The Fleet05 Total War

by David Drake (ed)

  Mackenzie James followed the figures that flashed on her board. The criminal knew his astrogation, solidly; that he watched over Kaplin’s shoulder told more clearly than words that there were stakes to this foray. A hum pervaded Sail’s hull, followed by deeper vibrations. The coil condensers began their charge cycle in preparation for FTL, and as if the change in the ship’s drive galvanized Jensen’s thinking, it dawned that Marity had blown Chalice station deliberately, her purpose to hide Mac James’s tracks.

  “You’ve stolen the brain crystal interfaces,” Jensen accused, his voice muffled by his own epaulette as Mac James shoved his face down and to the side, and manhandled him sideways into the hanging locker reserved for officers’ dress coats.

  James responded with a grin that had no humor behind it. “You helped make it convenient.” He pushed down, ramming his captive into the dusty closet. “Chalice security was busily watching your box of rigged bait. Really, boy, I’m surprised. A man would expect you to learn not to keep on meddling beyond your depth.”

  Jensen winced as his elbow caught on the door hinge. Jammed on a nerve, he gasped, sweated, and vainly thrashed for purchase in an area too constricted for bodily movement. “Damn you,” he grunted, before the fine silk of his officer’s scarf was forcibly crammed in his mouth. James used a length of shock webbing to tie the gag in place, then shoved the door closed.

  Jensen crouched in fetal position, his wrists lashed bloodlessly tight behind his back. Pressure against his cheek flattened his nose against his knees, and the toes of Harris’s battle boots ground relentless dents in his buttocks. Unable to move, unable to speak, he still could hear. The dry tones of Mackenzie James instructed Kaplin to adjust her course; she’d missed a decimal point. The result, as James phrased it, would get Sail an unscheduled refit, since Van Mere’s star had an asteroid belt that could skin the shields off a battle cruiser.

  Jensen squirmed and managed to cramp his left thigh. He could not stretch to relieve the discomfort, but only sweat with the pain. The closet quickly became stifling, and somewhere between nausea and frustrated tears, he missed the shift to FTL. He knew the transition had happened when the cramp eased off, and he realized the vibrations from the condensers had subsided back to a whisper.

  A light tread crossed the cockpit; not Kaplin’s, Jensen determined. She tended to slap her heels down, result of a flirty, provocative hip-sway she habitually used to distract. Most men were not immune, but James would prove the exception. Jensen knew the skip-runner to be formidably focused in his actions. The steps paused, and the couch by the com station creaked.

  “You’ll tell me Sail’s security code schedule,” James suggested in his gravelly bass.

  Silence. Jensen squeezed his eyes shut and moaned. Kappie, he thought desperately, you’ll go the way of Harris. He tensely awaited the shot.

  “Godfrey, girl,” said James. He sounded strangely tired. “Don’t shake so hard. I only shoot on sight when somebody’s fixing to kill me. Your pilot kept a gun in the pocket next to his jock strap, or didn’t you know that?” A pause. “No, I see not. His whores shared the secret, and for a pitiful bit of change, they talked.”

  In the closet, Jensen drew a shuddering, sweat-stinking breath. He had not known Harris packed a pistol, never mind under that ridiculously baggy coverall. Jensen’s worst nightmare had never allowed that James might run a network that extended so deep, into the back streets of who knew how many worlds. The haunts of pilots on leave were notoriously varied, and scattered as stars to scope out. That this criminal’s interest had focused so intently on Sail’s crew was a most unsettling discovery.

  “The codes,” reminded Mackenzie James, his voice gone strangely steely. Above the subliminal hum of FTL, the cockpit beyond the closet seemed gripped in waiting stillness.

  Kaplin gasped as if hit. “I can’t tell you,” she lied. “I don’t know them!” Her bravery held an edge of hysteria.

  Jensen braced for a shot that never came. The chair by the comconsole creaked again as Mac James shifted his weight. “Dearie,” he said in a tone of deceptive gentleness. “I’m running out of time. That means you talk, or I embarrass the brass higher up.”

  In the closet, Jensen frowned; and Kaplin’s tremulous silence became underscored by James’s quick tread, then the tap of fingers over the keys on what had to be the command alcove console.

