The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack

by David Drake (ed)

and the voice of my fettered soul that asks:

  what more will my cloth-clad captor,

  vindictive in victory, require that I endure,

  that I might earn the right to die?

  Admiral Meier leaned back in his chair. If that’s what the medics were doing on Target, he wondered what the combat files read like. And he wondered what Smythe thought of it. The thought took the edge off the excitement he had felt reading about the doctor’s adventure. Deciding there was only one way to find out, the admiral switched on the intercom.

  “Mr. Smythe?” he said, trying to sound as if he weren’t annoyed at calling his own office. Why hadn’t that pompous Pat Jamesen turned his own office over to Smythe instead? Jamesen had rarely bothered to report here for duty anyhow since his brother was elected to the Council Appropriations Committee.

  “Yes, Admiral?” the investigator answered almost instantly.

  “Could you come into my, ummm, the next office to your left?”

  “Be happy to.” Smythe actually sounded cheerful. Well, some people enjoyed dirtying others. Meier braced himself.

  When the investigator had settled into a, chair, Meier decided to dispense with pleasantries and loose his broadside.

  “That was a damn fine action on Target, a lot of good men died.” He tried not to sound defensive. “Even if it didn’t end the Khalian threat, it, moved ‘em further from the border.”

  “They still occupy Bethesda, Triton, and Dibden Purlieu,” Smythe retorted, but in a level voice.

  “Exactly,” Meier agreed, having maneuvered the conversation to where he wanted it. “And your being here is doing nothing but complicating our efforts to do something about that.”

  He plowed on before the investigator could respond.

  “You must be aware that we are planning a major action to recover Bethesda. When we reoccupy that planet, the Khalian position on the others becomes untenable.”

  Meier’s voice was becoming louder. His agitation with being investigated was complicated by his growing concern over the Bethesda operation.

  They simply weren’t ready yet. It takes months to recall and reassign a thousand ships and not disrupt everything they have to maintain inside the Alliance. Duane had nearly caused disaster on McCauley by withdrawing too much force.

  The memory that his grandson had done such an outstanding job calmed Meier. As if waiting for the Admiral to be ready to listen, Smythe choose that moment to answer in his perpetually level voice.

  “I am here to help, not hinder.”

  Meier suppressed a snort.

  “No really,” the investigator added quickly. “Perhaps it is time I explain. You have to keep this in the strictest confidence. Even from the rest of the Strategy Board.”

  Admiral of the White Isaac Meier wasn’t sure whether he should feel insulted or not.

  “Go on,” he said in a voice that echoed reserved judgment.

  “There is something wrong with the Khalia,” Smythe began, gesturing with his shoulders. “It just doesn’t feel right.”

  “We’re at war with the hull-pocked weasels,” the Fleet officer interjected more vehemently than he intended.

  “At war yes, but are the Khalia like any enemy the Alliance has ever faced? Do they act like any navy, any culture we have ever dealt with?”

  “It’s a big galaxy, Mr. Smythe. Lots of strange things in it. That’s part of why The Fleet is needed.” Meier couldn’t resist interjecting the commercial. This Smythe certainly thought he knew it all.

  “Not so big that a race capable of causing this much trouble shouldn’t even be listed on the old Imperial records.” The investigator launched his own broadside. “A pre-industrial, semi-barbaric culture doesn’t become capable of what the Khalia are doing in less than a thousand years.” Smythe leaned forward, warming to his topic.

  “Look, how would you characterize the individual tactics of the Khalians?”

  “Deadly,” Meier answered instantly. Was this man casting doubts on the fighting ability of The Fleet?

  “Will you permit me to show you another file? You may find it more interesting than the med corps one.” The investigator not too subtly put the admiral on notice he was aware his actions were being monitored. ‘’’After that I’m going to need several weeks alone to plough through a gigabyte of memory. I’ll count on you to throw up a barrier around me that will keep everyone else out.”

  Meier didn’t respond. Something didn’t fit about Smythe either. He was much too competent to fit the mold of Alliance Council flunky.

