Battle of the Ring Read online

  “I am quadrilateral ambidextrous,” Velmeran explained, trying to look more nervous about the prospect than he actually was. “There is, however, an iarbitrary order of importance. I should miss the lower left the least of any.”

  “So be it,” Wriestler agreed. He took the hand in question, twisting the cuff to remove the glove. “Will you require any medical attention?”

  “None at all. There will be no bleeding, since veins and arteries seal automatically, and healing will be complete in a few hours.”

  “If you will allow me, I have my suspicions about Starwolf reflexes,” Trace interrupted. He had Velmeran to sit down on the floor, his wrist extended, then instructed one of the sentries by the door to brace both of its forelegs atop the armored sleeve. Wriestler regarded this procedure questioningly, but wasted no time as he adjusted the setting on the laser scalpel to maximum intensity.

  There was a loud electric snap and the sentry somersaulted to land heavily on its back. Velmeran drew back his arm, swearing in his own language, but the pain faded almost immediately; Kelvessan nervous systems included a feedback mechanism that blocked unnecessary pain. By the time he looked up, Wriestler had already transferred the hand to the suspension box and was setting the controls. Trace was watching the uncertain movements of the sentry, undamaged but unable to raise itself without help.

  “Are you all right, little fellow?” Wriestler inquired professionally, taking the injured wrist to look inside the open sleeve. He looked surprised and approving. “My, it really is healing up in a hurry. You people are remarkable.”

  “Take care of that,” Trace said as the physician quickly packed up his supplies. “That hand means more to the final defeat of the Starwolves than this entire ship.”

  Wriestler made some impatient gesture of assurance as he pushed the cart out the door. Trace frowned, obviously displeased with the physician’s indifference at what was to him a very important occasion. A threatening gesture from the sentries alerted him to the fact that Velmeran had risen and was returning to his stool. His almost festive mood returned instantly.

  “I’m glad that you could give me a hand,” he remarked glibly as he took his own seat, as if he expected Velmeran to appreciate his attempt at humor. He shrugged. “I do hate to see you so dejected, although I can hardly blame you for that. I guess that I was expecting to find the friend I last saw in that cafe in Vannkarn.”

  Velmeran glanced up at him. “What did you expect? This is business, remember?”

  “As you say, this is business,” Trace agreed. “Oh, hating you and plotting dire revenge enlivened those endless weeks while they made and installed new pieces of my back, and those endless months of pain while I learned to use those new parts. But, when it was all over, I realized that I hurt you worse than you had hurt me. Now it seems that I’ve hurt you again, and I honestly regret that.”

  “Why did you not die?” Velmeran muttered.

  Trace laughed ironically. “Pure perversity, I assure you. Listen to me, Starwolf. We both have our duty. You have to destroy my fine, big ship, and I mean to destroy yours. I think that only one of us will succeed, and I do seem to be winning. I thought it was a purely human failing to imagine your enemies as cruel monsters devoted to the service of evil. I assure you that I am an honest man.”

  Velmeran glanced at him sharply. “The honest man who dropped a bomb on a city just to get my attention. It seems to me that you are the very monster you describe.”

  Trace shrugged indifferently. “It is of small consequence. You see, young Richart is a more practical man than Jon ever was. He’s impatient with sending invasion forces to take planets, only to have them freed by Starwolves. He’s instituted a new policy, one that even I find a bit severe. Just now, there are six conversion devices in orbit over Tryalna, four equally spaced in equatorial orbit and two in polar. The explosion would blast away the air, seas, and rip off at least a few kilometers of the surface itself, caught in the center of a concussion like that. The way I see it, the entire population of that world lives on my sufferance now. I simply called a small portion of that debt due.”

  “You are a monster,” the Starwolf said, shaking his head slowly.

  Commander Trace’s calm indifference broke suddenly, turning with frightening speed to self-righteous fury. “Damn it, you four-armed freak, I’m trying to save my race and my civilization. Can’t you see that our only hope is in the firm hand of a strong government to enforce selective sterilization on large segments of a dying population?”

  “No, because that is not your only hope,” Velmeran insisted. “There is a much easier way. In our worlds, the human population has already begun a program of voluntary screening of genetic defects at the time of artificial insemination. No genetic tampering is allowed, just a deletion of the faulty genetic variables so that the sound genetic variables have a better chance. That protects the complete freedom and individuality of the offspring. And it allows the positive aspects of evolution to remain in effect so that the race does not stagnate. In fact, five hundred years should completely eliminate the overload of genetic defects that have accumulated. And potential parents are very eager to make use of genetic screening, when the alternative is a forty percent chance of some mental or physical defect.”

  Donalt Trace sat in silence for a long moment as he considered that. His one virtue was that he was indeed an honest man. But fairness and honesty were by no means the same thing; he knew that he was not always fair, and he was less fair than he believed himself to be. He proved just that.

  “You are right on one thing,” he agreed. “That is a simpler, more effective idea. I’m sure our planners thought of that and rejected it. Your mistake must be in thinking that we are too backward and shortsighted to know better. You and I both know that we intend to eventually breed whole races of workers designed for specific tasks.

