-14-

Maeken Kea reviewed the scan data for the third time. Readings inside this highly charged nightmare were suspect to begin with. And it certainly seemed too good to be true, which meant to her that it probably was. She did not believe in luck. But the evidence remained, and she did not believe that static distortion could have altered the scanner reading so completely.

“It must be so,” she agreed, although her reluctance was plain. “They are towing the Methryn.”

“If the scan of energy emissions is at all accurate, that is the only explanation,” Trace insisted.

“What convinces me is this additional evidence. Look at their orbital projections.” She called up the data and a diagram on her monitor. ‘Their orbit is a slow spiral inward toward the planet, taking advantage of gravity to help maintain their speed. They’re doing everything they can to keep that ship moving. The question is, did they break down or shut down?”

“Care to make an educated guess?”

Maeken shrugged. “It hardly matters either way. The important thing is that the Methryn is no longer moving under her own power. If we are going to catch her, it is going to be now.”

 

The corridor opened onto a chamber of some size, which in turn served only as a balcony for a greater chamber beyond. Although it shared the same high ceiling, they could see that it dropped down at least one full level and appeared to be about forty meters wide by at least a hundred long. The three Starwolves could see little of the floor below, although they could make out a similar balcony on the far side and an entrance where the main corridor on this level picked up again.

“Security region,” Velmeran remarked as they paused at the doorway. “We are on the far edge of the Kalfethki quarters.”

“How do you know that?” Consherra asked.

“Airlock,” he explained, pointing to the double doors immediately behind them. “We were supposed to be a level above this.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“I prefer to meet them here,” he said as he began to ready his weapons. Baress did the same, although Consherra was too surprised to do anything but stare in disbelief. He indicated for her to set the controls on her rifle. “Single shot, full power will be most effective. At least we have two chances to salvage this mission. The Kalfethki will not call up to the bridge until they have defeated us. Also, their weapons are kept under lock, so that all they will have to fight us will be their ceremonial swords.”

“Why do we have to fight them in the first place?” Consherra demanded.

“They already have us cut off.”

Velmeran advanced cautiously to one of the two sets of stairs leading down from each corner of the alcove. Towering Kalfethki warriors. began streaming into the larger room below, stalking along in their awkward saurian gait with surprising speed. A smaller army was loping along the main corridor behind them, cutting off any retreat. All were armed with long, curved swords, with heavy blades two meters or more in length and quite capable of cutting a Starwolf in half, armor and all.

The three Kelvessan took up a defensive position on the steps, Velmeran at the bottom and Baress guarding the top. The Kalfethki continued to come, first by the dozens and then by the hundreds, until they filled the main chamber and overflowed into the alcoves. Velmeran knew their thoughts, and he could sense their eagerness and complete lack of fear. They had no concern for wars, for defending this ship or serving their temporary masters. They wanted either the honor of the kill or their own death, with a slight preference for the former.

Velmeran tried to keep this in mind, for this fight was to the death. Within himself there was a quiet shift of character, the coldly efficient killing machine he was designed to be replacing the true personality that was in itself incapable of violence. It was this duality of instinct that explained the puzzle of Kelvessan behavior, of how the most innocent and harmless of people in known space were also the most deadly warriors.

The press of saurian forms opened silently before him, forming a narrow corridor through the crowd. An older warrior, his battle harness decorated with at least two score badges of honor, advanced in slow stateliness, his weapon held upright. Behind him walked two more warriors and behind them a group of four. Others followed.

“A challenge,” Velmeran explained to his companions. “The first challenge is given to the senior warrior. With each challenge, the number of challengers is multiplied by two.”

“Quaint custom!” Consherra remarked. “What happens when you pass the challenges?”

“In theory, you do not survive the challenges. Challenge is issued only to a warrior who is hopelessly outnumbered, trapped, or otherwise doomed. They are not offering a chance to survive, just a chance for both sides to face death with all possible honor.”

“Would it be foolish of me to ask if you have a plan?” she inquired.

“Yes. At my order, Baress and I will use our guns to hold them back long enough for you to blast a hole through the floor just large enough for us to slip through. If we can escape, the Kalfethki will be so dishonored that they will go back to their cabins and begin the ritual of mass suicide.”