  “What are you doing?” Kaplin asked in a blend of fear and suspicion.

  “Canceling our course coordinates,” Mackenzie James replied. “We’re going to stay in the Chalice system until a battle cruiser comes to investigate.”

  “You’ll get us all blown to hell,” said Kaplin with the acid bite she used to admonish her senior lieutenant.

  “Very likely you’re right.” James left the command chair, and by the squeals of outrage that followed, Jensen judged that the skip-runner tied Del Kaplin to the pilot’s station with his usual ruthless style.

  There followed a wait, in which the skip-runner fixed himself coffee. In the protocols manual under the console, he found Sail’s security code schedule and ascertained the time for her next check-in. Then, with a style more flamboyant than Harris’s, he spun the scout craft on a trajectory that blended with the expanding debris from the explosion.

  Nauseated by vertigo, and jammed in the suffocating closet, Jensen felt a horrible, hollow lurch in his abdomen as the artificial gravity was switched off. More controls clicked in the cockpit as the skip-runner adjusted Sail for total shutdown, making her invisible to all but a tight-focus scan.

  An hour passed, then two. Sail’s call-in was due in thirty minutes. Jensen sat, ears straining, to hear how Mackenzie James planned to handle the Fleet cruiser that was sure to arrive at any moment.

  Kaplin must have been left facing the screens, because when the battle cruiser arrived, she spoke with tense satisfaction. “That’s the New Morning. She’s a flagship with an admiral aboard, and an escort fleet of six.”

  “Eight,” James corrected. “Chalice got off a distress torp.” He did not sound upset, but crossed to the comconsole and rapidly began punching keys.

  “You’re going to beg amnesty?” Kaplin said, just missing her usual sarcasm.

  “No. Personal phone call,” James qualified. “To your senior, Admiral Nortin.” A burst of static hissed across the screen, followed by the chime that signaled a clear transmission. James spoke crisply, “Ah, Admiral, I seem to have disturbed you in the shower?”

  Jensen tried to picture his crusty senior officer in a towel or a bathrobe. Imagination failed. Nortin was always, and ever would be, square-shouldered, tight-lipped, and well groomed, with a daunting row of medals on his chest.

  In tones slightly rusty from surprise, the admiral answered, “Get to the point.”

  “Indeed.” James paused for what had to be a nasty smile. “I wish to know the security codes for the scout-class vessel Sail.”

  “She’s on reconnaissance assignment.” The admiral recovered fast; already his words had recovered their customary bite. “Why Sail?” Then the admiral’s voice became softly menacing. “You on her?”

  James made no verbal reply; instead, his fingers tripped lightly over the console. A moment later, Jensen heard the click of the drive in the log tape reader.

  The admiral’s voice came back jagged. “Where did you get that film clip?”

  “From an extortionist who wanted something much too big for his resources. He got killed instead. His tape collection, unfortunately, survived him. Now, I want Sail’s codes, and quickly, or the fact you took pay to hang back from engagement at Elgettin will be broadcast to the satellite feeds.”

  “It was never so simple as that.” The admiral sounded suddenly very aged.

  “It never is, sir.” A false note of sympathy colored Mac James’s platitude. He was, after all, committing blackmail. Jensen raged at the indignity forced on t
he admiral, as, over com, he heard the old man calling information from security.

  Sail’s codes came through promptly after that, and Jensen despaired as he confirmed the accuracy of each sequence. Mackenzie James had done his legwork with the efficiency that trademarked his career. He humbled large men and small with the same evenhanded ruthlessness. For his pains, the skip-runner captain had gained himself a scout-class vessel with open search orders. He could travel the breadth of Alliance space, or any of a half-dozen security zones, and not be questioned; the Marity could accompany openly, masquerading under military escort.

  The effrontery of the piracy cut Jensen like a razor. He did not mourn for Harris. He felt only passing sympathy for his admiral’s private shame; but for his own whipped pride and the certain ruin of his career, his hatred burned murderously bitter. Fury did not allow for limits. Crushed and cramped into a hole not fit for a dog, Jensen twisted his shoulders sideways and strained against the tool ties. He forced numb and bloodless fingers to open and close and grope for the nearest object to hand, which happened to be Harris’s scuffed, old battle boots.

