Warhorse (40 page)

“Then get the
Scapa Flow
going.” He turned back to Kennedy—

“No, sir.”

Roman looked back. “No?” he asked, very quietly.

Ferrol's eyes flicked to Kennedy as his hand dipped into a pocket and withdrew an envelope. “Captain Roman,” he said, his voice abruptly formal, “pursuant to the Senate carte blanche directive contained in this envelope—” He took a deep breath. “I hereby relieve you of command.”

I
T HAD BEEN A
moment Ferrol had thought about ever since coming aboard the
Amity
; a moment he'd thought about, and worried about, and occasionally dreamed about. A moment that had been part of the background of his mind for over a year now.

A moment that, with all that preparation, surely ought to have been easier.

The bridge was deathly silent, even the occasional clicks and beeps of recording and sensing instruments sounding muted to him. The crewers were silent, too, for the most part frozen in place like so many statues. Ferrol kept the bulk of his attention on Roman, forcing himself to meet the other's eyes as he fought back the strange sense of guilt and shame and waited tautly for the inevitable explosion of disbelief and rage.

The explosion never came. “May I see that?” the captain asked calmly, extending a hand toward Ferrol.

Swallowing hard, Ferrol unstrapped and floated across to the other, planting one foot into a velgrip patch. Roman took the envelope, glanced once at the Senator's handwriting on its face, and opened it. Withdrawing the paper inside, throwing a speculative look at Ferrol as he did so, he began to read.

Ferrol licked his upper lip, his eyes darting around the bridge. This was the critical moment, the moment when the entire thing hung by a thread. If Roman refused to accept the Senate directive—if he refused to relinquish his command—

His darting glance touched Kennedy…and froze there.

He licked his lip again, the knot in his stomach tightening painfully as all of the Senator's veiled warnings about Kennedy flooded back at once. The most dangerous person on the
Amity
, he'd called her…and as Ferrol looked into those eyes—those rock-hard eyes, gazing unblinkingly straight back at him—he had no doubt whatsoever that the Senator had been right.

He took a careful breath, suddenly and acutely aware of the flat bulge of the needle gun pressing into his ribs beneath his tunic.
You'll be able to handle her
, the Senator had assured him; but gazing into those eyes, Ferrol wasn't nearly so sure of that. If she was indeed a trained professional, his only chance would be to make sure he shot first.

From Roman came a faint rustle of paper; with an odd combination of relief and reluctance, Ferrol broke his gaze from Kennedy and looked back at the captain. “I presume,” the other said, almost conversationally, “that you have some explanation for this.” He waved the paper gently.

“I believe the directive is self-explanatory,” Ferrol told him.

“The directive itself is quite clear, yes,” Roman agreed coolly. “I was referring to the reason you've chosen this particular moment to invoke it.”

Ferrol took a deep breath. “I'm not here for a debate, Captain,” he said, fighting against a quaver in his voice. This was hard enough without Roman dragging out the discussion. “The only question you need to consider at the moment is whether you're going to obey that directive. Yes or no.”

Once again he braced himself for an explosion…and once again the explosion didn't come. Roman gazed expressionlessly at him for a long moment; then, with only a touch of hesitation, he keyed his intercom. “All crewers: this is Captain Roman,” he said, his eyes steady on Ferrol. “As of this moment, per a Senate directive…I'm relinquishing command of the
Amity
to Commander Ferrol.”

He keyed off and, releasing his restraints, pulled himself out of the command chair. “Your orders, Captain?” he asked Ferrol.

Ferrol looked down at the empty command chair, fighting back the acrid surge of shame rumbling through his stomach and wishing bitterly that Roman would at least show some resentment over what had just been done to him. To humiliate a captain in front of his crew this way was a horrible thing to do to any man; to do it to someone who accepted the blow uncomplainingly was absolute hell.

