- 14 -

Velmeran stood for a moment longer, watching the black forms of the Mock Starwolf cruisers surrounding the three remaining carriers. Then he turned and hurried up the steps to the Commander’s station on the upper bridge.

“Get me a direct visual channel to the main monitor at my console,” he ordered, obviously very pleased with himself. “This is perfect. I have them right where I want them.”

Consherra turned in her seat to stare at him. “I beg your pardon? You were telling us a minute ago that Mock Starwolves do not even exist. Now we are up to our apertures in Mock Starwolves telling us to surrender.”

“They are talking to us and not shooting,” he explained as he lifted himself into the seat and rolled it forward. He leaned closer to the monitor, which remained obstinately blank. He waited a moment more, then looked up impatiently. “What is he waiting for?”

“He seems hesitant to open a visual line,” Korlaran answered.

“Then give me an audio line,” Velmeran declared impatiently, although he had no intention of surrendering the point. He wanted this errant Starwolf to see him clearly, and to see a few truths.

“This is Jaeryn of the Avenger,” the Mock Starwolf commander responded immediately, speaking Terran like a human would. Velmeran realized that he did not even speak the language of his own kind. “What is your answer?”

“This is Commander Velmeran of the Starwolf Fleet,” he responded, sounding very stern and impatient on his own part. “If you want to talk to me, you are going to give me that visual channel I asked for and then speak to me in a more reasonable manner.”

That was calculated to surprise, and it did. Velmeran knew that he was speaking to a very young and inexperienced Kelvessan, and someone who was not entirely sure of the things that he had been told were true. The monitor lit up a moment later. They were both surprised to see each other’s face, but Velmeran was the first to comprehend the full meaning. He sat back, smiling. “Yes, I think that you do understand. Where did they tell you they got you? That they had bred you themselves from original genetic material?”

“Well, yes,” Jaeryn admitted, obviously disconcerted. “They did warn us that you would look quite a lot like us.”

“But you look almost exactly like me, is that it?” Velmeran asked. “The Kelvessan were created by the Aldessan of Valtrys fifty thousand years ago. You and all of your companions were cloned from genetic material taken from me personally during a little accident I had about a year before you were born. You were not created by them, and your genetic material was not altered in any way. They do not have that ability. And I suppose that I might warn you now that Commander Trace would never trust you. I suspect that there are very likely to be self-destruct devices built into your ships that can be detonated by external remote control.”

“Yes, we found those long ago,” Jaeryn admitted thoughtfully. “Those things are no longer in our ships. How did you know?”

“A simple, logical deduction, based upon a long history of associating with Commander Donalt Trace,” he explained. “So there you are, I suppose. You can no longer trust the Union, and you have reason to doubt just about everything they ever told you. Now you are wondering if you belong anywhere. That is why you held back from the battle.”

“Exactly,” Jaeryn agreed, regaining some authority of his own. “Of course, the fact that they betrayed us does not automatically make you our friends. They raised us to believe in a great many high ideals that they apparently do not believe in themselves, and they told us many things about you that appearances argue could be true. It seemed to me that the best way to prove matters was to arrange a confrontation under circumstances that we could control.”

Consherra, seated at the helm station, rolled her eyes. “You would almost think that he is talking to himself.”

“Listening to your communications has also been very informative,” he continued. “Actually, we arrived before you did, so we have overheard quite a lot. It seems that we are both orphans in this universe. Are we people or are we property, Commander Velmeran?”

“I was just about to stress that very point,” Velmeran answered. “I would like for you to declare your intentions and be done with it. I have some very important business to attend right now. For one thing, I am going to make certain that Kelvessan are not treated like property again. Are you going to help me?”

Jaeryn considered that briefly. “Are you asking me to surrender to you?”

“I am asking you to join your ships to the Starwolf Fleet and help your own people in a time when we need you most,” he answered. “If you are not yet certain that you can trust us, then remove your ships until you have enough evidence to decide.”

“I think that we will take the chance, Commander,” Jaeryn said. “What can we do?”

“Move your cruisers in to guard those captured Union ships and give my poor carriers a rest. Have this channel stand by.” He sighed heavily, leaning back in his seat and permitting himself a moment of looking incredibly relieved. There was a limit to how many miracles even a Starwolf could pull off in one day. Then he looked up. “Get President Delike back on the channel. We were discussing a surrender.”

 

Velmeran had the Maeridyen and the Karvand returned to their bays, to act as an occupation force within the station itself. The military, under Admiral Laroose, was loyal to the Starwolves and following Velmeran’s orders. The civilian Kelvessan were otherwise in command of the station, and they had kept the situation there from falling into confusion and panic during the battle.

The president and leaders of the Senate, or at least those who had not already been arrested, had retreated to the government compound within the station, not daring to leave for fear of the crowds, mostly human, who wanted nothing more than to administer their own justice to the traitors. President Delike and his friends feared the Kelvessan, and with good reason. But it was their own kind, people who now felt that they had been deceived into embracing philosophies they now detested for the promise of simple greed and hate, who would have gone into the compound after the traitors except for Starwolf intervention.

Fearing unexpected trouble to come, Velmeran ordered work to begin on the Maeridyen immediately. At least none of the three remaining ships had taken any damage during the battle, even though both of the two new ships had taken missiles directly against their shielded hulls. Velmeran’s first task was to formalize the surrender of the Republic to Starwolf authority. That was a rather desperate act on his part, and one that was not strictly necessary. But he considered the act itself most important, the ability to begin fresh with a new Republic, bound by the laws of a new constitution that would guarantee the irrevocable rights and freedom of the Kelvessan.

