Warhorse

by Timothy Zahn

  “Good.” Roman took a moment to run a quick status check, then cocked an eyebrow at his exec. “So what is it you need a private moment to discuss?”

  Ferrol’s eyes bored into his. “To put it bluntly, Captain, I don’t trust the Tampies.”

  “You mean as in they may be faking Pegasus’ illness?”

  “No, sir. I mean as in making a run for it once Pegasus is well again…whether Amity’s back yet or not.”

  For a moment Roman studied the younger man. The ghosts of Prometheus seemed to swirl behind those eyes…and Roman thought about those ninety-seven unfavorable questionnaires. “I think that highly unlikely,” he said at last, “but there’s no particular need to take even that small a chance. We certainly can’t leave the bulk of the survey section out here without a contingent of ship’s crew along to look after them…so you’ll have plenty of people to watch the Tampies, too.”

  It took a second to register; and then Ferrol’s eyes widened. “Me, sir?”

  “You, Commander,” Roman confirmed. “I’ll need a list of the people you’ll be taking with you within half an hour. Make sure it’s a compatible bunch—Amity’s got her share of intercrew squabbles, and there won’t be room for any friction on the boats.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ferrol’s tongue swiped briefly across his upper lip. “Sir…with all due respect, I’d prefer to stay with the Amity.”

  “I know you would, Commander,” Roman said, “but I don’t have any other choice. Someone with command authority has to stay with Pegasus, and I’m going to need both Kennedy and Stolt here with me. That leaves you.”

  Ferrol took a deep breath. “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice stiff with protest. He turned back to his station without further comment.

  Roman watched the other’s back for a moment, then turned to his own console. There were orders to be given; but before he got enmeshed in that, there was a crucial question that still had to be settled.

  The computer’s opinion, delivered a minute later, was clear but ominous: Amity could survive the trip to Shadrach, even without using Pegasus as a shield…but only as long as B’s energy output stayed at or below current levels. At a two-gee acceleration—the maximum that Tampies could handle for long periods—it would take them over twenty-five hours each way.

  And the white dwarf’s next burp could come at any time. If it happened in the next fifty hours, Amity was going to fry.

  We humans thrive on slim odds, he’d told Rrin-saa. He could only hope that hadn’t been all bravado. Clearing his screen, he keyed for the computer’s pager. “Call Lieutenants Kennedy and Marlowe to the bridge,” he instructed it.

  The blazing plumes of superheated plasma from Amity’s fusion drive were visible long after the ship itself was too far away to be seen. Ferrol watched through the lander’s rear viewport as they grew steadily fainter; and after a few minutes, they too were lost in the glare of the twin stars.

  Amity was gone.

  Ferrol gazed after them a moment longer, conflicting emotions churning within him. Roman had played the danger down, but Ferrol had run all the numbers on his own before leaving the ship, and he knew the dimensions of the razor-edge monorail Roman had sent Amity skating along. If the star gave off with one of its burps before they reached Shadrach, the ship was most likely gone.

  Leaving him in command.

  He grimaced. In command of a disorganized mob of scientists, few of whom had any idea which end of the lander was which, most of whom were likely to be far more trouble than help if push came to shove. In command of a group of ship’s crewers who knew damn well what was going on, and were edgy as hell because of it.

  In command of a group of Tampies.

  Ferrol turned away from the viewport and sent a sour look around the lander interior. Surrounding him on all sides was a three-dimensional chaos of people and equipment, a hell designed for the terminally fastidious. Near the middle of the storm floated Dr. Tenzing, bellowing out instructions to his people as best he could through a filter mask; a little ways away Weapons Chief Garin was doing similarly with the crewers.

  And beyond them, in a little pocket of calm at the lander’s nose, were the Tampies.

  Sitting together in their compact little group—and even in zero-gee Ferrol’s mind insisted on defining their odd cross-legged stances as sitting—they remained for the most part silent and motionless. Occasionally they spoke quietly together, or touched each other, or ducked their misshapen heads to peer out past the cluster of lifeboats at the dark shape of Pegasus floating a kilometer away. One of them moved slightly, giving Ferrol a brief glimpse of Sso-ngii, his eyes unblinking beneath the bulky amplifier helmet, and an even briefer glimpse of the disgusting animal tied in to that helmet.

