Battle of the Ring Read online

  “Calm, confident, and nearly as eager to begin as Lenna is,” Velmeran said, his voice echoing hollowly as he worked inside the compartment. “I wonder why this means so much to her.”

  “Well, she used to be quite a Starwolf when she was your age, when she still flew with the packs. That was a few years before you were even thought of, naturally. I think she wants to prove that she is also a very capable warrior, and not just a bridge officer.” She paused a moment to watch him closely. “She has not forgotten that Dveyella was a warrior. And that, had she lived, she would be going out with you on all these missions.”

  “Consherra is comparing herself with a memory,” Velmeran stated as he tightened the stowage straps around the gun. “And an increasingly dim memory.”

  “True, but the memory she is comparing herself against is her own, not yours. Perhaps it is more important for her to prove something to herself.”

  Velmeran seemed about to say something, but decided otherwise. She walked with him around the front of the fighter and up the steps of the boarding platform, holding his helmet as he climbed inside the cockpit. She obviously had something important in mind, some matter too important to wait. Velmeran seemed too distracted to notice. In truth, he had something equally important to say, if he could only find the words.

  “Consherra means a great deal to you,” Mayelna said at last, watching him fasten his straps. “You are aware, perhaps, that a male and female may share a special relationship. There most often comes a time in everyone’s life when you meet someone, and both of you become aware that the two of you will be keeping company for a very long time to come. But you must also realize, when a male and female join as mates, they are also peforming a natural function and must be prepared for the results that nature intended. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  Velmeran stared at her in utter amazement. With typical Kelvessan innocence, he completely misinterpreted her implications. “If this is the little talk we should have had fifteen years ago... well, we should have had it fifteen years ago. I am quite aware that Consherra and I are likely to have a child sooner or later. Considering her sexual instincts, it will probably be sooner.”

  “Soon enough,” Mayelna agreed vaguely. “Would that please you?”

  “I imagine that it would please me very much,” Velmeran said as he fastened the last strap. He paused a moment, uncertain, and looked up at her. “Valthyrra will be going in for overhaul after this. I was wondering... perhaps... if you would like to retire then.”

  Mayelna stared in absolute astonishment and mystification. “Retire? Why would I want to retire at this time?”

  Velmeran shrugged. “It makes about as much sense as what you were talking about.”

  “That may be so,” Mayelna agreed, affording him a searching stare. “Are you ready to command this ship? I do not question your ability to do so; you have for the last two years. What I mean is, do you want to?”

  Velmeran nodded slowly. “As you said, I have commanded here for two years now. I no longer have the time to run a regular pack as well as this ship and my special tactics team. Nor does my pack bring me the pleasure and sense of fulfillment it once did. I have outgrown it, you might say.”

  “So now you want my chair?” Mayelna asked, smiling with amusement.

  Velmeran smiled shyly in return. “I would take nothing away from you. I just thought that – under the circumstances – you might want to take up residence on the Kalvyn.”

  Mayelna swallowed apprehensively and looked away quickly to hide the tears that rushed to her eyes. Nothing in all her long years had touched her as much as that simple offer. Nothing meant more to her. “Meran, what... what can I say?”

  “You can say yes,” he suggested hopefully.

  “Are you going anytime soon?” Valthyrra demanded suddenly over com, her voice echoing dimly from the helmet Mayelna held. She looked down at it, then reached out and set the helmet on his head.

  “You go take care of business, Commander Velmeran,” she said as she fastened the collar clips. “I will watch your ship until you come back.”

  -13-

  Maeken Kea was still fastening her jacket when she arrived at the bridge. As a matter of fact, it was the only part of her uniform that she had on. In her years as the Commander of a warship, she had learned through experience to always wear something when she tried to catch a little sleep when battle was likely. But the Starwolves had a certain perversity on that score; they had been careful to attack while she was in the shower. She reasoned that, if she got only one thing on by the time she reached the bridge, the jacket was long enough to keep her decently covered – if just barely. She was correct, for the most part; she was blissfully unaware that the tail of the jacket was split in the same place her own tail was split.

  Lieutenant Skerri saw her the moment she entered and pretended to notice nothing strange, although she could well imagine the stimulation to his postadolescent fantasies. She threw her pants in his direction and headed straight for her console.

  “So what is it?” she demanded briskly as she bent over her monitor.

  “Captain, the Methryn’s corridor has turned straight out from the planet,” Skerri reported. “It seemed suspicious to me, so I knew that you would jump on it.”

  “You bet your – “

  “Collision imminent!” Marenna Challenger warned suddenly.

  Maeken glanced anxiously at the main viewscreen, where the danger was immediately obvious. A rock of respectable size, a kilometer and more wide by half a kilometer high, was hurtling down the Methryn’s corridor, moving fast and accelerating rapidly along a path designed to make the best use of the gravity of the large planet below. Numbers projected to one corner of the screen estimated time to impact and counted down sixteen to fifteen even as she watched. Maeken needed only an instant to decide.

  “Arm missiles to launch!” she ordered briskly. “Detonation on impact. Fire one... and two. Hull shields to maximum – brace for impact.”

