Tactical Error Read Online Free PDF Page A

entire complex seemed silent and empty now that its primary function
was done. She wanted out of here, but she did not want to go home. She wanted
to be out with her fleet, at the command of a swift, powerful ship. Even a
Fortress would do, for all that she seemed to have bad luck with the monsters.
    Donalt Trace stood a short distance behind her, leaning back with crossed
arms against the table that rested against the inner wall. He was a towering
man, as big as she was small, a stately, ruggedly handsome man with streaks of
white in his hair and a regal face lined by years of care and reconstructive
surgery. They were both growing old in the pursuit of his schemes.
    “It’s just not fair,” she insisted, turning to face him.
“We’ve worked on this for years. Twenty years of planning all
coming together at the same time, hitting the Starwolves in more ways than they
can possibly handle. Next to you, I’ve done more than anyone else to make
this happen. I want to be a part of it.”
    Trace shook his head slowly, perhaps even sadly. Maeken expected no
concessions from this man, not even for her. Obsessed men were supposed to be
cold and uncaring, to use others as they used themselves. Most people assumed
that Donalt Trace was a man obsessed with the destruction of the Starwolves, a
certain Starwolf named Velmeran in particular. But Maeken thought that she knew
him better. Fighting Starwolves was simply his job, and he took it very
seriously.
    Trace’s task was simple in definition, but seemingly impossible in
actual implementation. He had to find a way to destroy the Starwolves so that
the Union would be free to turn its military might inward to enforce the
sterilization of complete segments of its own population. Genetic drift was
slowly degenerating the human species; the essential rule of nature that only
the strong should survive had not been in effect in hundreds of centuries, and
the Union wished to impose its own standards of just who should survive and
reproduce. The Starwolves were enough of a distraction that the Union’s
ability to police and control its own was beginning to slip, with elements of
internal rebellion growing rapidly for the first time in thousands of years.
    Fighting the Starwolves meant fighting Velmeran, their tactical leader, a
Starwolf of tremendous cunning and initiative. Twenty years and more had passed
since Donalt Trace’s last meeting with Velmeran, and he had, in a strange
way, benefited from that meeting. He had been matured by what had happened to
him that last time. He had shed his blind loyalties, beliefs, and prejudices,
his foolish self-limitations that had made him the simple, shallow man he had
been. He had learned wisdom the hard way, through defeat and the cynicism born
of his failures. He had become a serene, calculating man of tremendous depth, a
man qualified at last for defeating the ultimate weapon of war, the sentient
fighting machine of artificial design known as the Starwolf.
    He had learned to defeat them in the only way he could. He knew now that he
could never build better ships or weapons than they possessed. He had come to
realize that he could never build better pilots, living or mechanical. The only
way to defeat Starwolves was to be more creative than they were. The only
weapon that would work against the Starwolves was themselves. Twenty years of
careful planning had gone into a relentless series of attacks designed to make
the Starwolves outsmart themselves.
    He pushed himself away from the table, his biomechanical arms moving with
their typical hesitation. “Every part of my plan is ready except for the
contingency clause. That’s the part that only you can do for me. If we
win, we win everything, perhaps even an immediate end to this ancient war. We certainly
make our victory inevitable. If we lose, we lose everything. That means that
someone I can trust has to be there to pick up the pieces.”
    “No, don’t say that,” Maeken