Warhorse

by Timothy Zahn

  Ferrol chewed at his lower lip. A distinct possibility… “All right,” he said slowly. “Short to outer hull; then isolate the middle hull again and start the capacitors charging again. Better charge the backup set, too.”

  Demarco threw him a puzzled look, but nodded. “Right.” Another crack!—“Charge drained to outer hull,” he announced. “Outer hull now isolated…charging commencing.”

  “Good,” Ferrol said, shifting his attention back to the space horse calf and keying for the air lock ready room. “Townne, you and Hlinka better get moving—I want the space horse secured for travel in half an hour.”

  “Acknowledged, Chay—”

  “Anomalous motion!” Demarco snapped. “Five thousand kilometers out, coming straight toward us.”

  “What?” Reese gasped. “God, Ferrol—”

  On Ferrol’s board the laser comm light went on. “Unidentified ship,” a quiet voice came over the speaker, “this is Captain Haml Roman aboard the C.S.S. Dryden. You’re ordered to shut down your drive and prepare to be boarded.”

  “I see I was right,” Ferrol commented into the brittle silence. “It was an unusually patient captain. I guess you’d better belay that securing party, Townne.”

  “My God, Ferrol,” Reese breathed. “You’re not going to surrender, are you? God, if I’m caught here—”

  “Shut up or leave the bridge,” Ferrol cut him off evenly, his eyes flicking across the readouts. The warship wasn’t moving very quickly, but even at its current speed it would be within reasonable boarding range in ten minutes or less, with boarders knocking at the hatches five minutes after that. The Scapa Flow wouldn’t be going anywhere on Mitsuushi before then, either: the outer sensors indicated the Dryden had its ion beams playing across the Scapa Flow’s hull, charging it and its attached Mitsuushi ring to uselessness.

  Or rather, trying to charge it. At the moment, the earlier discharge from the capacitors had the hull already holding just about all the charge it could, with the Dryden’s beams largely being deflected uselessly off into space. A situation entirely to Ferrol’s liking…and one his opposite number on the Dryden might well have missed. “Capacitor status, Mal.”

  “Main set shows three minutes to full charge,” Demarco reported. “Another four on the backups.”

  Ferrol nodded, keying a countdown on his board timer where he could keep an eye on it. This was going to be tight. “Let’s see if we can stall him a little,” he said to no one in particular.

  He tapped for comm control and the Scapa Flow’s brand-new Domino III voice refractor, feeling a flicker of grim satisfaction at his own foresight in persuading the Senator to shell out the cash for the latter. With the Domino subtly altering the tones and frequency levels of his voice, the ship out there could analyze it forever without getting anything they could match up against a voiceprint file. The Senator had maintained the gadget was a waste of money; Ferrol had convinced him otherwise.

  A light went on: the Scapa Flow’s laser had locked onto its target. “Captain, this is Professor John English aboard the research ship Milan,” he said, putting just a touch of professorial stuffiness into his voice. “We’re doing some highly delicate work here, and we’d greatly appreciate it if you’d keep your distance.”

  “Would you now,” the other came back. “May I ask what sort of work that might be?”

  “We’re banding space horses, of course,” Ferrol told him. The Dryden, he noted, hadn’t slowed its approach in the slightest. Not that he’d really expected it to. “Trying to learn their movement patterns and social habits. Though I presume a mere civil servant like yourself wouldn’t have heard of our project.”

  “We don’t get the more esoteric scientific journals out on border duty, no,” the captain said with a dryness that showed he didn’t believe a word of it. “Going to strap thirty-six square kilometers of tachyon transceiver to it, are you?”

  “Our version is considerably more compact,” Ferrol said, improvising easily. “It’s an experimental system, capable only of transmitting random blips of tachyon static. We hope that a modified version may someday be adapted for direct ship-to-ship or ground-to-ship communication.”

  “Certainly a worthwhile goal to shoot for. As long as we’re on the subject of ships, perhaps you’d care to explain why yours isn’t listed on our registry.”

