The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack (10 page)

Still nauseous, Jensen sought stability in watching the analog monitor. As the attitude thrusters opened wide, the, pared disc 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 disc 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 Gs 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 bum. 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 from 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 persistence 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 with 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 Evan’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.”

No spark of greed warmed the eyes of MacKenzie James. Single-mindedly efficient, he banged the hatch closed over his captive’s head. Jensen kicked out in disbelief and managed to skin both his knees. The slipped gag constricted his wind. Over his ragged, frantic breaths came the unmistakable click of latches, the inexorable deadening of sound as the seals of the container clamped closed. He banged again, uselessly. He might suffocate, or die of hypothermia in
Marity’s
unheated cargo hold; surely Mac James would see reason, contact his father and arrange an exchange of money.

Jensen felt the capsule bump and rise; through its shell he heard the unmistakable hiss of a lock. He screamed in uninhibited terror, then; but nothing prevented the sickening, tumbling fall into weightlessness and cold which followed. He curled up, shivering in the bitter end of hope. Mackenzie James had jettisoned him, living, into deepspace.

The cargo capsule’s seals preserved atmosphere. For a while its honeycomb panels would conserve body heat, but with no air supply it was an even draw whether Jensen would die of asphyxiation or tumble back to fry in the fury, of Castleton’s star. At best, he might be salvaged alive by a Khalian scout ship. Worst and most galling was the fact that Mackenzie James went free.

Jensen shouted in frustration. Unable to forget those coil-scarred fingers flexing and curling, tirelessly beating the odds, he longed for one chance to shoot his antagonist, even as he had Evans: from behind, with no chance for recriminations, just death—fast and messy and final. But anger only caused the nooses to rip painfully into his, wrists. In time, all passion, all hatred, unraveled into despair. Jensen’s tears soaked the hood of the Freer robe and curled the dark hair at his temples. After Mac James, he reviled his disciplinarian father, for stifling his career with the stipulation that under no circumstances was undue favor to be granted him. Competence became a sham. Such was the influence of fame and politics, no board of officers dared to grant promotion without performance of outstanding merit. One by one, Jensen had seen his peers advance ahead of him. Balked pride and rebellion had landed him here, trussed and sealed like flotsam in a cargo capsule. Too late, and in bitterness, he questioned why the promise of money had failed to motivate MacKenzie James.

The air in the capsule quickly became stale. Jensen’s thoughts spiraled downward into a tide of black dizziness. His limbs cramped, then grew numb; the transmitter in the Freer sash dug relentlessly into his neck, but he was powerless to ease even this smallest discomfort. Presently, none of that mattered. Resigned, Jensen directed his last awareness to cursing MacKenzie James. As consciousness began to dim, sometimes the name of his father slipped in . . .

* * *

Something banged the cargo capsule. Jostled against the side panels, Jensen heard the whine of grappling hooks. Fear roused him from lethargy as they clamped and secured his prison. Suffocation seemed a kindness next to threat of Khalian cruelty, but the young officer lacked strength to do more than shut his eyes as whatever being had salvaged him popped the capsule’s release catches. Clean air rushed in around the seals, and light fell blindingly across Jensen’s face.

“I’m surprised he left you alive,” said an acerbic voice he recognized.

Jensen started; drew a shuddering breath, and ducked sharply to hide cheeks still wet from crying. “My god, how did you know where to find me?”

Perfectly groomed, and correct to the last insignia on her uniform, Ensign Shields regarded him with that whetted edge of antagonism she had affected since the morning he had compelled her collaboration in his scheme to capture MacKenzie James. “
Marity’s
instruments weren’t shielded,” she said at last. “You’re living lucky for that.”

Jensen tried to scrub his damp cheeks against his shoulder, and awkwardly found he couldn’t, not with his hands still bound. His embarrassment changed poisonously to resentment. He faulted himself bitterly for lacking the presence of mind to note the implications of
Marity’s
opened instrument panels. Evans had programmed the autopilot for the FTL jump with the keyboard circuitry wide open to surveillance; if the scout ship assigned to Shields was not one of the fancy, new brain models, she still carried a full complement of electronics.