by Janny Wurts
'Snarking hell, Jensen. You damned near got us roasted. You knew Freeborn stalkers were loose out there! For that I'd like to push your face in. I wonder if you understand how close we came to being ionized?'
Jensen swung his crew chair from the screens. His dark eyes showed not the slightest trace of regret. 'Try to remember how close,' he said. 'If you lose Marity on me, that stalker mine will be the only excuse we have to offer at our defense briefing.'
'And may you shrivel in front of the ladies for that,' snapped Harris. He wanted a drink, and a chance to take a leak in real gravity. What began as a lark had turned seriously sour; until the sensors signaled Marity's transit from FTL, nothing remained but to wait and brood, because certainly no sane man was going to fathom the intentions of Lieutenant Jensen.
* * *
The transit lasted days. Harris slept, or banged about in the chaser's tiny galley unearthing the beer he had stashed where he swore no Fleet inspector would check, never mind that access to his cache took most of his off-watch time. He needed his comforts. A man couldn't get booze in detention; to Harris's thinking that was precisely where Shearborn's hare-brained officers would be headed.
'Autolog won't lie for us,' he carped when the lieutenant in command crossed paths with him at meal time.
Jensen refused to debate.
Harris parked the heels of his boots on the table and cradled his mug, which untruthfully read coffee, between his knees. But even a barbarity of this magnitude provoked no reaction. Nettled by the lieutenant's secretive silence, the pilot added, 'A leap this long could send us clear to Halpern's.' Which was about as far from Khalian raid sites as a ship could go, and stay within charted Alliance space. 'You better think up a very fancy alibi.'
Jensen sat down opposite, drank his orange juice in chilly stillness. His uniform looked as if he had just stepped off parade. No stubble shadowed his chin. Just when had he taken time to groom? Harris wondered. Since the jump to FTL, the man had done little else but pace before the analog's blank screen, brooding over the unguessable motives of Marity's skip-runner captain.
* * *
Despite such fanatical vigilance, the tracking alarm caught Shearborn's crew of two napping. Harris shambled from his bunk, stretching like a bear and complaining of a hangover. As always, he slept in his uniform. Jensen had not. He bolted without ceremony from his berth, clad in fleur-de-lis pajamas that looked like they had been starched with his uniforms.
'You guessed right,' he announced when Harris reached the bridge. 'Marity broke light speed in Halpern's Sector.' He flicked irritably at his uncombed hair and killed the FTL drives. The Shearborn abruptly ended transit, underwent that unnerving blurring of edges that heralded return to analog navigation.
Harris winced as his hangover flared in sympathy. Once reality stabilized, he laid his cheek against the cowling of the companionway and muttered something concerning martyrs and zealously sober commanders.
Jensen ignored the comment, fingers drumming impatience while the sensors assimilated data and the screens flashed to life.
Visual display revealed the dim red disk of a dwarf star, a strangling haze of interstellar dust, and no immediate reason for Marity's choice of destination. Jensen chewed his lip. 'Why should a planetless star in Halpern's interest MacKenzie James?'
Harris pitched himself into the pilot's chair, his coveralls halfway unfastened. He studied the readouts, then shot his companion a look of surprise. 'That's Cassix's star.' The lieutenant continued to look blank, which proved to a certainty that his source network had not included scientists. Harris explained. 'Any test pilot knows. That's the site of Fleet's classified orbital R&D lab - the deep-space flight-and-weapons division, where the fancy new gadgetry gets prototyped. Security like a church vault, though. A skip-runner shouldn't be able to get close.'
But along with gunrunning, MacKenzie James's speciality was trafficking military secrets; he'd stolen records from Fleet Base once and gotten away clean. Uncomfortably, Jensen considered implications. The skip-runner was a dangerously subtle man. If the Shearborn's crew caught him attempting a raid upon the Cassix base, they would instantly become heroes.
Jensen thought quickly. 'Where's Marity? Have we still got a fix on her?'
Harris raised his brows with dry sarcasm. 'You haven't looked through the tail port?'
