“You will have your link on the central monitor.”
The largest monitor in the center of the command console blanked out the scanner images that it had been relaying, then faded back in with a close image of Commander Donalt Trace. He was an older man with graying hair, looking more tired than old, with heavier, harsher features than she was used to seeing in most humans. She had heard stories that he was of older Terran stock, standing an almost incredible two meters tall. The sight of his own uniform reminded her that she was not in armor, or even in command white. She hoped that he would not take note of that first omission on her part.
He stared at her for a moment, not recognizing her. Or rather, he did not recognize her as Velmeran; she looked enough like her father that she meant to encourage him to make that mistake. She had heard that humans could not easily tell one Kelvessan from another, even the one Trace should have known better than all others. She just sat with her upper arms braced on the arms of her chair, her chin resting in her linked hands, waiting for him to speak first. This was a vaguely impatient gesture that she had often seen her father use with people whom he suspected were about to annoy him.
“This is Combined Fleet Commander Donalt Trace, on board the SuperFortress Challenger,” he declared at last. “You are trespassing in a secured Union system. Leave immediately or be destroyed.”
“Challenger? You seem to be overly fond of a name that was never very lucky for you, Don,” Keflyn answered, deepening her voice slightly. “This is Velmeran aboard the Methryn.”
Trace stared at her closely, and she was very careful not to betray her apprehension. Fortunately, Kelvessan did not have distinct male and female differences in their features, size, or general build, at least none that were readily obvious when they were fully dressed. She just hoped that Quendari had kept her visual image above the level of her breasts, which were rather prominent for a Starwolf.
Trace leaned back in his seat as he crossed his arms, although he still seemed more surprised than the appearance of satisfaction he wanted to convey. “So, it is you. I would have thought that you would have run home to Alkayja to intercept my invasion force. I thought that was where you were headed, the last time I saw you.”
Keflyn was trying hard not to look either surprised or dismayed. Apparently a lot had been going on out there in her absence. The very fact that he knew the name argued that his threatened invasion of Alkayja must be true.
“Or is this just revenge?” Trace continued, hardly giving her time to answer. “There was certainly nothing to be gained from even trying. Your own Republic has turned on you, naming you an outlaw race. They believe that they have made their peace with the Union, and they would never believe you if you did warn them. And I have my own Starwolves now. How can you fight that? They should just about be there by now.”
“Trust me to arrange things better than that,” Keflyn answered him with quiet satisfaction, as if she was very sure of herself. Then she reached over and cut the connection manually, a greater abruptness than if she had asked Quendari to do it. She sat back in the large, well-padded seat, wondering what in the name of perdition had happened in the last few weeks. She looked up at the hovering camera pod. “They will follow us through the gates of Hell if they have to. Trace will give,them no choice.”
The Valcyr changed course slightly, passing the fleet of Fortresses at a range that surely tempted the cannons of the immense ships, then corrected her course again as she came around in a wide curve, still moving out of the system. The Fortresses brought themselves about ponderously, breaking away one by one to reduce the chance of a collision. They were safe enough to fly grouped in a straight course, but their incredible mass reduced their turns to half-controlled slides.
“I had expected they could keep up better than that,” Quendari remarked with some disgust. “I will have to begin braking now, and give them a chance to catch up.”
“Where are we going?” Keflyn asked.
“Jupiter,” she explained, then paused when she saw that the young Starwolf did not recognize the name at all. “Jupiter. The fifth planet in this system, and a fairly hefty gas giant.”
“Why go there?”
“For our health,” the ship answered. “And also for the hydrogen.”
Quendari had to slow herself considerably, and the better part of twenty minutes passed before the massive shape of the gas giant began to grow large in the viewscreen. The tremendous gravitational surges of the sun had not greatly affected the larger, more remote outer worlds, although little Pluto had slipped its orbit completely and had disappeared long ago on its long, lonely voyage through the stars. Keflyn knew the names of none of those planets, forgotten in the depths of time. Jupiter had lost a few moons in its relatively small orbital slip, with no evidence of whether they had spiraled out or down.
