella asked in amazement. "The Commander is your own mother."
"And you might recall that she did not protest strongly," he reminded her. "Mayelna is a good Commander, but she works hard at it. She learned long ago the flaw in our standards of advancement, that being a good pilot does not necessarily make one a good leader."
"Valthyrra Methryn has something in mind for you, and I doubt that she would willingly let you go," Dveyella said. She rose slowly and shifted her shoulders to settle her armor into position, then turned back to Velmeran. "Perhaps you would be the most use here. We will go get Keth, and you can see for yourself what you think."
6
The Union carrier did not turn toward a new destination but dropped out of starflight and rushed into port so fast that it barely slowed itself for orbit. It was followed, discreetly and silently, by a machine hardly larger than a transport's star drive. The drone was fast and very maneuverable, and it had scanners and sensors of such range and sensitivity that the Union could only dream about. It also had the intelligence to perform its tasks efficiently, as well as judge new situations and act accordingly.
The drone watched patiently as the carrier settled into orbit, then it moved quickly, evading detection as it probed the planet to its very core. At last the little machine assembled all the information it had gathered into a neat package, opened an achronic channel and transferred it all back to the Methryn. Valthyrra quickly analyzed the information and was delighted with what she found. She quickly called Dveyella and the members of her pack to a meeting in one of the smaller conference rooms. The Commander left Consherra to watch the bridge, much to the first officer's dissatisfaction.
"My drone reported that the carrier reached its destination a short time ago," Valthyrra began. "It orbited just long enough to discharge a passenger and the remains of a fighter by way of a freight shuttle before moving on to the station to secure for repairs. The planet is called Bineck, fourth planet of a system by the same name, so called after the captain of the ship that first discovered it… a common enough ploy by otherwise unknown and unremarkable Union officers to stake a claim for immortality."
"If we can dispense with the trivialities," Mayelna remarked in her best patience-under-adversity voice.
"They seem to have decided upon stealth rather than security to hide their prize," the ship continued. She activated the viewscreen at the back of the small table where the group sat, turning her camera on its short boom to watch also. She quickly drew out the schematic for the system in question, showing the path of the carrier's approach, before moving on to the planet itself, drawing in features as she described them.
"The planet is uninhabited and uncolonized. The Union maintains a small orbital base, and there is also a major base on the planet itself, mostly a supply and refitting station for small ships. There are no facilities for larger ships, so they are dealing with the carrier as best they can. There are about fifty fighters at the station and some two hundred more at the base. There are also forty stingships and fifteen destroyers at the station. The carrier is in no condition to fight, and she is so tied up with cables and gantries that they could not have her free in time anyway."
"What about the carrier's fighters?" Dveyella asked.
"She lost those the last time we met," Valthyrra replied, and continued. "The extinct natives were great builders in stone. Even though they never developed a higher technology, they built fortresslike cities, kilometers across and so far down that the drone had to scan with deep-probe. Archeologists finished with these cities long ago and the Union has been using them ever since as longterm storage shelters. The native race died out about ten thousand years ago, long before the Union expanded into this area. We knew of them but never made contact. They were gone before we knew of their difficulties."
"Radiation traces?" Dveyella asked.
"No, the catastrophe was a natural one. A sudden, naturally mutated virus stripped the planet of vegetation in a quarter of a year's time. It was a type of super-virus, immense in size and complexity, that turned sugars into alcohols. Even grains stored in the deepest levels of the cities were ruined. The animal life either starved or died eating planet life that was infused with toxic alcohols… or from simply ingesting too much alcohol of any type."
"Quite an interesting little bug," Velmeran remarked. "Did the Union clear it properly?"
"They seeded a virus-chaser and imposed a full standard century of quarantine, but we had already eradicated it nine thousand years before. You do not leave nasty little things like that lying around for fools to blunder into. Which was a good thing, since survey teams came and went for half a planet year before they finally figured things out."
"But the Union is able to use these ruins, even after ten thousand years?" Dveyella asked.
"Ruins might not be an accurate word, since very little is ruined. These people built to last. And I will grant that the Union had to do a great deal of cleaning and a few repairs to make those cities fit for storage caches."
