Warhorse

Chapter 23

For the next four days the Amity remained in Earth orbit, waiting for orders, while conflicting rumors as to what those orders might be swept through the ship like a sequential set of gas leaks. When they finally came, it was a distinct anticlimax: Amity would return to Solomon to trade Man o’ War for its next space horse. The breeding program, apparently, would continue.

They were back in Solomon system an hour later, and within a few more had made orbit around the planet. There they were met by a Tampy ship and the cumbersome but reasonably straightforward process of switching space horses was performed.

Man o’ War and the Tampy ship left, leaving Sso-ngu and the other Handlers to settle in for a few hours of taking turns under the amplifier helmet—introducing themselves to the newcomer, Rrin-saa had once tried to explain it. The same hours on Amity’s human half were considerably less filled, with activities consisting mainly of last minute checks, idle conversation, and practice in saying “Sleipnir”

instead of “Man o’ War” when referring to the source of the ship’s main motive power.

Several days were normally allotted for the welcoming/acclimation procedure. But Sleipnir was a quick study; or else the extensive practice Amity’s assembly-line schedule had forced on its Handlers was beginning to pay off. Whichever, within a single day—less than forty-eight hours after leaving Earth—Amity was ready.

And for the next six weeks, as per orders, that was how it remained. In Solomon orbit, and ready.

“Sorry to wake you, sir,” the bridge officer said apologetically. “But the overcode on this was marked ‘urgent.’ ”

“That’s all right,” Roman assured her, rubbing the last bits of sleep from his eyes and shrugging on a robe before switching on the intercom’s visual. He keyed in to the laser comm circuit—“Solomon tachyon station, this is Captain Roman,” he identified himself. “Acceptance code follows.” He keyed the sequence into his terminal.

“Acknowledged,” the station said a few seconds later. “Beginning transmission.”

Roman leaned forward, mentally crossing his fingers. If this wasn’t, in fact, some kind of orders—

TO RESEARCH SHIP AMITY, SOLOMON: FROM COMMANDER

STARFORCE BORDERSHIPS EXTENSION, PRE-PYAT:

:::URGENT-ONE:::URGENT-ONE:::URGENT-ONE::: HUMAN/TAMPLISSTA STUDY TEAM AT NCL 9862 OVERDUE. AMITY TO

PROCEED IMMEDIATELY PREPYAT; CONTINUE ON TO 9862 WITH

RESEARCH SHIPS ATLANTIS, STARSEEKER, AND JNANA IN TOW.

FURTHER INFORMATION AVAILABLE FROM RESEARCH SHIPS.

VICE-ADMIRAL MARCOSA, COMBOREX, PREPYAT CODE/ VER

*@7882//53

2:16 GMT///ESD 6 MAY 2336

Roman read the message twice, a cold chill settling into his stomach. There was something wrong here. Something very wrong…

“Any orders, sir?” the bridge officer’s voice prompted. From her tone, it was clear she was desperately hoping there were some.

Roman took a deep breath. “Alert the Handler,” he told her. “We’re Jumping to Prepyat as soon as he and Sleipnir are ready. Number One web crew to start prepping their equipment—we’ll be taking three ships in tow, and we’ll need to run tether lines to them.” He hesitated. “And wake Lieutenant Kennedy. Tell her I want her dressed and on the bridge in fifteen minutes.”

The three ships were grouped tightly together a hundred meters away from the Amity, holding to an almost perfect zero-vee-relative as the two web boats moved among them fixing tether lines. Standing on the velgrip beside the command station, Kennedy studied the activity on Roman’s display. “Opinion, Lieutenant?”

Roman asked her quietly.

“I’d say no doubt, sir,” she shook her head. “Even at this distance you can see that the missile tubes haven’t been sealed. And that ion projector just under the main sensor bulge on the Atlantis would never have been left on a surplused ship.

Legalities aside, the things are just too expensive to give away.”

Roman nodded. Her conclusions, unfortunately, jibed with his own. “So what we really have here is an unmarked military task force.”

“Yes, sir. If I had to guess, I’d say the Atlantis is either a destroyer or light cruiser, and the other two are converted and possibly beefed-up corvettes.”

