“Freighters are stupid,” Daerran told her. “Freighters are the cattle of the lanes. Do you want to be a cow?”
She lifted her camera pod. “No, not really.”
“Send your data over to the station, and shut yourself down for a few weeks of convalescence,” he told her, then turned to Captain Tarrel. “I would suppose that your stay with us is just about at an end. When you go out from this station again, it will probably be aboard another carrier. For now, we should go into the station and see what they have planned.”
They took a lift down to the main starboard docking tube, which led them, after a walk of nearly a hundred meters along the nose of the carrier and into the station itself, to one side of the bay control station and the observation rooms to either side. It seemed that the station air, which also filled the tube, was something of a compromise. It was warmer than that within the ship, but still slightly cool by human standards.
Whether Commander Daerran had expected it or not, something of a reception committee was waiting for them outside the docking tube. Hasty introductions were made, but these were mostly between some three dozen people who already knew each other at least by name and reputation and Captain Tarrel was able to remember only the most important ones present. There were three other carriers already at the station, including one that was still in the late stages of construction. For reasons that she did not expect, she surprised herself by taking exception to the fact that the Starwolves were actually under the control of a human senior officer, a certain Fleet Commander Dave Asandi. He was a tall man and rather dark, reflecting like all other humans at the station a more direct Terran ancestry than herself, reminding her oddly of the Union’s ruling Sector Families. The Fleet Commander’s entourage of scientific and military advisors was a mixed group, with slightly more Starwolves than humans.
Kelvessan, she reminded herself, that being their name for their race in their mysterious language. A language that, for all the long-suffering Lt. Commander Walter Pesca had been able to determine, did not even exist. He was, for that matter, still in his own cabin aboard the Kerridayen, forgotten and not necessary for the business at hand. Now that she had discovered humans in the station, Tarrel wondered if he might be encouraged to defect.
It seemed that this group had been waiting for the Kerridayen to arrive with her important data on the Dreadnought and the observations of witnesses who had fought the machine. Their first serious strategy meeting was planned to begin immediately. Tarrel found herself walking beside Fleet Commander Asandi, who was openly curious about her. She had found the Starwolves to be very open, uncomplicated people, direct, honest and incapable of duplicity. The humans among them shared many of those same qualities, although it came across almost as a rigidly honest gallantry in them.
“I find you a very uncommon person, Captain,” he said. From anyone else, such flattering comments would have put her on her guard against lechery and requests to borrow money. “You have repeatedly faced two of your most deadly enemies.” “You did not expect that of a Union captain?” she asked, speaking more directly than she would have among her own.
“Frankly, I did not,” he admitted. “That is not to say that I question the courage of your officers. But the limits of your technology would not seem designed to inspire courage, but prudence.”
Tarrel smiled. “To tell you the truth, I believe that the only reason I am alive now is because I have a very accurate sense of knowing when it is time to run.”
“Your own people seem to value you highly,” Asandi told her. “So that you may know how matters stand at this point, we now have a formal truce with the Union. You have been appointed special diplomatic and military advisor. And we are happy to have you. We will be carrying our fight with this Dreadnought into your own space, and we need you to smooth the way with local officials when our ships descend in force upon their systems. I have received a special communication detailing your new duties and special powers. I will add that you can expect any reasonable cooperation from us, including the right to see and to know certain things that we would otherwise have kept to ourselves.”
She hesitated. “If you will excuse me for bringing this up, but it does seem like the proper moment. Commander Daerran indicated that those very matters that you just mentioned might interfere with your ability to allow me to return home again when this matter is settled.”
“He was right to broach that subject with you,” Asandi explained carefully, after a moment’s pause. “It involves certain assurances that he did not have the power to give you himself. He could not promise you something that the Council might then feel compelled to take away.”
“I do understand,” she insisted. “On less immediate matters, there are a few things I have been wondering about.”
“Please speak freely.”
“For one thing, I find it odd that a human would be the supreme commander of the Starwolf fleet. The Kelvessan seem to feel that they are people, not property, and certainly not machines of war.”
“That might require a rather complex explanation,” Asandi said as they filed aboard a tram to take them deeper into the station. Other members of the group continued their own conversation, allowing Asandi and Tarrel the privacy to speak freely. “In theory, the Kelvessan are in fact property and not people, and I am supposed to make their decisions for them. In practice, they make their own decisions among themselves. I serve as a liaison between the Kelvessan and the human worlds of the Republic, which supplies many of their needs. That is why my post has traditionary been led by a human. I am indeed not qualified to act as their military commander. I have never been in Union space and I do not fully understand the situation they face. They tell me what they need and what they would like to have, and I do my best to get it for them.”
“But the Republic no longer exists,” Tarrel insisted. “At least, that’s what I have always been told. The Starwolves are fighting to restore the old Republic, which created them as a long-term weapon of last resort.”
“That is partly true in itself,” he agreed. “But the Republic has never ceased to exist. We are the Republic, admittedly only a handful of colonies smaller than a single sector of your Union. For that matter, those that you call the Starwolves are formally the First and Second Special Carrier Fleets.”
“First and Second?”
He smiled wryly. “The First Fleet patrols your space. The Second Fleet, considerably smaller, guards our own space from attack. They have not been needed since the early years of the war, but we keep a few carriers at hand just the same.”
The tram took them well into the interior of the station, and the entire delegation filed quickly into a large conference chamber, taking their seats to suddenly become a committee. Captain Tarrel herself began the discussion by relating the events of her first and second unexpected encounter with the Dreadnought, and her attempt to make contact with it afterward. Then she and Commander Daerran spoke of their observations of the Kerridayen’s attack on the Dreadnought in an attempt to gain information. The scientists of the group took control of the discussion after that, analyzing and debating the data that the Carthaginian and the Kerridayen had collected. Tarrel did her best to keep up with the conversation from that point but matters became a bit thick for her education, especially when they began to explore regions of advanced physics that her own understanding of science told her did not exist. Secondary subspace refractions and achronic resonance seemed to be the topics of the moment, and she had only a vague idea of what those things even meant. She sat back in her chair, listening much but saying nothing as she waited for matters to return to subjects in which she could be useful.