Consherra did not answer. She was thinking about Theralda Vardon and the disquieting lifelessness that was often a part of her character, or the quiet, machine-like efficiency of Quendari Valcyr because of the lack of personal contacts she needed to fully develop her own personality. Valthyrra had enough of her own programming to mirror her original personality to a very high degree, but she would never be exactly the same person she had been before. Consherra had to wonder which would be better, to endure the ghost of the Valthyrra she knew or a completely new ship.
She noticed almost too late that Venn Saevyn had already begun initiating the start-up of Valthyrra’s primary programming. Consherra began to fear that something had gone wrong, however, when the single-lens camera pod only continued to stare aimlessly rather than turn to orient on them.
“Valthyrra Methryn, do you hear me?” Saevyn asked. “How do you feel?”
The camera pod turned at last, the lens rotating slowly as it came around. “I am in perfect operating condition, to the extent that I have so far been able to determine. I have initiated a complete system check.”
Consherra closed her eyes as she sat back in her seat. That voice, a cold, lifeless monotone, was only vaguely recognizable as Valthyrra’s.
“Valthyrra, do you recognize either of us?” he asked.
The camera pod rotated around a fraction more. “I regret that I do not know you, but I do of course recognize Consherra, Helm and First Officer of the Methryn.”
“And do you know where you are and what has happened to you?”
Valthyrra seemed to consider that for a moment. “I am in my construction bay on Alkayja Station. I am aware that I have been installed aboard the new carrier, so I must assume that the Methryn has been destroyed. My last memory is of speaking with Commander Velmeran on the bridge. That seems now like a very long time ago.”
“That will be enough for now,” he told her. “We will speak with you again on the bridge in a few minutes.”
Venn Saevyn closed down the terminal, and they withdrew from the core. Consherra hurried to secure the access hatch, lifting the door back into place and locking it down.
“I am actually encouraged,” Saevyn remarked. “She initiated a more detailed response to my last question than I had specifically asked. She seems to be curious about the fixtures of her past life, and that may well lead her to investigate her full programming. But we must still take things slowly.”
Velmeran and Tregloran followed Venn Keflyn into the small room in a quiet section of the Methryn’s infirmary. Dyenlayk, the Methryn’s chief medic, was already waiting in the room, standing over the unconscious form that lay in the narrow bed.
“Installing Valthyrra in a new ship gave me the idea,” Velmeran explained. “That reminded me of when I first met Venn Keflyn, and she told me that she had been forced to take a new body when she was young.”
Tregloran glanced at Venn Keflyn, who looked embarrassed. “I was very indiscreet when I was younger.”
Velmeran walked over to stand across the bed from Dyenlayk. “Is she ready?”
The medic nodded. “She seems to be in perfect condition. I see no reason why we should not awaken her.”
“Do it, then.”
Dyenlayk bent over the inert form and administered a drug through the intravenous connection, then began removing the straps of the wrist unit. “You can talk to her now. That should bring her around.”
Velmeran nodded and, with a quick glance at Tregloran, bent over the bed. “Lenna Makayen? Lenna Makayen? Do you know why Scotsmen wear kilts?”
Although she did not open her eyes, a slow, mischievous smile crossed her face. “I have no idea, Commander. Why do Scotsmen wear kilts?”
“Because sheep can hear a zipper from a hundred meters.”
Lenna made a face, then opened her eyes and stared up at Velmeran in a very accusing manner. “I’m dead.”
“You were. We fixed that,” he told her. “We cloned you a whole new body, and Venn Keflyn moved you right inside. It seems that Aldessan do it all the time, so it must be respectable.”
“I have no complaints;” Lenna insisted. She yawned and stretched, and in the process noticed something that she had not expected. “Four arms! I have four arms! Did you people put me together wrong, or something?”
“Well, we had to clone you a whole new body,” Velmeran explained. “Venn Keflyn did say that it does not have to be cloned from your original self, even if that is the usual method. You always did want to be a real Starwolf.”
“Yes, but what Starwolf?” she asked, obviously concerned. “I mean, if I am going to go through life looking like someone else, I want to know who.”
