“Got it—hold it a second,” Demarco interrupted himself. “Another blip just popped into view. Directly astern… looks like a damn Tampy ship.”
Ferrol hissed between his teeth. “Same orders,” he told Demarco. “Back behind the calf when I give the word.”
“We’ll still be in full view of the Tampy ship there,” Reese pointed out, his voice tight. “In fact, we’ll be broadside to it—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ferrol cut him off. “They’re too far back to reach us with an ion beam, even if they have one, and they’re not likely to use anything heavier.”
Reese frowned at the tactical display. “Why not?”
“Because they might hit the calf, of course,” Ferrol growled. “Besides, I don’t think they’d risk doing anything that far out of official character, not with the Dryden sitting there watching.” He released the cutoff switch, throwing a glance at the timer as he did so. A minute and a half to go. “Just one moment longer, Captain,”
he called. “We’ve got the stack of papers here and are copying them for transmission.”
“Of course you are,” the other said, almost soothingly. “Well, it’s been fun, Captain, but I think we’ve run this one pretty well into the ground. Shall we go ahead and call it quits, or are you really determined to waste more time sending over a set of forged documents?”
Ferrol felt his lip twist. If there was one thing he hated, it was having to put up with a condescending sense of humor. “Are you officially notifying me that I’m under arrest?” he countered.
“Consider yourself notified. You didn’t really expect that spun-sugar story of yours to get you very far, did you?”
“It was worth a try. You’d be surprised at the number of people whose brains go into coma-mode when they see official-looking paper.” Ferrol snapped his fingers and gestured to Demarco. The other nodded, and abruptly the drive roared to life, pushing Ferrol back into his seat.
He expected the Dryden’s captain to react with surprise or even anger at the sudden maneuver; but if the other was even annoyed it didn’t show in his voice. “Whatever you’re planning, Captain, let me assure you that it won’t work,” he said calmly.
“Our sensors show your outer hull and Mitsuushi ring are carrying a heavy positive charge, and we both know you can’t possibly outrun us in normal space.”
“I trust that after we’ve been officially arrested my people will be taken aboard your ship,” Ferrol said, ignoring the other’s comment. The Scapa Flow was beginning to move now; another minute and the Dryden’s ion beams would be at least partially blocked by the quiescent space horse calf still wrapped in the Scapa Flow’s netting. “I’d just as soon your melted-face chummies out there don’t get their hands on my ship, either.”
“You have something against Tampies?”
For a moment the memories flooded back; ruthlessly, Ferrol forced them down. He couldn’t afford emotional distractions right now. “Let’s just say I know what they’re capable of,” he said shortly. “Despite Senate propaganda to the contrary.”
The Dryden’s captain seemed to digest that. “Interesting comment,” he said after a moment. “Perhaps we can delve into the subject in more depth on the trip back. As it happens, the Tampies out there aren’t connected with this at all.”
Ferrol snorted under his breath. “Not that it matters,” he said. “Even if they’re not just out here to monitor your poacher hunt, it’s a sure bet that it was the Tampies who gave you the original orders.”
The pause was brief, but it was long enough for Ferrol to recognize that his gibe had hit a nerve. “Our orders came from the Senate, Captain,” the other said evenly.
“You really ought to be on our side,” Ferrol told him. “As long as the Tampies have a monopoly on ownership and control of space horses, you and I and the whole Cordonale are going to be stuck dancing to their tune. The only way to break that hold—”
“Prepare to receive boarders, Captain,” the other interrupted him. His voice was no longer bantering.
Well, Ferrol thought, gritting his teeth, it was worth a try. And perhaps more to the point, it had gained the Scapa Flow the rest of the time it needed. The ship was in position; the timer showed fifteen seconds to full charge. Slapping the laser cutoff, Ferrol keyed for all-ship intercom. “Mitsuushi in twenty seconds,” he announced.
“And brace yourselves—this could be rocky.” He shifted his attention to Demarco.
“The minute you have full charge on the capacitors, fire them both down the tether,” he instructed. “If I’m right, we’ll have the Mitsuushi back for only a few seconds—don’t miss the window.”
“Ferrol, what—?”
“Shut up, Reese,” Ferrol cut him off, his eyes on the tactical display. The Dryden was driving laterally now, swinging around the space horse calf to where it would again have a clear shot with its ion beams. A leisurely maneuver—at current solar wind fluxes it would take another hour or more for the charge on the Scapa Flow’s hull to be neutralized, and the captain over there knew it. Mentally crossing his fingers, Ferrol wedged himself tighter into his chair and watched the timer cross to zero. “Go,” he ordered.
The double crack! rocked the ship; and the sound was still echoing in Ferrol’s ears as the main display lit up with a brilliant flash. “We just lost the netting and tether!” Demarco shouted as the hull-stress alarm began its warbling. “The current must have vaporized them.”
“Get ready!” Ferrol shouted back, his eyes on the surface charge indicator. Ahead of the Scapa Flow, two capacitors’ worth of free electrons combined with those from the vaporized netting fibers, the whole mass of them rushing at Van de Graaff speeds toward the most electron-deficient object anywhere around them—
The hull-stress alarm tone was moving up the scale, but Ferrol hardly heard it. On his screen the Mitsuushi sensors showed the positive charge dropping like a rock straight toward—
“Hull’s neutral!” he barked at Demarco. “Go!”
And an instant later the space horse calf, the Dryden, and the stars all vanished.
They’d made it.
Ferrol took a deep breath. I’ll be damned, he thought. It worked. “Status?”
“Mitsuushi’s clean but shaky,” Visocky’s voice reported from the engine room. “If we don’t make breakout in an hour the equipment’ll do it for us. All that charge the capacitors dumped on the middle hull has to be bled off sometime soon, too.”
Ferrol nodded. “We’ll make breakout in three minutes, alter course and go another ten. At that point we should be able to take as much cleanup time as we need without worrying about unexpected company.”
He switched off, and turned to find Reese looking at him. His expression—“You have something to say, Reese?”
“We’re heading home now, I take it?”
“There’s not much point in doing anything else,” Ferrol told him. “Eventually, the pro-Tampies will ease up on this yishyar patrol; until then, there’s not much we can do. Unless you want to start scouring systems at random?”
“Not really.” Reese glanced at the blackness on the main display. “That was a hell of a chance you just took. I may not know all that much about starships, but I do know that triggering what amounted to a major lightning bolt between the space horse and the Scapa Flow could have taken out both the hull’s micro seams and the Mitsuushi ring in the bargain.”
Ferrol gazed at him. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Reese. You don’t know much about starships.”
Reese’s eyes hardened. “You could have shunted the capacitor charge directly to the outer hull,” he said, his voice edging into accusation. “You didn’t need to vaporize the netting and tether line.”
“I wanted the extra electron cloud between us and the Dryden in case they tried bringing up the ion beam again,” Ferrol said, keeping his voice level. “Besides, shunting directly to the hull would have carried its own set of risks.”