'There,' Harris said suddenly, startlingly loud in the silence. 'I've got a fix on the target.'
His experienced eyes had spotted the skip-runner craft. A flat flash of reflection confirmed his sighting, as a shiny surface on her hull caught reflection from the dwarf star. Jensen turned up the resolution enhancer on the analog screen. Though his pilot patiently informed him that the hardware would not perform under
Shearborn'
s
erratically violent motion, the lieutenant continued searching until his eyes burned.
Hope of coherent conversation seemed nonexistent; Harris shrugged and made a show of initiating a star-field comparison search. Lights flickered on the control panels as computer circuitry normally reserved for navigation diverted to speed his results. The pilot laced blunt hands in his lap. Wearing the cynical expression he practiced for women who pressed him for marriage, he stretched back in his crew chair, adjusted his headset, and wished he could watch a porn tape. Sex was a better sweat than listening to the terse exchange between a desperate parent and an equally nervous skip-runner who doubtlessly wondered whether any Indie contract was worth taking risks of this magnitude.
Suddenly Harris shot upright, the mockery gone from his face. 'Sir, your plan won't work.'
Jensen held his focus on the analog screens, where, faint against the deep of space, a spider-filament of cable arced out, then ever so gradually drew taut.
'They're sending the babies down, linked to a timed explosive,' Harris continued vehemently.
This time Jensen answered, very bleak. 'Linked? How? To the carrier capsule, or the cable itself?'
Harris listened. 'Cable,' he replied after a moment. 'The detonation code will be kept by the skip-runner. Which means the scum will skip system, leaving station personnel fifty-five seconds to reel that capsule in and cut those kids free before the charge goes off.'
Jensen became very still.
Harris showed a rare mix of deference and regret. '
I'm
afraid we're shut down, sir. Best we can do is record data that might help an undercover agent round them up.'
'Which will be impossible to manage, not before the Indies have replicated that laser design.' All nerves and anger, Jensen flexed the fingers of his right hand. 'I'll shoot out the cable link between the explosive and that capsule, first.'
Harris grinned, sarcasm restored. 'Boy, we're in problems up to our nuts already. Brass won't award a winning ticket for blowing two babies to bits. You'd have to be marksman elite to maybe hit that cable at all, far less the connecting link between a carry capsule and an explosive charge.'
Jensen returned a nasty smile, then drew a chain from his collar. He dangled before his pilot's insolent gaze a medallion of skill that not one man in ten thousand held the privilege to wear.
'Shit,' said Harris. 'How was I to guess?'
'You couldn't,' Jensen shot back. He was the youngest, by nearly a decade, ever to obtain the premier marksman's rating, but this once pride did not prompt his temper. The mission chronometer by his elbow advanced another fraction. A margin of minutes remained if the
Shearborn
was to foil the kidnappers.
The problems ahead were formidable, as Harris was quick to point out. 'You can't hit that small a target without an attitude adjustment.
Shearborn'
s still tumbling, remember?' The pilot slashed a finger beneath his chin in graphic pantomime. 'We break cover, and the little girls die. We're shot down the second we fire our gravity drives.'
Jensen made contingency for that. 'We wait,' he said, an intensity about him that Harris had never seen. 'After station personnel cable the plans up to the terrorists, the kids start down in the capsule. We stabilize our attitude then. Surprise will be in our favor. I shoot out the linkup. The kids and the charge are in freefall but recoiling away from the break in the line. Station personnel will reel the babies in, bet on that. And with an enabled charge drifting back toward its point of origin, the skip-runners will have their hands full cutting loose that trailing cable. That gives maybe ten seconds for us to blast their ugly presence out of space.'
'Clever.' Harris scratched his chest in that thoughtful manner his drinking cronies would have recognized for a warning. 'But your range is extreme. You haven't allowed for drift, or for the proximity of Cassix's star. Gravity will pull your shot off target.'
Jensen reached out, gently smoothed the wing insignia on his pilot's coveralls. 'That's where your part comes. You'll plot my aiming point. If my shot were treated as an exercise in drive ballistics, you and that computer would have no trouble getting it right.'
