Although the Vardon was still the same size and shape as her older sisters, she did possess some other subtle differences. She had six main drives in a slightly larger housing under each of her short, slightly downs wept wings rather than the usual four. Her stardrives were the same size as previous ships, since she depended more upon her jump drive for interstellar distances, and she was the first carrier to have twin conversion cannons, a pair of the large muzzles protruding just slightly from beneath her nose.
“She is a pretty thing,” Velmeran commented softly. He still regretted the fact that other business had caused him to miss her launch.
“Everything a ship could ever want to be,” Valthyrra agreed wistfully.
Velmeran glanced at her. “They have one just like that with your name on it, waiting for you. It should be ready soon now.”
“It would be nice, just to feel young again,” she replied vaguely.
Velmeran did not answer, knowing that she was tearing herself apart in the duty he required of her, using the jump drive that was destroying her to keep his schedule. He had wanted for her to transfer into this ship, let Theralda wait for the one that would soon be coming out of her construction dock, but the time for going home had never been convenient, and it had seemed more important to have that twenty-third carrier in operation as soon as possible.
“Could you find out if Tregloran wants to talk to me?” Velmeran asked.
“He is standing by already,” Valthyrra reported; she had already been in private communication with the other ship. She moved her camera boom closer. “I will put you through on my own pickup.”
“Treg?” he asked, addressing the camera pod.
“Tregloran here. We are ready to go to work, Commander.”
Velmeran glanced at Consherra. “He still knows his master’s voice. Treg, we will be coming over for a little talk.”
“Do not trouble yourself, Commander. Theralda and I will come over to the Methryn.”
“Not on your life!” Valthyrra interceded. “We will be over in a few minutes.”
“You want to see how a new ship works?” Theralda asked.
“This from a ship whose claim to fame was her ability to get herself blown out of space?” Valthyrra responded even more sharply. “I can still take you in a fight, sister. I just wanted to see if you were keeping yourself in any sort of order.”
“You just bet. Come on over, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
“Just clear a path,” Valthyrra said, and cut the channel. She turned her camera pod to look at Velmeran. “You know, I think I like her.”
When Velmeran and Consherra reached the transport bay, they found that Valthyrra was already waiting for them. The small wedge-shaped hull of the probe was hovering near the door of their transport, the shielded camera pod at the end of its long, flexible neck bent around to regard them.
“You have elected to join us?” Velmeran asked. The probe was perfectly capable of independent space flight, as small as it was. It was essentially just a field drive system and a transceiver for Valthyrra’s use inside an armored shell.
“I might as well take it easy on myself,” she replied. “All of my remaining probes are getting a little shabby, and we are sitting in a very cold and uncomfortable section of space just now.”
The probe turned and drifted inside the open hatch of the transport, and the two Starwolves followed, but they paused in mild surprise as soon as they stepped inside. Venn Keflyn stood in the aisle between the transport’s rows of seats. The Aldessan was not as massive a creature as she seemed but exceptionally rangy, a dragon’s body in long, chestnut-colored fur, both sets of long, triple-jointed legs braced wide as she held to the back of the seats with all four arms. Her head was bent low to avoid the rather low ceiling, her large cat’s eyes glittering at them through the fringe of her mane.
“Glad that you could make it,” Velmeran commented.
“You people seem to think this business quite important,” Venn Keflyn replied. “There is a reason why I should be there.”
That was certainly vague enough. Velmeran had met several Venn warriors from her ancient and mysterious race, but she remained his idea of the archetype. The Venn were the members of the elite group of warrior-scholars of the Aldessan — an admittedly strange combination of professions for anyone. They had created his own race, the Kelvessan, some fifty thousand years before, supposedly as the ultimate peacekeeping weapon — a function that they had not fulfilled especially well — but apparently also for the excuse for having the company of another race that was in most ways like themselves. Velmeran was even less certain that that had worked out quite as well as intended.
They were still taking their seats when the small ship came to life, rising a short distance from the deck. A moment later the deck itself dropped away as the massive doors of the cargo bay opened, the interior atmosphere held in by a containment field. The transport moved down through the containment field and out between the parting halves of the bay doors.
Velmeran looked into the control cabin, curious about their impatient pilot. He and Consherra were still taking their seats in the front of the main compartment. The pilot glanced at him rather guiltily, and Velmeran was surprised to see his own daughter.
“Keflyn, what are you doing here?” he exclaimed, then regarded her shrewdly. “You expect an invitation to this meeting.”
“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.”