She certainly did her best, but she had her doubts at first. As she came lower, she could see that her earlier guess was correct. The landscape below was rugged and heavily wooded, but there were several grassy meadows to be seen. She fired the remaining braking charge, dropping the shuttle’s speed to perhaps half that of the speed of sound, then she turned the rudder in one direction and the ailerons in the other, causing the huge machine to crab sideways, slowing even more in the sideslip.
She reached in the open chestplate of her suit, switching her communication channel. “Quendari Valcyr, do you hear me?”
“I hear you quite well,” the ship answered immediately.
“I am about to crash this shuttle in the middle of nowhere,” Keflyn explained quickly. “Could you send a message to Derrighan at the Feldenneh settlement and have him come in Mr. Addesin’s van to fetch us? We will be coming down about eight hundred kilometers short of the field.”
“I will send a probe immediately,” Quendari assured her. “And I will send another to meet you, in the event you need help. A probe may not be much, but it is the best I can do.”
“It will be appreciated,” Keflyn replied.
She selected her landing place quickly, one of the larger meadows where she could bring the shuttle down on the very crown of a hill, then allow the ship to slide downhill to a stop. That, she thought, would help prevent the shuttle from burying its nose in the ground and jerking to a violent stop. She was not entirely certain about all that; she was not used to ships this size, nor any that flew entirely on atmospherics.
The shuttle settled in on the hilltop very smoothly and slid some 300 meters to the base of the hill. Then it did bury its nose in the soft ground and came to a very sudden and violent stop. The straps of Keflyn’s seat broke and she left the ship very quickly by the nearest way, with an involuntary leap through the forward window. The shuttle gave a final heave as if broken apart at the seams by some internal explosion that was not quite enough to break it apart, and it settled with a sigh and a cloud of dust. Then it began to burn furiously.
Jon Addesin had himself out of his seat in moments and hurried back to the pilot’s cabin to check on Keflyn, only to find to his very great surprise that she was gone. When he saw the broken window, he knew what had happened. He rushed back to the interior cabin and opened the emergency hatch, then tossed out several survival packs and himself. Fortunately most of the lower nose had collapsed or been buried, and it was only two meters down into loose soil. He was still wearing half his own weight in the engineering suit, and the fall nearly left him stunned.
He pulled off his helmet as quickly as he could, then hurried to find Keflyn. As it happened, he nearly ran over her as he turned. She was standing there beside him, looking much less the worse for wear than himself. Starwolves in their armor enjoyed a high degree of invulnerability.
“I think that we should get away from this monster, just in case there is something inside that might explode,” Keflyn said, helping him to gather up the survival packets.
“So now what?” Addesin asked. “Do you have any idea where we are?”
“I have a very good idea where we are,” she insisted. “I have also made arrangements to have someone here to rescue us in a few hours. Trust me to arrange things better than that.”
They retreated to the edge of the woods, where they would have some cover from the wind and wood for a fire. It was late afternoon and Keflyn doubted that Derrighan would arrive before midnight, assuming that he left as soon as Quendari’s probe reached him and did not wait until the next day. She could use her com as soon as they were settled to inform the Valcyr of their condition, and the burning shuttle should provide an excellent beacon for several hours yet.
“We will have to get you a new pair of shuttles,” Keflyn remarked as they were setting up a temporary camp. Jon Addesin had come out of his heavy suit immediately, and she was now shedding her own.
Addesin looked up in surprise. “What?”
“Well, you lost that shuttle on Starwolf business,” she explained. “And we do owe you a few favors in exchange for what we are about to do to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that this planet just became Starwolf property. We will keep it secret if we can, but it is too dangerous for you to ever return to Union space. Perhaps you will be able to have the supply run between our own home world and here.”
Addesin seemed to be at a complete loss. “The Union already considers this world as their own. Do you really think that the Starwolves can chase them away?”
Keflyn was amused as she began sealing up the suit for storage. “The Union has never been able to take from us any property that we have claimed as our own. Are you worried?”
Addesin shrugged. “I just have a much higher opinion of what the Union is capable of doing compared to you Starwolves.”
Keflyn laughed aloud. “You cannot be serious! Based on what evidence?”
Then she had to admonish herself for thinking that she was any better. She had never been honestly in love in her life, and yet she had to reluctantly admit that she was becoming very fond of Derrighan indeed. Perhaps absence did make the heart grow fonder, and her present company only cast the contrast between the two into a bright, cold light. Despite her quiet sympathies for the man, she was also growing very tired of Jon Addesin’s sullen suspicions. She was eagerly looking forward to Derrighan’s arrival, and his quiet, undemanding love.
