Warhorse

  He broke off suddenly, something blazing in his eyes. “Kennedy, get on your nav system—I want a minimum-time route to the space horse corral at Kialinninni. Ferrol, consider yourself as on parole: collect that animal you’re chasing down and head back to the Cordonale—we’ll sort out any charges against you later.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ferrol protested. “What’s the rush?”

  “Don’t you remember?” Roman ground out. “The Tampies have been pulling their space horses back to Kialinninni. All of them.”

  And abruptly, Ferrol got it. “Leaving dust sweat trails over the place,” he breathed. “Every one of them pointing straight at the corral.”

  “Exactly,” Roman said tightly. “We’ve got to warn them right away. Maybe we can do something to confuse the trail—send ships out to drop sub-nuke missiles at the original Jump points or something.”

  Ferrol chewed hard at his lower lip. The possibilities here… “I’d like to come along, captain,” he said. “If we head toward you right now, we should be able to rendezvous in half an hour or so.”

  Roman had been looking away, presumably at Kennedy. Now, very deliberately, he looked back at Ferrol. “May I ask why?”

  Ferrol forced himself to hold the other’s gaze. “I’m still Amity’s exec,” he reminded the other, aware for the first time in hours of the needler pressing against his side beneath his tunic. The needler, and the Senator’s envelope… “It’s where I belong. Even if you choose to confine me to quarters.” A sudden thought occurred to him— “Besides, which, the Amity is far better equipped to handle these animal samples than we are. And since it’ll probably take at least a few hours to get back, this would give Dr. Tenzing a head start on studying them.”

  Roman pursed his lips, frowning at Ferrol as if trying to read the motive behind the words. Ferrol held his breath…and at last, almost reluctantly, the other nodded. “Very well, Commander. Proceed with your capture, and prepare your samples for transfer. We’ll rendezvous with you in an hour.”

  Ferrol exhaled quietly. “Yes, sir. Thank you, Captain.”

  “I’ll talk to you then. Amity out.”

  The display went blank. For a long moment Ferrol stared at it, feeling his stomach knotting up within him. Once again, in the face of totally inexcusable actions, Roman was going to give him another chance…and once again, Ferrol was very likely going to betray that trust.

  He’d known, from the beginning, that this would probably happen. What he hadn’t expected was that it would hurt.

  “First Jump completed, Captain,” Kennedy reported from the bridge. “We’ll be driving cross-system now for about twenty minutes to get into proper position for the second.”

  Roman nodded. “Good. Any problems with the Scapa Flow?”

  “Not so far.” She paused, her eyes flicking away from Roman’s face for a quick scan of her displays. “No. The tether line’s holding just fine, and Sleipnir doesn’t seem to be having any trouble at all with the extra mass.”

  “Very good. Keep me informed.”

  The intercom screen blanked, and he looked back up. On the other side of his desk, Ferrol was sitting quietly, trying to exude respect and a sort of righteous dignity. Not that it was really coming off. “Probably a slightly bumpy ride for them back there,” Roman told him. “We can still arrange to berth your men here, you know.”

  Ferrol shrugged. “I appreciate the offer, sir, but to be perfectly honest, they’ve got better accommodations in the Scapa Flow than they’d have here.”

  “As well as a better chance of cutting the tether line and escaping once we’re back within Mitsuushi distance of the Cordonale?” Roman asked pointedly.

  Ferrol seemed to draw himself up. “I’ve given you the ship’s parole, Captain,” he said, his voice stiff. “They won’t try to leave.”

  Roman thought about that. “No,” he acknowledged, “I don’t believe they will. My apologies, Commander.”

  “Thank you.” Ferrol seemed to brace himself. “So. Do I get a formal hearing before I’m confined to quarters? Or are we going to hold off on such formalities until we get back to Earth?”

  Roman studied him. The semi-genuine respect was still there, and the righteous innocence too…but there was no real worry. Which seemed just a little odd, considering how much a man in Ferrol’s position should have to worry about. “You assume,” he said, “that I’ll be leveling charges.”

  Ferrol frowned, a touch of uncertainty flicking across his eyes. “Aren’t you?”