  “I know all about this great democracy that your Republic values so highly. Wonderful theory, but it works only on paper. It is a shaky, effectual form of government at best. Man was barely able to govern himself at his height; he certainly cannot now, in the days of his decline. The fact remains that there is an inherent flaw in any system that tries to reciprocate political power back into society at large. Power is used effectively when it is concentrated into the hands of those who have been trained to use it. And do not think that the sector families look upon our civilization as a society of slaves to serve us. We are not the masters. We serve just as anyone else, and we have bred ourselves thousands of years to be what we are.”

  Velmeran sighed at the hopelessness of the situation. “Donalt Trace, I did not come all this way to discuss philosophy with a tyrant. But I will tell you this. I am in control of this situation. I will escape, and I will destroy this ship in the process. And if you want to escape with your own life, you will abandon this ship within the next half hour.”

  Trace only laughed. “You sound so sure of yourself, you almost have me worried. Unfortunately for you, I do know the value of a good bluff.”

  He paused as his communicator beeped imperiously, and held the small device to his ear for private listening.

  “Right away,” he responded tersely before putting away the device. He turned back to his prisoner. “I have to go up to the bridge for a while. I know that you won’t mind me leaving you in such fine company.”

  “Not at all.”

  He turned to the sentries. “If he so much as gets off the stool, you are to shoot to kill. Is that understood?”

  “Understood,” the sentries agreed in a ragged chorus, including the one still lying on the floor. Trace left, locking them inside the room.

  Nearly three-quarters of an hour later, Lenna Makayen was concluding her sixth act of judicious sabotage. She would have liked to have done more, but she was running out of time. Lieutenant Skerri stood well to one side, watching her closely. His obvious concern told her that she must be doing something very right. He had been very reluctant to cooperate, but he
also had shown very little tolerance for the minor beating he had received at her hands. Bill, the sentry, stood at the door leading into the weapons chamber, watching his prisoner while he listened down the hall. His electronic patience was inexhaustible.

  “There’s the last one, all set,” she said to herself with satisfaction.

  “Damn it, don’t you appreciate the seriousness of what you’re doing?” Skerri demanded, resuming their previous argument. “Sabotage of a Union warship is a very serious crime. You would do well to give yourself up now.”

  “I would, now? And why is that?”

  “Because what you’ve done is more than illegal, it’s treasonous!” he declared. “You’re obviously not a Starwolf, but you are in league with them. Your crime is punishable by death. You should surrender yourself immediately and accept your punishment.”

  Lenna set down her socket wrench to stare at him. “That has to be the most damned foolish, illogical argument I’ve ever heard. ‘Give yourself up, and we’ll thank you before we kill you.’ You’re in no position to make threats, boy.”

  She turned back to her work of securing the inner access plates, hurrying now because she was afraid that it might be getting late. She had a long trip back to her fighter yet. She had no desire to be inside this ship when the Methryn attacked, especially after her own tampering.

  “Where are you from?” Skerri asked almost politely.

  “Scotland,” she snapped.

  “Sounds like a frontier planet.”

  “It is. Named after Sir Walter Scott, the first colonist.”

  “How did you happen to fall in with Starwolves?”

  “Answered an advertisement in the paper, just like everyone,” she replied absently.

  “But why?”

  She afforded him another of those impatient stares. “Because I think your Union sucks rotten eggs. At least my new friends don’t pitch nuclear missiles at defenseless planets just to get your attention.”

  Skerri remained silent, lacking a ready answer for that. His arguments were not going very well, so he finally admitted to himself that he was not going to convince this girl to surrender. Instead he now thought it best to allow her to conclude her business so that she would let him go in time to warn the ship about the damage she had done. He really was a trusting soul, and not particularly bright.

  “You will be leaving when you finish here?” he asked guardedly.

  “Of course. And you...” She paused to look at him. “I can’t take you with me, and I certainly can’t just let you go. I really cannot risk your getting free if I left you tied up somewhere, and you’ll be dead soon enough anyway.”

  She looked over at Bill, and Skerri knew that she meant to have the renegade sentry shoot him. Lenna turned back to her work unconcerned, but he watched the motionless sentry. After a moment the machine moved for the first time since they had arrived, turning its head to look out the door.

  “The lift door just opened,” Bill reported. “I also hear a sentry approaching from the other direction.”

  “Check it out, Bill,” Lenna told him. “I can keep an eye on Captain Dauntless. I’ll blow his head off if he makes a sound.”

  Although she had been addressing the sentry, Lieutenant Skerri was quite aware that her final statement had been for his benefit. Nor did he doubt that she meant it, and he had nothing to lose except a couple of minutes off a severely limited life expectancy. As soon as Lenna returned to her work of securing the outer access panel, he launched himself directly at her. She saw him coming at the very last moment and threw herself well to one side, unfortunately in the opposite direction of the gun that she had laid handy on top of the launch tube. Skerri knocked the gun off the top of the tube as he landed against it, and it disappeared into the shadows beyond.

  The two combatants came off the floor at the same time, ready for battle. Lenna had three distinct advantages: she was much stronger, quicker, and Skerri was under the mistaken impression that both of those advantages were his. She was more than a match for him, at least until he snatched up the long-handled socket wrench. That put her on the defensive from the start.

