Tactical Error (5 page)

“Just a moment, you two,” Consherra interrupted, sitting back in
her seat with both pairs of her arms folded. “That is the Vardon, and
Tregloran is the commander of that ship. She is not the property of either one
of you.”

Both Velmeran and Valthyrra stared at her, looking too surprised to be hurt.

“I know you both,” she continued sternly, glaring at Velmeran.
“You get so caught up in your schemes that you begin to give orders as if
you were in command of the entire Wolf fleet. While that ship of yours always
has been willing to try anything she can get away with, she has also acquired
some of your bad habits.”

Velmeran shrugged helplessly with both sets of arms. “I
am
in
command of the entire Wolf Fleet.”

“You can still be polite.”

Valthyrra had tracked the main viewscreen around to observe the approach of
the other ship, and they looked up in time to see the almost breathless
approach of the Vardon, appearing suddenly under the ring and braking sharply
with her forward engines to pull to a sudden halt barely twice her own length
away. There was a certain amount of blatant showing off in such a maneuver,
although Valthyrra had to think that fifteen million tons of ship was a lot of
weight to throw around so casually for a machine that was still making her
trial flight.

The Vardon advertised herself willingly as the new Starwolf supership. Her
hull employed a new type of armor, a silver-titanium fusion that could disperse
most direct cannon strikes in itself, but which could be infused with a
structural shield to become harder even than the heavy quartzite used by the
Union on their Fortresses. Because the ship was still under her trials, the
black polymer impact layer that gave other Starwolf ships their distinctive
appearance had not yet been installed. Her hull was still the bright silver of
the original metal, except for a wide border of black impact shielding around
the edges where her upper and lower hulls met along her lateral groove. There
had been some discussion of leaving her in that form, a clear warning of the
special threat she represented. She hardly needed that complete coat of impact
polymer.

Although the Vardon was still the same size and shape as her older sisters,
she did possess some other subtle differences. She had six main drives in a
slightly larger housing under each of her short, slightly downs wept wings
rather than the usual four. Her stardrives were the same size as previous
ships, since she depended more upon her jump drive for interstellar distances,
and she was the first carrier to have twin conversion cannons, a pair of the
large muzzles protruding just slightly from beneath her nose.

“She is a pretty thing,” Velmeran commented softly. He still
regretted the fact that other business had caused him to miss her launch.

“Everything a ship could ever want to be,” Valthyrra agreed
wistfully.

Velmeran glanced at her. “They have one just like that with your name
on it, waiting for you. It should be ready soon now.”

“It would be nice, just to feel young again,” she replied
vaguely.

Velmeran did not answer, knowing that she was tearing herself apart in the
duty he required of her, using the jump drive that was destroying her to keep
his schedule. He had wanted for her to transfer into this ship, let Theralda
wait for the one that would soon be coming out of her construction dock, but
the time for going home had never been convenient, and it had seemed more
important to have that twenty-third carrier in operation as soon as possible.

“Could you find out if Tregloran wants to talk to me?” Velmeran
asked.

“He is standing by already,” Valthyrra reported; she had already
been in private communication with the other ship. She moved her camera boom
closer. “I will put you through on my own pickup.”

“Treg?” he asked, addressing the camera pod.

“Tregloran here. We are ready to go to work, Commander.”

Velmeran glanced at Consherra. “He still knows his master’s
voice. Treg, we will be coming over for a little talk.”

“Do not trouble yourself, Commander. Theralda and I will come over to
the Methryn.”

“Not on your life!” Valthyrra interceded. “We will be over
in a few minutes.”

“You want to see how a new ship works?” Theralda asked.

“This from a ship whose claim to fame was her ability to get herself
blown out of space?” Valthyrra responded even more sharply. “I can
still take you in a fight, sister. I just wanted to see if you were keeping
yourself in any sort of order.”

“You just bet. Come on over, and I’ll show you how it’s
done.”

“Just clear a path,” Valthyrra said, and cut the channel. She
turned her camera pod to look at Velmeran. “You know, I think I like
her.”

