She paused a moment, leaning even closer. “Listen carefully, now. The High Council might be ready and willing to descend upon you like scavengers for losing that very expensive ship, but we can still turn this into a victory. We lost the Challenger, but the experiment was a success. The Starwolves could not destroy a Fortress from the outside, and we sure as hell won’t give them a second chance to destroy one from within.”
“Very encouraging,” Trace remarked. “What about…”
“Wriestler brought it,” she assured him. “Now this is the plan, at least as we will present it. We continue to build Fortresses but hold them back, adding to the fleet and using the ships only to defend the inner worlds. We build our own big, fast carriers full of quick little fighters. And in about twenty years we will have thousands of our own Starwolves grown up and ready to fight.”
Donalt Trace sighed heavily. “Twenty years. At this rate, I should last so long.”
“For now you stay well away from Starwolves,” Maeken said firmly. “You have no good sense where Velmeran is concerned. Twenty years, and you can retire successfully. You let me do the talking, and I’ll start talking as fast as I can as soon as we reach port. You rest now. We’ll talk again as soon as you’re up to it.”
“Do the best you can,” he answered weakly.
Maeken withdrew quietly and hurried to the galley. After the spaciousness of the Challenger, the compactness of the destroyer was confining. There were no lifts, but the galley was less than half a minute’s walk from the cramped sick bay. She found Wriestler seated at a small table, leaning over the hot drink he had ordered.
“Finished,” she said as she took the opposite seat. “Shouldn’t you hurry back?”
Wriestler shrugged. “He’s in no danger now that he’s on the machine.”
“Then why were you so reluctant to let me speak with him?”
“Just being the proper doctor,” he said. “A large part of your internship is just learning to be a self-important ass. They teach the same thing to officers, although you seem to have missed the point.”
“It never did anyone any good, as far as I can tell. But there is one extraordinarily tall ass that needs to be back to work as soon as possible.”
“Half a year at most,” Wriestler said, and smiled at her reaction of surprise. “Yes, it took him the better part of two years to recover from that last one. But, in a strange way, he’s not in nearly as bad a shape. The machine will have new skin on him in two weeks. The eye should be no problem, and we can fit him with a pair of mechanical arms as soon as a pair his size can be made.”
“Mechanical?” Maeken asked.
“He asked for it and, under the circumstances, it’s the best way to go. There’s a limit to how many regenerated parts you can stick in a person, and he’s pushing the limit right now. I once had a young officer who was half a year from receiving two legs, half an arm, and a rebuilt face. Halfway to nowhere he began to reject his new skin, and nothing would stop it. He screamed every waking minute… which I kept to a minimum.”
“In pain?” Maeken asked cautiously.
“In terror. I could block the pain.”
The Methryn remained with the Kalvyn over Tryalna for another day and a half until the Karvand arrived and the freighter Lesdryn had slipped unobserved into the fringes of the system. The Starwolves could not keep a ship in this system for very long, since the twenty remaining carriers had to adjust their patrols to allow for the two damaged vessels. The Lesdryn would be back in a couple of weeks, her caverous holds filled with rebuilt destroyers and battleships to replace the system fleet.
Daelyn was understandably shocked and saddened to hear that her mother was dead, although the rare opportunity to visit with both her father and brother distracted her from her grief and she went away with more good than bitter memories. Both she and Commander Schayranna thoroughly approved of the new Commander, but the strange girl with two arms who sat familiarizing herself with the helm controls on the auxiliary bridge took a little getting used to.
Lenna was at the controls when the Methryn, the Kalvyn, and the Lesdryn left orbit, an occurrence that took more than just a little getting used to for the ship, the regular helm, and the new Commander. The auxiliary bridge had no commander’s console, which gave Velmeran the excuse to loiter about and watch her every move. Since it was Consherra’s responsibility to teach her young assistant, she also made it her business to watch over the girl. And since Valthyrra’s camera pod was mounted overhead, she had the best view of all. Besides that, she had the reassurance of having an override on every control.
Once she got the Methryn out of orbit and accelerating to starflight along the proper flight path, however, they began to relax. Lenna had grown up with the desire to be the helm on a starship, and now she had her hands on a bigger, faster ship than any Trader had ever hoped for.
This scene was repeated several days later as the three Starwolf ships decelerated in their approach on the planet Alkayja. They moved out of starflight together, the Methryn and the Kalvyn flying side by side with barely their own length between them while the freighter Lesdryn followed at about three times that distance.
Everyone on the bridge watched the viewscreen expectantly for their first glimpse of Alkayja and its immense orbital base. For many, like Velmeran and Consherra, this was the first time that the Methryn had been in port in their lifetimes. Valthyrra’s earliest memories were of this place. Her first run under her own power had been in this space, executing experimental trajectories around the four smaller and three larger planets. And yet even she had spent less than a score of years out of her eighteen centuries here, most of that time in refitting. Carriers never returned home except at need.