  “Condition red – brace for impact.” Marenna relayed the order to the entire ship as the first missile struck and exploded. The viewscreen dimmed automatically against the brilliant nuclear flash barely six kilometers ahead. The second explosion followed in the next instant. A fourth of the boulder was either vaporized or crushed by the concussion into gravel. The rest split into five sections that were still alarming in their proportions.

  A second later the debris pelted the Challenger’s forward hull. The quartzite shielding held, although the ship shuddered violently. Maeken remained standing through the impact only by holding on to the back of her seat.

  “Shield your engines!” she yelled at Marenna even as the reverberations echoed through the ship’s hull. She was only guessing what the Starwolves would do next, but it was a good guess. Four packs of fighters dived out of the ring in the next instant. Because Maeken had already given the order to shield, they got only six of the fourteen exposed engines.

  “That tears it,” Maeken muttered in disgust as she snatched her pants from Lieutenant Skerri’s grasp. “Keep your eyes open.”

  Skerri did as he was told. As the Captain turned and began to pull on her pants, he did his best to watch closely while pretending to keep his eyes discreetly on the monitor. At forty-five, Maeken Kea was twice his age, on the far side of middle-aged by his own definition. He was all the more surprised to see a trim and shapely fanny.

  “Do you see anything?” she asked.

  “Captain, I...,” Skerri stammered guiltily, then understood what she meant. “All clear for the moment.”

  Maeken paused to glance at him over her shoulder. It did not do for junior officers to have any fascination for their seniors, but she could keep Skerri under control. Besides, he served her best for as long as she was able to keep him impressed, and she had the feeling that she had just impressed him in a way that neither of them had expected. She looked around for her boots and found that they must have been left in her cabin. />
  “Collision imminent!” Marenna warned again.

  Maeken looked up at the viewscreen and saw absolutely nothing. At that instant the Challenger shuddered so violently that she left the deck. She struck the ceiling and was pinned there for a moment, hitting squarely in the middle of her back so hard that her vision dimmed. Then gravity returned and she was dropped sprawling to the deck. Skerri landed nearby and remained motionless. She began to pick herself up, cursing herself for not strapping in after that first attack but glad that she at least had her pants on. A second impact from the opposite direction flattened her to the deck. She was about to ask for a report when she saw Starwolf fighters on the main viewscreen.

  “Do not return fire!” she ordered sharply as she rose to stand uncertainly. “Keep your power in the hull shields.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Maeken straightened her back experimentally, trusting that nothing hurt bad enough to actually be broken. Skerri remained motionless. She considered moving him but knew that she could not. He was a big, healthy boy, while she was technically a tall midget. She appreciated the fact that she was moving while he was not. Well, Mr. Skerri. Not so old after all, are we?

  “Damage report!” She gasped in pain as she lowered herself into her seat.

  “No damage to the ship,” Marenna replied. “I believe that the better part of the crew is slightly incapacitated for the moment, and I will send automated sentries to investigate possible injuries to off-duty personnel.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “There were two additional impacts,” the ship explained. “Small corridors had been opened at right angles to our own. Boulders of approximately two hundred meters were accelerated along these corridors and struck the ship above and below the forward hull, the result of remarkably accurate timing. The impacts rocked the ship violently.”

  A slight understatement, Maeken reflected. She noticed that Lieutenant Skerri was sitting up and rubbing his head. At the moment that seemed to be a favorite activity of the Challenger’s crew.

  “With us again, Mr. Skerri?” she asked.

  “I was never completely gone,” he replied. “Just very close to it.”

  He rose and walked stiffly over to her console. Holding the supports of her seat, he quickly checked the scanner images. Starwolf fighters were swarming over the hull of the ship, skimming the gleaming black surface by as little as two meters. All to absolutely no effect.

  “As long as we keep the guns retracted, they have absolutely no targets,” Maeken explained. “Besides, it might be a trick. I want to keep that power to the hull shields in the event they throw something else at us.”

  “I see what you mean,” Skerri agreed. “Tricky devils. These attacks are getting more sophisticated all the time.”

  Maeken nodded slowly; it was as fast as she could nod. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but I’m beginning to get scared. There seems to be no limit to how much Velmeran can think up and put together. We may reach a point where I will finally make a mistake.”

  Skerri frowned. “It is getting dirty.”

  “I’m glad you recognized something suspicious and got me to the bridge in time,” she said, grinning mischievously. “At least they didn’t catch you with your pants down.”

  Lieutenant Skerri laughed in spite of the pain.

  The seventh and last fighter dropped quickly into the sheltered cove formed by three towering projections in the Challenger’s hull. Watching from his own cockpit, Velmeran identified it as Lenna’s. The little ship extended its landing gear and dropped down until its landing pads locked magnetically against the hull of the Fortress.

  “All down and no problems,” he reported over com. “You can break off the attack.”

  “Right, Captain,” Baressa replied. “All packs break off... “

  Her voice was lost as he disconnected his suit from the fighter’s com link and support system. He was surprised and delighted that the Challenger had held her fire on the way in; that was something he had anticipated but not expected. All he had hoped for was to create a state of complete confusion to hide the landing of the assault team.

