The Crew Of The Methryn
Velmeran: The Methryn’s captain, although called by the Starwolf title of Commander. (Captain is the formal title for a pack leader.)
Valthyrra: The persona of the Methryn’s sentient computer system. Although the ship itself is simply the Methryn, she is often referred to as Valthyrra Methryn.
Consherra: The Methryn’s first officer and Helm, she is the ship’s second in command. She is older than Velmeran by several years, and served in the same position before he became Commander.
Venn Keflyn: A non-humanoid alien, a Valtrytian of Altrys, who has been an advisor aboard the Methryn for the past two decades.
Keflyn: The daughter of Velmeran and Consherra, and named after Venn Keflyn. She is young, twenty years of age, and a very capable pilot in Baressa’s pack.
Baressa: A senior pack leader, she was a teacher and supporter of Velmeran’s when he was younger.
Baress: A member (male) of Velmeran’s special tactics team.
Tresha: The Methryn’s (female) chief engineer.
Dyenlayk: The Methryn’s (female) chief medic.
Cargin: The Methryn’s Weapons Officer, his main weapon console is adjacent to Consherra’s helm station.
Larenta: The Officer (female) at the Methryn’s scanner station.
Korlaran: The Methryn’s (female) Communications Officer.
Other Starwolves
Tregloran: The Commander of the Vardon, and a former student of Velmeran’s.
Theralda Vardon: The sentient computer system of the Vardon.
Maeken Kea: A Starwolf spy, although she is not herself a Kelvessan but the sterile offspring of the mating of a true human and a female of Trader stock, now a separate species adapted for the stresses of spaceflight. She has been with the Starwolves for twenty years, having come aboard the Methryn as a stowaway. She has lately been aboard the Vardon with her Starwolf mate Tregloran.
Bill: A sentry automation of Union construction and ‘reformed’ by Velmeran for Lenna Makayen’s use as a spy. In form he is white and heavily armored, with a large main hull on four long legs, no arms, and a small head. He seems to possess a crude personality, although his actual sentience is limited.
Quendari Valcyr: One of the first Starwolf carriers, she was lost testing an experimental jump drive, and has been locked within a continental glacier on Terra for thousands of years.
Denna: The Vardon’s First Officer (female).
Daelyn: Commander of the Karvand, and Velmeran’s older half-sister.
The Republic
Admiral Laroose: The elder commander of the Republic’s military concerns, he is in theory Velmeran’s superior but has deferred to the Starwolf’s leadership for twenty years. His former title (in the previous story) was that of Fleet Commander, a title that Velmeran now holds.
The Traitors
Alac Delike: The President of the Republic, a weak and fearful man.
Arlon Saith: First Senator, therefore the elected leader for the Republic Senate.
Marten Alberes: Party Chairman, leader of the political party that now controls the Republic Senate.
The Union
Donalt Trace: Sector Commander of the Rane Sector and now High Commander of the Combined Union Fleet, his specific duty is to destroy the Starwolves.
Maeken Kea: A shrewd Union Captain (female) and now Trace’s assistant.
Richart Lake: Councilor (political leader) of the Rane Sector, and Donalt Trace’s cousin.
Barg: A security guard on the ice planet.
Salgey: A security guard on the ice planet.
Others
lyan Makayen: Lenna’s full-human half-brother, he is a constable on the independent colony of Kanis.
Jon Addesin: Captain of the Free Trader tramp freighter Thermopylae; which serves the Feldenneh colony on Alzmedz.
Derrighan: A Feldennye of a feral, vaguely humanoid race. The shipping master of the Feldenneh colony, and a secret representative of his government.
Kalmedhae: The elder leader of the Feldenneh colony.
The freighter slipped smoothly out of starflight well short of its target, coasting into system at high speed. It was small for an interstellar cargo craft, well under a hundred meters in length, looking more like a large tender used to offload the immense bulk freighters than a starship in its own right. Four main drives were tucked tightly within the fixed inner portion of its variable-geometry wings, now swept full back for flight, while a deceptively small but powerful stardrive was fitted neatly between the twin stabilizers of its tail.
