The tool tie on his wrist jerked him short and rebound slammed him backward into James. Jensen tried to fight. A punch that ineffectively dented suit padding was all he could manage before a kick in the groin killed his resistance. Amid the chaos of motion provoked by his shoves and thrusts, the tool tie looped his other wrist. Mac James controlled his random tumble. He shucked the suit, revealing blunt features and a pair of nondescript coveralls soaked like camouflage with bloodstains. Plainly the suit's original owner had died from exposure to vacuum. Left queasy by pain, and by the coppery sharpness of the droplets drifting in freefall that unavoidably got inhaled with each breath, Jensen cursed.
The gun barrel was no longer pointed at his face. James's hand on the grip was relaxed, even negligent as he loosened the neck of his coverall; this action was an effrontery by itself since Jensen was not fully helpless. His feet were left free to kick; but to do so in null grav without use of his arms was asking for a nasty crack on the head. Mac James understood that Jensen was experienced enough to know this. The skip-runner relied on that wholly, an arrogance his captive found infuriating.
Jensen cursed again. He despised the notion that a criminal could so easily guess his mind. He decided any effort was worth the inevitable concussion, but on the point of action, James caught the tool tie and jerked it like a leash.
Snapped in line like a disobedient puppy, Jensen wrestled with shoulders and forearms, half gagged by the taste-smell of blood. His struggles skinned the flesh of his wrists, no more; Mac James towed him expertly through the inner lock. Crimsoned, coil-scarred fingers tapped across the control panel. The skip-runner was no stranger to Fleet vessels, Jensen observed in bleak rage. The lock hissed shut, fail-safe seals engaged.
'You lost your ship, at least,' Jensen managed through clenched teeth as he was dragged past the service access to condenser and
d
rive-engine compartments. 'I hope she was blown to a million bits as a result of your late misjudgment.'
Mac James half turned. A glimpse of his snub-nosed profile showed a sardonically lifted brow. 'Misjudgment? Godfrey, boy.
I'm
exactly where I planned to be, which is more than you can say for yourself.'
Jensen returned an epithet, clipped short as he twisted to stop a nose dive; Mac James towed him through the access hatch into the upper level of the ship, and gravity slammed his shoulders into the deck grid. The breath left his lungs and his feet drifted stupidly in the gravityless well of the service corridor.
'Up,' said Mackenzie James. The pellet pistol was back in his hand and fixed in nerveless steadiness on the vitals of his captive. 'Move, now!'
An impatience colored the skip-runner's tone that only a fool would question. Jensen rolled, pulled his knees beneath his body, then flinched as his captor clapped a hand to his shoulder. He was ruthlessly hauled upright, spun, and marched ahead. The tool tie tautened, stressed his arm sockets without mercy, while the pistol nuzzled the base of his skull.
'Now,' said James in his ear from behind. 'We're going to the bridge. At the companionway, you will stop and instruct your pilot to set course for Van Mere's station in Arinat.'
Jensen automatically began to protest. A shake from Mac James caught him short.
The captain qualified. 'Your current orders permit you to act on discretion. And discretion, if you wish to stay alive, says
Sail
engages FTL for Arinat.'
Aside from the weapon at his neck, curiosity urged Jensen ahead. That James knew the fine print on his orders was a cold and disquieting puzzle. 'Why Arinat? And what's at Van Mere's except a trading colony for a remote agricultural outpost?'
'Quite a bit,' James said uninformatively. Then, as if stating everyday business, he added, 'The
Marity
didn't blow to bits along with Chalice. She's spaceworthy, and awaiting rendezvous, and will go under your escort through the security zone checkpoint to Arinat.'
At which point Jensen knew searing rage. He had played blindly into an ambush. Months of intricate planning had led him to this: not as the hunter, but the trapped prey, forced to play puppet for the skip-runner Mackenzie James.
'Carry on, Lieutenant,' the gruff voice instructed in his ear.
Jensen did so purely out of hatred. He swore he would find a way to turn the tables, to bring this pirate to a justice long deserved.
