The Starwolves Read online

  " ...in time to do something about it." She paused and bent over the com unit mounted into the table. "I want all pack leaders in the Council Room in ten minutes."

  "Ah... Commander, we really do not believe that we should leave our packs just now, under the circumstances." A hesitant reply came after a long moment.

  "I do not doubt that you would want to be anywhere but here just now, under the circumstances," Mayelna replied. "But if you do not want to be suspended, then you had better stop questioning orders. I want to see you here in five minutes. Your packs will be just fine without you."

  Velmeran tried not to look startled, but it was the first time that he had heard anyone threatened with suspension. And he could tell that she meant it, if only to prove that she could and would. "Has it really come to that?"

  "We shall see, I suppose," Mayelna replied simply, although she looked troubled. "The crew of this ship is beginning to forget that we are a military force, not a gang of thieves and pirates. And yet this is the type of behavior that I would expect from pirates."

  "Perhaps there have not been enough reminders lately," Valthyrra suggested. "We never attack anything but freighters. Starwolves used to spend more time breaking Union invasions and trade monopolies."

  "That may be changing, if this is any indication," Mayelna said. "Perhaps this was more misunderstanding and circumstance than laziness and insubordination. I hope so, because personnel problems will endanger this ship if the Union is becoming more aggressive. If things do not change quickly, then I am going to inquire about changing out packs with five or six other ships."

  This time Velmeran could not help looking surprised; even Valthyrra's glass eyes seemed to widen. A change-out of five packs meant half the pilots, which meant that she was dissatisfied with nearly the entire group. At least he was safe. No ship would take a pack whose members could put together all their years to make the age of only one experienced pilot.

  "Tresha, is there any reason why we cannot reopen the upper level of each bay?" Mayelna asked.

  "Not that I know of," the engineer answered.

  "Do we have crewmembers for it?"

  "We have an overabundance of crewmembers in too many areas," Valthyrra replied. "By shifting some to new duties, we can easily run the upper decks. When those bays were closed five thousand years ago, I did not have enough crew for it. I kept ten packs in those days simply by using pilots who would be rejected now. Do you know that I once flew with only nine hundred crewmembers?"

  Mayelna glanced up at the camera pod in mild annoyance, and continued. "It might seem superfluous, most of the time. But four functional decks would mean that we could ready and launch twice as many packs at a time."

  "Is the Union really getting more aggressive?" Cargin asked.

  "We lost nearly an entire pack two years ago," Valthyrra replied. "There were three such incidents in the four months prior to that, and eleven since. Twenty-one ships have been lost from our carriers in the last two years. We did not lose that in the quarter century prior to that. This trap was the most that the Union has thrown against a carrier in fifty years."

  "But was it a trap?" Velmeran asked. When he saw that everyone was looking at him, he continued. "An intentional trap, I mean. Their perimeter scanners showed a freighter under attack. The Station Commander sent out half of his fleet, perhaps just in the hope of chasing us off. It might be that they never meant to close for battle, but they underestimated our speed and we were on them before they realized. Then, when he knew that he had a Starwolf stuck inside one of his ships, he sent out the rest to distract us."

  "It has happened before," Valthyrra agreed.

  "That is easier to believe than to think that this was planned," Velmeran insisted. "They could not know that an old fool would try to poke a hole through the hull of a carrier, and this attack makes no sense otherwise."

  "Now that is the other part that I do not understand," Mayelna said as she crossed both sets of arms and leaned back in her chair. "If Keth had time to locate a hatch, then he had time to turn away."

  "On the contrary, I understand it only too well," Valthyrra said. "It was my reason for wanting him retired. Your race, the Kelvessan, was genetically engineered for two main reasons. Hypermetabolism gives you the swift reflexes needed to fly the wolf ships and the strength to withstand accelerations far beyond what your buffer shields can compensate for, far beyond what any true human could endure.

