boarding ramp. Lenna waited patiently while a pair of soldiers in environmental suits like her own stepped out.
“What are you doing out here?” the apparent leader of the pair asked. At least he asked in the calm, almost bored voice of someone who expected a perfectly reasonable answer. After all, Lenna was dressed as one of their own and walking about this disgruntled countryside with a sentry. She relaxed.
“Performing cold-weather exercises on this experimental model,” she explained, indicating Bill. He bent one foreleg and nodded. “We were flying along when something came up behind us in a hurry and blasted us good.”
“Must have been that rebel freighter that made that laughable pass at the base three days ago,” the second of the two offered.
“I imagine so, considering the fact that you’ve been walking due west along its approach,” the first one agreed. “Why don’t we give you a ride in, as much as that might seem like better late than never.”
“How far are we from the base?” Lenna asked as she directed Bill into the rear portion of the tank.
“Oh, it’s just over that next hill, not more than a kilometer away.”
There was certainly something to be said about being delivered to the front door, although she was just as glad that they had not found her before this. As it was, it seemed likely that she would be allowed to simply disappear inside the base as soon as they arrived. Otherwise, after finding her in the middle of the frozen nowhere, there would have been too much time to wonder about her, perhaps even to test her identity to greater depth than her forged idents could endure.
The base was sprawled across the icefield that filled the wide, circular depression of a valley that appeared to be the better part of fifty kilometers across, although only the tops of a few mostly-buried buildings broke through the surface of the snow in widely-scattered clumps. Very little information existed about this base, and no photographs. Lenna was not surprised to find that the largest part of the complex was actually deep underground, in the zone of constant temperatures and therefore sheltered from the deadly cold of the winter storms.
The tank cut a straight path across the ice to the nearest of many long, featureless buildings. The massive metal door opened at their approach, revealing a long, steep ramp descending into the depths. Lenna watched with interest as they descended beneath the relatively thin lens of ice that filled the shallow, valley floor, down within the rock itself. Even the Union knew better than to build something that might be expected to last for centuries in the ice itself, which had a disconcerting habit of moving and cracking, as well as simply accumulating and then disappearing altogether over long periods of time.
They arrived at last in a type of underground garage, where some two dozen hover tanks were parked, with empty stalls for several more. The ceiling seemed a little low, at least to Lenna. She thought that she would have felt just a little nervous in trying to guide a tank through this enclosed space, since the machines had no wheels and were obliged to float about a meter off the ground. There seemed to be about three meters of clearance over the roofs of the parked tanks. Considering how massive they were, that was cutting it just a little close.
Her own tank settled to the floor and the main hatch began to fold down, although the two soldiers remained seated in the forward cabin. The leader turned to look at her.
“This is patrol depot three,” he explained briefly. “We have to go back out on duty, so we’ll just let you out here. The tram station is through that passage on the far side of the chamber.”
“We’re on the eastern perimeter?” Lenna asked, sending Bill on through the narrow hatch.
He nodded. “This is the main complex, of course. Hangars for the supply ships and the mock wolves are on the far side of the western ridge.”
Lenna was so surprised by that unexpected lead that she almost forgot to tender the appropriate thanks and farewells as she followed Bill out the hatch. The tank rose and moved away, accelerating up the long ramp back to the surface. Lenna hardly even noticed as she walked absently across the garage toward the tram station, while Bill followed loyally behind.
Things seemed to be going about as well as she had any right to expect. First she was delivered right inside the base itself, without the need to bluff her way through security, and then she was given the lead she needed to begin her search. Apparently the vague hints were perfectly true. The Union was developing a new form of missile or automated fighter that employed highspeed artificial intelligence to outfly the Starwolves, a highly advanced variant of the old Wolfhound missiles that had been used to limited effect in the past.
“Get a move on,” Bill told her softly. “You might attract attention to yourself, shuffling about like that.”
“All right. You just keep your shell on,” Lenna answered softly. “What’s your problem? You have a short in your patience chip?”
“What do we do now?” he asked, his usual practical and unperturbed self.
“Now we establish our cover,” she said, directing Bill into the first of the two compartments of the tram. “First we turn up the personnel sections and requisition ourselves an apartment where I can leave this arctic gear, and then we begin having a look about. If things continue to… Hello!”
“Hello,” Bill answered pleasantly.
“Oh, debug yourself!” Lenna snapped, waving him away impatiently. She had been bent over the control panel in the front of the compartment, where the operator could select from between some three dozen tram routes. There was a very extensive map of both the passenger and heavier cargo tram routes. “Why, just look at this map. This place must be as large as a city. And a fairly large city, at that.”
“Many places to look,” Bill remarked innocently.
Maeken Kea stood at the window of the observation deck, watching the loading of the cutter that would take her back to Vannkarn. The ship looked small and lonely in the immense, underground bay now that the fleet was under way, just as this entire complex seemed silent and empty now that its primary function was done. She wanted out of here, but she did not want to go home. She wanted to be out with her fleet, at the command of a swift, powerful ship. Even a Fortress would do, for all that she seemed to have bad luck with the monsters.
Donalt Trace stood a short distance behind her, leaning back with crossed arms against the table that rested against the inner wall. He was a towering man, as big as she was small, a stately, ruggedly handsome man with streaks of white in his hair and a regal face lined by years of care and reconstructive surgery. They were both growing old in the pursuit of his schemes.
“It’s just not fair,” she insisted, turning to face him. “We’ve worked on this for years. Twenty years of planning all coming together at the same time, hitting the Starwolves in more ways than they can possibly handle. Next to you, I’ve done more than anyone else to make this happen. I want to be a part of it.”
Trace shook his head slowly, perhaps even sadly. Maeken expected no concessions from this man, not even for her. Obsessed men were supposed to be cold and uncaring, to use others as they used themselves. Most people assumed that Donalt Trace was a man obsessed with the destruction of the Starwolves, a certain Starwolf named Velmeran in particular. But Maeken thought that she knew him better. Fighting Starwolves was simply his job, and he took it very seriously.
Trace’s task was simple in definition, but seemingly impossible in actual implementation. He had to find a way to destroy the Starwolves so that the Union would be free to turn its military might inward to enforce the sterilization of complete segments of its own population. Genetic drift was slowly degenerating the human species; the essential rule of nature that only the strong should survive had not been in effect in hundreds of centuries, and the Union wished to impose its own standards of just who should survive and reproduce. The Starwolves were enough of a distraction that the Union’s ability to police and control its own was beginning to slip, with elements of internal rebellion growing rapidly for the first time in thousands of years.
Fighting the Starwolves meant fighting Velmeran, their tactical leader, a Starwolf of tremendous cunning and initiative. Twenty years and more had passed since Donalt Trace’s last meeting with Velmeran, and he had, in a strange way, benefited from that meeting. He had been matured by what had happened to him that last time. He had shed his blind loyalties, beliefs, and prejudices, his foolish self-limitations that had made him the simple, shallow man he had been. He had learned wisdom the hard way, through defeat and the cynicism born of his failures. He had become a serene, calculating man of tremendous depth, a man qualified at last for defeating the ultimate weapon of war, the sentient fighting machine of artificial design known as the Starwolf.
He had learned to defeat them in the only way he could. He knew now that he could never build better ships or weapons than they possessed. He had come to realize that he could never build better pilots, living or mechanical. The only way to defeat Starwolves was to be more creative than they were. The only weapon that would work against the Starwolves was themselves. Twenty years of careful planning had gone into a relentless
