Warhorse

“May we ask Lle-ka

Roman’s face warmed with embarrassment. Concentrating on the shark, he’d totally forgotten the ship they’d come here to rescue in the first place. “Good question,” he agreed. “How about it, Captain?”

“There’s no sign of either the ship or the space horse,” Lekander said, his tone just a shade too casual. “But I wouldn’t worry too much about that. My guess is that they spotted the shark, dropped their beacon, and got out before the vultures could catch them.”

Roman stared at the intercom, a nasty suspicion begi

“You told me they were six hours overdue at port,” he reminded Lekander. “Even if they had had to Jump to a different star first, it wouldn’t have taken them an extra six hours to find their way home.”

“Maybe they had mechanical difficulty,” Lekander said tartly. “Or stopped to calve or something.”

“Or maybe they got home fine,” Roman countered, “and all this rush was just to get out here before the shark left?”

“I don’t really see,” Lekander said, a noticeable edge to his voice, “how any of this could possibly matter.”

Roman grimaced. No, Lekander probably didn’t see. But someone above him surely had… and that someone had apparently realized that persuading Tampies to participate in a rescue mission would be a hell of a lot easier than talking them into joining a shark hunt.

And that same someone had obviously decided that keeping Roman in the dark would help sell the story.

“Rro-maa?”

Roman braced himself. “Yes, Rrin-saa?”

“Is it true that there was no one in danger here?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know, Rrin-saa,” he told the alien truthfully. “I really don’t.”

For a long moment the Tampy was silent. “We are not predators, Rro-maa,” he said at last. “We do not kill without reason, nor interfere with the patterns of nature without cause.”

“Rrin-saa, it’s necessary that we learn as much about these sharks as we can,”

Roman said, cursing whoever the mallet-head was who’d put him in the middle like this. “As much for your benefit as for ours. If there are sharks moving into this region, your space horses will be in danger.”

“When it becomes necessary, we will do what we can to protect them,” Rrin-saa said. “You have lied to us, Rro-maa.”

“The lie was to both of us, Rrin-saa,” Roman said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“I am sorry, too,” the Tampy said. “The Amity experiment has been built on trust.

That trust is now gone.”

Roman’s stomach tightened. “Perhaps the trust can be rebuilt.”

“No. The Amity experiment is at an end.”

Rrin-saa’s words seemed to echo through the bridge. Roman stared at the intercom without really seeing it, head spi

“It is worth more than you can imagine,” Rrin-saa said, his voice almost sad. “And we will sorely regret its loss. But we have no choice. Our first duty is to honor the patterns of nature, and you have forced us through deceit to violate that duty.” He paused. “I do not expect you to understand.”

Roman sighed. “We have ethics, too, Rrin-saa. It’s just that pragmatism is too often considered the most important of them.”

“And duty is only to yourselves.” Roman winced, but there was no bitterness he could hear in the Tampy’s voice. Only more sadness. “I do not believe you will ever learn otherwise. We will return you and the others to Solomon when you are ready. We will then return Sleip

“Rhin-saa—”

The intercom screen went blank.

Slowly, Roman looked up… to find Ferrol watching him. “You have a comment, Commander?”

Ferrol’s face was hard. “I think he’s bluffing, Captain.”

Roman eyed him. “You think so, do you?‘

“Yes, sir, I do,” Ferrol said doggedly. “They aren’t going to just throw away the breeding program—certainly not on the whim of a single Tampy. Their leaders will turn it around; and in the meantime, they’ll have taken the opportunity to load a little more of that wonderful Tampy guilt onto our backs. It’s emotional manipulation, pure and simple… and I think everyone else here can see that.”

“Perhaps everyone else can,” Roman said. Suddenly, he was very tired. “But then, general agreement has always been an unreliable indicator for truth.” Unstrapping, he pushed out of his seat. “Continue with the observation and recording; I’ll be in my cabin.” He gripped the back of his headrest, aimed himself toward the bridge door—

“Captain, we’re getting movement,” Ke

“Heading straight for them,” Marlowe cut in. “Picking up speed now—” he turned to look at Roman, his face rigid, “Captain, it’s another shark.”

Roman twisted in midair and shoved himself back into his chair, grabbing for his restraints with one hand and keying the comm laser with the other. “Amity to Atlantis; emergency. You’ve got another shark on your tails.”

“We see it,” Lekander’s voice came back calmly. “Relax, Amity—we know how to handle these things now.”

“I sure as hell hope so,” Roman muttered under his breath, his eyes on the shark now centered in the scope screen. Still accelerating… “Marlowe, find out where that thing came from,” he ordered. “Specifically, whether it just Jumped in or whether it’s been lurking there watching the whole time.”

“Yes, sir.”

The task force was pulling away from the carcass, coming around and spreading out for battle. The pale laser tracks lanced out… and disappeared into the cloud of vultures ru

“Got it, Captain,” Marlowe a

So it hadn’t been there for the earlier battle; which meant it was sheer dumb luck that its vulture cloud had just happened to block the first laser salvo. Dumb luck, and nothing more.

But the sinking feeling refused to go away.

“It’s not turning over,” Ke

“It’s going to ram them,” Ferrol breathed.

Roman felt his hands curling into fists. “Amity to Atlantis—Captain, get your force out of there.”

“Shut up, Roman,” Lekander’s voice snarled. “We’re busy. Ready; fire.”

On the screen, half a dozen flares suddenly flickered from the sides of the three ships. The missiles skittered away toward the shark—

And abruptly stopped.

Roman stared in disbelief. The missiles, their drives still flaring impotently away, sat frozen in space perhaps a third of the way to the shark.

“The shark’s stopped accelerating,” Ke

“But it can’t” Marlowe protested. “It just got here—it can’t possibly know about the missiles.”

Ferrol swore, suddenly, under his breath. “It’s the vultures,” he said. “It has to be.

The first shark’s vultures must have recorded the battle and then relayed it to the other one.”

Roman gritted his teeth. The shark was continuing to move toward the task force; but the missiles, frozen in its telekene grip, were still hanging midway between ships and predator. “It’s holding them, but isn’t strong enough to push them back,”

he said. “Marlowe: assuming those are sub-nukes, how much closer do they have to get before triggering them will damage the shark?”