Velmeran had never realized the hollow, pointless lives that all Kelvessan were forced to lead. They were an entire race of people eternally waiting for something they could not name to begin. The time had come for him to win this war, so that they could be united in purpose rather than bound to the service of need and duty, so that others could have the freedom they surrendered. Sixteen new cruisers, once they were modified for Kelvessan technology and their crews trained, would make all the difference.

He went to the Government Compound for the signing of the treaties of surrender in the company of Admiral Laroose, who was standing in as representative of the new Republic. With him went Commanders Tregloran and Daelyn and also Jaeryn of the Avenger, so that he could see for himself what to make of his choice. President Delike signed the papers reluctantly, still accepting the weight of his duty enough to dislike the circumstances. Marten Alberes and First Senator Saith only looked upon it as a tedious necessity. They were already packed and ready to be taken to the ship that they had been promised in exchange for their cooperation.

“This isn’t justice,” Laroose complained, glaring as he watched Alberes put the final signature to the treaties. “If you ever return to Republic space, you’ll answer to me.”

Alberes afforded him only a brief glance of contempt.

“We will keep the letter of our agreement,” Velmeran said as he reached across the table to close the last of the portfolios that held the treaties. Then he leaned back in his chair, watching the three traitors closely. “You have just lost your jobs. Your authority ended when you signed those papers. So, do you expect that the Union will show you the gratitude you expect? They sent an invasion force to destroy you.”

“We have a certain bargaining force,” Saith explained. “Since you are obliged to let us go, then I feel free to tell you. We intend to sell out you Starwolves and your little Republic. I expect that the Union will be very grateful for all the secrets we have to sell.”

“Yes, it had occurred to me that you would think of that eventually,” Velmeran remarked, unconcerned. “Well, we should detain you no longer. Here is the clearance ident to your ship’s bay.”

He handed a small, yellow ident card across the table. Saith picked it up and read the bay number on the front surface, then stared at the Starwolf in disbelief. “But this is nearly halfway across the station and fifteen levels down.”

“Yes, but we are not obliged to be convenient,” he answered. “I suggest that you should go, before I have you thrown out.”

“Without an escort?” Alberes protested. “There is a crowd out there just waiting to tear us apart.”

“Yes. Well, that is your own fault,” Velmeran said. “I would like nothing better than to help, but I would hesitate to interfere in your destiny. The letter of our agreement requires that I make a ship available to you, not that I must get you to it safely. Of course, I would not want the three of you to be torn apart in the halls of this ancient station. That would set an unhappy precedence for the new Republic, much less make a terrible mess.”

He took several small, red capsules from his pocket and tossed them to the center of the table. “You have two, and only two, alternatives. You can go to your rooms and take your little pills, or you can take your chances with the crowd. You have no agreements with them, and they have already expressed their intentions. But you must decide now.”

Velmeran played a brittle game with words, but his meaning was plain. He was ordering these men to surrender themselves to a very sudden and unexpected execution, and then to play the part of their own executioners. Alberes glanced at the others, then reached out to take one of the red capsules and rose to leave. Saith frowned as he considered his options a final time, then took a capsule of his own and joined him. Delike only sat where he was, looking at each of them in turn for support, confused and very frightened like a lost child.

“Come along, old man,” Alberes told him. “We took the chance. Now we have to pay the price.”

Delike took the final capsule and joined his companions, although his shaking legs would hardly carry him. They left through a door in the back of the room, accompanied by Starwolf pilots in black armor who would escort them to their rooms. Even that was a bluff. If they could have found another way out, Velmeran was required by his agreement to allow them to go.

“Pathetic creature,” Laroose muttered in disgust. “He called me up a few hours before the battle began, all enthusiastic about this great plan for how he would help me prove that the other two were the real traitors and he was an honest man who had just been used. He believed that, too. Of course, he also asked me to help them betray you to the Union attack force. He said that the Starwolves were certain to lose anyway. I’m not sure that he was entirely sane there at the end.”

Velmeran had been watching Jaeryn closely, wearing a rather bulky suit of white and blue armor. The Mock Starwolves had been brought up in a very controlled environment, designed to keep them innocent and biddable. They had been very pleased with themselves after their secretive defection, but Jaeryn had seen quite a lot in the past few hours and he was beginning to realize just how naive they were. Velmeran was thinking about putting all sixteen of the cruisers in the bays for modification right away, to give his ten thousand new children a chance to grow up.

“I’m actually surprised that they did choose the pills over the crowd in the end,” Laroose continued. “They were gamblers. They should have chosen the almost non-existent chance of getting past the crowds instead of no chance at all with the pills. Considering that I’m in the company of Kelvessan, I’m almost embarrassed to use the word, but I am given to wonder if they did still possess some small measure of human dignity.”

“Nothing in life became them as well as the leaving of it,” Tregloran quoted, then shrugged when Daelyn turned to stare at him. “Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Another man who would be king.”

“Well, I have no wish to imitate Macbeth myself and take on more than I can manage,” Velmeran said. “I am reminded that I now own an interstellar empire, and I am responsible for it all by my little self. I intend to turn the Republic over to new management as soon as possible.”

 

“What is it?” Velmeran asked as he hurried into Alkayja Station’s command section. It was in form like the bridge of some immense ship, circular in shape with viewscreens facing in from all directions to provide a complete image, although many sections were devoted to magnified images or scanner maps. Velmeran had been using the station’s various command sections to conduct his business.