  “You’ll just have to take my word that I am not here on a witch hunt . . . we already know where your espers are quartered,” Smythe finished with an obvious attempt at levity.

  “A file?” the admiral inquired, reserving judgment.

  The investigator’s smile remained, though more strained.

  He reached over and keyed in a command he must have had preset. Meier realized he was being maneuvered, but couldn’t figure out why. With the clout of the entire Alliance Council behind him, Smythe certainly didn’t need to be concerned about the opinions of one admiral.

  JENSEN STEPPED BRISKLY from the orange-lit access corridor, and a thrill touched him as the confined echo of his footfalls fell away, lost amid the din of Point Station’s docking hangar. Through the bustle of mechanics stripped to their thinsul suits, and the cross-bracing of gantry arms and loading winches, he found the object of his passion instantly. A smile of predatory satisfaction lit his face. She was exactly as they had described her, in tones that varied from, frustration to thwarted fury, to outright, obsessive longing: ugly, patch-painted, and scuffed, a typically hard-run small time merchanter. Yet the awkwardly configured spacecraft under Jensen’s eager scrutiny was nothing of the sort. His trained mind could admire the artistry with which her weaponry and shielding had been installed without marring her image of innocuous decrepitude. Jensen squared his shoulders, missing the stiff scrape of his ensign’s collar. Like the deadly, efficient bit of machinery he viewed, he would use camouflage to disarm his prey. For the Marity was the love and the pride of MacKenzie James, a skip-runner wanted on eighty-six Alliance planets, for illegal trafficking in weapons, treason, theft, and sale of classified Fleet documents. Piracy was not a trade for the cautious; the Fleet’s autonomous diligence ensured that most skiprunner captains paid for their wealth with imprisonment or early death. But “MacKenzie, James,” as the criminal files formally listed a man whose true name was only a matter of conjecture, was no ordinary skip-runner.

  Mostly he was too good. The captains, officials, and highly placed admirals he had evaded, avoided, and unabashedly fooled in the course of his career made him dangerous, a topic of wild speculation in the barracks and the bars but one most scrupulously avoided in the company of superiors. To Michael Christopher Jensen, Jr., anyone who could engineer the skip-runner’s long overdue arrest would gain promotion, accolades, and a reputation of undeniably proven merit. For a young man who had yet to earn “his paint” in battle against the Khalia, MacKenzie James was a piece to be manipulated.

  Jensen adjusted the unfamiliar ties of the Freer over-robe he had acquired with some difficulty for the occasion. He looked the part, he knew, with his rangy frame and dark hair and eyes; meticulous to the point of fussiness, he had made certain no detail was out of character. Like many a fringe worlder, Freerlanders liked independence a bit too well to submit to Fleet sanctions; skip-runner captains knew them as a dependable market for illicit weaponry. They were ornery enough, or maybe just proudly stubborn enough, that only the reckless interfered with them in public. Still, as the young officer strode into the chaos of the loading-lanes, his palms sweated. His plan might be soundly designed, but he was not quite brash enough to be unafraid. Marity’s master had ruined many a promising career before an unscheduled repair stop had delayed him; and though inconvenienced, Ma
cKenzie James would never be caught unprepared.

  Especially here; Point Station was a crossroads for the remote boundary of Carsey Sector, a center for commerce and intrigue only sporadically patrolled. Between times, those goods and outbound colonists who were of questionable legal status arrived and departed with all the speed that over-used, outdated equipment could command. The ratchet of the winches was loud enough to drown thought, and the reek of heated machinery a metallic taint in the musty, re-circulated air. Jensen made his way cautiously. Ducking a trailing power cable, and wary of stepping into the path of the squat, radio-controlled light-loaders, he noticed the stares prompted by his black-fringed Freer robe. He adjusted his hood, careful to carry himself with the right degree of arrogance. His mimicry seemed effective. A dockworker stumbled clear of his way, and behind the periphery of the hood, someone else muttered, “Pardon, Freerlander.”

