by Janny Wurts
MacKenzie James sat immobile in his threadbare deck chair. 'This craft is fitted with several sets of back-up engines,' he admonished. 'Point Station personnel and Carsey sector authorities know better than to meddle with us.'
'Bastard,' Jensen said thickly. He moved gendy against the pressure of acceleration, his pellet gun trained steadily on his antagonist. 'Your mate was equally expendable?'
'Evans?' MacKenzie James did not change expression as the glare of the laser pencil snapped out. 'No Freer ever approached us without elaborate clandestine overtures and a meeting in private. Evans should have remembered.'
But Jensen's equilibrium had recovered. The vibration just prior to takeoff, surely that had been the lock cycling closed? Evans in all probability was on board. The control panels on the bridge seemed utterly dead; but with back-up systems, even now the mate might be piloting from a remote station elsewhere on Marity. If Evans was at the helm, Ensign Shields was going to have to fly her shapely ass off to keep up. Fortunately her ability was equal to her boasts.
Right now the primary directive was to take control before Marity gained enough charge to sequence her FTL drive. Icily composed in the half-light cast by the bridge control panels, Jensen shifted the target of his gun and squeezed the trigger.
The light-pen in MacKenzie's hand shattered. Fragments of casing raked his wrist and drew blood while the expended pellet screamed past his groin and imbedded in the stuffing of the adjacent crew chair.
Mac James moved, but this time Jensen was ready. Before the captain reached cover behind the bridge cowling, the Fleet officer had him cornered. Breathing hard, and sweating beneath his Freer robes, he trained his weapon squarely on the skip-runner's heart. 'Roll over. Cross your wrists behind your back. One wrong move, and you're dead.'
MacKenzie James grunted, eased his weight off his right forearm, and carefully extended it behind his waist. 'You're Marksman Elite?'
'Unfortunately for you,' said Jensen, concentrating more on the left hand of his captive than acknowledging the accolade he had striven for, and won with such pride at an exceptionally early age. Gun at the ready, the young officer loosened his robe and retrieved a pair of loop nooses, the thin, cutting type Fleet marines used to restrain everything from murderers to brawlers. He hooked the first over James's upraised wrists and jerked tight.
'Now raise your ankles, Captain.' James did so, and the second noose shortly trussed his legs.
Smiling raggedly from triumph and excitement, Jensen locked the ends and began to search the captain's person. The man was tautly muscled, which was unusual enough to inspire caution. Most skip-runners were slender to the point of fragility, the result of long hours lurking in null gravity, their ship's systems shut down to a whisper to avoid notice. MacKenzie James also carried no side arms, only a small knife in a sheath sewn into his boot. Jensen confiscated this, then shoved his prisoner awkwardly onto his back.
MacKenzie returned a cool, appraising stare that, even behind a pellet gun, Jensen found disturbing. 'You will tell me where Evans is piloting, clearly and quickly.'
The captive smiled with brazen effrontery. 'By now I expect what remains of my mate is being bundled up in a body bag.'
'Back at Station?' Jensen resisted an urge to step close; even bound, the captain was bulky enough to roll and knock him down. 'I'm not a fool, James. If Evans died on Station with the rest of the dock personnel, who guides this ship?'
MacKenzie's grin turned thoughtful. 'Well now, I could say with reasonable certainty that Marity flies on a hardwired connection between her accelerator banks and her coil regulator. Assuming I don't lie, any fool knows she'll blow when the condensers overheat.'
Jensen considered this, unpleasantly confronted by the mulish courage that had confounded so many officers of the law before him. The captain might be lying; but his reputation said otherwise, which placed Jensen squarely on the prongs of dilemma.
MacKenzie James stopped smiling. 'Don't think too long, boy. Since you so proudly blasted my laser-pen, I'll have to rummage around for my cutter tool to break the bridged circuit.'