The Valcyr looped around the planet in a quick, close orbit, the width of that world so great that the passage brought her several minutes she needed for the Fortresses to catch up with her. As she came around the other side, she moved forward aggressively in a sudden dart, rushing into the cover provided by a small moon that was between herself and the approaching Fortresses. The Union Forces moved out along a wider line into attack formation, giving every indication that they would be charging straight through, probably to hit the Valcyr from behind with their rear cannons. They were so completely armed that the direction of attack made little difference.
Quendari waited until they were almost within range, then she moved out from behind her cover slowly. She seemed to hesitate a moment before she banked completely over, belly up, and began to fall rapidly toward the planet. She approached straight in, her tapered nose aimed like a black arrowhead directly at the planet as she engaged enough reverse thrust to stand herself on end, holding herself to the greatest possible speed that she dared. She opened one transport bay just enough to eject a drone, which hurried to hide itself on the surface of the moon she had just left.
The Valcyr shaped her powerful battle shield into a long, narrow blade more than twenty kilometers in length, parting the cold, upper atmosphere of the planet in a fiery shell. She had only just returned to space after forty thousand years, and she seemed to have a hard time staying there.
Donalt Trace stood in the center of the Challenger’s vast, crowded bridge, watching the scan image as the Starwolf carrier continued its curious run straight in toward the planet. She was already slicing into the icy, upper layers of ammonia clouds at an almost impossible speed, more than thirty thousand kilometers per hour.
“Where the hell is she going?” he mused aloud. The old game began again. Velmeran began his feigns and ploys, luring Trace into the required response. His part now was to look beneath the obvious, to see how the proper and predictable reply was actually the first move into a trap. It reminded him very strongly of their last meeting, in a battle between a Fortress and a carrier above another giant world. He almost enjoyed a return to the game.
“Commander?” Captain Avaires moved closer, standing at dutiful, even eager attention. “It must be an evasive maneuver, sir. They bit off more than they could chew, and they know it.”
Trace frowned, displeased with the situation all the way around. He wished that Maeken Kea could have been here to command this ship. He wished even more that he could have spared her to lead the attack on Alkayja, but he dared not. She was too valuable held in reserve to pick up the pieces if something went wrong. And there were no bright, competent Feldenneh to crew his ships, their race once again refusing to accept duty in military ships.
“I think I know,” he said, pausing a moment to watch the screen. “They can lose themselves even from scan by dropping down into the upper reaches of the hydrogen layer, but it’s not just to hide. They can jump out of cover from time to time to draw our fire, showing themselves just enough to give us a ghost image and invite us to start mining the clouds with our missiles. If we throw away our missiles on the Methryn, then we cannot destroy
Terra.”
“We ignore them, sir?” Avaires asked.
He shook his head. “Taking the Methryn is more important than destroying one essentially uninhabited world. But I do not want to throw everything we have at them and still have the Methryn hiding in these clouds. Order the Fortresses to spread themselves in an evenly spaced orbit as close as we dare to go down. The moment they show, I want to be able to drop a dozen missiles on and ahead of them before they can go back down.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have missile bearing stingships ready to go down into the atmosphere if we get the chance, but launch no ships until I give the orders,” Trace added. “I want no energy emissions or other types of clutter in space to distract those scan images. Settle the ships in close orbit and close down the engines, but have shields standing by.”
“At once, sir.” Avaires hurried to the com station to relay those orders.
Trace stood alone on the bridge, watching as the Starwolf carrier disappeared into the deeper reaches of the planet’s hydrogen shell.
