Thorarinn Gunnarsson - Tactical Error

“What did this cost us?” he asked, turning to Valthyrra’s camera pod.

“No losses or severe injuries,” she reported. Her continual contact with the suits of her pilots allowed her to keep easy track of such things. “Very little damage to the ship itself, except for the main switching core. Should I begin to synthesize a new unit, or do we wait until we get home?”

“Get to work on it right away. We have a long journey home ahead of us, and that patch could fail at any time.” He turned to lean on the console of the central bridge, where Consherra remained at the helm station. “What are they doing?”

“They seem to be waiting, no change in course or speed,” she answered. “They probably want to see what our little weapons are doing to their ship. If the process continues to completion, it could take half an hour to strip that ship.”

He nodded. “We will continue to circle like a scavenger until they decide what to do. I do expect that they have had quite enough and are entirely on the defensive just now, but we have to watch them until we know that they have had enough.”

The Vinthra Commercial Complex was surely the largest, most sprawling orbital station Keflyn had ever seen. Since she had visited here on several occasions in the past, she was not particularly impressed. Under the present circumstances, she was far from thrilled to be here. This place represented the lion’s mouth, and she was about to stick her head in all the way up to her shapely Starwolf derriere.

Following the orders of station control, the Karabyn had spent the better part of an hour working her way into system as a part of the small fleet of incoming and departing ships with the precision of a stately dance. After having done it the hard way, she was beginning to have some understanding of the havoc that the sudden, menacing arrival of a Starwolf carrier must have upon a station like this. Keflyn had been taking advantage of her esteemed reputation with the crew of this ship to observe the docking from the small and rather crowded bridge, hiding her alarm at watching two-handed humans trying to dock a ship that was not smart enough to begin to dock itself.

Since the Karabyn was a regular courier for the Union rebels, she had been scrupulous in following the protocol of asking no one their names and they did not ask for hers. She knew the name of the ship itself only because it was listed, along with her recognition code, on either side of the hull. She had been told that the crew was changed every few weeks, and that the ship herself was given a new name, code, and registration papers twice a year.

An aging independent freighter of less than 140 meters, the Karabyn obviously did not rate very highly with the port authorities. She was nuzzling into a simple docking sleeve in one very remote corner of the station, hardly more than a large cargo airlock for her nose and a pair of braces that was ready to catch her. Even if it had been allowed for such a humble ship, they had no interest in bringing the Karabyn down to the surface as she had at Kanis. Although she had no atmospheric control or lift surfaces at all, the Karabyn was perfectly capable of landing.

The ship shuddered slightly as she slipped her docking probe into the main airlock. The braces closed against the hull a moment later, locking her in. The bridge crew hurried to secure the ship, powering down all systems except environmental and maintenance.

“Well, here we are,” the captain said, turning to her. “I’ll go find out if the Thermopylae is in port and where she is located. You won’t have to leave the ship until everything is ready.”

“Will she be on schedule?” Keflyn asked, knowing that their arrival had been timed perfectly.

“She’s a ship hired out for a regular run,” he explained. “They have to keep their schedule within a reasonable tolerance or they risk losing their contract. Barring accident or major emergency, they’ll be here.”

The captain left in the company of a junior officer, leaving the ship’s regular business in the hands of the first officer and cargo master. Keflyn spent the time as best she could, getting herself into costume and preparing her bags for travel. As far as she was concerned, this was the most dangerous part of the operation. The captain of the Thermopylae could turn them all in for a very sizeable reward, if it included her as the main prize, and she would never know until they came to take her away. And even if that part went well, she still had to reach the other ship, which could be kilometers away through a very crowded station. Although she knew to look for the tell-tale signs that gave her away, she still thought that she looked very much like a Starwolf pretending to be human. She was never entirely sure if she had been teased when she recalled her father’s story of how he had once fooled all of Port Kallenes for a couple of days, including the redoubtable Lenna Makayen.

The junior officer came to collect her several hours later, helping her to place her bags into a shipping container that would be transferred over to the Thermopylae . One of her bags contained an achronic transceiver that weighed half as much as herself. It seemed that the negotiations with the captain of the Thermopylae had gone extremely well, and that he was completely willing to accept the risk of transporting her to the colony on Alameda, which the Union called Charadal. But they would have to hurry, since the Thermopylae was on the Port Schedule to depart in only a few hours.

The shipping crate was put on a cart which the officer from the Karabyn proceeded to navigate through the crowd. Keflyn was obliged to follow him at a discreet distance, with just one of her bags over her shoulder, playing the part of a passenger looking for her ship. She had to wear the cape to hide her lower set of arms, and that prevented her from wearing a uniform that would have allowed her to pretend to be the member of a ship’s crew.

Having lived all her life in the monotonous uniformity of the same ship, she was in fact too busy enjoying herself during her walk through the station to be frightened. The corridors of the station were nearly overflowing with the press of aliens of every type, mostly human. She was so busy looking about, in fact, that she had a hard time keeping within sight of her guide. They arrived in time at an airlock essentially identical to the one they had just left. Following the instructions she had been given, she loitered at the observation port while her crate was loaded onto the ship.

That gave her a chance for her first look at the ship that would take her to her destination. The Thermopylae was a moderately large ship by Free Trader standards, some 300 meters or more in length, but old and generally decrepit. On the whole — and largely because of Starwolf intervention — the Free Traders led a fairly profitable existence. For one to be in this state meant that they had been down on their luck for some time, perhaps impoverished from the debt of unexpected repairs. She had heard tales of Traders reduced to smuggling or other illicit schemes in their desperation to pay their port fees and keep their ships in space. This lot had apparently swallowed their pride and accepted a long-term contract for a run that would not have paid for the larger ships of the Companies.

“We should get you on board.”

She turned quickly to the man who had suddenly stepped up beside her. She had never met a Free Trader before. But remembering Lenna and how she could pass for Kelvessan, Keflyn was not entirely surprised at how much he looked like one of her own kind. He was too tall for a Starwolf, but he did have the same tan skin, dark brown hair and dark eyes, and the same smooth, almost child-like features, perhaps more so because he was obviously still quite young. The Free Traders were nature’s answer to the Kelvessan, the very best that natural selection could do to adapt a living creature to the same high-stress environment of space flight that the Starwolves had been designed to conquer. The outward resemblances between the two races were, as far as anyone knew, entirely a matter of coincidence.