Battle of the Ring (34 page)

“It is normally the case that you appoint a Commander-designate
younger than yourself,” he told Baressa privately as the crowd began to
thin. “That is not very practical for me, under the circumstance. And,
since I am keeping my special tactics team, I do need to have a replacement
ready. As far as I am concerned, you are the only choice.”

“For now, perhaps,” Baressa answered. “Treg will never be
your equal, but he is quickly becoming a reasonable facsimile.”

“And I plan to begin his training immediately,” Velmeran agreed.
“But I do have other plans for him.”

She looked at him questioningly. “Other plans?”

Velmeran shrugged. “The Vardon will be coming out of construction
airdock in a few years. I might not have the authority to make such an
appointment....”

“But who would dispute the recommendations of Commander Velmeran of
the Methryn?” Valthyrra inquired.

Velmeran looked annoyed. “You be discreet about how you use my name
– or your own – with your sister ships or home base. Where did
Consherra get to?”

“Oh, Dyenlerra appropriated her and Lenna several minutes ago,”
the ship replied. “She told them to get out of their armor and report for
a medical scan.”

“I think that I should join them,” he decided. “Can you
call me a lift?”

“On the way. I will put away this remote and join you there.”

Velmeran returned to his cabin and removed his armor for the first time in
well over a day. He dressed quickly and hurried to the medical section, where
he found Consherra and Lenna occupying separate diagnostic beds in the same
room. Valthyrra had commandeered another probe and had arrived with Baressa,
Tregloran, and Baress just before him. They stared at him in surprise as he
entered, and he could imagine why. He was now dressed in the white of an
officer, clothes that Valthyrra had hurriedly prepared for him. His thick,
shaggy mane of wood-brown hair tumbled over his shoulders and halfway down his
back, his large eyes glittering behind the fringe of that brown curtain.

Dyenlerra afforded him only the briefest glance before turning back to the
readout for Lenna’s scanner. “You seem to be well, for all I can
tell. These readings mean nothing to me. I am not a veterinarian.”

“Then how do you know that I’m well?” Lenna asked as she
sat up on the edge of the bed.

“Because they are the same readings I got a couple of days ago.”

“I have a very good question to propose, if this is the time,”
Consherra began suddenly.

“This is not the time,” Dyenlerra insisted. “But ask, if
it will shut you up long enough for me to run a scan on you.”

“What happened to the Challenger?” she asked, ignoring the
medic. “My reprogramming was an obvious failure, so what did cause that
ship to explode? I am sure that it blew several seconds after Valthyrra
fired.”

“Oh, that was Lenna’s work,” Velmeran explained, and
continued when he saw five astonished stares. “While you were playing
with her programming, Lenna was running about the ship setting nuclear missiles
to explode. How many did you set?”

“Six in all,” Lenna explained, blushing slightly in
uncharacteristic modesty. “I set them on a ten-second delay after the
ship brought up its full shield. Good thing, too. About the delay, I mean. I
was still inside the shield when the Methryn fired. I guess those warheads
caused a chain reaction through just about every generator on that ship.”

“But the Challenger had already shielded once,” Valthyrra
pointed out.

“Yes, but I had only just started. It was a near thing, too. Half a
minute more and it would have exploded in my face. Scared the... devil out of
me, so it did.”

Consherra was practically speechless. “You mean that I did an hour of
reprogramming for nothing, while Lenna just walked in and destroyed that
monster of a ship with no trouble at all?”

Lenna glanced at her. “No trouble at all, did you say? Remind me to
tell you how much trouble it was to have someone swinging a wrench at my head
on the one hand while a sentry was aiming all its guns at me from
behind.”

“Well, you’re a real Starwolf now, even if you have only two
hands,” Velmeran said. “Which is only one less than I have. That is
what I needed to talk to you about.”

Dyenlerra glanced up from her monitor. “What is it. Did you hurt
yourself?”

Velmeran stepped over to her side and held up his handless lower arm for her
inspection. It was the first time the others had realized that the hand was
actually missing, since he had kept the glove of his suit on earlier. Tregloran
made some exclamation of outrage; Consherra, who was lying on the table next to
him, reacted even more sharply. Ignoring her, the medic pulled back the sleeve
for a closer look.

“How did this happen?” she asked with professional detachment.

“Donalt Trace wanted it,” he explained. “The ship’s
medic took it off with a laser scalpel.”

“He did? What did he want it for?”

“He wanted to make lots of little Starwolves.”

“Rashah ko veernon,
what a horrible thought!” she
remarked softly. “Just imagine Donalt Trace surrounded by half a million
Velmerans. Sounds like something from his own worst dreams.”

“Donalt Trace is dead, and the hand was destroyed,” Velmeran
said. “Can you make me another?”

