Warhorse (28 page)

“Shouldn't matter, as long as both sets are forced into telekene range,” Kennedy reminded him.

“And as long as Man o' War can hold onto them,” Marlowe muttered.

Roman nodded grimly. As matters stood right now, Man o' War and Quentin were acting as optical nets for each other. Only if the space horses could grab the vultures and hold them off to the side while they themselves got out of each other's way—

“Nets separating!” Marlowe barked suddenly. “Quentin's vultures are moving back toward the lander.”

“Damn,” Roman swore under his breath, keying the tactical for scale. Moving in toward Quentin and the lander…and staying just out of Man o' War's telekene range. “Ferrol! Can Quentin telekene them yet?”

A pause—“Not a chance,” Ferrol said tightly. “Wwis-khaa says Quentin's range is only about four kilometers.”

“Captain, the shark's accelerating,” Yamoto cut in. “And it's launching more vultures.”

“They're coming in fast,” Marlowe added. “ETA about two minutes.”

“The shark seems to have caught on to what we're trying,” Roman told Ferrol. “Give Quentin a kick in the rear—you've got to get that net cleared out before the next wave gets here.”

“We won't make it.” Ferrol's voice was under icy control. “Quentin's just not fast enough. You'll have to go without us.”

“Rro-maa, Manawanninni is holding the vultures,” Rrin-saa's voice came from the intercom.

And the Jump window was open. For the next ninety seconds.

“Captain?” Yamoto prompted.

Roman hissed between his teeth. “Secure from Jump,” he ordered. “Stand by for balanced thrust from main drive toward the shark. Laser crew, lock onto the shark— aim for one of the forward sensory clusters. Missile crew—”

“Captain, what the hell do you think you're doing?” Ferrol snarled. “You've got your window—get going.”

“We're not leaving you here alone,” Roman told him flatly. “Missile crew, shift your aim aft to—”

“Don't be a damn fool,” Ferrol cut him off. “Sir. You can't beat the shark, and you know it. Get back to the Cordonale and bring back a warship or something useful.”

Roman glared at the tactical display. The hell of it was, Ferrol had a damn good point—if
Amity
didn't get back, neither the Tampies nor the Cordonale might ever find out about this threat until it was too late to do anything about it. But to deliberately abandon his own crewers—“Sorry, Ferrol, but we're not taking applications for martyr today,” he said. “The shark isn't going to get either of us.”

“The shark doesn't give a damn about
us
,” Ferrol shot back. “It's the space horses it wants. We cut Quentin loose and let it run, and we'll be perfectly safe.”

“Maybe. But maybe not; and we can't take the chance.” An insert appeared in Roman's tactical display: a close-up of the shark, with the aft laser's tracking circle searching for a sensory ring. Searching with some difficulty; the approaching cloud of vultures obscured much of the view. “Most of the elements a space horse needs are present in that lander and its equipment,” he reminded Ferrol. “In different compounds and alloys, but the shark may not care.” The cloud of vultures between the
Amity
and its pursuer wasn't clearing—if anything, it was getting thicker. How many of the damn things, Roman wondered uneasily, had the shark
sent
? “Regardless, the subject is closed. Turn Quentin around and start hauling gees away from here while we slow down the shark a little.”

For a long second he thought Ferrol was going to argue. But— “Yes, sir,” the other gritted out. “Wwis-khaa, you heard the captain.”

“Main drive ready,” Yamoto announced. “Laser crew reports difficulty in aiming through the vultures.”

“Acknowledged,” Roman said. “All crewers; stand by.” The alert warning warbled, and for a brief moment Roman's mind flashed back to the
Dryden.
A genuine fighting ship, the
Dryden
, with genuine weapons and a trained crew to handle them.

The moment passed. He was on the
Amity
, with jury-rigged weapons and an unskilled crew, facing an enemy the Starforce's planners had never dreamed of.

All they could do was their best.

The shark had closed to fifty-five kilometers now, its vulture escort some ten kilometers closer. Ferrol's records had shown the predator had grabbed Quentin from almost forty-five kilometers away…

He took a deep breath. This was it. “Drive and laser:
fire
.”

