Warhorse

Chapter 29

Ferrol stared at the other across the desk, heart thudding painfully. “Where did you get this?” he demanded, his voice sounding strained and hoarse in his ears.

“From the Senate records,” Roman said.

“From your pro-Tampy friends, you mean,” Ferrol bit out. His hands were beginning to tremble; viciously, he jammed his palms against the edge of the desktop to silence them. “So what exactly is it?—just very heavily slanted in their favor, or a straight out-and-out forgery?”

Roman cocked an eyebrow. “You seem awfully vehement,” he said calmly, “for someone who doesn’t even know what’s in the report.”

Ferrol clenched his teeth, the ghosts and memories of Prometheus twisting through his mind and gut. “My parents’ hopes are in there,” he gritted. “Their hopes, and their dreams, and their lives. I know what happened on Prometheus, damn you.”

“Then read it for my sake,” Roman said. His voice was still calm, but there was a hard glint in his eyes. “So that you can enlighten me as to where I’ve been lied to.”

Ferrol held the other’s gaze a moment longer; then, slowly, lowered his eyes to the folder. What was he afraid of, anyway? He knew what the Tampies had done to his world, and no snowpile of propaganda—cleverly packaged or not—could ever change that.

Taking a deep breath, he opened the folder.

From its weight he’d known there was a lot of paper inside; what he hadn’t expected was the sheer variety of types and forms that were represented.

Depositions, official colony records, extracts from several of the C.S.S. Defiance’s logs, transcribed interrogations of some of the Tampies, logistics sheets, descriptions of the evacuation of the colonists, documents and memos written on fancy Senate alter-proof paper, and scientific and medical reports.

A lot of scientific and medical reports.

“There’s an overall summary,” Roman said, “at the beginning.”

Ferrol nodded silently, fingering the pile of medical reports. The top one was for the colony’s director, taken afterwards aboard the Defiance; and as he skimmed through it—

He looked up sharply. “Here’s lie number one,” he told Roman, jabbing his finger down on the report. “This medical report on Billingsham is a complete fraud. He couldn’t possibly have been diagnosed with hive viruses—it’s one of the first things they check for before they clear someone for a new colony.”

“I know,” Roman agreed soberly. “And you’re right, he couldn’t have brought anything like that to Prometheus. No one could have.”

Ferrol stared at him, something hard and cold settling into his stomach. “No,” he said. “No—just forget what you’re thinking. There’s no way he could have picked it up on Prometheus—we were totally clean of hive viruses.”

“Are you sure?” Roman asked quietly.

“Of course I’m sure,” he snapped. “I’ve read the survey team’s report—”

The rest of the sentence stuck in his throat. “No,” he breathed. “No. It can’t be.

Prometheus was certified for colonization. It was certified, damn it.”

Roman nodded, a flicker of pain crossing his face. “Certified, approved, and commissioned. And three thousand colonists sent there… over two hundred of whom have died since then from hive virus accumulation.” He hesitated. “If the Tampies hadn’t gotten you off when they did, it could have been all of you.”

Ferrol’s heart was starting to pound again. “I know what you’re going for,” he snarled. “What you and your pro-Tampy friends are trying to do. But it doesn’t hold together. If there was a hive virus there that the original survey team didn’t pick up on, how the hell could the Tampies have done it? They don’t have any bioanalysis equipment worth dirt—damn it all, they’d been on Prometheus less than two months when they stole the planet and threw us off.”

Roman held out his hands, palms upward. “I don’t know how they figured it out,”

he admitted. “I’m not sure anyone does, really.” He nodded toward the folder. “The follow-up committee’s best guess was that their attunement with natural patterns somehow let them deduce the viruses’ presence. Maybe something like the way Llos-tlaa knew that those creatures on Alpha weren’t going to attack the landing party, even though he couldn’t tell us why. And as for stealing the planet—” he shook his head. “They’re just as susceptible to hive viruses as we are. Prometheus has been abandoned for the past nine years… and is likely to stay that way.”

Ferrol bit hard at his lower lip, uncertainty twisting through him like a helical saw.

