by Janny Wurts
The chronometer on the autopilot clicked over; seven minutes to re-entry. Mac James once again appeared asleep. His behavior seemed inhuman, until Jensen recalled that Marity had docked at Point Station forty-eight hours before under emergency priorities. By the grimy, unkempt appearance of the captain's person, he probably had not slept while he effected repairs on his ship. Jensen himself had not rested for nearly as long, but excitement and stress had put him on a jag that precluded relaxation.
* * *
At a minute and a half to re-entry, MacKenzie James opened his eyes. The corpse of his mate lay undisturbed on the deck. Jensen stood at the analog screen, his gun clenched in anxious fingers. Beneath the Freer robe, his left hand gripped the keys to the nooses which secured MacKenzie James with white-knuckled indecision.
One minute to re-entry; Mac James quietly recommended pressing the toggle to unshutter the shield generators. Though to do so felt like capitulation, Jensen did not cling to foolish pride. A suspicion crossed the young officer's mind, that more of Marity's systems might be operational than the control monitors indicated. But no time remained to run cross-checks. The buzzer signalled phase-out of Marity's autopilot, and the eerie instant of suspension which heralded transition from FTL to normal space followed after. Jensen watched the analog screens with taut anticipation.
Castleton's appeared as a dun ball, mottled gray at the terminator; the larger of two moons showed as a sliver to dayside, but Jensen spared the scenery barely a glance. The sensors finished processing data, and the screen became peppered with silvery specks; scouts by their formation. Larger shapes nestled among them, unquestionably cruisers, with a third one tucked away behind the mass of Castleton's.
'Godfrey,' Mac James observed, his neck craned awkwardly to allow a view of the screens. 'They didn't waste time expanding their strike force, now did they?'
'They might not be Khalia!' Jensen snapped.
A buzzer clipped his outburst short. Lights flashed warning on the analog panels, and one of the flecks gained a faint halo of red.
'Well, Fleet or enemy, boy, one of them is about to fire on us.' Mac James shrugged irritably at his bonds. 'If you like slavery, or maybe even vivisection, just keep sitting there doing nothing.'
Jensen raged, uncertain; Marity's sirens wailed with sudden violence, her shields crackling under the impact of a hit.
'Warning rocket,' Mac said tersely. 'Probably they're provoking to see whether we want a fight. Power up the transmitter, boy.'
Jensen hesitated.
'Do it now!' barked MacKenzie James, adamant as a Fleet rear admiral.
Another red halo bloomed on the analog screen. Jensen slapped the transmitter switch. The gabble of alien speech that issued from the speaker caused the last bit of color to drain from his face.
'Now listen carefully, boy,' said the hell-begotten captain from the floor. 'Do exactly as I tell you, or we'll both get our guts ripped out.'
'You planned this!' Jensen accused, horror sharpening the immediacy of their peril.
'Yes, now shut the hell up and listen!' MacKenzie said.
The patter of Khalian changed inflection, and a singsong voice in poorly pronounced wording began a demand for the surrender of Marity and all human personnel on board.
Still clutching pellet gun and keys, Jensen rubbed his hands over his blanched face.
'You will surrender my ship to the Khalia,' MacKenzie James instructed tersely. 'But add that you will submit only to a great captain, one who has proven his merit. That one, you will say, is the Khalia cruiser currently in orbit over the night side of Castleton's.'
Jensen lowered his hands, incredulity spread across his features.
Before he could draw breath to speak, Mac James cut in, 'Just do it!'
Instead Jensen spun and stabbed each of the firing studs in frenzied succession. Nothing happened. Marity's weapons remained utterly unresponsive. Furious that his career should be finished without a single rocket fired in protest, and whipped by recognition that no option at all remained to him, Jensen crumbled at last into panic. 'Why disable the weaponry, man? Why, if you planned this cruise into an effing Khalian fleet?'
'I probably wanted to commit suicide.' MacKenzie's vicious sarcasm jarred like a slap. 'Maybe, though, I'll get slavery or vivisection instead.'
