by David Drake
A few of the behemoths winked their running lights in salute of the Marity and her latest act of sabotage against the Fleet.
Blackly murderous, Jensen chafed at the lashing on his wrists. He considered a thousand ways to kill the skip-runner captain MacKenzie James, all of them lingeringly bloody.
The Syndicate fleet departed, leaving the black of space on the analog screen. Hours passed. Jensen’s hands were numb. His full bladder became a torment. His wrists stung and his shoulders ached, and his ears had long since stopped hearing the thump and bump, and the hiss of flushed air from the lock below decks as the Kildare’s heavier components were offloaded to the hold on board Marity. The tap of footsteps coming and going ceased, replaced by one incongruously light tread recognizable as that of MacKenzie James.
At the entry to the bridge he paused, and called instructions to his mate and pilot. “Go back to Marity and power up the coils. Syndicate’s about reached Khalia by now, and when they find Duane there to give a hot welcome, I want to be gone from this system.”
Gibsen said something that rang with cheerful sarcasm.
Then MacKenzie James strode across the metal floor plates, rounded the central bulkhead that divided the rear half of the bridge into two compartments, and ended by looking down at the commander still strapped to the central crew chair. He studied Jensen with an intensity that unnerved. For once, Mac’s coil-scarred hands were still. A faded, much creased coverall covered his muscled shoulders, the cuffs unhooked and turned back where they’d bound at sinewed wrists through the hours of hanging in the wreckage waiting to spring the trap. Although the only one of Kildare’s original crew without a gag, Jensen waited for the skip-runner to speak first.
“Boy, the message torp giving the Syndicate war fleet’s vector to Khalia went out under your codes. For that, your brass might overlook the fact that you were careless enough to get your ship boarded and stripped. If you’ve got the guts and the glibness to lay your story right.”
Jensen regarded the captain he reviled with every fiber of his being. His career standing did not trouble him. That concern would arise later. Now, only one question burned to be answered. Staring into an expression like chipped granite, Jensen asked, “Why should you send that message torp? You’re not a man who does favors on principle.”
Mac James gave back a rogue’s grin that harbored little humor. “Who else could have done the job and been ignored through the passage of the entire Syndicate attack fleet?”
Unsatisfied, Jensen said nothing.
The coil-scarred fingers flexed, one by one in succession with the familiarity of long-established habit. Mac James qualified on a note of dubious sincerity. “Say I didn’t want Khalia scragged.”
“Did it have to do with your market for illicit weapons?” Jensen demanded, burningly fierce.
The most-wanted skip-runner captain in space awarded his adversary a half shrug of dismissal. “You have one outstanding asset, boy. Your thinking is simplistically accurate.”
Since the comment was the last that Jensen might have anticipated, he was left without ready rejoinder.
Untouchable, untraceable, and infuriatingly confident, MacKenzie James turned on his heel. He stepped off the stripped bridge of the Kildare and departed through the lock for his transfer back to Marity. Moments later the same accursed analog screen showed the skip-runner ship’s departure.
Yet the last word came over the com channel the captain had deliberately left open.
“You have no propulsion system, no firepower, and no communication or navigational equipment left aboard,” observed the blunt tones of Mac James. “However, in the aft console where message torps are stored, you’ll find one Gibsen left behind. That should be sufficient to see you rescued, when the fight winds down over Khalia.” A moment later the skip-runner captain added an afterthought: “Oh, yes, and your engineer, is it Officer Dak? He’s locked in the emergency escape capsule. You’ll want to let him out. Apparently he pissed off my mate some, and the air supply in the capsule was left off. . . .”
* * *
It was Cael, one of the laser crew, who worked out of his bonds first. Lanky, sallow, and looking as if he’d worn the same coverall for a week, he arrived on the bridge in an excited gush of talk. “Can’t find Dak,” he said breathlessly as he cut Jensen’s hands free. “Damned skip-runner must’ve abducted him, or killed him, or something, because he’s not in any of the compartments. Jesus, you should see what’s happened down there. Ship’s got no guts left, I swear. Stripped down to her coils, which leak, and are useless anyway.”