Valthyrra quickly pulled a file picture of a curious alien creature, short and powerful of build, with four long legs on a short main body and a pair of long arms attached to a small, vertical upper
torso. Its eyes and ears were immense. "The natives were nocturnal cave dwellers. The cities they built are indeed more like caves, with few outer doors and no windows, and walls so thick that the temperature does not vary much throughout the year even in the levels aboveground. And most of the cities are well below the surface. They would come out on the surface — by night — to farm, but they would not dwell there by choice."
"The point of all this history and archeology is that Keth is being kept in one of the supply caches, not in the main base. He is under very little guard, and is in fact very easy to get at. There is nothing remarkable about the cell he is in, just an ordinary storage room like millions of other rooms in the eighty-seven major cities across the planet, but he is on a level so deep that Union technology could not possibly scan for him.
"So they stuck him in a hole as quickly as they could and are trying to pretend that nothing has happened, ready to feign bewilderment to any Starwolf that might descend upon them. But they made two mistakes. They do not know that we were aware of Keth's location from the moment they put him into safekeeping. And they have that half-wrecked carrier tied up at the station for repairs, right in plain sight. I can excuse the first, but hardly the second."
"Can you show me where they have Keth?" Dveyella asked.
"Simple enough," Valthyrra said as she began to display graphics on the viewscreen, beginning with a map of the planet. "Because of the great size of the major cities, the Union has always assumed that the native population was between two and five million each. We know, from actual observation, that few populations ever exceeded fifty thousand. Because of their naturally stable temperatures, these cities are to be found from the tropics to just within the arctic regions… just as long as a major crop could be grown in the region. The only exceptions are a few that were more dependent upon coastal fishing. They lived long lives, nearly as long as that of your own kind. They built to last, and they were very careful in their building."
Valthyrra paused to rotate her map of the planet, moving in on a single city. "The place where they have Keth is on the far northern coast of the larger continent, one of those fishing centers on the edge of the arctic sea. The city itself is just a few kilometers inland in a fold between ridges of a rather rugged band of mountains. The city is a fairly large one, for its coastal cliffs had caves enough for a vast fleet." The image focused on a section of the city. "Keth is here, in the southwest corner. You can land your ships here on this wide ledge on the ridge overlooking the city, no more than a kilometer from the southwest entrance."
Valthyrra indicated the ledge and drew out a careful map down from the heights to the entrance and on into the interior of the city. "After entering, you will proceed a short distance to the main stairs leading down. Here you will descend twelve levels to the very bottom. That is a deceptively far distance down, nearly half a kilometer, since there is considerable space between levels. Fortunately there is a freight elevator installed in the stairwell itself. The remains of the fighter are stacked together in shielded boxes not far from the entrance, beside a landing pad used by freight transports."
"So what we have is a round trip of three kilometers or more, one of which is an elevator ride," Dveyella commented to herself before looking up at the hovering camera pod. "How much time do we have?"
"The nearest fighters are at the main base on the other continent, and much farther to the south." Valthyrra indicated the two locations on her map projection. "That is just over nine thousand kilometers. The fighters will undoubtedly go subballistic to make the best time. Count on no more than thirty minutes, but be prepared if they only give you twenty."
Dveyella nodded thoughtfully. "And we can enter through the polar magnetic corridor and fly in low?"
"Yes, that is what makes this easy. There is not much in the way of surveillance equipment, since there has never been any need. The Union has always disdained radar because of its limited effective range due to its speed-of-light time lag, and the planet has a strong enough magnetic field to deflect achronic sensors and scanners."
"And what of guards?"
"There are no living personnel at the complex, although there are perhaps a hundred automatons walking the halls." She quickly drew up the schematics for a curious machine. Its heavy, rounded upper body was carried on four spindly legs, with guns sprouting like antlers from its head and upper back and a long whip of an antenna like an upraised tail. "They are all of the new Shepherd design, smarter and quicker than the old Prowler sentry model."
"I am familiar with the design," Dveyella said. "What do you want done with the wreckage of the fighter? We cannot leave it, and I would rather take it with us than try to destroy it. Our fighters are too well-built; it would take quite an explosion to blow it to worthless bits, especially if it is in shielded containers."
"Do you propose that we should haul it out on our backs?" Velmeran asked. "Is that why you wanted to know if I was strong?"
"No, hardly," Dveyella said, smiling. It was a ridiculous thought, even though they could lift twelve tons between them. "Our transport has an oversized cargo door and heavy-duty handling arms. We can get those boxes on our way out."
