Warhorse

“Looking us over, probably,” Ke

“Or else waiting for Quentin to tire,” Ferrol said. “Though trying to starve a space horse in a yishyar system strikes me as pretty stupid.” Quentin had completed its turn now, and Ferrol felt himself being pushed back into his seat as the calf began to pick up speed. “The vultures stay with us the whole time?” he asked Ke

“Like they were welded there,” she confirmed. “Quentin’s just too slow on turns to get ahead of them. Even with them having to lug that optical net of boulders along with them.”

An optical net. An odd term… but that was exactly what it was. A semisolid disk that had them trapped as thoroughly as if they were inside the webbing back at the Tampies’ Kiali

Trapped… but why?

“Ke

She checked. “Yes. Still nothing registering.”

“Can the anomalous-motion section be extracted and run alone?”

Ke

“I can’t see them breaking off a good meal just for the fun of it,” Ferrol told her, matching his volume to hers.

She nodded and got to work; and a second later Ferrol was slammed briefly into his seat as Quentin jerked. “What was that?” he snapped, twisting his head to look at the Tampies.

Sso-ngu‘s mouth moved soundlessly for a handful of heartbeats before any words came out. “I do not know,” he said. “I know that I have never felt such intensity of feeling in a space horse before; that is all.”

“Well, what’s it like?” Ferrol snarled. “Is it like fear, or concern, or happiness—?”

“Movement!” Ke

Ferrol had the object on his own display now; the scale clicked on—

“Ffe-rho!—Quenti

“Give it its head!” Ferrol barked. “Just don’t let it Jump—”

The rest of his words were blown out with his wind as Quentin shot forward, ramming him two gee’s-worth back into his seat. “Ke

“No contest,” she said, her voice tight. “The thing’s doing at least seven gees toward us.”

Ferrol got a hand to his display, keyed for tactical. Two gees or not, the vultures were still staying with them. And the scale on the intruder—“My God,” he said.

“Damn thing’s almost two kilometers long.”

“I’d say we’ve found our space horse killer,” Ke

“Yeah, well, let’s see if we can discourage it a little.”

Fighting the extra weight in his arms, Ferrol keyed the comm laser for a fullintensity unmodulated pulse and set it to tracking the shark, wishing to hell he had some real weaponry to work with. “We got anything aboard this teacup besides the laser?” he asked.

“Not that I know of,” Ke

“Good.” The tactical showed the laser locked firmly on the elongated mass overtaking them. “Be sure to balance with the forward jets—we don’t want to ram Quentin.”

“Right. Range, forty-five kilometers—”

And without warning the weight was abruptly lifted from them. An instant later Ferrol was jammed painfully against his harness, the hiss of the forward jets in his ears. He caught just a glimpse of Quentin’s dark bulk as it rushed toward the forward viewport—

And with a grinding of metal the lander caromed off the calf’s side.

It took a second for Ferrol to shake off the shock. “Ke

“Shark reached out and grabbed Quentin, I think,” she said, her voice a bit slurred.

Ferrol looked sharply at her; but her next words were clear enough. “I couldn’t stop us in time.”

From behind them came a low moan—fear or anger or something else, coming from Demothi. “Sso-ngu, is Quentin hurt badly?” Ferrol called, glancing back.

“He is not injured.” The words were barely understandable, as if the Tampy could spare only a tiny fraction of his mind for the task of speaking English. His eyes were bright; his twisted face preternaturally alert and very alien. “He is being drawn toward the other. Who will consume him.”

Demothi moaned again. “Ke

“Damn far away for that.”

“Yeah, but the telekene grip will just get stronger as it reels us in. We’ve got to try it.”

“Right.”

Ferrol braced himself; and was slammed again into his seat for an instant as the roar of the lander’s fusion drive filled the boat. Lost in the noise was the crack of capacitors as his jabbing finger fired the laser. The sound and acceleration cut off simultaneously. “Sso-ngu? Are we free?”

“The hold remains,” the Tampy said.

“But we’re not moving backwards any more,” Ke

“Hit it again,” Ferrol ordered. On the visual he could see what looked like one of the shark’s feeding orifices rotating into view, and he’d just focused the laser on it when Ke

And the lander leaped forward, swaying wildly back and forth like a pendulum.

“Sso-ngu!” Ferrol snapped, fighting both the two-gee weight and a sudden surge of nausea.

“Quenti

Ferrol took a shuddering breath, eyes on the tactical. The shark was falling back, apparently not pursuing. Fifty kilometers… fifty-five… sixty—probably out of telekene range now…

“The vultures are still with us,” Ke

Ferrol nodded grimly. “I’ll settle for half a victory at this point,” he told her. “Ssongu, what’re the chances we’ve discouraged the shark permanently? After all, Quentin’s a pretty small mouthful for a predator that size.”

“I do not know,” was the predictable reply. “But you humans are a predator species yourself. Can you not form an accurate idea within yourself?”

Ferrol swallowed. Indeed he could… and the idea he formed wasn’t an especially encouraging one.

They fled at a full two gees’ acceleration for nearly ten minutes before Quentin could be persuaded to ease up. Under Sso-ngu‘s guidance the calf modified its speed and heading until it was paralleling a particularly dense section of the asteroid belt. “Maybe we should try weaving in and out, see if we can throw the vultures off,” Ferrol suggested.

“Probably a waste of time,” Ke

Ferrol frowned. “What makes you think that?”

“When they first moved in on us they were nearly a hundred kilometers away,” she reminded him, fingers skating across keys. “Quentin’s only about a hundred meters long, with a maximum width maybe twenty-five. The difference between head-on view and complete broadside would have been only sixteen minutes of an arc.

That’s… let’s see; a thumbnail at seventeen meters. Yet they immediately settled in directly in front of Quentin. I find it hard to believe their eyesight is that good.”

“I don’t see what difference it makes how they do it,” Demothi growled impatiently.

For a man who’d spent two months trying to suppress human emotions, Ferrol thought sourly, Demothi was certainly making up for lost time. “How it matters,”