Warhorse (3 page)

Trent snorted. “Fat chance. Sir.”

Roman eyed him. “You don't think humans and Tampies can learn to work together aboard the same ship, Commander?”

“I don't think it'll ever come to that, sir,” Trent said bluntly. “In my opinion,
Amity
's nothing but a smoke screen the Tampies and pro-Tampy senators dreamed up to try and look like they're doing something about the shared-worlds problem. The Starforce's never going to finish fitting out the ship; and even if they do, odds are the crew will be so badly biased that the results of the test voyage will be completely fraudulent.”

“And if neither happens…?”

Trent looked him square in the eye. “
Then
, sir…no, I don't believe humans and Tampies can work together. Not without killing each other.”

Roman grimaced. “You leave the Cordonale very few options.”

“Appeasement, or war,” Trent agreed quietly. “And even a Senate as spineless as this one won't appease them forever.”

Roman looked at the display, at the place where the space horse had been a minute ago, wishing he could argue with any of Trent's assessment. But he couldn't. And even if he could, it was clear the other's mind was already made up.

As were many other minds across the Cordonale.

“Just be sure to keep an open mind, Commander,” he warned the other. Even to his own ears the words sounded lame. “You never know when an alternative may present itself. Until then…we have a mission to carry out. Let's go track us down a poacher.”

“T
HIS,” STEFAIN REESE GROWLED
to no one in particular, “is starting to get ridiculous.”

A wave of tired irritation rippled through the general boredom that had settled in around the
Scapa Flow
's bridge crew. From his command chair Chayne Ferrol watched his men glare at Reese or pointedly ignore him, according to individual preference, and stifled a curse of his own. Like everyone else, he was roundly sick of Reese; unfortunately, political necessity dictated that
someone
remain on speaking terms with the man. “ ‘Haven't caught anything in five hours?' Ë® he quoted the old fisherman's joke. “ ‘Don't worry—
I
haven't caught anything in
eight
hours.' Ë®

The attempt at humor was wasted. “Save it, Ferrol,” Reese snorted. “I've heard that tired old joke at least five times in the last twenty-two days, and it wasn't funny the first time.”

With an effort Ferrol hung on to his temper. “Mr. Reese, we made it very clear to you at the outset what it was you were letting yourself in for. Even a
yishyar
system doesn't play host to more than a few space horses at a time, and there are four hundred billion cubic kilometers of asteroid belt out there for them to feed in. You can't expect one to Jump right in on top of us the first day here.”

“And yet we've had at least fifteen of them Jump in close enough to register on the anomalous-motion program,” Reese countered. “You didn't go after any of
them
, either.”

At the helm, Malraux Demarco stirred. “There's a hell of a lot of difference between picking up a target blip and sneaking up on it,” he bit out. “None of
us
is exactly crazy about floating around out here watching the rocks go by, either. Try not to forget that you
asked
to come along.”

“Yes, well it wasn't exactly my idea,” Reese shot back. “The Senator wanted me to come and observe—”

The slap of Ferrol's hand on his armrest echoed briefly through the bridge, cutting off the growing argument in mid-sentence. “What?” Reese demanded, throwing a defiant glare in Ferrol's direction.

For a long minute Ferrol just stared at the other, watching as the angry defiance faded into discomfort and then into the first twitchings of genuine fear. “You are not,” he said at last, the words quiet but icy cold, “to mention the Senator in connection with this ship, its crew, or its mission. Not here, not anywhere else. Ever. Do you understand?”

Reese swallowed visibly. “Yes,” he said.

Ferrol let the silence hang in the air a moment longer before turning back to Demarco. “Did we ever get anything more on that blip Randall picked up and then lost?”

Demarco shook his head. “The computer's equipment check came up negative,” he said. “It may have been a space horse that Jumped in for a snack and immediately left.” He paused. “Or it may have been another ship.”

Ferrol nodded. The latter was his own gut-level conclusion. “You think they spotted us?”

Demarco shrugged. “Two and a half hours should have been plenty of time for them to have recalculated their position, looped around on Mitsuushi and come roaring in on us,” he pointed out. “Given that they haven't, I expect it was just another poacher who spotted us and got nervous.”

“Or else an unusually patient Starforce captain who wants to catch us with our hands on the goodies,” Ferrol said. “We'll have to keep our eyes open.”

“That's all you're going to do?” Reese asked.

Ferrol looked over at him. “What do you suggest, Mr. Reese?” he asked mildly. “That we turn tail and run home empty-handed—and without even knowing what it was we ran
from
?”

Reese clenched his teeth. “I was suggesting you might want to take some practical precautions,” he gritted. “Like putting some shielding over the Mitsuushi ring, for instance.”