Firepower, and to spare. “What about the 9862 system itself? Dug up anything on that yet?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, leaning over his shoulder to tap a few keys on his console. A

chart appeared on Roman’s helm display, with the star marked in flashing brackets.

“It’s a blue-white giant, about six hundred light-years from the Cordonale. Pretty undistinguished, as far as I can see from what little we’ve got on it. No mention of any visits to the system; no indication, for that matter, that anybody’s ever so much as had a passing interest in the place.”

“Until now,” Roman said, tapping the data listing on the display. “I note the star’s very similar in size and magnitude to the one the shark chased us away from.

Coincidence?”

“It could be a yishyar,” Kennedy agreed. “I guess well know for sure in a couple of hours.”

Roman’s radio crackled. “Web One to Amity. All finished here; we’re coming in.”

“Acknowledged,” Roman said, and switched to the comm laser. “Amity to Atlantis; come in.”

“Atlantis; Captain Lekander,” the calm—and very military—voice came back promptly. The face on the screen was an excellent match to the voice. “What’s our status, Amity?”

“My web boats will be back in about ten minutes,” Roman told him. “At that point we’ll be ready whenever you are.”

“Good,” Lekander said briskly. “I’m not sure what you were told, Captain, but here’s the scenerio. A research team running on a very precise schedule has come up almost six hours overdue. We’re going in to find out what happened to them.”

“Pretending to be a civilian research team?” Roman asked mildly.

Lekander’s face didn’t change. “It was thought your Tampies might balk at ferrying military ships,” he said. “That’s not important. What is important is that you understand you’re here strictly as transport; you will not—repeat not—get involved in whatever happens once we reach the system. You will sit tight until we’re ready to go, observe everything that happens, and stay out of it. For the observing part, we’ll be sending over a boat containing a high-power telescope/recorder when we reach 9862. The sitting-tight part is your responsibility.”

Roman locked eyes with him. “And if there turn out to be vultures in the system?”

he asked bluntly.

“If you feel you’re in immediate danger,” Lekander said stolidly, “you’re authorized to Jump to the 66802 system—about two light-years away—and wait for us to rendezvous with you on Mitsuushi. Otherwise, we should have no problem clearing the vultures off you before we leave.”

Roman nodded, a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. “That assumes,” he said quietly, “that you will be leaving.”

Lekander’s face cracked, just slightly, into a tight smile. “Don’t worry,” he said.

“We’ll be leaving, all right.” He paused. “But the boat I’ll be sending you will also have an AA-26 midrange sub-nuke torpedo aboard. Just in case.”

Sleipnir Jumped, the task force disengaged from their tether lines and headed off, and Amity’s crew set about unpacking Lekander’s telescope/recorder from the boat Atlantis had sent across.

They also unpacked the sub-nuke torpedo and mounted it and its launcher to the outer hull. Just in case.

And when that was done, and the telescope was tracking the departing fusion tracks, there was nothing to do but wait. For hours and hours…

“They certainly seem to know where they’re going,” Kennedy said, leaning back in the helm chair and watching the task force’s progress. “There’s nothing of a search pattern about their course—they’re just heading straight across into the asteroids.”

“Must have a beacon on the missing ship,” Marlowe agreed, studying his own displays. “Damned if I can pick up the signal, though.”

“Probably a split-wave,” Kennedy told him. “Or something equally private. I’d guess they’re doing a minimum-time course, Captain; as soon as they make turnover we’ll be able to figure their endpoint.”

“Can’t we do that now?” Ferrol asked. “We should at least be able to track along their projected path.”

“I’m already doing that,” Marlowe said. “So far, I haven’t found anything that could be a ship.”

For a moment the bridge was silent. Roman thought about how the shark had tried to tear Amity apart… “They could be behind an asteroid,” he reminded them. “Let’s not assume the worst until—”

“Movement!” Marlowe snapped. “Portside of the task force, maybe four hundred kilometers away.”

“They see it,” Kennedy added. “They’re altering course—blasting lateral to swing around toward it. Breaking formation… they’re going for it.”

