Tactical Error (4 page)

Trace’s task was simple in definition, but seemingly impossible in
actual implementation. He had to find a way to destroy the Starwolves so that
the Union would be free to turn its military might inward to enforce the
sterilization of complete segments of its own population. Genetic drift was
slowly degenerating the human species; the essential rule of nature that only
the strong should survive had not been in effect in hundreds of centuries, and
the Union wished to impose its own standards of just who should survive and
reproduce. The Starwolves were enough of a distraction that the Union’s
ability to police and control its own was beginning to slip, with elements of
internal rebellion growing rapidly for the first time in thousands of years.

Fighting the Starwolves meant fighting Velmeran, their tactical leader, a
Starwolf of tremendous cunning and initiative. Twenty years and more had passed
since Donalt Trace’s last meeting with Velmeran, and he had, in a strange
way, benefited from that meeting. He had been matured by what had happened to
him that last time. He had shed his blind loyalties, beliefs, and prejudices,
his foolish self-limitations that had made him the simple, shallow man he had
been. He had learned wisdom the hard way, through defeat and the cynicism born
of his failures. He had become a serene, calculating man of tremendous depth, a
man qualified at last for defeating the ultimate weapon of war, the sentient
fighting machine of artificial design known as the Starwolf.

He had learned to defeat them in the only way he could. He knew now that he
could never build better ships or weapons than they possessed. He had come to
realize that he could never build better pilots, living or mechanical. The only
way to defeat Starwolves was to be more creative than they were. The only
weapon that would work against the Starwolves was themselves. Twenty years of
careful planning had gone into a relentless series of attacks designed to make
the Starwolves outsmart themselves.

He pushed himself away from the table, his biomechanical arms moving with
their typical hesitation. “Every part of my plan is ready except for the
contingency clause. That’s the part that only you can do for me. If we
win, we win everything, perhaps even an immediate end to this ancient war. We certainly
make our victory inevitable. If we lose, we lose everything. That means that
someone I can trust has to be there to pick up the pieces.”

“No, don’t say that,” Maeken protested.
“There’s no way that we can fail now.”

He stepped up close behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. She
almost could not stop herself from flinching under that touch, knowing the
incredible strength contained in those hands. Stronger even than the hands of
Starwolves, although he had only the two. “Just keep in mind who it is
we’re fighting, and never underestimate them. They are very, very good.
Their only weakness is that the only way they know how to think is like
themselves. My only remaining concern is how much Velmeran might have learned
from fighting us.”

Maeken glanced out the window, seeing that the cutter was being sealed for
flight. She bent to collect her bags. “Well, I suppose that I should be
on my way. They seem to be ready.”

“They have to wait for you,” Trace pointed out as he took one of
her bags for her. “It’s your ship.”

Maeken laughed, giving him the benefit of the doubt. He joked so seldom, but
he was often funny without intending to be. “So, what will you do when
it’s all over? Retire?”

“If I can,” he said as they walked over to take the lift down to
the main level of the bay. “It’s hardly going to be that simple, as
if the war will just end. I don’t know how many of their carriers we can
catch all at once. We might be hunting down Starwolves for some time yet to
come. But it
is
good to know that we can finally defeat them.”

“If you are so sure of that, then why do I have to stay behind to pick
up the pieces if something goes wrong?” Maeken said softly, mostly to
herself. Trace did not seem to hear as he pressed the call button for the lift.
Maeken frowned. “What will happen, when the war is over? I mean,
everything about our military, our government, even our economy, is designed to
run on this war. We build a massive amount of ships, weapons and equipment each
year, and the Starwolves oblige us by destroying a large part of it all so that
we can build some more. I had always assumed that we would have done something
to end this war one way or another a long time ago, if we really wanted.”

“That might have been true, in the past,” Trace answered.
“The war was a ready-made justification for limitless spending on
construction and research, for tight control on trade and interplanetary
travel. But then this business of genetic deterioration became an inescapable
fact, and the war has turned from an asset to a liability.”