  After fully depressurizing the cockpit, he opened the canopy and cautiously climbed out. They had landed on the side of the Challenger and were in fact on a vertical portion of the hull, like spiders walking up the wall. But that hardly mattered, since there was no gravity on the outside of the ship. Electromagnetic inserts in their boots kept them on the surface of the ship, although the hold was feeble through the quartzite shielding.

  The rest had gathered in front of the fighters, staring off across a flat expanse of open hull. Lenna arrived behind him; he could identify her easily by the fact that her armor had only one set of arms. Consherra was even more clearly identified by her white armor, an almost shocking contrast against an angular black landscape populated by black fighters and Starwolves in black armor.

  “Out there?” Tregloran asked uncertainly. “We could waste half an hour looking for that airlock.”

  “You should have looked for it on the way in,” Velmeran told him. “You might have landed on it.”

  He walked out eleven carefully paced steps and stopped at the edge of what now appeared to the others as a pit opening in the smooth surface of the hull. As they drew nearer, they could see that the rectangular depression was no more than ten centimeters deep, the lip designed to receive the hermetic seal of a docking tube. Inside that was the door itself, its two halves firmly sealed. They could also see now how he had found it so easily; the nose of his fighter was pointed directly toward it.

  “So, wizard, you have found the hidden door,” Baress remarked. “Do you know the secret word?”

  “You have access to Velmeran’s library,” Consherra said accusingly. “How did you acquire that privilege? I was his mate for half a year before he opened his shelves to me.”

  “Needless to say, I found an easier method,” Baress said dryly. “I asked. Perhaps you never thought of that.”

  “I lock the doors to keep the books on the shelves,” Velmeran explained, interrupting his silent examination of the airlock. “Not to keep people out. A book serves no function unless it is read.”

  “Well, do you have any magic words?” Consherra asked impatiently.

  “Certainly. Quad erat faciendun, quantum placet. Allegro non troppo!” he declared in a commanding voice, waving all four arms in elaborate gestures. “Open sesame!”

  The doors snapped back instantly, revealing the brightly lit interior of the airlock. A second set of doors at the bottom were securely closed; the Union did not have the containment fields that Starwolves used on their own locks and bays.

  “Quickly, now,” Velmeran warned. “There are sensors on these doors that I am having to hold inactive.”

  “Right,” Lenna agreed. Before anyone could stop her, she reached down to take hold of the edge of the lock and flipped herself inside. Gravity interfered halfway through her free-fall somersault and she fell heavily on her back on a wall that suddenly became a floor.

  “Great stars!” She wheezed, and struggled to pick herself up. “Watch that first step.”

  Velmeran was the first to recover from his surprise. He turned and lowered himself cautiously into the airlock. Kneeling on the floor, he reached up to assist Consherra and Baress. Last of all, Tregloran passed their guns down to them.

  “We have to get through this airlock before I let something slip,” he said. “You remember what I told you. When the time comes, the three of you are to get away from here. If we are not back by then, we will not be coming back. Not to worry, though.”

  “Do I look worried?” Tregloran asked. “You can take on the lot of them, and bring this ship home for salvage. Especially now that you have Lenna to help you.”

  “I cannot tell you how reassuring that is,” Velmeran remarked with droll sarcasm as he allowed the outer door to snap shut. He turned immediately to the control panel by the inner door and ran h
is upper right hand lightly over the surface, not quite touching, as if tracing hidden wiring. He quickly found what he was looking for, or so it seemed. Air began cycling into the lock, and a moment later the inner door snapped open.

  Baress and Lenna were out the door immediately, rifles ready as they scouted the corridor in either direction, while Consherra stood with her rifle trained down the larger hall immediately ahead. Velmeran peered at them curiously.

  “I could have told you nothing was there,” he remarked. He turned to look at the door, and it obediently slid shut. “There. No indication that we ever came through.”

  “First things first,” Lenna remarked as she set down her rifle. Taking her bundle of extra clothes, she headed for the suit room adjacent to the airlock. She immediately began stripping off her armor, hanging it on an empty suit rack in the wall beside the door, where it was less likely to be seen.

  “Remember to avoid the sentries,” Velmeran reminded them, having pulled off his helmet. “What one sees, they all know. It does us no good to destroy one before it has seen you, since its destruction will be noted and investigated. We need to conduct our business undetected, and leave the same way... if we can.”

  “Are those beasties able to identify legitimate crewmembers on sight?” Lenna asked.

  “No. Visual identification is a complex function with a long history of accidents,” Baress told her. “The uniform and the forged magnetic ident you carry will identify you as a legitimate crewmember.”

  “Just turn on the old Kanian charm,” Velmeran added. “That should be enough to baffle even an automaton.”

  He glanced inside the little room to check on her progress, and found that she had just come out of her armor. It was his first sight of a naked human, and he did not care for another. The lack of a second set of arms made her look pitifully deformed.

  “Since you will be on your own, remember to keep track of the time,” he continued. “And give yourself enough time to get out. You have to be back inside your armor before you can leave.”