Battle of the Ring (19 page)

As if on cue, Valthyrra drifted around the corner at that moment when
her name was mentioned, moving silently up behind Velmeran and Consherra.
Having grown impatient with waiting in Mayelna’s office, she had sent her
probe to investigate. Consherra reached out with one hand to hold her
back.

“I often think of joining you here,” Tryn continued after a
moment. “I always meant to. But then I went up to the bridge to stay, and
there was no longer any question. And yet it was never because I did not love
you enough. I hope you understand that.”

“I understand completely,” she assured him. “The same was
true for me. Anyone else may change from ship to ship but not us. I am needed
here. I could not have loved you more, but not even that was enough to break
the bonds of responsibility that tie me to this ship.”

“And so there was never any hope for us?” Tryn asked.

“No, there never was,” Mayelna said, shaking her head sadly.
“Perhaps it was foolish of us to even allow this to begin.”

Tryn reached out gently, almost cautiously, to take up her hand in his.
Their reunion was one of reconciliation from the start, as if they must first
apologize to each other and themselves for allowing the years to slip away
while they remained apart.

“No, it was never foolish,” he insisted. “I have often
felt frustrated by the circumstances of our union, but I have never regretted
it. My only regret is that I cannot have you with me always.”

Maylena smiled, and it seemed to Velmeran that he had never seen his mother
so happy. They took each other in their arms and kissed their reconciliation
complete. With the shadows of the past laid aside, they could now look to what
was and what may yet be.

“Mayelna, there is one thing that I must know,” Tryn said
gently. “Is Velmeran my son?”

Mayelna stood silent for a long moment staring into his eyes as he held her
tightly into his arms. Velmeran took a few hesitant steps in their
direction, waiting for her reply. Consherra and Valthyrra remained where they
were, forgotten for the moment, as they watched expectantly.

“Do you even need to ask?” Mayelna answered evasively.
“Looking at the two of you together, can there be any doubt?”

“No, Mayelna. I want to hear you say it,” Tryn insisted.
“You would never tell me before, and I have never pressed you. I cannot
imagine that you would not want to admit that Velmeran is my son. Is there
some reason that he should not know that I am his father?”

“No, of course not,” she said, turning away. “Is it really
that important to you?”

“Yes, it is. I will not be parted from you again without hearing
you say it. Please, tell me.”

She turned to him slowly, seeing the desire and need to know reflected in
his eyes. Then she saw Velmeran, waiting quietly a few steps away, silently
begging her to say it was true. Tears came suddenly to her eyes, and yet she
smiled warmly. “Of course he is.”

For a moment Tryn and Velmeran stared at each other. Then Tryn turned to his
son, smiling in warmth and reassurance as he held out a hand invitingly, and
Velmeran hurried to join them. The three embraced quickly, in silence, then
walked together down the empty hall to Mayelna’s cabin. Valthyrra,
staring intently at the small group, began to drift after them. Consherra
caught her by the base of the probe’s long neck and hauled her back.

“Not this time,” she hissed. “For once keep your nose out
of it.”

“But she does not know that for a fact,” Valthyrra protested,
turning her camera pod to look up at her captor.

“What does it matter?” Consherra demanded quietly. “They
have what they believe, and what they want to believe. And that is all the
truth they need.”

Valthyrra considered that, and her camera pod nodded in silent
agreement as she turned for a final glimpse of the three. She wished them all
the happiness they might find.

The transfer of crewmembers between the Methryn and the Kalvyn proceeded
quickly and was completed in only two hours. Valthyrra shed all the weight she
had to spare, such as over a hundred tons of refined ores and other raw
materials in her holds. For the same reason, she did not send out her distillation
ship to collect pieces of drifting ice to replenish the supply of water
she carried as fuel. Her tanks were only a quarter full, but she considered
that more than adequate. Converted to pure energy, a little water actually went
a very long way, even when feeding a carrier’s big engines.

