Warhorse

Roman shook his head in wonderment…in wonderment, and with the first stirrings of real fear. Even at fifty kilometers away a blast that size should have delivered a thunderclap of heat and particle radiation directly into the shark’s surface and sensory clusters. If it could shrug off something that powerful—

  “Missile away,” Kennedy announced into his thoughts; clenching his teeth, Roman shifted his attention back to the ships. A flare had appeared beside the Atlantis; and beside the Starseeker, and beside the Jnana, and beside the Atlantis again— “Correction: barrage away,” Kennedy amended. “Looks like they’re throwing everything they have at it.” The first missile flare erupted in a dim pinprick of light—

  “They’ve gone to chemical warheads,” Marlowe said, sounding stunned.

  “Must be trying to kill it without excessive damage,” Kennedy suggested. “Probably figured the first sub-nuke had taken enough of the fight out of it.”

  “Damn fool risky,” Marlowe muttered. “There it goes, though. Turning around and…wait a minute. What the hell?”

  The shark had veered ponderously away from the incoming missiles; but instead of turning a full 180 degrees and running, it proceeded to trace out a convoluted path that seemed to be part helix, part spiral, and part random. Through it all the pinpricks of exploding warheads continued to flare across the middle of the display, looking for all the world like some strange space-going species of firefly.

  And then, even as the task force launched a fresh barrage of missiles, the shark finally turned tail and fled.

  “Only pulling about two gees,” Kennedy reported. “It’s hurt, all right.”

  “Hurt, and gone crazy both,” Ferrol snorted gently. “What the hell was that, anyway?—the dying-swan version of a mating dance?”

  “Or else an attempt at evasive maneuvers,” Marlowe offered. “It was still doing a fair job of telekening those missiles away from it the whole time, even though they were getting closer there at the end.”

  “It’s slowing down,” Kennedy said, peering intently at her helm display. “Acceleration dropping toward zero…make that at zero.”

  Roman held his breath. Again the firefly flashes dotted the screen—

  But this time, directly against the shark’s surface.

  “They’ve got it,” Kennedy grunted. “—There go the lasers again.”

  “Ion beams, too,” Marlowe reported. “And they’re getting through—the explosions must have scattered the vultures. God, those lasers are actually cutting into the shark’s hide. Cutting deep into it.”

  Between the lasers, ion beams, and warheads the light show went on for another twenty minutes…and when it was finally over, there was no doubt whatsoever that the shark was dead.

  Or, to be more precise, what was left of the shark was dead.

  “Well,” Marlowe said to no one in particular, “that’ll certainly give them a head start on dissecting the thing.”

  With an effort, Roman unclamped his jaw. “A head start, and then some.” He reached for the comm laser control, set for tracking. The indicator flashed— “Amity to Atlantis,” he called. “Come in, Atlantis.”

  “Atlantis; Captain Lekander,” the reply came a few seconds later. “You enjoy the show, Amity?”

  “It’s just nice to know the things can be killed,” Roman told him dryly. “We’d had our doubts.”

  “Anything alive can be killed,” Lekander countered. “It’s just a matter of having the right tools for the job.”

  “I imagine. So what happens now?”

  “We’ll give the area a few hours to cool off, then send a team over to do some dissection,” Lekander said. “Assuming there’s enough of it left by then—I don’t know if you can see it from there, but the vultures have gone ahead and started lunch already. So much for honor among thieves, I guess.”

  “Um.” Roman’s helm display changed to show Kennedy’s projection of the shark’s drift. “How much time were you planning to spend studying the carcass, Captain?” he asked.

  “That’s fairly open-ended,” Lekander said. “Why?”

  “Our projection shows you’ll be passing within a few hundred thousand kilometers of our current position,” Roman explained. “We could rendezvous out there with you and take the whole carcass back with us.”

  “That’s tempting, but no,” the other said. “Like I said, you’re supposed to sit there where we left you and not get involved.”

  Roman nodded. “Understood. Just thought I’d ask.”

  “Rro-maa?”

  Roman jumped at the voice; he hadn’t realized anyone from the Tampy section was listening. “Yes?”

