“Oh, sure, since I am already going in that direction, I mean,” she agreed innocently, as if accepting that as an invitation in itself.
Keflyn had of course been named after that same Aldessan standing behind them in the cabin, at a time when Velmeran had felt far more impressed with the mysterious Venn Keflyn. She was in most ways like her father, although she was always eager and ready for anything while Velmeran had accepted greatness reluctantly. In her younger years, the only way they had found to keep her out of trouble was to constantly move her ahead in her training, until she had gone to the packs at the very early age of fifteen. Now twenty, she had nearly five years of experience with Baressa, the best pack leader in the ship, and was ready for a pack of her own.
But Keflyn differed from Velmeran in one very important respect; both her interest and her real talent lay in command. She would be a pack leader because it was a necessary step to becoming the commander of her own ship, as well as the best use of her talents until Velmeran could find a ship for her. Perhaps in that respect she was more like her mother, Consherra, who had given up the packs and the possibility of command because she had always felt that her place was on the bridge.
Velmeran sat back in his seat, folding his arms. “Just why is this so important to you? Is there a purpose at work here, or are you consumed with overwhelming curiosity?”
“No, I have to go to this meeting,” she said, her voice becoming soft and serious. She did that rarely, and everyone had learned that it meant for them to pay attention. “I have this premonition that I have some important task to perform.”
“Oh, my!” Consherra muttered, rolling her head back on the top of the seat cushion. “What do you think?”
“She is about the right age for that to begin,” Velmeran admitted. That was a bit of an exaggeration; he had actually been twenty-seven at the time when he had begun such tricks in earnest, although he had not enjoyed the benefit of Aldessan training. That brought something else to mind and he glanced over his shoulder at Keflyn’s alien namesake, standing quietly in the back of the cabin. “Is this why you came along?”
“Perhaps.”
Twenty years he had had this fox-faced, snake-bodied wiseacre on his ship, and he was still occasionally tempted to slap the mystic pretentiousness right out of her.
“Can I come?” the younger Keflyn asked, unable to contain her suspense any longer.
Velmeran thought about it a long moment. “You can come along, then, but you will abide by our decisions.”
“When did you train to fly a transport?” Consherra had to ask.
“Oh, well, I really never had,” Keflyn admitted hesitantly. “It just never seemed to me that it should be so difficult.”
Velmeran looked rather uncertain. “Was it?”
The transport bay doors on the Vardon closed, and Keflyn brought the little ship down on the deck. This bay was in most ways identical to the one they had just left, except that something about it just looked new. For one thing, the machinery did not seem to rattle and clang so much, and the paint on the bulkheads and beams did not have the blurred, lumpy look of several centuries of coats. Perhaps it had just been the sight of that sleek, silver and black ship that they were now inside that made the difference.
Like a dutiful son, Tregloran was there as soon as they stepped from the transport. Like both Velmeran and Consherra, he was dressed in the white tunic, pants, and short cape that were the unofficial dress uniform of a Kelvessan bridge officer. Keflyn wore her full armored suit, with a black cape attached at the shoulder clips, in a less subtle effort than she might have wished to emphasize her own rank and experience. Venn Keflyn wore only her belt and harness, with its small arsenal of knives, guns, and small explosive devices.
“Venn Keflyn, this is an honor,” Tregloran exclaimed, honestly surprised when the Aldessan appeared at the hatch of the transport.
“Stuff it, Treg,” she told him bluntly. “Did you think that I would not be involved in this?”
“I hear that you are doing well with this ship,” Velmeran commented. “No problem with the adaptations?”
“None at all,” Tregloran insisted. “She really had handled perfectly, perhaps even better than the older carriers handled even when they were new. After fifty thousand years of exactly the same design, it was time for a change or two.”
They stepped to one side as manipulator arms locked onto the transport and lifted it away for storage. It was an old habit on board starships to never leave anything with mass of any consequence setting about unsecured. As soon as the little ship was well clear of the deck, the small group of visitors followed Tregloran to the nearest lift.
“It is good to see you again, Consherra,” he said. “I never realized just how much you really do as second-in-command until I had one who was new to the task, and who never wanted the job in the first place.”
“Who do you suppose does all of the real work?” Consherra asked. “I suppose that you knew all there was to know about commanding a ship?”
“Actually, Velmeran was a very good teacher.”
Escaping the wrath of a first officer, he dropped back close beside Velmeran. “Have you heard anything from Lenna?”
“Only that the crew of the freighter that had carried her in released her and Bill on the surface, they think safely and undetected,” Velmeran answered. “I do not expect to hear from her until she is ready for us.”
Tregloran stood aside as they stopped before the doors of the lift, waiting for the others to proceed him.
“I worry about her,” he admitted after the lift had started. “Not so much because of what she does, but because she will soon be too old to do it. I was watching her during our trial runs, and I could see that the accelerations are beginning to hurt her quite a lot. I have to wonder how much longer she can take it. As hard as it is to think about it, I suppose that she is starting to get old.”
“Lenna?” Velmeran was frankly surprised. He remembered the girl Lenna who had followed him home twenty years earlier. She was older than he was. Was that old for a human, even of Trader stock? He frankly had no idea. “Well, when it comes time to put her off the ship, there are just two things that you should remember.”
“What is that?”
“First, it is now your responsibility to tell her.”
“Oh, nice!” Tregloran complained. “What is the second thing?”
“When you do put her out, be sure to lock all the doors.”
Consherra turned to afford him a medium-range dirty look. “I think that what troubles him most is that he does not want to have to put her off the ship in the first place.”
“Oh, I know that,” Velmeran agreed. “I indicated that I am sympathetic with the problem, but that I have no better answer except to say that it is his own fault for getting involved with someone from a different species.”
Tregloran looked puzzled. “Yes, that is exactly what I thought you were telling me.”
The discussion was mercifully concluded by the arrival of the lift at the bridge, and they arrived sooner than the visitors from the Methryn would have anticipated. Valthyrra, who had been conspicuous in her remarkable silence, bent her camera pod around to peer at the lift. Her own had not run so smoothly and swiftly even after her last overhaul. A moment later she happened to glance outside the lift into the bridge just beyond, and she was captivated. She drifted along, heedless of her companions, staring in rapt fascination. It was just like her own, but it was so new and bright and… neat. Really neat.
Tregloran made quick introductions all around. Curiously enough, this was the first meeting between Velmeran and Theralda Vardon. He had rescued her from the museum in the port of Vannkarn more than two decades earlier. She had at the time been dormant, only a single memory cell remaining from the vast network of memory storage units and processors that formed the sentient computer systems of the Starwolf carriers. This was actually the second ship to carry the name and personality of the Vardon, the original having been destroyed over sixteen thousand years before.