  "Older pilots generally do not fail because they get too slow, but because the elaborate structural supports in their joints and internal organs begin to give out. Keth had been fighting hard for some time, harder than he had fought in years, and I do not doubt that his pain was growing with each turn. Yes, he had time to turn from that carrier. His reflexes were also quick enough to find an alternative to the pain such a turn would have caused. Older pilots do have a tendency to run into their targets."

  She rotated her camera pod around so quickly that the others glanced up as well. Pilots were entering, mostly Velmeran's own pack members, moving almost fearfully to seats in the lower portion of the gallery. Baressa had arrived sometime before and had quietly taken her seat at the table.

  "The question, of course, is what happens now," Mayelna continued. "Keth surely deserves what he might get. But it remains a matter of duty and protection of our reputation to get him back."

  "Keth is my responsibility..." Velmeran began to protest.

  "I would permit it if I could," Valthyrra said, ignoring Mayelna's hostile stare. "But your pack does not have the experience for such a task, and you are shorthanded besides. I have already taken the liberty of locating and contacting a special tactics team."

  Mayelna nodded in silent approval.

  "We will contact Thenderra Delvon in about forty hours for the transfer of the special tactics team," Valthyrra continued. "Another sixty hours will be needed to trace the carrier to its projected destination. We might still be needed for such matters as creating diversions and discouraging pursuit, so I want this ship and all packs battle-ready with time to spare."

  "It is just that simple?" Velmeran asked.

  "Neither the Commander nor myself has any intention of allowing you to go after Keth by yourself," Valthyrra said firmly. "You are perhaps the best pilot we have, but this requires more. You were trained for the packs, and you are very good at what you do. Leave this to those who have been trained for it."

  She paused and looked up. The other eight pack leaders had arrived, waiting fearfully at the outer door.

  They had come as a group, apparently in the mistaken belief that there was safety in numbers. Valthyrra glanced back. "If you will excuse us, the Commander and I have some armored butts to chew. Veyndayk, please continue the salvage operations as quickly as possible."

  Everyone at the table or in the gallery rose to leave. Consherra fell in beside Velmeran, even though she was second in command and might have stayed. Tregloran, with the rest of the pack behind him, waited on the steps, refusing to leave without their pack leader. Velmeran could not guess what was foremost in their thoughts – their concern for their lost member or their astonishment at what they had done.

  "I am sorry, Captain," Tregloran said. "We would have gotten her, if we had not been forced to turn back."

  Velmeran stared at him in surprise. "Treg, was that you flying with Baressa and me?"

  "Of course," the younger pilot answered. "I saw you go after her, and I thought that small help was better than none."

  "Hardly small help," Velmeran said. "Not when we were flying wing to wing in a herd of stingships. You earned your pay today."

  "And a bonus," Consherra added. "Double bonuses, in fact, for your entire pack and Baressa's, while everyone else will get only a stern lecture on tardiness. As for yourself, you are wanted in the left holding bay immediately."

  "Me? What did I do?" Tregloran asked nervously, looking alarmed and surprisingly guilty.

  "You were the one who plugged that f
reighter?" she asked, and he nodded. "Well, she is a real freighter and full of cargo. Since you brought her out of starflight, you get first pick of her goods."

  With a cry of delight, Tregloran tried to force his way through his packmates on the steps ahead of him. When that proved impossible, he was reduced to trying to hurry diem on ahead; Fortunately for his patience, the others were nearly as eager as himself to get to that bay. This was the first big ship that they had brought down by themselves, a minor accomplishment compared to fighting a fleet of Union warships, by themselves and outnumbered. Now they remembered, and wanted to get to the bay to see what they had caught. Velmeran smiled, and decided that he would very much like to go with them.

  "So the students have fought with the big boys now," Consherra remarked as she walked beside him. "Perhaps they are no longer students."

  "They still have much to learn," Velmeran said. "But they are learning."

  "So, I believe, are we all," Consherra added, then looked over at him. "Meran, do not take it so hard. You did what you had to do, and you did it very well. That is real trouble."

