Crisis

by David Drake

  That explained the horrible dizziness: inertia, not pain. The Kildare tumbled from the hit, her guidance units unable to compensate with one quarter of the system blown out. Left gray and disoriented from his own hurts, Jensen fought the buck of the deck and crashed back into his command chair. “Find out if she’s stable,” he rapped out in reference to the hull. Then he glanced across the gloom of the V-shaped control bridge toward the silhouette of his still-swearing pilot. “Get this hulk back under control, fast.”

  The pilot, the fair-haired son of somebody’s father in the Admiralty, was nowhere near as good as the rating sewn onto the starched sleeve of his coverall. Neat to the point of fussiness he might be, but his hands were slow, and his touch, far from unerring. Trembling, he fumbled the controls.

  Whiplashed by a second round of inertial force all the more aggravating for being unnecessary, Jensen shut his eyes in forbearance. The last pilot he’d been assigned had been a sloppy son of a bitch when it came to appearance; but he could by God fly. Kildare rolled, bucketed, lurched, and finally wobbled out of her tumble.

  By then the young ensign had recovered his curiosity enough to voice the obvious. “Damn, Commander, who would be firing on us out here?”

  Jensen ignored the question until after he had queried his one competent bridge officer, a wary middle-aged woman named Beckett who’d been born without the instincts of motherhood. “Gun crews intact, sir, and your engineer gives the drive systems a tentative okay,” she answered in her husky baritone. The sandy hair pulled back from her forehead emphasized bushy eyebrows, and square, oversize front teeth. If homely appearance had stifled her social life, Beckett poured her frustration into her work. She’d already confirmed the engineer’s next check. “Dak’s testing the coil regulator for signal overload, but adds it’s an outside possibility.”

  The laser hit must have grazed them, Jensen determined, and concluded further that if their shields had been breached, the attack weapon was more powerful than any small vessel should pack. Still, reassured that the main drive systems of his vessel apparently remained intact, Commander Jensen stared across an undecorated expanse of grate flooring to the junior ensign who had questioned inopportunely; a boy so fresh from his Academy training that he still wore his hat on the bridge; hunched in earnest over his board, the kid had a clear, pudgy complexion that ran to acne, and ears that stuck out from under spikes of silvery fair hair. He was currently gazing, rapt, at the image of drifting fragments on the main analog screen.

  “I thought I asked you to check on the status of our hull?” Jensen snapped, pained by more than his ribs. He resisted an impulse to blot sweat from his brow, then silently pondered the selfsame issue. His ship was a converted yacht, a rich man’s toy hastily revamped for Fleet service in the face of threat from the Syndicate. She was armed more for scout duty than defense, and with her untried crew and recently promoted senior officer, Admiral Duane had stationed her as far from any probable site of action as possible. Why had the Kildare been fired upon? And by whom, when they were just a patrol sent out for observation, in case the battle that currently centered around Target proved to be a feint?

  “Beckett,” Jensen said belatedly, “initiate a scan.”

  The communications officer nodded her leathery face, eyes underlit by the scatter of lights on her board. She did not belabor the point that she had done so, long since, but the blown aft sensors left her blind to near half of the analog grid.

  * * *

  On the bridge of the Marity, by appearance a hard-run merchanter, and by trade a skip-runner ship, a bearish, blunt-featured man scratched at the mat of chest hair through the opened neck of his coverall. The flight deck of his vessel was too cramped with instrumentation for a man of his size to stretch. This did not seem to trouble him as he turned deceptively lazy eyes to the mate who worked the console beside him. “They found us yet?”

  Slender, elegant as an antique rapier, Marity’s mate, Gibsen, turned his head with a half-raised brow. Framed by a vista of illegal electronics and signal lights of alien design, he said, “No. And their pilot’s a kid who can’t fly.”

  In the half gloom of Marity’s flight deck, MacKenzie James didn’t speak. On the graying side of thirty-five and muscled like a wild beast, he made no move. But the corner of his mouth that lifted toward a smirk said “incompetent” more plainly than words. His scarred hands stopped their scratching, and his gravelly, basso voice phrased orders with a sparseness that hinted at exasperation. “Forget subtlety. Show them.”

