Tactical Error (23 page)

Venn Keflyn apparently did not have to think about it for very long. Soon
after they came around a final turn into a long straight section, she opened
fire with her rear cannons. The first set of bolts went wild, as difficult as
it was for her to aim to the rear and fly the large interceptor through the
narrow tunnel at the same time. Then a lucky shot connected with the forward
magnetic truck of one of the two trams. There was a small explosion well
beneath the front of the tram and the truck disintegrated in a thick cloud of
smoke and sparks, causing the cab of the tram to collapse heavily onto the
track. Unable to push against the drag of this massive weight with only the
rear truck in operation, the tram began to slow quickly.

By the time they came to the next long straight section of tunnel, the crew
of the remaining tram knew that they had to take out the Valtrytian ship before
it destroyed them. They had no idea what they faced, for they had never seen a
ship at all like the corvette and they likely would have dismissed any mention
of the Aldessan as a myth. They opened fire in force as soon as they had a
clear shot. Fortunately Venn Keflyn had a better feel for her ship and weapons
by that time. Several of her own shots crashed through the cabin of the
security tram, which disappeared in a series of explosions.

“We are clear from behind for the moment,” she reported.
“Are we still thinking, Commander?”

“We are thinking that running through these tunnels will get us
nowhere,” Velmeran responded. “They have closed all the doors on
us. We will have to stop somewhere along here and...
Varth!”

He brought his fighter to a stop in a hurry, having to trust that the others
had been paying more attention to their flying than himself and would not run
over him. More doors were closed than he had anticipated, for a very solid,
metal barrier now blocked their path, sealing off the entire tunnel. His
fighter bobbed to a sharp halt, its nose hovering barely a meter short of that
barrier. Hardly any more room separated the other ships.

“Drop down, then follow me in order,” Velmeran ordered tersely
as he spun his fighter around and accelerated quickly in the other direction.

He did not go very far, but this time at least he was expecting it. He
passed one of the occasional storage and maintenance areas for the large
freight trams and then a last wide turn, finding himself almost on top of
another of the barrier doors. If he had returned to their previous speed, he
might have never stopped his ship before it crashed through that massive
portal; at least the impact would have probably opened the way for the other
ships to escape. Unfortunately, there were no side tunnels in the section where
they were now trapped.

Directing the other ships to move clear, he backed several meters away from
the door and turned the full force of his fighter’s cannons against its
thick metal. The lighter onboard cannons of his fighter had no effect, and
he did not dare to use the powerful accessory cannon in such close quarters. A
quick scan proved what he had expected, that there was an energy-absorbing
shield in the metal of the door itself, just enough to drain away the power of
the bolts as they hit. Nothing was meant to be simple, it seemed. Donalt Trace
would stop the Starwolves from leaving, if he could. At the very least, he
would slow them down.

“Stay here for a moment,” he directed the others.

Rotating his ship, he retreated back up the tunnel a short distance to the
maintenance platform. A large, flatbed carrier sat alone in temporary storage
on the side track. The cars were designed to take all the power they needed to
levitate their magnetic trucks from the track itself, so they were always in a
functional mode at any time they were on the track. Velmeran dropped the
landing gear of his fighter and settled the small ship onto the bed of the
carrier, applying some downward force through the fighter’s field drive
to hold it down. Then he accelerated rapidly.

The carrier moved willingly, floating effortlessly on a thin cushion of
magnetic force. The barriers that sealed the sections of this tunnel were
shielded against energy weapons, but that shielding did not protect it against
physical harm. The flatbed carrier was large and weighed several tons.
Accelerated to over 200 kilometers, it made a very effective battering ram.
Velmeran lifted his fighter from the deck and slowed, allowing the carrier to
hurtle on past. Riding frictionless, magnetic rails, it lost very little speed
before it crashed into the barrier.

