Braking hard, the Methryn was upon Alkayja within minutes, dominating the left half of the viewscreen. Lenna brought the ship completely around the sunlit side of the planet, holding the tight curve by force at several times the required velocity of that low orbit. As they neared darkness, the station appeared over the black horizon.
Alkayja station was not the largest that Velmeran had seen, smaller in fact than the Rane Military Complex above Varmkarn, the difference being that this was a compact structure. The main body, twenty-five kilometers across, consisted of a thick ring studded by the large rectangular modules that were the carrier bays. Twenty-two were docking bays, their wide, low openings enclosed only by containment fields, while the two construction bays and four refitting bays had actual doors. Above this was a thinner ring with bays for ordinary freighters and regular military forces. The thick inner hub of the station, completely filling the rings, contained the city itself and an industrial complex. The hub tapered quickly to blunt ends above and below, housing generators and clusters of large engines. Home Base was a mobile station, although it had not left orbit after arriving from Terra fifty thousand years before.
Valthyrra resumed direct control as the three ships closed on the station, each one moving toward its individual bay. She edged her shock bumper into the bracket designed to receive it, the meters-thick shock pistons attached to the frame of the station and those within her nose catching her tremendous mass and bringing it to a gentle stop. The pistons relaxed, pushing her into the parked position as two additional sets of brackets moved in from either side to lock into catches within the hull grooves at the tips of her blunt wings. Docking tubes telescoped out from the forward wall to fasten against her major airlocks.
With docking complete, the Methryn began the process of shutting herself down for the first time in a hundred years. Some basic systems had to remain in operation, such as internal gravity and atmosphere, as well as all of Valthyrra’s essential computer systems. But she did shut down her generators to shift over to station power. This was the only painful part of the process, although strictly from a moral and philosophical point of view.
“All secure,” Valthyrra reported.
“That’s it?” Lenna asked, still at her station. “So what do you do now?”
“Do?” the ship asked. “You leave. You do whatever you can find to keep yourself amused and out of trouble.”
“No, I mean, what do we do?” the girl protested. “Where do we go?”
She looked at Velmeran, but he only shrugged. “I have no idea.”
That had not been directed solely at Lenna, and the young Starwolves who had not been through this before were relieved to hear it. They had somehow been under the collective impression that repairs and refitting meant that a carrier and her crew of Starwolves became a damaged machine and a couple of thousand unemployed Kelvessan.
“However, you have all earned a vacation,” Valthyrra continued. “This is your first port leave, so you should have one of your new friends show you how to sell your trade goods.”
“Trade goods?” Lenna asked, confused.
“Yes. We support ourselves with acts of piracy, and our crewmembers are paid with various items taken from the capture cargo. Did Dyenlayk not pay you for your good work on the Challenger?”
“Pay me?” Lenna asked, mystified. Then realization hit like an exploding star. “Oh, so that was why he gave me a silver tea service!”
Valthyrra stared. “What did you think you were supposed to do with it?”
“Hell, I was going to give a party!”
Valthyrra’s camera pod shot up in surprise, then spun around in a complete circle and beat itself three times against the ceiling. Once that was out of her system, she brought it back to where Velmeran was standing. “Fleet Commander Laroose is on his way to the bridge.”
“Fleet Commander?” Velmeran asked in obvious confusion.
“Yes, the Fleet Commander,” the ship insisted. “Your superior. The guy who gives you your orders.”
“My orders?” he asked, even more confused. “No one gives me orders.”
“I doubt that he would dare to. Nonetheless, he does have the theoretical authority.”
Velmeran had little time to speculate on the type of person who would undertake the task of directing the entire Wolf Fleet. He did have some idea of what he expected of such a person, something very different from the tall, broad-chested human of middle years who entered the bridge half a minute later. His initial surprise was seasoned with mild indignation that the Republic would keep a human in the position of leadership of its Starwolves like a gesture of ownership, coupled with his inner belief that a human was not morally or intellectually capable of such a task.
Commander Laroose obviously knew his way around a carrier’s bridge. But he approached the middle bridge almost reverently, like an admirer in the presence of an idol for the first time.
“Commander Velmeran?” he asked tentatively.
“Yes?”
“I cannot tell you how glad I am to meet you,” he said enthusiastically, shaking the Starwolf’s hand vigorously. He noticed but politely ignored the missing hand, indicating that he had read the report on the incident. “You’ve done some amazing things, and you’ll find that quite a reputation has preceded you. In fact, you’re the first true folk hero of the Kelvessan. And something of a hero of my own, as you might guess. Every Kelvessa I know has taken up playing cards with the faces down.”
Velmeran smiled at the comic image that Laroose drew for him with such obvious enthusiasm. These tactics, even if they were not intended as such, were not without their results. Velmeran was not flattered, since his ego did not operate in that manner. But he was more than gullible enough to be taken in by such charm.
“Before we begin work on the Methryn, there is an important matter that I must discuss with you and your ship,” Laroose continued, now serious. “There have been a lot of changes here at Alkayja Base these last two years. Your own exploits have forced us to realize that we have to do more to serve our own ships. I now have four refitting docks in full operation; we can now overhaul a carrier in two months. We can even have the Methryn repaired and back out in only three. And it is important for you to be back out as soon as possible.”
“Of course,” Valthyrra answered pointedly before Velmeran could reply.
“But I would like to convince you to stay six months. You see, we have a new generation of bright Kelvessan scientists. Mutant stock, I daresay. Anyway, since we started work on the new Delvon, they put their minds to the task and came up with improvements for our engines. Maximum power output is up by over one-third. We have dampening fields that work a full fifty percent better than before. And we have successfully tested an operational jump generator.”
“What?” Valthyrra demanded breathlessly, in spite of her inability to breathe. “The Delvon is going to be a real terror.”
“Yes, well, we have all these new engines and units ready to install two decades before we can put them in,” Laroose explained. “So, when I heard that you were coming in, I thought that we might want to strip out your old engines and give you all these toys, where they will do the most good. In fact, we mean to refit all the carriers and freighters as fast as we can bring them in. What do you say?”
“I do not consider that my decision to make,” Velmeran replied, and looked up at the dazed lenses of the camera pod. “Val, do you agree?”
“Do I agree?” she asked incredulously. “I beg!”
18
Commander Laroose’s assertion that Velmeran was becoming quite a hero to his people was no exaggeration; if anything, it was an understatement. Kelvessan had begun to arrive even before the Methryn was