  “Oh, we’re probably too new,” Ferrol said, keeping the bulk of his attention on the capacitor countdown timer and the scene on the main tactical display. The Scapa Flow was almost exactly broadside to the Dryden’s approach vector, a fairly lousy position to be in. “We registered only a couple of months ago, just before we headed out,” he added. “You really ought to make it a point to have your registry updated more frequently.”

  “Ah,” the other said. “That must be it. No doubt the procedure will be simplified once you get your miracle micro tachyon transceiver under better control. I don’t suppose that along with your registry papers you’d happen to have written permission from the Tampies to be out here poking around their yishyar system?”

  “Of course we do,” Ferrol said, trying to sound simultaneously haughty and injured. “And a Senate directive, and a release from the Starforce, and a half-dozen other pieces of official pontification. It’s astonishing sometimes how much paper it takes to run even a simple scientific expedition. Let me dig everything out of storage and have the computer send you over some copies.” He touched the cutoff switch. “Mal, when I give the word, swing us around so that the calf’s between us and the Dryden. Don’t worry about straining the tether or netting—we’re not going to be keeping them, anyway.”

  “Got it—hold it a second,” Demarco interrupted himself. “Another blip just popped into view. Directly astern…looks like a damn Tampy ship.”

  Ferrol hissed between his teeth. “Same orders,” he told Demarco. “Back behind the calf when I give the word.”

  “We’ll still be in full view of the Tampy ship there,” Reese pointed out, his voice tight. “In fact, we’ll be broadside to it—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Ferrol cut him off. “They’re too far back to reach us with an ion beam, even if they have one, and they’re not likely to use anything heavier.”

  Reese frowned at the tactical display. “Why not?”

  “Because they might hit the calf, of course,” Ferrol growled. “Besides, I don’t think they’d risk doing anything that far out of official character, not with the Dryden sitting there watching.” He released the cutoff switch, throwing a glance at the timer as he did so. A minute and a half to go. “Just one moment longer, Captain,” he called. “We’ve got the stack of papers here and are copying them for transmission.”

  “Of course you are,” the other said, almost soothingly. “Well, it’s been fun, Captain, but I think we’ve run this one pretty well into the ground. Shall we go ahead and call it quits, or are you really determined to waste more time sending over a set of forged documents?”

  Ferrol felt his lip twist. If there was one thing he hated, it was having to put up with a condescending sense of humor. “Are you officially notifying me that I’m under arrest?” he countered.

  “Consider yourself notified. You didn’t really expect that spun-sugar story of yours to get you very far, did you?”

  “It was worth a try. You’d be surprised at the number of people whose brains go into coma-mode when they see official-looking paper.” Ferrol snapped his fingers and gestured to Demarco. The other nodded, and abruptly the drive roared to life, pushing Ferrol back into his seat.

  He expected the Dryden’s captain to react with surprise or even anger at the sudden maneuver; but if the other was even annoyed it didn’t show in his voice. “Whatever you’re planning, Captain, let me assure you that it won’t work,” he said calmly. “Our sensors show your outer hull and Mitsuushi ring are carrying a heavy positive charge, and we both know you can’t possibly outrun us in normal space.”

  “I trust that after we’ve been of
ficially arrested my people will be taken aboard your ship,” Ferrol said, ignoring the other’s comment. The Scapa Flow was beginning to move now; another minute and the Dryden’s ion beams would be at least partially blocked by the quiescent space horse calf still wrapped in the Scapa Flow’s netting. “I’d just as soon your melted-face chummies out there don’t get their hands on my ship, either.”

  “You have something against Tampies?”

  For a moment the memories flooded back; ruthlessly, Ferrol forced them down. He couldn’t afford emotional distractions right now. “Let’s just say I know what they’re capable of,” he said shortly. “Despite Senate propaganda to the contrary.”

  The Dryden’s captain seemed to digest that. “Interesting comment,” he said after a moment. “Perhaps we can delve into the subject in more depth on the trip back. As it happens, the Tampies out there aren’t connected with this at all.”

  Ferrol snorted under his breath. “Not that it matters,” he said. “Even if they’re not just out here to monitor your poacher hunt, it’s a sure bet that it was the Tampies who gave you the original orders.”

  The pause was brief, but it was long enough for Ferrol to recognize that his gibe had hit a nerve. “Our orders came from the Senate, Captain,” the other said evenly.

