Tactical Error (27 page)

She reached in the open chestplate of her suit, switching her communication
channel. “Quendari Valcyr, do you hear me?”

“I hear you quite well,” the ship answered immediately.

“I am about to crash this shuttle in the middle of nowhere,”
Keflyn explained quickly. “Could you send a message to Derrighan at
the Feldenneh settlement and have him come in Mr. Addesin’s van to fetch
us? We will be coming down about eight hundred kilometers short of the
field.”

“I will send a probe immediately,” Quendari assured her.
“And I will send another to meet you, in the event you need help. A probe
may not be much, but it is the best I can do.”

“It will be appreciated,” Keflyn replied.

She selected her landing place quickly, one of the larger meadows where she
could bring the shuttle down on the very crown of a hill, then allow the ship
to slide downhill to a stop. That, she thought, would help prevent the shuttle
from burying its nose in the ground and jerking to a violent stop. She was not
entirely certain about all that; she was not used to ships this size, nor any
that flew entirely on atmospherics.

The shuttle settled in on the hilltop very smoothly and slid some 300 meters
to the base of the hill. Then it did bury its nose in the soft ground and came
to a very sudden and violent stop. The straps of Keflyn’s seat broke and
she left the ship very quickly by the nearest way, with an involuntary leap
through the forward window. The shuttle gave a final heave as if broken apart
at the seams by some internal explosion that was not quite enough to break it
apart, and it settled with a sigh and a cloud of dust. Then it began to burn
furiously.

Jon Addesin had himself out of his seat in moments and hurried back to the
pilot’s cabin to check on Keflyn, only to find to his very great surprise
that she was gone. When he saw the broken window, he knew what had happened. He
rushed back to the interior cabin and opened the emergency hatch, then tossed
out several survival packs and himself. Fortunately most of the lower nose had
collapsed or been buried, and it was only two meters down into loose soil. He
was still wearing half his own weight in the engineering suit, and the fall
nearly left him stunned.

He pulled off his helmet as quickly as he could, then hurried to find
Keflyn. As it happened, he nearly ran over her as he turned. She was standing
there beside him, looking much less the worse for wear than himself. Starwolves
in their armor enjoyed a high degree of invulnerability.

“I think that we should get away from this monster, just in case there
is something inside that might explode,” Keflyn said, helping him to
gather up the survival packets.

“So now what?” Addesin asked. “Do you have any idea where
we are?”

“I have a very good idea where we are,” she insisted. “I
have also made arrangements to have someone here to rescue us in a few hours.
Trust me to arrange things better than that.”

They retreated to the edge of the woods, where they would have some cover
from the wind and wood for a fire. It was late afternoon and Keflyn doubted
that Derrighan would arrive before midnight, assuming that he left as soon as
Quendari’s probe reached him and did not wait until the next day. She
could use her com as soon as they were settled to inform the Valcyr of their
condition, and the burning shuttle should provide an excellent beacon for
several hours yet.

“We will have to get you a new pair of shuttles,” Keflyn
remarked as they were setting up a temporary camp. Jon Addesin had come out of
his heavy suit immediately, and she was now shedding her own.

Addesin looked up in surprise. “What?”

“Well, you lost that shuttle on Starwolf business,” she
explained. “And we do owe you a few favors in exchange for what we are
about to do to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that this planet just became Starwolf property. We will keep
it secret if we can, but it is too dangerous for you to ever return to Union
space. Perhaps you will be able to have the supply run between our own home
world and here.”

Addesin seemed to be at a complete loss. “The Union already considers
this world as their own. Do you really think that the Starwolves can chase them
away?”

Keflyn was amused as she began sealing up the suit for storage. “The
Union has never been able to take from us any property that we have claimed as
our own. Are you worried?”

Addesin shrugged. “I just have a much higher opinion of what the Union
is capable of doing compared to you Starwolves.”

Keflyn laughed aloud. “You cannot be serious! Based on what
evidence?”

