The Starwolves (6 page)

"You are not in trouble," Consherra said firmly. "Indeed,
you are about the only one who is not."

"I did lose Keth," he pointed out.

"Keth is a problem of his own making."

Velmeran did not reply, for he was beginning to grow concerned about the
incoming fighter. It was Tregloran's, to judge by its engine pitch, and he
seemed destined to repeat a past mistake, for he was coming in quickly with his
landing gear up.

"Treg, remember your landing gear," Velmeran said to himself. But
Tregloran continued his approach, heedless of crewmembers waving their arms. He
entered the bay and moved unerringly to his place in line. Then he hovered, a
long moment suspended out of time, and his landing gear folded down. The little
ship settled to the deck with almost contemptuous gentleness, hardly flexing
its struts.

"At least I am spared that disaster," Velmeran remarked as he
continued on toward the lift, leaving Consherra to hurry after him.
"Now, you tell me what happened to the support we needed. And no
excuses."

"Excuses?" Consherra asked. "Is that why you think I am
here?"

"Why are you here?" he asked in return. "Either Valthyrra or
Mayelna sent you."

"Valthyrra did suggest that I come, although I was happy to do
it," she said, somewhat defensively. "I am here to help you, so you
listen to me. Mayelna has called an immediate council to decide what we should
do about Keth. We have no time to lose and you had better know how matters
stand before we get there. No one is going to blame you for losing Keth. Right
now, the big question is why eight packs were fifteen minutes getting
clear."

"Fifteen minutes!"

"Yes, fifteen. I am sure that it seemed like an hour to you, since
things were rather busy at your end. But that is still three times longer than
it was supposed to take. To put it simply, no one took matters seriously until
it was too late. Valthyrra put out an attack alert at your first warning. But
most of the pilots took their time getting to the bays and quite a few,
including five pack leaders, ignored the alert until it was repeated for the
third time."

"How could they..."

"As I understand it, too many people got the idea that the freighter
you were chasing turned out to be a battleship, and that your students were
frightened. They thought that Baressa's pack could handle the matter, and that
the alert would pass before they got to the bays. The pack leaders kept calling
up to the bridge, asking if they really had to bestir themselves. Valthyrra
roasted their ears with a few choice words, put every pilot and crewmember not
in armor on probation and threatened suspension for everyone not at their ships
or stations in five minutes."

"Then it was not just the pilots?" Velmeran asked.

"No, but it was the worst among the pilots," Consherra said, pausing
a moment to press the call button for the lift. "Valthyrra remarked that
she has had trouble getting her packs out before, for a variety of
reasons, but never laziness. She said that perhaps we do not fight often
enough."

"That sounds like something Valthyrra would say," Velmeran
remarked. The lift doors snapped open and they stepped inside. "She may be
right."

"You, at least, have nothing to worry about," Consherra
repeated as she set the controls for their destination. "You have managed
to impress all the powers that be... even the Commander, although she is not
likely to admit it."

"Do not make me out to be the hero of this battle," Velmeran
exclaimed. "I did nothing special."

"You most certainly did."

"Then I was too busy to notice."

"That is exactly the point," Consherra insisted. "You led the
attack. You made all the important decisions, while we were all too busy trying
to figure out what was going on. Baressa was senior pack leader out there, by
more than a hundred years, and she deferred to your leadership."

Velmeran did not know how to answer that, for it suddenly occurred to
him that she was right. Then a very different thought came to mind.
"This has not been Mayelna's day."

Consherra frowned. "Your mother is taking this hard. We all knew that
Keth was too old to fly. Mayelna is nearly as old herself, and she has been
thinking for some time about naming her Commander-designate."

Velmeran considered that and nodded thoughtfully. "And the
Commander-designate has to be named from among the pack leaders. And I doubt
that there is anyone she would choose, especially after today."

"That is the problem," Consherra explained. "That decision
belongs to Valthyrra, not her. And Valthyrra has already indicated her choice.
But Mayelna has delayed in naming the new Commander-designate."

