Timothy Zahn - Warhorse

There was a single line of instructions on the front of the envelope, written in the Senator’s small and geometrically precise script: To be used when deemed necessary. Ferrol gazed at the words, letting the Senator’s calm strength and infinite confidence flow from the handwriting into him. No, this wasn’t Prometheus and helplessness. This was the Amity… and the chance to turn the Tampies’ quiet undeclared war right back on them.

If he was lucky. Somehow, Ferrol thought he would be.

For a long minute after Ferrol left, Roman sat quietly in his chair, gazing at the door and listening to the sound of his heart pounding in his chest. He’d expected anti-Tampy from the other, of course—virulent anti-Tampy, even.

He hadn’t expected absolute ice-packed hatred.

Even now, with Ferrol gone from his sight, the memory of the emotional turmoil he’d sensed in the younger man made him wince. Ferrol’s pain and anger were as fresh as if he’d been thrown off Prometheus only yesterday, the emotions kept alive for eight years by the certain knowledge that the Senate had lied through its collective teeth about what had happened to the colony.

About that, at least, he was right. Roman had seen the official documents.

He dropped his gaze to the intercom, feeling temptation tugging at him. A single touch of a button—a short, probably very painful, conversation—and Ferrol would be gone. The Antis’ time bomb gone from his ship, the faction itself absolutely furious at him—

And their revenge would be to scuttle Amity. And with it perhaps mankind’s last chance to stay out of war with the Tampies.

Roman closed his eyes tiredly. No, it was too risky. For now, at least, the only prudent course would be to play along with Ferrol. Give him all the leeway he wanted… and hope that whenever he made his move—whatever that move was—that there would be a chance to block him.

And until that happened, Roman still had a ship to run. Putting Ferrol out of his mind as best he could, he keyed his display to the status report menu and got back to work.

And tried not to notice how remarkably similar his wait-and-see plan was to the pro- Tampy Senators’ own method of dealing with the problem.

At precisely 0812 the next morning, the Amity cast off its moorings on the Tampy corral. Trailing a kilometer behind their space horse, Pegasus, on deceptively thin tether lines, the ship headed out into deep space.

Roman had already known that the view from outside a space horse ship was impressive. What he hadn’t expected was that the ride was even more so.

It was quieter, obviously; but the reality of it far outstripped the expectation. Over the years Roman had grown accustomed to the many levels of noise a ship’s fusion drive was capable of putting out, from the dull but still permeating drone of standby to the steady thunder of full acceleration. It was a sound that never ceased as long as the ship was under power, and to be pulling a steady 0.6-gee acceleration without even a whisper of that familiar noise was awe-inspiring and just a little scary.

No drive noise also meant no deck vibration, of course; less obviously, it also meant none of the gentle rolling motion that came of the computer sensing and compensating for slight imbalances in thrust between the different drive nozzles. It was, in fact, for all the world like sitting in a full-size simulator back at the Academy.

“We’ve cleared the far edge of the corral enclosure,” Kennedy reported from the helm. “Signaling the Handler to increase acceleration to 0.9 gee.”

Roman nodded acknowledgment. He’d rather expected Kennedy to take the helm herself on this leg of the trip, and he hadn’t been disappointed. Clearly, she was serious about getting space horse experience. “What’s ETA to the scheduled Jump point?” he asked her.

“One hour twenty minutes,” she told him as their weight began a smooth increase.

“That is, if we stick to our current minimum-energy course.”

“We’re in no particular hurry, Lieutenant,” Roman told her. “Besides, I want to put Pegasus through a variety of maneuvers during the voyage. Minimum energy, minimum time, straight-line—you know the list.”

Ferrol half turned from his station. “I trust you’re not expecting the space horse to run into some kind of limit,” he offered. “I’ve heard of them pulling five gees without any noticeable strain.”

Roman shook his head. “I’m not looking for limits, Commander. Just differences.”

He turned his attention to the man at the scanner station. “Lieutenant Marlowe, how’s the signal from the contact feed repeater?”

“Coming in strong, sir,” Riddick Marlowe confirmed. “I’ve got it going to two separate recorders, as per orders.”

Roman nodded and turned back, to find a thoughtful frown on Ferrol’s face.

“Comment, Commander?” he invited.

Ferrol hesitated, then shook his head minutely. “No, I’m wrong,” he said, almost as if to himself. “If recording the traces from an amplifier helmet was all there was to it, someone would have compiled a library of them long before now.”

Roman nodded. “Agreed. It’s apparently not just a matter of getting a list of the right commands—the direct and immediate touch of a Tampy mind seems to be necessary for proper space horse control.” He cocked an eyebrow, “You have an interest in space horse control?”

“Of course,” Ferrol said. “And so should anyone else. If humanity’s ever going to expand farther than a few dozen light-years from home, we’re either going to need our own space horses or a lot of redesign of the Mitsuushi.”

“Or else a long-term rental agreement with the Tampies,” Kennedy put in.

Ferrol’s eyes flicked to her. “Renting is fine in its place,” he said evenly. “I don’t think full-scale colonization fits in that column.”

“Certainly not if they’d want to sit over the colonists’ shoulders and complain about their development schemes,” Marlowe agreed, almost under his breath.

“Sometimes I swear the Tampies think of us as a bunch of eight-year-olds, with them as our mothers.”

Kennedy chuckled. Ferrol didn’t. “You may have a point, Lieutenant,” Roman told Marlowe. “Bear in mind, though, that occasionally we do indeed act like eight-yearolds.”

“Agreed, Captain,” Marlowe shrugged. His eyes flicked to Roman’s face, as if trying to gauge his new commander’s tolerance to bridge chatter. “I’d argue in turn that most of the time that kind of behavior comes about because we have a sense of humor, something the Tampies don’t seem to know anything about.”

“Perhaps,” Roman conceded. Whatever form the Tampy sense of humor took—if they had one at all—it had so far managed to remain hidden.

And speaking of Tampies and things hidden…

Unstrapping, he got to his feet. “Commander, you have the bridge,” he told Ferrol, making one final check of the instruments. “I expect to be back before we Jump.”

“Acknowledged, sir,” Ferrol said. “May I ask where you’ll be?”

“Port side,” Roman told him. “It’s about time I paid a courtesy call on the Tampies.”

There were four connections between Amity’s human and Tampy halves, each equipped with a standard air lock. Beside the lock was a rack of filter masks; choosing one, Roman put it on, making sure the flexible seals fitted snugly around nose and cheeks and jaw. He’d heard stories of what Tampies in an enclosed space smelled like, and it would be embarrassing to gag on his first visit. The air lock went through its cycle, replacing most of the human-scented air with a purer oxygen/nitrogen mix, signaling ready after perhaps thirty seconds. Taking a careful breath through the filter mask, Roman keyed the door to open.