lightning that rippled harmlessly over her hull and a fourth of the distance around the shell. At the same time she dropped her tapered nose enough to pass just beneath the blunt bow of the Fortress. Although she cleared the lower hull with fifty meters to spare, their great forms appeared to skim past with only the narrowest gap. The Challenger had dropped her outer shield and held her fire, her full power to her hull shields for nearly half a minute that the Methryn was beneath her. Then she was past, accelerating at her best speed along the decoy corridor laid by her own transports.
Now Valthyrra was safe and could flee out of range before the Challenger could pivot back around to bring her main battery to bear. She turned her attention back to her stricken Commander. Dyenlerra had arrived moments earlier and was bent over the diagnostic unit attached to her suit. She looked up as Valthyrra brought her camera pod around.
“I am sorry,” the medic said softly. “It is too late.”
For a long moment out of time, Valthyrra was too stunned to react. Then she did something that she should not have been able to do, something contrary to the programming that had brought her to life thousands of years before. Her capacity for both love and grief had grown far beyond what her initial design had allowed. In a blind fury, mindless of her own safety and forgetting her own crew members on the Challenger, she swung herself back around and began charging her conversion cannon. But the Challenger immediately sensed that rapid increase in power, and she knew what it meant. Without even waiting for orders, she threw up her shield.
That brought her fully back to her senses. She began to power down her cannon as she turned herself back around and disappeared into the ring.
Velmeran sat alone in the chamber just off the power core, beside a control console for a field generator that still smoked from the effects of a heat charge. One life had been required in payment for the successful completion of this task. He had known that from the first. But he had thought that it would have been his own, terms that he would have been willing to pay. In the end the payment had come suddenly and unexpectedly, the one life nearest to him that he had considered safe. If he had only known. He sat alone in the middle of the vast ship that he had come to destroy and grieved silently for what might have been.
So it was that he grieved too long, lost amid regret and self-recrimination, when Donalt Trace found him there minutes later.
15
When Donalt Trace first saw the single figure completely encased in Starwolf armor sitting on the steps of the inclined ladder leading up into the machinery of the field generator, he did not know what to make of it. Because the Kelvessa was helmeted, he could not tell who it was or why he just sat there in a decidely dejected altitude. He was aware that the Challenger had been in battle, having ambushed the Methryn and apparently won. And so he thought he knew from that who this must be.
Commander Trace checked his rifle a final time before moving in. Two other crewmembers moved in along converging paths, their own rifles ready. The sentries held back, too big and clunky to sneak up on anything short of a deaf thark bison facing in the wrong direction. As versatile as the automatons were, they were never subtle.
Three against one. Trace considered the odds slightly on his side because he had the element of surprise. He would have felt safer if he could have gone in shooting, but he desperately needed a live Starwolf.
“We have you surrounded!” he called out, a slight exaggeration. “Put down your weapons and move in this direction.”
The Starwolf looked up, startled. Seeing the three rifles trained on him, he decided quickly. Moving carefully, he released his belt with its two pistols and remaining heat charges and laid it on the floor. Then he rose slowly and walked half the distance to where Trace stood.
The Sector Commander called in the waiting sentries, ordering them to surround the captive at a distance of only two meters and shoot if he made any sudden moves. Only then did he receive the abandoned weapons. The rifle was a greater burden than he cared to admit, and he hung it by its strap from the access hook on the side of a sentry and slipped the latch of the belt on the opposite side. He gave the Starwolf’s armor a quick inspection but saw nothing he considered to be a weapon.
“Now, my busy little friend,” he said, facing his tiny captive. “Why don’t you remove that helmet so that we can see who you are.”
The Starwolf released the throat clips and pulled off his helmet. As much as his kind looked alike to most humans, Donalt Trace recognized him immediately. What surprised him was to find that Velmeran had been crying. His triumphant look faded to one of sadness.
“Your ship?” he asked gently.
“You hit the bridge,” Velmeran explained simply.
“I am sorry,” Trace said, and his regret seemed very sincere. “I never really meant to hurt you, not like I have. This is simply business. I do what I have to do.”
“I am glad that you can appreciate that,” Velmeran remarked.
Trace looked at him sharply. “What do you mean by that?”
Velmeran only shrugged indifferently, as if he had a secret and considered it very secure.
“You’ve put a bomb in the power core, haven’t you?” Trace insisted. “All this minor sabotage… you could work at this for hours and never get anywhere. Well, I know where you entered, about three-quarters of a kilometer back. Your bomb has to be somewhere between that point and here.”
Velmeran shrugged again. “And how many tens of thousands of access plates will you have to check under in the next hour before it goes off before you find it? It is not a very big bomb, but it is more than enough to snap this power core in two.”
“We can reroute the network around the power core. Besides, the Methryn is not going to fire on you — assuming she is still able — while I have you.”
“The Methryn will do what she must,” the Starwolf assured him.”And I will be gone by then, anyway.”
Trace grinned in wry amusement. “You know, I more than half believe you will. That’s why I’m hoping to make it very, very hard for you. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you to my associates for a few minutes while I call up to the bridge.”
Commander Trace sent him back to the steps where he had been sitting and put the three watchful sentries to stand guard over him, their guns charged and ready to fire. Then he withdrew around the corner, far enough to avoid being overheard by the sharp ears of a Kelvessa.
Velmeran, distracted from his grief by matters at hand, gave some quick thought to the immediate future. His claim that he could escape at any time was not an idle threat. At least he hoped not. For now he had to buy time for Consherra to reach the auxiliary bridge and complete her own task. As long as Trace was preoccupied with him and the crew of the Challenger was distracted by looking for a nonexistent bomb, Consherra was likely to remain forgotten.
Velmeran concentrated his talent on forcing the Challenger to open her basic programming. He found it easier to control this ship than to force Valthyrra to recite Lenna’s rank poetry, but he also had to be far more subtle.
