'Valthyrra Methryn seems to have plans for me,' Velmeran remarked as he chose a sturdy connecting rod to sit on.
'Valthyrra obviously thinks a great deal of you, and I trust what the ships think. They have been around so long, and have seen so many people come and go, that they can tell,' Dveyella said, keeping her real thoughts to herself. She wondered how much he really knew about the plans that Valthyrra had for him; somehow she suspected that he knew more about what was going on than anyone thought. This was the most interesting ship that she had been on in years. 'And do not think that you would fly in my pack if I did not trust you.'
'How did you come to lead a special tactics team?' Velmeran asked.
'By being as good as they say you are,' she explained. 'I was asked to fill a vacant place — just like you — and I was asked to stay. After fifty years I am now the senior member of the pack.'
'They all died?'
Dveyella shook her head. 'Some, but mostly they retire back to the regular packs. Marlena plans to go soon, so I might keep you if you do well enough, and if you want. Have you thought about it?'
Velmeran considered that a moment, and shook his head slowly. 'No, I have not. I have a pack… I might not be the best leader, but I have a responsibility to my pack.' But then he paused as a new thought occurred to him. 'Maybe that is what Valthyrra has in mind for me, though.'
'Why would you think that?'
'I have been a source of dissension lately,' he explained. 'After our last battle, part of the crew has come to look upon me as something of a hero, while others — a few others — only resent me. Valthyrra and the Commander have problems enough without me in the middle of it.'
'I have been told something about pilots who refused to go out until they were certain that the trouble was real,' Dveyella said. 'Would it surprise you to hear that this is not the first time in recent months?'
'No, I suppose not.'
'I also heard that you were indeed something of a hero…'
'According to Consherra!' Velmeran said accusingly.
'By Consherra, yes,' she agreed reluctantly. 'The pilots think otherwise?'
'My opportunity for heroism arose because I was out there alone, unsupported by pilots who did not want to trouble themselves until they were sure that they were needed,' Velmeran explained hotly. 'Two packs against a system fleet, and it was mostly over before the Methryn could get a single fighter out. Management is by no means prepared to allow them to forget it. You can surely see how that could cause resentment.'
'Envy is the seed of resentment.'
'Witticisms do not run the starship,' Velmeran said. 'This comes as a good opportunity to get rid of me gracefully. I can leave the hero, to a task more suited to my abilities.'
'You think they want to be rid of you?' Dveyella asked in amazement. 'The Commander is your own mother.'
'And you might recall that she did not protest strongly,' he reminded her. 'Mayelna is a good Commander, but she works hard at it. She learned long ago the flaw in our standards of advancement, that being a good pilot does not necessarily make one a good leader.'
'Valthyrra Methryn has something in mind for you, and I doubt that she would willingly let you go,' Dveyella said. She rose slowly and shifted her shoulders to settle her armor into position, then turned back to Velmeran. 'Perhaps you would be the most use here. We will go get Keth, and you can see for yourself what you think.'
6
The Union carrier did not turn toward a new destination but dropped out of starflight and rushed into port so fast that it barely slowed itself for orbit. It was followed, discreetly and silently, by a machine hardly larger than a transport's star drive. The drone was fast and very maneuverable, and it had scanners and sensors of such range and sensitivity that the Union could only dream about. It also had the intelligence to perform its tasks efficiently, as well as judge new situations and act accordingly.
The drone watched patiently as the carrier settled into orbit, then it moved quickly, evading detection as it probed the planet to its very core. At last the little machine assembled all the information it had gathered into a neat package, opened an achronic channel and transferred it all back to the Methryn. Valthyrra quickly analyzed the information and was delighted with what she found. She quickly called Dveyella and the members of her pack to a meeting in one of the smaller conference rooms. The Commander left Consherra to watch the bridge, much to the first officer's dissatisfaction.
'My drone reported that the carrier reached its destination a short time ago,' Valthyrra began. 'It orbited just long enough to discharge a passenger and the remains of a fighter by way of a freight shuttle before moving on to the station to secure for repairs. The planet is called Bineck, fourth planet of a system by the same name, so called after the captain of the ship that first discovered it… a common enough ploy by otherwise unknown and unremarkable Union officers to stake a claim for immortality.'
'If we can dispense with the trivialities,' Mayelna remarked in her best patience-under-adversity voice.
'They seem to have decided upon stealth rather than security to hide their prize,' the ship continued. She activated the viewscreen at the back of the small table where the group sat, turning her camera on its short boom to watch also. She quickly drew out the schematic for the system in question, showing the path of the carrier's approach, before moving on to the planet itself, drawing in features as she described them.
'The planet is uninhabited and uncolonized. The Union maintains a small orbital base, and there is also a major base on the planet itself, mostly a supply and refitting station for small ships. There are no facilities for larger ships, so they are dealing with the carrier as best they can. There are about fifty fighters at the station and some two hundred more at the base. There are also forty stingships and fifteen destroyers at the station. The carrier is in no condition to fight, and she is so tied up with cables and gantries that they could not have her free in time anyway.'
'What about the carrier's fighters?' Dveyella asked.
'She lost those the last time we met,' Valthyrra replied, and continued. 'The extinct natives were great builders in stone. Even though they never developed a higher technology, they built fortresslike cities, kilometers across and so far down that the drone had to scan with deep-probe. Archeologists finished with these cities long ago and the Union has been using them ever since as longterm storage shelters. The native race died out about ten thousand years ago, long before the Union expanded into this area. We knew of them but never made contact. They were gone before we knew of their difficulties.'
'Radiation traces?' Dveyella asked.
'No, the catastrophe was a natural one. A sudden, naturally mutated virus stripped the planet of vegetation in a quarter of a year's time. It was a type of super-virus, immense in size and complexity, that turned sugars into alcohols. Even grains stored in the deepest levels of the cities were ruined. The animal life either starved or died eating planet life that was infused with toxic alcohols… or from simply ingesting too much alcohol of any type.'
'Quite an interesting little bug,' Velmeran remarked. 'Did the Union clear it properly?'
'They seeded a virus-chaser and imposed a full standard century of quarantine, but we had already eradicated it nine thousand years before. You do not leave nasty little things like that lying around for fools to blunder into. Which was a good thing, since survey teams came and went for half a planet year before they finally figured things out.'
'But the Union is able to use these ruins, even after ten thousand years?' Dveyella asked.
'Ruins might not be an accurate word, since very little is ruined. These people built to last. And I will grant that the Union had to do a great deal of cleaning and a few repairs to make those cities fit for storage caches.'
Valthyrra quickly pulled a file picture of a curious alien creature, short and powerful of build, with four long legs on a short main body and a pair of long arms attached to a small, vertical upper torso. Its eyes and ears were immense. 'The natives were nocturnal cave dwellers. The cities they built are indeed more like caves, with few outer doors and no windows, and walls so thick that the temperature does not vary much throughout the year even in the levels aboveground. And most of the cities are well below the surface. They would come out on the surface
