“Even Don suspected that the Starwolves would confound him in the end,” Maeken Kea said, as she stood with Velmeran and Councilor Lake after Keflyn related her story a second time. “I feel sorry for him, more than anything.”
“And yet he kept you in reserve, for this,” Velmeran said.
She shook her head firmly. “He never knew that the High Council meant to offer surrender if he failed. He honestly believed that, no matter how things turned out, he had put you at too many disadvantages for you to recover. Too many of the errors in tactics were his own.”
“We were lucky,” Velmeran told her. “He never expected the defection of his own Starwolves even before the battle began. And none of us expected the recovery of the Valcyr and her defeat of an entire Fortress fleet.”
He turned abruptly to Richart Lake. “Why do we not go for a short walk, just you and I?”
“What, now?” Lake was surprised, but obviously not reluctant to the idea.
“What better time?” Velmeran asked. “I am not a diplomat or a politician, yet I find myself the temporary ruler of an interstellar empire. You seem to be speaking on behalf of the Union. The things that we are about to decide have to serve hundreds of worlds for a very long time, so we have to get it right.”
Leaving the others to stare, they turned and walked slowly along the wide promenade deck, occasionally glancing out the wide bank of windows to one side. If Richart Lake had been taken by surprise by this remarkable approach to interstellar diplomacy, he also seemed quietly impressed. For his own part, Velmeran was beginning to suspect that there was more of the old Jon Lake in his grandson Richart than anyone had credited. “I am going to make a deal with you,” the Starwolf continued. “The first problem with such negotiations is that each side must figure out what the other wants, then work to some mutual agreement. That slows things down and adds too much opportunity for error. I am going to tell you what I want out of this, and you are going to tell me what you want.”
Lake made some vague gesture of agreement. “Very well.”
Velmeran glanced out the window, where a Starwolf cruiser was drifting in a shared orbit with the station, quietly standing guard. “The Starwolves want out of the business of war. We want lives of our own and the ability to find our own destinies. We want the assurance of knowing that no one will ever again treat us like machines or property. The human race is going to have to learn to police its own conscience.”
Lake nodded. “The Sector Families want out of the business of government. Too many headaches and too much grief. We want to salvage what we can of our business, but we are willing to give up our monopolies.”
“It took you fifty thousand years to decide this?” Velmeran asked.
“No, we like things just the way they’ve always been,” Lake corrected him. “There is tremendous profit in monopolies and despotism, but we see that we’ve lost the war. We can draw this out and force you to reduce us to poverty, or we can call an end to this now and salvage what we can. So we offer you this deal. We will make it easy for you and give you an immediate end to this war. We surrender nearly all political power, and we break up the Companies into reasonable sizes. In return, you allow us to survive – as free citizens – and to keep just enough of our previous holdings to keep us from going begging.”
Velmeran considered that, and nodded. “That can be arranged. You deserve some reward for being reasonable.”
Lake frowned. “Now we come to the part you might not like, considering what you have just said. Union space is big and very diverse. For thousands of years now, only two things have kept it together. One has been Starwolf threat. The other is simple greed, and the Union has been an enormously profitable venture for a long time. If you Starwolves simply disappear, the Union will fall apart and be at war with itself in a matter of years.”
Velmeran stopped to stare at him. “Are you telling me that after fighting this war for five hundred centuries, you now expect us to fight your peace?”
Velmeran stepped onto the bridge of the Valcyr, looking about in curiosity. Whatever he might have expected of a ship so immensely old, he had never thought that it would look exactly like any other carrier he had ever seen. There were exactly as many stations at the bridge, in exactly the same order. When the Starwolves found a design they liked, they apparently stayed with it. The first real difference in their design had come with the construction of the Vardon, adapted to accommodate new technology and an extra pair of main drives.
Quendari Valcyr’s camera pod rotated around to watch him as he entered, the lenses rotating to focus on him. Her movements reminded him for a moment of Valthyrra, particularly in the way she moved her boom into position just a moment before the camera pod itself completed its own turn. It was a very lifelike gesture, imitating the way that most intelligent beings would often turn their heads a moment before cutting their eyes in the direction of whatever they saw. It was an acquired gesture rather than preprogrammed, and not all of the ships shared it.
“Welcome aboard, Commander,” she said.
“Welcome home, Quendari Valcyr,” he replied. “Keflyn has told me of your resourcefulness. Do you feel ready to rejoin the fleet?”
“Yes, I believe that I should,” she agreed. “I have almost waited too long, it seems.”
“No, we need you more than ever now,” he said. “I would like to begin moving crewmembers on board right away and have you back out again in a few days. That leaves only the problem of finding you a Commander.”
“I would like to have Keflyn,” the ship said without hesitation.
“That is entirely your own choice,” Velmeran told her. “If you want, I can help you to find someone with more command experience.”
“Keflyn and I seem to understand each other very well,” Quendari explained. “We are both a little short on battle experience. But I am no warrior, no matter what role I was designed to fill, and the war is over anyway.”