Jensen did so, and colored as if caught in a gaffe. The Marity drifted off the Shearborn's stern, so close that the scuffs of every careless docking could be counted in her paint. To the last worn strut, the craft looked her part; that of a privately owned, hard-run cargo carrier that had suffered and survived a succession of mediocre pilots. Scratches to the contrary, the man at the Marity's helm had to be Harris's equal or better to have achieved her present position with such delicacy. The chaser's most sensitive motion detectors had tripped no alarm.
'Serves you right for leaving FTL without taking precautions,' muttered Harris. 'That merchanter's inside our shield perimeter. If Mac James is inside, he's certainly laughing his tail off.'
Yet Jensen surmised that the truth was very different. MacKenzie James had a smile like crystallized antifreeze; his eyes could be unnervingly direct, but no man in Fleet uniform had ever known the skip-runner captain to laugh.
When the Shearborn's lieutenant offered neither comment nor orders, Harris's annoyance shifted to suspicion. 'Why should a criminal of Mac James's reputation lure us out here in the first place? I say you've played right into this skip-runner's hands. Or did you maybe agree to collaborate with him beforehand?'
Jensen spun from the analog screen, furious. Whatever rejoinder he intended never left his lips. That instant the communications speaker crackled crisply to life.
'Godfrey, but you boys like to bicker,' drawled a voice. The accent was vague and untraceable, trademark of any operation engineered by MacKenzie James. Harris swore in astonishment, that any skip-runner alive should brazenly commandeer a monitored Fleet com band. Across the compartment, Lieutenant Jensen went threateningly still and cold.
Incisive as always, the skip-runner captain resumed, if your pilot can fly covert, and if between you the initiative can be gathered to eavesdrop on local transmissions, you'll discover a terrorist action in progress. The director of research on Cassix is being coerced into breach of Alliance security. Now it happens that the Shearborn is the only armed vessel on patrol in this system. You'd better prepare to intervene, because your course log can't be erased, and your careers will both be stewed if you can't justify your precipitous withdrawal at Dead Star.'
Harris slammed a fist into his crew chair and wished he could kick flesh. 'Well, happy snarking holiday! Just who in hell does that arrogant sonuvabitch think to impress?'
But MacKenzie James returned no rejoinder. The Marity vanished, dissolved from continuum into FTL, leaving the Shearborn drifting unprepared. The instruments which flagged ion trails were not yet reset; neither Fleet officer had thought that a necessity, since every current theory assured them that the departure of the skip-runner's craft should not have happened solo. Within such close proximity, Shearborn should have been swept along as the coil fields collapsed. Yet Marity went FTL without a flicker of protest from the instruments.
'We've lost him.' Harris lifted his opened hands, his light eyes bright with disbelief. 'That rumor must be true, then. The bastard buys technology from outside.'
'Maybe something an Indie found,' Harris speculated.
But the whys and hows of Marity's systems were suddenly the least of the issue. Hunched in the command chair with a frown of obsessed concentration, Lieutenant Jensen rose to the challenge. Cassix Station lay on the far side of the dwarf sun from their current position. If a raid were in progress, and if skip-running instigators had jammed communication by translink, they would be forced to coordinate their operation through local transmission. Temporarily they would be blind to more sophisticated sensory data, which meant everything scoped by deflection imagery. The Shearborn was shado
wed by Cassix's star.
She would not yet be noticed; but to stay that way and eavesdrop on the terrorists, she would have to launch a probe to relay signals from the dwarfs far side. Crisply, Jensen listed orders.
His pilot responded with indignant disbelief. 'You aren't going to believe that criminal!'
'I never knew him to lie.' Jensen gestured with extreme irritation. 'Carry on.'
Harris fastened the front of his uniform with uncharacteristic care, then entered the codes for navigation access. 'Well, the society releases on the news bulletins don't cite that guy for humanitarian idealism. If I wore the stripes on your jacket, I'd be wondering what's in this for MacKenzie James.'
