silent beacon?'
'Yes, that is a possibility,' Lake agreed.
'And such a beacon would be located on the ship rather than in the suit of the pilot?'
'They do carry a distress beacon in both the ship and the suit, but those we know about. A secret tracking beacon, however… certainly in the ship. They could not hide a long-range beacon in the suit.'
'Then this is your message,' Trace said as he turned back to the messenger. 'Make your best time back to Bineck. The prisoner is to be transferred into your ship, along with two sentries and as many live guards as will fit. Then have the fighter put aboard a destroyer that is to make best speed for… shall we say the big sector shipyards at Karran? Do you have that? Do you need written orders?'
The messenger shook his head. 'Verbal will be enough, under the circumstances.'
'Good. Remember to say nothing of your orders over radio, since there may be ears you know nothing about.'
'Military escort, sir?'
'Hell, no! You might as well broadcast your plans aloud! Your only hope is in secrecy and speed. Besides, the sector fleet couldn't save you if they want you bad enough. Hurry, now.'
The messenger saluted quickly and disappeared out the door of the Sector Commander's office. Donalt shook his head slowly at the stupidity of the human race in general and underlings in particular. Councilor Lake stood by the window, his hands in his pockets as he stared out across the underground city of Vannkarn. But his thoughts on the matter were plain enough. He was smiling as if at some private joke, amused with his own thoughts.
'It's too late, you know,' he remarked after a long moment.
'Yes, I know that. These long delays in travel time are working against me. I've only just now found out what's going on, and for all I know it might already be over.' Trace glanced over at him, irritated. 'You don't have to look so damned pleased by it all.'
'I'm not exactly pleased,' Lake answered. 'I'm as frustrated as you to realize that we can never deal with Starwolves on their own terms. And yet, where Starwolves are concerned, I have learned to never be too hopeful or depend too much on luck.'
'They make their own luck,' Trace said. 'That is what I want for us.'
'You want your own Starwolves?' Lake asked, turning to look at him. 'What if our people cannot duplicate their genetic design?'
'Then we clone the one we have,' Trace insisted.
'We can surely tamper with his genetic material enough to make use of the information it contains to create our own viable race.'
Lake nodded thoughtfully. 'Good idea. But what then? Will your new Starwolves serve you willingly?'
'It's not a question of will. As long as we bring them up from the start without a thought in their head except for what we put there, they will be machines to serve us. But I can see that you don't like the idea of using real Starwolves.'
'I prefer that we learn how to make our own,' the Councilor admitted. 'Then we can order their obedience to our will. What if real Starwolves have some instinctive urge to fight us? You could find that your own weapon has turned against you.'
7
The late morning sun hung just over the horizon far to the south. Summer was nearing its end and the long day would end with it, for the sun would soon fall below the edge of the world and not rise again for half a year.
The northern polar region of the planet Bineck was in most ways like that of any other world where human life could dwell. Both poles were open ocean, bordered only in part by continents that lay mostly in warmer climates. Bineck was a cool world; even the equator was only temperate and the poles were bitterly cold even in the height of summer, with massive floes of thick ice. Nothing lived on those icy plains, not when the little life that did exist on that world struggled for survival in warmer regions. A few fish did swim below the ice but they were, in truth, only colonists, no more native to that world than the people who had planted them there.
Three small ships shot down through the clear, cold sky through the very center of the magnetic pole, only a few hundred kilometers from the planetary axis. They fell with tremendous speed, nose down with their engines idling to hide them from scanner detection. The transport and two fighters descended wrapped only in the protection of their atmospheric shields, allowing them to move at tremendous speeds with little bother from atmospheric friction. They had begun their approach well outside detection range, building to speed and then drifting along a carefully plotted course that permitted them to complete their run without having to develop the engine power that would give their presence away, braking gradually with minimum reverse thrust.
They entered the upper atmosphere as fast as even wolf ships would dare, nearly seventeen thousand kilometers per hour, dropping down from the very fringe of space to ground level in less than a minute. Leveling out at the very last moment, the three ships engaged their engines just enough to maintain their speed. They flew as low as they could, until their atmospheric shields began to press against the ice only five meters below. At fifteen times the speed of sound, the shock wave created by their shields pulverized the thick ice, throwing it up in a towering plume of snow and splintered crystals.
Flying wing to wing, the ships casually dodged pressure ridges and icebound glaciers that appeared out of the hazy whiteness of the horizon with blinding speed. After a couple of minutes the ice floe began to break up, ending abruptly only seconds later. The ships shot out over open water, a vast curtain of white vapor rising like a storm cloud behind them. Still hundreds of kilometers short of their goal, they began to apply braking thrust to drop speed quickly as they prepared to land.
Hardly a minute later the three ships finally dropped to subsonic speed just as a fortress wall of towering cliffs rose before them. The lead fighter moved to the front as Dveyella took them by a concealed path. The weather had been less kind to the hills since they had been alive; a canyon had cut deep into the unprotected land, providing a hidden passage for the ships until they reached the cover of the high ridge. Dveyella led them at almost a crawl along the back of the ridge, finally slipping through a tight pass that put them almost on top of the wide ledge where they would land.
The transport settled gently to the very center of the ledge, and the two fighters nestled in close to either side. Velmeran left his fighter as Dveyella had instructed, with the generator idling just enough to keep itself cycling, the energy cells charged and the major systems powered up. They might not be able to spare the time for a prestart on the way out. He unstrapped and lowered the boarding ladder; jumping was the easiest way down, but the hinged canopy prevented pilots from jumping back into the narrow opening of the cockpit, and it was a long jump. Fighters had a very long-legged stance to accommodate their turned-down wings and the big main drives they protected.
Dveyella walked around the front of the transport just as he leaped down. She was still fastening on the thick belt that held her guns and a row of heat charges. She turned as the door of the transport slid open. Baress stuck his head out, frowning fiercely. 'Do you know how hard it is on a good pilot to have to make the ride down as a passenger?'
'No, but I will surely ask the first good pilot I find,' Dveyella replied.
Baress's frown deepened as he stepped down to join them. 'Spare me. I came to tell you that a storm is due. A late season warm front is pushing up a line of about the worst weather this place ever sees, and it should be on us about the time you return.'
'I can see that for myself,' Dveyella said, glancing up at the wall of dark clouds that was beginning to climb above the ridge behind them. Lightning rippled up and down its length, and distant thunder rumbled faintly.
Baress only shrugged. 'I am only trying to be useful. Are you sure that you will not need any help?'
'No, we will likely need all the help we can get. But I am sure that you will not leave this ledge.'
'I will sit on him if he as much as looks over the side,' Marlena offered from the transport door. 'By keeping Baress here, the rescuers will at least outnumber the people needing rescue.'