Then she had to admonish herself for thinking that she was any better. She
had never been honestly in love in her life, and yet she had to reluctantly
admit that she was becoming very fond of Derrighan indeed. Perhaps absence did
make the heart grow fonder, and her present company only cast the contrast
between the two into a bright, cold light. Despite her quiet sympathies for the
man, she was also growing very tired of Jon Addesin’s sullen suspicions.
She was eagerly looking forward to Derrighan’s arrival, and his quiet,
undemanding love.

For any number of reasons, the time had come for Keflyn to go home.

The Methryn dropped out of jump into high starflight speeds, a great
shuttering crash running through her frame as it adjusted under the tremendous
stress of that shift. The members of the bridge crew looked up expectantly for
a long moment, then turned back to their work when there were no additional
noises or warning lights. The big ship had survived one more time.

“We are doing better than expected,” Valthyrra announced, the
lightness in her voice denying that everyone knew she was tearing herself
apart.

“I do not need for you to do better than expected,” Velmeran
told her. He leaned back carefully against the console of central bridge, the
injury to his left shoulder complex still bothering him slightly. “I need
for you to get there on schedule and intact. If you break down somewhere along
here, then we lose Alkayja.”

“I do keep that always in mind.”

“You just find it easy to ignore,” he finished for her.
“Any response from Keflyn’s portable transceiver?”

“Nothing so far,” Valthyrra responded, her camera pod moving
ahead of him as he rose from his own station on the upper bridge and descended
the steps. “Trel and Marlena are still asking to take their transport to
get her.”

Velmeran shook his head sadly. “No, we will need every pilot we have.
She has that Free Trader, and quite literally anything can outrun a
Fortress. I just hope that they get clear in time. I wonder if she has any idea
of where she really is.”

That thought amused Valthyrra as much as himself, but Velmeran’s
thoughts were always on business. Just one more day,
and
they would
reach their destination two days ahead of Donalt Trace’s Fortresses and
Mock Starwolves. Then his greatest juggling act ever would begin, and he would
have to find last minute answers to twenty years of careful planning.

He saw that the chief medic Dyenlayk had entered. He moved quietly to one
side of the bridge to meet her, but both Valthyrra and Consherra the
Everpresent saw him and invited themselves.

“How is Lenna?” he asked softly, knowing well why she had come.

Dyenlayk looked tired and at the end of hope. “The same as always. I
can keep her alive forever, but I have to ask myself why. There is certainly
nothing that I can do to put her back together, and I doubt that anyone can.
All the same, I still plan to keep her alive until I can hand her over to the
human medics at Alkayja. They know their own kind better than I ever will. If
they say that nothing can be done, then we have to let her go.”

“I never thought that she would make it back to the ship,”
Velmeran said, mostly to himself. “What can I possibly say to
Tregloran?”

“What can you possibly say to Bill?” the medic asked.
“That big, stupid automaton is just standing there beside her bed like a
ghost.”

“Throw him out, if he gets in the way.”

“I do not have the heart,” Dyenlayk said as she turned toward
the lift.

“I would have never thought that Bill was that aware,” Valthyrra
remarked.

“Bill exists for a very limited purpose,” Velmeran said.
“His existence is measured by his service to Lenna Makayen.”

He glanced up at Valthyrra’s camera pod, and she turned away in a
haughty gesture. “I most certainly will not at this time attempt to
council a grieving automaton.”

“Unfortunately, Lenna’s was only the first life of a friend that
I might have to throw away to save this war,” Velmeran said as he turned
to stare absently at the main viewscreen. “I just hope that the price
buys us what we want.”

“Could they really win?” Consherra asked.

“That depends very much on those Mock Starwolves,” Velmeran
admitted. “The one thought that occurs to me is that Donalt Trace fears
the very sight of Kelvessan, to the extent of an actual phobia. I am
responsible for that, I fear. I doubt very much that he would have trusted his
own Starwolves enough to give them as free a hand as he said. I expect –
and hope – that they will be very carefully directed only into very
specific parts of the battle. I am also remembering that they will have no
actual battle experience, and they are flying ships, no matter how good, that
were still built by Union technology. With all of those factors combined, I
still expect that one of our pilots should be as good as two or possibly three
of their own.”

