Timothy Zahn Warhorse

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You should have just told melt-face it was an order, and that you were his
superior officer, and that was that, Demarco sniffed. That s all the
explanation the stupid plant-lovers deserve.
Ferrol frowned at the other, a strange feeling curling through his stomach.
Somehow, he didn t remember Demarco as being quite this crude. If I m right,
he said quietly, we ve probably got a good chance of running into some sharks
along the way. Wwis-khaa and the others deserve to know what they re letting
themselves in for.
Demarco raised his eyebrows. I see some of the
Amity s heart-bleeding has rubbed off on you. Sir. So if we re not recruiting
watchdogs for the melt-faces, what the hell we want these miniature sharks
for?
do
We want them for transport, of course, Ferrol growled. Demarco was teetering
right on the edge of insubordination here. We ve been in a long, dead-end
track here, trying to capture and train space horses. Human beings are
predators, and the space horses can t or won t stand for that. But a
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space-going predator species might. Clear now?
Demarco snorted. If you say so. Sounds like the sort of wishy-wok stuff your
melt-
faced chummies would spout, though. If you ask me.
Quite suddenly, Ferrol decided he was tired of Demarco. All right then; try
this,
he said coldly.
We re going because I ve given you an order, and I m your captain, and that s
that.
Demarco s lip twisted, but he nodded. Yes, sir, he muttered, and turned back
to his console.
Chayne? Randall spoke up tentatively. Your melt-fa your Tampy signals he s
ready to go.
Ferrol took a deep breath, fighting for calm. Tell him to go ahead and Jump,
he ordered.
And wondered what had happened to his crew in the past year, to make them so
harshly bigoted.
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Timothy Zahn - Warhorse
Chapter 25
Arachne s director said they d alerted Earth and Prepyat via tachyon,
Yamoto s voice came over the comm laser. She sounded tired, and about as
emotionally drained as Roman felt. Not really surprising, under the
circumstances. I guess the message didn t get through.
It got through, all right, Roman told her. Just not soon enough.
Yamoto sighed. My fault, Captain. I should have alerted the colony as soon as
we arrived in the system, and the hell with any consequences.
Roman shook his head. It wouldn t have helped. Once we d Jumped to Sirius and
then back to Solomon system, we were already out of position to hit anywhere
near
Arachne itself. We couldn t have gotten here in time to stop Ferrol no matter
when you blew the whistle. It wasn t in any way your fault.
Yes, sir. She didn t sound like she believed it. I m ready to boost orbit
whenever you re ready.
Roman gave his helm display a quick scan. After four hours of a hard three-gee
acceleration/deceleration drive through Arachne system from their arrival Jump
point, Amity had finally reached the planet itself. The tactical showed their
course swinging close in to cut across Yamoto s own geosynchronous orbit& You
might as well just sit tight there, he decided. It ll probably be faster for
us to catch up than for you to fiddle with your orbit. Though what the hurry
was for, Roman really couldn t say by Yamoto s numbers, Ferrol and the
Scapa Flow were a good six hours ahead of them already, and
Amity s chances of tracking them down at this point were just fractionally
above absolute zero. We ll be alongside in about ten minutes.
Yes, sir.
At the helm, Kennedy half turned. Captain? I ve got a probable vector for
them now, if you d like to take a look.
Thank you. For a minute Roman studied the tactical and visual maps she d
produced. In the direction indicated
Was, basically, nothing. How probable this? he asked.
is
Only about seventy-five percent, actually, she admitted. The tapes Yamoto
made of Epilog s Jump are good and sharp, but you can only be so accurate from
half a kilometer away. Computer gives a ninety-nine percent probability for
this area a small circle appeared on the visual, centered around the original
vector but there are at least fifteen stars in there that ought to be visible
to a space horse.
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Even one as young as Epilog? Roman asked.
Kennedy shook her head. I don t know. Neither do the Tampies; I asked them.
And of course they wouldn t do anything so vulgar as to speculate& Roman
clenched his teeth, fighting down a sudden surge of anger at the aliens. This
wasn t
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Timothy Zahn - Warhorse their fault, either. Get me everything we have on
those stars, he directed
Kennedy. Let s see if we can figure out what Ferrol s up to.
He hadn t expected there to be much; and there wasn t. Estimated sizes,
estimated distances, spectral classes, estimated probabilities of solar
systems each listing had barely half a dozen lines. Not much there anyone
could want, Marlowe muttered.
Unless Ferrol knows something about one of them we don t, Roman pointed out.
Kennedy, do you have a list yet of what those datapacks he had might have
been?
Near as I can tell, all he accessed from the
Amity were the navigational locator program and the full Cygni Telescope
stellar mapping list, Kennedy said. Plus the Arachne data he gave Yamoto.
She told us he took six datapacks with him, which would be about right for [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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