No, it couldn’t be. Couldn’t be. A survey team couldn’t foul up so badly as to miss something as long-term deadly as a hive virus. It had to be just another pro-Tampy lie. Even if Roman himself genuinely believed it, it still had to be a lie.

But if it wasn’t…

And in the middle of his silent turmoil the door buzzer sounded.

For a single heartbeat Ferrol stared at the door… and then, in a sudden blinding flash of insight, he saw at last what they’d done to him. Roman’s invitation, designed to lure him off the bridge; the forged report, designed to keep him off it—

With the hiss of its released pressure lock the panel began to slide open; and with a single convulsive motion Ferrol jerked up half out of his chair, his right hand scrabbling beneath his tunic for the hidden needle gun. For an instant the barrel caught; then, as he slammed painfully down onto the chair again it came free.

Swinging it up, banging it once on the edge of the desktop as he did so, he brought it to bear on the doorway, squeezing it tightly in a two-handed grip. The panel finished its retraction into the wall—

And standing there, framed in the opening, was Kennedy.

The most dangerous person aboard the Amity, the Senator had once called her; and in that first, heart-stopping second Ferrol knew he’d been right. Standing motionless in the doorway, her hands hanging loosely and apparently empty at her sides, he watched as her eyes flicked from his face to the gun and back again without losing any of their icy calm. She was calm, cold, and professional.

And she had come to kill him.

It was another moment Ferrol had tried to prepare himself for… another moment for which, he saw bitterly, the preparations had been utterly inadequate. You’ll be able to handle her, the Senator had said with that infinite assurance of his; and Ferrol had nodded and believed him.

But no one had warned him what it would be like to look into someone’s eyes as he pulled the trigger.

Roman cleared his throat. “If you’re going to shoot her down in cold blood,” he said, almost conversationally, “you really ought to get it over with. If you’re not, perhaps you should put the gun down and invite her in.

Kennedy still hadn’t moved. “You can’t stop me.”

Ferrol warned her, his voice trembling with emotion, the taste of defeat in his mouth. If she would make just some move against him, something—anything—that he could justifiably consider an attack. But she just stood there. “Even if you kill me, you still can’t get help to the Tampies in time.”

Kennedy shot a quick glance at Roman. “I’m not here to kill anyone,” she told Ferrol soothingly. “Really.”

“Then why are you here?” he demanded. “I ordered you to stay on the bridge.”

Her eyes hardened. “As it happens, I came to try and keep you from making a fool of yourself. Obviously, I’m too late.”

Ferrol squeezed the gun tighter, determined not to be lulled. “I’m touched by your concern,” he said sarcastically. “And how exactly did you intend to do that?”

Roman stirred in his chair. “I think,” he said quietly, “that full introductions are in order.” He held a hand out toward Kennedy. “May I present Commander Erin Kennedy… formerly executive officer of the C.S.S. Defiance.”

Ferrol stared at her, the fingers wrapped around the gun gone suddenly numb. The Defiance … “I don’t believe it,” he heard himself say.

“Why not?” Kennedy asked. “Don’t think I could handle the job, or what?”

“I was warned that you were dangerous—” He broke off.

Roman nodded, as if reading his mind. “Warned, no doubt, by your Senate supporters,” he said grimly. “To whom the truth about Prometheus was indeed a touchy subject.”

Ferrol licked at his upper lip, dimly aware as he did so that he’d lowered the gun to the desktop. “Who would have known that? That you’d been on the Defiance, I mean?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Everyone who read that report, for starters,” she said, waving toward the folder lying open in front of him. “My name’s on half those papers—I was the officer in charge of the depositions and follow-up survey debriefings.”

Ferrol lowered his gaze to the folder, stomach tightening as he turned back a few pages to the stack of depositions. Interrogating officer’s name…

He looked up at her again. “It can’t be true,” he said, the words more reflex now than genuine conviction. “The survey team certified Prometheus clean of hive viruses.”

“They sure as hell did,” she nodded, face darkening with remembered anger.

“Certified it with such glowing recommendations that the Senate didn’t even bother with the legally required backup survey. Why the hell do you think everyone was so damned anxious to snowdrift the whole fiasco?”