Laroose looked up from where he and the Watch Commander had been standing at the bank of communication consoles. “Three ships coming rather sedately into system, making themselves known well out. Scanners classify them as Union cruisers. Our new Starwolves want to go out and exchange words with them.”

“Fighting words, I am sure,” Velmeran remarked. “Well, they have done everything but wave a white flag. Are they willing to talk?”

Laroose nodded. “Oh yes. Very quick to talk. They say that they’re a diplomatic mission.”

“Is that so?”

“They want to talk to you. A Councilor Richart Lake, in particular. He says that you once had dinner with his grandfather.”

Velmeran’s first thought was to wonder if this could be another trick. Two more Starwolf carriers had arrived in the two days since the end of the battle. With the formidable protection of the Starwolf cruisers at hand, he had ordered the rest of the fleet to return to their patrols.

He still could not imagine how this could be a trick. Of course, it was also hard to imagine why Richart Lake might have come himself. Jon Lake, his grandfather and the previous Councilor for the Rane Sector, had been a very different sort of man and one of the very few humans anywhere that Velmeran respected. Jon Lake had been a politician with the heart of a philosopher. Richart Lake was a businessman, and he made absolutely no mistake about it. He treated his rule of the Rane Sector as a necessary evil and a distraction from his proper management of Farstell Trade.

He nodded at last. “Let me talk to him.”

The Kelvessan at that communication console gave up her place to him, and he seated himself before the main monitor. A channel was already open, held on standby. He released the hold, and the monitor lit up.

“This is Commander Velmeran,” he said.

The image cleared. He had never met Richart Lake, either in person or by visual communications. He was in appearance fairly unremarkable, quite unlike the very distinctive, long faces or larger-than-life manners of both Donalt Trace and Jon Lake. But he did reflect his unmutated Terran ancestry, an obviously tall man with relatively heavy features.

“Yes, this is Richart Lake,” he said. “To state matters directly, I have come to offer our surrender.”

Velmeran considered it good fortune that he was already sitting down.

“Let me state our position simply,” Lake continued. “We have just given it our best, last effort. We have weighed all of the social, political, and material benefits, and we have come to the conclusion that, from this point on, we stand to gain more from surrendering than in continuing to deal with you on our previous terms.”

Velmeran was speechless. Five hundred centuries of war, and it had been decided in committee that it was no longer expedient. Richart Lake made it sound more like a merger than a surrender. He realized immediately that he was going to have to watch the negotiations very closely, or certain habitually gullible Starwolves were going to give away more than they kept. And what did unemployed Starwolves do, anyway? It was interesting to consider.

“Commander?” Laroose interrupted him quietly, indicating the scan map on a side monitor. “We have a problem. A carrier just dropped out of starflight and is coming up behind those cruisers in a hurry.”

“Which carrier?” Velmeran asked. They had waited for this for five hundred centuries, and now some fool was going to put a bolt up its tail.

“Well, that’s the funny part,” he explained. “She’s no known ship in the fleet. Her recognition code hails her as the Valcyr.”

If Admiral Laroose did not recognize that name, Velmeran certainly did. “The Valcyr disappeared a long time ago. Get me a channel to that ship.”

He turned back to the main monitor. “Councilor Lake, we have a little problem right now. I will have Admiral Laroose direct your ships to the proper docking bays in the diplomatic compound. Now if you will excuse me, I have to stop someone from blasting your ass.”

“Yes, by all means.”

Velmeran quickly switched to the second visual channel. The image of Richart Lake faded, to be replaced a moment later by a face he knew well. For one thing, it could have easily been his own. Of course, nearly a fourth of all the Mock Starwolves had his face, mostly because they also had his genes.

“Hello, Commander,” Keflyn said. “We have come to the rescue.”

“Keflyn?” She was the last person he had expected to see. “You are too late. And please leave those cruisers alone. They have come to surrender.”

“Oh. Right, Commander.”

“Is that really the Valcyr?” he asked. “Where did you find it?”

Keflyn frowned as she considered that. “Well, that really is a very long story.”

“What about Donalt Trace? He was on his way to destroy Terra with half a dozen or so Fortresses.”

“Oh, he is dead. We destroyed those Fortresses.”

“All by your little selves?”

“Well, that is another long story.”

“You are an absolute mine of information,” Velmeran muttered. “Will you please allow me to speak with the Valcyr’s Commander?”

Keflyn looked embarrassed. “I seem to be the Commander of the Valcyr. You see, I am the only one on board.”

Velmeran sat for a moment, staring at the ceiling. “You seem to be looking at the matter very optimistically. You think that being the only one on board leaves you in command. I cannot see how that makes you anything more than a passenger.”

“Quendari Valcyr says that I am the Commander,” Keflyn insisted stubbornly. “I get to sit in the chair and everything.”

“Very well, then, Commander Keflyn,” Velmeran declared. “Put your ship in a docking bay and bring yourself to the diplomatic quarters. I am a very busy person these days, but I will make time for a few long stories.”

The arrival of the diplomatic convoy at Alkayja Station proceeded much more amiably and quietly than anyone would have expected of such an historic event, and one so long awaited. There were no bands playing, no proclamations or ranks of Starwolves in dark armor. The three cruisers docked side by side in the bays reserved for diplomatic vessels, as seldom as those came, and a small group of visitors filed out into the wide promenade corridor to meet Velmeran, Tregloran, and Jaeryn of the Starwolves, and the former Republic represented by Laroose and the Station Commanders.

