Tactical Error (10 page)

“We should get you on board.”

She turned quickly to the man who had suddenly stepped up beside her. She
had never met a Free Trader before. But remembering Lenna and how she could
pass for Kelvessan, Keflyn was not entirely surprised at how much he looked
like one of her own kind. He was too tall for a Starwolf, but he did have the
same tan skin, dark brown hair and dark eyes, and the same smooth, almost
child-like features, perhaps more so because he was obviously still quite
young. The Free Traders were nature’s answer to the Kelvessan, the very
best that natural selection could do to adapt a living creature to the same
high-stress environment of space flight that the Starwolves had been designed
to conquer. The outward resemblances between the two races were, as far as
anyone knew, entirely a matter of coincidence.

He did not, of course, possess a second set of arms, nor could he take more
than just a fraction of the crushing accelerations that Starwolves could
endure. He could not endure even an instant of the vacuum or the super-cold
temperatures of open space. He could not lift thirty times his weight, nor did
he face a life expectancy of centuries.

He was sort of cute, all the same.

“We will be leaving in less than three hours,” he said as he
escorted her to the airlock. “The sooner we get out of here, the better
I’ll feel about it, I do admit.”

They were both happier once they stepped through the airlock and entered the
ship itself, moving quickly through the wide tube of the docking probe and into
the cargo hold. The
Thermopylae
was essentially just a single, long
storage bay, with her engineering section in back and the crew quarters in a
single deck above.

Her companion indicated a set of stairs leading up with a gallant wave of
his hand. “She’s not much, but she always gets there on time. So
far, at least. I’m Jon Addesin, Captain of the
Thermopylae
.”

“Keflyn, no last name, lately of the Methryn, Starwolf
extraordinaire.”

“I’ve never met a Starwolf before,” Addesin said as he
boldly lifted her cape to look at her second set of arms. Most humans would not
dare to touch a Starwolf, which they considered a quick way to certain death.
Perhaps she just looked small and defenseless without her armor; humans were
also not used to seeing Starwolves in such an advanced state of undress.

“You might find something in there you do not expect,” she said,
trying to sound stern and threatening, although she was more amused than
anything.

“I doubt that,” Addesin remarked. He stepped off the stairs and
paused almost immediately before the door of a cabin. “I thought that we
might put you here on the nearest end of the passenger section, right up
against the crew quarters. Being a colony supply ship, the
Thermopylae
has to carry a fair amount of passenger space, although we have nobody but
yourself on this trip. Since most of our passengers are Feldenneh, the
environmental system has been converted over to their tastes. Tell me if it
runs a little cold.”

“I am not likely to complain,” she said. “Starwolves were
meant for cold climates, like the Feldenneh.”

“Is that so?” He stared at her closely. “Where’s
your fur?”

“You seem to be very interested in what I have inside my
clothes,” she said, deciding to tease him hard in return. She was young
enough to be quite flattered by the attention, but old enough to know better.
“Do you have a thing about Starwolves? That is about as weird as it is
dangerous.”

“Just polite interest in something new and different.”

“Different? I should introduce you to one of my Valtrytian friends, if
extra limbs excite you.”

Addesin seemed to be at a loss for an answer to that one; Keflyn wondered if
he was not used to young, innocent prey that knew how to fight back. She had
learned to bluff from the best, having watched her father for years. And Lenna
Makayen had told her a few things that Starwolves hardly ever knew.

“Why don’t you stay under cover until we leave the
station,” he said as he turned to leave. “The port authorities sometimes
come on board to inspect the cargo before we go, but they never come into the
passenger area.”

A few short hours later, the
Thermopylae
backed away from her place
at the Vinthra Commercial Complex and accelerated in a slow loop that carried
her out of system. Eventually, as she pushed laboriously toward the speed of
light, she engaged her stardrive and slipped away into the endless night
between the stars. Unseen, a small, dark ship followed closely.

