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.