  Skerri advanced menacingly, swinging the wrench in a wide horizontal sweep as if it were a club or battleax. Lenna avoided it easily, but his tactic was simple; each swing drove her half a meter toward the wall at her back. After the second attempt she followed his swings with a quick rabbit punch to the jaw. Skerri endured three of these dizzying punches before changing his tactics, lifting his swing high enough to make her duck. While bent over, she delivered one more vicious punch to his stomach, ducked under his arm, and followed with a joint-snapping two-fisted thump in the middle of his back. The combination so thoroughly knocked the wind out of him that he nearly passed out and was forced to retreat.

  Skerri returned to the battle with a little more respect for his opponent. He held the wrench in one hand, leaving him freer to hit and kick. That helped a bit; he did not score any hits on Lenna, but at least she was scoring fewer hits on him. But Skerri was clearly on the defensive, and Lenna knew that she only had to bide her time until Bill returned.

  After a minute of this a sentry ambled into the chamber and paused just inside the door. Lenna glanced over her shoulder and realized that this was not Bill. There was no heavy rifle strapped over his left shoulder. While Bill had been checking the lift, the second sentry had heard the sounds of the fight and hurried to investigate. She was also trapped with Skerri in front and the hostile sentry behind. Then she realized that it was confused by the sight of two Union officers. Skerri was just as quick to recognize the problem.

  “I am Lieutenant Captain Denas Skerri,” he stated authoritatively. “This is an imposter. Shoot to kill!”

  The machine did not respond immediately; perhaps it was checking his visual identification against the file to confirm his claim. Lenna turned back to him and did her best to kick his balls off, then slipped behind him to put his bent form between herself and the sentry. Skerri recovered with surprising speed, turning to face her. Lenna drew back and launched herself at him, kicking with all her strength into the very center of his chest. Skerri was thrown backward, actually leaving the ground for most of his three-meter flight. He crashed back-first into the front of the sentry’s head, the pencil-thin barrels of its two smaller guns driving ten centimeters into his back. But he was dead already, his chest crushed by her kick.

  Lenna had fallen sprawling to the ground, and she rolled to one side as bolts from the sentry’s larger cannons deflected off the floor where she had been. It shook its head violently to free itself of the burden of the body penned there. Lenna had hoped to slip around behind it, but now she was hopelessly trapped between the two launch tubes. The sentry tracked her darting movements with its head until it had her, and fired.

  The protective flarings on both of the sentry’s forward guns were blocked with thick blood, and the bolts discharged within the focusing lenses before they could cut through those barriers, causing the head of the unfortunate machine to explode. However, as Velmeran had discovered a couple of years before, that was only a minor complication to the normal function of a sentry. The headless machine staggered blindly as it sought its prey by the infrared scanners on its chest.

  Lenna dived over the top of the launch tube, using that for shelter as she searched for her gun. The sentry fired two short bursts over her head as it continued to seek her. Then Bill was there, ramming the stricken sentry from behind to knock it off balance before discharging a round of bolts into its vulnerable lower hull. Lenna waited for the shooting to stop before she peered cautiously over the top of the tube.

  “Thank you, Bill. Nice work,” she said, climbing over the protective barrier. Then she saw the broken body of Lieutenant Skerri where it had been tossed aside. For a moment she allowed herself the privilege of turning pale, just as she had those times in the chilly streets of Kallenes. Half of it was from the sudden awareness that she had killed this man herself, half from t
he realization that it had nearly been herself. For a moment she wanted to sit down and cry, but this was hardly the time or place. You wanted to be a Starwolf, Miss Makayen, and so you are, she reminded herself. This is just the ugly part of the business.

  “They are dead,” Bill said helpfully, no doubt meaning to be reassuring.

  “Sure, and that’s what bothers me about it,” Lenna said. “I’d better seal this up to make sure that it works the way we want, then we’ll be on our way. Think you can get us back to the airlock where we first met?”

  “Yes, that is a simple matter.”

  “Don here,” Commander Trace responded, speaking into his com unit as he sat down wearily on the step. “Is that you, Kea?”

  “Yes, Commander. Fifty minutes from your mark.”

  Donalt Trace sighed and nodded in dismal agreement to no one in particular. “Wait five more minutes and order a general evacuation from the power core. Seal up the core completely, from one end of the ship to the other. We haven’t found the slightest hint of tampering, much less a bomb. No wonder he was so sure of himself.”

  He paused a moment to watch the workers swarming over the surface of the power core, surrounding it in a ring that moved slowly forward. There were fifty live workers and twice as many automatons. In the last three-quarters of an hour they had removed nearly two thousand access panels.

  “Go ahead and bypass the power core for the secondary power grid,” he continued. “That way we won’t be caught by surprise when the core blows. If I guess right, you’ll see the Methryn show her broken nose just about the time the thing goes. Draw her in as close as you can; this time we don’t want her getting away.”

  “Right,” Maeken agreed. “By the way, that stunned sentry just attacked and destroyed another down in the lower decks. I would like to know how the Starwolf did that. Do you have the device?”