For any number of reasons, the time had come for Keflyn to go home.
The Methryn dropped out of jump into high starflight speeds, a great shuttering crash running through her frame as it adjusted under the tremendous stress of that shift. The members of the bridge crew looked up expectantly for a long moment, then turned back to their work when there were no additional noises or warning lights. The big ship had survived one more time.
“We are doing better than expected,” Valthyrra announced, the lightness in her voice denying that everyone knew she was tearing herself apart.
“I do not need for you to do better than expected,” Velmeran told her. He leaned back carefully against the console of central bridge, the injury to his left shoulder complex still bothering him slightly. “I need for you to get there on schedule and intact. If you break down somewhere along here, then we lose Alkayja.”
“I do keep that always in mind.”
“You just find it easy to ignore,” he finished for her. “Any response from Keflyn’s portable transceiver?”
“Nothing so far,” Valthyrra responded, her camera pod moving ahead of him as he rose from his own station on the upper bridge and descended the steps. “Trel and Marlena are still asking to take their transport to get her.”
Velmeran shook his head sadly. “No, we will need every pilot we have. She has that Free Trader, and quite literally anything can outrun a Fortress. I just hope that they get clear in time. I wonder if she has any idea of where she really is.”
That thought amused Valthyrra as much as himself, but Velmeran’s thoughts were always on business. Just one more day, and they would reach their destination two days ahead of Donalt Trace’s Fortresses and Mock Starwolves. Then his greatest juggling act ever would begin, and he would have to find last minute answers to twenty years of careful planning.
He saw that the chief medic Dyenlayk had entered. He moved quietly to one side of the bridge to meet her, but both Valthyrra and Consherra the Everpresent saw him and invited themselves.
“How is Lenna?” he asked softly, knowing well why she had come.
Dyenlayk looked tired and at the end of hope. “The same as always. I can keep her alive forever, but I have to ask myself why. There is certainly nothing that I can do to put her back together, and I doubt that anyone can. All the same, I still plan to keep her alive until I can hand her over to the human medics at Alkayja. They know their own kind better than I ever will. If they say that nothing can be done, then we have to let her go.”
“I never thought that she would make it back to the ship,” Velmeran said, mostly to himself. “What can I possibly say to Tregloran?”
“What can you possibly say to Bill?” the medic asked. “That big, stupid automaton is just standing there beside her bed like a ghost.”
“Throw him out, if he gets in the way.”
“I do not have the heart,” Dyenlayk said as she turned toward the lift.
“I would have never thought that Bill was that aware,” Valthyrra remarked.
“Bill exists for a very limited purpose,” Velmeran said. “His existence is measured by his service to Lenna Makayen.”
He glanced up at Valthyrra’s camera pod, and she turned away in a haughty gesture. “I most certainly will not at this time attempt to council a grieving automaton.”
“Unfortunately, Lenna’s was only the first life of a friend that I might have to throw away to save this war,” Velmeran said as he turned to stare absently at the main viewscreen. “I just hope that the price buys us what we want.”
“Could they really win?” Consherra asked.
“That depends very much on those Mock Starwolves,” Velmeran admitted. “The one thought that occurs to me is that Donalt Trace fears the very sight of Kelvessan, to the extent of an actual phobia. I am responsible for that, I fear. I doubt very much that he would have trusted his own Starwolves enough to give them as free a hand as he said. I expect — and hope — that they will be very carefully directed only into very specific parts of the battle. I am also remembering that they will have no actual battle experience, and they are flying ships, no matter how good, that were still built by Union technology. With all of those factors combined, I still expect that one of our pilots should be as good as two or possibly three of their own.”
“Even three to one, they could still outgun us by numbers alone,” the ship reminded him.
“It also depends very much on what help we have,” he continued. “Right now, I am only counting on two ships and the fighters of the Methryn to carry this battle, plus whatever else we can find at the base. With those odds, we have to lose. We have to have at least one more ship with fighters come in before it starts.”
“I just hope that our friends back at the base have not decided to break up that incomplete ship in their construction bay for scrap,” Valthyrra said. “If that carrier is not in condition to fly and fight, then we are in trouble indeed. The extra engines and guns and the special armor of that new ship will mean a lot.”