Harris felt sweat spring beneath his collar. The accuracy required would likely be past the limits of the technology. Though the more brilliant pilots did such things in the course of test-flight emergencies, this was another matter. A man had no business risking the lives of two little girls to instinct, the reflexive style of hunch which routinely carried a badly drawn design through without mishap. Harris had no grounds - but his wilder nature was piqued. Here was a daredevil stunt like no other; if he pulled it off, there would be accolades.
Harris set steady hands to the keyboard. 'Give me the specs on your pellet rifle, and may the god of foolish ventures smile on us both.'
Jensen grinned for the first time since the start of the operation. Whatever queer challenge MacKenzie James had handed the crew of the Fleet chaser
Shearborn,
one of his skip-running brethren was about to get hammered out of space.
The inner lining of the pressure suit wicked away the sweat from Jensen's skin. Doused alternately in shadow, then the burnished, bloody glare of Cassix's star, he belted himself into the service niche by the forward air lock. The state-of-the-art gauss rifle cradled on his arm hindered his movements very little. The
Shearborn
tumbled dizzily underneath him. Yet in null gravity, as long as Jensen did not fix on the scenery, the radical attitude of the hull did not disorient him. Any nerves and tension he suffered stemmed from the unrevealed motives of MacKenzie James. That point preoccupied the lieutenant to the exclusion of all else. The children and the laser prototypes Jensen currently jeopardized his career to save had become prizes in a ritualized duel of wits.
Jensen checked the time.
The suit chronometer read 2015
. By now, the crate with the laser prototype lay in skip-runner hands. During the ascent, the speed of the cable's drive motor had been measured and recorded into Harris's flight computer. The lieutenant braced his rifle ... and waited.
In the darkness beyond Cassix, the lift motor hummed and reversed. Cable turned through frictionless gears, and a capsule bearing two children and an attached packet of condensed explosive began the kilometer-long transit toward the waiting arms of the father. Harris finalized his calculations.
The chronometer read 2026. A buzzer trilled in Jensen's helmet, and the pilot's voice read off coordinates.
Precisely on signal, the
Shear
born
'
s gravity drives kicked over. Centrifugal force slammed the lieutenant against his belt restraints; stars spun like a pinwheel around him as the
Shear
born
'
s attitude corrected with vicious and vengeful precision, compliments of pilot Harris in sharpest form.
The scout craft stabilized.
The parting kick of inertia was punishingly severe. Jensen's helmet struck the hull with a clang that made his ears ring. His head spun sickeningly and he cursed. If his vertigo did not stabilize fast, he would be unable to orient and take aim. Obstinacy born of exhaustive practice allowed him to slot the rifle stock into the connector which linked to the suit's visual display. At a second signal, he switched on the targeting scope.
On the
Shear
born
'
s bridge, the monitors would be screaming, one red alleyway of warning lights as the skip-runner ship trained weapons on the chaser which dared an intervention. Both ships had their screens down. On Cassix Station, speakers blared as personnel shouted in dismay ... too late. The integrity of the exchange they had promised the skip-runner was disrupted now past mending. No last-minute plea would convince a ruthless band of criminals that this rescue had not been betrayal. A father wept while a skip-runner's mate with shaking hands stabbed the detonation codes into a keypad. All men waited - one of them grim and another in tearful anguish. In under sixty seconds the silvery capsule on the cargo cable would explode in a coruscation of light.
Jensen raised his gauss rifle in the absolute silence of vacuum. With a clear head he locked the targeting scope onto coordinates, then cool-handedly squeezed the trigger.
The rifle kicked. Very far off, tiny to insignificance, a pinpoint of light crawled along a fragile thread of cable. The pellet which raced to intercept sped unhindered through vacuum, its course bent gently by the pull of a red dwarf star.
Sweating freely now, Jensen counted seconds - five, six - the marking tone sounded a final time. The lieutenant gripped hard to the combing. The reflective markers on the cable glistened like dewdrops poised on spider silk. By now, the magnetized pellet should have cut through. Jensen felt an ache in his chest. Along with the possibility of defeat, he realized at some point that he had stopped breathing.
Then the cable parted. Jensen shouted in relief as the tiny fleck that was the children's capsule drifted in a graceful arc against the stars.