Almost immediately, eight vast ships left their place of hiding in close
orbit over a remote planet of that system. Seven of those ships, moving in a
wide arrowhead formation, were standard Union Fortresses. The last was a ship
the Starwolves had heard about in rumor but never seen. The SuperFortress, vast
almost beyond belief, was nearly fifty kilometers in length, twice the size of
any other Fortress. Larger even than any mobile station ever built in Union
space, an armored monster vast, dark, and threatening. Slow and awkward, the
strike force took the better part of a full day to accelerate to light speed,
and even then they lumbered through the stars like a pack of large predators on
the hunt. Indeed they were already on the scent, following the
Thermopylae’s
trail at a discreet distance.

Thermopylae
was a fitful, temperamental little ship. Her star-drive
phased in an endless repetition of surges and stalls. The relentless pulsing
was enough to drive Keflyn to distraction, for Kelvessan had been bred with the
ability to sense stardrives as an alternative to having to rely upon scanner
images when pursuing their prey. She went at last to the main engineering
compartment in the back of the ship and began the subtle task of recalibrating
the drive to phase smoothly.

No race in all of space understood drives better than Kelvessan, and she
soon had the aging freighter purring contently. That brought about certain very
noticeable changes on the displays on the bridge, most importantly an increase
in speed of almost one-fifth. That, along with the nervous complaints of the
chief engineer who had been chased out of his domain by a determined Starwolf,
brought Captain Addesin to investigate.

He found Keflyn well in the back of the engineering compartment, closing
access panels on the main power coupling feeding into the stardrive. That
frightened him just a little; with the drive powered up, a mistake here could
have vaporized the ship. He stood where he was, leaning against a post as he
watched her.

“I know you are there,” Keflyn said at last.

Addesin shrugged and sauntered over to join her. “The position of
chief engineer was not open, but you can have it if you want it. Do people come
on board the Methryn and start taking her apart?”

“The Methryn has never been in such bad shape,” Keflyn said,
tightening the final bolts on the panel. “That rough phasing was giving
me fits.”

“You’re some kind of strange perfectionist?”

“Starwolves can hear drives phasing,” she said, tapping her
head. “That is no secret to the Union, although it is not common
knowledge. That is why we are such good fighter pilots. We can track drives
more accurately than any scanner.”

“That’s a neat trick,” he commented, surprised and
obviously skeptical. “I’ve never believed in magic.”

“Starwolves have nothing to do with the supernatural.” Keflyn teleported
the wrench that she had left beside the access panel into her hand; she had
inherited her father’s remarkable abilities, although simple
teleportation was actually the limit of her powers. “What we can do with
the natural is something altogether different.”

You are showing off,
she told herself.
Starwolves were not
supposed to do things like that in front of humans, not even their friends. Of
course, most Starwolves could not begin to do that. Then again, who was he
going to tell? No one would believe him.

Addesin thought about it for a moment, and decided to change the subject.
“Ah, if you are quite finished tinkering with my ship, would you like to
see the rest of it? Or would that just tempt you?”

“I might as well,” Keflyn agreed as they walked slowly back to
the main corridor. “I mean, we really need to get down to
business.”

Addesin looked startled. “I thought so, too, but I never expected it
so soon.”

Keflyn looked profoundly embarrassed. “I... really need to know about
the Feldenneh colony. I mean, how long have they been there, how large is the
colony now, and how much have they explored?”

“In other words, do they possibly know anything so important that it
would attract the attention of Starwolves?” Addesin elected to attack the
matter boldly. “Say, why don’t we get just one matter of business
over with early and be done with it. I know that colony fairly well; I helped
to set it up. If I knew what you were looking for, I could possibly help to
steer you in that direction. If I can’t know, then I’ll keep quiet
on the subject from now on.”

“Well, I wish you had not asked that,” Keflyn declared with
exaggerated regret. “Now I have to throw you out the airlock and
commandeer your ship.”

“What?”

“Why are you not afraid of Starwolves?” she asked with equal
bluntness. “Humans are all supposed to be afraid of Starwolves, as if
maybe we all run around poking people’s eyes out, or something.”

