"I might just leave you in that suit and lean you against the wall," Consherra observed, reaching that same conclusion. "Meran, the only cure for this is a few hours of sleep."
"I know," he agreed weakly. "I do not think that I could avoid it if I had to. But I do not like it… and I am afraid."
Consherra nodded. "I understand. It is not a pleasant thing, for all the good it does. I would stay with you, if you like. You do not have to be alone."
The lift slowed to a stop and the two stepped out. Then they paused and looked about, since they were not where they expected to be.
"This is not my corridor," Velmeran observed.
"No, it is mine," Consherra said, taking his arm to lead him on. "This is my cabin, over here. Valthyrra never misses a thing. No one is going to come looking for you here."
She started to lead the way, but when Velmeran hesitated she turned to glance back at him. She looked sad and defeated. "I would leave you alone, if that is what you want."
"I do not want to be alone," he said uncertainly. "I have had enough of being alone."
"This is for you to decide," she told him. "I wish that I might be the cure for your loneliness. I have been lonely myself, lately. But I would not try to be Dveyella and beg the love you had for her. Perhaps it is too soon."
"A day or a year, it would make no difference," Velmeran insisted. "I do not want someone to take Dveyella's place; that would be false. I do not love you, not the way you want. But I think that I do love you; I do know that you make me feel very calm and comfortable. I need time. Love me and I would love you in return, I can promise you that."
She nodded. "We would accept each other on our own terms, and I believe that we would work out a comfortable compromise. Will you come with me now?"
"I will," he said, taking the hand she offered. "Although I cannot imagine what pleasure you might find in my company just now."
Consherra smiled and drew him close. "As strange as it might seem, nothing would give me greater pleasure than to hold you in my arms and keep away your worries and fears while you sleep."
"I suspect that I would like that myself," he said, and submitted willingly to her kiss. Then, arm in arm, they turned and entered her cabin.
Farther down the hall, a vacuum cleaner lowered its camera pod and sighed with relief.
"Ah, our good Sector Commander returns from the dead!"
Donalt Trace peered about the room as best he could. He did not have much success, for he found himself lying facedown on a bed, his arms, legs and head immobilized by some type of framework. He did not have to see to know who it was; his uncle's cheerful tone was particularly grating. His back ached fiercely and he knew why, although he was not certain that he wanted to know the particulars. Councdor Lake moved into his field of vision, seating himself in a chair facing him.
"You look terrible," his uncle commented at last.
"How the hell am I supposed to look?" Trace demanded. "I was ambushed and shot by Starwolves."
"You were shot in the back while running for your life," Lake corrected him. "Do not be afraid to admit the truth. That was the only intelligent thing you did yesterday."
"Yesterday?" Trace asked in disbelief. "I must have caught it good, then. This is more than just burns from bolt flash?"
"A bit," the Councdor explained, leaning back casually. "Those Starwolf pistols carry a kick like our rifles, and you took a shot square in the middle of your backbone. Dr. Mervask worked on you fourteen hours yesterday, and that was just getting started. But you are likely to live now."
"Just tell me!" Trace hissed impatiently.
"Very well. It might shut you up. The good doctor put in a biosynthetic graft to replace the sixteen centimeters of spinal cord you lost, as well as eight artificial vertebrae. He had the devil of a time finding vertebrae your size, so he would have to replace those with new ones made special for you. Half the muscles in your back will be replaced by forced-growth clone types, as well as a piece of skin big enough to make a tent. You were fortunate in that your backbone actually stopped the bolt from cutting right through you. You were unfortunate in that your jacket caught fire and gave you more serious burns than you might have had."
"The old dress blues," Trace remarked. "Did the spinal grafts take?"
"Seemed to," the Councdor said. "The medical scanners insist that it would function as good as the original. The doctor says that your back is not likely to be the same — too much structural reconstruction. You will kick ass again, just not as hard."
"Good enough," Trace said, relieved. "What about the Starwolves?"
"Oh, they got what they wanted, poked a hole in the dome, and left. They leveled the Government Budding, the Residence and Farstell Trade. They also completely destroyed the planetary defense power complex, and the sector fleet is gone — absolutely gone. All we have left are the carriers, which did not arrive in time. The Starwolves got clear with no loss or damage. Now that is planning!"
"Wait just a moment," Trace protested. "If they leveled the Government Building…"
"Do you recall passing a pair of guards and ordering them to follow?" Lake asked. "They were normal, short-legged humans and you quickly left them behind. They arrived just in time to sneak you out of the room, and they got you into a lift and to the levels below the building before the Starwolves blasted it."
Trace did not answer. Whatever drug he had been given to awaken him was no longer at its peak effectiveness; the pain suppressants that made him unaware of his ruined back were beginning to win out, clouding his thinking and deteriorating his awareness.
"What now?" he asked in weary resignation. He was hardly able to care about anything, except for a dim hatred of one Starwolf.
"Now?" the Councdor asked thoughtfully, crossing his arms. "Now we learn from our mistakes. For fifty thousand years we have fought them on our terms, and the best we have been able to achieve is an uneasy peace, mostly because we are too big to swallow whole. Now we are going to have to fight them on our terms if we are going to survive. I have already ordered construction of the first of our Fortresses."