  She indicated the council table, where Valthyrra and the Commander were busily bombarding the erring pack leaders with a variety of threats and dire promises. But Velmeran lacked the courage to stay and listen. Despite everyone's assurances, his own conscience was not clear. He had lost a pack member, a life that was his responsibility. Ultimately he had only himself to blame for his failure to solve a problem that he had known existed.

  -4-

  Tregloran's recent run of luck nearly failed him, for the big freighter contained mostly clothes, tons upon tons of clothes being shipped to the port ahead for redistribution to the colonies and fringe worlds. All worthless to Starwolves, who needed an extra set of sleeves. He did find a few things that he took for use by the entire pack, and Veyndayk allowed him a small fortune in jewelry.

  Tregloran might have sold the jewelry in their next port to purchase something he could use, but he decided to put most of it into keeping. Wealth meant little to Starwolves. There were practical limitations to what they could have; whether it would fit into their cabins, or withstand the stresses of shipboard accelerations, or whether it even had any practical use in their lives. Jewelry they used as a type of universal currency, since they could not wear it (gold interfered with their high-speed nervous systems). They certainly were not poor, as Union propaganda tried to make them out to be. Piracy was their weapon against Union trade tyranny. They did not have to depend upon it for a living.

  Velmeran stayed to watch as the captured ships were brought in and stored in the bays. He was interested in them, for he and his students had fought these ships and yet it was the first clear look that he had of them. They had seemed big enough outside, but when four were packed inside one of the Methryn's bays they looked small and pitifully inadequate. After a time the damage, the shot-out turrets and wrecked bridges, began to bother him. Starwolves were well-trained to think of themselves as fighting machines; in the name of duty they seldom considered the consequences of their acts. Looking at these ships up close, however, it was too easy to remember that people had been inside their battered hulls. Not his own kind, perhaps, but even humans were people.

  After a time Velmeran retreated to a forward observation deck. The Methryn had few windows, and none at all in her armored hull sections. She had only two pairs of observation decks, directly over the fighter bays, the forward windows showing the holding bays and the rear windows allowing crewmembers to view incoming fighters, and a fifth platform in her bow directly above her shock bumper.

  The crews were all hard at work securing and cataloging salvage and the pilots were standing by their fighters, with two packs still out. Velmeran was seated alone, except for an automated floor-cleaning machine that sat idle a short distance away.

  "I thought that you might be here," Mayelna said suddenly, and he turned to find her approaching from the entrance to his right.

  "Valthyrra told you I was here," Velmeran said in return.

  Mayelna smiled. "Valthyrra Methryn sees all and knows all... at least everything that passes within her own thick shell. Do you suppose that we tickle her insides?"

  "I imagine that the feeling is one of nausea," he replied glumly, and immediately wished that he had not. It sounded a little poutish, even to him. If he could not even evoke self-pity, then he certainly could expect no sympathy from the Commander.

  Mayelna sat down on the bench beside him. "Why are you still in armor? Meran, what is wrong?"

  Velmeran glanced down, frowning. "Mayelna, what is right? I have done my best to make pilots out of that pack of children, and then I lose my most experienced member. I wonder if there is something more, something that I have yet to learn about leading."

  "Yes, I suppose that there is something you have yet to learn. The knowledge of what you can and cannot do, the confidence to act when you must, and the courage to seek help when you need it." She paused a moment and looked at him. "Your pilots are no longer students, not after today, even if they still have much to learn memselves. And Keth is a problem of his own making. He should have had sense enough to retire, or I should have told him. But not you. There are too many years between the two of you for you to have been able to tell him that, and I doubt that he would have listened."

  "I still feel responsible for him." Mayelna nodded.