The crowd had gradually pulled back, allowing ample room for the combatants. The first warrior waited silently as a warrior from the second group came forward to present Velmeran with a pair of swords – a remarkable concession – one for each hand. Velmeran took the weapons, the smallest the Kalfethki could find but still as long as he was tall, and swung them experimentally. He handed one sword to Consherra, then removed his helmet to give himself a clear view.

Velmeran approached the seasoned warrior, the sword in his upper hands held in the same upright salute. The Kalfethki lowered his sword slightly in a gesture of recognition and dived in, suddenly drawing back for a vicious swing. Velmeran’s major advantage was his speed, and he used it now, striking and pulling back faster than the mortal eye could follow. The Kalfethki paused and toppled backward over his massive tail. The Starwolf had slipped the blade between his ribs, through his heart, and on through his chest to severe his spine.

For the first time the gathered warriors broke their silence, muttering their surprise and approval before falling silent again. A couple of younger members stepped forward to retrieve the body, and the second set of challengers took his place. They had learned something from the mistake of the first warrior about underestimating the lightning-quick speed of their tiny adversary. Velmeran seemed almost to disappear as they swung their heavy weapons in unison, only to come up beneath their swords and fell them both before they had time to recover. The Kalfethki were impressed, to say the least.

“Three to nothing, my favor,” Velmeran remarked quietly as he retrieved his second sword. “Stand ready, now. I count five challenges; that means thirty-two in the last. I believe that I can take them all – they are incredibly slow – and a Kalfethki carcass is quite an obstacle in itself. Thirty-two should be an effective barricade. You start to work on the floor at my signal.”

“Are you sure that you can handle this alone?” she asked.

“I have to. Besides, this swordplay seems to come quite naturally. I should have been a pirate.”

“You are a pirate, among other things,” she reminded him.

 

“Captain!”

Maeken Kea and Donalt Trace both looked up and quickly identified the security officer standing beside his station to get their attention. Mystified, they hurried over to him as he returned to his seat.

“Trouble, Lieutenant?” Trace asked.

“Trouble, sir,” the junior officer agreed. “The Kalfethki are fighting.”

“Each other?”

“Yes, sir. They have someone cornered in a C Chamber on their level. They seem to be engaged in ritual challenge, and he must be holding his own very well.”

“Seal their section,” Trace ordered sharply.

“Yes, sir.” The young officer hit a master switch. On the maplike schematic on his monitor, the handful of open doors in the Kalfethki section sealed and locked.

“Now what?” Maeken Kea demanded impatiently. “We are not very likely to get them back under control once they start fighting. And if they decide to come after us, not even airlock doors will hold them long.”

“Yes, you are right. The Kalfethki are of no more use to us.” Commander Trace turned abruptly to the security officer. “Vacate the entire sector.”

 

Sixteen Kalfethki warriors were advancing to do battle when they stopped short to look around. Velmeran, helmetless, heard it as well. Airlock doors were being slammed shut. He thought that he could guess what it meant, while the Kalfethki knew beyond any doubt. They were about to die, suddenly and without honor, and there was nothing they could do about it. They stood, calm and silent, with their swords held in a final salute as they waited for death to come.

Their wait was not long. A slight breeze stirred within the chamber, the air whistling softly as it was drawn away. Soon even that quiet, ominous sound faded as the air became too thin. Decompression was usually a violent death, but the Kalfethki were too solid, their armored hides too thick, for them to simply explode. The only apparent damage was that their ears ruptured, leaving thin, red trails from the almost invisible holes in the sides of their heads. But their lungs were ripped apart in the growing vacuum. They began to fall unconscious within seconds.

Kelvessan were even tougher organisms. Their lungs did share the same vulnerability. However, they possessed by design a secondary valve that closed their trachea as tightly as an airlock. Since it was also an automatic function, Velmeran had no choice but to hold his breath until he was safely inside his helmet.

“What happened?” Consherra asked as soon as he could hear her.

“Somebody up there likes me,” he said, indicating the front of the ship. “They obviously thought that the Kalfethki were fighting among themselves.”

He walked over to the dead warriors and tried to pull one over to the area of the fight. His problem was not one of strength but a serious lack of traction in moving half a ton of inert weight. Baress realized what he intended and hurried to help. Together they pulled one back to the base of the steps and arranged limbs and weapons to suggest that this warrior had been fighting his fellows.