“Cael,” said Jensen, standing stiffly due to discomfort and an icy vista of fury. “Kindly be silent and cut your fellow officers free.”
The next thing Cael chose to cut was Beckett’s gag, which from Jensen’s point of view was a mistake. She never did keep her mouth shut.
“You won’t get away with this, Commander,” she said, between hawking sour spittle from her throat. “That message torp to Fleet won’t bring you farts for a citation, because I’m going to see you burn. You surrendered a Fleet vessel to a goddamned skip-runner, saw her stripped to her pins without a fight, and now you think to profit by it? Guess again.”
Slapped awake from his obsessive desire to see MacKenzie James dead and rotting, Jensen simply stared at her. He did not notice the looks given him by the ensign, nor the baffled curiosity of the gunman who paused in his ministrations to the pilot. In a tone of velvet quiet, the commander said, “Carry on with your duties. I’m going down to free Dak.”
Jensen strode coolly from Kildare’s bridge. From the moment he rounded the bulkhead, his crew burst into excited talk, but he did not hear. Sprinting full tilt for the access hatch to the lower level, he thought only upon how to save his career. Beckett was an unanticipated problem. Damn her for having no ambition whatsoever. Damn her for being a stickler for protocol. Old for her post, she’d probably never been promoted because the officers she’d served under hated her.
But deep down, Jensen knew that Beckett was only a fraction of the problem. Even if the other five members of the crew went along with a falsified story, how long before that greenie ensign or that all-thumbs pilot talked over their beer?
Involved in furious thought, Jensen hurried on.
Around the bend, past the gutted remains of the drive compartment, Jensen nearly collided with the other member of his gun crew. “Rogers,” he said, trying not to wince at the stab of pain from his cracked ribs. “The rest of the crew are on the bridge. Join them and wait for my return.”
“Aye, sir,’” said Rogers, his corpulent, ruddy features showing no curiosity at all. Cael often said he only came alive under his headset, with a live target in front of him.
Just then, Jensen was grateful for one crewman who was content with a stolid outlook. He ducked down a side corridor that narrowed into a tube. The light panels were out, lending a gray, echoing ghostliness to a downward plunge into dark. Kildare’s conversion had been too hasty for aesthetics; her gratings were blessedly bare. Jensen found the access panel by feel and tapped out the security code. A panel hissed open. Striped black and yellow, and glinting with reflective tape, the last remaining message torp rested untouched in its cradle, exactly as MacKenzie James had said.
Jensen lifted it out, grunting at the pain as cracked ribs protested the exertion. He hefted the capsule to his sound side, but found the effort a waste. The strain on the muscles called on to hold his body erect against the off-balancing weight hurt him just as much.
Breathing with all the tenderness he could manage and hating the fact his eyes watered from the effort, Jensen inched his way back down the access tube. He’d have to cross the main bay, which was probably unlighted, and that was the moment he’d be vulnerable if any of his crew chanced to stray from the flight deck.
The lights proved to be on, which was infinitely worse; Jensen felt exposed as he crossed the open expanse. His hands shook, and his fingers left sweaty prints o
n the reflective strips of the message torp. He pressed on, toward the shadowed alcove with its reflective emergency emblem.
* * *
The escape ejection capsule’s lock cracked open with a faint hiss and an escape of stale air. Grunting despite his best effort as he ducked, Jensen pushed his way inside, the message torp tucked across his knees. He elbowed the plate that would light the interior, and saw what looked like a bundle of rags in one corner. The seeping red stains in the cloth belied that assessment.
Jensen set down the torp, shifted, and light from the overhead flooded over his shoulder to reveal the engineer, Dak, bound, gagged, and rolled up in a shivering ball. The knuckles visible through the strapping on his hands and wrists were grazed, and he had a gash on one knee, an elbow, and the curve of one acne-dotted cheek. His eyes, which were blue and bugged out, swiveled in surprise at the sight of his commander. He moaned something that had the ring of obscenity into his gag and thrashed determinedly at his bonds.