A flash answered almost immediately, as the skip-runner ship fired gravity engines. The technician in her hold abandoned his keypad. Cursing and furious, he wrestled into a pressure suit, desperate to free the locking clamp that secured the trailing cable that now rebounded treacherously under recoil. Jensen's marksmanship had brought havoc, for now the fully enabled plasma charge drifted straight for the kidnapper's cargo bay.
'Now, Harris, now,' shouted Jensen.
His helmet went black. Reflex shielding protected his vision as Harris manned the weaponry, and both of the
Shearborn'
s cannons opened fire.
The helmet's shielding stayed opaque for a long and maddening interval. Jensen fidgeted like a child, cursed like a dock worker. His visor cleared finally to reveal a spreading, glowing curtain of debris that had once been a skip
-
runner ship. The moment warmed like vintage wine. Jensen smiled. He stroked his rifle like the thigh of a naked woman and said softly, very softly, 'Up yours, MacKenzie James.'
* * *
Jensen tugged the sleeve of his dress whites from the grasp of yet another congratulatory technician. The lieutenant had received a hero's welcome the moment the
Shearborn
touched the dock. Every member of Cassix Station personnel had come forward. They had shaken his hand, thanked him, and insisted upon an impromptu reception to meet the key administrators.
'Just coincidence we happened into this sector at all,' Jensen said in answer to the technician's question, the same question he had repeatedly fielded over a three-hour supply of coffee and cakes. 'The
Shearborn
was in pursuit of another suspect. Yes, that one got away, but his escape turned out to be fortunate. No Fleet scout would have entered this system if that chase hadn't gone sour. Yes, it was risky to shoot out that cable, but the children were unharmed. Now, if you'll excuse me? I've a promise to keep.' He hefted the gilt-papered bottle he had cadged for his pilot. An unwilling victim of regulations, Harris had been forced to remain on duty aboard the scout.
The technician smiled and shook hands again. 'You're a brave young man, sir, and a pride to the Fleet. You've saved the Alliance more than you know by keeping those weapon prototypes from the Indies.'
Jensen smiled back, raised the bottle apologetically, then dodged another wave of admirers. Any other time the lieutenant would have reveled in public adulation; but not here, not now. A most telling question remained unanswered, one detail left loose to rasp his nerves. MacKenzie James was nobody's humanitarian. A criminal of his caliber was unlikely to act out of pity for a father's little girls. Jensen dared not consider the incident finished until he was back at his post on the
Shearborn
and out of the Cassix system altogether. The fact that Harris could not share the celebration became his only excuse to slip away.
* * *
The docking hangar was very dark. After the brightly lit access corridors, Jensen found it difficult to adjust. Strange, he thought, that the overhead floods should be switched off. On the heels of a major crisis, he would assume a conscientious staff would take extra precautions.
But when Jensen queried the guard on duty, negligence proved not to be at issue.
'Damned skip-runner blasted the communications turret.' The security man gestured in resignation. 'Lights in here run off the same solar banks, and we'll need more than one shift on deep-space maintenance for repairs.'
Though the explanation seemed reasonable, Jensen's nervousness increased. He crossed the echoing expanse of hangar with swift steps and hurried up the
Shearborn'
s ramp.
Instinct caused him to hesitate just inside the entry. He sensed something amiss, perhaps from the conspicuous fact that Harris was not at his usual post in the galley with a row of empty beers for company. Jensen paused midstride, almost in the corridor to the bridge. That moment, a shadow moved just at the edge of vision.
Jensen ducked. The blow that should have felled him glanced instead off his ribs.
It knocked the breath from his lungs nonetheless. The bottle spun from his hand and smashed in a spray of glass and spirits. Jensen bent double, whooping for air that tasted sickly of whiskey. He snatched by reflex for his side arm. But the shadow moved ahead of him.
It proved to be a man, a large man who already dodged the shot he knew would follow. A Fleet officer accomplished enough to earn marksman elite could be expected to handle his gun as if it were an extension of his living flesh.
Jensen's shot crashed into the bridge-side bulkhead. Padding exploded into fluff where the intruder's head had been but a fraction of an instant before. Cursing, the lieutenant shoved another round into the breech. He hastened forward, skidding over the puddle of alcohol and glass. The cold portion of his mind wondered why the intruder had fled. A second blow, better placed, might have killed him in that instant before surprise kicked into adrenaline surge.
