“We have to work our way around,” Velmeran decided reluctantly.
There was a sudden, unexpected explosion from somewhere around the corner, followed by a steady hail of bolts that gave the Starwolves the distinct impression that the sentries themselves were under attack. When yet another exploded, Baress was overcome with curiosity and cautiously peered around the corner. He drew back instantly, looking decidedly astonished.
“So what is it?” Consherra prompted impatiently.
Baress shook his head slowly. “I still find it hard to believe, but I think the cavalry has arrived to save us.”
Velmeran looked for himself, and was met with the most incredible sight he had ever seen. Bill, the sentry, was running at his best awkward pace along the walkway behind the ambushers. Lenna Makayen was perched on the very top of his back, her rifle in hand, and both of them were firing for all they were worth. The other sentries, mystified at the unexplainable attack of a Union officer and one of their own, did not even fight back as they fell quickly under the assault. They shot their way through the line of attackers and drew to a stop before the three startled Starwolves.
“Hurry up!” Lenna urged. “We’ve cleared the passage, but more are on their way.”
“Lead on, then,” Velmeran answered as they fell in behind Bill’s protective bulk. “How did you know where to find us?”
“Bill did,” she explained. “He’s been listening in as the Challenger has been ordering her sentries about trying to find you. The first ambush is here, and the second is at the far end of the long corridor leading to the outer hull. You need to call Treg and the others and have them catch those sentries from behind. How many are there, Bill?”
“Three,” the machine replied, typically concise. They were about halfway down the tunnel to the outer hull when a short, rapid burst of cannon fire echoed loudly through the length of the passage. No bolts lit up the interior of the long corridor, however, and at its end they found Tregloran standing with his rifle in hand, surrounded by the smoking hulks of three sentries.
Tregloran turned without a word and led the way to the airlock. They stopped at the door and Lenna handed down her rifle before hopping off Bill’s towering back. She headed immediately for the suit room, already stripping off her clothes at a furious pace.
“You people go on and get yourselves out of here,” she ordered, her accent thickening as she tried to sound firm and authoritative. “It’ll take me a couple of minutes to get into this suit. I can’t go outside without it, and I’ll get it on no quicker with you waiting for me. It would be foolish of you to get caught here with me.”
“So who’s arguing with you now?” Velmeran asked, imitating her perfectly. “I have to go. Valthyrra needs me. But you get yourself out of here.”
“I’ll be just fine,” she assured him. “Bill is here to watch out for me.”
“The Challenger has left the ring for open space,” he added. “That might give you a little more time.”
He herded the others into the airlock and indicated for them to put on their helmets. Since he had none of his own, he began taking deep breaths until the air in the lock began to thin. Moments later the lock opened on the blackness of space and not the boulder-strewn surroundings of the ring. Trel and Marlena were there immediately, bending over the opening and reaching down to lift them out. Velmeran went first. Speed was critical for him, since he was now without an air supply and too tired to last for very long without one. He felt the intense cold of open space immediately, cold enough here in the shadows of the ship to have frozen dry ice, and perhaps even nitrogen, temperatures that would begin to affect him within minutes. He hurried to the fighters, the others only a moment behind.
He also could not hear their warnings, because he was completely deaf without the medium of air to carry sounds from the com built into his collar. He was suddenly aware of the presence of a warship immediately behind him, and turned to see a destroyer emerging from a concealed lock perhaps seven kilometers ahead. As soon as it slipped from its rack, it began to drift rapidly toward them as the Challenger continued to accelerate past, skimming the black hull of the larger ship with just meters to spare.
Velmeran stood beside the fighter as he watched. The smaller ship was facing in their direction, and he was able to see the guns open and charged below the extended bridge. Suddenly it stopped, or rather it fired its forward engines to match speed with the Fortress and hover alongside not fifty meters from where they stood. Then the destroyer began to move laterally away from the hull of the larger ship until it was clear to navigate.
As the tension of the moment passed, Velmeran felt himself begin to grow cold and dizzy and broke contact with the hull to pull himself in free-fall into the cockpit of his fighter. Maeken Kea had rescued her crew from the doomed Fortress. If she had seen Velmeran’s party on the hull, then she had returned the favor. Even so, he left one of his own behind. The Methryn was closing, and Lenna had run out of time.
Officers hurried to take their places on the Methryn’s auxiliary bridge, a smaller copy of the one that lay in ruins. Cargin paused on the way to the weapons console to catch a bright orange cord and jerk loose the pin that freed Valthyrra’s camera pod. The boom immediately dropped down to a comfortable level and the twin lenses spun in unison as they focused. She turned to Cargin, who remained waiting.
“I am going to charge to eighty-five percent of overload on the conversion cannon,” she explained quickly. “Back me up on the gauges so that I do not exceed that.”
“Right.”
The Challenger had turned abruptly to head straight out of the ring, running for open space where she could shield effectively. Valthyrra accelerated rapidly, closing quickly on the Fortress after its initial gain on the smaller ship after leaving the ring.
The Challenger was building to speed barely ten thousand kilometers ahead, trying to get up to a speed where even minor shifts in field-drive steering would throw her tremendous bulk into wide, evasive turns, making her a difficult target for the Metryn’s conversion cannon. It might have been that she was trying to survive long enough to get into starflight. But that was a poor defense at best, for the smaller, quicker Starwolf ship could follow her in and shoot out her exposed engines. She had to stay and fight.
The Methryn leaped forward as she unshielded the aperture of her conversion cannon and began charging the powerful weapon. There could be no hiding such a tremendous surge of power. The Challenger scanned it and cut acceleration as she made ready to divert her full power to her shields.