“Alkayja control, this is Methryn accompanied by Kalvyn and Lesdryn,” Lenna hailed at Valthyrra’s direction. “We are closing at twenty-two point eight million kilometers and anticipate Alkayja orbit in just over four minutes.”
“Affirmative, Methryn,” the reply came immediately. “We have your course projections and clear you to proceed as you are. Do you require assistance?”
“Negative, control. All systems are secure. We anticipate normal approach and docking.”
“We understand, Methryn. Table for three, right this way please. You are to take refitting bay one. The Kalvyn is directed to refitting bay two. The Lesdryn is to take berth five. Do you comply?”
All three ships responded, and Lenna continued the approach. She would not attempt to slip the Methryn into airdock; even Consherra would have hesitated to try that, although she could have. At least having Lenna to watch the helm freed Consherra to attend her own duties as second in command; Veimeran was beginning to appreciate just how much she did to keep this ship running. She spent an average of twenty hours a day to her work, spending at least half that time visiting various sections of the ship. Not only did she keep track of the physical condition of the ship itself, she also knew every member of the ship by name and kept track of their affairs.
Braking hard, the Methryn was upon Alkayja within minutes, dominating the left half of the viewscreen. Lenna brought the ship completely around the sunlit side of the planet, holding the tight curve by force at several times the required velocity of that low orbit. As they neared darkness, the station appeared over the black horizon.
Alkayja station was not the largest that Velmeran had seen, smaller in fact than the Rane Military Complex above Varmkarn, the difference being that this was a compact structure. The main body, twenty-five kilometers across, consisted of a thick ring studded by the large rectangular modules that were the carrier bays. Twenty-two were docking bays, their wide, low openings enclosed only by containment fields, while the two construction bays and four refitting bays had actual doors. Above this was a thinner ring with bays for ordinary freighters and regular military forces. The thick inner hub of the station, completely filling the rings, contained the city itself and an industrial complex. The hub tapered quickly to blunt ends above and below, housing generators and clusters of large engines. Home Base was a mobile station, although it had not left orbit after arriving from Terra fifty thousand years before.
Valthyrra resumed direct control as the three ships closed on the station, each one moving toward its individual bay. She edged her shock bumper into the bracket designed to receive it, the meters-thick shock pistons attached to the frame of the station and those within her nose catching her tremendous mass and bringing it to a gentle stop. The pistons relaxed, pushing her into the parked position as two additional sets of brackets moved in from either side to lock into catches within the hull grooves at the tips of her blunt wings. Docking tubes telescoped out from the forward wall to fasten against her major airlocks.
With docking complete, the Methryn began the process of shutting herself down for the first time in a hundred years. Some basic systems had to remain in operation, such as internal gravity and atmosphere, as well as all of Valthyrra’s essential computer systems. But she did shut down her generators to shift over to station power. This was the only painful part of the process, although strictly from a moral and philosophical point of view.
“All secure,” Valthyrra reported.
“That’s it?” Lenna asked, still at her station. “So what do you do now?”
“Do?” the ship asked. “You leave. You do whatever you can find to keep yourself amused and out of trouble.”
“No, I mean, what do we do?” the girl protested. “Where do we go?”
She looked at Velmeran, but he only shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“Aval den tras etrenon!” Valthyrra exclaimed. “You still live here, in your own cabins. The pilots are still answerable to their pack leaders — that includes you, two arms — and they are expected to practice. And the other crewmembers have their regular duties to perform This is not indefinite port leave.”
That had not been directed solely at Lenna, and the young Starwolves who had not been through this before were relieved to hear it. They had somehow been under the collective impression that repairs and refitting meant that a carrier and her crew of Starwolves became a damaged machine and a couple of thousand unemployed Kelvessan.
“However, you have all earned a vacation,” Valthyrra continued. “This is your first port leave, so you should have one of your new friends show you how to sell your trade goods.”
“Trade goods?” Lenna asked, confused.
“Yes. We support ourselves with acts of piracy, and our crewmembers are paid with various items taken from the capture cargo. Did Dyenlayk not pay you for your good work on the Challenger?”
“Pay me?” Lenna asked, mystified. Then realization hit like an exploding star. “Oh, so that was why he gave me a silver tea service!”
Valthyrra stared. “What did you think you were supposed to do with it?”
“Hell, I was going to give a party!”
Valthyrra’s camera pod shot up in surprise, then spun around in a complete circle and beat itself three times against the ceiling. Once that was out of her system, she brought it back to where Velmeran was standing. “Fleet Commander Laroose is on his way to the bridge.”
“Fleet Commander?” Velmeran asked in obvious confusion.
“Yes, the Fleet Commander,” the ship insisted. “Your superior. The guy who gives you your orders.”
“My orders?” he asked, even more confused. “No one gives me orders.”