"Mayelna disapproves of Valthyrra's choice?" Velmeran asked,
and shrugged. "Who would suit her?"

The Council Room behind the bridge was nearly empty, since most of the pack
leaders and officers were away. Mayelna sat at the head of the oval table at
the bottom of the audience pit, watching the screen mounted in the table
before her. Valthyrra was trying to peer over her shoulder, although her angle
of attack made that difficult. She was operating a camera boom mounted overhead,
above the very center of the table, but not so long or mobile as the main
camera boom on the bridge. Of the major officers, only Cargin, the weapons
director, Veyndayk of cargo and salvage and the engineering officer Tresha were
present. The gallery was empty of onlookers; this was not a safe place to be
just now, for those who had any choice.

Velmeran and Consherra descended the steps to the council floor, moving
carefully because of their armor. Valthyrra looked up immediately, and after a
moment Mayelna put the monitor on hold and glanced up. Velmeran did not much
like the way she looked him up and down as if checking for dents in his armor.
Apparently satisfied with her inspection, she sat back.

"Welcome back, Meran," she said. "I feel obliged to tell you
that you did very well, especially under the circumstances."

"Even if so much trouble came of it?" he asked.

"Even so. Her Worship is so pleased with herself that she is likely to
burst the seams in her hull, and Veyndayk is dreaming of the loot we are going
to collect on pillage. And while I am hardly pleased by it, I am glad to know
that we have personnel problems..."

"Laziness!" Valthyrra inserted.

" ...in time to do something about it." She paused and bent over
the com unit mounted into the table. "I want all pack leaders in the
Council Room in ten minutes."

"Ah... Commander, we really do not believe that we should leave our
packs just now, under the circumstances." A hesitant reply came after a
long moment.

"I do not doubt that you would want to be anywhere but here just now,
under the circumstances," Mayelna replied. "But if you do not
want to be suspended, then you had better stop questioning orders. I want to
see you here in five minutes. Your packs will be just fine without you."

Velmeran tried not to look startled, but it was the first time that he had
heard anyone threatened with suspension. And he could tell that she meant it,
if only to prove that she could and would. "Has it really come to
that?"

"We shall see, I suppose," Mayelna replied simply, although she
looked troubled. "The crew of this ship is beginning to forget that we are
a military force, not a gang of thieves and pirates. And yet this is the type
of behavior that I would expect from pirates."

"Perhaps there have not been enough reminders lately," Valthyrra
suggested. "We never attack anything but freighters. Starwolves used to
spend more time breaking Union invasions and trade monopolies."

"That may be changing, if this is any indication," Mayelna said.
"Perhaps this was more misunderstanding and circumstance than laziness and
insubordination. I hope so, because personnel problems will endanger this ship
if the Union is becoming more aggressive. If things do not change quickly, then
I am going to inquire about changing out packs with five or six other
ships."

This time Velmeran could not help looking surprised; even Valthyrra's glass
eyes seemed to widen. A change-out of five packs meant half the pilots, which
meant that she was dissatisfied with nearly the entire group. At least he was
safe. No ship would take a pack whose members could put together all their
years to make the age of only one experienced pilot.

"Tresha, is there any reason why we cannot reopen the upper level of
each bay?" Mayelna asked.

"Not that I know of," the engineer answered.

"Do we have crewmembers for it?"

"We have an overabundance of crewmembers in too many areas,"
Valthyrra replied. "By shifting some to new duties, we can easily run the
upper decks. When those bays were closed five thousand years ago, I did not
have enough crew for it. I kept ten packs in those days simply by using pilots
who would be rejected now. Do you know that I once flew with only nine hundred
crewmembers?"

Mayelna glanced up at the camera pod in mild annoyance, and continued.
"It might seem superfluous, most of the time. But four functional decks
would mean that we could ready and launch twice as many packs at a time."