Valthyrra could wait no longer, even though she was still three thousand kilometers short of her target. She aimed herself quickly and fired. The Challenger threw up her shield, full and strong from the first instant, forming a misty white sphere around the ship. Only a fraction of a second later that concentrated blast of raw energy struck squarely in the middle of the shield and parted around it, like a wave breaking over a rock. For three full seconds the Methryn turned the power to destroy a world against that shield, and it was still intact when she found nothing else to throw against it.
For a moment Valthyrra was at a loss to know what to do. She could not fire the conversion cannon again; although undamaged, the thick walls of the containment chamber and the kilometer-long throat of the weapon glowed white-hot. Then the dense shield came down and she saw that the Challenger was already pivoting to face her, and she knew that she had no choice. Even as she closed to attack, she turned sharply to head away at a right angle.
As it turned out, that was perhaps the only thing that saved her. The Challenger altered her path to follow the fleeing carrier, opening fire while her target was still in range. In the next instant she turned into a rapidly expanding nova of blinding light and heat and millions of tons of vaporized metal. The Methryn all but leaped into starflight to stay ahead of the shock wave that put a sizable dent in the ring and for a short time added a white glaze to its normal dirty brown as the haze of trapped ice crystals was vaporized by the stellar heat.
Within minutes the Methryn was setting herself into a wide, slow orbit around the planet well outside the ring. Six of the seven fighters of the special tactics team closed quickly on final approach to her landing bay. Velmeran brought his fighter in quickly, landing in the center of the bay. He leaped out as soon as the canopy was open and ran for the lift that was waiting for him, landing-bay crewmembers moving silently out of his way.
Even though he knew what had happened, he still was not prepared for the destruction he saw on the deserted bridge. Temporary patches had been set in the hull so that the atmosphere could be restored, and all of the loose debris had been cleared away. Most of the bridge showed some damage; both of the stations of the middle bridge were in ruins, while the blasted pit of the upper bridge was lost in darkness. This was the worst shock for Velmeran, even above the sight of the Methryn’s wrecked nose. His earliest cherished memories were of his privileged visits to the place, the Methryn’s heart, when his mother had still been Commander-designate and the best pack leader on the ship.
“Valthyrra?” he called hesitantly.
She brought her camera pod around to look at him, the twisted hinges of her boom creaking. Only one lens focused in on him, the leads of the damaged camera hanging loose.
“I am sorry,” she said softly. “I let you down.”
“No, not you,” he assured her as he walked over to join her. “It was my fault, if anyone’s. My careful plans simply were not good enough.”
Velmeran collapsed wearily into the nearest of the two seats of the navigational console. Valthyrra brought her camera pod in closely to look at him. “There is a matter of truth that I would discuss with you. I suspect that you knew that this fight would cost a life. You meant it to be your own.”
“I wish that it had been,” he said despondently. “I guess I believed that I had made some bargain with fate, that I could trade my own life to protect a world and save my ship. If nothing else, I have been taught that fate is only a word for what will be, and that I cannot bargain with chance. And that, for all my special talents, I cannot see the future, only hints of what might be. I would rather see nothing at all.”
“No, you are wrong,” Valthyrra insisted. “Twice now you have been warned, and twice you have used that warning to shape a future of your own making. But shaping a future and controlling it are two very different things. It is only natural to blame yourself when something goes wrong, but that really does not make it your fault.”
Velmeran said nothing, nor would he even look up at her. Still, she thought that he had listened to her, and that his grief would not turn inward to guilt and self-doubt. “I feel very alone just now,” he said at last.
“I think you know that you are not,” she told him. “You are surrounded by a great many people who love you and think very highly of you. There is a girl down in the landing bay just now who is crying as much for you as for her former Commander. I hope I do not have to tell you how much you mean to me.”
Velmeran sighed heavily with regret at the mention of Consherra. He had not told her and the others, saving that bad news for when they were clear of the Challenger. He had meant to be the one to tell them upon their return, but he had forgotten in his haste to reach the bridge.
He shook his head slowly. “What have I won? Mayelna is gone. My ship is wrecked. I had to leave Lenna in that ship after she came back to help us. Donalt Trace is dead, and even that gives me no satisfaction. I am tired of war and destruction. For once I would like to know that I have done something positive, something of value.”
“But you have,” Valthyrra insisted. “In years to come you will make an end to this war, and free the Kelvessan to seek worlds and lives of their own. Before she died, Mayelna spoke these final words. She said that we must not grieve for her, for her life was long and full and nearly all that she had ever hoped to see had come to pass. She said that I must watch over you, and help you in every way I can to use your special talents to make the best future you can imagine. For no one has ever done a tenth as much to shape a new future for the Kelvessan as you have.”
Velmeran looked up at her suspiciously. “Did she really say all that?”
“Well, no,” the ship admitted reluctantly. “All she said was, ‘Save yourself, you old fool.’ In her own way, that meant very much the same thing.”
Velmeran made an odd noise, and Valthyrra glanced quickly away in the thought that he was going to cry. Then, to her astonishment, she realized that he was laughing softly. She turned to stare at him, and then the humor of that struck her as well.
“Commander?” she said gently.
Velmeran glanced up at her, momentarily shocked to receive that title and its awesome burden of responsibility for the first time. Then he found that, while the title might be new, the mantle of responsibility had a familiar, almost comfortable feel with little power to frighten him. He rose and shrugged the shoulders of his armor into place.
“Progress report.”
“I have already sent the packs to assist the Kalvyn in breaking the invasion force over Tryalna,” Valthyrra reported. “Capture ships and other support vessels are also on their way to assist.”
“Donalt Trace said something about conversion devices in low orbit.”