The Valcyr slowed quickly as she penetrated through Jupiter’s dense atmosphere and into the depthless ocean of liquid hydrogen. She elongated her shields even more, bringing them up to even greater strength as the pressures continued to mount, trapping a pool of low-pressure liquid hydrogen within her shields to act as insulation against the increasing temperature. Pouring all the power she dared through her main drives, she was barely able to maintain an initial speed of about seventeen thousand kilometers. That speed would continue to fall as she pushed steadily deeper and tremendous pressures turned the hydrogen from liquid to a thick plastic.
The heat was a strong consideration. Her shields were opaque to the radiation of heat, but temperatures inside that shell continued to climb. She had actually planned that reaction, since the volume of low-pressure hydrogen within the shell would try to expand as it warmed, providing outward pressure to reinforce the shields. Even so, the ship itself would eventually begin to heat dangerously as the trapped hydrogen against its hull warmed. Quendari estimated that she faced a journey of at least two-and-a-half hours, a long time to survive temperatures that might eventually reach twelve to fifteen thousand degrees in the surrounding hydrogen.
She was running blind, even her space-distorting achronic sensors hopelessly scrambled by the fierce electric and magnetic currents running through the liquid hydrogen. Visual was even more useless, and she kept her main viewscreen blanked out. She was orienting herself by the pull of gravity as she aimed straight down toward the heart of the planet, estimating her progress as best she could from her speed and the external pressure against her shields. At almost exactly two-and-a-half hours, her speed began to slow to a relative crawl. She had penetrated more than halfway to the core of the planet to the depth of liquid, metallic hydrogen, turned into a dense, molten, metallic substance by the tremendous temperatures and pressures.
“This is as far as we go,” Quendari announced. “My speed has been cut so low that I could spend hours trying to push forward enough to make any difference in our distance from the core.”
“Are they still out there?” Keflyn asked.
“Yes, I suppose,” she answered, not very certain. The drone that she had left had only one command, to transmit a tight, achronic beam into the core of the planet if the fleet moved out of close orbit. Otherwise it was to keep communication silence, reducing the possibility if giving itself away.
“We might as well do it,” Keflyn agreed. “At your discretion.”
“Warming the conversion cannon for firing, building the power reserve to one hundred percent,” Quendari reported. “The jump drive is powered up and standing by.”
Keflyn nodded. “When you are ready.”
She would have been amused, if the circumstances had not been so incredible. Quendari persisted in granting her every courtesy as Commander, although she felt that she was just along for the ride. She had been able to make a few suggestions in recalibrating the jump drive so that it was far less likely to run away with itself, until permanent alterations could be made.
“All ready,” Quendari reported a few moments later. “At my count. Three. Two. One.”
The tubular shield of the conversion cannon shot out from the nose of the Valcyr, striking deep into the heart of the planet to its rocky core, and Quendari poured all the power she had to give through that passage. Jupiter was just large enough to be a failed star, lacking the mass to generate the pressures and temperatures in the liquid, metallic hydrogen to allow fusion reactions to begin. Quendari bridged that gap, pouring billions of megatons of explosive force into the heart of the planet. Fusion began as a sudden spark, adding more and more power into the system with each small reaction, the process expanding so rapidly that the heart of the planet went up in a flash of stellar flame.
Driven by that fierce, internal heat, the outer hydrogen shell of the planet expanded rapidly outward as it was warmed from within. The Fortresses came quickly to life in a desperate attempt to engage their engines and escape as the bands of color melted away in a stellar flare of brilliant light and searing heat, and the surface of the newborn star reached out to trap them. Some ran a short distance before they were caught, while others hid within their shields before the defensive shells were overloaded and collapsed.
Barely twenty million kilometers away, space itself erupted in a sudden flare of white-hot gas. The Valcyr hurtled out of the core of that brief, brilliant explosion, the substance of stellar material suddenly released from under vast pressures as it was carried through with the carrier’s short jump. She looped around wide, coasting on the thrust of her jump, turning back for a clear view of the new star.
“We got them?” Keflyn asked, daring to look up and see that they had indeed survived.