When Velmeran and Consherra reached the transport bay, they found that
Valthyrra was already waiting for them. The small wedge-shaped hull of the
probe was hovering near the door of their transport, the shielded camera pod at
the end of its long, flexible neck bent around to regard them.

“You have elected to join us?” Velmeran asked. The probe was
perfectly capable of independent space flight, as small as it was. It was
essentially just a field drive system and a transceiver for Valthyrra’s
use inside an armored shell.

“I might as well take it easy on myself,” she replied.
“All of my remaining probes are getting a little shabby, and we are
sitting in a very cold and uncomfortable section of space just now.”

The probe turned and drifted inside the open hatch of the transport, and the
two Starwolves followed, but they paused in mild surprise as soon as they
stepped inside. Venn Keflyn stood in the aisle between the transport’s
rows of seats. The Aldessan was not as massive a creature as she seemed but
exceptionally rangy, a dragon’s body in long, chestnut-colored fur, both
sets of long, triple-jointed legs braced wide as she held to the back of the
seats with all four arms. Her head was bent low to avoid the rather low
ceiling, her large cat’s eyes glittering at them through the fringe of
her mane.

“Glad that you could make it,” Velmeran commented.

“You people seem to think this business quite important,” Venn
Keflyn replied. “There is a reason why I should be there.”

That was certainly vague enough. Velmeran had met several Venn warriors from
her ancient and mysterious race, but she remained his idea of the archetype.
The Venn were the members of the elite group of warrior-scholars of the
Aldessan – an admittedly strange combination of professions for anyone.
They had created his own race, the Kelvessan, some fifty thousand years before,
supposedly as the ultimate peacekeeping weapon – a function that they had
not fulfilled especially well – but apparently also for the excuse for
having the company of another race that was in most ways like themselves.
Velmeran was even less certain that that had worked out quite as well as
intended.

They were still taking their seats when the small ship came to life, rising a
short distance from the deck. A moment later the deck itself dropped away as
the massive doors of the cargo bay opened, the interior atmosphere held in by a
containment field. The transport moved down through the containment field and
out between the parting halves of the bay doors.

Velmeran looked into the control cabin, curious about their impatient pilot.
He and Consherra were still taking their seats in the front of the main
compartment. The pilot glanced at him rather guiltily, and Velmeran was surprised
to see his own daughter.

“Keflyn, what are you doing here?” he exclaimed, then regarded
her shrewdly. “You expect an invitation to this meeting.”

“Oh, sure, since I am already going in that direction, I mean,”
she agreed innocently, as if accepting that as an invitation in itself.

Keflyn had of course been named after that same Aldessan standing behind
them in the cabin, at a time when Velmeran had felt far more impressed with the
mysterious Venn Keflyn. She was in most ways like her father, although she was
always eager and ready for anything while Velmeran had accepted greatness
reluctantly. In her younger years, the only way they had found to keep her out
of trouble was to constantly move her ahead in her training, until she had gone
to the packs at the very early age of fifteen. Now twenty, she had nearly five
years of experience with Baressa, the best pack leader in the ship, and was
ready for a pack of her own.

But Keflyn differed from Velmeran in one very important respect; both her
interest and her real talent lay in command. She would be a pack leader because
it was a necessary step to becoming the commander of her own ship, as well as
the best use of her talents until Velmeran could find a ship for her. Perhaps
in that respect she was more like her mother, Consherra, who had given up the
packs and the possibility of command because she had always felt that her place
was on the bridge.

Velmeran sat back in his seat, folding his arms. “Just why is this so
important to you? Is there a purpose at work here, or are you consumed with
overwhelming curiosity?”

“No, I have to go to this meeting,” she said, her voice becoming
soft and serious. She did that rarely, and everyone had learned that it meant
for them to pay attention. “I have this premonition that I have some
important task to perform.”

“Oh, my!” Consherra muttered, rolling her head back on the top
of the seat cushion. “What do you think?”

