Battle of the Ring Read Online Free

I am
not Kelvessan, then what am I?”
    “Something more,” Consherra said, pointing to the medical
scanner aimed at his back. “Dyenlerra wants to study you very closely.
The suggestion has been made that you are a mutation, perhaps the first
evolutionary step our race has taken since our creation. In short, you are the
real Kelvessan. We are only the prototype.”
     

-2-
    The palatial structure in the mountains south of Vannkarn was called Rane
Manor after its first owner, although the dynasty he had founded now bore the
name Lake. This was not the original mansion; few things built by man could
survive chance accident and natural disaster that long. In all those years,
fifty thousand in all, only one thing had remained unchanged: the same family
had ruled there in a line of descent that had remained unbroken. The family
name had changed often and clan leaders had frequently turned to the offspring
of near or distant cousins to adopt an heir.
    Richart Lake had come to that high position with the sudden if not
unexpected death of his grandfather hardly a year before. Richart was not the
same sort of man Jon Lake had been, and the sector already reflected his
changes. Jon Lake had been philosophical and reflective, while Richart was
calculating and coldly efficient. He ran the sector as he had run Farstell
Trade, as a business, a tool to control the population, with definite goals to
be met and a profit to be made. And he was in his own way even stronger.
    Donalt Trace, the Sector Commander, was like neither of those two. He
disdained both government and business; according to his own philosophy, a
society existed primarily to serve the needs of its military. His whole life
had been shaped around the single, all-important task of defeating Starwolves.
Richart, on the other hand, had been taught that the Starwolves were a threat
that could not be effectively countered, a problem that could be quietly worked
around but never eliminated. That was perhaps their main difference. Donalt
would have them always fighting, while Richart knew that they could not win.
Neither of them had an effective solution. Until now.
    Jon Lake had divided the two great tasks of his life between his two
successors. Donalt had inherited the problem that the Starwolves represented,
but Richart had received the greater responsibility of ensuring the survival of
their race. The human species was in rapid decline, too long apart from the
rules of natural selection that had shaped their very being. Weak and defective
traits had polluted the genetic resources of the entire species. A large
portion of their race was impaired physically or mentally beyond the ability to
function normally. This escalating problem was a drain of resources that the
Union would be unable to afford before long.
    Richart Lake was the key supporter of a daring, even dangerous plan to
correct this problem. His grandfather had first proposed to trim back the
population of the Union by at least half. Forced sterilization would be
employed on a large-scale basis, having already begun on those with severe
mental or physical impairments. But those standards would slowly be increased
to include everyone below a certain intelligence level or a victim of any
physical defect, a subsidized return of natural selection, while genetic
enhancement would be used to predispose groups of people to certain tasks.
    The problem of enforcing that plan was obvious. The implement of the first
phase, four months earlier, had led to unrest on every Union world, rioting on
twenty and the complete overthrow of Union authority on one. Before the next
phase could be put into effect, the full force of the military would be needed
to intimidate or punish the general population into compliance. And for that,
the problem of the Starwolves must somehow be eliminated. That last point was
vital, for the Starwolves would quickly use the Union’s troubles to
defeat it.
    And that was Donalt Trace’s specialty.
    Trace