The fusion drive roared to life, jamming Roman deeper into his seat as Man o' War's acceleration was briefly doubled. Almost instantly the lighter hiss of the forward maneuvering jets joined in, their thrust fighting against that of the drive, and a second later the extra acceleration was gone. Roman stole a glance at the helm display. The rein line tension registered zero:
Amity
's drive was now matching Man o' War's own acceleration. “Yamoto? Lander's acceleration?”

“Two point six gees,” she called back.

“Hhom-jee, bring Man o' War up to 2.2 gees,” he ordered into the intercom. “Yamoto, get ready to match it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Another brief moment of adjustment, and Roman could give his attention back to the tactical display. The shark was almost to the forty-kilometer mark and still closing. “Laser crew: report.”

“We can't get through!” Even muffled by the engine roar, the young crewer's voice sounded on the edge of frantic. “The vultures won't get out of the way—they're blocking the laser.”

“Steady,” Roman snapped, a cold feeling settling into his stomach. So the shark had learned something from its encounter with the lander, after all. Briefly, he wondered if it had learned too much. “Focus your shots on individual vultures,” he ordered. “See if you can kill or disable them. Missile crew: launch.”

The edge of the rear camera view went black as the sunscreens edited out the flare of the net missile's drive tube. Roman shifted his attention back and forth between the visual and tactical displays; and a handful of heartbeats later, the missile cracked open into a silent explosion of silvery space horse webbing. The flood swung up and over the nearest group of vultures… “Tenzing, it's not working.”

“Give it another second, Captain,” the other's voice came tensely. “—
There
!”

And, abruptly, the explosion reversed itself, Tenzing's framework of artificial Alphan memory muscle closing the net in on the vultures like a giant fist. Another burst from the missile's drive knocked the bunched vultures to the side—

“Laser crew!—you've got your opening!” Roman barked. Even as he spoke, a faint line of ionized hydrogen flickered on the visual, targeting the shark's side. The predator seemed to twitch—

And a second later the beam was again blocked as a second swarm of vultures came up from below to fill the gap.

“Damn,” Marlowe snarled. “Laser's blocked again.”

“What did we hit?” Roman asked him.

“Looked like the beam caught the edge of a sensory cluster,” the other said. “But it didn't stay there long enough to do any real damage.”

“Still, we're clearly on the right track,” Roman pointed out. “It wouldn't have reacted so strongly to what wasn't much better than a near miss unless we'd genuinely hurt it. Missile crew—status?”

“Second missile's almost ready to go, Captain.” The crewer must have been facing away from the mike; Roman could hardly hear him over the drive. “As soon as we set the launch timer—”

And without warning Roman was thrown against his restraint straps as
Amity
suddenly was yanked backward.

“Yamoto!—full thrust,” Roman shouted. The order was pure reflex; already the roar of the drive was changing pitch as Yamoto kicked out all the stops. For a second the ship seemed to teeter on the verge of breaking free…and then, slowly, the pressure on the rein lines increased, and the inertial indicators began to show backwards movement.

They were caught. Caught, and being reeled in.

A
DOZEN FRANTIC VOICE
s shouted for Roman's attention. He ignored them all, eyes flicking across displays for information, mind furiously sifting possibilities. The shark was only thirty-two kilometers away—apparently it had opted not to risk grabbing them until they were well within its telekene range—and closing fast. The drive was at full power, and even though it wasn't strong enough to pull them away, all the extra heat and radiation had to be doing
something
to the vulture cloud. The question was whether it would do enough, and do it before the shark got close enough to rip the ship apart.

And if it didn't…

“Missile crew: I want a fast reprogramming,” he ordered, shouting over the roar of the drive. “Shut down the proximity fusing and send the missile ahead, toward the lander's vultures. Ferrol, you copying?—you're to let the missile pass you and then use a standard 460 codex radio signal to trigger it when it's in position.”