The Union delegation was something of a surprise, and larger than Velmeran would have expected despite the presence of the three ships. The entire Union High Council was present, the High Councilors of all eighteen Sectors, and nearly half of the Sector Commanders as well. Even Maeken Kea was there as the acting High Commander of the Combined Fleet. She was in curious ways like a Starwolf herself, a diminutive woman of almost elfin features, quiet and seemingly innocent in manner, yet deceptively cunning and deadly.

The Valcyr had moved in quickly and docked herself well ahead of the slow Union cruisers. Keflyn had found Velmeran soon enough, and she related her long stories as quickly as possible. When the Union delegation arrived later, Maeken Kea took the news very hard. They had not known of the defeat of Commander Trace’s assault force, since news could not have come quicker to them than the Valcyr herself.

“Even Don suspected that the Starwolves would confound him in the end,” Maeken Kea said, as she stood with Velmeran and Councilor Lake after Keflyn related her story a second time. “I feel sorry for him, more than anything.”

“And yet he kept you in reserve, for this,” Velmeran said.

She shook her head firmly. “He never knew that the High Council meant to offer surrender if he failed. He honestly believed that, no matter how things turned out, he had put you at too many disadvantages for you to recover. Too many of the errors in tactics were his own.”

“We were lucky,” Velmeran told her. “He never expected the defection of his own Starwolves even before the battle began. And none of us expected the recovery of the Valcyr and her defeat of an entire Fortress fleet.”

He turned abruptly to Richart Lake. “Why do we not go for a short walk, just you and I?”

“What, now?” Lake was surprised, but obviously not reluctant to the idea.

“What better time?” Velmeran asked. “I am not a diplomat or a politician, yet I find myself the temporary ruler of an interstellar empire. You seem to be speaking on behalf of the Union. The things that we are about to decide have to serve hundreds of worlds for a very long time, so we have to get it right.”

Leaving the others to stare, they turned and walked slowly along the wide promenade deck, occasionally glancing out the wide bank of windows to one side. If Richart Lake had been taken by surprise by this remarkable approach to interstellar diplomacy, he also seemed quietly impressed. For his own part, Velmeran was beginning to suspect that there was more of the old Jon Lake in his grandson Richart than anyone had credited. “I am going to make a deal with you,” the Starwolf continued. “The first problem with such negotiations is that each side must figure out what the other wants, then work to some mutual agreement. That slows things down and adds too much opportunity for error. I am going to tell you what I want out of this, and you are going to tell me what you want.”

Lake made some vague gesture of agreement. “Very well.”

Velmeran glanced out the window, where a Starwolf cruiser was drifting in a shared orbit with the station, quietly standing guard. “The Starwolves want out of the business of war. We want lives of our own and the ability to find our own destinies. We want the assurance of knowing that no one will ever again treat us like machines or property. The human race is going to have to learn to police its own conscience.”

Lake nodded. “The Sector Families want out of the business of government. Too many headaches and too much grief. We want to salvage what we can of our business, but we are willing to give up our monopolies.”

“It took you fifty thousand years to decide this?” Velmeran asked.

“No, we like things just the way they’ve always been,” Lake corrected him. “There is tremendous profit in monopolies and despotism, but we see that we’ve lost the war. We can draw this out and force you to reduce us to poverty, or we can call an end to this now and salvage what we can. So we offer you this deal. We will make it easy for you and give you an immediate end to this war. We surrender nearly all political power, and we break up the Companies into reasonable sizes. In return, you allow us to survive – as free citizens – and to keep just enough of our previous holdings to keep us from going begging.”

Velmeran considered that, and nodded. “That can be arranged. You deserve some reward for being reasonable.”

Lake frowned. “Now we come to the part you might not like, considering what you have just said. Union space is big and very diverse. For thousands of years now, only two things have kept it together. One has been Starwolf threat. The other is simple greed, and the Union has been an enormously profitable venture for a long time. If you Starwolves simply disappear, the Union will fall apart and be at war with itself in a matter of years.”

Velmeran stopped to stare at him. “Are you telling me that after fighting this war for five hundred centuries, you now expect us to fight your peace?”

 

Velmeran stepped onto the bridge of the Valcyr, looking about in curiosity. Whatever he might have expected of a ship so immensely old, he had never thought that it would look exactly like any other carrier he had ever seen. There were exactly as many stations at the bridge, in exactly the same order. When the Starwolves found a design they liked, they apparently stayed with it. The first real difference in their design had come with the construction of the Vardon, adapted to accommodate new technology and an extra pair of main drives.

Quendari Valcyr’s camera pod rotated around to watch him as he entered, the lenses rotating to focus on him. Her movements reminded him for a moment of Valthyrra, particularly in the way she moved her boom into position just a moment before the camera pod itself completed its own turn. It was a very lifelike gesture, imitating the way that most intelligent beings would often turn their heads a moment before cutting their eyes in the direction of whatever they saw. It was an acquired gesture rather than preprogrammed, and not all of the ships shared it.

“Welcome aboard, Commander,” she said.

“Welcome home, Quendari Valcyr,” he replied. “Keflyn has told me of your resourcefulness. Do you feel ready to rejoin the fleet?”

“Yes, I believe that I should,” she agreed. “I have almost waited too long, it seems.”

“No, we need you more than ever now,” he said. “I would like to begin moving crewmembers on board right away and have you back out again in a few days. That leaves only the problem of finding you a Commander.”

“I would like to have Keflyn,” the ship said without hesitation.

“That is entirely your own choice,” Velmeran told her. “If you want, I can help you to find someone with more command experience.”

“Keflyn and I seem to understand each other very well,” Quendari explained. “We are both a little short on battle experience. But I am no warrior, no matter what role I was designed to fill, and the war is over anyway.”