Ferrol dropped his eyes to the folder again. The Senate. The whole Senate…

“You’re telling me that they knew all along,” he said. “That they… lied to me.”

“Is that so hard to believe?” Roman asked. “You would have been useless to them without your hatred of the Tampies.”

Ferrol threw him a sharp look. “If we’re going to talk about manipulation, what about you?” he accused the other, a spike of anger poking through the numbness.

“You knew about this all along—both of you did,” he added, shifting the glare to Kennedy. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Would you have believed us?” Kennedy asked.

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s exactly the point,” Roman said, his voice hard. “If I’d shown you this folder when you first came aboard, you’d have dismissed the whole thing as nothing more than a highly sophisticated scam by the pro-Tampy faction.”

“So instead you played me like a puppet,” Ferrol said bitterly. “Danced me around on wires, surrounded me with lots of pro-Tampy types, made me liaison with the survey section to make sure I got lots of exposure to the damn aliens. The exact same thing the Senator was doing to me, except in reverse. So why should I believe you instead of him?”

“Because we have proof,” Kennedy said, gesturing at the folder.

“And what if it’s nothing more than a sophisticated scam, like the captain said?”

Ferrol countered.

“Oh, come on, Ferrol—”

Roman raised a hand to silence her. “Chayne, we can’t prove any of this to you,”

he said quietly. “We all know that. The indications are there, if you search your memory—the fact that the Tampies began the evacuation with the families of small children, for instance, who are classically the most vulnerable to hive virus accumulation. But that’s not proof, at least not the kind you’re looking for.”

“So what do you suggest I do?”

“You do what all the rest of us have to,” Roman told him. “In the absence of proof, you have to decide whose word you’re going to trust.”

Ferrol swallowed, his throat aching as he did so… but down deep he knew there was really no decision to be made. In his mind’s eye he could see the Senator: the aloof eyes, the smugly arrogant voice, the endless manipulation of people and events. He could see a year of serving with Roman: the unashamed Tampy apologist, often irritatingly simplistic in his view of the universe, risking his life to try and save Ferrol and Kennedy from that first shark.

And he saw Kennedy: the calmness of temperament, the competence of long experience… and, according to her psych profile, an absolutely flat-neutral attitude toward Tampies. A woman with no axe to grind, for or against anyone.

A woman with no reason whatsoever to lie about Prometheus.

He focused on Roman’s intercom, and for a brief moment it occurred to him that he was probably going to look and feel like a damn fool. But then, he’d never been much of one to care what other people thought of him. Tapping for general broadcast, he took a deep breath. “This is Commander Ferrol,” he said, keeping his eyes on the console. “I’m returning command of the Amity to Captain Roman. That is all.”

Keying off, bracing himself, he looked at Roman. Once again, the other passed up the opportunity to gloat. “Thank you, Commander,” Roman said gravely.

Ferrol nodded acknowledgment. He’d been right: he did, indeed, feel like a damn fool. “With your permission, sir,” he said, trying to keep his voice from trembling,

“I’ll confine myself to quarters until you’re ready for the Scapa Flow to clear away the vultures.”

He started to get to his feet; paused as Roman waved him back. “Lieutenant, what’s the Jump situation?” the captain asked, turning to Kennedy. “Are we too deep in the gravity well to get out of the system?”

She shook her head. “Not really, though we’ll scorch Amity’s hull pretty good no matter where we Jump to from here.” She looked at Ferrol. “But Ferrol was right about one thing: if we ever had time to call up help from the Star-force, we don’t any more.”

Roman nodded slowly, his thumb and forefinger rubbing gently together as his eyes stared at nothing in particular. “In that case—” He stood up. “It’s time we got back to the bridge. You included, Commander.”

Ferrol got to his feet, feeling his stomach tighten up again. To have to face the rest of the bridge crew again… “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll have the Scapa Flow get ready.”

“Thank you,” Roman shook his head, “but I don’t believe we’ll be needing their services just yet. We still have an errand of mercy to carry out before we can leave.”

Ferrol stared at him… and suddenly he understood. “You mean we’re going to turn all the space horses loose anyway?”

