Tactical Error (28 page)

“What am I going to do?” Delike asked desperately.

“I will make that simple for you,” Velmeran told him. “I
am giving you only two choices. You give the Starwolves complete control of defending
this base and do everything you can to help us, or I will come in there and
pull you out.”

Delike considered that for a long moment, and Velmeran was by no means
certain that he would agree. Delike seemed foolish enough to believe that he
might still salvage the situation. He could as easily make the Starwolves work
to take the base, and attempt to disappear in the confusion. Very much depended
upon whether First Senator Saith and Party Chairman Alberes were there to
advise him. Velmeran remembered that Delike was only a simple, very
impressionable man who thought he was doing the right thing. The other two had
impressed him as a pair of crooks out for all they could get from this scheme.

“We will agree, on certain conditions,” Delike answered at last.

“I had anticipated that,” Velmeran answered. “But make it
brief. I am not in a generous mood.”

“Just this. First Senator Saith, Chairman Alberes, and myself must
have immunity from official prosecution and a ship to leave when it is done.
You must not interfere in our departure.”

“I agree,” Velmeran answered readily enough. “But only to
those two terms, and to the letter of the agreement. There will be no official
prosecution, and you will be given a ship to go where you will.”

“We will be looking forward to meeting you.”

“I just bet,” he muttered under his breath, and sighed. “I
want that carrier you have in your docking bay. I just hope for your sake that
you have not taken it apart. There is no statute of limitation on
stupidity.”

He nodded, and Valthyrra cut the line. He looked up at her. “Move
yourself into a docking bay as close to that inactive ship as you can manage.
We have to get her ready to fight. Go ahead and put every ship we have
overboard right now. I will take a team over to the new ship as soon as we dock
and get the bays open. All other crewmembers are to begin moving their personal
belongings out of the Methryn immediately.”

“Commander?” Consherra asked, using his title in her surprise.

He shook his head. “There is just no help for it. I want everything
out of this ship that is not a part of either the generators, weapons, or
drives. All of the racks for the fighters, the tools from the machine shops,
and the equipment from the science labs, and the furnishing for the schools and
sick bay. Even the simulators. Everything that can be taken from this ship has
to go. The Methryn does not have the shielding or the engines of that new ship,
and she has just about ruined her spaceframe. The only advantage I can give her
now is to strip her of all excess weight. I believe that we might be able to
cut her down by as much as three million tons.”

“I agree,” Valthyrra added. “And by having no crewmembers
on board, I will be free to run interference for the others and take
superficial damage without concern.”

Velmeran looked up at her camera pod, suddenly aware from her words that she
knew they would not be coming back to this ship. The Methryn would not fly
again. He doubted that she would even survive this battle, however things
turned out. The Methryn had been built for war, and perhaps it was only proper
for her to die in battle. But Valthyrra would not die with the Methryn, not if
he could help it.

He turned to Consherra. “This is your department. I doubt that anyone
in this base knows more about the sentient complex of this ship than you, but I
will ask about just the same. As soon as we are docked, I want you to begin the
process of duplicating Valthyrra’s memory units.”

“There is not time to get Valthyrra installed in that new ship,”
Consherra protested.

“No, but we can move her in as soon as this is over,” he told
her. “She has to fly the Methryn in this battle, and there is not time to
pull her own units before the battle anyway. You know how deeply buried they
are. We will pull them out later, if we can. But just in case, I want
duplicates.”

The Methryn moved into her docking bay as soon as she had discharged the
last of her ships, taking the bay immediately to the left of the carrier that
had still been under construction. Tenders were already standing by to begin
pulling unused fighters, empty racks, and a mountain of spare parts from the
backs of the fighter bays. There was no artificial gravity in the bay itself,
only on board the ship, so the Starwolves were able to simply throw a fair
amount of crated material overboard to be retrieved by the tenders when they
could.