Skip-runner and captive reached the galley nook; beyond lay the companionway to the bridge. The hand that poised the gun at Jensen's neck tightened ever so slightly. Since Mac James was never a man to act by half measures, Jensen squared his shoulders. He stepped up to the companionway, faced through toward the cockpit, and crisply called out orders.
'Ensign Kaplin, discontinue your search pattern. Harris, I want this ship on a new course for Arinat. Plot FTL coordinates for the security zone checkpoint, and from there to Van Mere's station.'
Harris shot out of his habitual slouch. He turned his head, stared at his superior officer with an insolence peculiar to pilots, and said, 'You want
what?'
The pistol nosed harder against Jensen's neck. He swallowed stiffly. 'Harris. You're insubordinate.'
'When isn't he,' Kaplin commented with her usual flat-toned sarcasm. She shut down systems for travel and spun her station chair, in time to see Harris narrow his eyes.
'No,' the pilot said, quite softly. 'We've done too many assignments together for me to buy on this one. I'll set course for Arinat on one condition,
sir.
Step in here and show me both of your hands.'
Jensen had no chance to warn, no chance to act, just one instant of crystallized fear as Mac James shoved him aside. The pellet pistol went off, a compressed explosion of sound. Jensen staggered off balance, heard Kaplin's scream, and knew: Mac James had gunned down his pilot, even as he, on a past mission, had killed the
Marity's
mate. In his own way, but for different reasons, Jensen shared such ruthlessness. He was not shocked, but only whitely angry, when he recovered his footing and saw the fallen figure sprawled in the helm chair. The pilot's beret had tumbled off, and the fiery thatch of hair dripped blood. The long, lean fingers that had performed feats of magic at the controls were not relaxed, but twitching in an agitation of death throes. Mac James's pellet had taken Harris through the forehead. He'd probably died between thoughts.
A muffled sound across the cockpit reminded Jensen of his other, surviving crew member. Sarah del Kaplin looked sheet white; yet the makeup like garish paint over her pallor masked an unexpected depth of character. Scared to the edge of panic, she hadn't lost it enough to stand up.
Which was well, for the murdering skip-runner shoved onto
Sail's
bridge and snapped his next orders to the ensign. 'Lady, your training included flight rating, and you'd better know the material, because you're going to push that body off the helm and fly this vessel to Arinat and Van Mere's.'
Kaplin turned a shade paler. She lifted wide eyes to her senior officer; and prodded by the gun in twitchy hands at his back, Jensen said, 'Kappie. Just do it.'
She returned a jerky nod, rose, and struggled with Harris's cooling corpse, her hands with their extravagant nail polish shaking and shaking, but able enough nonetheless. She sat in Harris's spattered chair and engaged instruments to plot the skip-runner's course.
MacKenzie James followed the figures that flashed on her board. The criminal knew his astrogation, solidly; that he watched over Kaplin's shoulder told more clearly than words that there were stakes to this foray. A hum pervaded
Sail's
hull, followed by deeper vibrations. The coil condensers began their charge cycle in preparation for FTL, and as if the change in the ship's drive galvanized Jensen's thinking, it dawned that
Marity
had blown Chalice station deliberately, her purpose to hide Mac James's tracks.
'You've stolen the brain crystal interfaces,' Jensen accused, his voice muffled by his own epaulette as Mac James shoved his face down and to the side, and manhandled him sideways into the hanging locker reserved for officers' dress coats.
James responded with a grin that had no humor behind it. 'You helped make it convenient.' He pushed down, ramming his captive into the dusty closet. 'Chalice security was busily watching your box of rigged bait. Really, boy,
I'm
surprised. A man would expect you to learn not to
keep on
meddling beyond your depth.'
Jensen winced as his elbow caught on the door hinge. Jammed on a nerve, he gasped, sweated, and vainly thrashed for purchase in an area too constricted for bodily movement. 'Damn you,' he grunted, before the fine silk of his officer's scarf was forcibly crammed in his mouth. James used a length of shock webbing to tie the gag in place, then shoved the door closed.