“Even three to one, they could still outgun us by numbers
alone,” the ship reminded him.

“It also depends very much on what help we have,” he continued.
“Right now, I am only counting on two ships and the fighters of the
Methryn to carry this battle, plus whatever else we can find at the base. With
those odds, we have to lose. We have to have at least one more ship with
fighters come in before it starts.”

“I just hope that our friends back at the base have not decided to
break up that incomplete ship in their construction bay for scrap,”
Valthyrra said. “If that carrier is not in condition to fly and fight,
then we are in trouble indeed. The extra engines and guns and the special armor
of that new ship will mean a lot.”

Velmeran frowned. “If Lenna had been able to retrieve the codes that
will cause the Mock Starwolf cruisers to self-destruct, then we would have
little to worry about. We could have gone hunting for those Fortresses and met
them on our own terms. Of course, I am only assuming that those self-destruct
codes even exist. Donalt Trace might well be contemplating a long and
profitable partnership with his own Starwolves, just as he said.”

“I hope that Venn Keflyn did get him,” Valthyrra muttered in a
rather dire voice.

“In a way, Trace has already done his worst to us,” he
continued. “I do not like the thought of Kelvessan fighting Kelvessan, no
matter what the circumstances.”

The Methryn dropped out of starflight well inside the system and continued
her run quickly and under concealment, her main shields brought up to stealth
strength. She was already well past the inner line of automated defenses, which
had not even taken note of her passage. Circling tightly in her final approach,
she braked sharply at the last moment and pulled to a stop barely ten kilometers
short of the immense orbital base at the same time that she dropped her
cloaking shield. Her appearance was sudden and completely unexpected, designed
to use the vast, menacing form of the giant carrier in a subtly threatening
gesture.

The Republic had forgotten just how frightening its own Starwolves could be.

“Get me President Delike on the line, and make certain that they
understand that I mean now,” Velmeran ordered, watching the main
viewscreen. Most of the ships that had been in the area of the station were
heading very quickly in the other directions, but one audacious little cutter,
painted bright orange for easy visual recognition, was moving to intercept the
Methryn. “What does that bold little twit think he is doing?”

“That, Commander, is an automated escort,” Valthyrra explained.
“The Port Authority is demanding our surrender.”

“Is that so? Double-check that ship for life signs and destroy it in
the most spectacular manner that you can contrive.”

Valthyrra was happy to oblige; she had always considered the bright orange
escorts to be a rather officious gesture anyway. She spared it only a single
shot from the largest cannon from the main battery in her shock bumper, and the
escort disappeared in a flask of bright flame.

“Message delivered and understood,” Valthyrra remarked with deep
satisfaction. “President Alac Delike is awaiting your pleasure.”

She moved her camera pod closer, so that Velmeran could speak through her
own leads. He elected to follow her lead, launching into an immediate and
unrelenting assault. “President Delike, you are caught between a rock and
a hard place. You have the Kelvessan angry with you, and you may have just
noticed that we have almost all of the Republic’s weapons. And now you
have Donalt Trace and the Union coming down on you. An attack force of five
Fortresses and sixteen of their new Mock Starwolf cruisers will be here in two
days, and their orders are to destroy the Republic.”

“But that’s impossible!” Delike protested. “We have
a treaty with them.”

“That treaty was a ploy. Their only interest was using you to get at
me. Let me explain things carefully, since you obviously do not have the wit to
figure things out for yourself. This is the only supply base for the
Starwolves, and the homeworld of the Kelvessan race. They knew that we would
not accept exile, but force your surrender, and they have already gotten all
they ever wanted from you. They finally know the location of Alkayja, and you
have chased away the carriers that could have protected you. Now they plan to
destroy you, so that the carriers will have nowhere to turn.”