Free Dreadnought by Thorarinn Gunnarsson Page B

insisted. “On less immediate matters, there are a few
things I have been wondering about.”
    “Please
speak freely.”
    “For
one thing, I find it odd that a human would be the supreme commander of the
Starwolf fleet. The Kelvessan seem to feel that they are people, not property,
and certainly not machines of war.”
    “That
might require a rather complex explanation,” Asandi said as they filed aboard a
tram to take them deeper into the station. Other members of the group continued
their own conversation, allowing Asandi and Tarrel the privacy to speak freely.
“In theory, the Kelvessan are in fact property and not people, and I am
supposed to make their decisions for them. In practice, they make their own
decisions among themselves. I serve as a liaison between the Kelvessan and the
human worlds of the Republic, which supplies many of their needs. That is why
my post has traditionary been led by a human. I am indeed not qualified to act
as their military commander. I have never been in Union space and I do not
fully understand the situation they face. They tell me what they need and what
they would like to have, and I do my best to get it for them.”
    “But
the Republic no longer exists,” Tarrel insisted. “At least, that’s what I have
always been told. The Starwolves are fighting to restore the old Republic,
which created them as a long-term weapon of last resort.”
    “That
is partly true in itself,” he agreed. “But the Republic has never ceased to
exist. We are the Republic, admittedly only a handful of colonies smaller than
a single sector of your Union. For that matter, those that you call the
Starwolves are formally the First and Second Special Carrier Fleets.”
    “First
and Second?”
    He
smiled wryly. “The First Fleet patrols your space. The Second Fleet,
considerably smaller, guards our own space from attack. They have not been
needed since the early years of the war, but we keep a few carriers at hand
just the same.”
    The
tram took them well into the interior of the station, and the entire delegation
filed quickly into a large conference chamber, taking their seats to suddenly
become a committee. Captain Tarrel herself began the discussion by relating the
events of her first and second unexpected encounter with the Dreadnought, and
her attempt to make contact with it afterward. Then she and Commander Daerran
spoke of their observations of the Kerridayen’s attack on the Dreadnought in an
attempt to gain information. The scientists of the group took control of the
discussion after that, analyzing and debating the data that the Carthaginian
and the Kerridayen had collected. Tarrel did her best to keep up with the
conversation from that point but matters became a bit thick for her education,
especially when they began to explore regions of advanced physics that her own
understanding of science told her did not exist. Secondary subspace refractions
and achronic resonance seemed to be the topics of the moment , and she had only
a vague idea of what those things even meant. She sat back in her chair,
listening much but saying nothing as she waited for matters to return to
subjects in which she could be useful.
    “If
you will excuse me for interrupting, it seems to me that your discussion has
reached the point that it would proceed best in your laboratories,” Asandi said
at last. “Have you in fact reached some consensus upon just what direction your
investigations should take?”
    “We
believe that we have some idea of how to modify our scanners to see through
stealth-intensity shielding,” Dalvaen, the Kelvessen research leader, answered.
“We could have solved this problem long ago, except that there was never any
need. Only our own carriers have the ability to cloak themselves; even our
fighters cannot. As long as the Union never developed shielding technology to
that level, there was never any need.” “Then you can modify our present
scanners?”
    Dalvaen
was hesitant to answer