  “Depends partly on why you did it, I suppose,” Roman said evenly. “Motivation is a relevant part of action, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Depends on whether you’re talking ethics or legalities,” Ferrol countered.

  Roman shrugged. “Perhaps. At any rate, I had a chance to speak briefly to Wwis-khaa while you were helping transfer your specimens aboard, before he and the lander took Epilog and headed for home. He told me you were looking for some sort of flying sheep dog to help the Tampies protect their space horses.” He cocked an eyebrow.

  “And you, obviously, don’t believe that,” Ferrol said, an edge of challenge in his voice.

  “You were talking to a Tampy,” Roman reminded him.

  “So naturally you assume I was lying through my teeth.”

  Roman just waited; and after a moment Ferrol snorted. “As it happens, I was more or less telling the truth,” he growled. “Once we knew space horses weren’t just some isolated evolutionary accident, it stood to reason that they had to be part of a complete space-going ecosystem. Any ecosystem worth its salt ought to have several different varieties of predators, so I went off to hunt for them.”

  “Without any scrap of discussion or authorization,” Roman pointed out.

  “True,” Ferrol admitted. “On the other hand, Rrin-saa had already said he and the other Tampies were going to collect their marbles and go home when we got back to Solomon. If I hadn’t taken the opportunity Epilog presented, we might never have gotten another chance.” A half-smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “Besides, if I’d told you in advance your head would be on the block beside mine now.”

  “Not if I’d simply locked you in your cabin in the first place,” Roman said coldly.

  Ferrol raised his hands, palms upward, all innocence again. “If you had, we’d never have found the black hole ecology.”

  For if it prosper, the old cynicism ran through Roman’s mind, none dare call it treason. The politics of convenience and end result…the politics on which the Cordonale seemed to run these days. “You said what you’d told Wwis-khaa was more or less the truth. I presume from that that you had something other than guard duty in mind for these theoretical predators of yours?”

  Ferrol leaned forward, a sudden earnestness in his face. “We can train them, Captain,” he said, a quiet fire beneath the words. “Train them like the Tampies have trained space horses; only these would be ours. Ours. With our own space—whatever; wolves, maybe—with space-wolf ships the universe would be open to us. We could explore and colonize—we could do whatever we damn well pleased, and all of it without the Tampies interfering and hand-wringing us to death.”

  “Including the building of your warhorse fleet?” Roman asked.

  “Including any—” Ferrol broke off, his eyes narrowing as his mind belatedly caught up with his ears. “What did you say?”

  “Your warhorse fleet,” Roman repeated quietly. “The one you’ve been trying to sell to your Senate backers for quite some time now. Since before Amity’s first calving, anyway; possibly as far back as your escape from the Dryden and me in the Cemwanninni yishyar system.”

  Ferrol stared at him. “Where did—?” He swallowed visibly, took a deep breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, clearly striving for an indignant tone.

  “I’m talking about you,” Roman said, watching the other carefully. “A man who lied under oath and misappropriated Senate funds for the purposes of poaching space ho
rses from the Cemwanninni system. And who then—”

  “I never appropriated anything,” Ferrol protested. The dazed look was still there…but behind it was a growing sense of horror. “Ever. None of that was on my own—they recruited me for that, damn it.”

  “As a matter of fact, I believe you,” Roman told him. “But the official story that’s begun to make the rounds says otherwise. My guess is that your former supporters are laying the groundwork to discredit anything you might possibly say against them in the future.”

  Slowly, Ferrol’s gaze slipped from Roman’s face and drifted to the port, and for a long minute he stared silently out at the stars. Roman watched the play of emotions across the younger man’s face, feeling a pang of guilt at having had to be the one to drop the hammer on Ferrol’s head.

  And yet, even as he watched, he found his guilt unexpectedly dissipating, replaced by interest and a growing sense of respect. Ferrol had always had a rather brash confidence in himself and his opinions, an arrogance Roman had put down to the combination of youth plus the heady political power unofficially backing him from the shadows. But now, with that power suddenly turned against him, Roman realized it hadn’t been nearly as major a part of Ferrol’s internal support as he’d thought. The shock of realizing he was being thrown to the wolves was already changing into a hard and icy anger…and when he again turned to face Roman he was back in control. “How long since this official story came out?” he asked.

