Battle of the Ring (3 page)

“I understand,” she said slowly, and glanced up at him.
“Velmeran, do you still dream of what our race will become when the war
is over and we are free?”

“Of course,” he replied. “That dream gives me the courage
to do what I must. If I lose that dream, then I will be no more than an
ordinary pilot.”

“Well, I believe that you are leading us along the path to what we
will become,” she continued. “You have many special talents, not
all of them psychic. But being a leader, you are in front of the rest, alone
and by yourself. I understand the sadness that is a part of your life, since
you must pay for this greater dream with all your own personal dreams. I wish
that I could make your sadness and hurt go away and still your longing, but I
cannot. You need the understanding of someone like yourself, which I am not. No
one is like you, but I think that you are not so different as you
believe.”

“Perhaps you do know me well,” he conceded. “But if I am
not Kelvessan, then what am I?”

“Something more,” Consherra said, pointing to the medical
scanner aimed at his back. “Dyenlerra wants to study you very closely.
The suggestion has been made that you are a mutation, perhaps the first
evolutionary step our race has taken since our creation. In short, you are the
real Kelvessan. We are only the prototype.”

The palatial structure in the mountains south of Vannkarn was called Rane
Manor after its first owner, although the dynasty he had founded now bore the
name Lake. This was not the original mansion; few things built by man could
survive chance accident and natural disaster that long. In all those years,
fifty thousand in all, only one thing had remained unchanged: the same family
had ruled there in a line of descent that had remained unbroken. The family
name had changed often and clan leaders had frequently turned to the offspring
of near or distant cousins to adopt an heir.

Richart Lake had come to that high position with the sudden if not
unexpected death of his grandfather hardly a year before. Richart was not the
same sort of man Jon Lake had been, and the sector already reflected his
changes. Jon Lake had been philosophical and reflective, while Richart was
calculating and coldly efficient. He ran the sector as he had run Farstell
Trade, as a business, a tool to control the population, with definite goals to
be met and a profit to be made. And he was in his own way even stronger.

Donalt Trace, the Sector Commander, was like neither of those two. He
disdained both government and business; according to his own philosophy, a
society existed primarily to serve the needs of its military. His whole life
had been shaped around the single, all-important task of defeating Starwolves.
Richart, on the other hand, had been taught that the Starwolves were a threat
that could not be effectively countered, a problem that could be quietly worked
around but never eliminated. That was perhaps their main difference. Donalt
would have them always fighting, while Richart knew that they could not win.
Neither of them had an effective solution. Until now.

Jon Lake had divided the two great tasks of his life between his two
successors. Donalt had inherited the problem that the Starwolves represented,
but Richart had received the greater responsibility of ensuring the survival of
their race. The human species was in rapid decline, too long apart from the
rules of natural selection that had shaped their very being. Weak and defective
traits had polluted the genetic resources of the entire species. A large
portion of their race was impaired physically or mentally beyond the ability to
function normally. This escalating problem was a drain of resources that the
Union would be unable to afford before long.

Richart Lake was the key supporter of a daring, even dangerous plan to
correct this problem. His grandfather had first proposed to trim back the
population of the Union by at least half. Forced sterilization would be
employed on a large-scale basis, having already begun on those with severe
mental or physical impairments. But those standards would slowly be increased
to include everyone below a certain intelligence level or a victim of any
physical defect, a subsidized return of natural selection, while genetic
enhancement would be used to predispose groups of people to certain tasks.

The problem of enforcing that plan was obvious. The implement of the first
phase, four months earlier, had led to unrest on every Union world, rioting on
twenty and the complete overthrow of Union authority on one. Before the next
phase could be put into effect, the full force of the military would be needed
to intimidate or punish the general population into compliance. And for that,
the problem of the Starwolves must somehow be eliminated. That last point was
vital, for the Starwolves would quickly use the Union’s troubles to
defeat it.

And that was Donalt Trace’s specialty.

Trace had been nervously pacing the hall outside Richart Lake’s office
in Rane Manor for the past half hour. Now he straightened his back cautiously
and eased himself into a chair. Circumstance had not been kind to him these
past two years. He had just finished with a series of operations to reconstruct
his ruined back, blasted by a bolt from a Starwolf’s gun. Nor had his
reputation survived the raid on Vannkarn unaffected, in spite of his uncle’s
best efforts to protect him. Then the old Councilor had died suddenly, leaving
him to fend for himself while still immobilized by his injuries and his new
weapon only half built. As the new Councilor, Richart had shown him little
support and had gone so far as to consider his replacement.

But now that they needed him for their purposes, they could not be nicer.
The door to the inner office opened and Richart Lake stepped out. Trace rose as
quickly as he dared, hoping that he was not betrayed by the pain in his back.
His real condition was such that, had it been an officer in his command, he
would have restricted the man from space travel and certainly combat duty.

“Hello, Don. I’m glad that you could make it,” Lake
greeted him cordially enough, almost enthusiastically.

“No problem,” Trace assured him, stepping into the office as the
other held the door for him.

“Please excuse the mess,” Lake said as he pulled the door shut,
indicating the boxes, files, and temporary access terminals that littered the
room. He showed Trace a chair in front of the desk and hurried around to take
his own seat behind. “I’m afraid that we are only now getting
matters straightened up and back into working order. Next week we move into the
new government building, but it will be at least a year before we return to the
same level of efficiency we had before the Starwolves brought the roof down on
top of us. Farstell was a lot easier to put back together.”

“Farstell had the advantage of duplicate records as shipping and
receiving ports and factories,” Trace pointed out. “There was a lot
gone from the government and military offices that can never be
replaced.”

“True enough,” Lake agreed, and leaned back in his seat.
“I have received a full report on the space trials of your new ship.”

“So? What do you think?”

