The Starwolves (36 page)

"This is not my corridor," Velmeran observed.

"No, it is mine," Consherra said, taking his arm to lead him on.
"This is my cabin, over here. Valthyrra never misses a thing. No one is
going to come looking for you here."

She started to lead the way, but when Velmeran hesitated she turned to
glance back at him. She looked sad and defeated. "I would leave you alone,
if that is what you want."

"I do not want to be alone," he said uncertainly. "I have had
enough of being alone."

"This is for you to decide," she told him. "I wish that I
might be the cure for your loneliness. I have been lonely myself, lately. But I
would not try to be Dveyella and beg the love you had for her. Perhaps it is
too soon."

"A day or a year, it would make no difference," Velmeran insisted.
"I do not want someone to take Dveyella's place; that would be false. I do
not love you, not the way you want. But I think that I do love you; I do know
that you make me feel very calm and comfortable. I need time. Love me and I
would love you in return, I can promise you that."

She nodded. "We would accept each other on our own terms, and I believe
that we would work out a comfortable compromise. Will you come with me
now?"

"I will," he said, taking the hand she offered. "Although I
cannot imagine what pleasure you might find in my company just now."

Consherra smiled and drew him close. "As strange as it might seem,
nothing would give me greater pleasure than to hold you in my arms and keep
away your worries and fears while you sleep."

"I suspect that I would like that myself," he said, and submitted
willingly to her kiss. Then, arm in arm, they turned and entered her cabin.

Farther down the hall, a vacuum cleaner lowered its camera pod and sighed
with relief.

"Ah, our good Sector Commander returns from the dead!"

Donalt Trace peered about the room as best he could. He did not have much
success, for he found himself lying facedown on a bed, his arms, legs and head
immobilized by some type of framework. He did not have to see to know who it
was; his uncle's cheerful tone was particularly grating. His back ached
fiercely and he knew why, although he was not certain that he wanted to know
the particulars. Councdor Lake moved into his field of vision, seating himself
in a chair facing him.

"You look terrible," his uncle commented at last.

"How the hell am I supposed to look?" Trace demanded. "I was
ambushed and shot by Starwolves."

"You were shot in the back while running for your life," Lake
corrected him. "Do not be afraid to admit the truth. That was the only
intelligent thing you did yesterday."

"Yesterday?" Trace asked in disbelief. "I must have caught it
good, then. This is more than just burns from bolt flash?"

"A bit," the Councdor explained, leaning back casually.
"Those Starwolf pistols carry a kick like our rifles, and you took a shot
square in the middle of your backbone. Dr. Mervask worked on you fourteen hours
yesterday, and that was just getting started. But you are likely to live
now."

"Just tell me!" Trace hissed impatiently.

"Very well. It might shut you up. The good doctor put in a biosynthetic
graft to replace the sixteen centimeters of spinal cord you lost, as well as
eight artificial vertebrae. He had the devil of a time finding vertebrae your
size, so he would have to replace those with new ones made special for you.
Half the muscles in your back will be replaced by forced-growth clone types, as
well as a piece of skin big enough to make a tent. You were fortunate in that
your backbone actually stopped the bolt from cutting right through you. You
were unfortunate in that your jacket caught fire and gave you more serious
burns than you might have had."

"The old dress blues," Trace remarked. "Did the spinal grafts
take?"

"Seemed to," the Councdor said. "The medical scanners insist
that it would function as good as the original. The doctor says that your back
is not likely to be the same – too much structural reconstruction. You
will kick ass again, just not as hard."

"Good enough," Trace said, relieved. "What about the
Starwolves?"

"Oh, they got what they wanted, poked a hole in the dome, and left.
They leveled the Government Budding, the Residence and Farstell Trade. They
also completely destroyed the planetary defense power complex, and the sector
fleet is gone – absolutely gone. All we have left are the carriers, which
did not arrive in time. The Starwolves got clear with no loss or damage. Now
that is planning!"