But on the other hand, that sense of guilt might be exactly what Roman was going for. Steeling himself, Ferrol pulled off the velgrip patch and eased himself into the command chair. It felt damned awkward; but if there was one thing he'd learned from the Senator, it was that appearances and symbols were important aspects of command. “Marlowe; status report on the sharks,” he said, keying for scanner repeater.

“They're still coming,” the other growled.

“Their ETA to the corral?”

“At current acceleration, and assuming a comparable deceleration phase, about two hours.”

Two hours. For a moment Ferrol studied the tactical display. The three Tampy space horses were still giving ground; but the display now showed two more vectoring in toward the defenders from behind and upslope, and even as he watched a third Jumped into view. The rest of the Tampy empire, clearly alerted to the threat, throwing everything they had left into the Kialinninni system in a desperate effort to defend their corral:

Exposing the rest of their space horses to the attacking sharks…and in the process completing the total destruction of their space-going capabilities.

It was, perhaps, the last irony. For nine straight years now Ferrol had dreamed of playing a part in the Tampies' downfall; had hatched scheme after grandiose scheme designed to drive them from space and to pay them back in full for their cold-blooded theft of his world. And now, after all that planning, they were going to do the job all by themselves. By themselves, with a little help from the cycles of nature they professed such love for.

And all Ferrol had to do, quite literally, was nothing. Exactly nothing. For the next two hours.

“Commander, we're wasting time.”

Ferrol looked up at Marlowe. “Your objections are noted,” he said coolly. “Kennedy, do we still have that two-gee acc/dec course to the space horse corral on line?”

She was still facing him, that same rock-hard expression on her face. “We do.”

“Good,” Ferrol said. “Alert the Handler, then, and let's get going.”

She didn't move. “And what exactly do you intend to do there?”

He met her gaze, determined not to be intimidated. “As I said before, I'm not here for a debate, Lieutenant,” he said. “You have your orders; carry them out.”

“You don't need to take us in to the corral to keep the Cordonale from sending help,” Roman said quietly from beside him. “And the longer you hold us in this system, the more risk you're taking that the sharks or more vultures will reach us before the
Scapa Flow
can clear away the optical net.”

“I'm aware of that,” Ferrol growled, feeling a flash of annoyance that Roman had read his thoughts and plans so easily. “We're not going there to hide—we're going there to open the corral netting and let the space horses go.”

It hadn't been what he'd intended to say; and judging from Roman's expression, it had come as a surprise to him, too. “We're
what
?” he asked carefully.

“You heard me,” Ferrol told him curtly…and, actually, now that he thought about it, it wasn't such a bad idea. There was no particular reason why the space horses should have to suffer along with their Tampy masters, after all. Destroyed or scattered, the end result would be the same. “Unless,” he added to Roman, “you'd rather see the sharks get them.”

For a long moment Roman stared at him in silence. “So this is how you intend to get your revenge,” he said, very quietly.

“They won't be hurt—just trapped on their own worlds, out of our way,” Ferrol countered. “Would you rather we went to war and did the job more permanently?”

“You've seen space horses in action,” Roman said, as if Ferrol hadn't spoken. “You know how poorly they handle stress situations. Do you
really
still believe the Tampies have a secret fleet of warhorses hidden off somewhere?”

Ferrol grimaced. No, not really. Not any more. “The mechanisms and methods aren't important,” he told Roman shortly. “What's important is that the Tampies' very presence in and around human space is a threat to us…and that threat's going to end.” He focused on Kennedy. “I gave you an order, Lieutenant.”

For a moment he thought she was going to refuse. Then, without a word, she turned away from his gaze and swiveled back to her console. A brief, low conversation with the Handler, and a minute later
Amity
was moving again. “What's our ETA?” he asked as Sleipnir reached the indicated two gees.

“About seventy minutes,” she said, not looking back.

Giving them just under an hour to destroy a section of webbing and get out of the way before the sharks arrived. Should be adequate. “Very good,” he nodded.

“Rrin-saa also said they'd like to know why we're going there,” she added.

“Tell them we're helping them do the honorable thing,” he growled. “Let them figure it out from there.”