“Consherra provided the genetic material. We did a little manipulation with the variables, to give you individuality. Tregloran will have to find you a mirror. Venn Keflyn and I have to be getting back to work now.”
“Mercy, that was abruptly subtle,” Lenna declared. “By the way, what happened?”
“The end of civilization as we knew it,” Velmeran said. “You will have to ask Tregloran about that, since I cannot spare the two hours it would take to explain.”
Velmeran returned to the nearest lift, taking that to the main port airlock to leave the ship by the most direct route. He was under orders from Venn Saevyn to keep his distance from Valthyrra, for fear that his presence would shock her into possibly damaging her ability to access her damaged programming. He preferred to continue his immediate work from the command sections of the station.
At least the delegation from the former Union had since departed for home. They had arrived as the representatives of a government that had ceased to exist. They had departed as two separate nations, and slightly anxious allies. They also left in the company of Starwolf carriers. Velmeran wanted to take no chances with second thoughts from his retired tyrants.
Sixteen of the immense carrier bays in the lower reaches of the station had been adapted with docking probes and stabilizing brackets for the smaller cruisers, which had already been brought in for modifications. For now the cruisers lay essentially abandoned, their crews dispersed throughout the regular fleet for needed experience... and language lessons. Velmeran considered it disgraceful that Kelvessan did not even know their own language, ignoring the fact that Tresdyland was the Aldessan language. His opinion of the Aldessan was far more charitable. Dispersing several thousand Starwolves was somewhat easier with the appearance of the Valcyr, an entire carrier begging for a complete crew.
“One more small miracle,” Venn Keflyn commented. “Those that you do not make yourself, you manage to at least instigate very well.”
“I am becoming very tired of figuring out how to solve everyone’s problems all at once,” Velmeran said. “But above all else, I suspect that I have been extremely lucky.”
“You won everything when you should have lost everything,” Venn Keflyn said. “How did that happen? Were you more careful in your planning than Commander Trace was? Did you make fewer mistakes? Or were you, as you say, simply luckier?”
“I do not like to contemplate that too fully,” he answered. “But it was, I think, a combination of all three. We both made the most of what our circumstances allowed. Trace tried to make it a battle of wills, and that threw off his timing at a critical moment. He also trusted too much to the absolute and unquestioned loyalty of people he tried to deceive and use as slaves. He failed to consider the curiosity of Kelvessan, and he really should have known better than that. But above all else... “
Venn Keflyn twitched her ears at him. “Yes?”
Velmeran shrugged. “We were lucky.”
Velmeran stepped quietly onto the bridge of the Methryn, his first time since the battle. All of the bridge officers were at their stations, preparing the immense ship for flight. Consoles, monitors, and viewscreens were bright and active. Valthyrra’s camera pod was moving quietly from station to station as she supervised the activity. The scene looked just the same as it had for t
he last twenty years, as if nothing had ever changed. And yet this was not the same ship, and Valthyrra did not look up to greet him as she always did.
Venn Saevyn stood quietly at his side. Valthyrra had not improved in the days since her return to life, remaining dull and machine-like. Although she possessed her full memories of her previous life, those memories in themselves had not yet enabled her to access her full personality. Time was running out. Soon her primary programming would begin to grow with experience into a new personality all its own, and her old programming would be rejected from her memory as incompatible. The time had come that the very shock that they had been avoiding was now her only hope.
Consherra left her station and hurried over to join them. “Everything is ready. The Vardon and the Valcyr are standing by.”
Velmeran nodded and stepped further into the bridge. Valthyrra seemed to notice him for the first time, rotating her boom around until her camera pod was hovering only a couple of meters away. “Good day, Venn Saevyn. All of my main systems continue to function in perfect operating condition.”
Velmeran thought that it was not Valthyrra’s voice at all, it was so bland and even. There seemed to be no emotion within her at all. She was as capable of emotion as ever, but lacking in the experience to know what to do with her world on a personal level. Unable to do anything else, she remained only a machine.
“Valthyrra, do you know who this is?” Venn Saevyn asked.
“Of course. This is Velmeran, Commander of the Methryn and of the Combined Starwolf Fleet,” she replied in that precise, slightly eager voice. “They had told me that you have been very busy, Commander. It is good to have you back on the bridge at last.”