'Shut up.' Jensen needed a second to clear his mind. Somewhere on Marity would be a kill switch to cut the drives in the event of emergency; the other fail-safes and override systems would be nonexistent, for skip-runner captains as a rule pushed their machinery over margin. The complication that this ship held to no specs, that she was a jumble of ingenuity and modifications hung together by the cleverest criminal in the Alliance meant Jensen was in too deep. If MacKenzie James were freed to right his bit of sabotage, chances were he would create additional havoc in the wiring, perhaps even contrive to regain advantage.
'I'll take my chances,' Jensen decided. But his confidence was forced. If Evans had made it on board, he was now in serious trouble.
With the nooses secured without slack to a deck fitting, MacKenzie James could not roll onto his stomach. Nothing important lay within range of his feet. Certain as he could be that his captive was secure, Jensen sealed the bridge behind him and descended into Marity's service level. Away from Point Station's fields, the descent shaft had no gravity. Already the chill of deepspace seemed to have penetrated its shadowy depths. Jensen drifted in a faint fog of condensation left by his breath, the ladder rungs icy beneath his sweating hands. His feet tingled with the knowledge that at any second a plasma weapon might sear upward and fry him like a fly on a web. The Freer robe swirled and caught at his ankles and knees. Jensen longed to shed the fabric, but dared not. Sewn into the sash was the transmitter that enabled Ensign Shields to track him, and Marity, through the deeps of space.
Jensen reached the base of the shaft without incident. Gun at the ready, he barely waited for his soles to grab on the decking before he started forward. His danger now redoubled, for the access corridor extended in both directions; MacKenzie's mate might easily slip into the bridge behind him and set his captain free. The fact that the mate had no key to release the nooses, and that the material of which they were made was extremely difficult to cut offered only slight reassurance. Under Mac James's spoken guidance, Evans might take control of Marity from the bridge.
Jensen glanced nervously over his shoulder, then rounded the crook in the corridor near the access door which had first admitted him. Beyond lay the hold, dark except for the blink of the indicator that showed the life-support system which served that portion of the ship was currently switched off. Jensen agonized for a moment in indecision. If the outer lock was sealed, then Evans was surely on board. No sense in crippling his judgment with worry if the man had died back on Station; crisply Jensen punched the stud he found near the hold's double safetied access latch.
Arc lights flashed on, lancing uncomfortably into pupils grown adjusted to the dark. Jensen squinted through glare off the port's bubble window. Beyond the crosshatch of struts and decking, the lock was securely closed. Nearby, garishly colored in the severe illumination, lay the cargo capsule Jensen remembered from the apron back on Station. Fear raised gooseflesh at the nape of his neck. Whether or not MacKenzie James had triggered a remote control in the opened pilot's panel, that capsule had not wheeled on board by itself. Skip-runner's mate Evans had assuredly made lift-off, which made light of any sort a liability. Jensen set his hand on the stud to kill the arcs, and stopped, caught short by something bulky that drifted above the grating which floored the hold.
The thing twisted gently in null grav. Jensen made out the limp form of a man, and realized he'd been lucky. The automatic cutoff functions of lift had trapped Evans within the hold. Jensen glanced swiftly at the gauges in the panel by the lock controls. Marity's hold maintained atmosphere, but no recirculation for oxygen. As a safeguard against stowaways and other breaches of security, cargo areas as a rule did not allow manual access to the habitable portions of the ship. Dependent upon rescue from within, Marity's mate was probably hypothermic, for the cold of deepspace would swiftly permeate the uninsulated hold.
Jensen considered, t
hen cold-bloodedly stabbed the light stud off. By now a steady whine pervaded the corridor; Marity's engines climbed steadily toward overload. Evans probably knew the location of the emergency cutoffs, but it would likely take too long to force the information out of him. Jensen quashed his last pang of conscience.
The gloom seemed deeper on Marity's lower deck, and the cold more cutting. Though the breath came ragged in his throat, the young officer clung righteously to his purpose. The mate was a skip-runner's accomplice, a criminal no invested Fleet officer could condone.
Jensen ducked through a companionway. His eyes reflexively traced the layout of cables on the far side. Guided by their convergence, he pressed forward and ascended a small ramp, half-stumbling over the shallowly raised treads. The transmitter sewn into his sash dug into his waist, reminding that he had to succeed, or leave Ensign Shields to answer to Fleet admiralty for diverting a courier from dispatch duty.