A shudder shook Jensen's frame as the voice on the transmitter changed from a demand for surrender to threats. Rather than be blasted to vapor, Jensen pressed the toggle to send. He surrendered Marity and all on board to the Khalia in a voice he barely recognized as his own. Only as an afterthought did he include MacKenzie James's stipulation: that prize rights and conquest be awarded to one of proven merit, the great captain who cruised the dark side of Castleton's.
The effect upon the Khalia was profound. By their belligerent and bloodthirsty reputation, Jensen expected the enemy would converge upon their prize without delay. Instead, the scout ships clustered tightly to their respective cruisers; as if locked in deadly partnership, the closer pair of warships wheeled and advanced upon the one which even now accelerated from the shadowed side of Castleton's.
'They'll challenge,' MacKenzie broke in, answering Jensen's puzzled frown. 'Khalian war leaders can't bear to defer without a fight. That lends you a very narrow margin to get this bucket operational. Which means my release, boy, because this is the only break you're going to get.'
Jensen rounded upon the captain. 'You never intended to surrender!'
Mac James returned a withering stare. Mollified by a knowledge of the enemy not even Fleet intelligence could equal, Jensen thumbed the safety toggle off his pellet gun. Then he took the release key in his other hand, stooped, and undipped the nooses from MacKenzie James's feet. The man shifted forward to better expose his hands; the noose was soaked with blood. Nerves, or tension, or sheer frustration had caused the skip-runner captain to wrench at his bonds until his wrists tore open. Jensen keyed the catches, a sick clench in his gut causing his guard to slip. In that instant, MacKenzie's elbow hammered upward into his face. A spin and a kick relieved Jensen of his weapon. The young officer crumpled to his knees. Feeling as if every knuckle in his hand were broken, he fumbled to pull the knife he had confiscated earlier.
Mac James reached it first, and tossed it rattling into a corner. Disregarding Jensen completely, he retrieved the fallen gun, discharged the single round into the stuffed seat of a crew couch, then hurled the weapon without ceremony down the companionway ladder. With no break in movement he bent over the opened cowling of the control panel and furiously began to work.
Lights flashed to life under the captain's ministrations, casting baleful light over his frowning features. To Jensen, who moaned through clenched teeth at his back, he said, 'Clear Evans out of here, boy. If I trip over him at the wrong moment, some Khalia butcher'll hack off your balls.'
Jensen obeyed to buy time, lull the captain into the belief he was cowed. Evans's corpse was already cool to the touch, his bulk limp and awkward to lift. Hampered by his injured hand, Jensen was forced to drag him. Blood from the dead man's shattered jaw smeared the white deck. Dizzied with pain from his hand, Jensen choked back a wave of nausea. He reeled into the nearest crew chair, just as Marity roared to life. MacKenzie James crowed over the controls like an elated child. Scarred fingers kicked in the accelerators.
On the analog screen, the first pair of cruisers closed to do battle, scout ships circling to one side like swarms of angry bees. Now and again the bolt of a plasma discharge flicked through the flashes of heavy rockets.
'They're pounding themselves to a pulp,' Jensen observed in amazement.
'Better hope they do.' MacKenzie twisted a lead, then punched up Marity's screens. 'The one who's not joining the cockfight will be on our butt quick, before the survivor calls challenge on him.'
'How do you know?' Jensen hated himself for the admiration which colored his tone. 'Where did you learn so much about the enemy?'
MacKenzie never glanced up from t
he controls. 'Evans could have told you. Right now, I'm too busy.' He flung himself into the adjoining pilot's chair, took the helm, and almost immediately Marity veered.
Still nauseous, Jensen sought stability in watching the analog monitor. As the attitude thrusters opened wide, the pared disk of Castleton's fell away, replaced briefly by space sprinkled with fixed stars, and the moving points of enemy warcraft. These were eclipsed in turn by the disk of Castleton's sun; MacKenzie flicked the stabilizers and banged the heel of his hand down, shoving the gravity drive into full acceleration.
Jensen made a sound in protest as several g's of force ground his body against the crew chair. 'Out of the frying pan,' he managed, before discomfort forced him silent.