  “May we ask Lle-kann if the missing space horse has been located?”

  Roman’s face warmed with embarrassment. Concentrating on the shark, he’d totally forgotten the ship they’d come here to rescue in the first place. “Good question,” he agreed. “How about it, Captain?”

  “There’s no sign of either the ship or the space horse,” Lekander said, his tone just a shade too casual. “But I wouldn’t worry too much about that. My guess is that they spotted the shark, dropped their beacon, and got out before the vultures could catch them.”

  Roman stared at the intercom, a nasty suspicion beginning to knot his stomach. “You told me they were six hours overdue at port,” he reminded Lekander. “Even if they had had to Jump to a different star first, it wouldn’t have taken them an extra six hours to find their way home.”

  “Maybe they had mechanical difficulty,” Lekander said tartly. “Or stopped to calve or something.”

  “Or maybe they got home fine,” Roman countered, “and all this rush was just to get out here before the shark left?”

  “I don’t really see,” Lekander said, a noticeable edge to his voice, “how any of this could possibly matter.”

  Roman grimaced. No, Lekander probably didn’t see. But someone above him surely had…and that someone had apparently realized that persuading Tampies to participate in a rescue mission would be a hell of a lot easier than talking them into joining a shark hunt.

  And that same someone had obviously decided that keeping Roman in the dark would help sell the story.

  “Rro-maa?”

  Roman braced himself. “Yes, Rrin-saa?”

  “Is it true that there was no one in danger here?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t know, Rrin-saa,” he told the alien truthfully. “I really don’t.”

  For a long moment the Tampy was silent. “We are not predators, Rro-maa,” he said at last. “We do not kill without reason, nor interfere with the patterns of nature without cause.”

  “Rrin-saa, it’s necessary that we learn as much about these sharks as we can,” Roman said, cursing whoever the mallet-head was who’d put him in the middle like this. “As much for your benefit as for ours. If there are sharks moving into this region, your space horses will be in danger.”

  “When it becomes necessary, we will do what we can to protect them,” Rrin-saa said. “You have lied to us, Rro-maa.”

  “The lie was to both of us, Rrin-saa,” Roman said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  “I am sorry, too,” the Tampy said. “The Amity experiment has been built on trust. That trust is now gone.”

  Roman’s stomach tightened. “Perhaps the trust can be rebuilt.”

  “No. The Amity experiment is at an end.”

  Rrin-saa’s words seemed to echo through the bridge. Roman stared at the intercom without really seeing it, head spinning with disbelief. The last fragile diplomatic link between human and Tampy; and it was going to be lost over this? “What about the space horse breeding program? Surely that’s worth something.”

  “It is worth more than you can imagine,” Rrin-saa said, his voice almost sad. “And we will sorely regret its loss. But we have no choice. Our first duty is to honor the patterns of nature, and you have forced us through deceit to violate that duty.” He paused. “I do not expect you to understand.”

  Roman sighed. ?
??We have ethics, too, Rrin-saa. It’s just that pragmatism is too often considered the most important of them.”

  “And duty is only to yourselves.” Roman winced, but there was no bitterness he could hear in the Tampy’s voice. Only more sadness. “I do not believe you will ever learn otherwise. We will return you and the others to Solomon when you are ready. We will then return Sleipnninni to Kialinninni.”

  “Rrin-saa—”

  The intercom screen went blank.

  Slowly, Roman looked up…to find Ferrol watching him. “You have a comment, Commander?”

  Ferrol’s face was hard. “I think he’s bluffing, Captain.”

  Roman eyed him. “You think so, do you?”

  “Yes, sir, I do,” Ferrol said doggedly. “They aren’t going to just throw away the breeding program—certainly not on the whim of a single Tampy. Their leaders will turn it around; and in the meantime, they’ll have taken the opportunity to load a little more of that wonderful Tampy guilt onto our backs. It’s emotional manipulation, pure and simple…and I think everyone else here can see that.”