Jensen whipped around the innerlock, slammed shoulder first into a stowage locker. He trained his pistol squarely upon his quarry, only to flinch the shot wide. His curse of white hot anger blended with the clang as the pellet hammered harmlessly into high impact plastic.
Over the heated end of his gun barrel, Jensen beheld the limp form of Harris, gripped like a shield in a pair of coil-scarred hands.
The name left his lips, unbidden. 'Mac James!'
'Godfrey,' came the muffled reply. 'Tired of the party early, did you?'
The face, with its icy gray eyes, stayed hidden. Jensen was given no target for his murderous marksmanship, which was a feat. Mac James outweighed his unconscious hostage by a good sixty pounds. As to how the skip-runner had stowed away, Jensen recalled with sinking recrimination that the
Marity
had passed close enough to plant a boarder on the
Shearborn'
s hull. The stowaway's life-support of necessity would have been limited to the capacity of his suit pack, which meant that Mac James had gambled his life on the lieutenant's subsequent behavior. Had the
Shear
born
'
s crew backed down, returned through FTL to Dead Star, the skip-runner would have been fried in the coil field. Instead, the heroics which had preserved the station's integrity and the lives of two children had earned the
Shear
born
a warm invitation, without security screening, into a classified research installation. With a dawning stab of outrage, Jensen understood. He had been nothing more than a pawn. His triumph over the terrorists had provided the linchpin of a plot for MacKenzie James.
'I could kill Harris to see you dead,' Jensen said thickly. Certainly he was ruthless enough, MacKenzie James should recall.
But with insight that bordered the uncanny, the skip
-
runner sensed why the lieutenant dared not fire to kill. 'First you'll want to know just what mischief I've set loose while you were celebrating, boy.'
Jensen's fingers whitened on the grip of his pellet gun. His thoughts darted like a rat in a maze but found no opening to exploit. He had visited the control bridge on the
Marity.
Her captain's ability to manipulate hardware was real enough to frighten; and if Harris had slugged down drugs with his beer, the
Shearborn'
s systems had been open to sabotage for something close to three hours. Any havoc was possible.
Mac James's laconic observation interrupted the lieutenant's thoughts. 'Now, I see you have two choices. Murder your pilot to get me, and you've got a Fleet investigation on your case. You can bet they won't send a lightweight to chew your ass. Not if you kill without witnesses and a suspect like me turns up dead on your chaser, smack in the middle of a classified installation.'
'That won't save you,' Jensen said quickly.
'Maybe not.' Harris's head lolled to one side as Mac James shifted his grip. 'But a review of
Shear
born
's
flight log will uncover a coded file, accessed through stolen passkeys. The data list includes plans for every project Cassix Station personnel have going on the drawing boards. Fleet court-martial will nail you on theft of military secrets, without appeal. You need me alive, boy. Unless you know enough to go into that system and monkey that file out of existence without leaving tracks.'
Jensen felt shaky down to his shoes. He lacked the expertise to clear the encoded locks on the
Shearborn'
s software, much less to alter records on the other side. His helplessness galled doubly. In the event of a trial, the very ignorance that ensured his innocence would be impossible to prove.
'You're much too quiet, boy.' Mac James shifted his weight with sharpening impatience. 'Why do you think I've been so
busy
!
'
Rocked by a stab of hatred, Jensen perceived more. 'You sent that other skip-runner in, pitted me against him specifically to gain entrance to Cassix Station without leaving traces. The Indie contract on the kidnappers was only a cover.'
A strained silence followed, broken gruffly by Mac James's reply. 'A man lives according to his nature, you for pride and advancement, and Captain Gorlaff for his bets. That one buried his future permanently because he neglected to watch his odds. You can, too, boy. Or you can lift off Cassix and rendezvous with the
Marity,
where I can transfer that incriminating file without leaving traces in the system. I'll return Harris in a cargo crate. When he recovers from his hangover, he can fly you back to Commodore Abraham Meier for the commendation and promotion you both so richly deserve.'
Jensen steadied his grip on the gun. His hand trembled, and his face twitched. A single shot would restore his inner pride but shatter his public career forever. Swept by rage, and by a desire like pain to see the skip-runner captain who had manipulated him end up cold and bloody and dead, Jensen shut his eyes. Cornered without recourse, he made his choice.