But that was the uncomfortable question Jensen dared not ask. He had sworn to escape his father's shadow by outwitting and bringing to justice the most-wanted criminal ever to work Alliance space. For that he would have to beat the skip-runner at his own game, and the necessary first step was to play along. Jensen said, 'I want surveillance on that station, and quickly. Secure trajectory data and sequence ignition for launch of a relay probe.'
Harris could be strikingly inefficient when pressed against his will. But driven now by pique, and a morbid desire to humor Jensen until the young officer screwed himself through the folly of his own arrogance, the pilot donned his headset and applied himself to the navigation console.
The probe launched with a minimum of kick. No trail showed on the monitors. Satisfied only momentarily, Jensen hastened off the bridge to don his uniform before his coveted data started to arrive.
Harris bided the interval by plucking loose threads from the cuff of his coveralls. Upon Jensen's return, he had fallen asleep in his headset, his large hands loose in his lap, and his mouth open with snoring.
The Shearborn's officer in command spared no attention for annoyance. Tracking monitors showed the relay probe carving a wide parabola around Cassix star. The moment the light flashed green on the signal board, Jensen reached without ceremony and stripped the headset from his pilot. Harris woke with his customary hair-trigger reflexes and banged his head on the bulkhead as he rocketed out of his chair.
'Damn you,' he growled at Jensen.
Finding his fanatical commander absorbed by the new transmission, Harris stalked off to the galley.
He came back after an interval, munching a dessert bar. Jensen had already assembled details enough to confirm MacKenzie James's assessment. Harris stopped chewing as his senior recited the facts.
Trouble had found opening because the fleet which normally patrolled Cassix had been pared down to one ship, in support of the offensive at Dead Star. That cruiser had fallen to skip-runners who by long-range design had kidnapped the director of research's two infant daughters from an earlier raid on a passenger vessel.
'A straight-forward case,' Jensen reported, 'except for their bent for terrorism. The bastards killed the director's wife to prove themselves capable. The two little girls they hold hostage will be spared, provided the staff at Cassix surrenders a working prototype of the new laser weapons system.'
Harris stood for a moment, crumbs from his snack falling unnoticed down his chin. For once his blue eyes were direct. 'Who hired the talent for this? Indies? Junk freighters equipped with that scale of armament could make for a very ugly mess.'
'Indies, or rebels, or some independent faction who buys through skip-runners, does it matter?' Jensen yanked off the headset, then reflexively smoothed his hair. 'I want data on that station, as quickly as you can manage.'
Harris sank mechanically in his crew chair. He shoved his last bite of cookie in his mouth by reflex, while the headset between his hands repeated in precise and ugly detail just what would happen to the director's little daughters if the terms of their kidnappers were not met. He swallowed with difficulty, for his mouth had gone dry. 'I can't,' he said finally. 'The specs on Cassix Station are one hundred percent classified.'
'But you flew test runs there,' Jensen argued. Mac James had offered him a challenge he intended to win; and as a Fleet officer his duty was explicitly clear. 'Reconstruct what you can from memory. The skip-runners intend to exchange the children for the weapons system by cargo cable at 2000 hours, which leaves us very little margin to prepare.'
Harris looked up sharply. 'Cargo cable? We have a chance, then. Security might be recovered, but only if we write off the lives of two kids.'
'Just carry on!' Jensen added no promises. Ruthless as his choice seemed, in this case Harris knew the young officer was not playing for heroics. If the weapons system currently in development at Cassix fell into Indie hands, far more than two little girls would suffer.
The Shearborn prepared for intervention. Jensen activated the cloaking devices and ran checks on shields and weapons. Harris applied himself to navigation and mapped a course calculated to conceal their approach behind the mass of Cassix's star until the last possible moment. Neither man spoke. Harris held single-mindedly to duty for reasons of conscience; Jensen's penchant for advancement promised that his record in a crisis must be impeccable.
Presently, the Shearborn hurtled on a meticulously arranged course around Cassix's star. At the precise instant she crossed into scanner range, Harris kicked the attitude thrusters, killed her drives, and made a face as the snack in his stomach danced flip-flops to the pull of inertia. Tumbling with the random majesty of an uncaptured asteroid, the scout craft he piloted went dead to observation.