  They were planning something—of that much Ferrol was certain. The only question was…what?

  Kicking off the wall, he headed forward, and with unexpected luck managed to intercept Tenzing between orders. “Doctor,” he nodded. “How are your people doing?”

  “We’re almost set up,” the other said, his voice sounding a little hoarse. “We should be able to get going in, say, ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Good. I presume I don’t have to tell you to push it.”

  Tenzing’s face wrinkled, and Ferrol guessed that beneath the filter mask the other was probably giving him a tight smile. “I hold a minor degree in astrophysics, Commander,” the scientist said. “I know considerably better than you do just exactly what a nova does to its immediate neighborhood.”

  “I don’t want to see it close up, either,” Ferrol agreed. “Let’s make sure we don’t have to.”

  He gave his handhold a push and floated over to the port side, where Garin was hovering at the midship viewport. “How’s everything look?” he asked.

  “As good as can be expected,” Garin grunted. “I was just giving the lifeboat tethers a visual inspection. They seem solid enough.”

  “All right. When you’ve got a minute I want you to go find Yamoto and have her move us around into Pegasus’ shadow. No particular rush, but make it soon—we don’t have Amity’s shielding, and there’s no point in sitting out here picking up heat and radiation when we don’t have to.”

  “Yes, sir,” Garin nodded. “And after that?”

  Ferrol pursed his lips. “After that…I want you to keep an eye on the Tampies for me.”

  Garin’s eyebrow twitched. “Anything in particular I’m supposed to watch for?”

  “Something underhanded. Attempting to Jump without the Amity, if and when we get Pegasus back to normal. Maybe some kind of crazy sabotage scheme—for all we know, Rrin-saa may have saddled us with a suicide squad here. I don’t know what they’re up to—but they’re up to something. I can feel it.”

  Garin looked at the group of Tampies. “Me, too, sir. Don’t worry; I’ll watch them.”

  “Good. And if you catch them at anything—” Ferrol hesitated. “Well, just let me know. Privately.”

  “Yes, sir,” Garin said softly. “I’ll do that.”

  Ferrol nodded and pushed away. In his inner tunic pocket, the tiny needle gun felt very large.

  Chapter 10

  AMITY WAS STILL FOUR hundred thousand kilometers from Shadrach, and Roman was catnapping in his chair, when B burped.

  “You’re sure?” he frowned, studying his displays as he fought to brush the cobwebs from his brain. B’s energy output curve didn’t seem to have changed significantly.

  “Yes, sir.” Marlowe touched a key, and a velocity plot appeared on Roman’s scanner repeater display. “The dwarf’s blown off a thin shell of plasma, and it’s expanding outwards at nearly four hundred kilometers per second. For the moment the shell’s blocking off the extra radiant energy, but that won’t last long. As soon as it spreads itself thin enough for the light to get through…well, we’ll be in a little trouble.”

  “How long?” Roman asked, punching for course status.

  “A few minutes at the most.”

  Ro
man nodded grimly. Amity was already decelerating toward Shadrach, but at the two gees she was pulling it would take them an hour and forty-six minutes to reach the safety of the planet’s umbra. “Kennedy?”

  Her fingers were already moving across the helm keys. “We could turn the ship, sir, and accelerate for a few minutes before turning again and decelerating,” she offered doubtfully. “But flipping over twice would almost certainly eat anything we gained in the process.”

  And simply increasing their deceleration rate wouldn’t do any good, either, Roman knew: it would bring Amity to a stop sooner, but leave them stranded far short of the planet.

  Unless…

  He keyed for a large-scale position plot, holding his breath…and the gods were indeed kind. The larger of Shadrach’s two moons was almost directly on Amity’s heading, and was a good three hundred thousand kilometers closer to them than Shadrach itself. “Course change, Kennedy,” he ordered. “We’re going to try for the dark side of Shadrach’s moon. Execute as soon as you’ve got the numbers, then compute deceleration and ETA and see how much time that’ll buy us. Marlowe, get me an estimate of B’s brightness behind that expanding shell and send the numbers back to Stolt—I want to know how long the hull will be able to take it. Then check Kennedy’s ETA and see if it’s going to be enough.”