Velmeran took a small crew directly to the new ship, to get the bays open and
to take a quick look about the carrier and make certain that she was ready to
fight. Fortunately the ship seemed to be in a completely flight-ready
condition, lacking only memory cells to begin the slow, careful process of
bringing her to life. Those were missing because Velmeran had known for some
time that he would have to move Valthyrra into this new ship, and he had asked
several months earlier that the new ship not be activated until he could assess
the Methryn’s condition at the time of completion and determine whether
she could serve a few years more.

There was certainly no lack of help. Many Kelvessan scientists, engineers,
and technicians, some only just released from internment awaiting sterilization
or even death, hurried to assist in preparing the new carrier for flight. Many
more Kelvessan from throughout the station arrived to help in any way they
could. They threatened to slow things up in their eagerness to express their
appreciation to the Methryn and especially Commander Velmeran, until he made it
clear that he needed help more than thanks and that there was not a moment to
spare.

“Oh, I know that she is ready to fly,” Admiral Laroose, recently
returned from a premature retirement, explained when he found Velmeran touring
the ship’s engineering sections. “We had her out twice earlier,
before the Senate forbade it.”

“That helps,” Velmeran said. “Two carriers, some 250
fighters, and the automated defense drones. If the gods have elected to forgive
me for being inattentive to my duties these past few years, we might just have
a chance to win, which does bring me to the next point. The attack force will
probably invite us to fight on a single front, but I doubt very much that they
will keep to one. If anything comes up behind us, I want those defense drones
in position and ready. I very much need for you to coordinate their
attack.”

Laroose waved his hands in a gesture of refusal. “No battle
experience, old boy!”

“You are still the best I have. Besides, I am adamant about this
becoming a strictly Kelvessan battle. The Republic needs a chance to earn back
her own honor.”

“Then I accept reluctantly,” Laroose agreed, and frowned.
“It’s a damned shame that you had to grant pardons to Delike and
his chums. If you had just sent word, me and a few of my boys would have gladly
strangled them.”

“It served its purpose,” Velmeran said, looking up at him.
“And who says that I pardoned them? I only made a couple of very specific
promises about what I will and will not do to them. I still believe that
fortune usually finds a way to restore the balance of payments.”

By that time, Consherra had finally made arrangements to begin the transfer
of Valthyrra’s memory units. Eight of the massive memory cells were
located in separate portions of the carrier’s forward section, each a
heavily armored block the size of a large shipping container. The units
themselves were secured within their own protective access tube, so heavily
shielded that they often survived the complete destruction of the ship itself.
Consherra had been able to find eight newly-constructed blank units, ready for
installation in a ship of their own. She had two of these moved into each of
the Methryn’s four transport bays, where they would be nearest the
Methryn’s own units.

There was enough help at hand to have the heavy transfer cables laid out
between the blank units in the bays and the access panels to Valthyrra’s
units deeper within the ship. Consherra moved quickly, knowing that each
passing minute could be depriving Valthyrra of that much more of her memory.
The transfer of memory from one unit to another was risky enough under the best
of circumstances, ordinarily used only for the replacement of an aging or
faulty unit. Attempting the transfer of all eight units at the same time
multiplied the risk by that much, and the highspeed encoding method was
reserved for only a dire emergency. If the transfer was too incomplete, then
Valthyrra’s personality programming would also be too incomplete to
engage and return her to life.

“I am ready to enter the first unit,” Consherra announced to the
portable com link she wore on her collar. She was standing before a very heavy
and secure hatch built into the wall of one of the Methryn’s endless
corridors. “This unit access panel is labeled as A3 1121.”

“Tread softly,” Valthyrra answered as she opened the hatch.
“You stand before my primary cell. Most of my personality is locked
within that unit. You may begin.”

Consherra entered, making her way through the four meters or so of narrow
tunnel that led her to a second hatch, trailing the final length of the
transfer cable behind her. She lifted a heavy, long-handled tool, in form like
an immense socket wrench, and fitted the cylinder-shaped lock at its end into
the receptacle in the center of the hatch. It was in its way a large key, never
kept on board the ship itself but only under guard at Alkayja Base. With the
mechanical key installed, she took a small magnetic card from a compartment in
the handle of the key and inserted this in a slot in the wall to the right of
the hatch.