Roman eyed him, a tight smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “As I told you yesterday, Commander, I’ve learned a great deal about your character and judgment over the past year. You’ve hated the Tampies for a long time; but through all that you’ve never hated the space horses themselves.” He nodded toward the viewport, and the distant corral beyond it. “Your instinct toward the space horses was one of mercy. I’m willing to trust instincts like that.”

Ferrol nodded, as if he genuinely understood. For two whole minutes there he’d felt he knew exactly where he stood with respect to Roman, the Tampies, and the universe at large. Now, once again, he was totally lost. “I see, sir,” was all he could think of to say.

“Good,” Roman said, moving toward the door. “Let’s get going, then. By my count we have about forty minutes until we reach the corral. You, Commander, have just that long to find us a way to punch a hole in it.”

“Just about ready here,” Demarco’s voice came through the speaker on Ferrol’s console. “Townne and Hlinka have the cables hooked up to the corral mesh, and they’re coming back in. Main capacitors showing full charge, backups showing ninety-eight percent.”

“Acknowledged.” Ferrol looked over his shoulder at Roman. “It’ll be just another minute, Captain.”

Roman nodded and looked over at Marlowe. “ETA on the sharks?”

“Twenty-eight minutes for the leader,” the other said tightly. “A few minutes later for the others.”

Ferrol looked at his tactical display, feeling an odd mixture of frustration and melancholy. There were a total of ten Tampy ships harrassing the sharks now, but for all the effect they’d had on the predators’ progress they might just as well have stayed away. The sharks were still coming, the Tampies’ clumsy snare webbing hanging uselessly off their vulture vanguards or else simply vanished long behind them. Still coming… and on Amity’s other side, the corralled space horses very clearly knew it. Their restless milling about the enclosure had ceased; now, as if somehow divining what the Amity and Scapa Flow had in mind, they were pressed abnormally close together around the spot where, if all went well, a section of their cage was about to be vaporized.

And when that happened…

Ferrol bit at his lip, eyes suddenly brimming with moisture. In the wake of his confrontation with Roman and Kennedy everything he’d ever known or thought he’d known about the Tampies had collapsed into chaos, leaving his emotions far too tangled for him to really know anymore how he felt about them. But amid all the turmoil one fact stood out crystal clear.

The Senator, with all his cold-blooded conniving, had won. And the thought of that made Ferrol ill.

“Backup at full,” Demarco said. “All boards show green.”

Angrily, Ferrol blinked the moisture from his eyes. “They’re ready, Captain,” he said, not turning around.

“Very good, Commander,” the other said, his voice steady. “You may give the order.”

Ferrol gritted his teeth, shifting his attention to the visual display. “All right, Mai.

Get ready… fire.”

From the radio came the faint crack of the Scapa Flow’s capacitors; and on the visual a faint spiderweb of brilliant blue coronal discharge abruptly appeared as the massive jolt of current vaporized a half-dozen square kilometers of webbing. For a second the blue light illuminated the dark masses grouped silently behind it. Then the spiderweb was gone… and in the dim red light of the dwarf star Ferrol could see the masses moving toward the opening.

At the helm, Kennedy exhaled audibly. “There it is,” she murmured. “The end of an era.”

Ferrol nodded. They were beginning to flow through the gap now, the individual space horses making up the mass angling off in all directions as soon as they were clear of the webbing. He glanced at the tactical, wondering vaguely if the Tampies running before the sharks out there had noticed that their precious herd had been stampeded. Wondered if they would see it as a betrayal, or as a painful but necessary kindness.

He didn’t know. For that matter, he didn’t even know which way he’d originally meant it.

So much, he thought bitterly, for trustworthy instincts.

“They can come back,” Marlowe said. But not as if he believed it. “They got to space once before without the space horses. Surely they can do it again.”

Ferrol turned to see Kennedy shake her head. “Not without our help,” she said.

“The first time was a fluke—a space horse wandered into one of their systems and stayed there long enough for them to figure out how to catch it. They’ve never had any mechanical StarDrive of their own.”

“We can hope they had enough foresight to keep a few of their space horses out of this fight,” Roman said. “On the other hand…” He hesitated, a muscle in his cheek twitching once.

