She was also surprised to find that Lt. Commander Pesca was in his own cabin. He was almost always off somewhere, wandering about the ship and talking with Kelvessan in the hope of learning their language. He was trying to meet every member of the crew. The Starwolves had discovered very quickly that he could not tell any of them apart. He seemed to have a bad memory for people. He would come up to each of them as if they had never met before, even if it was their third or fourth encounter, and the Starwolves would pretend to be someone different each time. If Pesca ever paid attention to such details, he would have been beginning to think that there must be four or five thousand Starwolves aboard this ship, when in fact there were hardly a thousand due to stripped ranks and the lack of any non-active personnel.
In all the years that Captain Tarrel had been fighting Starwolves, or at least trying to avoid them, she had never anticipated their possession of such a mischievous sense of humor.
Commander Pesca looked miserable. He looked somehow like a kitten that had been left out in a cold rain, forlorn and weary and badly in need and want of comforting. Tarrel noticed that especially, not because she was able to feel any sympathy for him but because of her complete lack of pity. That was what surprised her. Since she had become a senior officer, she had always been very parental toward those who served under her, especially her junior officers. She knew that Pesca was in trouble with his obsession to learn the Kelvessan language, and that he was having a very xenophobic reaction to being trapped in alien company. He deserved pity, and yet she could not find it in herself to pity him. She realized that she had been ignoring him so far, rather than face the question of just what it was about him that bothered her. Perhaps he was simply too stupid and self-centered to develop any honest social graces, like a child who was too dull to be able to stop acting spoiled.
“Put on your armor and find yourself a safe place to ride,” she told him. “The Methryn is looking for trouble.”
“The Starwolves locked me on one of the escape pods,” he told her.
Oh? How very clever. “The escape pods have good acceleration seats, I’m sure. I can have you put off, but probably not before this first fight.”
“I’m not getting my work done,” he said, a vague and rather hopeless complaint. She took that to mean that he was not ready to be put off.
“Then what’s bothering you now?” she asked. “You’ve been in battle before. You were there aboard the Carthaginian, and the battle between the Dreadnought and the Kerridayen. You’re practically an old hand at this. And the objective of this mission is to survive. The Methryn will turn away as soon as she learns everything she can. The ship will survive, whatever else that thing does to her.”
“Yes, but something can go wrong,” Pesca reminded her. “I just realized that I’m not ready for that. There’s so much I haven’t done.”
“What, made a will?”
“It’s not funny, Captain,” he complained, then put on the most dejected face he had. “You might laugh to hear this, Captain, but I’ve never. . well, you know. I just thought I had more time, but I don’t like to think that I might have lived my entire life without doing it.”
Tarrel did not laugh, simply because she was not surprised. It was the old line about going into battle and being afraid to die a virgin. Either he really was a virgin and he meant this, or else he was naive enough to think that he could try such lines on his Captain. She could believe either case. “I’m sorry, Wally. There are only Starwolves aboard this ship, and I don’t expect you to have any luck propositioning them.”
“We’re not all Starwolves on this ship,” he suggested with an amusing lack of subtlety. “Since the two of us are alone among aliens, it just seems to me that we should stick together.” This time she nearly did laugh. “Wally, I have absolutely no interest in sticking to you that closely. I’ll give you two warnings. First, its safer to proposition Starwolves. Second, if you don’t straighten up and act like a good little trooper, I’ll have you put off this ship at the first opportunity. And if you ever get familiar with me again, I’ll ask the Starwolves to confine you to quarters until I can have you brought up for misconduct. Understand?” Pesca looked pale enough to faint. “Yes, Captain.”
“I’m not picking on you,” she told him. “That’s just the way the rules work for everyone aboard ship, although maybe it’s less formal when you work behind a desk.”
“Yes, Captain.”
She returned to the bridge, hoping that she was not late. The armor was somewhat heavy, usually an irrelevant matter since even such weight was of no consequence to Starwolves compared to the value of added protection and durability. But it was heavy to her, and she did not want to be caught in the corridors once the Methryn began two or three extra G’s of braking. She was appreciative that Commander Gelrayen was willing to surrender his seat to her, knowing that he welcomed the excuse to remain on the main bridge. He was still a pilot at heart; he wanted to be in the middle of things, not sitting on high and giving occasional directions to a ship that flew herself.
“We are ten minutes out,” Valthyrra told her as she walked carefully onto the bridge, still getting used to the weight of her armor. “What about your young friend?”
“He’s afraid of dying a virgin,” Tarrel commented sourly.
“There is nothing wrong with virginity,” the ship said. “I am a virgin, and I expect to stay one for a very long time. Monks die as virgins, and they are called holy. To be more specific, I was wondering if he is preparing himself for our transition out of starflight.”
“He was when I left him. If his sense of normal caution should become overwhelmed by baser instincts, it might do him good to spend some time on the floor. Or even the wall.”
“He seems to be having a hard time of it,” Gelrayen said, joining them at that moment. “I have told the crew to be gentle with him. His behavior is becoming rather odd.”
“I can have him put off the ship, as soon as we find someone to take him,” Tarrel offered. “I think it would be better for him if he does go. He seems to be a paranoid xenophobe.”
“Is he?” Kayendel looked up from her helm station. “Why would he want to become a linguist if he is afraid of aliens?” “Some morbid fascination to the unbalanced mind, I suppose. Half of all mental health professionals I’ve ever met were worse off than most of their patients.”
“I am bringing the ship up to full battle alert,” Valthyrra announced. “We have to be ready for anything. If this is the time, then we must move very quickly and get away.”
Captain Tarrel obediently hauled her armored self up the steps to the Commander’s station, allowing the Starwolves to attend to their last-minute duties. She was just a little annoyed that she was unable to wear her armor with the complete disregard of the Starwolves; they made it seem easy to look grand and powerful in their suits. The armor itself was only half the weight, covering the pressure suit, pressurization equipment, and a self-contained atmosphere designed to satisfy Starwolf needs for up to ten hours using a carbon dioxide converter system and solid oxygen supplement canisters. The heating was a simple wire mesh inside the pressure suit, and cooling — a more important matter under most circumstances — was a solid state unit assisted by a microcirculation network. The power, enough to supply auxiliary weapons or to run a companion’s damaged suit, came from a self-contained total conversion generator.
Her greatest problem with the suit was getting herself into the seat at the Commander’s station. In order to have the consoles with their controls, keyboards and monitors as close as possible, the station was enclosed. The seat could only be reached using the pair of bars built into the overhead console; it was a simple enough matter for a Starwolf to lift himself and his armor into that seat, even under hard accelerations, but not for her. Once she was in, her armor settled very comfortably into the seat, and the alternate set of straps attached directly to the chestplate. She set her helmet in its own rack, close at hand in case the hull lost pressure.