  "I know. I would be concerned if you did not. You know, we had thought to give your pack to Keth, after your old pack was nearly destroyed. We knew that he would have to retire very soon, but by then he would have the students half-trained and you would be more ready to become pack leader. But Valthyrra said no. She said that he has no sense of responsibility toward others, that he is too self-centered and showed off more and more as his abilities began to fail. She was right, as always. Keth would have been too busy with himself to have taught those students a fourth of what they have learned from you. And if he had led that pack out today, I do not doubt that he would have lost half of them."

  A short distance away, the cleaning automaton quietly, carefully moved its camera around for a better view of the pair.

  "Our pilots are no better than the people who teach them, and who lead them," Mayelna continued. "And a person who does not really care will never be his best at what he does. After today, I wish that many more of my pilots had your devotion and sense of duty. Perhaps Valthyrra is right. Perhaps we do not fight often enough."

  "Why?" Velmeran asked suddenly, looking up. "Why do we fight? Why should we fight, except to satisfy a need that was probably bred into us anyway?"

  Mayelna frowned. "I do not suppose that you want another history lesson."

  "No, you gave me that fifteen years ago," he answered. "We judge the Union unfit, and we seek to destroy it. Why? Are we the keepers of humanity's conscience, when we are not even human ourselves? Why should we continue to fight when we cannot win. And what would we do if we did win?"

  Mayelna nodded slowly, almost sadly. "Very few of us question the reason for our own existence. Valthyrra considers it an encouraging sign if you do, and I do see the wisdom in that."

  She sat, deep in thought, for so long that the automaton turned its camera slightly to focus in on her, and even Velmeran began to wonder. At last she sighed heavily and shook her head. "I cannot tell you. There is an answer, but you must find it for yourself. Your own reason... not just to fight, but to work toward the day that the fighting may end. My whole life, as pack leader and then Commander, has been to do what I can to shape the future that I would like to see. But I will not live to see the end of this war. For today, I am satisfied to know that matters would be worse without our contribution, that the colonies would all be slave camps for the fat inner worlds." She turned to look at him. "Nor do I believe that you really question the value of what you do. You are too good of a pilot to be filled with doubt, for that doubt would always be holding you back."

  The automaton turned its camera back to
Velmeran and adjusted its focus. He shook his head. "No, I suppose not. But that still does not make it any easier to accept the fact that I have no choice."

  "Do you want to leave this ship?" Mayelna asked so suddenly that both Velmeran and the automaton looked at her in surprise.

  "No," Velmeran said without hesitation. "Flying with the packs means everything to me. I suppose all I really want is the chance to have decided that for myself."

  Mayelna nodded. "Meran, every one of us desires, more than anything else, to fly with the packs. But only one in twenty is good enough. All the rest must serve those fighters and the ship that carries them, and they can only dream of what you have. I flew with the packs for nearly three hundred years and I had to give it up, not because I want to command this ship but because I was needed. You have what you want most. Would you be willing to give it up, even if you were needed somewhere else?"

  Velmeran considered that and shook his head. "No. At least not yet."

  "I know," Mayelna said gently. "I will not tell you to accept what you are and make the most of it. Soon, I hope, you will find that it fulfills your needs as well, and you will be happy."

  "I suppose that you're right," Velmeran agreed. "I am not dissatisfied with what I have, but perhaps with what I am. Sometimes I feel like a machine, genetically programmed to seek and destroy."

  "Valthyrra Methryn is a machine," Mayelna pointed out. "She was built a fighting ship, and that is all she can be. Compared to her, you have all the choices you could want to be whatever you want. But she is happy with what she is, and I could hardly deny that she has both life and free will, as much as anyone."

  "Yes, that is true," Velmeran agreed. The automaton dipped its camera, almost a gesture of relief. Velmeran saw that movement, and looked at the machine in mystification. "I might be mistaken, but it seems to me that cleaning unit is taking an unusual interest in us."

  The unit glanced up with a startled look, only to see Mayelna peering at it intently. The machine executed a quick turn and made a hasty retreat across the observation deck as fast as its padded magnetic tracks would carry it.