The three Starwolves made their way through the maze of saurian bodies and ascended to the alcove above the opposite end of the great chamber. Velmeran stopped before the closed airlock and began his remote manipulation of the controls. He had only begun when the doors snapped open unexpectedly, and a blast of air and a Kalfethki exploded outward at him. Although caught off-guard, Velmeran reacted quickly enough to catch the warrior by a massive arm and flip him overhead. The warrior crashed heavily on his back a good four meters away. His ears already bleeding from decompression, he rose shakily and staggered forward in a final charge. He made it only four uncertain steps.

“Inside!” Velmeran ordered them into the airlock and shut the door, immediately cycling air into the chamber. “Deliberate decompression of an airlock. You can bet that set off alarms all the way to the bridge.”

“Why did he do it?” Consherra asked, still shaken by it all. “He could have lived.”

“No, he would have been dead within minutes by his own hand anyway,” he explained, pausing to trigger the outer doors and wave them through. “Honor, you know. But there was some honor to be won in at least trying.”

Before they could scramble for cover, a lift door only three meters ahead opened suddenly and a sentry stepped out, no doubt on its way to investigate the disturbance. The automaton did not see the Starwolves until it stepped into the hall and turned to face them. Then it found itself eye-to-eye with Velmeran and paused in midstride.

“You did not see anyone,” he told the machine.

The sentry made no reply, but neither did it open fire. Velmeran gestured the others past and slipped by the sentry when they were clear. They froze along the wall behind it, but the machine took no notice as it trotted awkwardly down the corridor the way they had come.

 

“What do you make of it?” Maeken Kea inquired.

The security officer shrugged. “I can only guess, but it was no malfunction. A Kalfethki was inside the airlock when they were sealed. Perhaps he tried to open the wrong door. Perhaps he simply wanted to die with his companions. Any survivor would not have been a willing one, knowing that his death was ordered.”

“Just keep watch until the sentries have a chance to tally the dead,” she told him. “I do not want any of those licentious lizards wandering about the ship. There is no telling what strange ideas some survivor might dream up.”

Maeken Kea was not particularly pleased with the situation, nor with Donalt Trace. She had not liked the idea of two thousand Kalfethki on board her ship in the first place. She liked even less to have them decompressed at the first provocation, as much as she had to admit to the necessity. Needless to say, she still had no idea that Trace had ordered a nuclear strike on Tryalna; he had contrived to have her off the bridge at that time. As it was, she got along with him as well as she did because she was under the mistaken impression that he did not interfere with her command of the ship.

“Captain?”

Maeken looked over and saw that the security officer monitoring and directing the sentries had called her. The officer was one of several Faldennye who made up a third of the Challenger’s crew. Maeken was not adept at reading their expressions, but she had the impression that this young lady had just been profoundly surprised.

“What is it?”

“Captain, I... I have just received a communication from a sentry,” she explained hesitantly in her rich, purring voice. “It called in to report that it had just not seen anyone.”

Maeken reacted to that with predictable mystification. “I take it that there is something unusual in this?”

“Captain, sentries relay reports only when called for, or when they have something definite to report. They do not make contact spontaneously to report nothing.”

Maeken nodded in understanding. “I see what you are getting at.”

“There is also a problem in syntax,” the Feldennye continued. “The sentry said that it had just not seen anyone. As if it had seen something important enough to report, and that it was nothing. Something is wrong.”

“A malfunction?”

She nodded in resignation. “That would have to be it, although a remote internal check reveals nothing. I have ordered another sentry to reinforce that one, in the event it is failing.”

“Where did this occur?”

“Here, just as it came off the lift.” She indicated the place on the map projected on her monitor.

Maeken drew back in surprise. “Not fifty meters from an airlock that was decompressed. And it is now standing guard outside that very lock.”

“It is so,” the Feldennye agreed. “Could the two incidents be related?”

“If you can figure out how, then you tell me. The airlock only opened on the other side.” Maeken glanced at the ceiling, rubbing an aching neck as she considered the matter. “Keep your eyes open.”

Maeken saw that Commander Trace had returned and hurried to join him on the central bridge.

“Did you see Lieutenant Skerri?” She asked.

“No, he wasn’t there. He must have returned to his cabin. I didn’t think to ask for him.”