"Wait just a moment," Trace protested. "If they leveled the
Government Building..."

"Do you recall passing a pair of guards and ordering them to
follow?" Lake asked. "They were normal, short-legged humans and you
quickly left them behind. They arrived just in time to sneak you out of the
room, and they got you into a lift and to the levels below the building before
the Starwolves blasted it."

Trace did not answer. Whatever drug he had been given to awaken him was no
longer at its peak effectiveness; the pain suppressants that made him unaware
of his ruined back were beginning to win out, clouding his thinking and
deteriorating his awareness.

"What now?" he asked in weary resignation. He was hardly able to
care about anything, except for a dim hatred of one Starwolf.

"Now?" the Councdor asked thoughtfully, crossing his arms.
"Now we learn from our mistakes. For fifty thousand years we have fought
them on our terms, and the best we have been able to achieve is an uneasy
peace, mostly because we are too big to swallow whole. Now we are going to have
to fight them on our terms if we are going to survive. I have already ordered
construction of the first of our Fortresses."

Trace opened one very alert eye. "Do you mean that?"

"Of course I mean that! I never say things that I do not mean,"
Councdor Lake said impatiently. "In the last three weeks or so the
Starwolves have wrecked enough of our ships to pay for the thing. We might as
well spend our money on something they cannot tear up so easily. Of course, it
would be two years before the thing is ready. Construction would be slow
because we have most of the sector fleet to replace, as well as repairs to the
city."

"So long?" Trace muttered as he began to surrender to the drugs.

"I am afraid so. But then, it would not be ready any sooner than you
are, so don't worry about it," Lake said. Then noticing that his nephew
was once again unconscious, he rose to leave. "Dream about it."

The group that gathered in the storage bay of one of the Methryn's smaller
holding bays was indeed a little one, consisting only of the ships themselves,
their Commanders, designates and helms. The center of attention was the immense
gray block of the Vardon's memory cell, now secured in a special cradle.
Consherra, assisted by the other two helms, was quietly assembling a large
portable unit of computer equipment. Three probes, each with a ribbon of a
different color tied about its long metal neck, hovered near. When everything
was ready, Valthyrra called the others close so that she and Consherra could
explain.

"There are two very important questions associated with this rather
unimpressive block of metal," Valthyrra began. "The first question,
of course, is the location of Terra. And the second is why the Union has never
been able to access the information it contains. I do not expect to find the
answer to the first any time soon, but I am going to try. Consherra would
explain the second right now."

"We know that the Union has never been able to gain access to this
unit," Consherra began quickly. "Since the memory cells of our ships
contain vital information, their functions are our most carefully guarded
secrets. Only two people on board any ship, the helm and the ship itself, know
these secrets and can gain access to certain portions of the ship's computer.
The core of the computer, the thinking portions, can only be opened in airdock.

"These memory cells have built-in safeguards to prevent access,"
she continued, picking up a thick-cabled lead from the portable unit beside
her. "There are six receptacles at each end of the memory cell. Each
receptacle accepts a fifty-two-prong lead, but only fifty of those prongs
actually work. The other two prongs act as keys. Two of the fifty-two slots of
each receptacle are lock-out devices. If prongs are inserted into these slots,
the entire receptacle shuts down. The two lock-out slots are located at random
among the total, and their location is different for each receptacle. You must
know which prongs to remove to gain access, and all twelve receptacles must be
operating to gain initial access. After that, only one lead must be functional
to access the unit.

"Even then, you have to know the access code to phase the unit into the
rest of your computer network. Even then, if the unit senses that it is not a
part of a real ship's computer, it would shut itself down. The casing is
shielded against X-ray, scanner probe and psychic divination, and physical
tampering or disassembly of the unit triggers a self-destruct. And that is how
we know that the Union never accessed it or tried to open it."