“It is slow... “

“It was never meant for speed,” Trace replied. “Just as
long as it can get itself where it needs to be.”

“Then you are satisfied with the machine?” Lake asked.

“Yes, I am,” the Sector Commander replied without hesitation.
“It is everything that I had hoped it would be. It accelerates and
handles perfectly. The computer network and channeled power grid work as well
in real life as they did on paper.”

“And the sentient command computer?”

Trace shrugged. “Again, it was perfect in its operation. It is no more
or less than it needs to be. As you know, it has intelligence, independent
reasoning capabilities, and self-awareness, it can take care of itself, but it
will also follow orders without question. It is not a living, thinking, feeling
being like the Star-wolf carriers, but we did not want that in the first
place.”

“No, we did not,” Lake agreed thoughtfully.

“And it can fight,” Trace continued. “We ran it through
twenty-eight simulated attacks by Starwolves. Everything we know they have, we
threw at it. It survived every attack, and won more than half of the
engagements that we played through.”

Lake glanced up at him. “No problem for you, I trust? I mean, you are
still fairly fresh from your last surgery.”

“No, no problem,” Trace assured him. “As you pointed out,
the machine is no light cruiser. We took at most a momentary five G’s,
otherwise no more than sustained three.”

“Then you will be along for its first mission?”

“Yes, I must. I expect that we will have no problem the first time
that we meet Starwolves, since they will not be prepared for what my beauty can
do. Assuming they survive, they are likely to run crying for Velmeran to slay
this dragon for them. And Velmeran is the one unpredictable element. If he shows
up, then I want to be there.”

“Well, that is just the problem,” Lake said, leaning back
heavily in his chair. “The Fortress is a strong defensive weapon. Put one
of these in a system and you are drawing an imaginary line that you dare any
Starwolf to cross. I do not like having to use our only Fortress as a combat
lesson. But we need that ship at Tryalna if we are going to retake and hold
that system. The Starwolves know what the revolt and secession of a major
system will mean for the Union, and they are going to fight to keep it free.

“We have to do something about the Starwolves if we are going to be
respected. They have been having their way with us ever since they broke into
Vannkarn. And you can bet that Tryalna would not have been so quick to revolt
if they had not been certain that the Starwolves would protect them.”

Richart Lake sat back for a moment, deep in thought. Trace knew that he was
being lectured one last time before being sent off to complete his assigned
task, but he accepted it in good grace. The unfortunate reality was that if he
wanted the High Council to give him more of these very expensive ships, then he
had to listen attentively to a certain amount of advice and words of wisdom.

“Do you believe that you can defeat a Starwolf carrier with this
machine?” Lake asked after a moment.

“Yes, I know I can,” Trace replied quickly and certainly.

“Just stay away from Velmeran, if you can. He has a bag of tricks for
every situation. His is a problem that we must work around, for now.”

Trace looked up at him. “Quite to the contrary, I should think.
Velmeran is a problem that we cannot ignore; if we can eliminate him, the rest
will be comparatively easy. This is my best chance to defeat him, before the
Starwolves can develop any strategy against this new weapon.”

The Councilor considered that. “You might well be right. But you must
also take whoever comes your way. I’m glad that you were able to get
Maeken Kea to captain your ship, especially since the Krand sector helped us
put up so much of the cost.”

“She is the best that I could find. True military geniuses are few and
far between these days.”

“Geniuses of any type are few and far between anymore. That is why the
situation is becoming so critical. We have to save ourselves while we are still
smart enough to be able to do it. You will be on your way, then?”

“We have to get to Tryalna in time to do some good.”

“Then I must allow you to be about your business,” Lake said,
and leaned over the desk to shake his hand. “Good luck, Don. I cannot tell
you how important this is. But if you lose this ship because of your personal
grudge against Velmeran, I’ll hang you out to dry when you get
back.”

“Don’t worry about that. Besides, if I don’t win, there
probably will be nothing left of me to send back.”

Maeken Kea was not at all sure she liked this. She had arrived on a military
courier late the previous night, shown to a room – a suite – that
was opulent beyond even her rank and reputation, and then pushed on board a
small passenger shuttle the next morning to find herself in the company of no
less than Sector Commander Donalt Trace. Now they were on their way back into
space with an air of calm stealthiness that left her very uneasy.

Maeken was smart enough to figure a few things out for herself, since the
Sector Commander sported a self-satisfied wait-and-see attitude toward this
affair. She had been relieved of her command while she had still been trying to
get her battleship into dock, informed that she was now attached to Union High
Command. Her orders vaguely mentioned a new command. Well, she had heard a
rumor that Donalt Trace was off his deathbed and running trials on a new ship
that was supposed to be a match for a Starwolf carrier.

She did not much care for the prospect of commanding a ship designed to
equal a Starwolf carrier, since it implied that she would be fighting
Starwolves. She had once fought Starwolves and won, holding on to a very
valuable piece of property her sector had wanted for a long time. A short but
successful career bore out the fact that she was probably the Union’s
best tactical genius. But she had no false pride in that regard. She knew that
she could not take on the likes of Velmeran or Tryn or Schyranna and hope
to win. And she certainly did not want to fight Starwolves under the command of
someone like Donalt Trace. Rumor made him out to be either a fool or a madman,
and either one was dangerous.

“What led you to choose the military?” Trace asked suddenly.
Maeken glanced up, startled from her own thoughts.

“I hesitate to mention it, but it is really just an indulgence of my
childhood fantasy,” she explained. “I love big ships.”

The Sector Commander laughed. “I might just have a ship for you! Would
you be willing to fight Starwolves?”

Maeken shifted uneasily. “Do you mind if I do not answer at once? Yes,
I would fight Starwolves if I had the right weapon. Do you have one to
offer?”