  As if blowing the hell out of the ass end of any Fleet ship hadn’t been questionably unsubtle, Gibsen set tapered fingers to the controls and tweaked.

  The Marity changed position.

  * * *

  Which meant Beckett, bent yet over a console set for a fine-screen search, suddenly got an eyeful of side vanes and struts where a second ago her instruments had shown emptiness. The impossible happened. She got flapped, screeched a startled oath, and jerked back before she thought to step down the magnification. “Dammit to hell with a hangover!” she repeated, sounding more like her gender than she ever had. “We’re being messed after by a goddamn merchanter.”

  “What!” Jensen half sprang from his command chair, then sank back with a grunt of pain. Plagued by echoes of his own startlement reflected back at him by bare, metallic bulkheads, he went suddenly cold to the core. The only “merchanter” he could imagine near the site of a major battle against the Syndicate would be the Marity, command of the skip-runner and criminal MacKenzie James. “Get me a registry number,” Jensen snapped through stabbing discomfort. “Or lacking that, scan for specs.”

  Beckett read back the requested information in her usual sexless voice.

  “Marity,” Jensen confirmed. And his manner held an edge that his crew had never known.

  * * *

  On the dimly lit bridge of the Marity, the mate Gibsen raised baleful hazel eyes to his captain. “Mac, they aren’t minded to be sportsmen this morning. The portside plasma turret is rotating our way.”

  “Beats hell out of being overlooked,” Mac James said laconically. “Now give ‘em something to chase.”

  Gibsen’s narrow features lit in a grin, red-tinged by the lights of his console. “Lead them on by the nose, you mean.” His delight did not fade through the split-second interval as he played his controls with a touch his Fleet counterpart aboard Kildare would have sworn on his scrotum was wizardry.

  * * *

  Beckett patently refused the belief that the Marity was anything other than a hard-used private hauler; she argued loudly up to the point when her screens displayed a maneuver that should by Marity’s aged specs have destroyed the integrity of her hull. Caught midsentence in denial, the com officer paused, closed her heavy jaw, then recited the formula that outlined the effects of inertia upon the Marity’s supposed limitations. “Bits,” she finished heatedly. “We should be looking at flying bits of wreckage.”

  Cracked ribs prevented Jensen from rounding on her in a fury. As a result, his instructions to his pilot came out with unintentional control. “Tail her. And set our coils charging for transit to FTL. If Marity’s going to jump, we jump with her, or blow our coil condensers trying.”

  “Bloody hells, Commander, whatever for!” interjected Beckett. “We’ve an assigned post, and despite the provocation, I see no reason to abandon our position.”

  Jensen moved a foot and swiveled his chair toward her. He glared the length of the bare, functional bridge compartment. “Are you questioning my direct order?” he demanded with a rage that burned entirely inward; his face stayed deadpan, and his eyes, unflinchingly level.

  Beckett’s rough complexion reddened. “I question unreasonable judgment.” Nonplussed, her huge hand flicked the switch that assured her words would be monitored and incorporated into the ship’s official course log.

  The fresh-faced ensign beyond her followed the exchange with an interest that could damn, if the issue ever came to
court-martial.

  Frostily stiff, Jensen said to his pilot, “Carry on, Sarchev. Follow the Marity.”

  Later, when the craft of MacKenzie James initiated FTL, the Kildare followed suit.

  * * *

  “Hooked,” murmured Gibsen when the queer hesitation in human time-sense passed, and the darkness of FTL settled like a hood over both of the Marity’s analog screens. “Your boy commander’s taken the bait.”

  On the adjacent chair, which had a tendency to leak its stuffing out of several haphazardly stitched rips, Mac James turned his blunt-featured face. Red-lit by the array of the Marity’s instruments, he showed the smile of a sated predator. He flexed his coil-scarred fingers with the method of old habit and murmured, “After the tangle we made of Jensen’s plot at Chalice station, did you ever think that he wouldn’t?”

