She rotated her camera pod around so quickly that the others glanced up as well. Pilots were entering, mostly Velmeran's own pack members, moving almost fearfully to seats in the lower portion of the gallery. Baressa had arrived sometime before and had quietly taken her seat at the table.
"The question, of course, is what happens now," Mayelna continued. "Keth surely deserves what he might get. But it remains a matter of duty and protection of our reputation to get him back."
"Keth is my responsibility…" Velmeran began to protest.
"I would permit it if I could," Valthyrra said, ignoring Mayelna's hostile stare. "But your pack does not have the experience for such a task, and you are shorthanded besides. I have already taken the liberty of locating and contacting a special tactics team."
Mayelna nodded in silent approval.
"We will contact Thenderra Delvon in about forty hours for the transfer of the special tactics team," Valthyrra continued. "Another sixty hours will be needed to trace the carrier to its projected destination. We might still be needed for such matters as creating diversions and discouraging pursuit, so I want this ship and all packs battle-ready with time to spare."
"It is just that simple?" Velmeran asked.
"Neither the Commander nor myself has any intention of allowing you to go after Keth by yourself," Valthyrra said firmly. "You are perhaps the best pilot we have, but this requires more. You were trained for the packs, and you are very good at what you do. Leave this to those who have been trained for it."
She paused and looked up. The other eight pack leaders had arrived, waiting fearfully at the outer door.
They had come as a group, apparently in the mistaken belief that there was safety in numbers. Valthyrra glanced back. "If you will excuse us, the Commander and I have some armored butts to chew. Veyndayk, please continue the salvage operations as quickly as possible."
Everyone at the table or in the gallery rose to leave. Consherra fell in beside Velmeran, even though she was second in command and might have stayed. Tregloran, with the rest of the pack behind him, waited on the steps, refusing to leave without their pack leader. Velmeran could not guess what was foremost in their thoughts — their concern for their lost member or their astonishment at what they had done.
"I am sorry, Captain," Tregloran said. "We would have gotten her, if we had not been forced to turn back."
Velmeran stared at him in surprise. "Treg, was that you flying with Baressa and me?"
"Of course," the younger pilot answered. "I saw you go after her, and I thought that small help was better than none."
"Hardly small help," Velmeran said. "Not when we were flying wing to wing in a herd of stingships. You earned your pay today."
"And a bonus," Consherra added. "Double bonuses, in fact, for your entire pack and Baressa's, while everyone else will get only a stern lecture on tardiness. As for yourself, you are wanted in the left holding bay immediately."
"Me? What did I do?" Tregloran asked nervously, looking alarmed and surprisingly guilty.
"You were the one who plugged that freighter?" she asked, and he nodded. "Well, she is a real freighter and full of cargo. Since you brought her out of starflight, you get first pick of her goods."
With a cry of delight, Tregloran tried to force his way through his packmates on the steps ahead of him. When that proved impossible, he was reduced to trying to hurry diem on ahead; Fortunately for his patience, the others were nearly as eager as himself to get to that bay. This was the first big ship that they had brought down by themselves, a minor accomplishment compared to fighting a fleet of Union warships, by themselves and outnumbered. Now they remembered, and wanted to get to the bay to see what they had caught. Velmeran smiled, and decided that he would very much like to go with them.
"So the students have fought with the big boys now," Consherra remarked as she walked beside him. "Perhaps they are no longer students."
"They still have much to learn," Velmeran said. "But they are learning."
"So, I believe, are we all," Consherra added, then looked over at him. "Meran, do not take it so hard. You did what you had to do, and you did it very well. That is real trouble."
She indicated the council table, where Valthyrra and the Commander were busily bombarding the erring pack leaders with a variety of threats and dire promises. But Velmeran lacked the courage to stay and listen. Despite everyone's assurances, his own conscience was not clear. He had lost a pack member, a life that was his responsibility. Ultimately he had only himself to blame for his failure to solve a problem that he had known existed.
4
Tregloran's recent run of luck nearly failed him, for the big freighter contained mostly clothes, tons upon tons of clothes being shipped to the port ahead for redistribution to the colonies and fringe worlds. All worthless to Starwolves, who needed an extra set of sleeves. He did find a few things that he took for use by the entire pack, and Veyndayk allowed him a small fortune in jewelry.
Tregloran might have sold the jewelry in their next port to purchase something he could use, but he decided to put most of it into keeping. Wealth meant little to Starwolves. There were practical limitations to what they could have; whether it would fit into their cabins, or withstand the stresses of shipboard accelerations, or whether it even had any practical use in their lives. Jewelry they used as a type of universal currency, since they could not wear it (gold interfered with their high-speed nervous systems). They certainly were not poor, as Union propaganda tried to make them out to be. Piracy was their weapon against Union trade tyranny. They did not have to depend upon it for a living.
Velmeran stayed to watch as the captured ships were brought in and stored in the bays. He was interested in them, for he and his students had fought these ships and yet it was the first clear look that he had of them. They had seemed big enough outside, but when four were packed inside one of the Methryn's bays they looked small and pitifully inadequate. After a time the damage, the shot-out turrets and wrecked bridges, began to bother him. Starwolves were well-trained to think of themselves as fighting machines; in the name of duty they seldom considered the consequences of their acts. Looking at these ships up close, however, it was too easy to remember that people had been inside their battered hulls. Not his own kind, perhaps, but even humans were people.
After a time Velmeran retreated to a forward observation deck. The Methryn had few windows, and none at all in her armored hull sections. She had only two pairs of observation decks, directly over the fighter bays, the forward windows showing the holding bays and the rear windows allowing crewmembers to view incoming fighters, and a fifth platform in her bow directly above her shock bumper.
The crews were all hard at work securing and cataloging salvage and the pilots were standing by their fighters, with two packs still out. Velmeran was seated alone, except for an automated floor-cleaning machine that sat idle a short distance away.
"I thought that you might be here," Mayelna said suddenly, and he turned to find her approaching from the entrance to his right.
"Valthyrra told you I was here," Velmeran said in return.
Mayelna smiled. "Valthyrra Methryn sees all and knows all… at least everything that passes within her own thick shell. Do you suppose that we tickle her insides?"