Warhorse (6 page)

The man who'd brought with him a personal file and psych profile that practically simmered with Tampy-hatred.

It was, unfortunately, the kind of politically-twisted logic that Roman should have expected. The Senate's anti-Tampy faction would have demanded that Roman's own pro-Tampy inclinations be balanced by an opposite bias in
Amity
's executive officer, and it was clear from Kennedy's own comments that such a demand had indeed been made and yielded to. Still, for the past few days he'd dared to hope that they might have given up that concession at the last minute; that the continuing border troubles would have convinced them that they could safely give
Amity
a fair trial without the need to stack the deck. Clearly, they hadn't been interested in taking that chance.

And coming at the last minute like this, there wasn't a lot Roman could do about it. Keying the man's file onto his display, he scanned it one last time to refresh his memory, then touched the intercom switch. “Is the exec there yet?” he asked the yeoman manning the outer desk.

“Yes, sir.”

Mentally, Roman braced himself. “Send him in.”

The door slid open and a young man stepped through, moving with somewhat less certainty and grace than had Erin Kennedy before him. Less experience with ships in low-rotation mode, Roman noted automatically, filing the datum away for possible future reference. “Welcome aboard, Commander,” he said. “I'm Captain Haml Roman.”

“Lieutenant Commander Chayne Ferrol,” the other identified himself, his voice formal, stiff, and cool. “I'm looking forward to serving with you, Captain.”

Ferrol had argued long and hard with the Senator and his friends about this assignment—had brought up a hundred reasons why it wouldn't work, a hundred more why he didn't want to serve under the man who'd come within a hair of nailing him and the
Scapa Flow
three months earlier. They'd assured him there would be no problem, convinced him he was the only man for the job…but now, standing there under Roman's unblinking gaze, Ferrol wished he hadn't given in. Those eyes were far too intelligent, far too discerning, and for that first awful moment Ferrol was sure the captain somehow knew exactly who he was. He braced himself for the accusation as Roman opened his mouth— “We're looking forward to having you aboard, Commander,” the other said.

The tightness in Ferrol's chest eased, and he began to breathe again.
So much for paranoia
, he thought, annoyed with himself for jumping so easily to conclusions. “Thank you, Captain,” he said. “My apologies for arriving at the last minute like this.”

Roman waved the apology aside. “I imagine the fault lies with those who sent you.” His eyes dipped to his desk display. “You'll forgive me if I say that at twenty-four you're a bit young for your rank.”

“The commission is honorary,” Ferrol said. That was technically supposed to be a secret, but Roman could hardly have failed to figure it out. “I have, however, had six full years in the merchant fleet, two of them as captain of a small ship of my own. I think you'll find me fully capable of serving as
Amity
's executive officer.”

“Oh, I'm sure you are,” Roman said mildly. “It's just that your file is oddly vague on these details, and I wanted to get some of them cleared up. The size of your former command, for instance.”

“It was a small interstellar tug with a crew of fifteen,” Ferrol told him.

Roman nodded. “I know the type. Close-knit crew, everyone friends, captain basically God—and everyone likes it or quits at the next port. There are a lot of people who think that's the ideal starship size.”

His voice was casual, almost bantering…but his eyes were anything but. “It would probably save time, Captain,” Ferrol said evenly, “if you'd just go ahead and ask me why I'm here.”

Roman cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, I know why you're here, Commander. What I want to ask is why you hate the Tampies so much.”

Even eight years later, the memory of it was still a hot needle beneath his skin. “You have my file there,” Ferrol said, forcing his voice to remain calm. “You should be able to figure it out.”

Roman studied him. “I gather you're referring to the Prometheus treaty.”

“Treaty?” Ferrol snorted. “That was hardly a treaty, Captain. It was an act of war.” He nodded curtly at Roman's desk display. “Read the official papers sometime, Captain, if you can manage to dig them out of the Starforce's snowpile. Read the fairy tale about how the Tampies decided one day that
they
wanted Prometheus—never mind that we'd just spent three years working damned hard to build a colony there. Read how the Senate meekly agreed and sent the
Defiance
to forcibly take us off.” His voice was starting to shake, and he took a careful breath to calm it. “I doubt you'll be able to read that having their life's goal kicked out from under them was what ruined my parents' health and killed them two years later. Official papers don't usually bother with trivialities like that.”