Velmeran hoped to buy himself an extra hour or two by having the
Methryn move forward in steps, edging cautiously into system and then pausing
for final preparations. An important question in his mind was whether or not
Trace knew that sequential firing of conversion cannons would destroy his
ship. If so, he knew that he had to fight and defeat the Methryn before more
carriers showed up. The other question was why he had not used the same tactic
to force the Kalvyn back into battle and destroy her while he had the chance,
before the Methryn had time to arrive.

And so the Methryn began her leisurely run into system. There were twenty
packs, nearly two hundred fighters, standing free on her decks in the landing
and storage bays as large accessory cannons were being mounted to the
undersides of their hulls. Other work was progressing as well, including the
erection of a slender tripod on wandlike legs a hundred meters above her
upper hull.

The Methryn’s bridge, as large as it was, needed to be twice as big to
accommodate all the people who had business there. So it seemed to Mayelna, who
seemed to have some trouble trying to follow six other conversations at the
same time. At that moment Velmeran marched onto the bridge from the right lift
corridor. He had been from the bridge to various parts of the ship and back
again so many times that on his last visit, hardly ten minutes earlier,
Valthyrra had teased him for simply riding the lift for fun.

“Is everything ready?” he asked as he approached Mayelna and
Valthyrra, waiting at the base of the steps leading to the middle bridge.

“It will be,” Valthyrra answered simply.

“The tower will be ready ahead of schedule,” Mayelna added.
“The construction crew reports that they will be finished and back inside
by the end of the hour. Which is good, since we need to have them in well
before we come deep enough into system for any activity to be scanned on our
outer hull.”

Valthyrra made some curious, noncommittal sound. She approved of
Velmeran’s plan completely. The tower was constructed of slender
aluminum rods, light enough to escape detection by Union scanners even at close
range. Valthyrra did not object to the tripod, but what went atop it.

“Speaking of scanning, Don has to know that we are moving into system
by now,” Velmeran said. “And he also has to know that we are
stalling for time. Has he given any indication of a threatening gesture to
hurry us on?”

“No, not yet,” Valthyrra answered. “But then, we have been
under way only the last three minutes. I will be keeping a very close
watch.”

Velmeran paused for a long moment, so obviously in the grips of a new idea
that the others waited patiently for him to finish. Whatever it was, he did not
need long to decide.

“Call me a lift, Valthyrra,” he said as he turned and hurried
away. “I have to talk to someone.”

“And they are off!” Valthyrra remarked softly. “It is
Mayelna’s Folly ahead by a length, followed by Out of Time, with Lost
Patience a close third.”

“Do you ever stop?” Mayelna asked as she started up the steps to
her own station.

“Never. Keth is calling for you.”

“Very well.” Mayelna sat down heavily and rolled the seat to its
forward position, then leaned over the intership com. “Yes, what is it,
Keth?”

“Commander, I wish to report that I have discovered an intruder.”

Mayelna looked up at Valthyrra, who only stared back in return. She turned
back to the com. “I understand. Send her up to the bridge.”

“Should I provide escort?”

“No, she knows the way.”

“But what if she escapes?”

Mayelna frowned. “I should be so lucky.”

The unexpected but relatively minor problem of the intruder was forgotten
within minutes. The Kalvyn was now ready to move herself into position, where
she would be ready either to assist the Methryn or, according to plan, move in
to stand watch over Tryalna. She would have liked to have consulted with
Vel-meran a final time, but he had not yet returned. Mayelna and Valthyrra did
their best to advise her.

“As I see it, you should go ahead as planned,” Mayelna said,
watching the scanner images on the main console at her own station.
“Velmeran is certainly busy over here, but as far as I can tell he has no
intention of changing his original plan.”

“Very well, then,” Schayressa replied. “I will pace myself
with your attack so that I do not get ahead of you. Be careful.”

“We will keep that forever in mind,” Mayelna assured her, and
glanced up at the figure in black armor waiting patiently at the top of the
steps.

“Yes, what is it?” she asked absently. The Starwolf was no one
she recognized, but she assumed this tall girl to be a pack leader from the
Kalvyn. Then she did a double take and nearly jumped out of her seat.
“Heavenly days! Lenna Makayen!”

Valthyrra spun her camera pod around so fast that something inside the hinge
made an odd noise.