  “I heard it first during the Defiance debriefings,” Roman told him. “I’d tried to dig into your record a few times before that, but your friends had done too good a job of burying it.” Ferrol nodded grimly. “And now it’s suddenly accessible again,” he growled. “Suitably modified, of course.”

  “So it would appear,” Roman agreed. “So. What are you going to do now?”

  Ferrol exhaled thoughtfully. “Try to interest someone else in the idea of taming space predators, I suppose. Maybe the Sinshahli Psych Institute—that place Demothi came out of.”

  “You may find it hard to get a hearing,” Roman warned. “No telling how far afield they’ll let the story circulate.”

  “They won’t let it get too far,” Ferrol shook his head. “If too many people heard it, they might wind up having to bring charges against me. The last thing they’ll want is for me to tell my side of it in a public forum.”

  “So. Stalemate,”

  Ferrol shrugged uncomfortably. “Providing I don’t do anything to shake the tree. Probably one reason they made sure you knew about it. A good way to deliver the message.” He looked at Roman sharply, as if something had just registered. “But if you’d already heard the official version…why did you let me take the Epilog calving?”

  Roman locked eyes with him. “As I said, I didn’t believe the critical parts of it. You learn a great deal about a man when you spend a year serving with him, Ferrol—you learn about his character, and about his judgment, and which you can trust and under what circumstances.”

  Something might have passed over Ferrol’s eyes; Roman wasn’t sure. “Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, his voice carefully neutral. “I…thank you for your trust, sir. If you’ll excuse me now, it’s been a very tiring few days. With your permission, I’d like to go to my cabin and rest.”

  “Certainly,” Roman nodded. “Kennedy’s projection puts us at Kialinninni in about twelve hours; I’ll want you available for bridge duty then.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, getting to his feet.

  “And Commander…?”

  Ferrol paused at the door. “Yes, sir?”

  “Welcome home.”

  This time something did indeed pass over Ferrol’s eyes. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and left.

  Something, it seemed to Roman, that had looked a great deal like pain.

  Chapter 27

  KIALINNINNI’S SUN WAS A dim red star marked on Roman’s helm display by a flashing circle, moving with the rest of the stars across the screen as Sleipnir came around in a gentle arc to line up with it. For a moment, before the space horse blocked it, the star was visible in the forward port, and Roman threw a quick look out at it. It was even harder to see there than it was on the display. “Sso-ngii, are you sure Sleipnir can see the target star?” he asked into the intercom.

  “He can,” the Tampy replied.

  Roman frowned again at the helm display; but Sso-ngii ought to know what he was talking about. “All right. Stand by to Jump at my command. And let me know immediately if this procedure startles or frightens Sleipnir.” He keyed engineering into the circuit. “Commander Stolt; Dr. Tenzing—you ready?”

  “Just waiting for the order, sir,” Stolt replied. “The boats are all tanked up and ready to go, and Dr. Tenzing’s double-checked the spray pattern.”

  “Very good. Launch.”

  “Yes, sir. Launching…now.”

  Roman shifted his attention to the tactical display. From Amity’s hanger came Stolt’s two gimmicked boats, flying together in close formation as they came up Amity’s hull. They passed the bow and began to split apart; and by the time they reached Sleipnir they were on opposite sides of the space horse’s bulk.

  “Starting the gas spray,” Stolt announced.

  On Roman’s display the two boats, moving up opposite sides of Sleipnir’s cylindrical mass now, began to trail what showed up on the screen as a cohesive-looking mist. Smoothly, and in perfect synch, the boats altered direction, and as Roman watched began tracing out a double-helix pattern a few meters above the space horse’s surface. The mist spread slowly out behind them as they circled near Sleipnir’s head and started back, and by the time they were once again traveling alongside the rein lines the mist had settled in around Sleipnir, circling and engulfing the creature like a halo from some strange medieval painting.