The whine of stressed engines rose relentlessly, throwing off unpleasant harmonics. Jensen covered his ears with his hands and hurried blindly forward. The cables threaded through a conduit above a small hatch, and, by the shielded panels, Jensen figured the drive units lay immediately beyond. If he were forced to tear the coils out barehanded to prevent an explosion, he wondered whether the burns would prevent him from manipulating his gun.
But that concern became secondary when Jensen discovered the shielded doorway was secured with a retina lock, inoperable except to Mac James, and maybe his mate. With no alternative left but to fetch Evans, he returned down the access corridor toward the hold.
But when he banged the switch once again, the arcs glared off a vista of empty grating. The cargo capsule lay open in the harsh light, and Evans was nowhere to be seen. With a crawling chill that had nothing to do with sweat, Jensen spun and raced for the bridge ladder. He'd made an idiot's misjudgment. Marity was a skip-runner's craft; he should never have assumed her specs would conform to those of a common merchanter.
The rungs themselves hampered, spaced as they were to a design that differed from Fleet regulation. Clumsily shortening his reach, Jensen made more noise than he intended. Above, the gruff voice of MacKenzie James called warning.
'Company, mate. Initiate without cross-check and take cover. I trust your coordinates from memory.'
Evans returned a protest, just as Jensen reached the upper level. The shift from weightlessness to induced gravity blunted his speed, yet still he managed to fling himself into cover behind an electronics housing. Aware of him, Evans still did not turn, but lingered to fine-tune something in the control panel. Noosed helplessly to the crew chair, MacKenzie James cursed viciously.
Driven by threat of failure, Jensen raised his gun and fired. His pellet hammered Evans in the back of the head. Instantly dead, the mate pitched forward into the control banks. His body quivered once, and slipped to the deck, leaving vivid smears on the cowling.
Jensen shivered with relief. In the icy clarity of adrenaline rush, he noticed that MacKenzie James said nothing at all; but his steely eyes bored with steady and unsettling intensity into the Fleet officer who had gunned down his mate. He seemed almost to be listening for something.
Jensen discovered why a moment later. Marity's engines died to a whisper. There followed a peculiar hesitation in time, that blurring transition which signalled the drop into FTL.
Jensen knew a chill of apprehension. He had not killed swiftly enough. Now she hurtled through deepspace toward a destination only MacKenzie James and his dead first mate would know. Still, though the ship was untraceable to the courier, Jensen did not lose control. The prize, the skip-runner captain whose capture would gain him advancement, was still at his mercy.
Jensen dug in the pouch sewn into the Freer robe for another round of ammo. His fingers snagged in the fabric; he swore and wrestled them free, while from the deck, MacKenzie James broke his silence.
'Most Freer carry their weapons on a belt across their chests. The pouch is for pills to kill parasites, and the clip on the seam hangs their water skins.'
Jensen clamped his jaw tight, methodically busy with reloading. If Mac James chose to make conversation, he would have a purpose other than boredom.
'Godfrey, who's left to shoot but me?' The skip-runner never glanced at the corpse, oozing blood an arm's length from him.
Jensen snapped a fresh round into the magazine of the gun and tried to figure why Mac James might wish to distract him with chatter. Quite dangerously, the stakes had altered. He might hold the upper hand, but the captain was not entirely at his mercy. With Marity's major controls stripped of function and her FTL hurtling her toward an unknown destination, Jensen shoved back the first, creeping stir of doubt. He could defeat the retina lock over the drive access hatch by dragging his captive down below and manhandling him up to the sensors. But disabling Marity's FTL condensers would do no good if he had no inkling of her position. Jensen stepped over the mate's sprawled feet. Most of the screens were opaque, empty of data as the rest of the controls. As he surveyed the opened cowling and tightly racked maze of exposed boards, it occurred to him that Mac James might have prepared his own diabolical sort of defense: Marity was probably inoperable by any hand but her captain's. Jensen clenched his hands, rage at his predicament momentarily making him dizzy. He would come out of this on top, with the promotion he was long since due. Freshly determined, he searched out the stop-marker coordinates that glimmered on the navigational board.