Swift and powerful, the ship was in fact the commercial variant of a successful but antiquated missile carrier. And as such, it was the first cousin of the freighter that Lenna Makayen had flown before she had left Kalennes to join the Starwolves, the major difference being that her ship had not been fitted with a stardrive. Sitting in the jump seat behind the pilot, she found everything about this little ship refreshingly familiar. Perhaps surprisingly familiar might have been a better phrase, since she had not seen that freighter of her’s in twenty years.
The years had passed swiftly; they had been so busy, but it had still been a long time. Starwolves never seemed to age, but she knew that she had. She was a long way from being old, still in her mid-forties, but she was no longer young. The crushing G’s that were an unavoidable part of their environment were no longer quite so easy to take, and it was sometimes a little hard to get out of bed in a ship where the temperature was kept as brisk as an autumn morning for the comfort of its rightful inhabitant. Her remaining years with the Starwolves were already numbered, so it was not too soon to think about what she would do with herself after her retirement. She had been with them two decades, and no one had said a word about pensions.
Lenna was herself the sterile offspring of a Terran descendant and a Trader, a separate species that had evolved slowly from human stock during their long adaptation to the crushing stresses of spaceflight. But as quick and strong as she was, she could not begin to match the tremendous power and durability of the Kelvessan, that space-faring race known as the Starwolves. Theirs was an entirely artificial biochemistry, able to endure the flesh-ripping accelerations of their swift fighters and carriers, possessing speed-of-light reflexes and the strength to function under crushing G’s. Hers was only nature’s best mimicry of their artificial perfection.
The Starwolves had been created in the depths of time five hundred centuries before, as the last, desperate attempt of the fading Terran Republic to resist the tyrannical conquests of the Union. And after all that time, both they and their ancient war still existed, the Starwolves winning every battle, but lacking the independent initiative to pursue the war to its conclusion. The Starwolves had themselves been evolving with time, only now achieving the self-possession to determine their own future plans, and the first thing they desired was an end to this long, pointless war.
It seemed that both sides were equally determined to have a final end to this long conflict. The Union was dying, ravaged from within by genetic deterioration. It had its own brutal plan to save themselves, but they first had to be rid of the distraction of the Starwolves. The last battle had begun, and Lenna had been a part of it from the first when she had been a stowaway on the carrier Methryn. She had stayed on as their expert spy, able to go places where their elfin faces and double sets of arms would betray them immediately for what they were.
But now times had changed, and the old days were gone forever. She had left the Methryn over a year earlier, having decided to stay with her mate Tregloran when he had gone over to be the captain of the newly-built Vardon, leaving Velmeran and Consherra and all of her old friends. She thought that she would still be seeing enough of them, considering how closely the two ships would surely be working together. Tregloran was himself no longer the eager, awkward boy she had first met, but the calm, rational leader he had been trained to become, in most ways a lesser copy of Velmeran himself. It was hard enough to have a relationship with someone of a completely different species, although people in every sense of the word had been doing that for a very long time. Part of the problem was in having a mate who was still very young, while she watched her comparatively short time slipping by.
Lenna looked up, checking their approach on the scan monitor. The ship was making a secret approach, dropping out of starflight well short of its destination, then coasting in at high speed, braking gradually only near the end of its run. As an atmospheric-capable missile carrier, the aging ship did possess rather antiquated stealth capabilities, at least as far as Union technology had been capable of achieving. Certainly it lacked the ability to cloak like the big Starwolf carriers. They could not hope to remain undetected all the way in, but this tactic might allow them to get fairly close. Then they would break for a rapid dash in, accomplish their mission, and retreat as fast as that small but spirited stardrive would carry them.
“There’s a lot of natural debris in this system,” the captain offered, glancing at her over the back of his seat. “We could still swing back out and hide ourselves, in case you need us.”
Lenna shook her head firmly. “They would know that you hadn’t left and that would put them on their guard. Besides, they’re subtle, I can tell you, waiting to pounce on you when you least suspect.”
He shrugged. “I just want it understood that we’re willing to do that for you, if it would help. You’re a long way from home, and no one has told me how you plan to get out again.”