Velmeran nodded. “Perhaps your time has come, and none of us will be warriors any longer. I certainly hope so.”
Velmeran turned to leave, walking quickly toward the lift. The lift doors opened just before he arrived, and Keflyn stepped out. He took a step back and bowed. “Your ship, Commander.”
“So, that is how it is done?” Keflyn asked, looking about as if she expected a little more ceremony during the naming of a ship’s Commander. “I never thought that you would agree.”
“The ships name their own Commanders,” he told her. “You should never interfere with that. I think Quendari needs a friend just now. Someone she trusts. Take care of her.”
Velmeran entered the lift and the door snapped shut. Keflyn turned and stepped out slowly onto the bridge. Quendari brought her camera pod around to face her as she walked up to stand just before the lenses of the pod. “Hello, Quendi. I have brought you something.”
She brought out a large, red, velvet ribbon, already tied with an adjustable loop. Keflyn slipped the loop around the pod and pulled it tight, checking the fit. Quendari lifted her pod slightly, as if uncertain how to reply. She was struggling with new emotions and responses that were beyond her very limited experience.
“This is life,” Keflyn said. “Any regrets?”
“I grieved thousands of years for the loss of a very short, happy time in my life,” Quendari said. “That time will always be special to me, because it was the first time in my life that I was happy. Now I am content. Thank you, my friend.”
Matters resolved themselves much more quickly and easily than Velmeran had expected, and all he had to do was wait for the pieces to all fall into place and then interpret them correctly. The final, missing piece had come with the unexpected arrival of the Valcyr and her tale of where she had spent her time. He decided that the gods of fortune must have forgiven him all the way around.
At first, he was at a loss to determine a way to salvage the Union that he thought the delegates would be willing to accept. The easiest solution, of course, wa
s to declare that the human race could bloody well destroy itself if it had not yet learned to behave itself, and allow them to have at it. That was tempting, but Velmeran could not ignore an appeal for help. The Starwolves had invested too much in the human race to allow them to destroy themselves in war or genetic decay, at least as long as they were willing to try. But he wanted to find a solution that involved the Starwolves to the least possible extent, putting the greatest responsibility on the Union to police itself.
The answer that he eventually arrived at was to balance the forces that would now be acting upon the Union, using the threat of war to discourage fragmentation and the threat of alien intervention to discourage war. He sat down with the delegates and a large map of all of human space, both Union and Republic, and drew a line that divided the whole into two exactly even parts, each half of Union space getting an even half of Republic space. One half became the new Republic, with its capital at Vannkarn on Vinthra. The other half, after some confusion and deliberation, adopted the name Terran Confederation.
In order to strike a perfect balance, the two interstellar nations drafted exactly the same constitutions with exactly the same governmental structure. To insure peaceful cooperation and even development between the Republic and the Terran Confederation, they were joined together with the Kelvessan in the Triple Alliance, a hypothetical super nation with a congress which met at regular intervals. As an added insurance, both the Alliance and the Starwolves themselves had the legal right to intervene in the government of either nation if the terms of the treaties were violated.
That left the Kelvessan looking for someplace to call home. Velmeran had been quietly entertaining thoughts of his own ever since the unexpected appearance of the Valcyr. Terra, because of its shift into a colder, deeper orbit, was no longer an ideal world for human habitation, but it was perfectly suited to Kelvessan and their need for a colder environment. The Kelvessan would adopt Terra as their new home world, and Alkayja Station was to be moved there to be the base of the combined Starwolf Fleet. To maintain their own self-sufficiency, they were given control over a large area of space to form the basis of their own nation, consisting mostly of several worlds abandoned by the Republic in the distant past. Quendari Valcyr knew the location of a fair number of lost colonies.
The solution ultimately pleased all concerned. The Kelvessan had been betrayed by the very people they had trusted the most, and only autonomy would restore their sense of independence and security. The delegates were uncertain about turning over Terra herself, the cradle of human civilization, to be the new Kelvessan homeworld. But when they thought about it, they were just as pleased that they did not have the Starwolves in their own space.
One person who was not entirely pleased by the arrangements was Admiral Laroose. His loyalties had been with the Starwolves and particularly with Velmeran. But Alkayja would soon be a part of the new Republic, and he had been appointed to be an advisor to the new government.
“It still takes a little getting used to, I say,” he declared. “Of all possible turn of events, I never expected that I would be playing politician out of an office in the underground city of Vannkarn, with that... that Maeken Kea as my assistant. I will be glad when she is done with her quiet mourning of that devil Trace.”
“Maeken Kea was perhaps the closest that anyone ever came to loving Donalt Trace,” Velmeran said. “Let her mourn him all she wants. The Great Spirit of Space knows that few enough do miss him.”
Laroose stared in disbelief. “After all the grief he’s caused you! All the same, I will surely tear up your precious treaties and find myself a gun if she ever again makes the slightest hint that your persecutions drove Trace to act the way he did.”
