Tactical Error

have vaporized the ship. He stood where he was, leaning against a post as he watched her.

“I know you are there,” Keflyn said at last.

Addesin shrugged and sauntered over to join her. “The position of chief engineer was not open, but you can have it if you want it. Do people come on board the Methryn and start taking her apart?”

“The Methryn has never been in such bad shape,” Keflyn said, tightening the final bolts on the panel. “That rough phasing was giving me fits.”

“You’re some kind of strange perfectionist?”

“Starwolves can hear drives phasing,” she said, tapping her head. “That is no secret to the Union, although it is not common knowledge. That is why we are such good fighter pilots. We can track drives more accurately than any scanner.”

“That’s a neat trick,” he commented, surprised and obviously skeptical. “I’ve never believed in magic.”

“Starwolves have nothing to do with the supernatural.” Keflyn teleported the wrench that she had left beside the access panel into her hand; she had inherited her father’s remarkable abilities, although simple teleportation was actually the limit of her powers. “What we can do with the natural is something altogether different.”

You are showing off, she told herself. Starwolves were not supposed to do things like that in front of humans, not even their friends. Of course, most Starwolves could not begin to do that. Then again, who was he going to tell? No one would believe him.

Addesin thought about it for a moment, and decided to change the subject. “Ah, if you are quite finished tinkering with my ship, would you like to see the rest of it? Or would that just tempt you?”

“I might as well,” Keflyn agreed as they walked slowly back to the main corridor. “I mean, we really need to get down to business.”

Addesin looked startled. “I thought so, too, but I never expected it so soon.”

Keflyn looked profoundly embarrassed. “I… really need to know about the Feldenneh colony. I mean, how long have they been there, how large is the colony now, and how much have they explored?”

“In other words, do they possibly know anything so important that it would attract the attention of Starwolves?” Addesin elected to attack the matter boldly. “Say, why don’t we get just one matter of business over with early and be done with it. I know that colony fairly well; I helped to set it up. If I knew what you were looking for, I could possibly help to steer you in that direction. If I can’t know, then I’ll keep quiet on the subject from now on.”

“Well, I wish you had not asked that,” Keflyn declared with exaggerated regret. “Now I have to throw you out the airlock and commandeer your ship.”

“What?”

“Why are you not afraid of Starwolves?” she asked with equal bluntness. “Humans are all supposed to be afraid of Starwolves, as if maybe we all run around poking people’s eyes out, or something.”

“Kill you as soon as look at you is the proper expression,” he told her. “I don’t know. You see, I’ve lived my entire life without ever seeing a real, live Starwolf in person, and then you walked onto my ship.”

“You went outside and got me.”

“You know what I mean,” Addesin exclaimed. “That was a line, a come-on — flattery. You speak the language reasonably well, well enough to change the subject.”

“You changed the subject. I asked why you were not afraid of me.”

Addesin paused a moment, then indicated for her to proceed him up the ladder to the crew deck. “I don’t have an answer. You simply do not frighten me. I’ve seen things in my life that have frightened me a whole lot more than you. Now, do I get an answer to my question, or do you even remember what it was?”

Keflyn frowned as she considered how much to tell him. “We think that your colony used to be a major world of the Terran Republic nearly fifty thousand years ago.”

“A major world?” Addesin asked. He looked both directions along the wide corridor that ran most of the length of the ship, choosing to go toward the back. “We’ve found some ruins, but nothing to suggest a major world.”

“You have found a few glaciers as well, I imagine,” she said, and he nodded. “Those glaciers have been at work for five hundred centuries.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I can tell you now that there are some buried ruins, but quite extensive and well- preserved ruins all the same.”

“Does the Union know about these ruins?”

“No, I don’t think so. The Feldenneh consider this world to be their own, and they can be very secretive about anything that they consider to be their business. I’ve always respected their privacy, since I work for them. At the same time, they seem to trust me.”

They entered the large galley and lounge at the end of the corridor, with its wide bank of windows overlooking the ship’s rear drive section. Keflyn flipped the switch that opened the metal shields of the windows, looking out into the blaze of colors of the Thermopylae’s passage. Jon Addesin stepped back from the window. Few humans, even Free Traders, could endure the vertigo of looking directly into the glaring visual distortion of starflight. It was a Starwolf’s native element.

“How long?” she asked.

“It’s a long way,” Addesin explained. “It’s way on the outside, even from the Rane Sector. New territory for the Union. The schedule calls for three and a half weeks.”

“And how long before you have to go on?” she asked.

“Only a week. I hope that gives you all the time you need to do whatever you have to do.”

“I will not be leaving with you,” Keflyn explained.

“Oh, I see.” Addesin was obviously surprised and dismayed to hear that.

“Could we get there ahead of schedule?” she asked, turning to look at him with a Kelvessan’s big, innocent eyes. She was no fool; he would know that every day they arrived early was another day he had with her. “I mean, surely you can get just a little more speed out of this ship.”

It was rather bad acting. Keflyn was new at this; she knew the theory, but she had never practiced the technique. All the same, young Captain Jon Addesin swallowed it whole.

“Well, I suppose that we could step it up just a little,” he agreed reluctantly; something about this made him very nervous. “Especially after what you’ve done to our stardrive, we could probably step up the speed as much as one-third without stressing the engines much more than we were. There’s just one thing that I have to ask.”

“And what is that?”

“Can you work on my generator also?”

The Thermopylae arrived in orbit above the world that the Feldenneh natives called Charadal a full week ahead of schedule. It was a cool, green world of two wide seas between two large, continental regions, mountainous and forested between massive poles and vast plains of glacial ice. It was the type of world only a Feldhennye could love, and a world that the Kelvessan could learn to love.

As soon as the Thermopylae had settled comfortably into orbit, the crew began the process of unloading their cargo into shuttles. The two atmospheric shuttles were kept in their bays in the underside of the freighter, where they could be loaded directly from the main cargo bay. The Feldenneh colony was receiving so little cargo on that particular journey that the whole shipment was easily loaded onto the two shuttles in only one trip. Depending upon the type of shipment the colony had for export, loading their cargo could be as easy or it could take the better part of a week. Jon Addesin never knew what he would be carrying out until he got there, but he was expecting a fairly large shipment of cured wood.

When Keflyn followed Captain Addesin into the shuttle bay for the ride down, she had immediate reservations — the two aging transports were even more decrepit than the freighter herself, worn out from uncounted circuits into and back out of planetary atmospheres. The shuttles were an ancient and simple design, intended for slow, rough, atmospheric entries with low-powered shields that allowed a great deal of heat to leak through, deflected by the shuttle’s own ceramic composite hull. The low-powered design was slow and awkward, but it allowed for more of the shuttle’s interior room to be given over to cargo and less to massive generators.

Keflyn was even more alarmed when she entered the forward cabin of the first shuttle to find Jon Addesin at the controls. She was not particularly surprised; the Thermopylae was flying under a minimal crew, with just about everyone taking multiple duties. Jon Addesin was not only captain but helm and