“Kill you as soon as look at you is the proper expression,” he
told her. “I don’t know. You see, I’ve lived my entire life
without ever seeing a real, live Starwolf in person, and then you walked onto
my ship.”

“You went outside and got me.”

“You know what I mean,” Addesin exclaimed. “That was a
line, a come-on – flattery. You speak the language reasonably well, well
enough to change the subject.”

“You changed the subject. I asked why you were not afraid of
me.”

Addesin paused a moment, then indicated for her to proceed him up the ladder
to the crew deck. “I don’t have an answer. You simply do not
frighten me. I’ve seen things in my life that have frightened me a whole
lot more than you. Now, do I get an answer to my question, or do you even
remember what it was?”

Keflyn frowned as she considered how much to tell him. “We think that
your colony used to be a major world of the Terran Republic nearly fifty
thousand years ago.”

“A major world?” Addesin asked. He looked both directions along
the wide corridor that ran most of the length of the ship, choosing to go
toward the back. “We’ve found some ruins, but nothing to suggest a
major world.”

“You have found a few glaciers as well, I imagine,” she said,
and he nodded. “Those glaciers have been at work for five hundred
centuries.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I can tell you now that there are some buried
ruins, but quite extensive and well-preserved ruins all the same.”

“Does the Union know about these ruins?”

“No, I don’t think so. The Feldenneh consider this world to be
their own, and they can be very secretive about anything that they consider to
be their business. I’ve always respected their privacy, since I work for
them. At the same time, they seem to trust me.”

They entered the large galley and lounge at the end of the corridor, with
its wide bank of windows overlooking the ship’s rear drive section.
Keflyn flipped the switch that opened the metal shields of the windows, looking
out into the blaze of colors of the
Thermopylae’s
passage. Jon
Addesin stepped back from the window. Few humans, even Free Traders, could
endure the vertigo of looking directly into the glaring visual distortion of
starflight. It was a Starwolf’s native element.

“How long?” she asked.

“It’s a long way,” Addesin explained. “It’s
way on the outside, even from the Rane Sector. New territory for the Union. The
schedule calls for three and a half weeks.”

“And how long before you have to go on?” she asked.

“Only a week. I hope that gives you all the time you need to do
whatever you have to do.”

“I will not be leaving with you,” Keflyn explained.

“Oh, I see.” Addesin was obviously surprised and dismayed to
hear that.

“Could we get there ahead of schedule?” she asked, turning to
look at him with a Kelvessan’s big, innocent eyes. She was no fool; he
would know that every day they arrived early was another day he had with her.
“I mean, surely you can get just a little more speed out of this
ship.”

It was rather bad acting. Keflyn was new at this; she knew the theory, but
she had never practiced the technique. All the same, young Captain Jon Addesin
swallowed it whole.

“Well, I suppose that we could step it up just a little,” he
agreed reluctantly; something about this made him very nervous.
“Especially after what you’ve done to our stardrive, we could
probably step up the speed as much as one-third without stressing the engines
much more than we were. There’s just one thing that I have to ask.”

“And what is that?”

“Can you work on my generator also?”

The
Thermopylae
arrived in orbit above the world that the Feldenneh
natives called Charadal a full week ahead of schedule. It was a cool, green
world of two wide seas between two large, continental regions, mountainous and
forested between massive poles and vast plains of glacial ice. It was the type
of world only a Feldhennye could love, and a world that the Kelvessan could
learn to love.

As soon as the
Thermopylae
had settled comfortably into orbit, the
crew began the process of unloading their cargo into shuttles. The two
atmospheric shuttles were kept in their bays in the underside of the freighter,
where they could be loaded directly from the main cargo bay. The Feldenneh
colony was receiving so little cargo on that particular journey that the whole
shipment was easily loaded onto the two shuttles in only one trip. Depending
upon the type of shipment the colony had for export, loading their cargo could
be as easy or it could take the better part of a week. Jon Addesin never knew
what he would be carrying out until he got there, but he was expecting a fairly
large shipment of cured wood.