“Just me,” Lenna said, grinning sheepishly. She carried the
heavy armor with no problem, in spite of the fact that it weighed fully as much
as she did. “You are the trusting sort.”

“I knew you would come,” Mayelna told her. “My problem is
not keeping you, but getting rid of you. I must compliment you on your
disguise.”

“I’m back in makeup,” she said, obviously pleased with herself.
“All I have to do, it seems, is make my eyes look bigger. And hide my
ears. All the Starwolves on this ship have pointed ears poking through their
hair, but no one seems to notice that I have none.”

“I see what you mean,” Mayelna observed. “Then what gave
you away this time?”

Lenna shrugged helplessly. “I just overlooked the fact that when you
walk around a Starwolf ship looking like a Starwolf, the other Starwolves
expect you to speak Starwolf.”

“Tresdyland,” Mayelna corrected her.

“Anyway, I thought it safe enough to go down and use the simulator. I
never thought that Keth would still be lurking about. I expected him to have
gone to the Kalvyn with his students like he was supposed to.”

“Yes, some people do that,” the commander remarked dryly.
“Where did you get that suit?”

“Oh, it’s Velmeran’s, to be sure.” Lenna beat her
head for-ward to look at the armor. “He’s the tallest Starwolf on
this ship, so I thought his suit might fit me. And I knew that he had an old
suit standing on a rack in his cabin.”

“And the lower arms?”

“Empty, of course. So what do you propose to do with me? If it’s
all the same to you, I would as well remain in the simulator. It is in a
heavily protected part of the ship. And the artificial gravity simulates the
G’s in a fighter, so that I’m increasing my tolerance for
accelerations. I can hold the controls through a fifty-G turn now. You show me
an ordinary human who can do that.”

Mayelna regarded her speculatively. “Just what is your fascination
for the simulator?”

“It’s not a matter of fascination, Commander. Velmeran and I
both know what he’s going to have to do to destroy that big ship, and
he’s going to need my help. I’ll need to be good enough to fly with
him, and I haven’t so long to practice.”

Mayelna frowned thoughtfully. “I think I know what you have in mind,
and you may be right. Very well, then. Lenna Makayen, you are now a Starwolf.
Valthyrra, how long will it take to make her a suit?”

“The better part of a day,” the ship replied. “For now, it
would take only fifteen minutes to pull the lower arms off that suit and set
some plugs in the holes.”

“All right,” Mayelna agreed, and turned back to Lenna.
“You are now a pilot on board this ship. It is impossible for you to fly
with the regular packs, but I am assigning you to Velmeran’s special
tactics team. First, you will go immediately to have that suit modified. Keth
will meet you there, and take you to the fighter assigned to you. That will
give you perhaps two hours of practice in a real ship, with emphasis on
launching and landing. Is that agreeable?”

“Very,” Lenna replied, trying vainly to hide a triumphant smile.

“This solves a couple of problems,” Mayelna continued. “It
is not safe to send you away... safe for either you or us. If the Union learned
that you had been aboard a Starwolf carrier, they would take you apart for any
information you might have. Also, I suspect that Velmeran’s special
tactics team will prosper from having a human spy. And to keep you busy between
missions, I am also going to assign you to Consherra as an assistant helm. Now,
is there anything special you might need?”

Lenna thought for a moment. “For now, I will probably need a Union
officer’s uniform of intermediate rank. I will certainly need other
disguises in the future, including a suit with four arms for when I need to be
a real Starwolf. Could we possibly mechanize the lower arms?”

“It can be done,” Valthyrra agreed.

“Consherra told me that you are an experienced pilot,” Mayelna
said. “We will be giving you a cabin on the pilot’s level, and do
what we can about giving you a little more heat. And just what do you find so
amusing?”

“It’s my father, Commander,” Lenna explained, grinning
broadly. “He didn’t even want me to be a Trader. If he was still
around, he would blow a gasket if he knew that I was a Starwolf. But I
wonder if Velmeran is going to be agreeable to all these plans.”

“He anticipated this, and it was his idea. He had already discussed it
with me,” Mayelna said with a sly grin. “Get on with you, now. We
have work to do, and so do you.”