“We have any Mitsuushi shielding, Mal?” Ferrol asked Demarco.

“That'll block a warship's ion beams? Not hardly.”

Ferrol looked back at Reese. “Any other suggestions?”

From the expression on Reese's face the suggestion he was toying with would have been a ripe one. But even as he took the necessary breath to make it—

“Anomalous motion, Chayne!” Demarco snapped. “It's—God, it's practically on top of us. Bearing twenty-three mark six, fifteen mark two; range, fifty-six kilometers.”

“A warship?” Reese demanded, his voice half an octave higher than normal.

Demarco threw him a look that was pure strained patience. “No. A space horse.”

“If a rather puny one,” Ferrol added, studying his own readouts. It
was
small, come to think of it. In fact, unless the computer had completely scrooned up the distance calculation—

And abruptly, a shiver ran up his back. “That's a
calf
, Mal.”

Demarco peered at the display. “I'll be damned.”

Ferrol licked his upper lip, his heart beginning to thud in his ears as he keyed the general intercom. A space horse calf. Young, impressionable…and maybe, just maybe, trainable. “Captain to crew: we've got a target. Starting our approach now.” He paused. “Look
real
sharp, gentlemen. I want this one.”

At the helm Demarco teased the drive into operation, and Ferrol felt Reese's eyes on him. “If you have something to say, Reese, say it and then shut up.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other gesture toward the cylindrical creature now centered on the main display. “You hoping a calf won't have the same fear of human beings that adult space horses do?” he asked.

So the man had operational brain cells, after all. “That's the way it works with other animals,” he said shortly. “It's called imprinting.”

“If the calf is young enough,” Reese agreed cautiously. “Whatever ‘young enough' means in this case.”

“You want a debate, go back to the Senate,” Ferrol told him absently. “Right now, we have more important things to do.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, Mal; let's go.”

They approached at a fraction of their usual stalking speed, with the result that it took them nearly an hour to drift into netting range. Excessive and unnecessary caution, perhaps—at no time did the calf show any signs at all of nervousness, much less panic—but they had the time to spare and there was no percentage here in taking chances. Besides which, there was no way to know whether a calf on the verge of spooking would exhibit the same signs of distress that an adult space horse would.

“Net guns ready,” Demarco announced. “Range to target…1.4 kilometers. Plates at full charge.”

Ferrol consciously relaxed his jaw muscles. This was it. “Stand by, primary gun. Ready…fire.”

Beneath him, the
Scapa Flow
bucked once as, on the tactical display, the missile shape of the coiled net appeared, dead on target for the calf, its tether lines snaking along behind it. Ferrol held his breath, his eyes on the calf.
Just a few more seconds
, he mentally urged it.
Stay put just a few more seconds.
On the screen the missile shape was disintegrating, unwrapping into an almost insubstantially thin mesh as it neared the calf.
Just a few more seconds
…

And, too late, the calf noticed the object hurling toward it. The missile—or what was left of it—jerked as it was telekened to a halt…but the strands of the mesh were far too thin for the creature to get an adequate grip on. An instant later the net hit, wrapping itself solidly around the calf—

“Stun it!” Ferrol snapped.

The
Scapa Flow
bucked again, far more violently this time, as the netted calf tried to pull away from its captor; but even as Ferrol was slammed back into his seat cushions he heard the muffled
crack
! of the
Scapa Flow
's huge capacitors. On the screen, the net flared briefly with coronal discharge…and the calf stopped moving.

Across the bridge, Reese swore reverently under his breath. “You did it. You really
did
it.”

Ferrol wiped a hand across his mouth. “Assuming we haven't killed it, yes. Mal?”

Demarco spread his hands. “Who can tell with a space horse? Nothing obviously wrong with it, though.”

“Good.”

A flashing light caught Ferrol's attention: the
Scapa Flow
's middle hull, now highly positively charged from the capacitors' discharge, was threatening to arc to the outer hull. “Shorting to outer hull,” Demarco announced, reaching for the proper switch.

“Hold it a minute,” Ferrol ordered, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling with unpleasant premonition. Shorting the middle and outer hulls together would leave the outer hull positively charged until it collected enough solar wind electrons to neutralize the imbalance…leaving the Mitsuushi inoperable until the process was complete. “Give me a full scan of the immediate area first,” he told Demarco. “Look for indications that the ship we tagged earlier might be skulking around out there.”

Demarco gave a curt nod and busied himself at the scanners. Ferrol waited, trying to ignore the flashing arc-danger warning, and after a minute Demarco straightened up. “Looks clear,” he reported. “Of course, he could be hanging way back somewhere with a Mitsuushi intercept loop already programmed in.”

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.