  “Perhaps everyone else can,” Roman said. Suddenly, he was very tired. “But then, general agreement has always been an unreliable indicator for truth.” Unstrapping, he pushed out of his seat. “Continue with the observation and recording; I’ll be in my cabin.” He gripped the back of his headrest, aimed himself toward the bridge door—

  “Captain, we’re getting movement,” Kennedy spoke up. “About two hundred thousand kilometers beyond the task force.”

  “Heading straight for them,” Marlowe cut in. “Picking up speed now—” he turned to look at Roman, his face rigid. “Captain, it’s another shark.”

  Roman twisted in midair and shoved himself back into his chair, grabbing for his restraints with one hand and keying the comm laser with the other. “Amity to Atlantis; emergency. You’ve got another shark on your tails.”

  “We see it,” Lekander’s voice came back calmly. “Relax, Amity—we know how to handle these things now.”

  “I sure as hell hope so,” Roman muttered under his breath, his eyes on the shark now centered in the scope screen. Still accelerating… “Marlowe, find out where that thing came from,” he ordered. “Specifically, whether it just Jumped in or whether it’s been lurking there watching the whole time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The task force was pulling away from the carcass, coming around and spreading out for battle. The pale laser tracks lanced out…and disappeared into the cloud of vultures running before the shark. “Marlowe? Snap it up,” Roman gritted, a sudden surge of dread curdling through his stomach. If the shark had been watching—if all that intelligence and learning ability had already seen the ships’ weapons in action…

  “Got it, Captain,” Marlowe announced. “The record shows a definite Jump point. It just got here, less than two minutes ago.”

  So it hadn’t been there for the earlier battle; which meant it was sheer dumb luck that its vulture cloud had just happened to block the first laser salvo. Dumb luck, and nothing more.

  But the sinking feeling refused to go away.

  “It’s not turning over,” Kennedy said abruptly. “Captain, it’s not doing a turnover for a zero-vee rendezvous with the task force. And it’s still accelerating.”

  “It’s going to ram them,” Ferrol breathed.

  Roman felt his hands curling into fists. “Amity to Atlantis—Captain, get your force out of there.”

  “Shut up, Roman,” Lekander’s voice snarled. “We’re busy. Ready; fire.”

  On the screen, half a dozen flares suddenly flickered from the sides of the three ships. The missiles skittered away toward the shark—

  And abruptly stopped.

  Roman stared in disbelief. The missiles, their drives still flaring impotently away, sat frozen in space perhaps a third of the way to the shark

  “The shark’s stopped accelerating,” Kennedy said, her voice very quiet. “It’s holding the missiles back—putting that as its top priority.” She looked back at Roman. “Which means it recognizes that the missiles are its chief danger.”

  “But it can’t,” Marlowe protested. “It just got here—it can’t possibly know about the missiles.”

  Ferrol swore, suddenly, under his breath. “It’s the vultures,” he said. “It has to be. The first shark’s vultures must have recorded the battle and then relayed it to the other one.”

  Roman gritted his teeth. The shark was continuing to move toward the task force; but the missiles, frozen in its telekene grip, were still hanging midway between ships and predator. “It’s holding them, but isn’t strong enough to push them back,” he said. “Marlowe: assuming those are sub-nukes, how much closer do they have to get before triggering them will damage the shark?”

  “They can’t trigger them,” Kennedy put in before Marlowe could answer. “The ships are way too close now themselves for that. If they tried it—”

  She broke off as, on the screen, the missile flares abruptly and simultaneously vanished. “Marlowe?” Roman snapped.

  “It broke them up,” Marlowe murmured, a horrified awe in his voice. “Just…tore them to shreds.”

  And if there had been any doubt left, it was gone now. The shark knew exactly what it was up against…and exactly how to fight back.

  And Lekander knew it. On the screen the three ships were veering away, blasting lateral to the shark’s momentum. Roman held his breath— “Atlantis to Amity,” Lekander’s icy voice came suddenly, making him jump. “We track some vultures heading your way; better get out while you can.”

  “Never mind us—get yourselves out,” Roman retorted. “You can’t possibly defeat the shark now.”

  “We’d figured that out, thank you,” Lekander growled. “Get to the 66802 system—well be there when we can. Atlantis out.”