The chip inside the card fed its data through the magnetic contacts into the
electronic lock, which recognized her right to access to the core. Six heavy
latches pulled back one after the other, and Consherra pulled down on the
handle of the mechanical lock, releasing its own internal latches. Then she
took hold of the massive handles on either side of the hatch and lifted it
clear, breaking the airtight seal. The hatch itself weighed nearly two hundred
kilograms, a final insurance against the credentials of the one opening the
core. It was no burden for the enhanced strength of a Kelvessan or even the
four powerful arms of an Aldessan of Valtrys, its original designers. But no
human could have lifted it clear.

Inside was a final door, this one fitted with a numeric keypad. Consherra
quickly punched in the final access code, the one known only to the Commander,
First Officer, and the ship herself. The hatch lifted clear, allowing her to
see inside the armored core and the massive memory cell locked securely in its
cradle.

“At last,” Consherra remarked softly and she lifted herself
through the open hatch. “You could be dead by the time I run this maze
eight times.”

“I am comforted by your consideration,” Valthyrra answered
sourly. “This is the important one. I could as easily do without the
others.”

“Can you estimate your transfer rate?” Consherra asked as she
pulled the cable around to one end of the cell, where its main access sockets
were located. “That should give you some idea of the extent of transfer
in the time allowed.”

“Virtual encoded memory,” the ship explained. “There is no
predicting the transfer rate because there is none. The receiving unit sees the
entire memory of the master unit all at once, but it takes time to mirror what
it sees. Some is mirrored instantly, while some will take hours. And since
portions of that same memory file may exist in another cell, I have to access
the entire data from all sources before I am able to see the memory myself. It
gets complicated when you try to work with it, but it is the key to my ability
to think like you mortals.”

Since the new ship had no main computer network in operation, the entire
vessel had to be controlled manually. At least there was enough secondary
computer operation that the major systems were able to regulate themselves,
although the commands for those systems had to be relayed from their master
stations on the bridge. In theory, this carrier could fly and fight with a crew
of only fourteen, that being the number of stations on the bridge. The weapons
systems remained the biggest problem, since there was only just enough computer
control to assist in targeting. All the various small cannons in their
retractable turrets along the ventral groove, where the upper hull was joined
to the lower, were directed by their own gunners.

Because of the difficulties in flying the ship manually, Velmeran decided
they would fight this battle with only a minimal crew of officers and
technicians. Even the fighters and transports with their support teams were
installed in Alkayja Base and would launch from there. Like the Methryn, the
new ship would fly stripped for battle.

One problem that had to be solved early on was finding a name for the new
carrier, to make references and communications easier and clearer. This new
ship was unofficially the Methryn, but there already was one Methryn on hand
with a prior claim on the use of that name. Before Velmeran had a chance to
decide anything for himself, he found that the codename Alternate was
already in general use for the new ship among the pilots, while the base
personnel referred to her as Carrier D-Class 2-A, its registration number.
Alternate seemed easier to deal with, especially in a hurry. For the duration
of the coming battle, the new carrier became known as the Maeridyen, which was
the Tresdyland word for Alternate.

The task of flying the Maeridyen fell to Consherra, and she was not pleased
with the prospect. She had never had as much direct control over a carrier in
her life, since there was ordinarily at least an automatic flight control
system to interpret her commands from the manual controls into a series of
related actions throughout the ship. She would be in control of actual
navigation, engine power, and the jump drive as a method of emergency evasion.
The more precise control of the Maeridyen’s main systems would come from
Tresha and her assistant at the engineering station. Cargin, from his station
beside Consherra’s helm on the central bridge, would have main weapons
control, while the defense station would coordinate the ship’s shields.
Flight control and navigation would assist Consherra in flying the ship, while
the scanning, running systems, and damage control stations would pick up any
slack.