  He felt a slight sideways tilt as Amity began the task of changing its direction the required few degrees. The bridge creaked a bit as it rotated slightly to accommodate; and then the straight-line motion came back, and Roman fought against the opposite tilt until the bridge finished the inverse correction. “Course change executed,” Kennedy reported. “If we run a constant eight-gee deceleration from here we’ll reach the moon in just under twenty-seven minutes.”

  “Marlowe?”

  “It’ll be damned tight, sir,” Marlowe grunted. “The drive nozzles will take the brunt of it, and they’re a lot more heat-resistant than the hull itself. But we’re not exactly dead-on to the star; and even if we rotate slowly so that each section of the hull gets equal exposure, we’ll still reach the theoretical danger point in fifteen to twenty minutes.”

  Roman nodded. “What else have you got, Kennedy?”

  “Not much, sir,” she shook her head. “We can cut it to twenty minutes by shutting down the drive and maintaining our current speed for nine minutes, but that’ll mean doing the last eleven at twelve gees.”

  Eleven minutes of twelve gees. Eleven minutes of hell for the ship and its human crew…and maybe far worse for the Tampies still aboard. Could Tampies even survive twelve gees? Roman keyed his intercom. “Rrin-saa?”

  The alien’s face appeared. “I hear, Rro-maa.”

  “Rrin-saa, we’re in a crisis situation here,” Roman told him. “We’re going to have to pull eleven minutes at twelve gees or Amity isn’t going to make it. Can your people take that?”

  A shadow of emotion might have crossed Rrin-saa’s face; Roman couldn’t tell for sure. “I do not know,” he said. “I know Tamplissta have survived eight gees for short times; that is all.” He paused. “Your wishes are ours, Rro-maa. You must do what is necessary.”

  Roman gritted his teeth. “Lay in your course, Kennedy. Signal for dangerous acceleration. Rrin-saa…good luck.”

  The drive cut off; and as the warning alarm began to hoot, Roman’s chair unfolded into its acceleration couch mode. He snuggled down into it as best he could in zero-gee, feeling the contour cushions adjust to his body, and watched the displays. He’d done everything he could, and now there was nothing to do but wait as the laws of physics played themselves out.

  A minute later, right on schedule, the expanding plasma shell broke.

  The hull temperature numbers skittered upward, higher than Roman had ever seen them, before falling abruptly as all sunside sensors either cut out or flared into uselessness. The pattern of destruction repeated itself around the entire circumference as the slow rotation Kennedy had put Amity into gave each section of hull the same deadly exposure in its turn. Within minutes the outer reflective layer was beginning to show signs of blistering, and the temperature within the ship was rising faster than the cooling system could dump it.

  And then the fusion drive kicked back in…and Roman gasped for breath as the giant invisible hand jammed him hard into his couch. Jammed him, held him down, did its damnedest to crush the life out of him…

  The last thought to flicker through his mind before the blackness overtook him was that putting his ship and crew through this high-pressure volcano was a hell of a way to run a rescue mission.

  Slowly, as if in disbelief at her survival, Amity began to pull herself together.

  “—Damage control reports over twenty buckled hull plates. Repair crews are working on the worst of it.”

  “—Breakage of improperly stowed gear is pretty high, Captain, but nothing vital seems to be lost. We’re cleaning it up.”

  “—The landing was a little rough, but didn’t cause any damage to the drive nozzles. We’re a few kilometers southeast of the center of the moon’s dark side. Rotation period is about nine days, so we can stay put for as long as we’ll need.”

  “—Casualties, Captain. The Tampies report eight dead during deceleration. No deaths on our side, but a number of broken bones and minor internal injuries. A medical team’s gone portside to assist the Tampy doctors.”

  Eight dead. Roman swore, uselessly, under his breath. Eight dead…and the fact that they were Tampies almost made it worse. He would have to call Rrin-saa and give his official condolences, of course—

  “Captain?” Marlowe called. “I’ve managed to punch a laser carrier through all that ion-soup static out there. We’ve got Dr. Lowry’s group.”

