“When you do put her out, be sure to lock all the doors.”
Consherra turned to afford him a medium-range dirty look. “I think that what troubles him most is that he does not want to have to put her off the ship in the first place.”
“Oh, I know that,” Velmeran agreed. “I indicated that I am sympathetic with the problem, but that I have no better answer except to say that it is his own fault for getting involved with someone from a different species.”
Tregloran looked puzzled. “Yes, that is exactly what I thought you were telling me.”
The discussion was mercifully concluded by the arrival of the lift at the bridge, and they arrived sooner than the visitors from the Methryn would have anticipated. Valthyrra, who had been conspicuous in her remarkable silence, bent her camera pod around to peer at the lift. Her own had not run so smoothly and swiftly even after her last overhaul. A moment later she happened to glance outside the lift into the bridge just beyond, and she was captivated. She drifted along, heedless of her companions, staring in rapt fascination. It was just like her own, but it was so new and bright and… neat. Really neat.
Tregloran made quick introductions all around. Curiously enough, this was the first meeting between Velmeran and Theralda Vardon. He had rescued her from the museum in the port of Vannkarn more than two decades earlier. She had at the time been dormant, only a single memory cell remaining from the vast network of memory storage units and processors that formed the sentient computer systems of the Starwolf carriers. This was actually the second ship to carry the name and personality of the Vardon, the original having been destroyed over sixteen thousand years before.
Velmeran was curious to discover just how much of the original Theralda Vardon actually remained, and whether or not she still remembered one very important piece of information. Legend, or rumor, had always insisted that she had been the last ship to know the location of lost Terra. Valthyrra, who was old enough to have known the first Vardon, thought it likely, although not even Theralda was old enough to have been there herself.
Tregloran completed the introductions with his first officer Denna, a tall, rather dark Kelvessan with a surprisingly shy, even self-effacing smile; commanding a completely new ship had taught both her and her young commander a lot about being humble. Theralda had her camera pod bent completely around, staring at the captivated Valthyrra.
“She will probably refuse to leave until you show her engineering and the main fighter bays,” Velmeran said softly. “I suppose that we should get on with this little meeting. Perhaps one of the smaller conference rooms…”
“Yes, or we could just hang curtains from her and use her for a hatstand,” Tregloran added, just to see if she was listening.
“Oh, certainly,” Valthyrra agreed, returning — with some effort — to the here and now. “We might just as well retire to one of the conference rooms and get started.”
“An excellent suggestion,” Velmeran agreed, amused.
Such meetings in the conference rooms located behind the bridge of the Starwolf carriers were a common occupation for most of those present, meetings that would often lead to major defeats for the Union. Keflyn had contrived to sit in on a few of the most recent meetings on the Methryn, following along as the second to her pack leader, Baressa. The group from the Methryn sat on one side of the oval with Tregloran and his first officer on the other. Denna looked rather lost and intimidated by such exalted company, and frankly fearful of the Aldessa.
“Well, I know what the question is,” Theralda began. Her presence was through the camera pod at the end of the sort boom hung over the center of the table, currently rotated around to watch her visitors. “I have some good news and some bad news. No, I do not know the location of Terra, at least not accurately. I have a lead. Not a conscious lead, but the location of a world that is very important to finding Earth, in some way a stepping stone on the way.”
“But you do not recall the specific importance of this world?” Velmeran assumed.
“No, not specifically, although I do think that it was an important base to the early Starwolves. I remember being given the coordinates of this world from Meykenna Haldayn and she told me that she had been refitted here, but the conversation exists in my current memory only as a fragment. I think that this world may have been Alameda, the original location of Home Base before it was removed to Alkayja in the heart of the Republic, and was abandoned at the same time that Terra was lost.”
“I hope that there is something there now,” Velmeran prompted. He and Consherra both noted some vagueness to Theralda’s personality, a small lack of spontaneity and a sense almost as if her mind had a tendency to wander. Her personality programming had obviously not survived intact in that one memory cell, and she was still filling in the missing pieces. After a year’s time, she seemed to be doing very well for herself. Once she was speaking, she seemed normal enough. Her tendency toward the melodramatic was a trait she shared with all her sister ships. Velmeran found it refreshing to note that some things had never changed.
“Even allowing for five hundred centuries of planetary drift, there is only one planet it could be,” she explained, turning her camera pod to the large viewscreen on the wall to one side of the table. A simple schematic of the Union and Republic space came up. “It is located here, in territory held by the Republic but near to Union space. This was once quite near a fairly active region of human space, near the center of that one cone of human expansion that led into what was to become Union space. But those were ancient colonies, dating well before the Act of Unification, and they were all destroyed in the early years of the war. It has always been a remote region of the Republic.”
“Remote?” Consherra asked. “It is almost off the chart.”
“That is hardly surprising,” Valthyrra commented. “We know that the Republic was struggling to survive in those days. When Terra was lost, they withdrew to their major colonies that had not been ravaged by the war, those most remote from Union space. I would guess that Terra herself would lie somewhat nearer to the heart of the present Republic, and deeper in from the regions of Union space.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Theralda agreed, continuing this duel of the data processors. “Of course, Home Base was later severely damaged in an attack by a Union assault force that had wandered upon its secret location entirely by chance. That led to the destruction of the computer libraries that held a considerable amount of this old but no longer important information, such as the location of former major worlds like Terra and Alameda. And yet, while those worlds were abandoned for reasons that even I cannot guess, I
“They were unlivable,” Keflyn reminded them needlessly.
“Exactly,” Theralda agreed. “But we now know the probable location of the planet Alameda, and somewhere on that world may still exist important clues for finding Terra herself.”
“Yes, a brilliant deduction,” Valthyrra approved.
“Thank you very much,” she responded amiably, turning her camera pod toward the Methryn’s probe and dipping her lenses as if taking a bow. “Now I do not expect such clues to be obvious, unfortunately. I recall no record of the climate of Alameda before it was abandoned, but it is now a mountainous, heavily forested world just recovering from a long, hard ice age, with great sheets of continental glaciers still in retreat. It is really too cold for human habitation, but has since been settled as a Feldenneh colony.”
“Feldenneh?” Velmeran asked, surprised. The Feldenneh was a race feral in appearance, long-lived, and intelligent, but not very populous, quiet and very peaceful in nature. They had no sympathies for the Union, but their home world and colonies were within Union space and so subject to its dictates. “That makes this a Union-held colony by default.”
“Yes, but there is no Union representation, diplomatic or military, on the planet,” Theralda explained. “The colony was only settled in the past decade, and there is still only the one, main settlement. The Feldenneh are not great explorers, which would explain why they have not found traces of any previous settlement.”
“That and the effects of heavy glaciation,” Valthyrra added. “Continental glaciers can sweep away the ruins of even extensive modern civilizations in a relatively short amount of geologic time.”
“A most astute observation,” Theralda approved.
“You are most gracious,” Valthyrra purred with delight, dipping her own armored camera pod.
“Oh, enough!” Velmeran exclaimed, smiling. “You two are incorrigible. It seems to me that we have discovered this lead only just in time. If there are any remaining ruins, the Union would know about it soon enough. I suppose that you have not been there yourself.”