“Captain!”

She turned in time to see the same Feldennye officer pull off her headphones and throw them down on her console. The entire bridge crew stared in open amazement. Feldennye were extraordinarily calm, eventempered people, and it took a great deal to frustrate them to the point of being upset. Maeken hurried to her station, the Sector Commander close behind.

“Captain, I was making a complete scan of the location and activity of all the sentries when I found one unit far from its assigned place,” she explained. “It belongs near the middle of the ship, but found it as far forward as it can get. I asked it to explain itself, and it... it told me to shut up and mind my own business.”

Maeken glanced up at Donalt Trace, but he had missed the previous report and was even more mystified. She turned back to the security officer. “That is no simple malfunction, is it?”

“No, Captain.”

“I would guess that either this entire ship is cracking mentally under the stress of battle, or else someone is tampering with our sentries.”

“That is the only explanation,” the Feldennye agreed.

Maeken turned to the astonished Sector-Commander. “I have to remain here, so it is up to you. I suggest that you find four or five off-duty crew members and put rifles in their hands, take as many sentries as you can squeeze into a lift, and see if you can intercept them.”

“Who?” Trace asked, perplexed.

“You have Starwolves on your ship.”

“Starwolves? Are you sure?” He almost looked faint.

Maeken shrugged helplessly. “Not entirely. It might all be coincidence, but I doubt it. The Kalfethki were fighting when you killed them. Were they fighting among themselves, or were they defending your ship? Only a few minutes later an airlock in a decompressed area opened, and a sentry on the other side of that lock spouts nonsense.”

“But how could they have gotten into the ship undetected?”

“Simple enough. They must have a device that activates the locks without alerting the master control. It failed once, and we got a light. A similar device stuns sentries.” She looked up at Commander Trace. “Your ship is as good as you meant it to be. They couldn’t hurt it from the outside, so they mean to wreck it from the inside.”

Donalt Trace shook his head slowly. “Damned Starwolves. But what can they do?”

“Heaven only knows,” Maeken said. “I will stay on the bridge and call in about fifty sentries to guard the passages in. You organize that hunting party and do your best to intercept them.”

 

Velmeran stopped so suddenly that Consherra nearly ran into him from behind. Both she and Baress snapped their rifles to ready and prepared to shoot anything that moved.

“They know that we are here,” he said at last. “Donalt Trace is coming to look for us.”

“That hardly makes any difference,” Baress observed. “This is a very big ship, and they have only a general idea of where to look for us.”

“They know what level we are on,” Velmeran told him. “It might not be long before someone remembers that the auxiliary bridge is on the same level. I have to do something to turn their attention elsewhere.”

Baress regarded him closely, a wasted gesture, since both of them were in their helmets. “I think I know what you have in mind.”

“Then you know what you have to do, as well. Sherry, I am going to have to leave you for a while, to lay a false trail to lead Commander Trace away into some other part of the ship. Baress will watch out for you until I come back.”

“But what about my part?” she asked. “I cannot get into this ship’s computers without your help.”

“Just call to me when you are ready,” he told her. “I will be listening for you. Do not worry about me. All I intend to do is to make my way toward the main bridge tripping lights and upsetting sentries as I go. I can move faster than they can follow, then catch up with you when you are finished.”

“You watch out for yourself,” Consherra called after him as he hurried down the corridor the way they had come.

“Come on,” Baress urged her gently. “He has done this type of work often enough to have learned how to stay out of trouble. And the sooner we finish our work, the sooner we can all get out of here.”

Consherra agreed with the logic in that and reluctantly joined him as they hurried on their way.

Velmeran retreated back up the corridor about a hundred meters, where he had seen an access tube, and quickly descended five levels toward the center of the ship. The plan of the Challenger was as complicated as the map of several cities stacked one on the other, but he had committed the basic mechanical design to selective recall and he knew the trick of navigating the major corridors. Soon after reaching the lower level, he happened upon a sentry unfortunate enough to be facing the wrong direction and quietly slipped a heat charge on its back. That should be enough to shift any pursuit down to this new level.

After that he dropped two more levels and located a corridor that took him laterally toward the interior of the ship and the mechanical core that ran through the very center of its length.