"Is the Union really getting more aggressive?" Cargin asked.

"We lost nearly an entire pack two years ago," Valthyrra
replied. "There were three such incidents in the four months prior to
that, and eleven since. Twenty-one ships have been lost from our carriers in
the last two years. We did not lose that in the quarter century prior to that.
This trap was the most that the Union has thrown against a carrier in
fifty years."

"But was it a trap?" Velmeran asked. When he saw that everyone was
looking at him, he continued. "An intentional trap, I mean. Their
perimeter scanners showed a freighter under attack. The Station Commander sent
out half of his fleet, perhaps just in the hope of chasing us off. It might be
that they never meant to close for battle, but they underestimated our speed
and we were on them before they realized. Then, when he knew that he had a Starwolf
stuck inside one of his ships, he sent out the rest to distract us."

"It has happened before," Valthyrra agreed.

"That is easier to believe than to think that this was planned,"
Velmeran insisted. "They could not know that an old fool would try to poke
a hole through the hull of a carrier, and this attack makes no sense
otherwise."

"Now that is the other part that I do not understand," Mayelna
said as she crossed both sets of arms and leaned back in her chair. "If
Keth had time to locate a hatch, then he had time to turn away."

"On the contrary, I understand it only too well," Valthyrra said.
"It was my reason for wanting him retired. Your race, the Kelvessan, was
genetically engineered for two main reasons. Hypermetabolism gives you the
swift reflexes needed to fly the wolf ships and the strength to withstand
accelerations far beyond what your buffer shields can compensate for, far
beyond what any true human could endure.

"Older pilots generally do not fail because they get too slow, but
because the elaborate structural supports in their joints and internal organs
begin to give out. Keth had been fighting hard for some time, harder than he
had fought in years, and I do not doubt that his pain was growing with
each turn. Yes, he had time to turn from that carrier. His reflexes were also
quick enough to find an alternative to the pain such a turn would have
caused. Older pilots do have a tendency to run into their targets."

She rotated her camera pod around so quickly that the others glanced up as
well. Pilots were entering, mostly Velmeran's own pack members, moving almost
fearfully to seats in the lower portion of the gallery. Baressa had arrived
sometime before and had quietly taken her seat at the table.

"The question, of course, is what happens now," Mayelna
continued. "Keth surely deserves what he might get. But it remains a
matter of duty and protection of our reputation to get him back."

"Keth is my responsibility..." Velmeran began to protest.

"I would permit it if I could," Valthyrra said, ignoring Mayelna's
hostile stare. "But your pack does not have the experience for such a
task, and you are shorthanded besides. I have already taken the liberty of
locating and contacting a special tactics team."

Mayelna nodded in silent approval.

"We will contact Thenderra Delvon in about forty hours for the transfer
of the special tactics team," Valthyrra continued. "Another sixty
hours will be needed to trace the carrier to its projected destination. We
might still be needed for such matters as creating diversions and discouraging
pursuit, so I want this ship and all packs battle-ready with time to
spare."

"It is just that simple?" Velmeran asked.

"Neither the Commander nor myself has any intention of allowing you to
go after Keth by yourself," Valthyrra said firmly. "You are perhaps
the best pilot we have, but this requires more. You were trained for the packs,
and you are very good at what you do. Leave this to those who have been trained
for it."

She paused and looked up. The other eight pack leaders had arrived, waiting
fearfully at the outer door.

They had come as a group, apparently in the mistaken belief that there
was safety in numbers. Valthyrra glanced back. "If you will excuse us, the
Commander and I have some armored butts to chew. Veyndayk, please continue the
salvage operations as quickly as possible."

Everyone at the table or in the gallery rose to leave. Consherra fell in
beside Velmeran, even though she was second in command and might have stayed.
Tregloran, with the rest of the pack behind him, waited on the steps, refusing
to leave without their pack leader. Velmeran could not guess what was foremost
in their thoughts – their concern for their lost member or their
astonishment at what they had done.