Velmeran followed cautiously, bringing his fighter close to the shattered
barrier. The force of the impact had ripped the massive door completely clear
of its mounting, wrapping itself around the front of the carrier. At least the
tunnel itself was completely clear, although it took a fair amount of caution
and some directions from the others before Venn Keflyn was able to slip her
larger ship between the wreckage and the low ceiling. Once they were all clear,
Velmeran led the way forward through the tunnel.

They came within a couple of hundred meters to a major junction of two tram
tunnels, one track disappearing down a tunnel that branched away to the right.
That left the tunnel much narrower than it had been, causing enough concern for
the Starwolves but nearly closing in upon the tapered wings of the Valtrytian
ship. The slightest mistake now would have been disastrous, and still Velmeran
could find no side tunnels leading into one of the bays. He thought that they
must be in another long passage between the various sections of the
installation.

“Commander, we have visitors again,” Venn Keflyn reported.
“They are keeping a respectful distance this time, but they are still
there.”

“You will have to deal with them eventually,” he told her.
“We will need a few minutes of peace, if we are to find a way out of here
and get it open. Lenna?”

“Nothing I can do,” she insisted. “I didn’t have to
navigate the tunnels often, and then I always had a map and a guidance
computer. Besides, they have control of the place.”

Velmeran had not been wondering how things might have gotten worse, but he
found out anyway. Every light in the tunnel suddenly went out. The pilots had
to navigate on scan and blind chance for a moment as they dropped their landing
gear to bring up their landing lights. And even that was inadequate,
illuminating only the ghostly edges of the walls, the tunnel disappearing into
a well of darkness. They dared not reduce their speed for fear of the security
trams closing on their tails. The trams were locked to their tracks, a
guarantee of their safety even if they ran without any guidance in the dead of
darkness. Their only danger lay in actually bringing down one of the ships,
since they would then have the wreckage on the track ahead and no way to stop
in time. Velmeran was not about to test that vague insurance of their own
safety; he did not trust the Union crews of the trams – assuming there
were any – to be aware of their danger.

Velmeran was about to give Venn Keflyn further instructions when they
suddenly burst upon a chamber of vast size and the darkness exploded in a storm
of bolts. Velmeran ignored fitful sight and trusted for the moment to scanner
images, and even then it took a long moment for him to realize where they were.
They were in what seemed to be a large central switching depot for the entire
tram system, a maze of intersections and loops of elevated tracks, and dozens
of security trams were taking aim at them from every direction. For the moment,
the abilities of the Starwolves to sense the crystal engines of other ships had
prevented collisions. But that could not go on for long, and Venn Keflyn did
not have that ability under any circumstances.

“Scatter!” he ordered sharply. “Duck down any tunnel you
can find. We will have to trust Valthyrra to find our way for us.”

He turned and headed down the nearest tunnel, hoping that a majority of the
others would be able to follow either himself or each other into the same
tunnel. Valthyrra would be able to scan a map of the tunnels and the locations
of the ships themselves, directing them to a rendezvous. Then he would be able
to put Venn Keflyn in the lead, using the greater power of the corvette’s
weapons to clear a passage through any barrier.

“Commander, Donalt Trace has been calling for you for the past couple
of minutes,” Valthyrra reported. “He wants to talk to you.”

“I happen to be very busy at the moment,” Velmeran answered
impatiently. He also happened to be very frustrated.

“He says that he will let you go, if you just talk to him.”

“I wonder... as if I do not know,” Velmeran muttered to himself
as he considered the situation furiously. It was not so much that they were at
Trace’s mercy; they could force their way out. But Trace obviously had a
secret that he wanted very much to share. He brought his fighter to a complete
halt, hovering above the tracks. “Very well. Put him through.”

“You have a through channel,” Valthyrra reported.

“Ah, yes. Commander Velmeran. It’s been – what? –
twenty years or so. It is so good to hear from you again.”

“Not many are that glad to see me,” Velmeran answered.
“Then again, you did extend the invitation, did you not?”

“It was still very good of you to come. Will you speak with me on
neutral ground?”