“I'm sorry,” Roman said.

Even through the blur of emotion Ferrol could tell the other meant it. “I'm not after sympathy, Captain,” he growled. “And before you get the wrong idea, I'm not after revenge, either. What I want is for the Cordonale to understand the Tampies the way I do.”

“And that is…?”

Ferrol locked eyes with him. “There're two small facts that the official version conveniently leaves out. First, that it wasn't the
Defiance
's crewers who forced us out of our homes and off our world. It was a Tampy task force. A very efficient, very cold, very
military
task force. And second…that they forced us out a full
four days
before the date that's on the treaty.”

For a moment Roman was silent. “You're saying,” he said at last, “that the Tampies jumped the gun?”

“I'm saying,” Ferrol corrected grimly, “that they took unilateral action against us…and that the Senate backed off and let them get away with it.”

Roman rubbed his thumb and forefinger together gently. “Is it possible you could have been mistaken as to the timing involved? After all, you were fairly young at the—”

“I was almost sixteen,” Ferrol cut him off. “Quite old enough to know the months and days of the week, thank you—
and
to know how to translate local dates into Earth Standard ones.” He glared at the other. “There's no mistake, Captain. The public image the Tampies portray of themselves as peace-loving, passive friends of nature is a lie. I know it, the Senate knows it…and the rest of the Cordonale deserves to know it, too.”

“And how far do you intend to go to prove it?” Roman asked bluntly.

Ferrol took a deep breath, dragging his anger back under control. “You mistake my intentions, sir,” he said evenly. “I'm not here to goad the Tampies into showing their true character. I won't have to—being locked up in close proximity to a shipful of humans for three months ought to do it for me.” He locked eyes with the captain. “I'm here only to make sure that that evidence doesn't somehow get itself snowbound.”

“I see,” Roman nodded. If he was offended by the implied slur on his integrity, he made no sign of it. “Then there's just one more question I have to ask: given your feelings about the Tampies, are you certain you're willing to trust your life to them?”

Ferrol frowned. “In what way would I be doing
that
?”

Roman frowned in turn. “You didn't know? The
Amity
's a modified in-system freighter, without a Mitsuushi StarDrive. All interstellar travel will be via the space horse…and the systems we'll be going to are all well beyond normal Mitsuushi range.”

Something cold settled into the pit of Ferrol's stomach. “I wasn't told that, no,” he murmured. All travel via their tame space horse…and only the Tampies able to control or communicate with the giant creature. “That seems…a bit foolhardy, sir,” he managed.

“Perhaps.” Roman was giving him an all too understanding look. “Under the circumstances, if you'd like to resign the post, I'll certainly understand.”

Ferrol glared back, a flash of anger burning away the fear. That grandfatherly expression, reducing him to a child again—“Thank you, sir, but I'll be staying.”

Roman seemed to measure him with his eyes, then nodded. “Very well, Commander,” he said gravely. “Welcome aboard the
Amity.
We leave at 0800 tomorrow; I'll want you on the bridge two hours before that.”

“Understood, Captain.”

“I'll see you then. Dismissed.”

It was a long walk from the captain's office aft to the officers' section, a walk made all the more difficult by the subtly shifting weight and Coriolis effects Ferrol had to contend with. It was a standard enough procedure, certainly: altering a ship's rotational speed was a quick way to simultaneously test the spin jets, flywheel, and structural integrity. But he wasn't in the mood to be lenient with standard procedures. Even ones that worked.

In politics, lying was apparently one of the standard procedures. It often worked, too.

They'd lied to him. Deliberately. A lie of omission, but a lie nonetheless—and what really killed him was that part of the blame had to sit squarely on his own neck. Not once had it even occurred to him to ask whether the
Amity
would have a Mitsuushi backup.

Damn them.

