Warhorse

Chapter 21

The rein lines were softly glowing strands brushing across the lander’s ports, impossible to focus on even at such close range. Ferrol’s eyes stubbornly tried to do so anyway, even as the rest of his body braced for the wrenching jolt that would mean Quentin had lost control and panicked. But the surge the Tampies had more or less predicted didn’t come… and eventually Roman’s confirmation did. “All set, lander,” he said. “Web boats are coming back in now. We’ll keep firing the comm laser until they’re back in the hangar—the longer we keep the vultures distracted, the better chance we’ve got. Presumably.”

Ferrol clamped his teeth against the retort that wanted to come out. Roman had been noticeably less than enthusiastic about the plan—not, Ferrol suspected, because of any flaw the other could see in it, but simply because all the Tampies seemed likewise quietly opposed. Not for any reason they were willing to put into words, either, but for Tampies broad hints of vague uncertainties always seemed to be enough.

“We’re drifting a little,” Kennedy said into his thoughts.

With an effort, Ferrol shook the resentment from his mind. This was no time to let himself be distracted by Tampy coyness. “Ppla-zu, Quentin needs to ease a little to port,” he called to the Tampy behind them.

“Your… wish is mine.”

Ferrol threw a quick look over his shoulder at their replacement Handler, who’d taken up position between Demothi and a sleep-humming Wwis-khaa. He immediately wished he hadn’t; the Tampy’s face was twisted into a painful-looking expression Ferrol wouldn’t have thought even such lopsided features capable of.

“Ppla-zu? What’s the problem?”

“Quentinninni is… troubled,” the Tampy said thickly.

Ferrol glanced at Kennedy. “How troubled?” he demanded.

Ppla-zu tried twice before any words came out. “He… will endure… as necessary.”

“We’d better get this thing off the ground, and fast,” Kennedy murmured.

Ferrol nodded and turned back to his console. Maybe the Tampies’ worries hadn’t been totally unfounded after all. “Lander to Amity: better scorch with those boats, Captain.”

“How’s Quentin doing?” Roman asked.

“Ppla-zu says it’s troubled,” Ferrol told him. “Whatever the hell that means.”

“Probably just what it says: trouble. Especially since Bbri-hwoo’s telling me the same about Man o’ War.” Roman paused. “All right, web boats’ ETA for the hangar is two minutes. Let’s go ahead and get started—they’ll be in before we’re ready.”

“Right.” Ferrol leaned forward to peer out the viewport. Ahead and to their left, paralleling Quentin barely a hundred meters away, Man o’ War was a ghostly graywhite wall in the light of the distant sun. “You heard the captain, Ppla-zu,” he called. “Let’s do it.”

“Your wish is… mine.”

Ferrol settled into his seat and keyed for a tactical display. Twenty-eight kilometers ahead, the two optical nets were a pair of blobs sitting next to each other, each exactly in front of its chosen space horse. “Quentin’s starting to rotate,” Kennedy reported.

“Confirmed,” Roman said. “The vultures are matching it.”

Ferrol nodded silently. Reacting to the calfs slow rotation, they were indeed moving, sliding over toward the group that was blocking Man o’ War’s Jump vision. Just a little further…

“Mark!” Kennedy called. “Okay, Ppla-zu: ease it back again.”

Ferrol held his breath… and as Quentin rotated away from Man o’ War, its attending vultures also reversed their motion.

Damn. “We’re going to have to move Quentin closer in.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Roman agreed reluctantly. “I don’t know, though. Rrinsaa?”

“It is dangerous,” the Tampy’s voice came faintly. “Manawanninni already shows signs of stress.”

“What kind of stress is getting eaten going to give it?” Ferrol retorted.

“That’s enough, Commander,” Roman said sharply. “Escaping the shark at the cost of losing all control of Man o’ War isn’t going to gain us much.”

Ferrol ground his teeth. “Captain, with all due respect—”

“Ffe-rho is right,” Rrin-saa put in. “For Manawanninni’s sake, as well as that of ourselves, we must try.”

“Not to mention all the helpless test mice in the lab,” Ferrol muttered under his breath. “Ppla-zu? Let’s go—move us another twenty-five meters or so toward Man o’ War.”

It took nearly five minutes for the calf to be coaxed in that close… and in the end all of Ppla-zu‘s work proved to have been for nothing. Again, the vultures had no problem keeping optical nets in front of both space horses.

“But we’re on the right track,” Kennedy pointed out. “The vultures were measurably slower this time in their reaction to Quentin’s movement.”

“For all the good that does us,” Ferrol growled. “We’re at the end of the line here—we’re never going to get them any closer together.” He could feel his face warming with anger and frustration. It had seemed like such a good idea—

“Let’s not be quite so hasty to give up,” Roman admonished him thoughtfully.

“Agreed, if the vultures can still resolve two side-by-side space horses at this separation, it’s almost certainly a waste of time to try and push them any closer.

But then, maybe side-by-side isn’t really our best approach, anyway.”

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-zu: give Quentin a small rotation.”

There was no reply. “Ppla-zu?” 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-zu?” 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 Pplazu‘

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 faint 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-ngu 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.