Warhorse (30 page)

Ferrol frowned. “What, you mean fore-and-aft?”

“Exactly. We'll send another, longer rein line out to you, cut the one that's tethering you to Man o' War at the moment, and have Quentin slide into line directly
behind
us.”

Ferrol looked sharply at Kennedy, got a similarly sharp look in response. “Captain, even with Quentin in front to shield us,
Amity
's drive hasn't had nearly enough time to cool down.”

“No, of course not,” Roman agreed. “Once the rein line's in place and we've got it rigged to an amplifier helmet in here, you'll cut loose from Quentin and bring the lander in. If we can get Quentin right in line with Man o' War, we may just be able to fool the vultures into thinking there's only one—”

“Captain!” Marlowe's voice interrupted. “Shark's on the move again. Heading toward us on an intercept course at—good God, it's pulling almost eight gees.”

Kennedy swore quietly, her fingers skating over her console. “Must have finally figured out what we're doing,” she said grimly. “ETA…Captain, there's not going to be nearly enough time to send the web boats out again.”

Ferrol looked at the tactical, did a quick calculation of his own. She was right…and it left them with exactly one option. “We'll have to swing back in line with you from here,” he told Roman. “Squeeze ourselves and Quentin in between Man o' War and
Amity
.”

“It won't work,” Roman said, with a promptness that showed he'd already anticipated that suggestion. “The way your line is tethered, you'd wind up bringing Quentin another twenty meters or so closer to Man o' War. You'll never push the calf in that close.”

“We won't have to,” Ferrol said, his eyes tracing the lines on the tethering schematic. The angles, and fulcrum points… “All we need is for you to give Man o' War a kick forward. That should make us fall back to the end of the tether and swing right into position.”

“Only if Quentin doesn't panic,” Roman said.

“Have we got another choice?” Ferrol countered.

“Not really,” the other agreed tightly. “Rrin-saa?—you heard. Tell Bbri-hwoo to give Man o' War a nudge.”

For a moment, nothing. Then, as Ferrol stared at Man o' War's bulk, he saw it begin to move. “Here we go,” he murmured.

“Tether line tightening,” Kennedy reported. “Man o' War's staring to pull away and ahead.”

A slight tremor went through the lander, and Ferrol braced himself. But Quentin didn't bolt; and a minute later the calf and lander had swung neatly into place inside the kilometer-long gap between Man o' War and
Amity.

Ferrol let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. “
Amity
? We're blocked back here—what's happening with the vultures?”

“Holding position ahead,” Roman told him. “But they seem to be in a fairly amorphous mass, and not as clearly in two groups as they were before. We may have finally done it.”

“We'll find out soon enough,” Ferrol said. “Okay, Ppla-zii: give Quentin a small rotation.”

There was no reply. “Ppla-zii?” Ferrol said, twisting around. “—Oh,
hell
.”

“What?” Roman snapped.

“I'm not sure,” Ferrol growled. “But—Demothi, take a look.”

Demothi was already leaning forward to peer at the Tampy's face. “No doubt,” he said, his voice trembling noticeably. “It's
perasiata
—a sort of deep sleep or coma state.”

“Yeah, we know what
perasiata
is,” Ferrol gritted. And if the Handler had it, then Quentin was almost certainly out of commission, too. And if Quentin was gone—

Roman had apparently followed the same line of reasoning. “Rrin-saa,” he called. “Rrin-saa! What's happening down there? Is Man o' War still conscious?”

“No.” Rrin-saa's voice was quiet, almost calm. “It is the end. The cycle of life closes—”

“We're not giving up yet,” Roman cut him off harshly. “Marlowe, give Man o' War a shot from the comm laser—see if that'll jolt it back to consciousness.”

“Waste of time,” Demothi murmured, more to himself than to anyone else.

“So give us an alternative,” Ferrol told him. “You're the expert on Tampies here—how do they snap someone out of
perasiata
?”

“They don't,” Demothi said bitterly. “They just sit back and let nature take its course.”

Ferrol snorted. Of course. What else would Tampies do?