“Quentin?” Ferrol said quietly.

Almost reluctantly, Roman nodded. “It may not really matter how many they come out of this with,” he agreed soberly. “The very fact that there are creatures out there they can’t defend their space horses against may force them to turn the last ones loose anyway.”

For a minute the bridge was silent. The logjam at the exit hole had cleared out now, Ferrol saw, and the fifty or so space horses that still remained inside were flowing smoothly and swiftly out. In seven hundred years, he’d heard once, none of the Tampies’ space horses had ever died… which meant it had taken them all seven hundred of those years to assemble this stock.

And now they were all leaving; chunks of lumpy air from a punctured balloon. The end of an era, indeed.

“And speaking of ships without a mechanical StarDrive,” Roman said into his thoughts, “it’s time we cleared away those vultures and got out of here ourselves.

Commander?”

“Yes, sir.” Ferrol took a deep breath, watching the tactical as he keyed the radio.

“Amity to Scapa Flow; Mai, we’re pulling out. Get the net guns ready, and then—”

He broke off. Something on the tactical display…

“What is it?” Roman asked, his voice frowning.

Ferrol stared at the display, wondering if he was imagining things. But there was no mistake. The newly freed space horses, which had been angling sharply away from the approaching sharks’ trajectory as they left the corral, had begun to curve back inward toward that vector again. “Captain, take a look at the tactical,” he said carefully. “The escaping space horses… aren’t escaping.”

He turned to find Roman frowning at his own displays. For a moment their gazes locked—“Kennedy, are they still in too close to the star to Jump?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t think so, sir,” she said. “Not given what we now know about how much heat and radiation they can handle.”

“They’ve each picked up an optical net,” Marlowe pointed out doubtfully.

“Maybe…” He trailed off.

“But they’re not running away.” Kennedy looked over her shoulder at Roman, a vaguely stunned expression on her face. “They’re going to attack.”

Roman looked at her a moment; then, abruptly, reached for his console. “Amity to Tampy ships,” he called. “This is Captain Roman. Pull out of there, right now.

You’re about to be crushed by your own space horses.”

His answer was a burst of unintelligible whinelike squeaks and moans. “Damn,” he swore under his breath.

“Tie Rrin-saa into the line,” Ferrol suggested. “He can translate for you.”

Roman nodded, already keying for intercom. Ferrol shifted his attention back to the tactical; and a minute later the Tampy space horses began to veer away out of the sharks’ path. Out of the sharks’ path, and toward the loose sphere of space horses now closing in on the predators like a giant fist. “Make sure all recorders are on,”

he told Marlowe. “We’re going to want to get all of this.”

And the battle began.

It was, to Ferrol’s mind, a surprisingly leisurely confrontation; but perhaps all the more awesome for its slow, inexorable pace. Even as the Tampy ships reached the contracting sphere of space horses the sharks were breaking their own flying formation, angling outward to face their attackers like the fingers of an opening hand. Between the two groups, the vultures swarmed about like smoke in random cross breezes, either unable to maintain their optical nets in the face of the assault or else simply being thrown about by conflicting telekinetic forces.

Without warning, the Amity jerked, jamming Ferrol back into his seat. “Rrin-saa!”

Roman snapped. “What was that?”

“Sleipnninni wishes to join,” the Tampy’s voice came faintly over the intercom.

“Sso-ngu is having trouble holding him.”

“He has to,” Roman told him. “We can’t risk dragging the Amity into the middle of something like that. Change Handlers if Sso-ngu can’t hold on—double up if you have to—but keep Sleipnir here. Is that understood?”

“Your wishes are ours.”

Kennedy half turned. “We may be fighting a losing battle, Captain,” she said tightly. “The other Tampy space horses have gone back in, too.”

Ferrol swallowed hard. Kennedy was right: freed of the immediate threat of being the closest ones to the sharks, they’d now turned around to join the shrinking sphere, their tethered ships dragged helplessly along behind them like so much tinsel. Like Sleipnir, sensing somehow the group blood lust; unlike Sleipnir, too close to the center to have a hope of ignoring it.