Velmeran nodded. “Perhaps your time has come, and none of us will be warriors any longer. I certainly hope so.”

Velmeran turned to leave, walking quickly toward the lift. The lift doors opened just before he arrived, and Keflyn stepped out. He took a step back and bowed. “Your ship, Commander.”

“So, that is how it is done?” Keflyn asked, looking about as if she expected a little more ceremony during the naming of a ship’s Commander. “I never thought that you would agree.”

“The ships name their own Commanders,” he told her. “You should never interfere with that. I think Quendari needs a friend just now. Someone she trusts. Take care of her.”

Velmeran entered the lift and the door snapped shut. Keflyn turned and stepped out slowly onto the bridge. Quendari brought her camera pod around to face her as she walked up to stand just before the lenses of the pod. “Hello, Quendi. I have brought you something.”

She brought out a large, red, velvet ribbon, already tied with an adjustable loop. Keflyn slipped the loop around the pod and pulled it tight, checking the fit. Quendari lifted her pod slightly, as if uncertain how to reply. She was struggling with new emotions and responses that were beyond her very limited experience.

“This is life,” Keflyn said. “Any regrets?”

“I grieved thousands of years for the loss of a very short, happy time in my life,” Quendari said. “That time will always be special to me, because it was the first time in my life that I was happy. Now I am content. Thank you, my friend.”

 

Matters resolved themselves much more quickly and easily than Velmeran had expected, and all he had to do was wait for the pieces to all fall into place and then interpret them correctly. The final, missing piece had come with the unexpected arrival of the Valcyr and her tale of where she had spent her time. He decided that the gods of fortune must have forgiven him all the way around.

At first, he was at a loss to determine a way to salvage the Union that he thought the delegates would be willing to accept. The easiest solution, of course, was to declare that the human race could bloody well destroy itself if it had not yet learned to behave itself, and allow them to have at it. That was tempting, but Velmeran could not ignore an appeal for help. The Starwolves had invested too much in the human race to allow them to destroy themselves in war or genetic decay, at least as long as they were willing to try. But he wanted to find a solution that involved the Starwolves to the least possible extent, putting the greatest responsibility on the Union to police itself.

The answer that he eventually arrived at was to balance the forces that would now be acting upon the Union, using the threat of war to discourage fragmentation and the threat of alien intervention to discourage war. He sat down with the delegates and a large map of all of human space, both Union and Republic, and drew a line that divided the whole into two exactly even parts, each half of Union space getting an even half of Republic space. One half became the new Republic, with its capital at Vannkarn on Vinthra. The other half, after some confusion and deliberation, adopted the name Terran Confederation.

In order to strike a perfect balance, the two interstellar nations drafted exactly the same constitutions with exactly the same governmental structure. To insure peaceful cooperation and even development between the Republic and the Terran Confederation, they were joined together with the Kelvessan in the Triple Alliance, a hypothetical super nation with a congress which met at regular intervals. As an added insurance, both the Alliance and the Starwolves themselves had the legal right to intervene in the government of either nation if the terms of the treaties were violated.

That left the Kelvessan looking for someplace to call home. Velmeran had been quietly entertaining thoughts of his own ever since the unexpected appearance of the Valcyr. Terra, because of its shift into a colder, deeper orbit, was no longer an ideal world for human habitation, but it was perfectly suited to Kelvessan and their need for a colder environment. The Kelvessan would adopt Terra as their new home world, and Alkayja Station was to be moved there to be the base of the combined Starwolf Fleet. To maintain their own self-sufficiency, they were given control over a large area of space to form the basis of their own nation, consisting mostly of several worlds abandoned by the Republic in the distant past. Quendari Valcyr knew the location of a fair number of lost colonies.

The solution ultimately pleased all concerned. The Kelvessan had been betrayed by the very people they had trusted the most, and only autonomy would restore their sense of independence and security. The delegates were uncertain about turning over Terra herself, the cradle of human civilization, to be the new Kelvessan homeworld. But when they thought about it, they were just as pleased that they did not have the Starwolves in their own space.

One person who was not entirely pleased by the arrangements was Admiral Laroose. His loyalties had been with the Starwolves and particularly with Velmeran. But Alkayja would soon be a part of the new Republic, and he had been appointed to be an advisor to the new government.

“It still takes a little getting used to, I say,” he declared. “Of all possible turn of events, I never expected that I would be playing politician out of an office in the underground city of Vannkarn, with that... that Maeken Kea as my assistant. I will be glad when she is done with her quiet mourning of that devil Trace.”

“Maeken Kea was perhaps the closest that anyone ever came to loving Donalt Trace,” Velmeran said. “Let her mourn him all she wants. The Great Spirit of Space knows that few enough do miss him.”

Laroose stared in disbelief. “After all the grief he’s caused you! All the same, I will surely tear up your precious treaties and find myself a gun if she ever again makes the slightest hint that your persecutions drove Trace to act the way he did.”

“She said that?” Velmeran looked startled. “The bitch!”

Laroose glanced at him, but declined to comment. “So what do you do now? You have an interim government in place, and that finally gives you the time to pay more attention to your own people.”

“I am leaving,” the Starwolf declared. “As soon as they have Valthyrra up and going, Quendari Valcyr is going to lead the Methryn and the Vardon on our first visit to Terra – Earth, as she calls it. Keflyn is very anxious to get back. She was unable to tell the Feldenneh colonists that the Union fleet had been destroyed, so they are still waiting for their world to be destroyed.”

