Warhorse

Chapter 14

The shuttle’s engines gave one final burp and cut off, and for a few seconds Ferrol fought the usual brief battle with nausea as his system made its adjustment back to free-fall. The adjustment seemed to take longer than usual… but then, he was seldom this weary during such transitions.

He sighed, and looked around him. A shuttle, the Senate crewers had called it; but they might as well have labeled it a yacht and been done with it. A rich man’s yacht, drafted into allegedly public service with a few rows of seats bolted into what had probably once been a dining room or conference room or something. Not that the alterations had done much to dent the atmosphere—infinitely-adjustable seats with individual built-in entertainment systems were hardly likely to be mistaken for standard Starforce-issue acceleration couches. Listening to the rumbling in his stomach, Ferrol wondered sourly if having someone throw up all over their flying glitter-room would do anything to bring the visiting senators back into the real world. From the evidence to date, he doubted it.

“Commander Ferrol?”

Ferrol looked up before he realized the voice was coming from the seatback behind him. “Yes?” he said.

“Captain Mendez’s compliments, sir; he’d like to see you on the bridge at your earliest convenience.”

Ferrol frowned. Some kind of trouble? “On my way.”

He found the release and pulled it, staying where he was for the couple of seconds it took the safety harness to remold itself and retract smoothly into the seat again.

The bridge, he’d seen when they entered, was three compartments forward, just ahead of a ready room and a closet-sized box the yacht’s downgrade renovation had left apparently unused. Easing to the aisle, he gave himself a push forward and headed for the door.

It opened as he reached it, closing behind him almost before he’d gotten fully inside. A flicker of light—identity scan, possibly—and then the inner door slid open and he floated through into the ready room.

“Good evening, Chayne.”

Ferrol reached out a hand to steady himself on one of the nearby seats, relief that there wasn’t an emergency mixing with annoyance that he’d jumped to that conclusion in the first place. In retrospect, he should have expected something like this. “Good evening, Senator,” he replied, coolly polite. “Been promoted to captain, have you?”

The Senator’s lip twitched in a momentary smile. “It seemed safer to have the call put in the captain’s name. Personal entertainment systems aren’t supposed to leak over, but there’s no reason to take unnecessary risks.”

Ferrol pulled himself down into a seat, his eyes flicking to the bridge door a couple of meters away as he strapped himself in. “I’d have thought your being here at all would come under that heading, sir.”

“They’re all my people in there,” the Senator assured him, raising one hand to study a fingernail. “You know, Chayne—forgive my bluntness—you seem rather less than satisfied with the way the hearings went today.”

Ferrol snorted. “You noticed that, did you?”

Deliberately, the Senator raised his eyes from his examination. “We’ve noticed.

Believe me. All of us.”

Ferrol felt his face growing warm. “Sorry,” he muttered.

For a long moment the Senator eyed him without speaking. “I’m sure you’ll understand,” he said at last, “that you’re the last person we would have expected to see passionately arguing a Tampy point of view. I’m sure you’ll also understand how such an abrupt change in attitude is likely to make our friends nervous.”

“I am not arguing a Tampy point of view,” Ferrol growled. “I’m arguing that, in this particular case, we happen to have as much to gain from an extension of Amity’s mission as do the Tampies. I don’t know how to make that any clearer than I already have.”

“Oh, your position is clear enough,” the Senator shrugged. “It’s your judgment that’s in question.”

Ferrol’s annoyance was starting to simmer into anger. “This isn’t some half-assed idea I came up with on the spur of the moment, Senator,” he reminded the other stiffly. “I’ve thought that space horse calves were humanity’s best bet since long before you put me aboard the Amity.”

“Indeed,” the Senator said dryly. “Yes, your war-horse concept is quite well known among our group. Some of us feel it almost qualifies as an obsession, in fact—which is a major part of our concern. What evidence do you have that space horse calves would be more responsive to human control than the adults are?”

“Absolutely none,” Ferrol said. “What evidence do you have to the contrary?”

The Senator’s lip twisted in a way that always made Ferrol feel like a stubborn and not very bright child. “Let me spell it out for you, Chayne, in terms you apparently haven’t thought of. Assume for a moment that Junior wasn’t a fluke, that there really was some factor in Amity’s mission or crew that induced the breeding.

Assume further that we can reproduce the results at will and are at some point able to make off with one of the calves. What do you think the Tampy reaction will be?”

“They won’t be exactly happy about it—”

“ ‘Won’t be happy’ doesn’t even begin to cover it,” the Senator cut him off sharply.

“In case it’s escaped your notice, Chayne, the Tampies see themselves as the guardians of nature in general and of space horses in particular. Stealing a calf out from under their noses for research purposes could well trigger a full-scale war that we’re emphatically not ready for.”

With an effort Ferrol unclenched his teeth. “Then we don’t steal the calf,” he said.

“We find some way to experiment on it without the Tampies knowing what we’re doing.”

The Senator raised his eyebrows. “And how do you suggest we do that?”

“I don’t know,” Ferrol shot back. “You have the idea people—ask them. Assuming they haven’t lost their nerve, too.”

The Senator’s face darkened. “Such things take time, Ferrol. Time, and money, and planning. You’d probably have to stay on the Amity for several more months, possibly as much as a year.”

“Whatever it—what?” Ferrol stared at him. “What do you mean, I’d have to stay on the Amity?”