“Give me some more power on this scope, Marlowe,” Roman ordered, straining to make out the form that was now definitely picking up speed toward the circling task force. “I can’t tell if that’s a shark or a space horse.”

“One second, Captain—these damned controls are twitchy.” The view shimmered, gave an eye-wrenching jerk, steadied and enlarged—

“Holy mother,” someone murmured.

Roman found his voice. “What’s the scale on that?”

“Measures out to almost twenty-six hundred meters,” Marlowe said grimly. “About thirty percent longer than the one we fought, with just over twice its volume.”

And if telekinetic strength indeed scaled with volume… Roman clamped down hard on the almost overpowering urge to send out a comm laser warning. A waste of time, or worse: Lekander would certainly know what his force was up against, and the last thing he needed was extra distractions. “Any sign of vultures?” he asked instead.

“Not that I can see,” Marlowe said. “Definitely no optical nets, anyway, at least not so far. Must recognize that they’re not space horses.”

“Or else the lack of telekinetic abilities leaves the vultures nothing to lock onto,”

Roman nodded. “Either way—”

“Got laser fire,” Marlowe cut in. “All three ships.”

Roman peered at the scope screen. The pale lines of ionized gas were just barely visible as they tracked along the shark’s surface. “Any idea what power they’re using?”

“Hard to say at this distance,” Marlowe said. “Though if they’re standard combat lasers—yowp; there goes the shark.”

The huge predator swerved violently as one of the beams raked up toward its forward end. The laser corrected; but even as it found its target again, a cloud seemed to detach itself from the shark’s body and flow forward. “There go the vultures,” Ferrol muttered under his breath.

“The lasers must have hit a sensory ring,” Kennedy said. “—Firing again.”

Again, the pale lines lanced out… but this time they stopped far short of their intended target, disappearing into the cloud that had coalesced in their path. “Is that the vultures doing that?” Roman asked Marlowe.

“Affirmative,” the other nodded. “Looks like they’ve got a screen of rocks set up, a sort of heavy-duty optical net. Though against military lasers—there; got a punchthrough.”

One of the pale lines had pierced the barrier, and once again the shark twitched away from its touch. But almost instantly the beam was cut off again. “They got the hole filled in,” Marlowe reported grimly. “Those sharks learn fast, don’t they?”

“It can’t keep that up forever, though,” Ferrol shook his head. “Eventually it’s got to run out of vultures.”

“Yeah, but maybe not before the ships get within grabbing range,” Marlowe pointed out. “If enough of that barrier is rock and not vulture, they may be able to hold it together long enough.”

A tiny flare sparked at the Jnana’s hull—“Missile away,” Kennedy identified it.

“Heading for the vultures. Make that two,” she amended as a second flicker appeared beside the Starseeker.

Roman frowned as the two flares swung into alignment, the second crowding the tail of the first. The lead missile reached the laser barrier—

“Missile breaking up,” Marlowe announced. “Must be a net missile; yes, there’s a glint from the filaments. Spreading around the vultures—damn.”

“What?” Roman snapped.

“Plasma discharge from the net,” Marlowe said, sounding stunned. “Absolutely massive. Must have had a thousand amps and at least that many volts on it.”

“That got the barrier open, all right,” Kennedy said. “Second missile going straight through the hole. Shark’s telekening it to the side—must think it’s another net missile—”

And an instant later the center of the screen went black as sunscreens kicked in.

“Sub-nuke explosion, Captain,” Marlowe said. “Shaped blast, about a twentymegaton rating, triggered approximately fifty kilometers out from the shark.”

Roman hissed between his teeth. Even at Amity’s distance… “Ferrol, call down to Tenzing’s people and have them put a real-time monitor on the radiation,” Roman ordered. “And have the Tampies watch for signs of stress in Sleipnir. We should be well clear of any trouble, but there’s no point in taking chances.”

“Yes, sir,” Ferrol said, and turned to his intercom. On the scope screen the black dot was shrinking and fading—

And the shark was still moving. Sluggish, but clearly alive.

