Battle of the Ring Read online

  Velmeran tried to keep this in mind, for this fight was to the death. Within himself there was a quiet shift of character, the coldly efficient killing machine he was designed to be replacing the true personality that was in itself incapable of violence. It was this duality of instinct that explained the puzzle of Kelvessan behavior, of how the most innocent and harmless of people in known space were also the most deadly warriors.

  The press of saurian forms opened silently before him, forming a narrow corridor through the crowd. An older warrior, his battle harness decorated with at least two score badges of honor, advanced in slow stateliness, his weapon held upright. Behind him walked two more warriors and behind them a group of four. Others followed.

  “A challenge,” Velmeran explained to his companions. “The first challenge is given to the senior warrior. With each challenge, the number of challengers is multiplied by two.”

  “Quaint custom!” Consherra remarked. “What happens when you pass the challenges?”

  “In theory, you do not survive the challenges. Challenge is issued only to a warrior who is hopelessly outnumbered, trapped, or otherwise doomed. They are not offering a chance to survive, just a chance for both sides to face death with all possible honor.”

  “Would it be foolish of me to ask if you have a plan?” she inquired.

  “Yes. At my order, Baress and I will use our guns to hold them back long enough for you to blast a hole through the floor just large enough for us to slip through. If we can escape, the Kalfethki will be so dishonored that they will go back to their cabins and begin the ritual of mass suicide.”

  The crowd had gradually pulled back, allowing ample room for the combatants. The first warrior waited silently as a warrior from the second group came forward to present Velmeran with a pair of swords – a remarkable concession – one for each hand. Velmeran took the weapons, the smallest the Kalfethki could find but still as long as he was tall, and swung them experimentally. He handed one sword to Consherra, then removed his helmet to give himself a clear view.

  Velmeran approached the seasoned warrior, the sword in his upper hands held in the same upright salute. The Kalfethki lowered his sword slightly in a gesture of recognition and dived in, suddenly drawing back for a vicious swing. Velmeran’s major advantage was his speed, and he used it now, striking and pulling back faster than the mortal eye could follow. The Kalfethki paused and toppled backward over his massive tail. The Starwolf had slipped the blade between his ribs, through his heart, and on through his chest to severe his spine.

  For the first time the gathered warriors broke their silence, muttering their surprise and approval before falling silent again. A couple of younger members stepped forward to retrieve the body, and the second set of challengers took his place. They had learned something from the mistake of the first warrior about underestimating the lightning-quick speed of their tiny adversary. Velmeran seemed almost to disappear as they swung their heavy weapons in unison, only to come up beneath their swords and fell them both before they had time to recover. The Kalfethki were impressed, to say the least.

  “Three to nothing, my favor,” Velmeran remarked quietly as he retrieved his second sword. “Stand ready, now. I count five challenges; that means thirty-two in the last. I believe that I can take them all – they are incredibly slow – and a Kalfethki carcass is quite an obstacle in itself. Thirty-two should be an effective barricade. You start to work on the floor at my signal.”

  “Are you sure that you can handle this alone?” she asked.

  “I have to. Besides, this swordplay seems to come quite naturally. I should have been a pirate.”

  “You are a pirate, among other things,” she reminded him.

  “Captain!”

  Maeken Kea and Donalt Trace both looked up and quickly identified the security officer standing beside his station to get their attention. Mystified, they hurried over to him as he returned to his seat.

  “Trouble, Lieutenant?” Trace asked.

  “Trouble, sir,” the junior officer agreed. “The Kalfethki are fighting.”

  “Each other?”

  “Yes, sir. They have someone cornered in a C Chamber on their level. They seem to be engaged in ritual challenge, and he must be holding his own very well.”

  “Seal their section,” Trace ordered sharply.

  “Yes, sir.” The young officer hit a master switch. On the maplike schematic on his monitor, the handful of open doors in the Kalfethki section sealed and locked.

  “Now what?” Maeken Kea demanded impatiently. “We are not very likely to get them back under control once they start fighting. And if they decide to come after us, not even airlock doors will hold them long.”

  “Yes, you are right. The Kalfethki are of no more use to us.” Commander Trace turned abruptly to the security officer. “Vacate the entire sector.”

  Sixteen Kalfethki warriors were advancing to do battle when they stopped short to look around. Velmeran, helmetless, heard it as well. Airlock doors were being slammed shut. He thought that he could guess what it meant, while the Kalfethki knew beyond any doubt. They were about to die, suddenly and without honor, and there was nothing they could do about it. They stood, calm and silent, with their swords held in a final salute as they waited for death to come.

  Their wait was not long. A slight breeze stirred within the chamber, the air whistling softly as it was drawn away. Soon even that quiet, ominous sound faded as the air became too thin. Decompression was usually a violent death, but the Kalfethki were too solid, their armored hides too thick, for them to simply explode. The only apparent damage was that their ears ruptured, leaving thin, red trails from the almost invisible holes in the sides of their heads. But their lungs were ripped apart in the growing vacuum. They began to fall unconscious within seconds.