  Jensen buried his hands in red-banded cuffs and kept his steps light, as if he had grown up walking icy, wind-carved sands; nothing less than perfection would deceive MacKenzie James. As Marity’s spidery bulk loomed closer, the time for second thoughts narrowed. Now, Jensen no longer regretted that necessity had forced him to include Ensign Shields in his plan. That she drifted just beyond Point’s grav field perimeters in the dispatch courier Fleet Command had assigned to the pair of them now offered great reassurance. Though technically his senior, and compelled to collusion by a veiled threat of blackmail, she would not let him down. The moment her courier had altered course for Point Station, the Ensign was committed.

  Jensen managed not to trip on any cables as he crossed the apron that separated Marity from the adjacent berth. Eyes narrowed beneath the fringe of his hood, he promised that overcoming Shields’s reluctance would be the last time he traded upon his father’s influence for his own gain. The man who arranged MacKenzie James’s arrest could write any ticket he wished and with this in mind, Jensen studied the slots that recessed the studs of Marity’s entry lock. The young Fleet officer repressed a whistle of admiration at the evident strength of her seals. No Freer ever uttered anything that resembled music outside of ritual. Such attention to detail was not misplaced, for a moment later he found himself noted by the ferret-quick gaze of the individual who served Marity as skip-runner’s mate.

  The man was typical of the type signed on by MacKenzie James. Young, athletic, and guaranteed to have no ties, he turned from wheeling a cargo capsule that had overlapping layers of customs stamps to mark a conspicuously legal course across Alliance space. The Freer robe drew his attention. An instant later, Jensen found his path blocked, and his hooded features under scrutiny by a pair of worldly eyes.

  “You’re here to see Mac James,” said the mate.

  He placed slight emphasis on James, the Mac more a prefix than first name. Jensen considered this idiosyncrasy while returning a nod of appropriate Freer restraint.

  The man smiled, suddenly older than his years. His thinsul suit hung loosely over his frame, no doubt concealing weapons. “Godfrey, wherever we alight, and no matter how unexpectedly, you people seem to find us.” But his easy manner was belied by the tension in his stance.

  Yet skip-runners could be expected to treat strangers with caution. Careful to pronounce the name precisely as Marity’s mate had, Jensen said, “Then Mac James is available?”

  “Mac’s topside.” His appraisal abruptly complete, the mate jerked his head for the young officer to follow, then gestured toward the open jaws of the lock.

  Jensen took a slow breath, readjusted his Freer hood, and ducked under Marity’s forward strut. He set foot on the loading ramp, and quashed, a panicky urge to retreat. The burning ambition which held him sleepless each night drove him forward as the mate disappeared into shadow.

  Jensen passed the lock. Marity’s interior seemed dim after the arc lamps that illuminated Station’s docks. His spacer’s soles clung lightly to metal grating, the sort that adjusted on tracks to vary storage according to the demands of different cargos. But as Jensen blinked to adjust his vision, he heard the clang of an inner lock; a cool draft infused the outer hold and by that he guessed that on the far side of that barrier Marity’s resemblance to a merchant carrier must end. Only a craft that carried state of the art shielding and navigational equipment would trouble to control its atmosphere while in port.

  The mate paused at the head of the corridor and called. “Mac?”

  A grunt answered from the ship’s upper level, distorted into echoes by the empty hold.

  “Company’s here asking for you.” The mate waved for Jensen to pass him and continue alone down the access corridor. “Ladder to the bridge is there to the left.”

  Startled to be left on his own, Jensen crossed the threshold of the inner lock with his best imitation of Freer poise. He set cold hands to the ladder beyond. Faintly over the mate’s receding footsteps, he heard the muted grind of light-loaders laboring outside on Marity’s hull. Then the inner lock hissed shut. Irrevocably sealed off from Station, and isolated amid the hum of the air-circulating system, Jensen recognized the sizzle of a laser pencil cutting through cowling.

  “Come to talk, or to tap-dance?” Marity’s master called gruffly from above.

