Tarrel smiled. “To tell you the truth, I believe that the only reason I am alive now is because I have a very accurate sense of knowing when it is time to run.”
“Your own people seem to value you highly,” Asandi told her. “So that you may know how matters stand at this point, we now have a formal truce with the Union. You have been appointed special diplomatic and military advisor. And we are happy to have you. We will be carrying our fight with this Dreadnought into your own space, and we need you to smooth the way with local officials when our ships descend in force upon their systems. I have received a special communication detailing your new duties and special powers. I will add that you can expect any reasonable cooperation from us, including the right to see and to know certain things that we would otherwise have kept to ourselves.”
She hesitated. “If you will excuse me for bringing this up, but it does seem like the proper moment. Commander Daerran indicated that those very matters that you just mentioned might interfere with your ability to allow me to return home again when this matter is settled.”
“He was right to broach that subject with you,” Asandi explained carefully, after a moment’s pause. “It involves certain assurances that he did not have the power to give you himself. He could not promise you something that the Council might then feel compelled to take away.”
“I do understand,” she insisted. “On less immediate matters, there are a few things I have been wondering about.”
“Please speak freely.”
“For one thing, I find it odd that a human would be the supreme commander of the Starwolf fleet. The Kelvessan seem to feel that they are people, not property, and certainly not machines of war.”
“That might require a rather complex explanation,” Asandi said as they filed aboard a tram to take them deeper into the station. Other members of the group continued their own conversation, allowing Asandi and Tarrel the privacy to speak freely. “In theory, the Kelvessan are in fact property and not people, and I am supposed to make their decisions for them. In practice, they make their own decisions among themselves. I serve as a liaison between the Kelvessan and the human worlds of the Republic, which supplies many of their needs. That is why my post has traditionary been led by a human. I am indeed not qualified to act as their military commander. I have never been in Union space and I do not fully understand the situation they face. They tell me what they need and what they would like to have, and I do my best to get it for them.”
“But the Republic no longer exists,” Tarrel insisted. “At least, that’s what I have always been told. The Starwolves are fighting to restore the old Republic, which created them as a long-term weapon of last resort.”
“That is partly true in itself,” he agreed. “But the Republic has never ceased to exist. We are the Republic, admittedly only a handful of colonies smaller than a single sector of your Union. For that matter, those that you call the Starwolves are formally the First and Second Special Carrier Fleets.”
“First and Second?”
He smiled wryly. “The First Fleet patrols your space. The Second Fleet, considerably smaller, guards our own space from attack. They have not been needed since the early years of the war, but we keep a few carriers at hand just the same.”
The tram took them well into the interior of the station, and the entire delegation filed quickly into a large conference chamber, taking their seats to suddenly become a committee. Captain Tarrel herself began the discussion by relating the events of her first and second unexpected encounter with the Dreadnought, and her attempt to make contact with it afterward. Then she and Commander Daerran spoke of their observations of the Kerridayen’s attack on the Dreadnought in an attempt to gain information. The scientists of the group took control of the discussion after that, analyzing and debating the data that the Carthaginian and the Kerridayen had collected. Tarrel did her best to keep up with the conversation from that point but matters became a bit thick for her education, especially when they began to explore regions of advanced physics that her own understanding of science told her did not exist. Secondary subspace refractions and achronic resonance seemed to be the topics of the moment, and she had only a vague idea of what those things even meant. She sat back in her chair, listening much but saying nothing as she waited for matters to return to subjects in which she could be useful.
“If you will excuse me for interrupting, it seems to me that your discussion has reached the point that it would proceed best in your laboratories,” Asandi said at last. “Have you in fact reached some consensus upon just what direction your investigations should take?”
“We believe that we have some idea of how to modify our scanners to see through stealth-intensity shielding,” Dalvaen, the Kelvessen research leader, answered. “We could have solved this problem long ago, except that there was never any need. Only our own carriers have the ability to cloak themselves; even our fighters cannot. As long as the Union never developed shielding technology to that level, there was never any need.” “Then you can modify our present scanners?”
Dalvaen was hesitant to answer precisely. “We have a very sound idea that we are ready to prove through advanced computer simulations. If it passes the computer models, then we can attempt testing at scale. But I have no idea yet just how much modification of our present scanners this will involve. My suspicions are that these adaptations will be of a radical nature, requiring actual refitting of the carrier.”
“Then we should let your people get to work immediately and discover just how much this will involve,” Asandi said. “I will have appropriations cleared for anything you might require. But what about the question of weapons?”
The Kelvessan sat back in his chair, seemingly a gesture of defeat on his part. “Unfortunately, that is going to require some very serious thought before we can propose any answers. I am curious about modifying our cannons to operate more like the Dreadnought’s own discharge beams. That shield might then be unable to simply deflect away the energy of our cannons, and we could overload the shield. We also want to look into the possibility of designing auxiliary shield projectors that could be carried within the holding bays and would step up the ship’s own shielding capabilities to a level comparable to that of the Dreadnought, modified to deflect its discharge beams the way that our present shields deflect regular cannon bolts. Being able to look inside the Dreadnought’s shields might tell us what we need to know. But I am afraid that we do not have any quick answers to this problem.”
Asandi nodded. “I will send a message to the Union telling them to expect this matter to take some time. For us, it is time to get to work.”
The meeting was adjourned, and Captain Tarrel was left to wonder what she was to do now. Commander Daerran had told her.that she would no longer stay aboard the Kerridayen, since the damaged carrier would not be going out again for several weeks. But she did not yet know if they proposed to send her out again as an advisor aboard some other ship or if she was to stay there at the station until the Starwolves were ready to try their new weapons in battle, and she doubted that such a test would be coming anytime soon.
As she hesitated, Fleet Commander Asandi walked over to join her. “I was wondering if you would prefer to send that message to Sector Commander Lake yourself. Or perhaps I should first ask if you are satisfied that we are doing enough?” “It sounds to me as if you really are doing your best,” she assured him. “In as far as I was able to understand any of it, that is.”
Asandi smiled fondly. “The Kelvessan really are such dear people. They tend to forget that mere humans like ourselves are not as quick as they are, either in mind or body. If you wish, you might be more satisfied with their progress when they have something to show from their computer simulations. I have to admit that I probably don’t understand any better than you just what they have in mind.”
“Do you suppose that I could look at their computer models as soon as they have something to show?” Tarrel asked as they stepped out into the corridor to return to the tram.
“Yes, certainly,” he agreed without the slightest hesitation. “Then you would prefer to wait and send your message as soon as you are sure that we are on to something concrete?”
“No, I should have a look at my new orders and send a reply at once,” she said. “I’ve been out of touch a long time, and I should be reporting in. I can send a more detailed report later. I suppose that I’ll be sending a long-range achronic message through your own equipment?”
“We have a carrier standing by at the Vinthra Military complex that can receive and relay long-range messages. That might not seem very private, at least not for a diplomat, but it is the best we can do since your own achronic transceivers have a limited range.”
“That should be just fine, really,” Tarrel insisted. “I want Sector Commander Lake to send me a detailed report of every attack by the Dreadnought since its battle with the Kerridayen, unless they’ve been sending you that information already.”