  Two places the Eirish pilot wore those shoes without fail: on deck during combat, and off on leave, where his hobbies had been whoring and brawling. The toes were reinforced with steel caps, and Jensen sawed his bonds feverishly against the metal in the futile hope of fraying through high tensile mesh.

  Activity continued on the bridge. Mackenzie James reset the autopilot, then, in a masterful orchestration of instruments, cross-wired the grav-drive regulators and the life-support emergency generators to charge the coils in a split-second burst of power. Sail’s banks reached peak capacity and transferred into FTL in one screaming instant of vertigo. New Morning’s instrumentation would have seen the surge, but not in time to evaluate whatever had caused the burst. To keep ends neat, they’d chart the anomaly as an unstable bit of debris from Chalice’s fusion reactor.

  Assured that Sail was safely away, James confined Kaplin to the stores locker behind the galley. Jensen missed the light-footed tread that returned to the cockpit, but not the change back to analog space, and the voice that activated the com and summoned the Marity to take station to Sail’s rear.

  Mac James relayed instructions to his mate. “I’ll escort you through the checkpoint at the security zone, as planned. Once in Arinat system, we’ll separate. Sail will execute patrol patterns while you transfer the goods and take payment. We’ll rendezvous afterward off Arinat nine, darkside of the satellite called Kestra. That’s the only blind spot in the Syndicate’s sensor network, and it’s a damned narrow one. Misplace a vector, and we’re vapor, so be careful.”

  As the skip-runner closed contact and restored Sail’s altered circuitry to reprogram his original course, Jensen paused in his attempt to free his hands. Furiously he combined facts, those he knew with others he’d heard. His final conclusion was chilling. For Mackenzie James inferred that the agricultural colony beneath Van Mere’s was a covert Syndicate outpost, undiscovered by the Alliance and, indeed, unlikely to be, since Arinat system lay within the Molpen security zone that ships could not enter without passing a military checkpoint. The added inconvenience should have discouraged spies; but in a backhandedly clever sort of way, the compromised location made sense.

  Who knew, and who had ever thought to look for sophisticated technology underneath three continents of crops? The secret was viciously guarded, since James had risked acquisition of Sail to have her in system for his transaction. If the Syndicate faction behind Van Mere’s valued their skip-runner contacts lightly enough to blow them out of space after goods transfer, the wisdom of Sail’s presence made sense. On patrol, her sensors would detect explosions or plasma charges. She would be duty bound to report such abnormalities and file for investigation. The spies on Van Mere’s would wish to avoid such attention in the interest of preserving their anonymity. Stations that traded with agricultural outposts rarely acted with aggression, and that profile provided essential cover.

  Mackenzie James had indestructible luck because he unerringly planned for contingencies. As Jensen resumed sawing at his restraints, he had to admire the man’s genius. Mac’s operations had the feel of a grand dance, precisely timed, and disarmingly masqueraded as coincidence.

  That Sail should be commandeered for treason was no sane ending to contemplate. The lieutenant leaned back in the cubicle, flexed his wrists, and groped at his bonds with his fingertips. The webbing was not the least bit frayed, and a tug to test the knots showed his efforts had only chafed skin.

  A man who hated less might have quit. Jensen rammed his shoulders against the wall and relentlessly sawed all the harder. He persisted though his muscles cramped into screaming knots of agony. He cut and cut and cut the tool tie across the toe cap of Harris’s boot through the hours of passage to Arinat. His hands went numb, and then his wrists and elbows. He kept cutting. Sail completed her transit, kicked out of FTL, and the web of the tool tie he’d been tearing at showed the faintest trace of a nap. He rested, listening as James refined course and opened contact in an unfamiliar language with his Syndicate contact on Van Mere’s.