“But what do we do now?” Maeken insisted. “If the basic
economic structure of our civilization is about to come to an end, what do we
put in its place? What can we do?”

“What can’t we do?” Trace asked in return, then stepped
out of the lift when the doors snapped open. “Don’t you understand?
The Union wants to take itself apart. A war economy is a system that belongs to
a forgotten age. I like to think that we have outgrown that, that perhaps we
outgrew such things a long time ago and just never realized it. I would like to
see my fleet become something very different than it is now, perhaps a body of
explorers and peacetime troubleshooters, and I don’t mean anything
military or clandestine by that, but an organization of scientists and diplomats
and teachers.”

“In all the years that I’ve known you, I never suspected that
you were secretly a starry-eyed optimist,” Maeken remarked as she hurried
to keep pace with him. “So with everything else in the known universe
about to change, what is to become of you? Time at last to be yourself? Maybe
settle down and have children?”

Trace considered that, his face making no less than two almost comical
contortions. “If I had children now, I would be just old enough to settle
down and have grandchildren.”

Maeken frowned to herself. She could see that she would get nowhere along
that line, at least not until the war was over. “Well, if those are your
objectives, why not just make peace with the Starwolves? I’ve always
found them a very reasonable and honorable people.”

“That is the contingency plan,” Trace said in a cold, tight
voice. “But not now, not when we finally have them trapped. If we make
peace with them, we’re stuck with them, and there is no place for
Starwolves in our future. It’s their fault that this damned, ridiculous
war has gone on so long. They would never leave us alone and give us a chance
to go our own way, and I should hope that we have too much human pride to let a
pack of glorified laboratory animals dictate our future to us. Right now,
we’re fighting to stay alive as a race. If we have to turn ourselves over
to the Starwolves to guard our collective conscience and police our every move,
then we might just as well die.”

Trace walked in a rather angry silence, leaving Maeken Kea almost running to
keep up with him. They crossed the twenty or so meters of the bay floor to the
boarding ramp of the cutter. Trace passed her bags into the hands of a junior
crewmember who was making final preparations for getting the little ship under
way, indicating for another to take the bags she carried. They hurried into the
ship with their burdens, and Trace turned to leave just as abruptly.

“Good luck, Commander,” Maeken called after him, determined
that he would not simply disappear without a word. Once he developed a case of
Starwolves on the mind, he forgot all else.

He paused only long enough to nod once, looking over his shoulder.

“Commander Trace!” she insisted, running after him a few paces.
“You can surely spare me a moment more of your time. You’re on your
way to your carefully contrived meeting with Velmeran, and if that goes the way
it has in the past, then I may never see you again. There are a lot of things
that I’ve never said, out of respect for military necessity, but you can
damned well do better than that.”

Donalt Trace just stood where he was for a long moment, looking startled and
slightly confused, before he turned and walked slowly back to stand before her.
He towered over her, remote and silent, and Maeken wondered almost fearfully if
her quiet hopes had only earned her his wrath. Then, to her great surprise, he
bent to take her hand, and kissed it gently. From anyone else, that would have
seemed a contrived and ridiculous gesture. Donalt Trace was, if nothing else, a
man of quiet majesty and gallantry, and he had meant that gesture in perfect
sincerity.

“To a future of many hopes, my little lady,” he said, then
turned to walk away.

Maeken Kea wept silently, knowing that she had forced the question and
wondering if she would have been better for never having known the truth in
matters that she could never have the way she wanted.

Vast and dark, the Starwolf carrier moved quietly through the shadow of the
ring, the black arrowhead shape of her armored hull almost invisible against
the bands of bright colors of the immense gas giant. She stayed close to the
underside of the ring, hiding in its pale shadow and the sensor distortion from
the haze of fine particles of ice surrounding the ring, ready to run into the
planet’s own deep shadow if unwanted visitors were to arrive in the
system. No small, black fighters moved through her closed bays. Her few windows
were sealed, and her running lights were dark.

