'How could they…'
'As I understand it, too many people got the idea that the freighter you were chasing turned out to be a battleship, and that your students were frightened. They thought that Baressa's pack could handle the matter, and that the alert would pass before they got to the bays. The pack leaders kept calling up to the bridge, asking if they really had to bestir themselves. Valthyrra roasted their ears with a few choice words, put every pilot and crewmember not in armor on probation and threatened suspension for everyone not at their ships or stations in five minutes.'
'Then it was not just the pilots?' Velmeran asked.
'No, but it was the worst among the pilots,' Consherra said, pausing a moment to press the call button for the lift. 'Valthyrra remarked that she has had trouble getting her packs out before, for a variety of reasons, but never laziness. She said that perhaps we do not fight often enough.'
'That sounds like something Valthyrra would say,' Velmeran remarked. The lift doors snapped open and they stepped inside. 'She may be right.'
'You, at least, have nothing to worry about,' Consherra repeated as she set the controls for their destination. 'You have managed to impress all the powers that be… even the Commander, although she is not likely to admit it.'
'Do not make me out to be the hero of this battle,' Velmeran exclaimed. 'I did nothing special.'
'You most certainly did.'
'Then I was too busy to notice.'
'That is exactly the point,' Consherra insisted. 'You led the attack. You made all the important decisions, while we were all too busy trying to figure out what was going on. Baressa was senior pack leader out there, by more than a hundred years, and she deferred to your leadership.'
Velmeran did not know how to answer that, for it suddenly occurred to him that she was right. Then a very different thought came to mind. 'This has not been Mayelna's day.'
Consherra frowned. 'Your mother is taking this hard. We all knew that Keth was too old to fly. Mayelna is nearly as old herself, and she has been thinking for some time about naming her Commander-designate.'
Velmeran considered that and nodded thoughtfully. 'And the Commander-designate has to be named from among the pack leaders. And I doubt that there is anyone she would choose, especially after today.'
'That is the problem,' Consherra explained. 'That decision belongs to Valthyrra, not her. And Valthyrra has already indicated her choice. But Mayelna has delayed in naming the new Commander-designate.'
'Mayelna disapproves of Valthyrra's choice?' Velmeran asked, and shrugged. 'Who would suit her?'
The Council Room behind the bridge was nearly empty, since most of the pack leaders and officers were away. Mayelna sat at the head of the oval table at the bottom of the audience pit, watching the screen mounted in the table before her. Valthyrra was trying to peer over her shoulder, although her angle of attack made that difficult. She was operating a camera boom mounted overhead, above the very center of the table, but not so long or mobile as the main camera boom on the bridge. Of the major officers, only Cargin, the weapons director, Veyndayk of cargo and salvage and the engineering officer Tresha were present. The gallery was empty of onlookers; this was not a safe place to be just now, for those who had any choice.
Velmeran and Consherra descended the steps to the council floor, moving carefully because of their armor. Valthyrra looked up immediately, and after a moment Mayelna put the monitor on hold and glanced up. Velmeran did not much like the way she looked him up and down as if checking for dents in his armor. Apparently satisfied with her inspection, she sat back.
'Welcome back, Meran,' she said. 'I feel obliged to tell you that you did very well, especially under the circumstances.'
'Even if so much trouble came of it?' he asked.
'Even so. Her Worship is so pleased with herself that she is likely to burst the seams in her hull, and Veyndayk is dreaming of the loot we are going to collect on pillage. And while I am hardly pleased by it, I am glad to know that we have personnel problems…'
'Laziness!' Valthyrra inserted.
'…in time to do something about it.' She paused and bent over the com unit mounted into the table. 'I want all pack leaders in the Council Room in ten minutes.'
'Ah… Commander, we really do not believe that we should leave our packs just now, under the circumstances.' A hesitant reply came after a long moment.
'I do not doubt that you would want to be anywhere but here just now, under the circumstances,' Mayelna replied. 'But if you do not want to be suspended, then you had better stop questioning orders. I want to see you here in five minutes. Your packs will be just fine without you.'
Velmeran tried not to look startled, but it was the first time that he had heard anyone threatened with suspension. And he could tell that she meant it, if only to prove that she could and would. 'Has it really come to that?'
'We shall see, I suppose,' Mayelna replied simply, although she looked troubled. 'The crew of this ship is beginning to forget that we are a military force, not a gang of thieves and pirates. And yet this is the type of behavior that I would expect from pirates.'
'Perhaps there have not been enough reminders lately,' Valthyrra suggested. 'We never attack anything but freighters. Starwolves used to spend more time breaking Union invasions and trade monopolies.'
'That may be changing, if this is any indication,' Mayelna said. 'Perhaps this was more misunderstanding and circumstance than laziness and insubordination. I hope so, because personnel problems will endanger this ship if the Union is becoming more aggressive. If things do not change quickly, then I am going to inquire about changing out packs with five or six other ships.'
This time Velmeran could not help looking surprised; even Valthyrra's glass eyes seemed to widen. A change-out of five packs meant half the pilots, which meant that she was dissatisfied with nearly the entire group. At least he was safe. No ship would take a pack whose members could put together all their years to make the age of only one experienced pilot.
'Tresha, is there any reason why we cannot reopen the upper level of each bay?' Mayelna asked.
'Not that I know of,' the engineer answered.
'Do we have crewmembers for it?'
'We have an overabundance of crewmembers in too many areas,' Valthyrra replied. 'By shifting some to new duties, we can easily run the upper decks. When those bays were closed five thousand years ago, I did not have enough crew for it. I kept ten packs in those days simply by using pilots who would be rejected now. Do you know that I once flew with only nine hundred crewmembers?'
Mayelna glanced up at the camera pod in mild annoyance, and continued. 'It might seem superfluous, most of the time. But four functional decks would mean that we could ready and launch twice as many packs at a time.'
'Is the Union really getting more aggressive?' Cargin asked.
'We lost nearly an entire pack two years ago,' Valthyrra replied. 'There were three such incidents in the four months prior to that, and eleven since. Twenty-one ships have been lost from our carriers in the last two years. We did not lose that in the quarter century prior to that. This trap was the most that the Union has thrown against a carrier in fifty years.'
'But was it a trap?' Velmeran asked. When he saw that everyone was looking at him, he continued. 'An intentional trap, I mean. Their perimeter scanners showed a freighter under attack. The Station Commander sent out half of his fleet, perhaps just in the hope of chasing us off. It might be that they never meant to close for battle, but they underestimated our speed and we were on them before they realized. Then, when he knew that he had a Starwolf stuck inside one of his ships, he sent out the rest to distract us.'
'It has happened before,' Valthyrra agreed.
'That is easier to believe than to think that this was planned,' Velmeran insisted. 'They could not know that an old fool would try to poke a hole through the hull of a carrier, and this attack makes no sense otherwise.'
'Now that is the other part that I do not understand,' Mayelna said as she crossed both sets of arms and leaned back in her chair. 'If Keth had time to locate a hatch, then he had time to turn away.'
'On the contrary, I understand it only too well,' Valthyrra said. 'It was my reason for wanting him retired.