Threl nodded in agreement. "All I have to do is set us down beside it, and Marlena can snatch them up in half a minute."
"There is surveillance equipment, visual and infrared scanners, at the complex. That is why you cannot come in for that fighter until you are ready to depart. Most of the planet's security is designed to guard the world as a whole and keep anything from approaching too closely in the first place. That is why you will not have to worry about automatic cannons tracking you. There are none."
"Unfortunately, that is also why your packs are going to have to stay well back," Dveyella added. "If they see fighters coming in, they are going to be on their guard."
"That is true as well," Valthyrra agreed. "But my drone will be watching you closely, and I can time matters close enough so that my packs will be there to support you on your way out."
Dveyella nodded. "Our problem with fighters is going to be inside the atmosphere, since we have to keep our speed down to their level. Outside it is going to be stingships and destroyers. Out transport is good, but it is still no fighter and it will be the most vulnerable to stingships. We have to keep them off her tail."
"I will have nine packs there to help you by then," Valthyrra said. Then, seeing Velmeran's look of dismay, she turned her camera pod to stare at him. "Nine packs, not ten. I will not allow your children to launch. Short one, perhaps…"
"But not without me, no," Velmeran agreed. "They already know that they will not be going out, and they have been taking it fairly well. But Treg wants to go with me so badly he is positively begging. I wonder if it would not be easier to simply lock him in his cabin until this is over."
Mayelna laughed aloud. "Now perhaps you will be able to appreciate how hard it is for me to try to tell you no!"
Velmeran sealed the last closure of his new suit and opened the chestplate, flipping down the hinged mirror so that he could see to set the controls. The visual display was cleverly designed; the monitor displayed normally for an assistant's use and, at the touch of a button, backward and upside down so that the wearer could see it in the mirror. He quickly set the controls and the cooling unit cycled on strongly but silently. The one flaw in the Kelvessan's impressive design was that they generated a great deal of heat even when they were inactive, and reached dangerously excessive levels during hypermetabolism. Outside the cool environment of their own ships, they depended upon their suits for comfort or even life in temperatures that ordinary humans found normal.
Valthyrra might not have been able to improve upon the construction of the suit, but she made a vast improvement in the fit. The armor itself fit much closer about the suit inside, and was no longer free to shift and turn during swift or difficult movements. She had made suits for both himself and Dveyella to very precise measurements, so precise that they would have to be c
areful of both gaining or losing weight. And that was a problem in itself, for Starwolves had to eat enormously to maintain their powerful metabolisms.
"Now this is the way it was supposed to be!" Dveyella declared as she lifted both sets of arms high over her head and shifted her shoulders back and forth. "It feels as if you have articulated the backplate."
"I have," Valthyrra said, hovering near in the form of a probe. "Both the front-and backplates are split down the middle and joined by a continuous hinge, with the protective plastic coating molded in one piece over the top. All of our suits are built that way, although it seems that no other ships have adopted the design."
"Can you give me plans for that design?" she asked.
"Of course," Valthyrra said, and turned to Velmeran. "I have also made you a pair of special guns to carry in the belt of that new suit. More powerful than anything I have in reserve. They will not pierce the armor of those automated sentries, but their high-output generators will allow you to shoot more rapidly. Up to four times a second."
"You will not find better than that," Dveyella said. "Take them."
"I will," Velmeran agreed. "Where are they?"
"Down in one of the shops," Valthyrra said, pausing a moment as her camera pod quickly scanned the room. Consherra stood quietly in the doorway, and the machine focused on her. "Consherra, my dear, do you recall the place?"
"Of course," the first officer replied, and gestured for Velmeran to follow her. "Come along, killer."
"Meet me in the landing bay as soon as you can," Dveyella said quickly.
"I will not be long," Velmeran promised as he followed reluctantly. He knew that Consherra was by no means pleased with him, and he expected a lecture. Dveyella was much better company, and prettier too.
Velmeran surprised himself with that last thought, since he seldom entertained such notions and never seriously. It was true; Dveyella was prettier, but not by much. She was also more interesting because she told him about the things he liked to hear. Consherra was intelligent, knowledgeable and even witty, but she seemed to think that her most pressing duty was to attend to the lecturing and nagging that she thought Mayelna missed. It was easy enough for him to see how he would like Dveyella. What surprised him was that he compared her with Consherra, when he had never given the Methryn's helm any thought in the first place.
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