On the Methryn’s bridge, Velmeran paced with pentup energy before
the central bridge. Seated at the helm station, Consherra watched him quietly.
She was reminded of Mayelna, his mother and predecessor, gone now these past
twenty years. She had always been content to remain inconspicuously in the
quiet recesses of the commander’s station of the upper bridge, while
Velmeran would more often descend to the main bridge where he could move about,
watching the various stations. He was a very capable commander, but he would
never be completely at home on the bridge. He missed being a pilot more than he
would ever admit, and Consherra would always regret the necessity that had
taken him away from the one real delight in his life. He had been a legendary
pilot, but he was needed too much on the bridge of this ship.

At least they would be meeting old friends this day. Tregloran had left the
Methryn over a year before to prepare his own ship, the Vardon, for her launch
and initial tour of duty. With him had gone Lenna, perhaps the most unusual
crewmember ever to walk the corridors of a Starwolf carrier, as well as most of
the rest of Velmeran’s old pack. Only the core of Velmeran’s
special tactics team remained; Baress and the two transport pilots, Trel and
Marlena. Baressa’s pack now served Velmeran for the remainder of his
special tactics team.

Of course, Velmeran was anxious to see the newest ship in the Starwolf
fleet. Valthyrra was a little anxious about that herself. Consherra had been
quietly amused by watching the ship’s camera pod, which had been engaged
in its own form of nervous pacing, looking over the shoulder of every bridge
officer in an erratic cycle. Occasionally Commander and camera would fall in
beside each other as they conversed privately. That was occasionally a bit of a
trick for Valthyrra, who had to choreograph the movements of her camera boom.

“Have you heard any gossip?” Velmeran asked the ship as they
both stopped just before Consherra at the helm station. “Has there been
any hint that Theralda remembers anything important?”

“There has been precious little gossip on the subject of Theralda
Vardon, beyond the fact that she is up and running,” Valthyrra explained.
“It has been a closed subject, considering the importance of the
information she may be carrying. Why did you never take me to look for Terra
while you were still in the business of predicting the future?”

Velmeran did not answer, knowing when he was being teased and not
necessarily too kindly. As it had turned out, the almost god-like psychic
abilities of the High Kelvessan were limited to only a few months of hyper-sensitivity
at the time when those talents were coming to their full maturity. Velmeran and
several other of the Kelvessan aboard the Methryn were still remarkable
telepaths, even by the standards of his own kind, but his apparent ability to
predict the future had long since been severely diminished.

The Aldessan had been so disappointed, they had refused to have anything to
do with him for a year.

Velmeran was still young for a Kelvessan – very young to command a
ship of his own, young even for a pack leader. He was tall for one of his kind,
although the Kelvessan did not vary greatly in most physical characteristics,
and he was still smaller than most humans, even at the height of their genetic
decline. Like all Kelvessan, he had large, dark eyes and long, thick hair of
chestnut brown, but he was of mutant stock, the reason for his unusual height
as well as the fact that he was somewhat less human in appearance than most of
his kind, his long skull and hint of a short muzzle making him almost feral in
appearance. Consherra, who shared his mutant features, had finally figured out
that the High Kelvessan were beginning to resemble the Aldessan of Valthrys,
their creators.

“Here they come,” Valthyrra announced, with an almost predatory
eagerness that made Consherra look up. The ship dropped her voice in a
conspiratorial manner. “They came out of jump exactly five light-minutes
from the planet. I never had that kind of control from my jump drive.”

“Your frame could never take it,” Velmeran reminded her. That
was a very sore point with Valthyrra. She damaged herself just a little more
every time she jumped, so she was obliged to save it for emergencies. “I
would like to take a short ride in that ship, all the same, if you would not
consider it too disloyal.”