 

With the eight memory cells locked into their secured access tunnels and all connections installed and tested thoroughly, all of the physical stages of bringing Valthyrra into her new home were complete. There was nothing to do now but to access those memory units, assemble Valthyrra’s personality program in the matrix of the sentient computer complex, and see how well it worked.

Consherra was very glad to have Venn Saevyn to assist her in the process of starting up the new computer complex. Venn Keflyn had anticipated the need, and had arranged for an expert with considerable experience to accompany the Valtrytian fleet. Saevyn was not only competent in the repair of sentient systems, he had even designed a couple.

Consherra learned a few things about sentient machines that she had never guessed. One thing was their size. Most of the sentient computers built by the Aldessan were in self-contained units about the size of one of Valthyrra’s memory cells, five tons of machinery that was mostly just its protective housing in weight and memory storage in volume. The Starwolf sentient computers were six hundred tons of storage cells, primary, secondary, and peripheral units, a result mostly of their dedicated military roles, heavy shielding and shock protection. Ninety percent of their system involved non-sentient systems that could be accessed directly on either conscious or fully automatic levels. They also had their own maze of redundancy; even their conscious systems were spread throughout the nose of the carrier, and they could lose three-quarters of their circuitry before it even began to effect their operation.

“The trick is to avoid shock,” Saevyn explained as he and Consherra opened the access door to Valthyrra’s main terminal station.

“But how do you manage that?” Consherra asked. She was busy using one of the large access wrenches on the door, which opened exactly like those over the memory cells.

She removed the outer door of the terminal station, and Saevyn politely stepped forward to take it from her. “The key to the conscious intelligence of the sentient computers is in their array of liquid crystal processors. The matrix in the processor can change on command, so that the processor adapts its internal circuitry according to its required function.”

“Yes, I know that much,” Consherra agreed. The inner door slid up, and she stepped through into Valthyrra’s computer core.

“With simple, stupid computers, there is no harm if the liquid crystal processors change their form abruptly, even as often as several times each second,” he continued as he slid his own massive form through the relatively small opening of the hatch. His slender draconic body fit through easily, but he had to fold each of his long, triple-jointed arms and legs into a variety of contortions to get them through, and he was wearing a full armored suit to contain any loose fur. “But your ship is quite another matter, with eight simultaneous levels of consciousness and quite literally billions of liquid crystal synaptic connections in a network of hundreds of major processors. A rapid start-up of such a large and complex system can be a very great shock, especially if you suspect trouble with the personality programming anyway. It can place the system and the programming into a conflict that might never be resolved.”

He stood for a moment, looking about the long, narrow chamber with its banks of monitors and relay stations. Then he moved to the main control station and eased his large form onto the long, couch-like seat designed to serve the sinuous forms of the Aldessan, the only permanently mounted feature for their use in the entire ship. Consherra took the ordinary seat beside him.

“First we will assemble her full personality program from her memory units and establish them in a cache in her short-term memory.” Saevyn explained. “Then we proceed to a normal startup with her original programming. That was the foundation of her current personality, and it will serve as a guide for her to access and accept her programming back into her network.”

He moved himself closer to the main keyboard and monitor and began the process of bringing Valthyrra out of storage. Consherra watched in silence as he ran a final systems check through the Methryn’s entire computer network, then loaded Valthyrra’s primary, personal program from the reference files kept on optical disks. He did not start her up right away but engaged only the automatic functions, directing the rest into a temporary memory cache. Once he knew that everything was going well so far, he began to bring the large memory cells on line, one at a time and fine-tuning each before he had all eight of the units in perfect sync with the computer complex.

“This ship is an absolute marvel,” Venn Saevyn declared after hours of intense work. “I have never seen a system so thorough in its design. Not easy to work with, but built like the rest of this ship. Quick, competent, and almost indestructible.”

“It looks good?” Consherra dared to ask.

“As good as we have any right to expect,” he said. “There is fragmentary damage to her personality programming. Redundancy resolved most of the damage and the system self-corrected many of the remaining holes by logical extrapolation. If Valthyrra accesses her full programming, any remaining damage will be repaired automatically.”

Consherra frowned. “Is she likely to?”

Saevyn laid back his ears, a gesture that Consherra recognized quickly enough from her long association with Venn Keflyn. He glanced over at the inactive camera pod, mounted to one side of the main console. “At the very least, her memories will guide her into developing a new personality that is in most ways like the old.”

Consherra did not answer. She was thinking about Theralda Vardon and the disquieting lifelessness that was often a part of her character, or the quiet, machine-like efficiency of Quendari Valcyr because of the lack of personal contacts she needed to fully develop her own personality. Valthyrra had enough of her own programming to mirror her original personality to a very high degree, but she would never be exactly the same person she had been before. Consherra had to wonder which would be better, to endure the ghost of the Valthyrra she knew or a completely new ship.

She noticed almost too late that Venn Saevyn had already begun initiating the start-up of Valthyrra’s primary programming. Consherra began to fear that something had gone wrong, however, when the single-lens camera pod only continued to stare aimlessly rather than turn to orient on them.

“Valthyrra Methryn, do you hear me?” Saevyn asked. “How do you feel?”

The camera pod turned at last, the lens rotating slowly as it came around. “I am in perfect operating condition, to the extent that I have so far been able to determine. I have initiated a complete system check.”

Consherra closed her eyes as she sat back in her seat. That voice, a cold, lifeless monotone, was only vaguely recognizable as Valthyrra’s.

“Valthyrra, do you recognize either of us?” he asked.

The camera pod rotated around a fraction more. “I regret that I do not know you, but I do of course recognize Consherra, Helm and First Officer of the Methryn.”