“Nothing escaped that I have detected,” Quendari reported. “I am still scanning the area carefully for even small ships, although I doubt that they had time to even think about getting to their escape pods. In fact, escape pods would not have had the speed to escape the shock wave.”
“And yourself?” Keflyn asked as she lifted herself from her seat at the commander’s station.
“My condition appears to be perfect. Even my conversion cannon seems to have survived the firing.”
Keflyn nodded. “Set course for Alkayja, then. Best possible speed, with the largest jumps you dare take. We might not yet be too late.” She paused at the bottom of the steps. “I do not like to leave Terra itself unprotected, with the possibility of more Union warships coming along behind the main fleet at any time.”
“If they do not arrive within the next few hours, they will find nothing but some odd energy readings from the area of the fifth planet,” Quendari explained. “There is no battle debris to be found, except for the wreckage of the Thermopylae. The explosion swallowed it all. Is anyone likely to leap to the true conclusion, as unlikely as it was what we did, or will they simply assume that the party has gone on somewhere else?”
Keflyn watched the newborn star for the moment that it was still on the forward viewscreen, before the Valcyr began to accelerate to starflight. “Then you are saying that it will not stay like that for long?”
“Probably no more than a few hours,” Quendari explained. “There is not enough mass to maintain the temperatures necessary to continue natural fusion reactions. Given enough time, it will eventually cool off, stratify itself back out, and look much the same as always.”
“How much time?” Keflyn asked.
“Perhaps only a few thousand years.”
“Oh.”
- 14 -
Velmeran stood for a moment longer, watching the black forms of the Mock Starwolf cruisers surrounding the three remaining carriers. Then he turned and hurried up the steps to the Commander’s station on the upper bridge.
“Get me a direct visual channel to the main monitor at my console,” he ordered, obviously very pleased with himself. “This is perfect. I have them right wher
e I want them.”
Consherra turned in her seat to stare at him. “I beg your pardon? You were telling us a minute ago that Mock Starwolves do not even exist. Now we are up to our apertures in Mock Starwolves telling us to surrender.”
“They are talking to us and not shooting,” he explained as he lifted himself into the seat and rolled it forward. He leaned closer to the monitor, which remained obstinately blank. He waited a moment more, then looked up impatiently. “What is he waiting for?”
“He seems hesitant to open a visual line,” Korlaran answered.
“Then give me an audio line,” Velmeran declared impatiently, although he had no intention of surrendering the point. He wanted this errant Starwolf to see him clearly, and to see a few truths.
“This is Jaeryn of the Avenger,” the Mock Starwolf commander responded immediately, speaking Terran like a human would. Velmeran realized that he did not even speak the language of his own kind. “What is your answer?”
“This is Commander Velmeran of the Starwolf Fleet,” he responded, sounding very stern and impatient on his own part. “If you want to talk to me, you are going to give me that visual channel I asked for and then speak to me in a more reasonable manner.”
That was calculated to surprise, and it did. Velmeran knew that he was speaking to a very young and inexperienced Kelvessan, and someone who was not entirely sure of the things that he had been told were true. The monitor lit up a moment later. They were both surprised to see each other’s face, but Velmeran was the first to comprehend the full meaning. He sat back, smiling. “Yes, I think that you do understand. Where did they tell you they got you? That they had bred you themselves from original genetic material?”
“Well, yes,” Jaeryn admitted, obviously disconcerted. “They did warn us that you would look quite a lot like us.”
“But you look almost exactly like me, is that it?” Velmeran asked. “The Kelvessan were created by the Aldessan of Valtrys fifty thousand years ago. You and all of your companions were cloned from genetic material taken from me personally during a little accident I had about a year before you were born. You were not created by them, and your genetic material was not altered in any way. They do not have that ability. And I suppose that I might warn you now that Commander Trace would never trust you. I suspect that there are very likely to be self-destruct devices built into your ships that can be detonated by external remote control.”
Tactical Error Page 26