Preternaturally aware of the access hatch gapped open at his back, Jensen whispered urgently for silence.
“Hostiles are still aboard,” he lied as he stooped over the battered engineer. He began with the wrist bonds and whispered into the ear that poked over the edge of the gag. “We’re in very deep trouble.”
Dak flexed his freed hands and gave Jensen a wide-eyed look of sarcasm. His first words, as his gag came loose, were “No kidding.”
Jensen let some of the anger he felt toward MacKenzie James leak into his voice. “Crew’s all dead. Without quarter.”
That shut Dak up, fast. Sealed in the escape capsule, he’d had no clue as to what had befallen. He stared in shocked horror as his senior officer continued.
“They spared me so they could pump me for security codes and information,” Jensen fabricated. He paused, made a show of staring at his hands, which were abraded and raw from his constant twisting at the ties that lashed him to the crew chair. “I talked some, mostly as a ploy. The skip-runners thought I was scared and didn’t view me as a threat. They tied me less carefully than they might have, and I managed to work free.” Now Jensen raised his eyes and stared ingenuously at his engineer. “We need to blow the ship,” he confided. “Take out those skip-runners before they have a chance to use my codes against the Fleet, or to make off with Kildare as a prize.”
“They were going to leave me to suffocate!” Dak burst out in a fury.
Nervelessly, Jensen played along. “No doubt.” He allowed a moment for the unpleasantness of that concept to register, then gently prodded for what he wanted. “I need you, Dak. We’re stripped of all energy sources but that cracked coil unit, and somehow we need to destroy Kildare.”
Dak’s face grew thoughtful, almost boyish as he considered the problem. “Shouldn’t be too difficult,” he surmised, his knobby fingers tapping his agitation. “The crack’s making the unit unstable anyway. All we need to do is play a current through it. Should create a critical imbalance on short order.” He ruminated for a moment, chewing his lip. “Trouble is, once I start the sequence, there won’t be any fail-safe. Kildare will explode, and nothing we do could stop the process.”
“You’d rather die at the hands of the skip-runners?” Jensen said brutally.
Dak shrugged. “Rather not die at all, truth to tell. But I guess this is our best chance.”
Jensen settled back with a show of relief that was not entirely feigned. “I’ll see you commended in my report, for courageous duty to the Fleet.”
For a moment, Dak looked wistful. “My mom would appreciate that. If we ever get through this alive.”
Jensen nodded. As his back settled against the console of the escape capsule, he made a point of wincing over his cracked ribs. “I’ve brought a message torp,” he said thinly. “When you get back from sabotaging the coils, we’ll launch the capsule without engines. If we’re lucky, drift will carry us clear before the skip-runner notices. When we know we’re away, the torp will call in a rescue.”
At the crucial moment Dak’s childish face looked uncertain.
“I hate to go out,” he allowed. He dabbed at the gash on his knee, and made a face. “That damned skip-runner’s mate fights dirty.”
Cloaked in the icy air of command, Jensen held back a sigh. “I won’t remind you of the need to keep out of sight.”
“I don’t ever wake up their husbands,” Dak admonished dryly. “Be sure of it, I’ll be damned quiet.” He folded his awkward assortment of limbs, slipped past, and sauntered off into the main bay with his lips curled in a nervous grimace.
Left alone in the stuffy confines of the capsule, Jensen readied the panel for takeoff. Mac James had left all the systems operational, which was well, for he had no intention of leaving the Kildare by drift. He’d go under power, and fast as he could manage, and he’d watch his command blow from space. That his crew were to die without quarter caused his hands to shake only slightly.
He’d weighed his options and decided without regret. The ghosts of a greenie ensign, and that dried-up bitch Beckett, a gun crew, and an incompetent pilot would not haunt him half so much as a career despoiled by court-martial.
That Dak had to be duped was a pity. The kid was a gifted engineer. . . .