“She said that?” Velmeran looked startled. “The bitch!”
Laroose glanced at him, but declined to comment. “So what do you do now? You have an interim government in place, and that finally gives you the time to pay more attention to your own people.”
“I am leaving,” the Starwolf declared. “As soon as they have Valthyrra up and going, Quendari Valcyr is going to lead the Methryn and the Vardon on our first visit to Terra – Earth, as she calls it. Keflyn is very anxious to get back. She was unable to tell the Feldenneh colonists that the Union fleet had been destroyed, so they are still waiting for their world to be destroyed.”
With the eight memory cells locked into their secured access tunnels and all connections installed and tested thoroughly, all of the physical stages of bringing Valthyrra into her new home were complete. There was nothing to do now but to access those memory units, assemble Valthyrra’s personality program in the matrix of the sentient computer complex, and see how well it worked.
Consherra was very glad to have Venn Saevyn to assist her in the process of starting up the new computer complex. Venn Keflyn had anticipated the need, and had arranged for an expert with considerable experience to accompany the Valtrytian fleet. Saevyn was not only competent in the repair of sentient systems, he had even designed a couple.
Consherra learned a few things about sentient machines that she had never guessed. One thing was their size. Most of the sentient computers built by the Aldessan were in self-contained units about the size of one of Valthyrra’s memory cells, five tons of machinery that was mostly just its protective housing in weight and memory storage in volume. The Starwolf sentient computers were six hundred tons of storage cells, primary, secondary, and peripheral units, a result mostly of their dedicated military roles, heavy shielding and shock protection. Ninety percent of their system involved non-sentient systems that could be accessed directly on either conscious or fully automatic levels. They also had their own maze of redundancy; even their conscious systems were spread throughout the nose of the carrier, and they could lose three-quarters of their circuitry before it even began to effect their operation.
“The trick is to avoid shock,” Saevyn explained as he and Consherra opened the access door to Valthyrra’s main terminal station.
“But how do you manage that?” Consherra asked. She was busy using one of the large access wrenches on the door, which opened exactly like those over the memory cells.
She removed the outer door of the terminal station, and Saevyn politely stepped forward to take it from her. “The key to the conscious intelligence of the sentient computers is in their array of liquid crystal processors. The matrix in the processor can change on command, so that the processor adapts its internal circuitry according to its required function.”
“Yes, I know that much,” Consherra agreed. The inner door slid up, and she stepped through into Valthyrra’s computer core.
“With simple, stupid computers, there is no harm if the liquid crystal processors change their form abruptly, even as often as several times each second,” he continued as he slid his own massive form through the relatively small opening of the hatch. His slender draconic body fit through easily, but he had to fold each of his long, triple-jointed arms and legs into a variety of contortions to get them through, and he was wearing a full armored suit to contain any loose fur. “But your ship is quite another matter, with eight simultaneous levels of consciousness and quite literally billions of liquid crystal synaptic connections in a network of hundreds of major processors. A rapid start-up of such a large and complex system can be a very great shock, especially if you suspect trouble with the personality programming anyway. It can place the system and the programming into a conflict that might never be resolved.”
He stood for a moment, looking about the long, narrow chamber with its banks of monitors and relay stations. Then he moved to the main control station and eased his large form onto the long, couch-like seat designed to serve the sinuous forms of the Aldessan, the only permanently mounted feature for their use in the entire ship. Consherra took the ordinary seat beside him.
“First we will assemble her full personality program from her memory units and establish them in a cache in her short-term memory.” Saevyn explained. “Then
we proceed to a normal startup with her original programming. That was the foundation of her current personality, and it will serve as a guide for her to access and accept her programming back into her network.”
He moved himself closer to the main keyboard and monitor and began the process of bringing Valthyrra out of storage. Consherra watched in silence as he ran a final systems check through the Methryn’s entire computer network, then loaded Valthyrra’s primary, personal program from the reference files kept on optical disks. He did not start her up right away but engaged only the automatic functions, directing the rest into a temporary memory cache. Once he knew that everything was going well so far, he began to bring the large memory cells on line, one at a time and fine-tuning each before he had all eight of the units in perfect sync with the computer complex.
“This ship is an absolute marvel,” Venn Saevyn declared after hours of intense work. “I have never seen a system so thorough in its design. Not easy to work with, but built like the rest of this ship. Quick, competent, and almost indestructible.”
“It looks good?” Consherra dared to ask.
“As good as we have any right to expect,” he said. “There is fragmentary damage to her personality programming. Redundancy resolved most of the damage and the system self-corrected many of the remaining holes by logical extrapolation. If Valthyrra accesses her full programming, any remaining damage will be repaired automatically.”
Consherra frowned. “Is she likely to?”
Saevyn laid back his ears, a gesture that Consherra recognized quickly enough from her long association with Venn Keflyn. He glanced over at the inactive camera pod, mounted to one side of the main console. “At the very least, her memories will guide her into developing a new personality that is in most ways like the old.”
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