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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
Dax,' 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,
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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 Dax.'
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 ~f 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.
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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
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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 on 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. Grt~nting 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 ache-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.
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