  Orders were relayed, and Marity assumed position for the sale of her stolen technology. Core interface crystals took years to manufacture, and there were many, many bodies left crippled from the war that waited, bathed in nutrients, in the hope of future service in a brainship. Since crystals were unique, and the idiosyncrasies of each required a precise match with the consciousness of the individual they would be paired with, today’s loss meant the death of hope for someone who valiantly clung to life in total helplessness. Jensen ran swollen, aching fingertips over the light fuzz on the tool tie. He acknowledged the sorry fact that he could never rip free in time to matter.

  In the cockpit, Mackenzie James logged in Sail’s codes and established routine patrol at Arinat’s. He set up a closed band connection with his mate on the Marity, and the core crystals came closer to changing hands.

  Prisoned in the closet, Jensen shut his eyes. He reviewed every memory of Harris. There had to be a reason, besides steel toe caps, why the pilot insisted on a particular pair of boots whenever he flew into combat.

  “Never catch me being lab rat for a Weasel,” he had once confided over beer; Harris, whose whores had known he wore a pistol in a hip strap over his undershorts. Jensen reasoned furiously. The combat boots had metal-capped toes, but no ankle laces. It followed that Harris might have chosen the style to carry a knife in his boot cuffs.

  Jensen strained to raise his arms, hampered as his elbows jammed against the back wall and the door panel. He lacked the space to flex and reach the boot tops only inches away from his wrists. He grunted, forced blood-starved muscles to contract. Using wall and door to wedge his shoulders, he raised himself inch by torturous inch and scrunched backward. He sat on the insteps of Harris’s boots; while in the cockpit, Mackenzie James monitored the exchange of the crystals with a coolness that rankled the nerves.

  Jensen groped, caught the left boot cuff between his knuckles. He pinched, kneaded, and crumpled the tired old leather, while his joints tingled horribly in complaint. He found nothing. Close to tears of frustration, he twisted at his bonds, forced his shoulders into an angle that all but flayed his back, and managed to hook the right boot. He found what he sought, not a knife, but a razor-thin strip of metal sewn between the seams above the ankle.

  It took him a pain-ridden hour to work the implement free. By then utterly exhausted, he had to rest, his hands numbed lumps of meat, and his wrists scraped down to raw gristle. In the cabin, Mackenzie James wrapped up his transaction and gently set Sail on an outward spiral toward Kestra.

  Jensen cut himself twice before he got the razor positioned against his bonds. He nicked the weave of the tool tie over and over, his hold precariously slippery with his own blood. The stubborn webbing gave way. Shivering, wretched with discomfort and relief, he wormed his arms into
his lap and cradled his hands to his chest. He had to pause through an agonizing interval of time, until Mac James chose to leave the cockpit. Jensen dragged off his gag. He used the spoiled silk to wrap his gashed fingers, then, uncontrollably shivering in a cold sweat, he stole his moment to act.

  The lieutenant tripped the catch to the closet and spilled unceremoniously onto the deck. His legs refused to obey him, and his manual dexterity was shot. Aware that he had only moments, he half dragged, half rolled his body across the cockpit to the weapons locker. More seconds were lost as he blotted blood from his hand so the security sensor could read his palm print. The lock clicked open. Not trusting his aim with a kill weapon, Jensen chose a riot pistol armed with stun charges. Then, scuttling crabwise, he positioned himself against the companionway bulkhead just as Mac James stepped in through the access corridor.

  The skip-runner saw the opened closet and instantaneously jerked out his pistol. Formidably fast, he spun sideways, almost into cover as he punched the switch to shut the access hatch.

  Jensen’s charge nipped through the fast-closing panel and hammered the skip-runner in the shoulder. Nerves and muscles went dead and the pellet gun clanged to the deck. The barrel wedged in the hatch track. The door jammed, leaving a sliver of a gap; enough for Jensen to squeeze off another round.

  Luck favored him. The charge caught Mac James as he leaned to kick free the jammed pistol. He grunted what might have been a word, then crumpled and sagged to the deck.

  Jensen could not resist a crow of triumph. He might not have the Marity, might have lost the precious interface crystals to the enemy, but he had Mackenzie James. And along with the most wanted skip-runner in Alliance space, he could deliver the first definitive proof of a spy connection with the Syndicate. The wreckage of his plans at Chalice had not ended in failure.