  Gibsen lounged back in his crew chair, his long-lashed eyes deeply thoughtful. He did not say what he felt, that the more you messed with a man’s obsessions, the more dangerous he was likely to become. The corollary required no emphasis: Jensen’s hatred of MacKenzie James was no longer rooted in sanity.

  * * *

  On the control bridge of Kildare, Communications Officer Beckett whacked a ham fist against her thigh. “You’re crazy, and a goddamned danger to all of us.”

  Jensen regarded her outburst with no other reaction beyond a blink. “Question my authority one more time, and I’ll see you stripped of your rank.”

  His total absence of passion was all that made Beckett back down. Surrounded by taut stillness that gripped the two other crew members present, she looked down and fiddled a few adjustments on her board. The next instant the chime that signaled departure from FTL sounded across silence.

  “Short hop,” murmured Kildare’s pilot, and the next instant everybody on the flight deck had their hands full.

  The engineer called in to report a power failure in the main drive. “Coil leakage,” he said tersely. “No way of predicting the stress crack that caused it. But FTL’s a closed option until the system’s been drained and patched.”

  Even as Jensen drew a pained breath to express his annoyance, Beckett delivered worse news: their precipitous flight after Marity had landed them all but on top of the leading edge of a war fleet.

  “Identify,” Jensen snapped back.

  The greenie ensign did so, in tones surprisingly steady. “Syndicate, sir. On a projected course toward Khalia.” He would have added the pertinent facts, concerning numbers of dreadnoughts and formation, but Jensen’s next order prevented it.

  “Where’s Marity?”

  “Sir?” Now the ensign’s voice did quaver. Naively inexperienced, and fearful of questioning a senior officer, he added, “We should inform Fleet Command, sir. The skip-runner’s presence is secondary to the defense of Khalia.

  “Mac James’s presence indicates involvement with the enemy,” Jensen replied with a patience he did not feel. “Now find me Marity, fast, because in case you’ve forgotten your notes, draining the coils means we’ll be without shields. We’re a sitting duck right now for a trigger-happy skip-runner, and that’s our first concern.”

  Almost in defiance, Beckett stabbed at her board. The analog screen flashed in response and gave back an image of scuffed paint and rust-flaked vanes, and the faded letters of a registry code that the years had weathered unintelligible. “She’s off our bow,” Beckett added sardonically. “Close enough to be in bed with, and right where we have no weapon to bear, and where our attitude control systems are too perfectly crippled to maneuver. That’s not luck. I’d say this was a prearranged trap.”

  She did not belabor the point that Kildare was well within range to be detected by the approaching fleet. Despite the fact that she was a conversion from the private sector, Kildare’s weaponry specs readily identified her as a Fleet vessel. In seconds rather than minutes the Kildare and her crew of seven would be nothing better than a target.

  The particulars of that dilemma had scarcely registered when a voice homed in through the security net that should have kept Kildare’s com bands shielded from outside interference.

  “Commander, I’d say your survival options are limited to one,” came an intrusive drawl that made the skin on Jensen’s arms roughen to gooseflesh. He knew the inflection, would recognize that grainy timbre anywhere for the voice of MacKenzie James. “Unless you’d rather get slagged by a plasma charge,” the skip-runner captain continued, “I’d advise that you surrender your vessel unconditionally to me.”

  Jensen’s jaw muscles knotted. The moment held clarity like a snapshot, preserved in time by preternatural awareness of the bridge compartment, with its gray drab walls flecked with lights thrown off by the controls, and set in that dance of shadow and reflection, the faces of his officers, all staring. The pilot wore a stupid expression of surprise; the set of Beckett’s outsized jaw showed cynicism; but of them all the greenie ensign was worst, with his wide-eyed, choked-back fear that implied utmost faith in his commander’s ability to produce a miracle.