The sphere continued to close… and then, moving in unison, the sharks abruptly veered off their vector, angling toward an edge of the sphere as if attempting to punch their way out. The space horses countered instantly, twenty or so of them shifting over toward the intersect point. Bolstering the forces at that flank… and as he watched the maneuver Ferrol felt a shiver run up his back at the irony of it all.

His dream, scoffed at by everyone from the Senator on down, of creating a fleet of warhorses…

On the tactical, the sharks again changed direction. “They’re running,” Kennedy said.

“Or trying to,” Roman corrected grimly as the space horses again shifted to counter the move. “Marlowe, are you getting any indication as to what exactly they’re fighting with?”

“No, sir,” Marlowe shook his head. “I’d guess they’re all trying to choke or bludgeon each other to death with telekinesis, but we haven’t got any instruments that can confirm—”

He broke off as the Amity twitched again. “Rro-maa?”

“I’m here, Rrin-saa,” Roman answered. “Still having trouble?”

“Sso-ngu and Hhom-jee cannot hold Sleipnninni for much longer,” the Tampy said, his voice very alien. “He is driven, his mind closed to all else. As if, perhaps, in perasiata.”

Ferrol hissed soundlessly between his teeth, throwing a glance at the intercom. The Tampies’ first definition of perasiata had been as a sort of coma; two hours ago, they’d used the term for Sleipnir’s panic reaction to the approaching sharks; and now it had become a berserker-type rage. The same word, for three entirely different reactions… Perhaps, he thought, the Tampies didn’t know nearly as much about space horses as they thought they did.

He looked back at the tactical, at the sedate dance of death taking place out there.

No; they really didn’t know as much as they thought they did.

“Tell them they have to hold Sleipnir as long as they can,” Roman was saying to Rrin-saa. “At least for another few minutes. Near as we can tell, the space horses are winning out there, but—”

“I’ll be damned.”

Ferrol twisted around. Kennedy’s voice had been little more than a whisper, but there’d been something in her tone… “What is it?” Roman asked.

Kennedy took a deep breath. “I believe the battle’s over, Captain,” she said, the words coming out with—for Kennedy—unusual difficulty. “As good as over, anyway.”

Ferrol glanced back to see Roman frown at his displays. “Explain.”

She nodded toward her displays. “Look at the vultures,” she said quietly. “It’s hard to see—the space horses are blocking most of the view. But you can see enough.”

“I’ll be damned,” Marlowe echoed. “She’s right, sir. The vultures have grouped into optical nets again… in front of the sharks.”

“They’ve switched sides,” Kennedy said, shaking her head in obvious wonderment.

“Seen which way the battle was going, and decided en masse to join with the winners.”

On a hunch, Ferrol keyed for a forward visual scan. “Our optical net’s gone, too, Captain,” he told Roman. “The vultures are…” He paused, searching.

“They’re heading for the battle,” Marlowe put in.

“Interesting, indeed,” Roman said thoughtfully. For a moment he stared at his displays… and then, as Ferrol watched, a tight smile tugged at his lips. Reaching over, he keyed his intercom. “Rrin-saa?”

“I hear, Rro-maa. We cannot hold Sleipnninni for much longer—”

“No need,” Roman cut him off. “Tell Sso-ngu he can let Sleipnir go any time now, only to try and hold it down to a couple of gees.”

“Your wishes are ours.”

Roman keyed off the intercom; and as he did so the Amity abruptly lurched forward. Ferrol fought his stomach, and a moment later Sleipnir had settled down to a steady three gee acceleration. “I hope you’ve timed this right,” he told Roman as the brief nausea faded away. “I really don’t think we want to get there while the fight’s still going on.”

“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Roman said. “I expect the sharks will have been beaten too far down to bother us by the time we arrive. And actually, it’ll probably be better to get there a little early than to be too late.”

Ferrol frowned at him. “Too late for what?”

“You’ll see. Give the Scapa Flow a call; tell them to rendezvous with us at the nearest shark as soon as they’re all dead.” He gazed thoughtfully at the display. “If I’m right, we all have a lot of work ahead of us.”