Jensen crouched in fetal position, his wrists lashed bloodlessly tight behind his back. Pressure against his cheek flattened his nose against his knees, and the toes of Harris's battle boots ground relentless dents in his buttocks. Unable to move, unable to speak, he still could hear. The dry tones of MacKenzie James instructed Kaplin to adjust her course; she'd missed a decimal point. The result, as James phrased it, would get
Sail
an unscheduled refit, since Van Mere's star had an asteroid belt that could skin the shields off a battle cruiser.
Jensen squirmed and managed to cramp his left thigh. He could not stretch to relieve the discomfort, but only sweat with the pain. The closet quickly became stifling, and somewhere between nausea and frustrated tears, he missed the shift to FTL. He knew the transition had happened when the cramp eased off, and he realized the vibrations from the condensers had subsided back to a whisper.
A light tread crossed the cockpit; not Kaplin's, Jensen determined. She tended to slap her heels down, result of a flirty, provocative hip-sway she habitually used to distract.
Most men were not immune, but James would prove the exception. Jensen knew the skip-runner to be formidably focused in his actions. The steps paused, and the couch by the com station creaked.
'You'll tell me
Sail's
security code schedule,' James suggested in his gravelly bass.
Silence. Jensen squeezed his eyes shut and moaned. Kappie, he thought desperately, you'll go the way of Harris. He tensely awaited the shot.
'Godfrey, girl,' said James. He sounded strangely tired. 'Don't shake so hard. I only shoot on sight when somebody's fixing to kill me. Your pilot kept a gun in the pocket next to his jock strap, or didn't you know that?' A pause. 'No, I see not. His whores shared the secret, and for a pitiful bit of change, they talked.'
In the closet, Jensen drew a shuddering, sweat-stinking breath.
He
had not known Harris packed a pistol, never mind under that ridiculously baggy coverall. Jensen's worst nightmare had never allowed that James might run a network that extended so deep, into the back streets of who knew how many worlds. The haunts of pilots on leave were notoriously varied, and scattered as stars to scope out. That this criminal's interest had focused so intently on
Sail's
crew was a most unsettling discovery.
'The codes,' reminded MacKenzie James, his voice gone strangely steely. Above the subliminal hum of FTL, the cockpit beyond the closet seemed gripped in waiting stillness.
Kaplin gasped as if hit. 'I can't tell you,' she lied. 'I don't know them!' Her bravery held an edge of hysteria.
Jensen braced for a shot that never came. The chair by the com console creaked again as Mac James shifted his weight. 'Dearie,' he said in a tone of deceptive gentleness. '
I'm
running out of time. That means you talk, or I embarrass the brass higher up.'
In the closet, Jensen frowned; and Kaplin's tremulous silence became underscored by James's quick tread, then the tap of fingers over the keys on what had to be the command alcove console.
'What are you doing?' Kaplin asked in a blend of fear and suspicion.
'Canceling our course coordinates,' MacKenzie James replied. 'We're going to stay in the Chalice system until a battle cruiser comes to investigate.'
'You'll get us all blown to hell,' said Kaplin with the acid bite she used to admonish her senior lieutenant.
'Very likely you're right.' James left the command chair, and by the squeals of outrage that followed, Jensen judged that the skip-runner tied Del Kaplin to the pilot's station with his usual ruthless style.
There followed a wait, in which the skip-runner fixed himself coffee. In the protocols manual under the console, he found
Sail's
security code schedule and ascertained the time for her next check-in. Then, with a style more flamboyant than Harris's, he spun the scout craft on a trajectory that blended with
t
he expanding debris from the explosion.
Nauseated by vertigo, and jammed in the suffocating closet, Jensen felt a horrible, hollow lurch in his abdomen as the artificial gravity was switched off. More controls clicked in the cockpit as the skip-runner adjusted
Sail
for total shutdown, making her invisible to all but a tight-focus scan.