"I am going to try to access this unit," Valthyrra added as
Consherra began to connect the leads. "I will tell you now that I will not
be very successful. The first thing I will get as I open it will be the
complete program that defined Theralda Vardon at the time of her destruction.
That program would be at odds with my own in an open battle of electronic
schizophrenia, causing the unit to remain a foreign object in my computer
network. I would not get free access, but I do hope for a general overview.
That might tell me if the information we seek is indeed inside this unit."

"What then?" Daelyn asked. "Even if it is there, you still
would not have it."

"There is a new ship in the construction bay at Home Base," she
answered. "Ordinarily new ships are given general personality to serve as
a foundation for building their own. Instead we would install this memory cell
into that ship and simply bring the Vardon back to life in a new body.
Mechanical regeneration, so to speak. Salamanders never had it so good."

"It used to be common practice," Gelvessa Karvand added, "in
the early days of the war, that when a ship was heavtiy damaged – beyond
reasonable repair – that its surviving memory cells would be transferred
to a new ship."

"We are ready to try," Consherra said after locking in the final
lead.

"Very well, then," Valthyrra replied, with just a trace of
reluctance.

She settled her probe on a tabletop to prevent any accidents when she
released control. She did not risk any damage from this, but if her own
personality programming became locked in battle with that of the Vardon's, then
she would have to shut down her computer core for the few moments she would
need to rebuild her own identity. During that time the Methryn would be without
guidance, and she was safely installed in a stable orbit to insure that nothing
undesirable would happen during that time.

Valthyrra began the process of opening the memory cell, making her
acquaintance with the unit through proper access codes. It recognized her and
immediately fed her Theralda Vardon's personality program, and for the moment
all she could do was to hold tightiy to her own identity. If she became locked
in a loop with that warring program, then she would have to cut contact. But it
played out once and ceased, and the core of the cell lay open to her. She
approached it cautiously, and was immediately engulfed in a flood of images,
impressions and data. The instructions that would allow her minute examination
of those files were in the Vardon's personality program, closed to her.

Those who watched could not see her struggle, although there was a vacant
appearance to the probe's camera pod. That pod dipped slowly, sinking gradually
as the seconds passed. Then it snapped back to full attention and glanced
around at Consherra, who quickly shut down the computer link.

"Well?" Mayelna prompted impatiently.

"Well, I have good news and bad news," Valthyrra answered.
"This is the Theralda's primary cell for her personal memories, and not a
general data-storage cell. On the other hand, the location of Terra, important
data that she may have consulted often, is probably inside this cell as well.
We would not know until the Vardon is restored to life."

"And when will that be?" Commander Korlan asked. "Twenty to
thirty years from now."

The Starwolf fleet stayed only a day in that uninhabited system, since they
wanted to return to their individual territories before news of the attack on
Vannkam could spread. They waited only long enough for the fighters to be
stripped of their accessory cannons, serviced and returned to their own ships.
During that time the ships and their Commanders discussed how they thought the
rest of the Union would react to their raid. There were seventeen other sectors
to be considered, seventeen other High Councilors and Sector Commanders, who
had long assumed their inner worlds to be safe from these four-armed pirates.

There would be some reassessment of the standing and the power of the
Starwolves on the part of the Union and the Starwolves themselves. The Union
would be shaken to its core and that core would be angry and resentful. But it
would also be frightened and apprehensive, unsure when and where the wolf ships
would strike again. And they would strike again and again; the Starwolves had
already decided that. The Union was going to be taught to fear the Starwolves,
and above all the names of Velmeran and the Methryn.

Velmeran was on his way to the bridge just as the Methryn and her sister
ships were making ready to leave orbit. He and his mother had seen Daelyn away
only an hour before, an event that he recalled with sadness. He admired his
sister greatly, for she was about the most interesting person he had ever met.
That, she explained to his complete mystification, was because they were
exactly alike. He did regret that she could not be with him for this final
task. He did know that Consherra would want to be there, so he got off the lift
at her corridor to collect her.