“In this case nature being a predator bearing down on us at eight gees,” Kennedy put in. “What about an electric shock, transmitted along the rein lines? Any chance that could do it?”

Ferrol shook his head. “I doubt it. A massive enough shock can knock them out, but anything less than that doesn't seem to have any effect at all.”

Kennedy tapped a fingernail gently against her teeth. “Maybe a physical jolt, then,” she suggested. “Ramming the lander into Quentin's hide, for instance.”

Ferrol glanced behind him. Barely two hundred meters behind the lander he could see the gleam of
Amity
's nose. “We're a little close for firing the drive, aren't we?”

“Never mind
Amity
's paint job,” Roman said. “Give it a try.”

“Yes, sir.” Kennedy's hands brushed across the panel, flicking on all ten pre-fire switches in what appeared to be a single motion. “Hang on.”

The lander lunged forward, gathered speed…and ten seconds later rammed full into Quentin's smoothly curved end.

The shock threw Ferrol hard against his restraints. “Ppla-zii?” he snapped, twisting his neck to look behind him.

The Tampy's face hadn't changed…and peering intently into that face, Demothi shook his head. “No good. He's still under.”

Ferrol swore and turned back to the tactical display. The shark had stopped accelerating now, and was turning ponderously over for the deceleration phase of its attack. If it decelerated at the same eight gees it had been doing earlier, it would be within telekene range of them in perhaps three minutes.

“Ferrol—look at the vultures,” Kennedy said suddenly.

Ferrol shifted his attention to that part of the display. The lander's impact with Quentin had angled the calf a couple of degrees out of line with Man o' War…

And for the first time since they'd appeared, the vultures had failed to match the motion.

Ferrol hissed frustration between his teeth. It was, perhaps, the ultimate irony: the barrier finally lifting just as the engine died. “Great,” he said. “Hooray for us. Too bad there won't be time to break out the champagne.”

“Knock it off,” Kennedy snarled. “We've got two and a half minutes left to snap them out of it—let's
use
those minutes.”

Ferrol clenched his jaw tightly enough to hurt. She was right…but the seconds ticked by, and no inspiration came.

And the shark was two minutes away. “There's a predator bearing down on us,” Kennedy muttered under her breath, her face tight with concentration. Still not ready to give up. “Self-preservation ought to come into play sometime here.”

“Unless they're like the Tampies,” Ferrol grunted. “Ready to roll over and die whenever—”

He broke off, head jerking around as it suddenly hit him. “That's
it.
They
are
like the Tampies—they're both nonpredator species.”

“I don't see—”

“Demothi!” Ferrol cut her off. “Get that helmet on—
now
.”

“Lander?” Roman's voice came sharply. “What's going on?”

“Maybe a chance to wake Quentin up,” Ferrol shouted over his shoulder. Demothi was fumbling with the helmet—fumbling far too slowly—there; it was off Ppla-zii's head, and he was easing it over his own. “I think that's why Quentin originally spooked and Jumped, Captain—it sensed Demothi as being a predator and tried to get away. If he can spook it again—”

Without warning, the lander lurched violently, slamming Ferrol's teeth down on his tongue. He had just enough time to taste blood—

And suddenly a blue-white star blazed in front of them, a feint luminescent haze outlining Quentin like a halo.

They'd done it.

It took Kennedy and her people an hour to plot their position and figure out a route back to the Cordonale. It took Rrin-saa and his people almost as long to decide what to do with Quentin.

“I don't understand,” Roman said. His eyes flicked past Rrin-saa, to where Sso-ngii and Hhom-jee sat quietly together under the twin amplifier helmets that now were wired into the Handler room. “I thought it was
you
who were so dead-set against abandoning Quentin the first place.”

“We could not leave him to the shark,” the Tampy said. “But the danger is now gone.”

“So why release him?” Roman persisted.

“Because he is damaged,” Rrin-saa said. “Not in body, but in his deeper self.”

“All the more reason to bring it back,” Roman countered. “Surely your people can do something to help.”

“It is not a matter of helping,” Rrin-saa said, and Roman could almost hear a note of sadness in the whiny alien inflections. “It is a matter of betrayed trust.”

