“Net guns ready,” Demarco announced. “Range to target… 1.4 kilometers. Plates at full charge.”
Ferrol consciously relaxed his jaw muscles. This was it. “Stand by, primary gun.
Ready… fire.”
Beneath him, the Scapa Flow bucked once as, on the tactical display, the missile shape of the coiled net appeared, dead on target for the calf, its tether lines snaking along behind it. Ferrol held his breath, his eyes on the calf. Just a few more seconds, he mentally urged it. Stay put just a few more seconds. On the screen the missile shape was disintegrating, unwrapping into an almost insubstantially thin mesh as it neared the calf. Just a few more seconds…
And, too late, the calf noticed the object hurling toward it. The missile—or what was left of it—jerked as it was telekened to a halt… but the strands of the mesh were far too thin for the creature to get an adequate grip on. An instant later the net hit, wrapping itself solidly around the calf—
“Stun it!” Ferrol snapped.
The Scapa Flow bucked again, far more violently this time, as the netted calf tried to pull away from its captor; but even as Ferrol was slammed back into his seat cushions he heard the muffled crack! of the Scapa Flow’s huge capacitors. On the screen, the net flared briefly with coronal discharge… and the calf stopped moving.
Across the bridge, Reese swore reverently under his breath. “You did it. You really did it.”
Ferrol wiped a hand across his mouth. “Assuming we haven’t killed it, yes. Mai?”
Demarco spread his hands. “Who can tell with a space horse? Nothing obviously wrong with it, though.”
“Good.”
A flashing light caught Ferrol’s attention: the Scapa Flow’s middle hull, now highly positively charged from the capacitors’ discharge, was threatening to arc to the outer hull. “Shorting to outer hull,” Demarco announced, reaching for the proper switch.
“Hold it a minute,” Ferrol ordered, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling with unpleasant premonition. Shorting the middle and outer hulls together would leave the outer hull positively charged until it collected enough solar wind electrons to neutralize the imbalance … leaving the Mitsuushi inoperable until the process was complete. “Give me a full scan of the immediate area first,” he told Demarco.
“Look for indications that the ship we tagged earlier might be skulking around out there.”
Demarco gave a curt nod and busied himself at the scanners. Ferrol waited, trying to ignore the flashing arc-danger warning, and after a minute Demarco straightened up. “Looks clear,” he reported. “Of course, he could be hanging way back somewhere with a Mitsuushi intercept loop already programmed in.”
Ferrol chewed at his lower lip. A distinct possibility… “All right,” he said slowly.
“Short to outer hull; then isolate the middle hull again and start the capacitors charging again. Better charge the backup set, too.”
Demarco threw him a puzzled look, but nodded. “Right.” Another crack!—“Charge drained to outer hull,” he announced. “Outer hull now isolated…
charging commencing.”
“Good,” Ferrol said, shifting his attention back to the space horse calf and keying for the air lock ready room. “Townne, you and Hlinka better get moving—I want the space horse secured for travel in half an hour.”
“Acknowledged, Chay—”
“Anomalous motion!” Demarco snapped. “Five thousand kilometers out, coming straight toward us.”
“What?” Reese gasped. “God, Ferrol—”
On Ferrol’s board the laser comm light went on. “Unidentified ship,” a quiet voice came over the speaker, “this is Captain Haml Roman aboard the C.S.S. Dryden.
You’re ordered to shut down your drive and prepare to be boarded.”
“I see I was right,” Ferrol commented into the brittle silence. “It was an unusually patient captain. I guess you’d better belay that securing party, Townne.”
“My God, Ferrol,” Reese breathed. “You’re not going to surrender, are you? God, if I’m caught here—”
“Shut up or leave the bridge,” Ferrol cut him off evenly, his eyes flicking across the readouts. The warship wasn’t moving very quickly, but even at its current speed it would be within reasonable boarding range in ten minutes or less, with boarders knocking at the hatches five minutes after that. The Scapa Flow wouldn’t be going anywhere on Mitsuushi before then, either: the outer sensors indicated the Dryden had its ion beams playing across the Scapa Flow’s hull, charging it and its attached Mitsuushi ring to uselessness.
Or rather, trying to charge it. At the moment, the earlier discharge from the capacitors had the hull already holding just about all the charge it could, with the Dryden’s beams largely being deflected uselessly off into space. A situation entirely to Ferrol’s liking… and one his opposite number on the Dryden might well have missed. “Capacitor status, Mai.”
“Main set shows three minutes to full charge,” Demarco reported. “Another four on the backups.”
Ferrol nodded, keying a countdown on his board timer where he could keep an eye on it. This was going to be tight. “Let’s see if we can stall him a little,” he said to no one in particular.
He tapped for comm control and the Scappa Flow’s brand-new Domino III voice refractor, feeling a flicker of grim satisfaction at his own foresight in persuading the Senator to shell out the cash for the latter. With the Domino subtly altering the tones and frequency levels of his voice, the ship out there could analyze it forever without getting anything they could match up against a voiceprint file. The Senator had maintained the gadget was a waste of money; Ferrol had convinced him otherwise.
A light went on: the Scapa Flow’s laser had locked onto its target. “Captain, this is Professor John English aboard the research ship Milan,” he said, putting just a touch of professorial stuffiness into his voice. “We’re doing some highly delicate work here, and we’d greatly appreciate it if you’d keep your distance.”
“Would you now,” the other came back. “May I ask what sort of work that might be?”
“We’re banding space horses, of course,” Ferrol told him. The Dryden, he noted, hadn’t slowed its approach in the slightest. Not that he’d really expected it to.
“Trying to learn their movement patterns and social habits. Though I presume a mere civil servant like yourself wouldn’t have heard of our project.”
“We don’t get the more esoteric scientific journals out on border duty, no,” the captain said with a dryness that showed he didn’t believe a word of it. “Going to strap thirty-six square kilometers of tachyon transceiver to it, are you?”
“Our version is considerably more compact,” Ferrol said, improvising easily. “It’s an experimental system, capable only of transmitting random blips of tachyon static. We hope that a modified version may someday be adapted for direct ship-toship or ground-to-ship communication.”
“Certainly a worthwhile goal to shoot for. As long as we’re on the subject of ships, perhaps you’d care to explain why yours isn’t listed on our registry.”
“Oh, we’re probably too new,” Ferrol said, keeping the bulk of his attention on the capacitor countdown timer and the scene on the main tactical display. The Scapa Flow was almost exactly broadside to the Dryden’s approach vector, a fairly lousy position to be in. “We registered only a couple of months ago, just before we headed out,” he added. “You really ought to make it a point to have your registry updated more frequently.”
“Ah,” the other said. “That must be it. No doubt the procedure will be simplified once you get your miracle micro tachyon transceiver under better control. I don’t suppose that along with your registry papers you’d happen to have written permission from the Tampies to be out here poking around their yishyar system?”
“Of course we do,” Ferrol said, trying to sound simultaneously haughty and injured. “And a Senate directive, and a release from the Starforce, and a half-dozen other pieces of official pontification. It’s astonishing sometimes how much paper it takes to run even a simple scientific expedition. Let me dig everything out of storage and have the computer send you over some copies.” He touched the cutoff switch. “Mai, when I give the word, swing us around so that the calf’s between us and the Dryden. Don’t worry about straining the tether or netting—we’re not going to be keeping them, anyway.”