“And do you know where you are and what has happened to you?”

Valthyrra seemed to consider that for a moment. “I am in my construction bay on Alkayja Station. I am aware that I have been installed aboard the new carrier, so I must assume that the Methryn has been destroyed. My last memory is of speaking with Commander Velmeran on the bridge. That seems now like a very long time ago.”

“That will be enough for now,” he told her. “We will speak with you again on the bridge in a few minutes.”

Venn Saevyn closed down the terminal, and they withdrew from the core. Consherra hurried to secure the access hatch, lifting the door back into place and locking it down.

“I am actually encouraged,” Saevyn remarked. “She initiated a more detailed response to my last question than I had specifically asked. She seems to be curious about the fixtures of her past life, and that may well lead her to investigate her full programming. But we must still take things slowly.”

 

Velmeran and Tregloran followed Venn Keflyn into the small room in a quiet section of the Methryn’s infirmary. Dyenlayk, the Methryn’s chief medic, was already waiting in the room, standing over the unconscious form that lay in the narrow bed.

“Installing Valthyrra in a new ship gave me the idea,” Velmeran explained. “That reminded me of when I first met Venn Keflyn, and she told me that she had been forced to take a new body when she was young.”

Tregloran glanced at Venn Keflyn, who looked embarrassed. “I was very indiscreet when I was younger.”

Velmeran walked over to stand across the bed from Dyenlayk. “Is she ready?”

The medic nodded. “She seems to be in perfect condition. I see no reason why we should not awaken her.”

“Do it, then.”

Dyenlayk bent over the inert form and administered a drug through the intravenous connection, then began removing the straps of the wrist unit. “You can talk to her now. That should bring her around.”

Velmeran nodded and, with a quick glance at Tregloran, bent over the bed. “Lenna Makayen? Lenna Makayen? Do you know why Scotsmen wear kilts?”

Although she did not open her eyes, a slow, mischievous smile crossed her face. “I have no idea, Commander. Why do Scotsmen wear kilts?”

“Because sheep can hear a zipper from a hundred meters.”

Lenna made a face, then opened her eyes and stared up at Velmeran in a very accusing manner. “I’m dead.”

“You were. We fixed that,” he told her. “We cloned you a whole new body, and Venn Keflyn moved you right inside. It seems that Aldessan do it all the time, so it must be respectable.”

“I have no complaints;” Lenna insisted. She yawned and stretched, and in the process noticed something that she had not expected. “Four arms! I have four arms! Did you people put me together wrong, or something?”

“Well, we had to clone you a whole new body,” Velmeran explained. “Venn Keflyn did say that it does not have to be cloned from your original self, even if that is the usual method. You always did want to be a real Starwolf.”

“Yes, but what Starwolf?” she asked, obviously concerned. “I mean, if I am going to go through life looking like someone else, I want to know who.”

“Consherra provided the genetic material. We did a little manipulation with the variables, to give you individuality. Tregloran will have to find you a mirror. Venn Keflyn and I have to be getting back to work now.”

“Mercy, that was abruptly subtle,” Lenna declared. “By the way, what happened?”

“The end of civilization as we knew it,” Velmeran said. “You will have to ask Tregloran about that, since I cannot spare the two hours it would take to explain.”

Velmeran returned to the nearest lift, taking that to the main port airlock to leave the ship by the most direct route. He was under orders from Venn Saevyn to keep his distance from Valthyrra, for fear that his presence would shock her into possibly damaging her ability to access her damaged programming. He preferred to continue his immediate work from the command sections of the station.

At least the delegation from the former Union had since departed for home. They had arrived as the representatives of a government that had ceased to exist. They had departed as two separate nations, and slightly anxious allies. They also left in the company of Starwolf carriers. Velmeran wanted to take no chances with second thoughts from his retired tyrants.

Sixteen of the immense carrier bays in the lower reaches of the station had been adapted with docking probes and stabilizing brackets for the smaller cruisers, which had already been brought in for modifications. For now the cruisers lay essentially abandoned, their crews dispersed throughout the regular fleet for needed experience... and language lessons. Velmeran considered it disgraceful that Kelvessan did not even know their own language, ignoring the fact that Tresdyland was the Aldessan language. His opinion of the Aldessan was far more charitable. Dispersing several thousand Starwolves was somewhat easier with the appearance of the Valcyr, an entire carrier begging for a complete crew.

“One more small miracle,” Venn Keflyn commented. “Those that you do not make yourself, you manage to at least instigate very well.”

“I am becoming very tired of figuring out how to solve everyone’s problems all at once,” Velmeran said. “But above all else, I suspect that I have been extremely lucky.”

“You won everything when you should have lost everything,” Venn Keflyn said. “How did that happen? Were you more careful in your planning than Commander Trace was? Did you make fewer mistakes? Or were you, as you say, simply luckier?”

“I do not like to contemplate that too fully,” he answered. “But it was, I think, a combination of all three. We both made the most of what our circumstances allowed. Trace tried to make it a battle of wills, and that threw off his timing at a critical moment. He also trusted too much to the absolute and unquestioned loyalty of people he tried to deceive and use as slaves. He failed to consider the curiosity of Kelvessan, and he really should have known better than that. But above all else... “

Venn Keflyn twitched her ears at him. “Yes?”

Velmeran shrugged. “We were lucky.”