He reached his cabin and went in, privacy-sealing the door behind him and flopping down on the bed. Beneath him, the cabin's tiny port showed a dizzying panorama as the stars swept past in time to
Amity's
rotation; but it was to the side bulkhead that he found his attention drawn. A normal, everyday bulkhead…except that, by an accident of room assignments, Ferrol's cabin was at the edge of the human half of the ship.

Beyond that wall—six centimeters of metal and soundproofing away—was the Tampy section.

Tampies. Misshapen faces, stupid-looking tartan neckerchiefs, infuriatingly whining voices, strange and vaguely nauseating odors. Bio-engineered “technology” which just barely deserved the name. High-minded ideals, noble-sounding words…and quietly ruthless actions. Memories flooded back, sharp and clear, and for a teetering moment the fears of Prometheus loomed over him like thunderclouds.

But this wasn't Prometheus…and he was no longer a helpless sixteen-year-old.

No longer helpless at all.

Rolling over, he reached down and pulled open the closest of the underbed storage drawers, withdrawing a thin black box from beneath a pile of shirts. He wouldn't have put it past Roman to have had his luggage examined…but, no, the indicator built into the lock showed it hadn't been touched. He tapped in the proper code, heard the gentle
snick
of the lock, and lifted the lid.

He pulled out the compact needle pistol first, making sure it pointed away from him as he laid it arm's length away on the bed. The spare clip came out next, along with the special permit for him to carry the gun. Beneath the hardware was the false bottom; and beneath that was the envelope.

The gun was a conversation piece. The envelope was his weapon.

There was a single line of instructions on the front of the envelope, written in the Senator's small and geometrically precise script:
To be used when deemed necessary.
Ferrol gazed at the words, letting the Senator's calm strength and infinite confidence flow from the handwriting into him. No, this wasn't Prometheus and helplessness. This was the
Amity…
and the chance to turn the Tampies' quiet undeclared war right back on them.

If he was lucky. Somehow, Ferrol thought he would be.

For a long minute after Ferrol left, Roman sat quietly in his chair, gazing at the door and listening to the sound of his heart pounding in his chest. He'd expected anti-Tampy from the other, of course—virulent anti-Tampy, even.

He hadn't expected absolute ice-packed hatred.

Even now, with Ferrol gone from his sight, the memory of the emotional turmoil he'd sensed in the younger man made him wince. Ferrol's pain and anger were as fresh as if he'd been thrown off Prometheus only yesterday, the emotions kept alive for eight years by the certain knowledge that the Senate had lied through its collective teeth about what had happened to the colony.

About that, at least, he was right. Roman
had
seen the official documents.

He dropped his gaze to the intercom, feeling temptation tugging at him. A single touch of a button—a short, probably very painful, conversation—and Ferrol would be gone. The Antis' time bomb gone from his ship, the faction itself absolutely furious at him—

And their revenge would be to scuttle
Amity.
And with it perhaps mankind's last chance to stay out of war with the Tampies.

Roman closed his eyes tiredly. No, it was too risky. For now, at least, the only prudent course would be to play along with Ferrol. Give him all the leeway he wanted…and hope that whenever he made his move—whatever that move was—that there would be a chance to block him.

And until that happened, Roman still had a ship to run. Putting Ferrol out of his mind as best he could, he keyed his display to the status report menu and got back to work.

And tried not to notice how remarkably similar his wait-and-see plan was to the pro-Tampy Senators' own method of dealing with the problem.

A
T PRECISELY 0812 THE
next morning, the
Amity
cast off its moorings on the Tampy corral. Trailing a kilometer behind their space horse, Pegasus, on deceptively thin tether lines, the ship headed out into deep space.

Roman had already known that the view from outside a space horse ship was impressive. What he hadn't expected was that the ride was even more so.

It was quieter, obviously; but the reality of it far outstripped the expectation. Over the years Roman had grown accustomed to the many levels of noise a ship's fusion drive was capable of putting out, from the dull but still permeating drone of standby to the steady thunder of full acceleration. It was a sound that never ceased as long as the ship was under power, and to be pulling a steady 0.6-gee acceleration without even a whisper of that familiar noise was awe-inspiring and just a little scary.