He was certain that Councdor Lake at least suspected the possibility of a counterattack on Vannkam. But he still believed that the element of surprise remained on his side, simply because Lake would not be expecting anything so soon. Hopefully he would also be expecting the Starwolves to come in the obvious way, through the dome. Velmeran doubted that he would do anything drastic to block the sea door even if he did suspect the possibility, since that was his own bolt hole. And even if he did, Velmeran would simply take his packs airborne to the port, where they would blast away the roof of the port building and fly down the tram tunnels, using their big cannons to clear the tracks. The plan was as nearly foolproof as he could hope.
The plan was that the Methryn would go in alone, coming in as close to Vinthra as she could to launch her packs. Then came the tricky part, for the assault force had to drift in almost powerless to avoid detection, at a speed slow enough that the most gentle braking would prepare them for planetary entry. They would be six hours in space and two more underwater, eight hours and more before they would return to their ships. Fortunately they would have to rely upon hypermetabolism only during the battle itself, only about twenty minutes before they were clear of the planet. The problem was that, for Kelvessan, that was entirely too long without eating.
Mayelna hurried down to the landing bay for a final word with Velmeran during the short jump into system. Valthyrra, in the form of one of her hovering probes, was there ahead of her. They waited beside his fighter as he made a final check of his pack.
"All ready?" Mayelna asked as Velmeran approached.
"Ready and eager, in fact," he replied. "It is hard for me to remember now how they were only green students only a short time ago. Now I trust them enough to take them with me into Vannkam."
Mayelna smiled. "To tell the truth, not that long ago I wondered if you would ever be a good pack leader. Now here you are, leading three entire ships on one of the greatest raids the Starwolves have ever attempted. In fact, I believe that you have assembled history's largest special tactics team."
Velmeran shrugged, as if it were unimportant. "I know better than to ask you not to worry."
"Just as I know better than to ask you to be careful," she said. "When you come back, there is something else that I must talk to you about."
"I understand," he answered, glancing down shyly. "It occurs to me that I should thank you — both of you — for making me what I am today. All your best efforts have paid off, it seems."
"Or in spite of our best efforts?" Valthyrra asked pointedly.
Velmeran laughed. "I am not sure how you did it, but I am what you have always wanted me to be."
"You are what you want to be," Mayelna corrected him. "That is the only thing I ever wanted. I never really doubted you, nor do I expect less of you than you are."
"It is time," Valthyrra interrupted gently.
"No long speeches," Mayelna promised, and turned back to Velmeran. "You have never asked me about your father…."
"I am my mother's son," he said, smiling. "I hope it does not surprise you to learn that I have always been satisfied with that."
"Good luck, Meran," she called as he turned and started toward his fighter. She tried to ignore the fact that Valthyrra was staring at her, not him. At last she had to gesture impatiently for the probe to remain silent.
"What if he had asked?" Valthyrra insisted. "You have no more idea than he does."
"Shut up!" Mayelna hissed under her breath. They retreated across the bay as the line of fighters began to power up for flight. "It was something that I had to know."
Moving as one, the ten packs of the assault team penetrated the outer edge of Vinthra's atmosphere, still braking gently with their forward engines. Looking down, directly above the center of the magnetic pole and not too far from the planetary axis, they might well have been descending toward a world of ice. An endless, featureless expanse of white lay below them, disappearing into the haziness of the horizon in all directions. The ice cap was not really all that large, but their altitude was now less than two hundred kilometers and they were coming down vertically.
They were able to brake harder as they penetrated deeper, now that they were well within the protection of the magnetic corridor. And that was well, for they had a lot of speed to lose before they reached the surface. They were only a hundred meters above the icy plain by the time they were able to cease braking and begin a wide, spiraling circle.
The lead fighter moved out from the rest, descending toward the solid ice floe. Velmeran activated his auxiliary cannon, and the big gun swung down and forward on its struts into attack position. These cannons were so powerful that they were mounted below the cockpit so that their flash would not blind the pilot, and moved a meter out from the hull to avoid searing it. In power they were comparable to the main battery of a Union battleship; a single shot from them could rip a smaller ship in half, and they could fire up to three shots a second.
Velmeran did not dare concentrate too much firepower on the ice, since power of this type could be detected. A two-second round of six shots left a steaming crater a hundred meters across. The brisk wind had carried most of the steam away by the time he circled back, and he could see that the center of the hole was more than clear enough of debris for safe access. He retracted the cannon and triggered the modified atmospheric shield for underwater travel, then dived toward the center of the pit.
Penetrating below the surface was as easy as he had hoped, although he did hear fragments of ice ring harmlessly against the hull as the shield filled with water. For now he kept his speed well down, barely a hundred kilometers, as he waited. His own pack followed as soon as they saw that he was safely installed in underwater flight, moving up in single file directly behind him until they were only ten meters apart, their overlapping shields forming a single long corridor that reduced drag for the entire group.
The other nine packs continued to dive through the steaming passage, assembling by packs beneath the ice in their own shield tunnels. These in turn lined up side by side, so that any accident that might occur in one pack was not likely to involve others. The single transport followed last of all, flying alone behind and slightly below the packs. Once they were all in place, Velmeran began to increase speed gradually, taking them up to the transport's maximum safe speed of thirty-eight hundred kilometers. The gently glowing ceiling of ice overhead began to streak past, and the packs dropped down to avoid the massive icebergs trapped over the years in the floe. To the ptiots it almost seemed as if they were flying upside down, passing over an inverted landscape.
After a few minutes they passed out from beneath the cover of the ice floe into open water. Now Velmeran had to be more cautious, watching his scanners constantly for the presence of aircraft overhead. The nature of their atmospheric shields was such that they absorbed in the tail any pressure wave formed by the forward cone. But he knew from their test runs in the seas on Alliolandh that they were leaving wide trails of dense bubbles, white trails when seen from high enough. He doubted that anyone would figure out the meaning of the trails themselves, not soon enough to matter, so long as they did not observe that fast-moving leading edge. It was a necessary risk.
Two hours of flight time brought them to the shallow coastal waters west of Vannkam. Now Velmeran relied upon the course plotted by his ship's computer, using its guidance to bring him to a point where the underwater tunnel must terminate. Submerged ridges of the coastal range made towering underwater cliffs that stretched for hundreds of miles along this shore. Reducing speed to five hundred kilometers, he began to cast about for that opening. The nine other packs fell back to follow his own in single file.