  Roman jabbed at his intercom. “This is Captain Haml Roman of the Cordonale Research Ship Amity. Dr. Lowry?”

  “Here, Captain.” The static cleared slightly, giving Roman a glimpse of a snowy-haired man in full pressure suit. His face—what could be seen of it through the helmet—looked haggard. “You can’t know how happy we are you’re here.”

  “I’m glad we made it. Where are you?”

  “Dark side of the planet. I can give you our latitude and longitude, but that won’t help you much—Shadrach rotates once every forty-two hours and we have to keep moving to stay out of the light.”

  “Yeah.” Roman had looked through the viewport at the planet only once. Low in the sky, showing about half a disk, and shining only by light reflected from fairly dark rock, it had still damn near blinded him. “I assume you have some sort of lander down there?”

  “Yes—a Sinor-Grayback TL-1. A little cozy for all fifty of us at once, but we can manage.”

  “Kennedy?” Roman murmured.

  “A bit on the large side, sir,” she said promptly, “but with our own lander gone there’ll be enough room for it in the hangar.”

  “Thank you. We can handle that, Doctor. How’s your fuel situation?”

  “We had to abandon a lot of it at the base, and we’ve used some since then to keep out of the sunlight, but we’ve got enough left to meet you in orbit whenever you’re ready. Assuming it’s not too high an orbit, that is.”

  “I think we’ll be able to accommodate you,” Roman said. “Now, I understand there’s a Tampy group down there, too. Are they with you?”

  Lowry shook his head. “I’m afraid they’re beyond help, Captain,” he said tiredly. “Their encampment was on the sunside when the dwarf first flared up. They’re all dead.”

  Roman felt his stomach tighten into a hard knot. “You’re certain?”

  Lowry’s sigh was just barely audible, and even through the static and pressure suit Roman could swear he saw the other shudder. “We’re certain. We went to their encampment as soon as it had rotated to the dark side. They had no warning whatsoever, no chance to escape. If the flare hadn’t blown off Shadrach’s minuscule atmosphere and sent shock waves through the ground we’d have been caught the same way ourselves.” Lowry’s hand reached up,
as if to run his fingers through his hair, then dropped in obvious embarrassment. “We don’t know why the dwarf triggered so soon; it should have been all right for at least another month—”

  “We can sift through the details later, Doctor. Are the rest of your people all right?”

  Lowry visibly drew himself together. “We’re fine—or we will be as soon as we can get out of here. Just tell us when we should lift to meet you.”

  “It’ll be a while yet, I’m afraid,” Roman told him, glancing at his scanner repeater display. “We’ll have to wait until the light intensity goes down enough for us to get across to you. We’re presently on your larger moon’s dark side.”

  Lowry stared. “You’re not over Shadrach itself? Captain—” He swallowed and took a deep breath. “Captain, you can’t wait that long. Our calculations show that the next flare-up will be the final one.”

  Roman’s mouth felt suddenly dry. “The nova?”

  Lowry nodded. “And the intensity won’t decrease more than a magnitude or so before that.”

  The bridge had gone very quiet. “How long have we got?” Roman asked.

  “As best as we can estimate, between sixty and seventy hours.”

  Sixty hours. And it would take a minimum of twenty-five of those to get back to Pegasus… “All right, Doctor, we’ll see what we can do. Amity out.”

  He tapped the disconnect key, and the static abruptly shut off. It made the silence in the bridge that much more noticeable. Turning carefully—the twelve-gee run had left aches in every muscle—he looked at Marlowe. “You heard all that,” he said. “You and Stolt get your heads together and find out how much more the hull can take.”

  “We’ve already done that, Captain,” Marlowe said. The light-intensity curve on Roman’s repeater display disappeared and was replaced by a second curve and a column of numbers. “Commander Stolt estimates the drive nozzles could handle another fifteen hours or so without damage,” Marlowe continued, indicating the appropriate part of the curve with his mousepen. “Unfortunately, we can’t go from here to Shadrach’s shadow in that position—the maneuvering jets don’t generate enough thrust.”