  The console pinged its loss of the laser signal. “Idiots,” Ferrol bit out. “What the hell are they waiting for?”

  “They can’t leave,” Kennedy said quietly. “That sub-nuke explosion—the one they used on the first shark—will have fully ionized their Mitsuushi rings. It’ll be at least another ten minutes before they can use them.”

  Ferrol stared at her, not saying anything. But then, Roman thought numbly, there really wasn’t anything else to say.

  On the screen the ships were still driving laterally, their accelerations up to eight gees. They can do it, Roman told himself, trying hard to believe it. Just a few more minutes.

  And as he watched, the Starseeker faltered in its rush outward. Faltered, slowed to a stop…and began to fall back.

  “Captain?” Marlowe said hesitantly. “I’m picking up those vultures now. They’ll be in position to set up an optical net in maybe fifteen minutes.”

  Roman nodded. Of course the vultures would come for them; it was a pattern of nature out here, too inevitable for him to even feel anger about it. “Kennedy, send the vector for the 66802 system to the Tampy section,” he ordered quietly. “Tell the Handler to prepare for an emergency Jump as soon as Sleipnir’s in position. Ferrol…arm the torpedo. Target toward the vultures, close-in blast—I don’t want them seeing which direction Sleipnir is pointing when we Jump.”

  A muscle in Ferrol’s cheek twitched. “Understood, Captain,” he said, and turned to his task. A moment later, “Torpedo armed and ready, sir.”

  “Fire.”

  Roman watched the flare streak off toward the approaching vultures. Then, with an effort, he turned his attention back to the scope screen.

  The Starseeker was still falling back toward the shark. Falling through the vulture shield…and all at once, the ship seemed to expand and vanish. Its attention no longer divided, the shark began accelerating again; and at an unheard-of ten gees set off in pursuit of the Jnana. “Handler reports Sleipnir in position,” Captain,” Kennedy said, her voice sounding distant in his ears.

  “Set torpedo for five-second detonation.” Roman took a deep breath. To run away now…
but there was absolutely nothing they could do. “Jump.”

  The NCL 66802 system was just under two light-years away; two and a half days by Mitsuushi. Its collective fingers crossed, Amity settled down to wait.

  Ten days later, neither the Jnana nor the Atlantis had joined them.

  Chapter 24

  “AS EXECUTIVE OFFICER,” FERROL said, working hard to keep his voice calm and formal, “one of my jobs is to inform the captain whenever I believe his course of action to be ill-advised or detrimental to the ship, the crew, or the best interests of the Cordonale. Therefore—”

  “You’d like to know why we’re still sitting out here?” Roman interrupted mildly. “Waiting for a task force that’s ten days overdue on a two-day trip?”

  Ferrol clenched his teeth. “Yes, sir, I do,” he said firmly. The captain had evaded this meeting for two whole days now, and Ferrol was damned if Roman was going to undercut his arguments with that agreeable/civilized act of his. “Particularly when our delay prevents the Starforce from receiving information vital to the security of the Cordonale. Standing orders on that—”

  “I take it, then, that you don’t think there could still be survivors?”

  Ferrol locked eyes with him. “Do you?” he asked bluntly.

  Roman’s expression didn’t change. “There’s always a chance,” he pointed out calmly. “A damaged ship able to make a short Mitsuushi hop could be a few light-hours out from 9862 making repairs. How could we go off and abandon them?”

  “We could send a ship back to wait for them,” Ferrol told him. “Or drop our report and records at Solomon and then come back ourselves.”

  Roman’s eyebrows went up. “And how would we do that? As soon as we reach the Cordonale, Rrin-saa and the Tampies will be taking Sleipnir back home.”

  Ferrol snorted. “And that’s what this is really all about, isn’t it? You’re mad at the Starforce for their little verbal sleight of hand; and in return you’re going to make them sweat a little.”

  Roman regarded him thoughtfully. “Tell me something, Commander. Back in the 9862 system, just before the second shark appeared, you said the Tampies’ anger over being lied to was nothing more than emotional manipulation. Do you really believe that?”