  Feeling the stabbing ache of his ribs and a gut-deep hatred that made him shake, Jensen licked white lips. When he did not immediately speak, the voice of MacKenzie James elaborated.

  “Boy, you’d better decide fast.”

  “Damn you,” Jensen cracked back, though with no channel open Mac James could not hear.

  Beckett said nothing. The ensign looked near to panic, as his awe of his superior officer became shattered before his eyes. Only Kildare’s pilot managed the wits to speak. “The skiprunner could be bluffing. He’s got no protection, either, and the whole Syndicate fleet is bearing down.”

  Which was not only naive, but stupid, Jensen raged inwardly. MacKenzie James never backed himself into corners, except by clearest design. This skip-runner had sold Fleet secrets to goddamn Syndicate spies, and since he was uncannily reliable when it came to trafficking classified material out of the Alliance, the enemy dreadnoughts bearing down on Khalia were unlikely to advertise their presence merely to take out a contact likely to be useful against the Fleet. Nor would they blink at a prize ship stolen from an adversary. Wise to the ways of the skip-runner and determined to stay alive to best him, Jensen gave the only answer that left him any opening.

  “I surrender the Kildare and all her crew to the master of Marity, without condition.” Through the heat of his own humiliation, Jensen was aware of his ensign trying desperately not to cry, and a glare of vitriolic contempt from Communications Officer Beckett.

  * * *

  Mac James’s pilot had the hands of a monkey when it came to dismantling a control board. His narrow, sensitive fingers could reach and unhitch and disconnect circuitry behind narrow, cramped panels that by rights should have invited curses. Gibsen whistled, oblivious.

  The sound set Jensen’s teeth on edge, as did the quiet, deliberate voice of Mac James as he commandeered a communications console as yet unmolested by Gibsen’s tinkering. It did not matter to Kildare’s former commander that the skiprunner, of his own volition, was following through with the duty first urged by the baby-faced ensign now bound and gagged in the back bay of the flight deck. That the message torp bearing word of the Syndicate fleet’s vector toward Khalia was fired away under Commander Jensen’s own codes did not matter; that Admiral Duane would receive the communication in time to give Fleet forces the edge in the coming battle to preserve the Khalian planets did not matter.

  Jensen’s mind centered on one thought.

  MacKenzie James was a criminal. He did not act out of heroism, but only callous self-interest. If he wanted Khalia defended, that could only be because the two-faced Weasels who’d surrendered made a healthy, lucrative market for traffic in illicit weapons. Gunrunning being second only to state and military secrets on the list of Mac James’s transgressions. Marity would be involved to her top vanes. Jensen stared at the stubble of hair that furred the crown of the skip-runner captain’s head, just visible over the com station. Hatred and rage had both give
n way to a patience unforgiving as stone.

  Tied to his own command chair, unmoved by Beckett’s grunts of discomfort from the corner where she lay bound alongside Kildare’s ensign and pilot Tensen waited in motionless tension like a snake coiled before prey.

  Gibsen muttered a query from behind an opened cowling.

  “Gun turrets next,” Mac James said in drawllessly succinct reply. “We’ll want the coil regulator and the magneto banks, but leave life-support intact.” The salt-and-pepper crown of hair disappeared briefly as Mac James leaned forward to toggle a switch. His next instructions to his mate were buried under a drift of garble from the com, most likely cross-chat on a Syndicate command channel.

  Jensen ground his teeth.

  Gibsen straightened with his hands full of circuit boards, and the foreign speech paused in an inflection that framed a question. MacKenzie James answered in the same lingo, and the response that came back was mixed with laughter.

  There followed an infuriating interval while Gibsen and his skip-runner captain stripped the Kildare, with sure, no-nonsense efficiency. Jensen found the pain of cracked ribs less intrusive than the pain of humiliation. He sat, strapped helpless on his own flight deck, unable to face away from the analog screen somebody had carelessly left operational–the screen that showed the passage of the Syndicate fleet bound to attack the planet Khalia, dreadnoughts and their fighters arrayed in formation like some grand, silent procession.