Beside him, Roman stirred. “Commander, I wonder if I might see you in my office for a moment,” he said quietly. “When you have the time, of course.”

Ferrol frowned up at him, a ripple of suspicion running through him. “Anything you want to say to me you can say right here,” he told the other.

Roman shook his head, his face unreadable. “What I have to say is strictly confidential.”

Ferrol gnawed his lower lip. Confidential, hell—Roman was up to something, and they both knew it. But what? Some kind of attempt to overturn or get around the Senate directive? By having Kennedy secretly Jump them back to the Cordonale, perhaps, and getting someone there to countermand the directive via tachyon?

Or did Roman have something else in mind? Something more direct, perhaps?

“You realize, I trust,” he said quietly, “that if anything happens to me, the
Amity
will be trapped here. I doubt very much the
Scapa Flow
will clear out the vultures' optical net unless the order to do so comes from me.”

He held his breath, wondering if Roman would sense that the warning was at least fifty percent bluff. But the other merely cocked an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting,” he asked mildly, “that I might engage in mutiny against a legally appointed commander?”

Ferrol glared at him, the uncertainty curdling in his stomach…but there was only one way to find out for sure what the other had in mind. “Kennedy, you have command of the bridge,” he said, unstrapping himself and standing up carefully against two gees' worth of weight. “I'll be in the captain's office; continue our course, and alert me of any change in the situation with the sharks.”

“Acknowledged,” she said, not turning around.

Ferrol turned to Roman, and for a moment the two men eyed each other. Then, Ferrol raised a hand, gestured toward the door. “After you, Captain.”

And besides, nothing Roman could do now would make any real difference. Whatever happened to Ferrol or the
Amity
, the Tampies had already lost.

“You won't mind, I trust,” Ferrol said as the office door buzzed and slid open, “if I sit at the desk.”

Roman cocked an eyebrow at him. “So that you can watch the door?”

“So that I can watch the helm repeater,” Ferrol corrected shortly, circling the desk and dropping into the chair. Keeping an eye on
Amity
's progress really
was
his primary concern, he told himself firmly. The fact that this way Roman would be between him and any unannounced visitors was purely coincidental. “So. What's this confidential news you need to tell me?”

Roman sat down across from him, and for a moment studied Ferrol in silence. “That Senate directive of yours is dated over a year ago,” he said at last. “You've had it ever since you first came aboard the
Amity
.”

“That's right,” Ferrol nodded. “It was my guarantee that you wouldn't rig things so as to snowdrift the data from our wonderful mixed-crew experiment.”

“But you didn't use it then,” Roman pointed out.

“There was no need,” Ferrol snorted. “The experiment was a disaster, and everyone knew it. If Pegasus hadn't come out of left field with that calf,
Amity
would have been decommissioned and you'd have been sent back to the
Dryden.
We'd have become a footnote in some obscure Starforce report somewhere, and that would have been the end of it.”

“Agreed; but that's my point. If the data so overwhelmingly supported the anti-Tampy viewpoint, and you were so afraid I'd hide it, why didn't you take command when we first returned to Solomon after our mission?”

Ferrol opened his mouth; closed it again. Somehow, the question had never even occurred to him. “I don't know,” he had to admit. “I suppose…well, I suppose I'd decided I could trust you to be honest.”

Roman nodded, an oddly intense look on his face. “And that's what it ultimately boils down to, isn't it? Trust. None of us can ever truly
know
everything, at least not in the sense of personal, firsthand experience. Our knowledge, our opinions, even many of our deepest beliefs—all of them hinge on the reliability of other people.”

“If you're wondering if my directive is valid—”

“Oh, I'm sure it is,” Roman assured him. “Perhaps your former sponsors would repudiate it now, but by the time we're in a position to ask them our activities here will be
a fait accompli.
We both know that.”

“Then if you have a point, I'd appreciate it if you'd get to it,” Ferrol growled, the hairs on the back of his neck beginning to tingle. This was it: Roman was about to launch his countermove.