  Kelvessan were even tougher organisms. Their lungs did share the same vulnerability. However, they possessed by design a secondary valve that closed their trachea as tightly as an airlock. Since it was also an automatic function, Velmeran had no choice but to hold his breath until he was safely inside his helmet.

  “What happened?” Consherra asked as soon as he could hear her.

  “Somebody up there likes me,” he said, indicating the front of the ship. “They obviously thought that the Kalfethki were fighting among themselves.”

  He walked over to the dead warriors and tried to pull one over to the area of the fight. His problem was not one of strength but a serious lack of traction in moving half a ton of inert weight. Baress realized what he intended and hurried to help. Together they pulled one back to the base of the steps and arranged limbs and weapons to suggest that this warrior had been fighting his fellows.

  The three Starwolves made their way through the maze of saurian bodies and ascended to the alcove above the opposite end of the great chamber. Velmeran stopped before the closed airlock and began his remote manipulation of the controls. He had only begun when the doors snapped open unexpectedly, and a blast of air and a Kalfethki exploded outward at him. Although caught off-guard, Velmeran reacted quickly enough to catch the warrior by a massive arm and flip him overhead. The warrior crashed heavily on his back a good four meters away. His ears already bleeding from decompression, he rose shakily and staggered forward in a final charge. He made it only four uncertain steps.

  “Inside!” Velmeran ordered them into the airlock and shut the door, immediately cycling air into the chamber. “Deliberate decompression of an airlock. You can bet that set off alarms all the way to the bridge.”

  “Why did he do it?” Consherra asked, still shaken by it all. “He could have lived.”

  “No, he would have been dead within minutes by his own hand anyway,” he explained, pausing to trigger the outer doors and wave them through. “Honor, you know. But there was some honor to be won in at least trying.”

  Before they could scramble for cover, a lift door only three meters ahead opened suddenly and a sentry stepped out, no doubt on its way to inve
stigate the disturbance. The automaton did not see the Starwolves until it stepped into the hall and turned to face them. Then it found itself eye-to-eye with Velmeran and paused in midstride.

  “You did not see anyone,” he told the machine.

  The sentry made no reply, but neither did it open fire. Velmeran gestured the others past and slipped by the sentry when they were clear. They froze along the wall behind it, but the machine took no notice as it trotted awkwardly down the corridor the way they had come.

  “What do you make of it?” Maeken Kea inquired.

  The security officer shrugged. “I can only guess, but it was no malfunction. A Kalfethki was inside the airlock when they were sealed. Perhaps he tried to open the wrong door. Perhaps he simply wanted to die with his companions. Any survivor would not have been a willing one, knowing that his death was ordered.”

  “Just keep watch until the sentries have a chance to tally the dead,” she told him. “I do not want any of those licentious lizards wandering about the ship. There is no telling what strange ideas some survivor might dream up.”

  Maeken Kea was not particularly pleased with the situation, nor with Donalt Trace. She had not liked the idea of two thousand Kalfethki on board her ship in the first place. She liked even less to have them decompressed at the first provocation, as much as she had to admit to the necessity. Needless to say, she still had no idea that Trace had ordered a nuclear strike on Tryalna; he had contrived to have her off the bridge at that time. As it was, she got along with him as well as she did because she was under the mistaken impression that he did not interfere with her command of the ship.

  “Captain?”

  Maeken looked over and saw that the security officer monitoring and directing the sentries had called her. The officer was one of several Faldennye who made up a third of the Challenger’s crew. Maeken was not adept at reading their expressions, but she had the impression that this young lady had just been profoundly surprised.

  “What is it?”

  “Captain, I... I have just received a communication from a sentry,” she explained hesitantly in her rich, purring voice. “It called in to report that it had just not seen anyone.”

  Maeken reacted to that with predictable mystification. “I take it that there is something unusual in this?”

  “Captain, sentries relay reports only when called for, or when they have something definite to report. They do not make contact spontaneously to report nothing.”

  Maeken nodded in understanding. “I see what you are getting at.”

  “There is also a problem in syntax,” the Feldennye continued. “The sentry said that it had just not seen anyone. As if it had seen something important enough to report, and that it was nothing. Something is wrong.”

  “A malfunction?”

  She nodded in resignation. “That would have to be it, although a remote internal check reveals nothing. I have ordered another sentry to reinforce that one, in the event it is failing.”

  “Where did this occur?”

  “Here, just as it came off the lift.” She indicated the place on the map projected on her monitor.

  Maeken drew back in surprise. “Not fifty meters from an airlock that was decompressed. And it is now standing guard outside that very lock.”

  “It is so,” the Feldennye agreed. “Could the two incidents be related?”

  “If you can figure out how, then you tell me. The airlock only opened on the other side.” Maeken glanced at the ceiling, rubbing an aching neck as she considered the matter. “Keep your eyes open.”

  Maeken saw that Commander Trace had returned and hurried to join him on the central bridge.

  “Did you see Lieutenant Skerri?” She asked.

  “No, he wasn’t there. He must have returned to his cabin. I didn’t think to ask for him.”