MacKenzie James said nothing. His profile seemed motionless as laser-cut quartz in the lights off the monitors as Marity picked up speed. Fuelled by the gravitational field of Castleton's sun, she gained velocity at a rate that was frightening. Jensen battled for equilibrium. He was not the pilot that Shields was, but he could recognize when safe limits were transgressed. As if his worn old craft did not hurtle full tilt for annihilation in the fires of a star, Mac James sat back and flexed his scarred fingers in a manner that suggested habit. Then, as Marity's course held stable, he shoved forward against the force of acceleration and busied himself again with the circuitry.
'Haven't you done enough?' Jensen demanded, mostly to distract himself from fear. With the Khalia behind, and the inferno of Castleton's star raging forward, what composure he had left was faked.
Mac James pulled a wire from the cowling and unceremoniously stripped it with his teeth. He twisted the bared end into a hook which he clamped to some unseen contact below. Another panel on Marity's control boards flickered to light; satisfaction made her captain expansive. 'You're better endowed with luck than brains, boy. You're not going to burn. Just maybe you'll be spared the hell of being bait for Khalia as well.'
He added no explanation. But as the third Khalian warship swung to intercept, the captain responded with hair-raising innovation. He spun Marity into what seemed a suicidal trajectory toward Castleton's sun. Like some terrible vulture, the Khalian cruiser swung into position, shadowing their descent into the inferno. If Mac James even once tried his drive brake, Marity's occupants would be weasel meat.
Jensen masked fright with bravado. 'You're sending yourself to hell, by way of the inferno.'
MacKenzie James said nothing. The staccato buzz of an alarm sounded, and the control board transformed to a field of warning lights. Caught in horrified absorption by the star swelling on the analog screen, Jensen almost forgot the Khalian warship until it fired.
The rocket lanced across the screens, violet against the glare of Castleton's star.
'My god,' Jensen said angrily. 'Do they believe in miracles, or what? They may as well vaporize us, for all that we can stop.'
'They think we're what we seem,' MacKenzie James said softly. 'A merchanter caught without escort.' He paused, as if that explained everything. A second Khalian rocket seared across the screens. In the fitful, flickering light of its passage, the captain seemed to recall that the man in the crumpled Freer robe who sweated in his crew chair was not his knowledgeable mate.
'The Khalia believe that we have chosen suicide rather than be captured. They fire to salute our courage, for by their honor code, our action is admirable.'
Which fit with the accuracy of truth, Jensen reasoned. With a crushing sense of frustration, he cursed the fact that he could not return the information to his superiors. Surely such knowledge would have earned him a commendation and promotion - but the closing proximity of Castleton's sun foreclosed any chance of survival.
MacKenzie James seemed peculiarly indifferent to the end his own subterfuge had created. Hunched like a bear over his controls, he grinned. 'Watch now.' But the corpse of the mate which oozed by the companionway showed as much enthusiasm as Jensen. 'In a moment, the Khalian ship will brake and pull off, just enough so she'll bounce off the gravity well at a tangent.'
'So what,' Jensen shot back. The captain was crazy; they'd melt just as handily by hydrogen fusion, but the man acted as if he was ignorant of the fundamental rules of physics.
'Now,' murmured Mac James. The Khalian cruiser shifted. His scarred hands moved at the controls, and Marity responded with a roar like a Chinese dragon. Jensen was tossed backward as her entire aft quarter opened up into a fireball.
Jensen saved himself from a bruising fall with the hand Mac James had injured. Pain exploded like white heat. His head spun and his vision momentarily went black.
'We're not a merchanter,' admonished MacKenzie James from the dark. By the time the officer's eyesight cleared, Marity had burned into a new trajectory, a searing arc that would carry her into a parabolic orbit just within survivable limits. This, with an antique mess of a drive unit that ran on explosive propellants - no sane captain would have such a relic on a space-going vessel.
'But the quick acceleration is damned handy in a pinch,' the skip-runner captain said brightly. 'It's saved my butt more than once.'
Mac James stretched in his chair, flexing his fingers in a hellish glare of warning lights and attitude meters. Jensen held his opinion. Marity might be safe at present, but only by the grace of surprise. Khalian raiders would be waiting once they rounded Castleton's sun, and even Mac James's famous cunning was not equal to combat against a cruiser.