Ferrol's voice was almost inaudible over the noise. “Captain, we can't just leave you—”

“Shut up, Ferrol, that's an order. Laser crew: concentrate on the vultures that are in the most direct line with the drive emissions—maybe we can blast a hole there and get through to the shark.”

“Captain, Man o' War's panicking,” Yamoto shouted back at him. “Hhom-jee's having trouble holding contact.”

Roman clenched his teeth, Ferrol's suggestion about cutting Quentin loose flashing through his mind. Was the shark really interested in
Amity
itself, or had it simply grabbed the ship because it recognized that
Amity
and Man o' War were linked together? “Hhom-jee, is Man o' War itself being held?” he called into his intercom.

The roar of the drive was his only answer. “Hhom-jee?—
answer
me!”

“He cannot reply,” came another Tampy voice. “His full speaking must be with Manawanninni.”

Roman swore under his breath. “Yamoto, what's the strain on the tether lines?”

“Approaching critical,” she told him. “We hold this level much longer and they'll snap.”

So the shark was indeed only holding
Amity
itself. Recognizing, perhaps, that taking the ship gained it the space horse, too?

But if the tether lines were cut, forcing the predator to choose between them…

A set of numbers on the tactical screen abruptly turned red. The
Amity
's internal stress indicators, starting to go crazy—“Stolt?”

“Laser still useless,” the other reported. “Drive's making a hash of the vultures, the shark's moved just enough off centerline that those vultures aren't the ones directly between us any more.”

Demonstrating once again the creature's ability to learn. It had recognized
Amity
as being the more dangerous of its two targets and was exerting all its force in the ship's direction.

Apparently ignoring Man o' War entirely…

“What about structural integrity?” Roman asked, his eyes flicking again to the red stress numbers.

“Getting some stretching,” Stolt said tightly. “Both linear and transverse—like tidal effects, only stronger. Probably the shark trying to pull us apart.”

And given the fight
Amity
was putting up, the shark could reasonably be expected to put as much effort into the job as it could spare. “Estimated time to damage?”

“At this strength, we'll start popping seams in maybe thirty minutes,” Stolt said. “But the strain will probably go up as the shark gets closer.”

Roman nodded grimly, indecision tearing at him. If Tenzing was right about the shark being a low-stamina sprinter, then it might still be possible to hold to the current status quo and try to wear the predator out.

But if Tenzing was wrong, any delay might well forfeit them their only other chance to get away.

It was a gamble they had to take. “Laser crew, cease firing,” he ordered. “Charge all pulse capacitors and stand by. Yamoto, ease up on the drive, just a little. Rrin-saa, I need to get a message in to Hhom-jee—can that be done?”

“He can hear you, Rro-maa,” the Tampy's voice came faintly.

“Good. Hhom-jee, when I give you the word, I want you to have Man o' War reach back and telekene away as many of the vultures between us and the shark that it can.”

“Your wishes are ours,” Rrin-saa replied.

“Yeah,” Roman muttered under his breath. “Yamoto? Range?”

“To the shark, twenty-four kilometers, Captain,” she said promptly. “The leading edge of vulture cloud is just over eighteen.”

At least two kilometers inside Man o' War's telekene range; maybe more. “Laser crew, stand by,” he ordered, shifting his attention to the internal stress indicators. They would have exactly one shot at this. A little closer; just a little closer…

“Captain, tether stress is redlining,” Yamoto said abruptly. “Another minute and we're going to lose Man o' War.”

Roman's hands curled into fists. This was it. “Hhom-jee:
now
.”

For a single, awful second he thought the gamble had failed. And then, as if by magic, a circle of black suddenly appeared in the hazy white cloud of vultures and rocks behind them. The hole spread outward like the negative of an explosion—

And behind it, clearly visible in the reflected light of the drive emissions, was the shark.

“Laser:
fire
!” Roman snapped. The faint line lanced out—

And without any warning at all Roman was slammed hard back into his chair.

There was no time to shout warnings or orders; but Yamoto was ready. A split-instant of weightlessness as she cut the drive was followed by a second back-wrenching slam of high acceleration as Man o' War took up the slack in the rein lines and leaped forward.