“She is about the right age for that to begin,” Velmeran
admitted. That was a bit of an exaggeration; he had actually been twenty-seven
at the time when he had begun such tricks in earnest, although he had not
enjoyed the benefit of Aldessan training. That brought something else to mind
and he glanced over his shoulder at Keflyn’s alien namesake, standing
quietly in the back of the cabin. “Is this why you came along?”

“Perhaps.”

Twenty years he had had this fox-faced, snake-bodied wiseacre on his ship,
and he was still occasionally tempted to slap the mystic pretentiousness right
out of her.

“Can I come?” the younger Keflyn asked, unable to contain her
suspense any longer.

Velmeran thought about it a long moment. “You can come along, then,
but you will abide by our decisions.”

“When did you train to fly a transport?” Consherra had to ask.

“Oh, well, I really never had,” Keflyn admitted hesitantly.
“It just never seemed to me that it should be so difficult.”

Velmeran looked rather uncertain. “Was it?”

The transport bay doors on the Vardon closed, and Keflyn brought the little
ship down on the deck. This bay was in most ways identical to the one they had
just left, except that something about it just looked new. For one thing, the
machinery did not seem to rattle and clang so much, and the paint on the
bulkheads and beams did not have the blurred, lumpy look of several centuries
of coats. Perhaps it had just been the sight of that sleek, silver and black
ship that they were now inside that made the difference.

Like a dutiful son, Tregloran was there as soon as they stepped from the
transport. Like both Velmeran and Consherra, he was dressed in the white tunic,
pants, and short cape that were the unofficial dress uniform of a Kelvessan
bridge officer. Keflyn wore her full armored suit, with a black cape attached
at the shoulder clips, in a less subtle effort than she might have wished to
emphasize her own rank and experience. Venn Keflyn wore only her belt and
harness, with its small arsenal of knives, guns, and small explosive devices.

“Venn Keflyn, this is an honor,” Tregloran exclaimed, honestly
surprised when the Aldessan appeared at the hatch of the transport.

“Stuff it, Treg,” she told him bluntly. “Did you think
that I would not be involved in this?”

“I hear that you are doing well with this ship,” Velmeran
commented. “No problem with the adaptations?”

“None at all,” Tregloran insisted. “She really had handled
perfectly, perhaps even better than the older carriers handled even when they
were new. After fifty thousand years of exactly the same design, it was time
for a change or two.”

They stepped to one side as manipulator arms locked onto the transport and
lifted it away for storage. It was an old habit on board starships to never
leave anything with mass of any consequence setting about unsecured. As soon as
the little ship was well clear of the deck, the small group of visitors
followed Tregloran to the nearest lift.

“It is good to see you again, Consherra,” he said. “I
never realized just how much you really do as second-in-command until I had one
who was new to the task, and who never wanted the job in the first
place.”

“Who do you suppose does all of the real work?” Consherra asked.
“I suppose that you knew all there was to know about commanding a
ship?”

“Actually, Velmeran was a very good teacher.”

Escaping the wrath of a first officer, he dropped back close beside
Velmeran. “Have you heard anything from Lenna?”

“Only that the crew of the freighter that had carried her in released
her and Bill on the surface, they think safely and undetected,” Velmeran
answered. “I do not expect to hear from her until she is ready for
us.”

Tregloran stood aside as they stopped before the doors of the lift, waiting
for the others to proceed him.

“I worry about her,” he admitted after the lift had started.
“Not so much because of what she does, but because she will soon be too
old to do it. I was watching her during our trial runs, and I could see that
the accelerations are beginning to hurt her quite a lot. I have to wonder how
much longer she can take it. As hard as it is to think about it, I suppose that
she is starting to get old.”

“Lenna?” Velmeran was frankly surprised. He remembered the girl
Lenna who had followed him home twenty years earlier. She was older than he
was. Was that old for a human, even of Trader stock? He frankly had no idea.
“Well, when it comes time to put her off the ship, there are just two
things that you should remember.”