  “Boats almost back,” Stolt said. “ETA one minute.”

  Roman nodded. “Marlowe?”

  “Cloud holding together nicely,” the other reported. “Expanding just enough to fill in the whole gap around Sleipnir,”

  “Good.” A thought occurred to him—”When you get a minute, you probably ought to let the Scapa Flow know what we’re doing—we don’t want them to be startled.”

  “Yes, sir.” Marlowe turned to his intercom.

  Roman returned his attention to the tactical. “Sso-ngii? Is Sleipnir bothered at all by the gas mixture?”

  “He is not. He is facing the Kialinninni star, Rro-maa, and is ready to Jump.”

  And was meanwhile busy exuding all the information any passing shark would ever need to find the Tampy corral. If this scheme Tenzing had dreamed up didn’t work…

  And the irony of it all was that if it did work they would probably never know it.

  On the tactical, the boats hovering close beside Amity’s hull disappeared. “Boats aboard, Captain,” Stolt announced. “Hangar door sealing…we’re ready here.”

  “Sso-ngii?”

  “I hear, Rro-maa.”

  Roman settled himself and shifted his eyes to the forward viewscreen. “All right, then. Everyone ready; fire, and Jump.”

  At the edge of the screen the comm laser lanced out, its passage marked just visibly by the flicker of ionized hydrogen atoms in its path. The dim line shifted inward, touched the edge of the gas cloud ahead—

  And, abruptly, Sleipnir was sheathed in flame.

  It wasn’t a terribly hot fire, as fires went—Tenzing had made sure of that when preparing his mixture. The temperature at Sleipnir’s skin would be no more than six hundred degrees Celsius, Roman knew—hardly worth a space horse’s notice, but more than enough to char and scramble the complex molecules in the dust sweat beyond any possible reconstruction.

  Or so the logic went. But for that first flaring instant, none of the chemistry or biology or logic really mattered. For that one single instant Sleipnir was a glimpse into semi-mythic racial memories of humanity’s past: an echo of ancient Viking funeral pyres, or of the self-immolation of the Phoenix, or o
f the fiery horror of Dante’s Inferno.

  The flame flickered out, and the vision faded, and Roman took a deep breath, feeling vaguely foolish. He glanced around the bridge, wondering if anyone had noticed. But all were still huddled over their consoles, busy with the usual tasks of a Jump.

  The Jump. Belatedly, Roman dropped his eyes back to his displays, giving them a quick scan. If the trick hadn’t worked…

  It had. Dead ahead on the nav display was the dim globe of Kialinninni’s sun; and a check of the timeline showed that the Jump had taken place at virtually the height of the flash fire.

  He looked up, to find Ferrol’s eyes on him. “It seems to have worked,” he commented to the other.

  “Looks that way,” Ferrol nodded. “So. Now what?”

  “We find the corral,” Roman told him, tapping keys on his console. If Kennedy’s projections had been on the mark the corral ought to be somewhere off to starboard…

  “Got it, sir,” Marlowe announced. “Bearing—well, the nearest edge of the enclosure’s about thirty-nine starboard, ten nadir; range, ninety-five thousand kilometers.”

  Roman nodded as the corral—or, rather, the ovoid computer-enhanced shape marking its invisible boundaries—appeared, centered, on the scanner display. He tapped for a tenfold magnification; repeated the procedure—

  “Good God,” Kennedy murmured, peering at her own display. “When they say they’re going to bring the space horses home, they don’t fool around, do they?”

  “No, they don’t,” Roman agreed, feeling just a little staggered himself. The last time he’d seen the corral, back when he’d arrived to take command of the Amity, there’d been perhaps a half-dozen space horses wandering around inside the enclosure; now, the place was almost literally packed with them. Moving restlessly about, visible only as pale slivers of reflected light from the system’s star, it was oddly reminiscent of the view through a microscope at a drop of swamp water. Distantly, Roman wondered if the Tampies had ever noticed that; but almost certainly they had. The recurring and circular patterns of life and nature were, after all, the backbone of Tampy philosophy.