'Nice work,' said Jensen. Awkwardly stiff in his command chair, he smiled. Their timing was perfect, a clean thirty minutes before the scheduled exchange between skip-runners and station. As the scopes resolved data, the lieutenant leaned anxiously forward. He expected the spider-armed sprawl of an orbital station, gravity powered, and glittering with the lights of habitation.
What he saw was deep-space darkness, scattered with distant stars.
His blank-faced dismay raised laughter from Harris. 'Well, what do you want for a security installation? Billboard lights and a docking beacon?'
Jensen shut his eyes, opened them, and tried not to blush at his foolishness. Like the chaser he commanded, Cassix Station would be surfaced in camouflage. The complex would be dark except for lighted pinpricks that simulated stars. Her deep-space side would be painted in reflective, and unless a ship chanced to cross her orbital plane and catch her in occultation with her parent star, she would be invisible to passing traffic.
Jensen bridled rising annoyance. He dared not use the Shearborn's fancy surveillance equipment. Without knowing how sophisticated his adversary's gear might be, he must assume that deflection beam interference would warn an already wary skip-runner that his activities had drawn Fleet notice. There were other ways to locate an orbiting body. The simplest involved time-sequence imaging, then a comparison of star fields to determine which objects were artificial by drift; except time was the one most glaring commodity this blitz operation lacked.
'There,' Harris said suddenly, startlingly loud in the silence. 'I've got a fix on the target.'
His experienced eyes had spotted the skip-runner craft. A flat flash of reflection confirmed his sighting, as a shiny surface on her hull caught reflection from the dwarf star. Jensen turned up the resolution enhancer on the analog screen. Though his pilot patiently informed him that the hardware would not perform under Shearborn's erratically violent motion, the lieutenant continued searching until his eyes burned.
Hope of coherent conversation seemed nonexistent; Harris shrugged and made a show of initiating a star-field comparison search. Lights flickered on the control panels as computer circuitry normally reserved for navigation diverted to speed his results. The pilot laced blunt hands in his lap. Wearing the cynical expression he practiced for women who pressed him for marriage, he stretched back in his crew chair, adjusted his headset, and wished he could watch a porn tape. Sex was a better sweat than listening to the terse exchange between a desperate parent and an equally nervous skip-runner who doubtlessly wondered whether any Indie
contract was worth taking risks of this magnitude.
Suddenly Harris shot upright, the mockery gone from his face. 'Sir, your plan won't work.'
Jensen held his focus on the analog screens, where, faint against the deep of space, a spider-filament of cable arced out, then ever so gradually drew taut.
'They're sending the babies down, linked to a timed explosive,' Harris continued vehemently.
This time Jensen answered, very bleak. 'Linked? How? To the carrier capsule, or the cable itself?'
Harris listened. 'Cable,' he replied after a moment. 'The detonation code will be kept by the skip-runner. Which means the scum will skip system, leaving station personnel fifty-five seconds to reel that capsule in and cut those kids free before the charge goes off.'
Jensen became very still.
Harris showed a rare mix of deference and regret. 'I'm afraid we're shut down, sir. Best we can do is record data that might help an undercover agent round them up.'
'Which will be impossible to manage, not before the Indies have replicated that laser design.' All nerves and anger, Jensen flexed the fingers of his right hand. 'I'll shoot out the cable link between the explosive and that capsule, first.'
Harris grinned, sarcasm restored. 'Boy, we're in problems up to our nuts already. Brass won't award a winning ticket for blowing two babies to bits. You'd have to be marksman elite to maybe hit that cable at all, far less the connecting link between a carry capsule and an explosive charge.'
Jensen returned a nasty smile, then drew a chain from his collar. He dangled before his pilot's insolent gaze a medallion of skill that not one man in ten thousand held the privilege to wear.
'Shit,' said Harris. 'How was I to guess?'