* * *
In a cubicle office of Special Services, a thin man with a dry complexion thumbed through the report. The lines that described Jensen’s story were straightforward enough–that Kildare had been commandeered by the skip-runner MacKenzie James, her crew murdered without quarter, and only her commander kept alive, for purposes of interrogation. With his vessel taken in tow to rendezvous with the Syndicate fleet, Commander Jensen had contrived escape, fired off the warning message torp to Admiral Duane’s fleet then arranged to scuttle Kildare. He had been rescued from his escape capsule forty-eight hours after the battle off Khalia, in battered condition with several cracked ribs.
Cloth rustled as a short man seated in the corner shifted his weight. “The boy’s lying outright. Mac James never kills unnecessarily.”
The thin man’s silence offered agreement. He thumbed the corner of the report for a moment before shuffling the pages straight.
The short man felt moved to clarify. “The security codes on the warning torp were Jensen’s, but Mac James’s personal cipher was appended. I say he’s still alive, and that Commander Jensen destroyed his ship to hide evidence detrimental to himself.”
The thin man stirred at last. “MacKenzie James is undoubtedly still alive. But the promotion to captain that’s coming to Jensen cannot be stopped without blowing Mac’s cover. With the Syndicate families being the threat that they are, I’m reluctant to call down a public hero. The people need the morale boost. And Mac’s far too valuable a contact to waste just to bring a murderer to trial.”
“Let it pass, then?” the short man concluded.
“No.” The word held the hardness of nails. “Give Jensen a file in our records. He might prove useful someday.”
Articles of War
Article IX
Every Person subject to this Act who shall desert his Post or sleep upon his Watch, or negligently perform the Duty imposed upon him, shall be dismissed from Service, with Disgrace, or shall suffer such other Punishment as is herein-after mentioned.
The Fleet dreadnought was the queen of space. Larger, better shielded, and bristling with weapons, they were also incredibly expensive. Manned by a crew of over five thousand, the dreadnought took five years to complete. It was estimated that each of the Fleet’s ten dreadnoughts had required resources greater than the total Planetary Economic Value that was generated annually by almost a third of the Alliance’s member planets.
The Syndicate battle plan was simple. The Fleish family fleet, consisting of a single dreadnought and its escorts, would feint at Target approximately six hours before the actual attack on Khalia. By committing one of their own dreadnoughts to the feint, they hoped to panic the defenders into calling for assistance. Then when Duane’s fleet was
at its farthest point from Khalia, their main body would strike.
If the feint didn’t work, then the Fleish ships were to eliminate any defenders and return to join the main battle as soon as was possible. They would then form a hammer that would slam the Fleet formation against the anvil of the combined Family fleets. In this way the Syndicate would have a decisive advantage whatever option Duane chose.
That was the plan, which, axiomatically never survives the start of the battle. It didn’t.
THERE WERE three of them aboard the assault boat.
The commander was the oldest and most experienced. He would be twenty-three next month. Some weeks earlier he had decided to grow a mustache so that he would look more mature, but all it really did was give him the appearance of a baby-faced young man with a dirty upper lip. He had a girl back home–a bona fide childhood sweetheart–and he spent most of his spare time writing long letters to her. He loved baseball, knew there was no better cook in the world than his mother, and hoped to take over his father’s farm after the war was over.
The pilot had a sneaking fondness for the commander, despite what he believed to be the senior officer’s naivete. The pilot was in for the long haul, and from what he had seen, it was going to be a very long haul indeed. He didn’t carry much emotional baggage, and he was too cynical by half, and he didn’t have all that much confidence in Dynamite Duane–or in anyone else except himself, for that matter–but he was a damned good pilot, and he knew it. He spent most of his spare time studying military tactics, against the day that he might command a ship of his own, and the rest of it he spent playing dozens of ongoing chess games by radio against other friends in the Fleet.
The engineer didn’t talk much, and thought less. He had spent most of his adolescence keeping one step ahead of the Khalia as they devastated one planet after another, and it had made a deep impression on him. The Fleet could fight the Syndicate or anyone else it chose; he knew who his enemy was.