The fix was still within Carsey Sector, and surprisingly familiar. That James would wish Marity to emerge only hours away from the wreckage he had left on Point Station bespoke unsettling confidence. Jensen hid his hands in his robe, too careful to give way to elation as he identified the fix as Castleton's World, a lifeless planet until recently, when Fleet Command had cut ground there for a large-scale outpost. Two squadrons patrolled there, with a dreadnought in synchronous orbit to maintain security for the duration of the construction.
Jensen turned slowly from the controls, starded to find that MacKenzie James seemed to be sleeping. Ripped with an irrational desire to destroy the man's nerveless peace, the Fleet officer said, 'Castleton's isn't the refuge you hoped for, not anymore.'
MacKenzie James replied without opening his eyes. 'You're not much in the confidence of your superiors, are you, boy? Or maybe the news is too recent, or the planned assault on Bethesda makes Fleet brass too busy to keep current.'
The assault on Bethesda was supposed to be top secret. Horrified that a common skip-runner should be party to Fleet secrets, Jensen stiffened. He leveled the barrel of his pellet gun just as the gray eyes of his captive flicked open. They reflected a cold and bloodless amusement that made him ache to pull the trigger.
'Khalia,' said MacKenzie James with uninfected plainness. 'The new base on Castleton's was overrun, utterly, and stripped of all survivors.'
Disbelief made Jensen tremble. Even the hand which held his weapon was not exempt. The captain had to be lying, his words a ploy to provoke a careless reaction. Only Jensen made it a point never to be careless.
Mac James shrugged, if you aren't going to kill me out of pique, you might want to clear the remains of my mate from the bridge. Because unless you wish to become a slave of the Khalia, I'll need to reconnect some circuitry without tripping over dead meat.'
The sheer effrontery of the suggestion undid Jensen's poise. 'You think I'm a fool?'
Mac James stirred against the confines of his bonds. 'Yes, but how much of one I'm waiting to find out.'
Jensen's jaw jerked tight. He pointed his gun to the deck, viciously flipped on the safety, then turned his back on his prisoner. All sensor displays were lifeless; when Marity broke out of FTL, no method remained to determine whether the ships which would greet her were Fleet, or enemy; and hell only knew if the defensive shields had power. Jensen felt a detestable sense of helplessness. Mac James had him boxed; not being a hardware man, he lacked the knowledge to hack the electronics back into working order.
Mac James drawled lazily at his captor's back. 'The sensors and analog screens are operational, boy, but you'll need to engage the power switch.'
Jensen hesitated out of principle. The control panel might possibly be booby-trapped: Yet logic dictated that Mac James would hardly plot murder while still under restraint, not unless he planned to die slowly of dehydration. Alert for surprises, Jensen hunted among the controls and flipped the appropriate switch. The analog panel hummed to life, and snow hazed the monitor, while the sensors gathered data. Presently, the haze subsided to black, which was normal; no image would resolve until Marity re-entered normal space.
Jensen tried the power switches for weaponry, without success. The guidance computer also proved to be dead, and only the watching presence of MacKenzie James prevented Jensen from hammering the panels in frustration. The chronometer by Marity's autopilot alone showed any indicators, the most maddening of which informed that re-entry into sub-light at Castleton's was barely thirty minutes off.
Jensen paced. Careful to stay within the perimeters of Marity's artificial gravity, he avoided the congealing runnels of Evans's blood, and also that portion of deck included in MacKenzie's field of view. He dared not give the skip-runner captain his liberty. Yet to risk re-entry near a base under Khalian control without fire power or maneuverability begged the most terrible fate. Not least, a concern the young officer would never have, admitted out loud, was the fact he had never seen action against the enemy. Jensen had never doubted his courage. But the possibility of closing with the enemy in a small, converted merchanter like Marity frayed his confidence to tatters.