Roman shook his head in wonderment… in wonderment, and with the first stirrings of real fear. Even at fifty kilometers away a blast that size should have delivered a thunderclap of heat and particle radiation directly into the shark’s surface and sensory clusters. If it could shrug off something that powerful—

“Missile away,” Kennedy announced into his thoughts; clenching his teeth, Roman shifted his attention back to the ships. A flare had appeared beside the Atlantis; and beside the Starseeker, and beside the Jnana, and beside the Atlantis again—“Correction: barrage away,” Kennedy amended. “Looks like they’re throwing everything they have at it.” The first missile flare erupted in a dim pinprick of light—

“They’ve gone to chemical warheads,” Marlowe said, sounding stunned.

“Must be trying to kill it without excessive damage,” Kennedy suggested.

“Probably figured the first sub-nuke had taken enough of the fight out of it.”

“Damn fool risky,” Marlowe muttered. “There it goes, though. Turning around and… wait a minute. What the hell—

The shark had veered ponderously away from the incoming missiles; but instead of turning a full 180 degrees and running, it preceded to trace out a convoluted path that seemed to be part helix, part spiral, and part random. Through it all the pinpricks of exploding warheads continued to flare across the middle of the display, looking for all the world like some strange space-going species of firefly.

And then, even as the task force launched a fresh barrage of missiles, the shark finally turned tail and fled.

“Only pulling about two gees,” Kennedy reported. “It’s hurt, all right.”

“Hurt, and gone crazy both,” Ferrol snorted gently. “What the hell was that, anyway?—the dying-swan version of a mating dance?”

“Or else an attempt at evasive maneuvers,” Marlowe offered. “It was still doing a fair job of telekening those missiles away from it the whole time, even though they were getting closer there at the end.”

“It’s slowing down,” Kennedy said, peering intently at her helm display.

“Acceleration dropping toward zero… make that at zero.”

Roman held his breath. Again the firefly flashes dotted the screen—

But this time, directly against the shark’s surface.

“They’ve got it,” Kennedy grunted. “—There go the lasers again.”

“Ion beams, too,” Marlowe reported. “And they’re getting through—the explosions must have scattered the vultures. God, those lasers are actually cutting into the shark’s hide. Cutting deep into it.”

Between the lasers, ion beams, and warheads the light show went on for another twenty minutes… and when it was finally over, there was no doubt whatsoever that the shark was dead.

Or, to be more precise, what was left of the shark was dead.

“Well,” Marlowe said to no one in particular, “that’ll certainly give them a head start on dissecting the thing.”

With an effort, Roman unclamped his jaw. “A head start, and then some.” He reached for the comm laser control, set for tracking. The indicator flashed—“Amity to Atlantis,” he called. “Come in, Atlantis.”

“Atlantis; Captain Lekander,” the reply came a few seconds later. “You enjoy the show, Amity?”

“It’s just nice to know the things can be killed,” Roman told him dryly. “We’d had our doubts.”

“Anything alive can be killed,” Lekander countered. “It’s just a matter of having the right tools for the job.”

“I imagine. So what happens now?”

“We’ll give the area a few hours to cool off, then send a team over to do some dissection,” Lekander said. “Assuming there’s enough of it left by then—I don’t know if you can see it from there, but the vultures have gone ahead and started lunch already. So much for honor among thieves, I guess.”

“Um.” Roman’s helm display changed to show Kennedy’s projection of the shark’s drift. “How much time were you planning to spend studying the carcass, Captain?”

he asked.

“That’s fairly open-ended,” Lekander said. “Why?”

“Our projection shows you’ll be passing within a few hundred thousand kilometers of our current position.”

Roman explained. “We could rendezvous out there with you and take the whole carcass back with us.”

“That’s tempting, but no,” the other said. “Like I said, you’re supposed to sit there where we left you and not get involved.”

Roman nodded. “Understood. Just thought I’d ask.”

“Rro-maa?”

Roman jumped at the voice; he hadn’t realized anyone from the Tampy section was listening. “Yes?”

“May we ask Lle-kann if the missing space horse has been located?”

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 beginning to knot his stomach.