The skip-runner captain met Jensen's skepticism with a stinging honesty. 'Boy, your officer's handbook doesn't list every known fact in the universe. The systems they have are infrared, which happens to be our salvation, because the emissions from that star out there will blind them.'
And it dawned on Jensen then, that both of them were going to survive. The Khalia believed they had burned. Once eclipsed by Castleton's star, Marity could hammer her way into escape trajectory with her anachronistic fusion rockets, then power down. With her gravity drives turned off, no infrared scope could distinguish her from an asteroid. Hopelessness and lethargy vanished in a breath. The pellet gun which Mac James had carelessly tossed down the companionway became of paramount importance.
Jensen measured the distance to the opened hatch with his eyes. The expanse was wider than he liked, particularly since the Freer robe would encumber him. Still, with Castleton's world and the threat of the Khalia keeping MacKenzie James preoccupied, there might never be a better opportunity. Jensen gathered his courage and jumped.
He completed no more than a step when a weight crashed into his shoulders from behind. He fell heavily to the deck. At once the muscled bulk of MacKenzie James bore him down. Jensen countered with a wrestler's move that should have freed him in short order. Instead the captain anticipated him, caught his wrist, and twisted. Jensen cursed, forced to fall limp or scream with the pain of dislocated joints.
Just shy of injury, Mac James let up. 'You're trouble,' he said bluntly. And as though he handled a vicious animal, he rolled and jerked Jensen upright. The strength in his hands was astonishing. Very quickly, the Fleet officer found himself noosed and helpless in the coils of his own restraints.
'Also, you talk too much,' MacKenzie added. He ripped away the sash of the Freer robe, pausing as his fingers encountered the bulk of the transmitter. A wicked flash of amusement touched his features as he went on and twisted the material into a gag, which he tied expertly in place. Jensen struggled but gained nothing except cuts on the ribbon-thin metal of the noose. Shoved into the nearest crew chair, he glared back as the captain studied him in passionless silence. The directness of the man's gaze unnerved Jensen as nothing had before.
'What chance did you give Evans?' Mac James's voice held a roughness that might have been grief, except his expression showed no feeling at all. The captain flexed his ruined fingers, one after another. Tortured with the certainty his fate was being weighed, Jensen recognized more than habit in the movement; such exercise had once restored mobility to hands crippled with coil burns. The driving p
ersistence of the captain's character abruptly became frightening to contemplate.
Jensen closed his eyes, opened them to find the captain watching him still. The ambition that had driven the attempt at his capture withered away to diffidence. The gag tasted of sweat and desert spice and stale saliva, and the sick fear in Jensen's gut coiled tighter by the minute.
Aware his captive's composure was crumbling, MacKenzie James jerked him to his feet and spun him around. 'Evans never did like to kill,' he said in contempt. 'For that, you'll leave Marity alive.'
But reprieve was not what MacKenzie James had in mind as he hefted his captive through the companionway. Towed through null gravity like baggage, Jensen had to writhe ignominiously to keep his face from banging the bulkheads. The hiss of the lock to the cargo hold spilled icy air over his skin. Left to drift, the young officer could not see his captor, but an echoing flurry of footfalls and the clang of something metallic did little but amplify his apprehension. Then hard hands caught his legs. His view of the hold spun horizontally, and through dizziness he glimpsed customs seals and the opened hatch of the cargo capsule. Then MacKenzie James brutally started cramming his body inside. Jensen exploded in panic.
He struggled, and got a bang on the head for his effort. Mac James shoved his shoulders down. Scarred fingers reached for the latch.
Jensen twisted frantically and managed to tear the gag loose. 'Wait!' he said breathlessly. Desperate now, his ambition reduced to a fool's dream, he begged. 'I could take Evans's place for you!' Except for the piloting, he was qualified; and he wouldn't defect, not really. Once he gained MacKenzie's confidence he could alert Fleet authorities.
But his proposal met with silence. Shoved protesting into the cargo capsule, and panicked by the prospect of confinement, Jensen abandoned his pride. 'Damn you, I'm the son of an Alliance Councilman! That should be worth enough to hold me for ransom.'