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
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 startup 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 startup of Valthyrra’s primary