  “Captain!”

  She turned in time to see the same Feldennye officer pull off her headphones and throw them down on her console. The entire bridge crew stared in open amazement. Feldennye were extraordinarily calm, eventempered people, and it took a great deal to frustrate them to the point of being upset. Maeken hurried to her station, the Sector Commander close behind.

  “Captain, I was making a complete scan of the location and activity of all the sentries when I found one unit far from its assigned place,” she explained. “It belongs near the middle of the ship, but found it as far forward as it can get. I asked it to explain itself, and it... it told me to shut up and mind my own business.”

  Maeken glanced up at Donalt Trace, but he had missed the previous report and was even more mystified. She turned back to the security officer. “That is no simple malfunction, is it?”

  “No, Captain.”

  “I would guess that either this entire ship is cracking mentally under the stress of battle, or else someone is tampering with our sentries.”

  “That is the only explanation,” the Feldennye agreed.

  Maeken turned to the astonished Sector-Commander. “I have to remain here, so it is up to you. I suggest that you find four or five off-duty crew members and put rifles in their hands, take as many sentries as you can squeeze into a lift, and see if you can intercept them.”

  “Who?” Trace asked, perplexed.

  “You have Starwolves on your ship.”

  “Starwolves? Are you sure?” He almost looked faint.

  Maeken shrugged helplessly. “Not entirely. It might all be coincidence, but I doubt it. The Kalfethki were fighting when you killed them. Were they fighting among themselves, or were they defending your ship? Only a few minutes later an airlock in a decompressed area opened, and a sentry on the other side of that lock spouts nonsense.”

  “But how could they have gotten into the ship undetected?”

  “Simple enough. They must have a device that activates the locks without alerting the master control. It failed once, and we got a light. A similar device stuns sentries.” She looked up at Commander Trace. “Your ship is as good as you meant it to be. They couldn’t hurt it from the outside, so they mean to wreck it from the inside.”

  Donalt Trace shook his head slowly. “Damned Starwolves. But what can they do?”

  “Heaven only knows,” Maeken said. “I will stay on the bridge and call in about fifty sentries to guard the passages in. You organize that hunting party and do your best to intercept them.”

  Velmeran stopped so suddenly that Consherra nearly ran into him from behind. Both she and Baress snapped their rifles to ready and prepared to shoot anything that moved.

  “They know that we are here,” he said at last. “Donalt Trace is coming to look for us.”

  “That hardly makes any difference,” Baress observed. “This is a very big ship, and they have only a general idea of where to look for us.”

  “They know what level we are on,” Velmeran told him. “It might not be long before someone remembers that the auxiliary bridge is on the same level. I have to do something to turn their attention elsewhere.”

  Baress regarded him closely, a wasted gesture, since both of them were in their helmets. “I think I know what you have in mind.”

  “Then you know what you have to do, as well. Sherry, I am going to have to leave you for a while, to lay a false trail to lead Commander Trace away into some other part of the ship. Baress will watch out for you until I come back.”

  “But what about my part?” she asked. “I cannot get into this ship’s computers without your help.”

  “Just call to me when you are ready,” he told her. “I will be listening for you. Do not worry about me. All I intend to do is to make my way toward the main bridge tripping lights and upsetting sentries as I go. I can move faster than they can follow, then catch up with you when you are finished.”

  “You watch out for yourself,” Consherra called after him as he hurried down the corridor the way they had come.

  “Come on,” Baress urged her gently. “He has done this type of work often enough to have learned how to stay out
of trouble. And the sooner we finish our work, the sooner we can all get out of here.”

  Consherra agreed with the logic in that and reluctantly joined him as they hurried on their way.

  Velmeran retreated back up the corridor about a hundred meters, where he had seen an access tube, and quickly descended five levels toward the center of the ship. The plan of the Challenger was as complicated as the map of several cities stacked one on the other, but he had committed the basic mechanical design to selective recall and he knew the trick of navigating the major corridors. Soon after reaching the lower level, he happened upon a sentry unfortunate enough to be facing the wrong direction and quietly slipped a heat charge on its back. That should be enough to shift any pursuit down to this new level.

  After that he dropped two more levels and located a corridor that took him laterally toward the interior of the ship and the mechanical core that ran through the very center of its length.

  All the power lines from the engines and turrets met here, merging with eighty additional generators before being channeled into the field drive and shield generators. Centermost, a hexagonal chamber two hundred meters across and running twenty-five kilometers from one end of the vessel to the other, it was the spine of the ship, a power core capable of containing and channeling the power of a small star.

  Velmeran had to force the access doors to the power core, intentionally allowing an indicator to light on the bridge. He followed the core forward, looking for mischief. Soon the power core began to branch off, feeding field generators clustered on groups of four about the core in chambers large enough to serve as hangers for cargo shuttles. He began ducking into these chambers, setting heat charges on vital control mechanisms. He doubted that he was doing the Fortress any real damage, for there was too much redundancy for that limited damage to have any serious effect. On the other hand, the results of his handiwork should have the bridge in a frenzy.