Trace opened one very alert eye. "Do you mean that?"
"Of course I mean that! I never say things that I do not mean," Councdor Lake said impatiently. "In the last three weeks or so the Starwolves have wrecked enough of our ships to pay for the thing. We might as well spend our money on something they cannot tear up so easily. Of course, it would be two years before the thing is ready. Construction would be slow because we have most of the sector fleet to replace, as well as repairs to the city."
"So long?" Trace muttered as he began to surrender to the drugs.
"I am afraid so. But then, it would not be ready any sooner than you are, so don't worry about it," Lake said. Then noticing that his nephew was once again unconscious, he rose to leave. "Dream about it."
The group that gathered in the storage bay of one of the Methryn's smaller holding bays was indeed a little one, consisting only of the ships themselves, their Commanders, designates and helms. The center of attention was the immense gray block of the Vardon's memory cell, now secured in a special cradle. Consherra, assisted by the other two helms, was quietly assembling a large portable unit of computer equipment. Three probes, each with a ribbon of a different color tied about its long metal neck, hovered near. When everything was ready, Valthyrra called the others close so that she and Consherra could explain.
"There are two very important questions associated with this rather unimpressive block of metal," Valthyrra began. "The first question, of course, is the location of Terra. And the second is why the Union has never been able to access the information it contains. I do not expect to find the answer to the first any time soon, but I am going to try. Consherra would explain the second right now."
"We know that the Union has never been able to gain access to this unit," Consherra began quickly. "Since the memory cells of our ships contain vital information, their functions are our most carefully
guarded secrets. Only two people on board any ship, the helm and the ship itself, know these secrets and can gain access to certain portions of the ship's computer. The core of the computer, the thinking portions, can only be opened in airdock.
"These memory cells have built-in safeguards to prevent access," she continued, picking up a thick-cabled lead from the portable unit beside her. "There are six receptacles at each end of the memory cell. Each receptacle accepts a fifty-two-prong lead, but only fifty of those prongs actually work. The other two prongs act as keys. Two of the fifty-two slots of each receptacle are lock-out devices. If prongs are inserted into these slots, the entire receptacle shuts down. The two lock-out slots are located at random among the total, and their location is different for each receptacle. You must know which prongs to remove to gain access, and all twelve receptacles must be operating to gain initial access. After that, only one lead must be functional to access the unit.
"Even then, you have to know the access code to phase the unit into the rest of your computer network. Even then, if the unit senses that it is not a part of a real ship's computer, it would shut itself down. The casing is shielded against X-ray, scanner probe and psychic divination, and physical tampering or disassembly of the unit triggers a self-destruct. And that is how we know that the Union never accessed it or tried to open it."
"I am going to try to access this unit," Valthyrra added as Consherra began to connect the leads. "I will tell you now that I will not be very successful. The first thing I will get as I open it will be the complete program that defined Theralda Vardon at the time of her destruction. That program would be at odds with my own in an open battle of electronic schizophrenia, causing the unit to remain a foreign object in my computer network. I would not get free access, but I do hope for a general overview. That might tell me if the information we seek is indeed inside this unit."
"What then?" Daelyn asked. "Even if it is there, you still would not have it."
"There is a new ship in the construction bay at Home Base," she answered. "Ordinarily new ships are given general personality to serve as a foundation for building their own. Instead we would install this memory cell into that ship and simply bring the Vardon back to life in a new body. Mechanical regeneration, so to speak. Salamanders never had it so good."
"It used to be common practice," Gelvessa Karvand added, "in the early days of the war, that when a ship was heavtiy damaged — beyond reasonable repair — that its surviving memory cells would be transferred to a new ship."
"We are ready to try," Consherra said after locking in the final lead.
"Very well, then," Valthyrra replied, with just a trace of reluctance.
She settled her probe on a tabletop to prevent any accidents when she released control. She did not risk any damage from this, but if her own personality programming became locked in battle with that of the Vardon's, then she would have to shut down her computer core for the few moments she would need to rebuild her own identity. During that time the Methryn would be without guidance, and she was safely installed in a stable orbit to insure that nothing undesirable would happen during that time.
Valthyrra began the process of opening the memory cell, making her acquaintance with the unit through proper access codes. It recognized her and immediately fed her Theralda Vardon's personality program, and for the moment all she could do was to hold tightiy to her own identity. If she became locked in a loop with that warring program, then she would have to cut contact. But it played out once and ceased, and the core of the cell lay open to her. She approached it cautiously, and was immediately engulfed in a flood of images, impressions and data. The instructions that would allow her minute examination of those files were in the Vardon's personality program, closed to her.
Those who watched could not see her struggle, although there was a vacant appearance to the probe's camera pod. That pod dipped slowly, sinking gradually as the seconds passed. Then it snapped back to full attention and glanced around at Consherra, who quickly shut down the computer link.
"Well?" Mayelna prompted impatiently.
