strength were probably true.
“You can certainly tell that Commander Gelrayen came up from the packs very recently,” the Kelvessan remarked. “Theralda Vardon warned me that a new Commander will find every excuse to stay near the packs and the fighters for a long time afterward.”
Tarrel pressed the button to call the lift, but one was waiting for them. Valthyrra Methryn had probably anticipated the need. They entered and began their long ride to the bridge. Kayendel took the sharp acceleration of the lift with complete ease, in spite of her burden.
“I obviously don’t need to ask if you are getting tired,” Tarrel observed. “Just how strong are you, anyway?”
“Oh, I would never want you to think that I am just showing off,” Kayendel said. “I am really not as strong as some of the pilots; part of the reason I did not stay with the packs.”
“Please brag a little.”
She smiled. “We do have to exercise regularly, just to live with these muscles. I can lift about four tons with either set of arms. Using both sets of arms and putting my back into it, I can move about ten.”
Tarrel frowned. “I used to be proud of that ninety kilo bench press.”
The Kelvessan watched her pensively. “If I can speak freely without fear of being insulting, I must admit that you are not at all what I expected. I was prepared to dislike having you aboard my ship.”
“Is that a fact?” Tarrel asked, quietly amused.
“In the last seventy years, I have probably had port leave on more Union worlds than even you have ever visited,” she explained. “Until now, I have never had much reason to think that your people were either very interesting or well-mannered.”
“It was probably the circumstances. I suspect that you Starwolves tend to forget just how frightening you can be, stalking about in that heavy armor. It makes you look twice as big.” Kayendel looked confused. “Our armor keeps us cool in your warm environments. But I suppose I know what you mean. Actually, we try to keep your people afraid of us. There are many times that we do not have to fight because our reputation keeps us safe.”
The lift stopped in the corridor outside the left wing of the bridge, and they followed that corridor back behind the bridge itself, past the various meeting rooms, to the block of visitor’s cabins. Kayendel selected a cabin that was adjacent to, but smaller than the suite that Captain Tarrel had been given.
She looked around in great curiosity. “This is a remarkable thing. You can live on a ship all your life, and yet there are places aboard where you have never been.”
“This is not the Vardon,” Tarrel reminded her. “But since everything seems to correspond, I suppose that I know what you mean. Of course, the size of this ship has a lot to do with that. There isn’t a corner of my own little battleship that I don’t know intimately.”
Kayendel set down her cases and bundles in a neat row. “Perhaps, but I have lived aboard a carrier all my life. You would expect to get to know any ship intimately in ninety years.”
Tarrel stared. “Just how long do your people live anyway?” “About three hundred standard years,” Kayendel explained as she opened the chestplate on her armor and began shutting down the cooling system. “Sometimes a little less. Sometimes quite a bit more. Around here, anyone less than a hundred is still considered young.”
“I’m beginning to envy you people,” Captain Tarrel remarked, then realized that the Starwolf was in the process of removing her armor. “Do you want me to leave?”
“Only if you want to,” Kayendel told her, unconcerned. “That depends upon how you react to naked Starwolves. I was hoping that you would take me to the bridge and introduce me to Valthyrra Methryn. You know her already, and I doubt that Commander Gelrayen will return any time soon. He wants to spend some time with his packs, I am sure.”
“You arrived aboard in a fighter,” Tarrel observed. “And you have fighting armor.”
“Our suits are all very much the same, even for those who never fly with the packs,” the Kelvessan explained. She unbelted the middle section of her suit, disconnected the leads and pipes connecting the top half with the bottom, and stepped out of the lower part. Not only was the lower part a single section, it stood upright on its own. “But as first officer, I am also the ship’s helm and I can fly her manually. Of course, you can hardly ever convince a ship to allow you to fly her, so we keep a fighter of our own to stay in practice.”
She separated the top half of the suit and pulled it off, also in a single piece. Fully naked, she looked far less human that Tarrel had anticipated. Large, bony hips, and a chest and back that were massively muscled to support the structure of her double set of arms, were joined by a middle section that was only a slender tube, her single pair of small breasts being her most human feature. The bones of Kelvessan looked deceptively light, but were in fact precipitates of iron, capable of bearing tons of stress. Without the unifying factor of clothing, even Kayendel’s facial features appeared far less human. There was some subtle difference to her cheeks and mouth, suggestive of an animal’s delicate muzzle, and her eyes appeared unnaturally large, like those from some cartoon drawing. Her pointed ears peeked out through her typical Starwolf s mane of soft brown hair. Tarrel was surprised to note that Kayendel’s hair was actually not as long as it appeared, but simply grew in a strip down the full length of her spine.
“I am told that we actually look far less human than we first did,” she said, seeming to know what her companion was thinking. “We were also originally less than half as strong. We evolve in steps about once every ten thousand years.”
Kayendel opened one of the cases and took out the uniform of a command officer, white tunic and pants, with cuffs trimmed with a black band, and began dressing quickly.
“The Starwolves don’t use a real uniform with emblems of rank?” Tarrel asked.
“Why should we bother?” Kayendel asked. “Most of us stay aboard the same ship our entire lives, so we know each other by sight. And yes, we really can tell each other apart quite easily.”
Captain Tarrel tried not to laugh. There were indeed only a very limited number of physical differences between Kelvessan, including size.
“There are compensations for being Kelvessan, but precious few. Races of artificial origin do not have much sense of identity, and about all that we have ever been allowed to do is fight. Perhaps you can understand why we hope very much that the war does not resume,” she continued, pulling on her boots. “Well, I suppose that I am ready to present myself to Valthyrra. I have been told that even Commander Gelrayen has reservations about her adaptation.”
Captain Tarrel did not comment, recalling how the ship had seemed almost about to panic with fear and guilt after the misfire of the impulse cannons. She knew that she might be attaching too much significance to the incident because she did not think of machines as being given to panic. But she was certain that she would find it hard to trust a helm officer of her own ship who had behaved in that manner.
“Main conversion generators are fully operational,” Valthyrra reported as she began the process of powering herself up for flight. “Main scanners, shields and environmental support are all on-line. Main drives are standing by. All systems ready for flight.”
Commander Gelrayen had been pacing the bridge, checking the readings on the monitors at station after station. Everything was actually going very well. The Methryn was leaving the construction bay a full day ahead of her proposed schedule, in spite of the problems she had encountered. Her long, tapered nose was fully plated, and her scanner was as ready as it was going to get, short of full testing. The Methryn finally had a full crew, although she carried almost no non-active personnel, and a compliment of ten packs. She had never flown herself before, but she had done this often enough with other carriers by a remote link. If she could fly another carrier, it seemed reasonable to expect that she could fly herself without the slightest difficulty. “Do you feel ready to go?” Gelrayen asked.
She brought her camera pod around. “Yes, I feel ready.” He nodded. “Contact bay control. Tell them to release the braces.”
Captain Tarrel was watching from the Commander’s station on the upper bridge. Although a jump seat had already been installed for her, Gelrayen had insisted that he would not be able to sit through this first flight. Kayendel was at the helm station on the middle bridge, standing ready at her manual controls if Valthyrra had any trouble controlling the ship.
“Docking braces are released,” Valthyrra reported. “The ship is standing free to maneuver.”
“Back yourself out of the bay under field drive,” Gelrayen told her. “And be very, very careful.”