“Does such a thing exist in this place?”

“Relatively neutral ground,” Trace corrected himself. “The
observation deck of landing bay twenty. I will be alone.”

“You will let the others go?”

“Do we have a private line?”

“You do now,” Valthyrra answered for him.

“Proceed forward at a moderate pace,” Trace instructed. “I
will guide you, and also make arrangements to divert the others to an open bay.
Whether or not they leave is entirely up to them, and being Starwolves they
probably will not. But they are not invited to our little meeting.”

The tunnel lights came back up, illuminating a narrow access tube leading
away into an indeterminate distance. Velmeran eased his fighter forward,
accelerating to about half the speed that they had been maintaining through the
tunnels. He knew that he was most likely heading into a trap, but he still had
to go.

Commander Trace stood at the far end of the observation deck, its wide bank
of windows looking out across a large bay that was dark and empty except for a
single abandoned Starwolf fighter. Velmeran entered the observation deck
cautiously, protected from harm by the heavy armor of the suit he wore, the
black of the regular pilots rather than his usual white so that he would not be
singled out. For the moment, he wore even his helmet, his gun belt strapped to
his waist, until he was more certain of the peaceful intentions behind this
meeting.

Donalt Trace was the largest human that Velmeran had ever met, still as tall
and straight as the last time they had met two decades past. He was becoming an
old man now, yet his appearance did not greatly convey that fact. The features
of his face were heavier, his hair beginning to gray. Yet the years had given
him a far greater presence than before, a maturity and experience that lent him
a sense of tremendous nobility, and of danger. He seemed almost like a statue,
larger than life, immobile and impervious to harm, and at the same time
possessing the hidden tenseness of a tightly-coiled spring.

He had in many ways become the man he had wanted to be, merged with the
worst that Velmeran had feared he would become.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said. “I am alone
and unarmed. It suits my plans for the moment just to talk with you.”

“I wanted to be sure,” Velmeran said as he released the throat
clips and removed his helmet.

Trace seemed even more surprised by the Kelvessan who stood before him,
staring for a moment of open amazement before he mastered himself. “So,
you have not changed at all. I knew logically that you would not. You
Starwolves live for so long that twenty years out of your young life must be
nothing to you. Yet seeing you here, looking exactly as you did then, it makes
all of those years between us evaporate as if they had never been.”

“Talk to me, Trace,” Velmeran said. “Tell me what was so
important that it required this. I have things to do.”

“Oh, I imagine that you do,” Trace said almost eagerly, taking a
step forward. “Perhaps you do not yet know just how much you have to do.

“It’s all very simple, don’t you see,” Trace
continued as he turned to look out the window, drawing his arms inside the
long, heavy cape he wore. “We’ve made the same mistake since the
start. We build some new weapon or invent some new tactic, and then we send it
out against you to see if it will work. Often it does work, once or twice, but
then you find some new way to deal with it and we are right back where we
started. I’ve made that mistake with you a few times myself, but then I
understood. I’ve learned to save my tricks for when they will do the most
good.”

He glanced at Velmeran then, a pleased and knowing look like someone who has
understood the magician’s tricks. “That was the answer, you see. I
had always wondered how a handful of Starwolves could always defeat us, with
all the vast resources and manpower that the Union has. That is because
everything about you, the design of your ships and the way that you operate is
designed for maximum efficiency, to be where you are needed and to be ready for
anything on a moment’s notice. We’ve tried to beat you at your own
game, and we always loose. I’ve tried to beat you at my game, and again I
lose.

“So then I sat myself down and thought about it.” He paused a
moment, and laughed to himself. “Hell, I was flat on my back, recovering
from my last little meeting with you. But I had that hand of yours, you see. I
had the ability to make Starwolves of my own. And I was determined that this
time it was not going to be a simple exercise in futility, that this time I was
not going to allow you the chance to find a way to defeat my newest weapon. I
was going to save it until I could use it to the most good.”