“How do you feel, Valthyrra?” Velmeran asked.
“I feel... I am in perfect operating condition, Commander,” she said, reinterpreting his question into simpler terms. “My function as the guiding intelligence of this ship is a very rewarding experience. I enjoy the companionship of other intelligent beings.”
Consherra glanced away, and even Venn Saevyn seemed discouraged. Velmeran knew that he would have to try harder. He had left clues embedded within her memories just before she had gone into battle, clues that he now hoped to call upon to shock her programming into operation. If he could only help her to remember how she had felt, the sadness, regret, and fear that she had been experiencing at that most important moment in her life, when she had faced the end of her existence without the certainty of knowing whether she had really ever been alive, or if she had existed only as a very complex machine with the ability to delude itself with the illusion of life.
“Do you remember the last time we spoke together, on the bridge of the old Methryn just before you went into battle?” he said. “Do you remember how very frightened and uncertain you were?”
Valthyrra rotated her camera pod slightly to one side as she struggled with emotions that her primary programming was not advanced enough to handle. “Yes, I remember speaking with you. I remember that I had lost something, but I did not know what it was or where to find it.”
“You were looking for your soul,” he reminded her. “Do you remember how frightened you were? Feel that fear again. Recall your despair.”
“I remember,” Valthyrra said softly, then lifted her camera pod in a gesture of pain and despair. “I was never afraid to die, but I was terrified by the thought that I had never lived.”
“You were looking for your soul,” Velmeran told her, forcing her deeper into the pain of her memories. “Did you find your soul?”
She turned to look at him, the lenses of her camera pod rotating to focus in. “I do not know. If I did know, then I have forgotten.”
“You keep your soul in the same place the rest of us have our own,” he said, the very same words that he had used during their last meeting. “In the hearts and minds of others. Your spirit is with us. We have kept it safe for you.”
“When you see me again, then you will know the truth in that,” Valthyrra concluded from her own memories, the very last thing she remembered from her life aboard the old Methryn. She turned aside, and the others stood waiting in silence. After a long moment she lifted her camera pod to an alert attitude and turned to look at them. “Well, why is everyone just standing around looking stupid? I thought we were going for a ride.”
“To your stations, everyone,” Velmeran said. “Val, do you feel up to it?”
“I feel fine, Commander. All moorings are clear, and all major systems are powered up.”
“Whenever you are ready,” he told her, then glanced up at her. “It is good to have you back, old friend.”
She rotated her camera pod around to look at him. “I am glad to have you back, Commander. It does my soul good.”
The Methryn backed smoothly out of her bay, then pivoted around and began to accelerate swiftly away from the station. Moments later, a second vast, dark shape joined her as the Vardon fell in to one side and slightly behind. They were two well-matched ships, silver hulls edged in black with six powerful main drives phasing smoothly. The Valcyr took the position opposite the Vardon seconds later, solid black, her four main drives flaring to match speed with the newer ships. They flew together in a tight “V” formation, moving steadily to light speed and their course to Terra.
Clouds of fighters moved in slowly behind the carriers, moving in a dense, disorganized mass. They separated into two distinct groups, one aligning with the Methryn and the other with the Valcyr, fighters that had been based at the station until they were ready to be brought aboard their ships. Twelve packs had left the Methryn and fifteen returned, their numbers augmented by the Mock Starwolves. All ten packs assigned to the Valcyr were coming home for the first time, the first fighters to see her decks in fifty thousand years, three of new pilots and seven transferred from other ships.
As they moved in beneath the inactive stardrives in the tails of the immense carriers, the crowds of fighters suddenly began to fall into order, nine at a time dropping into the V formation of the packs as they moved in beneath the carriers and moved smoothly into their bays. They were all aboard within a minute, the bay doors closing as the fighters were locked into their racks for starflight.
The three carriers widened their formation, putting a little more distance between themselves as they neared light speed. A deep, golden glow began to grow deep within their stardrives, erupting into sudden flares of tremendous power. The three carriers moved as one into starflight, carried on shafts of brilliant light.
Table of Contents
The Characters
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