"Well, I have good news and bad news," Valthyrra answered. "This is the Theralda's primary cell for her personal memories, and not a general data-storage cell. On the other hand, the location of Terra, important data that she may have consulted often, is probably inside this cell as well. We would not know until the Vardon is restored to life."
"And when will that be?" Commander Korlan asked. "Twenty to thirty years from now."
The Starwolf fleet stayed only a day in that uninhabited system, since they wanted to return to their individual territories before news of the attack on Vannkam could spread. They waited only long enough for the fighters to be stripped of their accessory cannons, serviced and returned to their own ships. During that time the ships and their Commanders discussed how they thought the rest of the Union would react to their raid. There were seventeen other sectors to be considered, seventeen other High Councilors and Sector Commanders, who had long assumed their inner worlds to be safe from these four-armed pirates.
There would be some reassessment of the standing and the power of the Starwolves on the part of the Union and the Starwolves themselves. The Union would be shaken to its core and that core would be angry and resentful. But it would also be frightened and apprehensive, unsure when and where the wolf ships would strike again. And they would strike again and again; the Starwolves had already decided that. The Union was going to be taught to fear the Starwolves, and above all the names of Velmeran and the Methryn.
Velmeran was on his way to the bridge just as the Methryn and her sister ships were making ready to leave orbit. He and his mother had seen Daelyn away only an hour before, an event that he recalled with sadness. He admired his sister greatly, for she was about the most interesting person he had ever met. That, she explained to his complete mystification, was because they were exactly alike. He did regret that she could not be with him for this final task. He did know that Consherra would want to be there, so he got off the lift at her corridor to collect her.
Consherra opened the door and stood staring at him in surprise. He was not in armor, but wore instead the closest thing the Starwolves had to a uniform. He was dressed in the solid black of a pilot, tunic and pants with boots tucked up under the cuffs, and a short cape fastened about the collar. His shaggy mane of thick brown hair was carefully brushed, laying neatly over his shoulders and falling into a smooth cascade halfway down his back. Combed to its proper length, his hair hung down over his eyes, which glittered within its shadow as he returned her stare. In spite of the lack of armor, he still looked very much the warrior — in spite of the inherently adolescent look of his features.
"Are you about to go up to the bridge?" he asked, almost eagerly. "I am on my way up to the bridge, and I do not want you to miss this."
"Yes, I am on my way there now," she replied uncertainly. "Miss what?"
"I have one more surprise for Valthyrra and the Commander," he replied cryptically. "You will have to wait and see."
"I will be patient then," she said, joining him as he returned to the lift. "Actually, I am pleased that you should remember me."
"Why should I not?" he asked. "We have not been alone together these past two days, but I have not forgotten you, and I never will. Are you certain of our love?"
"Are you?" she asked as they waited for the lift.
Velmeran frowned, glancing down shyly. "You were always open in your affections, and I was too innocent to realize that I was being courted. But who do you love? I am two people now. Do you see only Velmeran the warrior? He is strong and forceful and a very fascinating person, I do admit, but he is also false. He is the person I become when duty requires. But I want love during the time which is my own, from someone who knows and loves the real me. Do you understand what I am trying to say?"
"Of course I understand, but you are wrong," she insisted. "The two Velmerans you describe are one and the same, and I love them both."<
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They entered the lift, which had arrived a moment earlier, and Consherra quickly set the controls for the bridge. She turned back to him as soon as the door was shut. "To be truthful, you did surprise me. I held you in my arms four hours while you slept, and I assumed that we would become mates before you left me. I had the distinct impression that the thought did not even occur to you."
"Perhaps I am looking for more," Velmeran replied defensively, but his look argued that she was right. "Sex itself is easy enough for me to find just now. I have had five offers for duty mating since I returned from Vinthra, and I refused them all."
"What?" she asked incredulously. "Like it or not, you are Velmeran the Magnificent, and you have a certain responsibility to spread your well-ordered genes far and wide."
"Do you think that I am not aware of that? You are my mate, whether our union has been consummated or not. That is all I care about."
"Then what are you waiting for? You had the opportunity."
"I forgot! So what?" he demanded in return.
It was a good thing that the lift came to a stop at that moment, since it gave him a chance to escape. Consherra took her place at the helm console while Velmeran continued on to the upper bridge. The Methryn had already left orbit and now flew at the head of an arrowhead formation, flanked by her two sister ships as they accelerated casually to light speed. Velmeran saw that Valthyrra was watching him with particular interest; the formality of his appearance did not escape her notice. Mayelna's appearance was almost a mirror of his own except in white. Velmeran saw that his timing continued to be precise; it seemed that she had the same thought in mind.
"Ah, Meran. Half a moment," Mayelna said, glancing up briefly before returning to the com mike in the arm of her chair. "Three months it is, then?"
"Right," Commander Schyrrana replied. "Of course, you would need to come in two or three weeks before so that Velmeran can give it a good look and work up a plan. But he can do it."
Velmeran can do what? he had to wonder. He glanced at Valthyrra, but she only continued to stare at him in a most disconcerting manner.
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