old pack. Only the core of Velmeran’s special tactics team remained; Baress and the two transport pilots, Trel and Marlena. Baressa’s pack now served Velmeran for the remainder of his special tactics team.
Of course, Velmeran was anxious to see the newest ship in the Starwolf fleet. Valthyrra was a little anxious about that herself. Consherra had been quietly amused by watching the ship’s camera pod, which had been engaged in its own form of nervous pacing, looking over the shoulder of every bridge officer in an erratic cycle. Occasionally Commander and camera would fall in beside each other as they conversed privately. That was occasionally a bit of a trick for Valthyrra, who had to choreograph the movements of her camera boom.
“Have you heard any gossip?” Velmeran asked the ship as they both stopped just before Consherra at the helm station. “Has there been any hint that Theralda remembers anything important?”
“There has been precious little gossip on the subject of Theralda Vardon, beyond the fact that she is up and running,” Valthyrra explained. “It has been a closed subject, considering the importance of the information she may be carrying. Why did you never take me to look for Terra while you were still in the business of predicting the future?”
Velmeran did not answer, knowing when he was being teased and not necessarily too kindly. As it had turned out, the almost god-like psychic abilities of the High Kelvessan were limited to only a few months of hyper- sensitivity at the time when those talents were coming to their full maturity. Velmeran and several other of the Kelvessan aboard the Methryn were still remarkable telepaths, even by the standards of his own kind, but his apparent ability to predict the future had long since been severely diminished.
The Aldessan had been so disappointed, they had refused to have anything to do with him for a year.
Velmeran was still young for a Kelvessan — very young to command a ship of his own, young even for a pack leader. He was tall for one of his kind, although the Kelvessan did not vary greatly in most physical characteristics, and he was still smaller than most humans, even at the height of their genetic decline. Like all Kelvessan, he had large, dark eyes and long, thick hair of chestnut brown, but he was of mutant stock, the reason for his unusual height as well as the fact that he was somewhat less human in appearance than most of his kind, his long skull and hint of a short muzzle making him almost feral in appearance. Consherra, who shared his mutant features, had finally figured out that the High Kelvessan were beginning to resemble the Aldessan of Valthrys, their creators.
“Here they come,” Valthyrra announced, with an almost predatory eagerness that made Consherra look up. The ship dropped her voice in a conspiratorial manner. “They came out of jump exactly five light-minutes from the planet. I never had that kind of control from my jump drive.”
“Your frame could never take it,” Velmeran reminded her. That was a very sore point with Valthyrra. She damaged herself just a little more every time she jumped, so she was obliged to save it for emergencies. “I would like to take a short ride in that ship, all the same, if you would not consider it too disloyal.”
“Just a moment, you two,” Consherra interrupted, sitting back in her seat with both pairs of her arms folded. “That is the Vardon, and Tregloran is the commander of that ship. She is not the property of either one of you.”
Both Velmeran and Valthyrra stared at her, looking too surprised to be hurt.
“I know you both,” she continued sternly, glaring at Velmeran. “You get so caught up in your schemes that you begin to give orders as if you were in command of the entire Wolf fleet. While that ship of yours always has been willing to try anything she can get away with, she has also acquired some of your bad habits.”
Velmeran shrugged helplessly with both sets of arms. “I
“You can still be polite.”
Valthyrra had tracked the main viewscreen around to observe the approach of the other ship, and they looked up in time to see the almost breathless approach of the Vardon, appearing suddenly under the ring and braking sharply with her forward engines to pull to a sudden halt barely twice her own length away. There was a certain amount of blatant showing off in such a maneuver, although Valthyrra had to think that fifteen million tons of ship was a lot of weight to throw around so casually for a machine that was still making her trial flight.
The Vardon advertised herself willingly as the new Starwolf supership. Her hull employed a new type of armor, a silver-titanium fusion that could disperse most direct cannon strikes in itself, but which could be infused with a structural shield to become harder even than the heavy quartzite used by the Union on their Fortresses. Because the ship was still under her trials, the black polymer impact layer that gave other Starwolf ships their distinctive appearance had not yet been installed. Her hull was still the bright silver of the original metal, except for a wide border of black impact shielding around the edges where her upper and lower hulls met along her lateral groove. There had been some discussion of leaving her in that form, a clear warning of the special threat she represented. She hardly needed that complete coat of impact polymer.
Although the Vardon was still the same size and shape as her older sisters, she did possess some other subtle differences. She had six main drives in a slightly larger housing under each of her short, slightly downs wept wings rather than the usual four. Her stardrives were the same size as previous ships, since she depended more upon her jump drive for interstellar distances, and she was the first carrier to have twin conversion cannons, a pair of the large muzzles protruding just slightly from beneath her nose.
“She is a pretty thing,” Velmeran commented softly. He still regretted the fact that other business had caused him to miss her launch.
“Everything a ship could ever want to be,” Valthyrra agreed wistfully.
Velmeran glanced at her. “They have one just like that with your name on it, waiting for you. It should be ready soon now.”
“It would be nice, just to feel young again,” she replied vaguely.
Velmeran did not answer, knowing that she was tearing herself apart in the duty he required of her, using the jump drive that was destroying her to keep his schedule. He had wanted for her to transfer into this ship, let Theralda wait for the one that would soon be coming out of her construction dock, but the time for going home had never been convenient, and it had seemed more important to have that twenty-third carrier in operation as soon as possible.
“Could you find out if Tregloran wants to talk to me?” Velmeran asked.
“He is standing by already,” Valthyrra reported; she had already been in private communication with the other ship. She moved her camera boom closer. “I will put you through on my own pickup.”
“Treg?” he asked, addressing the camera pod.
“Tregloran here. We are ready to go to work, Commander.”
Velmeran glanced at Consherra. “He still knows his master’s voice. Treg, we will be coming over for a little talk.”
“Do not trouble yourself, Commander. Theralda and I will come over to the Methryn.”
“Not on your life!” Valthyrra interceded. “We will be over in a few minutes.”
“You want to see how a new ship works?” Theralda asked.
“This from a ship whose claim to fame was her ability to get herself blown out of space?” Valthyrra responded even more sharply. “I can still take you in a fight, sister. I just wanted to see if you were keeping yourself in any sort of order.”
“You just bet. Come on over, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
“Just clear a path,” Valthyrra said, and cut the channel. She turned her camera pod to look at Velmeran. “You know, I think I like her.”
When Velmeran and Consherra reached the transport bay, they found that Valthyrra was already waiting for them. The small wedge-shaped hull of the probe was hovering near the door of their transport, the shielded camera pod at the end of its long, flexible neck bent around to regard them.
“You have elected to join us?” Velmeran asked. The probe was perfectly capable of independent space flight, as small as it was. It was essentially just a field drive system and a transceiver for Valthyrra’s use inside an armored shell.
“I might as well take it easy on myself,” she replied. “All of my remaining probes are getting a little shabby, and we are sitting in a very cold and uncomfortable section of space just now.”
The probe turned and drifted inside the open hatch of the transport, and the two Starwolves followed, but they paused in mild surprise as soon as they stepped inside. Venn Keflyn stood in the aisle between the transport’s rows of seats. The Aldessan was not as massive a creature as she seemed but exceptionally rangy, a dragon’s body
