“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.”
“Just a moment, you two,” Consherra interrupted, sitting back in her seat with both pairs of her arms folded. “That is the Vardon, and Tregloran is the commander of that ship. She is not the property of either one of you.”
Both Velmeran and Valthyrra stared at her, looking too surprised to be hurt.
“I know you both,” she continued sternly, glaring at Velmeran. “You get so caught up in your schemes that you begin to give orders as if you were in command of the entire Wolf fleet. While that ship of yours always has been willing to try anything she can get away with, she has also acquired some of your bad habits.”
Velmeran shrugged helplessly with both sets of arms. “I am in command of the entire Wolf Fleet.”
“You can still be polite.”
Valthyrra had tracked the main viewscreen around to observe the approach of the other ship, and they looked up in time to see the almost breathless approach of the Vardon, appearing suddenly under the ring and braking sharply with her forward engines to pull to a sudden halt barely twice her own length away. There was a certain amount of blatant showing off in such a maneuver, although Valthyrra had to think that fifteen million tons of ship was a lot of weight to throw around so casually for a machine that was still making her trial flight.
The Vardon advertised herself willingly as the new Starwolf supership. Her hull employed a new type of armor, a silver-titanium fusion that could disperse most direct cannon strikes in itself, but which could be infused with a structural shield to become harder even than the heavy quartzite used by the Union on their Fortresses. Because the ship was still under her trials, the black polymer impact layer that gave other Starwolf ships their distinctive appearance had not yet been installed. Her hull was still the bright silver of the original metal, except for a wide border of black impact shielding around the edges where her upper and lower hulls met along her lateral groove. There had been some discussion of leaving her in that form, a clear warning of the special threat she represented. She hardly needed that complete coat of impact polymer.
Although the Vardon was still the same size and shape as her older sisters, she did possess some other subtle differences. She had six main drives in a slightly larger housing under each of her short, slightly downs wept wings rather than the usual four. Her stardrives were the same size as previous ships, since she depended more upon her jump drive for interstellar distances, and she was the first carrier to have twin conversion cannons, a pair of the large muzzles protruding just slightly from beneath her nose.
“She is a pretty thing,” Velmeran commented softly. He still regretted the fact that other business had caused him to miss her launch.
“Everything a ship could ever want to be,” Valthyrra agreed wistfully.
Velmeran glanced at her. “They have one just like that with your name on it, waiting for you. It should be ready soon now.”
“It would be nice, just to feel young again,” she replied vaguely.
Velmeran did not answer, knowing that she was tearing herself apart in the duty he required of her, using the jump drive that was destroying her to keep his schedule. He had wanted for her to transfer into this ship, let Theralda wait for the one that would soon be coming out of her construction dock, but the time for going home had never been convenient, and it had seemed more important to have that twenty-third carrier in operation as soon as possible.
“Could you find out if Tregloran wants to talk to me?” Velmeran asked.
“He is standing by already,” Valthyrra reported; she had already been in private communication with the other ship. She moved her camera boom closer. “I will put you through on my own pickup.”
“Treg?” he asked, addressing the camera pod.
“Tregloran here. We are ready to go to work, Commander.”
Velmeran glanced at Consherra. “He still knows his master’s voice. Treg, we will be coming over for a little talk.”
“Do not trouble yourself, Commander. Theralda and I will come over to the Methryn.”
“Not on your life!” Valthyrra interceded. “We will be over in a few minutes.”
“You want to see how a new ship works?” Theralda asked.
“This from a ship whose claim to fame was her ability to get herself blown out of space?” Valthyrra responded even more sharply. “I can still take you in a fight, sister. I just wanted to see if you were keeping yourself in any sort of order.”
“You just bet. Come on over, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
“Just clear a path,” Valthyrra said, and cut the channel. She turned her camera pod to look at Velmeran. “You know, I think I like her.”
When Velmeran and Consherra reached the transport bay, they found that Valthyrra was already waiting for them. The small wedge-shaped hull of the probe was hovering near the door of their transport, the shielded camera pod at the end of its long, flexible neck bent around to regard them.
“You have elected to join us?” Velmeran asked. The probe was perfectly capable of independent space flight, as small as it was. It was essentially just a field drive system and a transceiver for Valthyrra’s use inside an armored shell.
“I might as well take it easy on myself,” she replied. “All of my remaining probes are getting a little shabby, and we are sitting in a very cold and uncomfortable section of space just now.”
The probe turned and drifted inside the open hatch of the transport, and the two Starwolves followed, but they paused in mild surprise as soon as they stepped inside. Venn Keflyn stood in the aisle between the transport’s rows of seats. The Aldessan was not as massive a creature as she seemed but exceptionally rangy, a dragon’s body in long, chestnut-colored fur, both sets of long, triple-jointed legs braced wide as she held to the back of the seats with all four arms. Her head was bent low to avoid the rather low ceiling, her large cat’s eyes glittering at them through the fringe of her mane.
“Glad that you could make it,” Velmeran commented.
“You people seem to think this business quite important,” Venn Keflyn replied. “There is a reason why I should be there.”
That was certainly vague enough. Velmeran had met several Venn warriors from her ancient and mysterious race, but she remained his idea of the archetype. The Venn were the members of the elite group of warrior-scholars of the Aldessan — an admittedly strange combination of professions for anyone. They had created his own race, the Kelvessan, some fifty thousand years before, supposedly as the ultimate peacekeeping weapon — a function that they had not fulfilled especially well — but apparently also for the excuse for having the company of another race that was in most ways like themselves. Velmeran was even less certain that that had worked out quite as well as intended.
They were still taking their seats when the small ship came to life, rising a short distance from the deck. A moment later the deck itself dropped away as the massive doors of the cargo bay opened, the interior atmosphere held in by a containment field. The transport moved down through the containment field and out between the parting halves of the bay doors.
Velmeran looked into the control cabin, curious about their impatient pilot. He and Consherra were still taking their seats in the front of the main compartment. The pilot glanced at him rather guiltily, and Velmeran was surprised to see his own daughter.
“Keflyn, what are you doing here?” he exclaimed, then regarded her shrewdly. “You expect an invitation to this meeting.”