Roman frowned. “I'm sorry, but I just don't understand. What happened wasn't your fault.”

“We brought Quentinninni into our service, Rro-maa. We attached him to a ship, spoke deeply into his mind. In exchange for such service, we promised him care and protection. Instead, we exposed him to great danger. Further, we forced him into such trauma that he entered
perasiata
as the only way to endure it.” The Tampy gave a wheezing sigh. “How can we now pretend nothing has happened?”

Roman pursed his lips. “It seems to me that circumstances warrant giving yourselves a second chance.”

“We made a promise,” Rrin-saa said simply.

Roman sighed. The Starforce and Senate weren't going to like this at all…but
Amity
's charter specifically stated the Tampies had final say in any decision concerning space horse health. This was close enough. “All right. There's probably no advantage in sending Quentin off wrapped up in space horse webbing. If you'll allow me another hour, I'll send a boat out to remove the stuff properly.”

“That will be acceptable,” Rrin-saa agreed. “Thank you, Rro-maa.”

An hour later, Roman watched from the bridge as Quentin drove swiftly away into the black of space…and wondered if perhaps the Tampies really were too alien for human beings to ever truly understand.

T
HE HEARINGS CONVENED FORTY-EIGHT
hours later—not in the relative luxury of the Solomon state house this time, but in Earth orbit in the grim starkness of the warship C.S.S.
Defiance.
At Solomon, the Starforce and Senate had been more or less evenly represented; here, such balance was summarily dispensed with. Military men and women dominated the sessions, with the handful of civilians present participating mainly through intent listening.

The Senator, of course, was one of those civilians. As Ferrol had expected he would be.

But for the first three days they had literally no chance to speak privately. Ferrol's days were filled to the brim with debriefings; sometimes alone, other times with Roman or Kennedy or Tenzing sharing the stand with him. Nights were likewise filled, with fatigued sleep punctuated by disturbed dreams of sharks and vultures.

And of Prometheus. It had been this same
Defiance
which had taken him and the other evicted colonists away from their world. More than once, he wondered if choosing this particular ship for the hearings had been someone's twisted idea of a joke.

Awake, he talked; asleep, he dreamed…and at all times he waited with growing impatience for the Senator to finally draw him aside. On the fourth day, the last one scheduled, he got tired of waiting.

“I'm sorry,” Stefain Reese said, his tone a combination of firm and bland, “but the Senator is really
very
busy at the moment.”

“He'll see me,” Ferrol told him, craning his neck to see past the half-closed door into the other part of the office suite. The Senator was there, all right, in deep conversation with another civilian and two military men in heavily decorated dress uniforms. “Tell him who it is.”

The other hesitated just a second, then picked up his phone and murmured into it. Straining, Ferrol could hear the tone of the Senator's speech change— “He says for you to go back to your room, Ferrol, that he'll call you later.”

A quiet alarm bell went off in the back of Ferrol's brain. The scheduled return to
Amity
was barely two hours away. “There isn't going to be any ‘later,' Ë® he told Reese. “Tell the Senator I'll give him one minute to get rid of his guests. After that, I'll go on in and state my business in front of all of them.”

Reese gave him a long, thoughtful look, as if weighing the feasibility of calling Security. Ferrol countered with a stare of his own; and after a moment Reese dropped his eyes and spoke again into the phone. A short pause— “He'll be right with you,” he muttered.

Ferrol nodded and, for no particular reason, began counting off the seconds. Fifty-five of them later, the Senator's visitors got to their feet and, with only casual glances in Ferrol's direction, filed out of the suite.

The Senator remained standing in the inner doorway; and as the last of his guests left, his gaze shifted deliberately to Ferrol. A calm gaze, even and totally devoid of emotion. “Commander,” he nodded in a voice that matched the gaze. “Do come in.”

Silently, Ferrol eased past him into the room. This time, the Senator closed the door all the way. “You interrupted an important meeting,” he told Ferrol, crossing to an ornate metal desk in the corner and seating himself behind it.