  Jensen climbed. Sweating under his Freer cowl, he emerged in the windowless chamber of the bridge. Dead screens fronted the worn couches of two crew stations. The controls beneath were sophisticated and new, and somehow threatening without the array of labels and caution signs indigenous to Fleet military vessels. Jensen repressed a slight prickle of uneasiness. The man who flew Marity knew her like a wife; his mates without exception were pilots who could punch in and out of FTL or execute difficult dockings in their sleep.

  “You’re no Freer,” the captain’s gravelly voice observed from behind.

  Jensen whirled, fringes sighing across the top rungs of the ladder. Bent over the far console was the skip-runner half of Fleet command would trade their commissions to jail. Through the dazzle of the laser-pen, Jensen made out a dirty coverall with the clips half unfastened, knuckles disfigured with scars, and a profile equally blunt, currently set in a frown of concentration. Shadowed from the laser’s glare by a flip-shield, eyes light as sheet metal never left the exposed guts of Marity’s instrument panel, even as Jensen shifted a hand beneath his robe and gripped the stock of the gun hidden beneath.

  “Care to tell why you’re here?” The laser-pen moved, delicately, and the shift in light threw MacKenzie James’s scarred fingers into high relief. With a small start, Jensen recognized old coil burns, from working on a ship’s drive while the condensers were activated. The story was true, then, that Mac James had changed a slagged module barehanded to make his getaway the time he had sabotaged the security off Port.

  Mesmerized by the movement of fingers that should by rights have been crippled, Jensen opened, “You run guns,” and stopped. The man’s directness had rattled him and he had neglected his guise of Freer restraint; but then, Mac James had already observed he was no Freer. Why, then, let him in at all? Taken aback, Jensen was unable to think, except to notice how remarkably deft the scarred hands were with the electronics.

  “You’re not here to negotiate business.” MacKenzie James joggled a contact, applied his pen, then thumbed the switch off. The laser snapped out, and Marity’s master swung around, a hulking bear of a man with a spare brace of contact clips dangling from the head strap of his eye shield. He snapped up the plate, revealing a face of boyish frankness entirely at odds with his reputation.

  Jensen opened his mouth to speak, and was cut off.

  “You’re Fleet, boy, don’t bore me with lies.” Mac James whisked clips and shield from his forehead and threw them with a rattle into the disjointed segment of cowling. “That makes you trouble, unwanted being the least damning complaint I have against you.” He leaned heavily on the back of the nearest crew chair, his manner distinctly exasperated. “Don’t bother with
the gun, I know it’s there.”

  “Then you’ll surrender your person without a fuss,” said Jensen, his confidence buoyed by the realization that the man he covered was sweating. “Marity has skip-run her last cargo.”

  MacKenzie James raked scarred fingers through a snarl of uncombed hair. “Boy, you’ve put me in a very bad position, and I’m not known as a nice man.”

  “That doesn’t concern me.” Jensen eased the pellet gun from his robe, pleased that his hand was so steady. “Your papers, Captain. Tell me where they are.”

  MacKenzie James slung himself into the gimbaled couch. Light from the overhead fixture flashed on the worn tag he wore on the chain at his neck. The lettering stamped in its surface was ingrained with dirt, legible even in dim light: “MacKenzie, James, First Lieutenant.” That rumor also was true, Jensen reflected; or maybe part of it, that a two-credit whore from the Cassidas had gotten herself knocked up, then smuggled herself and her by-blow into the quarters of her officer lover. An emergency call to action came through, and when the Captain in command had discovered a civilian on board, he had dumped her through the airlock into deepspace as an example. Her lover had subsequently died in action. The kid, who may or may not have been related, had been signed over to some Alliance charity orphanage. Though given a legal name, he never called himself by anything but the inscription on the dog tag, surname first; and harboring no love for the military, he grew up into the most wanted man in Fleet record.

  MacKenzie James raised tired eyes. “Boy, if you continue with this, all the wrong people are going to suffer.”

  Jensen gestured with the barrel of the pellet gun. “Who? Not all your clients are like the Freeborn, who think to beat the Khalia single-handed. The guns you skip-run are as likely to be used by criminals as in defense.”

  “Godfrey,” said MacKenzie James with exactly the same inflection his mate had used earlier. “Nobody informed me I was such an idealist.”