  “You really ought to be on our side,” Ferrol told him. “As long as the Tampies have a monopoly on ownership and control of space horses, you and I and the whole Cordonale are going to be stuck dancing to their tune. The only way to break that hold—ˮ

  “Prepare to receive boarders, Captain,” the other interrupted him. His voice was no longer bantering.

  Well, Ferrol thought, gritting his teeth, it was worth a try. And perhaps more to the point, it had gained the Scapa Flow the rest of the time it needed. The ship was in position; the timer showed fifteen seconds to full charge. Slapping the laser cutoff, Ferrol keyed for all-ship intercom. “Mitsuushi in twenty seconds,” he announced. “And brace yourselves—this could be rocky.” He shifted his attention to Demarco. “The minute you have full charge on the capacitors, fire them both down the tether,” he instructed. “If I’m right, we’ll have the Mitsuushi back for only a few seconds—don’t miss the window.”

  “Ferrol, what—?”

  “Shut up, Reese,” Ferrol cut him off, his eyes on the tactical display. The Dryden was driving laterally now, swinging around the space horse calf to where it would again have a clear shot with its ion beams. A leisurely maneuver—at current solar wind fluxes it would take another hour or more for the charge on the Scapa Flow’s hull to be neutralized, and the captain over there knew it. Mentally crossing his fingers, Ferrol wedged himself tighter into his chair and watched the timer cross to zero. “Go,” he ordered.

  The double crack! rocked the ship; and the sound was still echoing in Ferrol’s ears as the main display lit up with a brilliant flash. “We just lost the netting and tether!” Demarco shouted as the hull-stress alarm began its warbling. “The current must have vaporized them.”

  “Get ready!” Ferrol shouted back, his eyes on the surface charge indicator. Ahead of the Scapa Flow, two capacitors’ worth of free electrons combined with those from the vaporized netting fibers, the whole mass of them rushing at Van de Graaff speeds toward the most electron-deficient object anywhere around them—

  The hull-stress alarm tone was moving up the scale, but Ferrol hardly heard it. On his screen the Mitsuushi sensors showed the positive charge dropping like a rock straight toward—

  “Hull’s neutral!” he barked at Demarco. “Go!”

  And an instant later the space horse calf, the Dryden, and the stars all vanished.

  They’d made it.

  Ferrol took a deep breath. I’ll be damned, he thought. It worked. “Status?”

  “Mitsuushi’s clean but shaky,” Visocky’s voice reported from the engine room. “If we don’t make breakout in an hour the equipment’ll do it for us. All that charge the capacitors dumped on the middle hull has to be bled off sometime soon, too.”

  Ferrol nodded. “We’ll make breakout in three minutes, alter course and go another ten. At that point we should be able to take as much cleanup time as we need without worrying about unexpected company.”

  He switched off, and turned to find Reese looking at him. His expression—“You have something to say, Reese?”

  “We’re heading home now, I take it?”

  “There’s not much point in doing anything else,” Ferrol told him. “Eventually, the pro-Tampies will ease up on this yishyar patrol; until then, there’s not much we can do. Unless you want to start scouring systems at random?”

  “Not really.” Reese glanced at the blackness on the main display. “That was a hell of a chance you just took. I may not know all that much about starships, but I do know that triggering what amounted to a major lightning bolt between the space horse and the Scapa Flow could have taken out both the hull’s micro seams and the Mitsuushi ring in the bargain.”

  Ferrol gazed at him. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Reese. You don’t know much about starships.”

  Reese’s eyes hardened. “You could have shunted the capacitor charge directly to the outer hull,” he said, his voice edging into accusation. “You didn’t need to vaporize the netting and tether line.”

  “I wanted the extra electron cloud between us and the Dryden in case they tried bringing up the ion beam again,” Ferrol said, keeping his voice level. “Besides, shunting directly to the hull would have carried its own set of risks.”

  “And besides,” Reese said softly, “you hoped the extra jolt might kill the calf?”