The Senator gazed at him. “The only way the committee will authorize a breeding mission for the Amity is if at least fifty percent of the original crewers and all of the senior officers agree to stay with it. Until we know what—if anything—the actual trigger mechanism is.”

Ferrol stared at the other, his anger turning into something icy. “Is that what all this was about?” he demanded. “Getting me worked up so that I wouldn’t have time to think about signing away another year of my life for you?”

“Consider it a test of your nerve,” the Senator countered coolly. “This is your vision, after all. If you don’t have the commitment to see it through…?” He shrugged.

It was emotional manipulation of the most blatant sort—deep within him, Ferrol could see that clearly. But the knowledge of what the Senator was doing to him didn’t help in the slightest. As the Senator had undoubtedly known it wouldn’t.

“I’ll stay with the Amity as long as it takes,” he gritted out. “Just be damn sure you find a way to get one of the calves.”

“Assuming there are calves to be gotten,” the Senator agreed. His goal achieved, all the challenge in his voice and manner was gone again, leaving behind the slightly cynical detachment that Ferrol had always associated with the man. “I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Yes,” Ferrol said shortly, fumbling for the release with a hand that still shook slightly with emotion. Just like a damn clockwork robot, he thought bitterly. He just flips a switch, and I do a little dance. “If that’s all, I’ll be getting back to my seat.”

“One more thing, Chayne.” The Senator paused, and Ferrol thought he saw the lines around the other’s mouth tighten, just a bit. “Keeping all of Amity’s senior officers aboard means that Erin Kennedy will be staying, too.”

Ferrol cocked his head. “You say that as if it should bother me.”

The Senator snorted under his breath. “Perhaps it should. Are you aware that she took a reduction in rank to join the Amity’s original mission?”

“I’d heard that, yes,” Ferrol said slowly, forehead wrinkling in thought. He’d never had much social contact with Kennedy, but she’d never struck him as anything but highly competent in her bridge duties.

Perhaps too competent? Or was the Senator just jumping at shadows? “You think she’s some kind of plant?” he asked. “Military Intelligence, maybe?”

“Could be,” the Senator admitted. “So far we haven’t been able to dig out just why she’s there… but we do know she was originally slated to be executive officer, and that implies strongly she’s a darling of the pro-Tampy side. So watch her, Chayne.

Watch her very closely. Especially if…” He raised his eyebrows significantly.

Especially if and when it came time to use the envelope. “I’ll watch her, sir,” Ferrol nodded grimly. “I still have the gun you gave me.”

“Good,” the Senator said. “I don’t doubt you’ll be able to deal with her if and when it becomes necessary. But bear in mind always that, as far as you’re concerned, she’s the most dangerous person on the Amity.” He nodded once, briskly. “Now; I understand you have a package for me.”

With an effort, Ferrol switched gears. “Yes, sir: Kheslav’s datapack. I’ll bring it to the hearings tomorrow morning.”

“You’ll get it for me now.”

Ferrol paused, floating above his seat. “What, while the shuttle’s running its prereturn checks? Won’t it look a little odd for me to dash off Amity’s hangar deck and then come charging right back again?”

“I don’t especially care what it looks like,” the Senator said, his voice abruptly icy with command. “I want the datapack, and I want it now.”

For a long minute Ferrol locked eyes with him… but it was no contest. “Yes, sir,”

he growled. “With your permission, Senator, I’ll return to my seat now.”

“Just one more thing, Chayne.” The Senator’s eyes bored hard into his. “I didn’t much care for the way you spoke to me a few minutes ago. I don’t want you to ever again suggest that I’ve lost my nerve—in fact, I don’t want you to ever even think it. Do I make myself clear?”

Ferrol swallowed. “Perfectly clear. Sir.”

Which was not to say, he thought darkly as he returned to his seat, that it wasn’t true…

The shuttle docked with the Amity half an hour later, and the preparations for its return planetside were still being carried out when Ferrol returned from his stateroom with Kheslav’s datapack.

The Senator accepted it without a word, though with what Ferrol imagined to be a suspicious set to his mouth. But if he wondered why the errand had taken Ferrol so long, he didn’t ask about it.

Perhaps he didn’t have to ask. Ferrol wasn’t worried about it one way or the other.

Twice in a single brief discussion he’d gotten the uneasy feeling that the Senator and his friends were starting to lose it… and if they were, it would be all too easy for their copy of the Kheslav data to be somehow mislaid.

And even if they weren’t, it was just good sense for there to be an extra copy of the data. Somewhere no one would think of looking for it.

One month later, with much the same crew but a new space horse, Amity left Solomon and headed again into deep space. Its mission this time was a laserstat copy of its first: the preliminary investigation of four Tampy-discovered planets.

There was no way to duplicate the pre-nova experience, even if anyone had been damnfool enough to risk it; as a substitute, Roman took the ship into the expanding gas cloud of a planetary nebula.

Three months later they returned to Solomon with datapacks full of scientifically exciting numbers and a new space horse calf towing their lander.

On its third mission the Amity investigated a pulsar and a nearby Wolf-Rayet system. On its fourth, it did nothing but examine various sections of the interstellar medium.

By then it was clear to even the most cautious members of the Senate and Admiralty that the actual content of the mission didn’t seem to matter. Nor, apparently, did the fact that interpersonal conflicts forced a large turnover of crewers and scientific personnel each time. At the end of each voyage, the Amity returned with a new calf.

And on the last day of the preparations for its fifth mission the Senator finally—finally—made his move.