All the power lines from the engines and turrets met here, merging with eighty additional generators before being channeled into the field drive and shield generators. Centermost, a hexagonal chamber two hundred meters across and running twenty-five kilometers from one end of the vessel to the other, it was the spine of the ship, a power core capable of containing and channeling the power of a small star.

Velmeran had to force the access doors to the power core, intentionally allowing an indicator to light on the bridge. He followed the core forward, looking for mischief. Soon the power core began to branch off, feeding field generators clustered on groups of four about the core in chambers large enough to serve as hangers for cargo shuttles. He began ducking into these chambers, setting heat charges on vital control mechanisms. He doubted that he was doing the Fortress any real damage, for there was too much redundancy for that limited damage to have any serious effect. On the other hand, the results of his handiwork should have the bridge in a frenzy.

 

Frenzy was a very good description of the state of affairs on the bridge. Marenna Challenger began to report damage to her innermost drive units. Maeken Kea pondered only long enough to establish exactly what was going on, then began shouting orders as she ran to her own console on the central bridge.

“Tie me in with Commander Trace’s personal communicator!” she ordered as she ran up the steps.

“Maeken?” Trace inquired even as she arrived at her station. “Captain Kea, what is it? My sentries just took off at a run.”

“Follow them!” she shouted into the com. “Starwolves are in the power core. I’ve relayed specific directions to your sentries, so they will take you straight there.”

“Right!” Trace agreed simply. The destruction of a section of the core might not affect the ship, since that power could be recircuited through the outer power network. But it was better to take no chances. If the Challenger was unable to shield herself, even the damaged Methryn could rip her apart.

Then all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place with shocking suddenness, instantly and unbidden. Momentarily stunned by that revelation, Maeken sat down heavily in her seat to review the facts she knew. Nothing was certain, and she still did not know the full truth. But she was so sure that she was willing to gamble the success of the entire battle on it.

“Marenna Challenger!” she ordered sharply, leaping from her chair. “Reduce speed gradually to a full stop. Do you understand me? Ready all guns and stand by to shield engines.”

“I understand,” the ship responded. “Beginning deceleration now. All offensive and defensive systems standing by.”

 

Not even Velmeran was aware for some time that the Fortress was slowing. The sudden shift of power from the rear engines to an equal number of forward engines running at the same level went unnoticed. His first hint came when he suddenly realized that the Methryn’s own sustained, high-pitched pulse was almost on top of them. In the next instant the Challenger braked hard before executing a quick end-over pivot to face back the way she had come.

Tregloran, do you hear me? he called out with all his telepathic skills.

Yes, Captain. Tregloran’s reply was distant but clear.

Warn Valthyrra! I cannot yet reach her.

I am already on my way! the younger pilot replied, for he had already figured out what was happening for himself. Unfortunately, he needed the more powerful com inside the fighter to call above the static inside the ring.

But it was already too late. Valthyrra Methryn had been skirting one of the larger moonlets, five kilometers across and large enough to have been rounded under its own gravity. When Tregloran’s warning came, she began braking hard to stop. Suddenly the Challenger was there before her, emerging black and threatening behind the satellite. She opened fire on the smaller ship with every gun she could bring to bear. From a hundred kilometers, only four times her own length, she could not miss.

And from that distance the Methryn’s shields had little effect against those powerful bolts. A hail of brilliant shafts of energy slammed against her shields, and she could not turn them all. One and sometimes two scored every second, cutting deep into her hull and discharging with tremendous explosions. The entire ship rocked violently under the unrelenting impacts.

“They are trying for the bridge!” Valthyrra shouted above the confusion as she readied herself for the flight. With her own pack members clinging to the hull of the Fortress, she could not fight back. It would have been foolish, futile effort anyway.

Mayelna glanced at her impatiently. “They seem to have a damned good idea where it is.”

A single bolt tore screaming with raw energy through the ceiling above the bridge, cutting through the heavy plating barely a meter behind the main viewscreen and striking at the front of the upper bridge, slicing through the front of the Commander’s console and into the deck below. It discharged into the structural supports on the next level, and the force of the blast traveled upward, ripping out most of the upper bridge. Cargin, at the weapons station, was pitched from his seat and landed unharmed on the forward console to the right of the navigator’s station. Mayelna was thrown against the ceiling with such force that her armor snapped as easily as the bones within. She fell amid the wreckage of plating and her own console in the center of the bridge.

