“I hereby relieve you of command.”

Chapter 28

It had been a moment Ferrol had thought about ever since coming aboard the Amity, a moment he’d thought about, and worried about, and occasionally dreamed about. A moment that had been part of the background of his mind for over a year now.

A moment that, with all that preparation, surely ought to have been easier.

The bridge was deathly silent, even the occasional clicks and beeps of recording and sensing instruments sounding muted to him. The crewers were silent, too, for the most part frozen in place like so many statues. Ferrol kept the bulk of his attention on Roman, forcing himself to meet the other’s eyes as he fought back the strange sense of guilt and shame and waited tautly for the inevitable explosion of disbelief and rage.

The explosion never came. “May I see that?” the captain asked calmly, extending a hand toward Ferrol.

Swallowing hard, Ferrol unstrapped and floated across to the other, planting one foot into a velgrip patch. Roman took the envelope, glanced once at the Senator’s handwriting on its face, and opened it. Withdrawing the paper inside, throwing a speculative look at Ferrol as he did so, he began to read.

Ferrol licked his upper lip, his eyes darting around the bridge. This was the critical moment, the moment when the entire thing hung by a thread. If Roman refused to accept the Senate directive—if he refused to relinquish his command—

His darting glance touched Kennedy… and froze there.

He licked his lip again, the knot in his stomach tightening painfully as all of the Senator’s veiled warnings about Kennedy flooded back at once. The most dangerous person on the Amity, he’d called her… and as Ferrol looked into those eyes—those rock-hard eyes, gazing unblinkingly straight back at him—he had no doubt whatsoever that the Senator had been right.

He took a careful breath, suddenly and acutely aware of the flat bulge of the needle gun pressing into his ribs beneath his tunic. You’ll be able to handle her, the Senator had assured him; but gazing into those eyes, Ferrol wasn’t nearly so sure of that. If she was indeed a trained professional, his only chance would be to make sure he shot first.

From Roman came a faint rustle of paper; with an odd combination of relief and reluctance, Ferrol broke his gaze from Kennedy and looked back at the captain. “I presume,” the other said, almost conversationally, “that you have some explanation for this.” He waved the paper gently.

“I believe the directive is self-explanatory,” Ferrol told him.

“The directive itself is quite clear, yes,” Roman agreed coolly. “I was referring to the reason you’ve chosen this particular moment to invoke it.”

Ferrol took a deep breath. “I’m not here for a debate, Captain,” he said, fighting against a quaver in his voice. This was hard enough without Roman dragging out the discussion. “The only question you need to consider at the moment is whether you’re going to obey that directive. Yes or no.”

Once again he braced himself for an explosion… and once again the explosion didn’t come. Roman gazed expressionlessly at him for a long moment; then, with only a touch of hesitation, he keyed his intercom. “All crewers: this is Captain Roman,” he said, his eyes steady on Ferrol. “As of this moment, per a Senate directive… I’m relinquishing command of the Amity to Commander Ferrol.”

He keyed off and, releasing his restraints, pulled himself out of the command chair.

“Your orders, Captain?” he asked Ferrol.

Ferrol looked down at the empty command chair, fighting back the acrid surge of shame rumbling through his stomach and wishing bitterly that Roman would at least show some resentment over what had just been done to him. To humiliate a captain in front of his crew this way was a horrible thing to do to any man; to do it to someone who accepted the blow uncomplainingly was absolute hell.

But on the other hand, that sense of guilt might be exactly what Roman was going for. Steeling himself, Ferrol pulled off the velgrip patch and eased himself into the command chair. It felt damned awkward; but if there was one thing he’d learned from the Senator, it was that appearances and symbols were important aspects of command. “Marlowe; status report on the sharks,” he said, keying for scanner repeater.

“They’re still coming,” the other growled.

“Their ETA to the corral?”

“At current acceleration, and assuming a comparable deceleration phase, about two hours.”

Two hours. For a moment Ferrol studied the tactical display. The three Tampy space horses were still giving ground; but the display now showed two more vectoring in toward the defenders from behind and upslope, and even as he watched a third Jumped into view. The rest of the Tampy empire, clearly alerted to the threat, throwing everything they had left into the Kialinninni system in a desperate effort to defend their corral.

Exposing the rest of their space horses to the attacking sharks… and in the process completing the total destruction of their space-going capabilities.

It was, perhaps, the last irony. For nine straight years now Ferrol had dreamed of playing a part in the Tampies’ downfall; had hatched scheme after grandiose scheme designed to drive them from space and to pay them back in full for their cold-blooded theft of his world. And now, after all that planning, they were going to do the job all by themselves. By themselves, with a little help from the cycles of nature they professed such love for.

And all Ferrol had to do, quite literally, was nothing. Exactly nothing. For the next two hours.

“Commander, we’re wasting time.”

Ferrol looked up at Marlowe. “Your objections are noted,” he said coolly.

“Kennedy, do we still have that two-gee ace/dec course to the space horse corral on line?”

She was still facing him, that same rock-hard expression on her face. “We do.”

“Good,” Ferrol said. “Alert the Handler, then, and let’s get going.”

She didn’t move. “And what exactly do you intend to do there?”

He met her gaze, determined not to be intimidated. “As I said before, I’m not here for a debate, Lieutenant,” he said. “You have your orders; carry them out.”

“You don’t need to take us in to the corral to keep the Cordonale from sending help,” Roman said quietly from beside him. “And the longer you hold us in this system, the more risk you’re taking that the sharks or more vultures will reach us before the Scapa Flow can clear away the optical net.”

“I’m aware of that,” Ferrol growled, feeling a flash of annoyance that Roman had read his thoughts and plans so easily. “We’re not going there to hide—we’re going there to open the corral netting and let the space horses go—”

It hadn’t been what he’d intended to say; and judging from Roman’s expression, it had come as a surprise to him, too. “We’re what?” he asked carefully.

“You heard me,” Ferrol told him curtly… and, actually, now that he thought about it, it wasn’t such a bad idea. There was no particular reason why the space horses should have to suffer along with their Tampy masters, after all. Destroyed or scattered, the end result would be the same. “Unless,” he added to Roman, “you’d rather see the sharks get them.”

For a long moment Roman stared at him in silence. “So this is how you intend to get your revenge,” he said, very quietly.

“They won’t be hurt—just trapped on their own worlds, out of our way,” Ferrol countered. “Would you rather we went to war and did the job more permanently?”

“You’ve seen space horses in action,” Roman said, as if Ferrol hadn’t spoken.

“You know how poorly they handle stress situations. Do you really still believe the Tampies have a secret fleet of warhorses hidden off somewhere?”