“I could, but I’m not going to. All Kelvessan can fully
regenerate skin, muscle, teeth, and any organ, but my studies of mutant genetic
structure indicate that you can replace missing limbs as well. This is my first
chance to test this. If it does not work, well... you know that you can always
come to me for a hand.”

Velmeran was spared the need to answer that when the medical scanner beeped
imperiously and Dyenlerra turned to the monitor. She nodded in satisfaction.
“The two of you are perfectly well.”

“I could have told you that,” Consherra remarked, then paused
when she saw that Velmeran was staring at her. He bore a look of deep hurt and
disappointment – even betrayal – that she had not expected.

“It is true,” she said simply, cautiously. “I am sorry,
but I did not know how to tell you.”

“Well, yes,” he stammered uncertainly. “But I had just
thought that when you wanted... that you and I...”

The sudden realization of what worried him was nearly enough to knock her
off the table. “Dearest ass! You are the only mate that I have had in
several years now. How could you possibly imagine that you are not the
father?”

“But we had not planned...”

Dyenlerra laughed aloud. “This is one of the little things that may
happen when two people fool around for fun. Has no one ever explained these
things to you?”

Velmeran was startled by some sudden revelation. “Mayelna started to
have that little talk with me just as I was about to leave. It was not the best
time, and I had no idea what she was talking about.”

“So now you do,” the medic remarked. “And while we are on
the subject, you owe me a duty mating.”

Velmeran began to make some evasive reply, but he was distracted by Lenna as
she leaped from the bed in her excitement. “Hey, I’m a Starwolf
now! How do I get in on this?”

Dyenlerra regarded her tolerantly. “We are not the same species.
Velmeran cannot get you pregnant.”

“Who cares?” Lenna demanded. “I just want to screw
around!”

Consherra regarded her for a moment, then took Velmeran by one hand and led
him off to one side of the room, as private as they were going to get in such
close quarters. “Are you pleased?”

“I could not be happier,” he assured her. “And no
regrets?”

Velmeran frowned. “Only one, and we can do nothing about that.”

Consherra nodded slowly. “She knew. And I believe that she was
pleased. I know that I am. He will be just like you, I am sure.”

“She,” Velmeran corrected her gently.

“She?” Consherra asked, and looked questioningly at Dyenlerra.

The medic shrugged helplessly. “She.”

“Varth!”
Consherra muttered. “I do all the work,
and yet I am the last to know.”

“Is it really so necessary?” Dr. Wriestler asked in feeble
protest in response to the request.

“Yes, it is,” Maeken Kea insisted. “You have saved his
life, but it won’t be worth a damn unless I can save his career. I must
speak with him before we reach port, and he has to remember what I tell him.
You indicated that he is alert enough at this time.”

“Yes, he will understand and remember what you tell him,” the
physician agreed reluctantly. “If you consider it absolutely
necessary...”

“It is so ordered,” Maeken said with enough firmness to make him
understand that she was not offering him a choice. “If you would care to
go up to the galley for something to drink, I will call you when I’m
finished. This will not take long.”

Wriestler recognized the implicit order that he was to make himself scarce
in a hurry and withdrew. Maeken watched until he was gone before entering the
room that he had been guarding bodily. The cabin was small, dominated by a curious
apparatus that was half bed and half low-walled tub, fed by a maze of opaque
plastic tubes connected to a series of machines and tanks. A dark figure lay in
the tub, encased in a cocoon of microscopic tubes that covered the burnt upper
half of the body like a pelt of long white hair. She braced herself and
approached slowly.

She could not imagine how Commander Trace could have survived. Dr. Wriestler
had plucked the bits of metal out of his chest and face and had set him in the
tank to regenerate his burnt skin. Once that was done, teams of specialists
would be able to concentrate on making replacements for his right eye and the
arms that had been quite literally ripped to shreds in the explosion of his
gun. Maeken had not been able to look upon him when the medical automatons had
come to collect him on the Challenger’s auxiliary bridge. At least most
of his body was now mercifully hidden within the machine.

“Commander?” she called softly.

He responded more quickly than she had anticipated, opening his one good eye
to stare up at her.

“My ship?” he asked weakly, his voice a faint, hoarse whisper.

“I lost the Challenger,” she replied simply. “The
Starwolves had her fixed too many ways. Velmeran gave me fifteen minutes to
abandon ship.”

Trace closed his one good eye and nodded weakly. “He fooled us both.
You did what you had to do. How... how did you get me away from him?”

“I recalled something I had heard about Starwolves being
gullible,” she explained. “I told him a sad, sad tale and he bought
it. Of course, neither of us had any idea that you had actually survived. As
far as that goes, he probably still thinks you’re dead.”

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.