station. “What course, Captain?”
“Right up the middle of the Rane Sector,” Tarrel told her boldly. “I want to make life miserable for some incompetent Union Captains and their backward little ships.”
“You know, I might be the only carrier who will never have fired upon a Union ship,” Valthyrra observed, almost wistfully.
“You worry me,” Tarrel remarked. “That’s not the first time you’ve said something to that effect. But cheer up! The truce will never last. You’ll be hunting Union ships within two months, after you destroy the Dreadnought. Just do me one favor. If you ever run across the battleship Carthaginian, you might think merciful thoughts.”
“Then you honestly believe that the war will return?”
“Of course. The Union is fundamentally greedy and ruthless. Many of the colonies are going to take advantage of our sudden misfortune to declare their independence. People like me will be sent out to punish them by dropping a few bombs on their heads, and people like you feel required to punish us in return and protect their independence. Unless, of course, our interplanetary network falls completely apart because the Dreadnought has destroyed so much.”
“And then we end up having to take care of you on a longterm basis,” the ship observed.
“Are there enough of you?” Tarrel asked. “You know, if you people are smart about this, you would move through as soon as you destroyed the Dreadnought and disable every Union military ship you can find. Then you could tell us how you expect us to behave, and we would have to listen. But I don’t believe that you could make yourselves do that.”
“The circumstances are different than they have ever been,” Valthyrra insisted. “Perhaps they would agree that it would be best to end the war as soon as it starts again, if you told them.” “Wait just a moment. You seem to forget just whose side I’m on. As soon as you destroy the Dreadnought, my mission here is complete and I’ll go back to my own ship.”
Valthyrra actually seemed surprised. “I had thought that you did not approve of many of the Union’s policies.”
“No, I don’t,” Tarrel told her. “A lot of it is fairly nasty and ruthless, and all for the sake of greed. But it does work fairly well. I’m not sure that anything else would work any better, and there are a lot of systems that would be much worse.”
“The Republic works, and no one has to get hurt to make certain that it does.”
Tarrel nodded. “That is true, and it has given me something to think about. In Union space, we’re taught that the Republic ceased to exist a long time ago, and I’m beginning to suspect that I now know why. But the situation there is just a little different. The Republic has the strong influence of the Kelvessan and your ships. You’re a lot more perfect than we are, but you were built that way. We’re only mortal. I’ve always believed in the Union, in spite of its problems, and I’ve been willing to enforce its policies. Did you think that the Starwolves had liberated me, that I was the Captain of a Union battleship because I was forced to be, or didn’t know any better?”
“Frankly, I have had trouble remembering that you are not just another Starwolf,” Valthyrra admitted. “You seem so much like them, far more so than I had ever expected that a human could be.”
“Perhaps you’re just not used to humans.”
“No, I have seen humans often enough in my life. They are different from either you or the Starwolves. Perhaps it is because you are both warriors.”
Captain Tarrel realized at that moment that she was discussing points of personal philosophy with a machine, and that they both seemed to be having some problem keeping in mind just who they were talking to. Whether naturally or by design, Valthyrra kept her camera pod always moving, changing angle, rotating lenses to focus on some small gesture of expression, all helping to create a strong sense of speaking with a real person who was actually there. In fact, Valthyrra was physically very large and distributed throughout the secure core of the ship. But, for the moment, Tarrel was more impressed with the complexities of Valthyrra’s mind. She had expected the ship to think responsively in the same way as even the most sophisticated computers, all her thought processes generated only in reaction to external events and input. In truth, the ship seemed to engage in quite a lot of independent thought and speculation, and many of her responses seemed more emotional than logical.
“I hesitate to say this, knowing that you could easily find offense in it,” Valthyrra continued. “In my experience, which I have been accumlating now for nearly six decades, I have generally found humans to be dull and very predicable in their lack of sophistication. Kelvessan, and the other ships, are always thinking beyond their own present concerns. They are more likely to tell you things that you would not expert, and they speak more plainly and honestly about what they really think and feel than humans, who seem mostly to feel some need to guard the privacy of their thoughts carefully. Perhaps that is also why you remind me more of the Starwolves.”
Captain Tarrel chuckled to herself. “I could take offense at that, except that I’ve been thinking much the same thing myself lately. It might have something to do with being locked inside a ship with several thousand Starwolves, who are very interesting, contrasted with one human, Wally Pesca, who is definitely not a higher form of life.”
“I was wondering, perhaps, what your opinion might be of my own performance,” the ship began hesitantly. Even the set of her camera pod suggested shyness. “I was aware from the first that you were uncertain about my ability to handle myself, whether because of my lack of experience or just because I am a machine.”
“I don’t trust anything that hasn’t proven itself,” Tarrel told her. “But you did just fine. In fact, you surprised me. Your inventiveness and lack of hesitation was very impressive. You knew what you had to do to save yourself and you did it.” Valthyrra turned her camera pod away. “I admit that I am very embarrassed about my loss of power. That was a careless and stupid mistake that should not have happened.”
“I agree, although it wasn’t your fault. Still, your professional pride forces you to blame yourself. I know I would.”
“I hardly know whether to feel good or bad about that battle,” the ship remarked. “To tell you the truth, except for that whole affair with the fuel element line, I thought that I did very well. I am now willing to take part in a serious attack on the Dreadnought.”
“Yes, I believe that you are ready for that.”
“I just hope that Commander Gelrayen agrees,” Valthyrra complained. “He seems to think that he has to tell me everything, as if I hardly know the first thing about taking care of myself.” Captain Tarrel had to work at hiding her smile. There was still something of a child left in Valthyrra Methryn. Which was really just as well; Starwolf carriers had to grow up so fast.
Valthyrra lifted her camera pod sharply, then rotated only the pod itself to face toward the front of the bridge. Her reaction suggested that she had just become aware of something that had happened somewhere off the bridge, her gesture with camera pod being entirely a reflex. She turned the pod back again after a moment.
“Captain, I have experienced an unexpected problem,” she said. “There has been an unpredicted decompression of an area within my hull. Automatic doors have contained the pressure loss to that one area, but suit telemetry indicates that there is someone trapped within.”
“Suit telemetry?” Tarrel repeated. “Does that mean that this person is in no danger?”
“None for the moment, Captain. I should add that the decompression seems to have been a deliberate act. If I had been aware sooner, I could have used my overrides to prevent it.”
Tarrel nodded. “Where is this? Does it have anything to do with normal repairs?”
“Not, it does not. It happened in a section well forward in the ship.”
“Can you show me where?”
Valthyrra cleared the main monitor on the Commander’s forward console and brought up a schematic of that area of ship. It was like identifying a single block from a large city; relatively speaking, the problem was contained in a very small region. In fact, it was limited to a single chamber of unusual shape and size, perhaps five meters deep but at least thirty meters wide. Even more unusual, a dozen narrow passages or tubes led forward some distance until they emerged through the lower hull of the ship.
“Val, what is that cabin?”
“That is one of four chambers giving access to my forward missile tubes,” she reported. “The missiles are loaded from the storage bay by an automated conveyor rack. When fired, the missiles are kicked down the tube and away from the ship with a high-pressure blast of compressed carbon dioxide, and they do not engage their drives until they are clear.”
“Did you have missiles loaded?”