  The bridge had gone silent. The charge, Ferrol knew, might indeed have killed the calf. The thought twisted his stomach…but he was damned if he was going to show that kind of sentimentality in front of Reese. “We captured that space horse,” he told the other, biting out each word as if he really meant it. “If we don’t get it…neither do the Tampies.”

  Reese took a careful breath. “I see,” he said stiffly.

  “I doubt that,” Ferrol told him. “But frankly, I don’t much care whether you do or don’t…and you’re excused from the bridge for the remainder of the voyage.”

  His face rigid, Reese unstrapped and made his way back to the bridge door. “The Senator will hear about this,” he warned.

  “I don’t doubt it,” Ferrol said. “At this point, I don’t much care about that, either.”

  The door closed behind him, and Ferrol turned back to the main display with a tired sigh. It was, perhaps, the beginning of the end. Even the Scapa Flow’s backers no longer truly understood how thin the razor-edge was that the Cordonale was balanced on. Even they were starting to be lulled by the Tampy protestations of peace and friendship.

  Or else they’d lost their nerve. Either way…

  Either way, there was going to have to be some serious discussion when the Scapa Flow reached home.

  Some very serious discussion indeed.

  For a long moment the bridge was silent, with the kind of silence Roman usually associated with sheer stunned disbelief.

  At least, that was what he himself was feeling. Disbelief…and a deep and personal chagrin.

  The poacher had beaten him.

  He took a deep breath. “Lieutenant Nussmeyer, did we get anything like a departure vector through all that?”

  “All—I believe so, sir, yes,” the other said. “Though if he’s smart he won’t stay on that course for long.”

  Roman focused on Nussmeyer’s profile. There was something that looked suspiciously like awe in the other’s face. “And you expect he is that smart, I gather?”

  Nussmeyer flushed slightly. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “I just—” He waved a hand helplessly. “You can’t help but admire a man who takes a gamble that big and pulls it off.”

  “I can’t?”

  Nussmeyer flushed again and fell silent…but even as Roman looked around the bridge he saw that it was a losing battle. The poacher�
�s crack about their orders coming from the Tampies had subtly but noticeably shifted their sympathies in his favor—that, along with the Tampy ship’s damnably bad timing in showing up when it did. It was just as well, Roman thought darkly, that there was no chance anyway of tracking the renegade down. It wouldn’t be an operation his crew could tackle wholeheartedly.

  Damn the Tampies, anyway. Abruptly, he reached to his console, keyed the radio. If the Tampies were here to keep tabs on his hunting— “Tampy ship, this is Captain Haml Roman aboard the C.S.S. Dryden,” he identified himself, his tone harsher than he’d intended it to be. “Your presence in this part of the system is not exactly conducive to our mission of hunting poachers. Would it be at all possible for you to shift your own operations elsewhere?”

  “I hear,” the whining alien voice came promptly. “We conduct no operations here, Rro-maa; we bring a message for you from your people.”

  Roman blinked. That wasn’t exactly the reply he’d been expecting. “I see. Go ahead, we’re ready to receive it.”

  An indicator came on briefly and went off. “Farewell,” the Tampy said, and a moment later vanished from the displays.

  The message was short, but no less a bombshell for all that. Roman read it twice before raising his eyes from his screen. “Lieutenant, lay in a course back to Solomon,” he ordered Nussmeyer. “Head out as soon as the Mitsuushi’s ready to go.”

  “Trouble?” Trent asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Roman shook his head. “The message just says that we’re to return, that the refitting for the Amity project has been finished.”

  Trent’s forehead furrowed. “That’s it? So what do they want from us?—a flyby to send it off?”

  “Not really,” Roman said. “Mostly, what they want is me…to be Amity’s captain.”

  Chapter 3

  THE COURIER SHIP THAT had brought Roman from Solomon to the Tampies’ Kialinninni system had been an old one, right on the edge of being retired or possibly a bit past it; and if appearances and the occasional creaking from the bracing struts were any indication, the shuttle now arrowing him toward Kialinninni’s sun and the Tampy space horse corral was of similar vintage. A continual and sobering reminder that the Amity project was looked upon with scorn or even suspicion by a significant part of the Senate and Starforce…and that it was that faction that controlled the appropriations. “I hope,” he commented, “that the Amity’s in better shape than this thing.”