Valthyrra’s camera pod was nearly ripped free by the blast, and it turned reluctantly when she tried to bring it back around. Reacting to falling pressure, doors were slamming shut throughout the area to contain the break in the hull. Cargin, recovering quickly, hurried to the dented helmet he spied amid the wreckage. With this in hand, he rushed to Mayelna’s inert form and gently lifted her up so that he could set the helmet over her head and clip it in place even as the last trace of air and smoke fled through the gaping hole overhead. Another crewmember arrived with pressure tape to seal the breaks in the Commander’s armor, in case the suit underneath had not sealed itself.

Oblivious to the continued assault she was taking, Valthyrra forced her damaged camera pod around until she was looking down at Mayelna’s silent, battered form. Cargin opened her chestplate for a reading. In spite of all their fears, it showed a feeble pulse of life.

“Dyenlerra to the bridge, now!” Valthyrra all but screamed over the ship’s com. Then, almost as an afterthought, she opened a line through every speaker and suit com. “Stand by to abandon ship.”

Mayelna stirred weakly. Surely she had heard! Valthyrra bent even closer, hoping that her suit com remained intact. “Commander?”

“Save yourself, you old fool!” Mayelna admonished in a thin, harsh whisper.

Valthyrra glanced up abruptly at the main viewscreen, a cold, determined gesture. The Challenger lay to her right and slightly above barely twice her length ahead, pounding the smaller ship with unrelenting fury. Swinging her nose around to face her enemy head-on, the Methryn opened fire with deadly accuracy as she accelerated straight toward the larger ship. Valthyrra concentrated her fire on the cannons of her very nose, kilometers forward of where Tregloran and the others watched in stunned terror.

The results were as she had anticipated. Neither the Challenger nor her captain knew whether the Methryn meant to ram or to fire her conversion cannon so close that nothing could deflect the flood of raw energy, even if it meant the destruction of both ships. Maeken Kea had to decide in a hurry. She diverted one quarter of the ship’s power to the hull shields, enough to minimize the damage of a direct impact, sending the rest into the outer shield. The Challenger disappeared within its protective white shell of static force.

The Methryn struck that barrier nose-on and it parted around her in a fantastic display of blue and white lightning that rippled harmlessly over her hull and a fourth of the distance around the shell. At the same time she dropped her tapered nose enough to pass just beneath the blunt bow of the Fortress. Although she cleared the lower hull with fifty meters to spare, their great forms appeared to skim past with only the narrowest gap. The Challenger had dropped her outer shield and held her fire, her full power to her hull shields for nearly half a minute that the Methryn was beneath her. Then she was past, accelerating at her best speed along the decoy corridor laid by her own transports.

Now Valthyrra was safe and could flee out of range before the Challenger could pivot back around to bring her main battery to bear. She turned her attention back to her stricken Commander. Dyenlerra had arrived moments earlier and was bent over the diagnostic unit attached to her suit. She looked up as Valthyrra brought her camera pod around.

“I am sorry,” the medic said softly. “It is too late.”

For a long moment out of time, Valthyrra was too stunned to react. Then she did something that she should not have been able to do, something contrary to the programming that had brought her to life thousands of years before. Her capacity for both love and grief had grown far beyond what her initial design had allowed. In a blind fury, mindless of her own safety and forgetting her own crew members on the Challenger, she swung herself back around and began charging her conversion cannon. But the Challenger immediately sensed that rapid increase in power, and she knew what it meant. Without even waiting for orders, she threw up her shield.

No, Valthyrra! Velmeran called to her silently across space. Run for now. I will call you when the time comes.

That brought her fully back to her senses. She began to power down her cannon as she turned herself back around and disappeared into the ring.

 

Velmeran sat alone in the chamber just off the power core, beside a control console for a field generator that still smoked from the effects of a heat charge. One life had been required in payment for the successful completion of this task. He had known that from the first. But he had thought that it would have been his own, terms that he would have been willing to pay. In the end the payment had come suddenly and unexpectedly, the one life nearest to him that he had considered safe. If he had only known. He sat alone in the middle of the vast ship that he had come to destroy and grieved silently for what might have been.

So it was that he grieved too long, lost amid regret and self-recrimination, when Donalt Trace found him there minutes later.