 

Velmeran stepped quietly onto the bridge of the Methryn, his first time since the battle. All of the bridge officers were at their stations, preparing the immense ship for flight. Consoles, monitors, and viewscreens were bright and active. Valthyrra’s camera pod was moving quietly from station to station as she supervised the activity. The scene looked just the same as it had for the last twenty years, as if nothing had ever changed. And yet this was not the same ship, and Valthyrra did not look up to greet him as she always did.

Venn Saevyn stood quietly at his side. Valthyrra had not improved in the days since her return to life, remaining dull and machine-like. Although she possessed her full memories of her previous life, those memories in themselves had not yet enabled her to access her full personality. Time was running out. Soon her primary programming would begin to grow with experience into a new personality all its own, and her old programming would be rejected from her memory as incompatible. The time had come that the very shock that they had been avoiding was now her only hope.

Consherra left her station and hurried over to join them. “Everything is ready. The Vardon and the Valcyr are standing by.”

Velmeran nodded and stepped further into the bridge. Valthyrra seemed to notice him for the first time, rotating her boom around until her camera pod was hovering only a couple of meters away. “Good day, Venn Saevyn. All of my main systems continue to function in perfect operating condition.”

Velmeran thought that it was not Valthyrra’s voice at all, it was so bland and even. There seemed to be no emotion within her at all. She was as capable of emotion as ever, but lacking in the experience to know what to do with her world on a personal level. Unable to do anything else, she remained only a machine.

“Valthyrra, do you know who this is?” Venn Saevyn asked.

“Of course. This is Velmeran, Commander of the Methryn and of the Combined Starwolf Fleet,” she replied in that precise, slightly eager voice. “They had told me that you have been very busy, Commander. It is good to have you back on the bridge at last.”

“How do you feel, Valthyrra?” Velmeran asked.

“I feel... I am in perfect operating condition, Commander,” she said, reinterpreting his question into simpler terms. “My function as the guiding intelligence of this ship is a very rewarding experience. I enjoy the companionship of other intelligent beings.”

Consherra glanced away, and even Venn Saevyn seemed discouraged. Velmeran knew that he would have to try harder. He had left clues embedded within her memories just before she had gone into battle, clues that he now hoped to call upon to shock her programming into operation. If he could only help her to remember how she had felt, the sadness, regret, and fear that she had been experiencing at that most important moment in her life, when she had faced the end of her existence without the certainty of knowing whether she had really ever been alive, or if she had existed only as a very complex machine with the ability to delude itself with the illusion of life.

“Do you remember the last time we spoke together, on the bridge of the old Methryn just before you went into battle?” he said. “Do you remember how very frightened and uncertain you were?”

Valthyrra rotated her camera pod slightly to one side as she struggled with emotions that her primary programming was not advanced enough to handle. “Yes, I remember speaking with you. I remember that I had lost something, but I did not know what it was or where to find it.”

“You were looking for your soul,” he reminded her. “Do you remember how frightened you were? Feel that fear again. Recall your despair.”

“I remember,” Valthyrra said softly, then lifted her camera pod in a gesture of pain and despair. “I was never afraid to die, but I was terrified by the thought that I had never lived.”

“You were looking for your soul,” Velmeran told her, forcing her deeper into the pain of her memories. “Did you find your soul?”

She turned to look at him, the lenses of her camera pod rotating to focus in. “I do not know. If I did know, then I have forgotten.”

“You keep your soul in the same place the rest of us have our own,” he said, the very same words that he had used during their last meeting. “In the hearts and minds of others. Your spirit is with us. We have kept it safe for you.”

“When you see me again, then you will know the truth in that,” Valthyrra concluded from her own memories, the very last thing she remembered from her life aboard the old Methryn. She turned aside, and the others stood waiting in silence. After a long moment she lifted her camera pod to an alert attitude and turned to look at them. “Well, why is everyone just standing around looking stupid? I thought we were going for a ride.”

“To your stations, everyone,” Velmeran said. “Val, do you feel up to it?”

“I feel fine, Commander. All moorings are clear, and all major systems are powered up.”

“Whenever you are ready,” he told her, then glanced up at her. “It is good to have you back, old friend.”

She rotated her camera pod around to look at him. “I am glad to have you back, Commander. It does my soul good.”

The Methryn backed smoothly out of her bay, then pivoted around and began to accelerate swiftly away from the station. Moments later, a second vast, dark shape joined her as the Vardon fell in to one side and slightly behind. They were two well-matched ships, silver hulls edged in black with six powerful main drives phasing smoothly. The Valcyr took the position opposite the Vardon seconds later, solid black, her four main drives flaring to match speed with the newer ships. They flew together in a tight “V” formation, moving steadily to light speed and their course to Terra.

Clouds of fighters moved in slowly behind the carriers, moving in a dense, disorganized mass. They separated into two distinct groups, one aligning with the Methryn and the other with the Valcyr, fighters that had been based at the station until they were ready to be brought aboard their ships. Twelve packs had left the Methryn and fifteen returned, their numbers augmented by the Mock Starwolves. All ten packs assigned to the Valcyr were coming home for the first time, the first fighters to see her decks in fifty thousand years, three of new pilots and seven transferred from other ships.

As they moved in beneath the inactive stardrives in the tails of the immense carriers, the crowds of fighters suddenly began to fall into order, nine at a time dropping into the V formation of the packs as they moved in beneath the carriers and moved smoothly into their bays. They were all aboard within a minute, the bay doors closing as the fighters were locked into their racks for starflight.

The three carriers widened their formation, putting a little more distance between themselves as they neared light speed. A deep, golden glow began to grow deep within their stardrives, erupting into sudden flares of tremendous power. The three carriers moved as one into starflight, carried on shafts of brilliant light.