“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 spinning with disbelief. The last fragile diplomatic link between human and Tampy; and it was going to be lost over this? “What about the space horse breeding program? Surely that’s worth something.”

“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 Sleipnninni to Kialinninni.”

“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,” Kennedy spoke up. “About two hundred thousand kilometers beyond the task force.”

“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 running before the shark. “Marlowe? Snap it up,” Roman gritted, a sudden surge of dread curdling through his stomach. If the shark had been watching—if all that intelligence and learning ability had already seen the ships’ weapons in action…

“Got it, Captain,” Marlowe announced. “The record shows a definite Jump point. It just got here, less than two minutes ago.”

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,” Kennedy said abruptly. “Captain, it’s not doing a turnover for a zero-vee rendezvous with the task force. And it’s still accelerating.”

“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,” Kennedy said, her voice very quiet. “It’s holding the missiles back—putting that as its top priority.” She looked back at Roman. “Which means it recognizes that the missiles are its chief danger.”

“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?”

“They can’t trigger them,” Kennedy put in before Marlowe could answer. “The ships are way too close now themselves for that. If they tried it—”

She broke off as, on the screen, the missile flares abruptly and simultaneously vanished. “Marlowe?” Roman snapped.

“It broke them up,” Marlowe murmured, a horrified awe in his voice. “Just… tore them to shreds.”

And if there had been any doubt left, it was gone now. The shark knew exactly what it was up against… and exactly how to fight back.

And Lekander knew it. On the screen the three ships were veering away, blasting lateral to the shark’s momentum. Roman held his breath—“Atlantis to Amity,”

Lekander’s icy voice came suddenly, making him jump. “We track some vultures heading your way; better get out while you can.”

“Never mind us—get yourselves out,” Roman retorted. “You can’t possibly defeat the shark now.”

“We’d figured that out, thank you,” Lekander growled. “Get to the 66802 system—we’ll be there when we can. Atlantis out.”

The console pinged its loss of the laser signal. “Idiots,” Ferrol bit out. “What the hell are they waiting for?”

“They can’t leave,” Kennedy said quietly. “That sub-nuke explosion—the one they used on the first shark—will have fully ionized their Mitsuushi rings. It’ll be at least another ten minutes before they can use them.”

Ferrol stared at her, not saying anything. But then, Roman thought numbly, there really wasn’t anything else to say.

On the screen the ships were still driving laterally, their accelerations up to eight gees. They can do it, Roman told himself, trying hard to believe it. Just a few more minutes.

And as he watched, the Starseeker faltered in its rush outward. Faltered, slowed to a stop… and began to fall back.

“Captain?” Marlowe said hesitantly. “I’m picking up those vultures now. They’ll be in position to set up an optical net in maybe fifteen minutes.”

Roman nodded. Of course the vultures would come for them; it was a pattern of nature out here, too inevitable for him to even feel anger about it. “Kennedy, send the vector for the 66802 system to the Tampy section,” he ordered quietly. “Tell the Handler to prepare for an emergency Jump as soon as Sleipnir’s in position.

Ferrol… arm the torpedo. Target toward the vultures, close-in blast—I don’t want them seeing which direction Sleipnir is pointing when we Jump.”

A muscle in Ferrol’s cheek twitched. “Understood, Captain,” he said, and turned to his task. A moment later, “Torpedo armed and ready, sir.”

“Fire.”

Roman watched the flare streak off toward the approaching vultures. Then, with an effort, he turned his attention back to the scope screen.

The Starseeker was still falling back toward the shark. Falling through the vulture shield… and all at once, the ship seemed to expand and vanish. Its attention no longer divided, the shark began accelerating again; and at an unheard-of ten gees set off in pursuit of the Jnana. “Handler reports Sleipnir in position, Captain,”

Kennedy said, her voice sounding distant in his ears.

“Set torpedo for five-second detonation.” Roman took a deep breath. To run away now… but there was absolutely nothing they could do. “Jump.”

The NCL 66802 system was just under two light-years away; two and a half days by Mitsuushi. Its collective fingers crossed, Amity settled down to wait.

Ten days later, neither the Jnana nor the Atlantis had joined them.