In Enemy Hands

"Under the Deneb Accords..." McKeon began, and Ransom surged to her feet.

"Citizen Captain de Sangro!" she barked, and a gun butt slammed into McKeon's mouth. He went down, spitting blood and broken teeth, and Venizelos stepped forward angrily, but Anson Lethridge and Scotty Tremaine grabbed him. Surgeon Lieutenant Walker knelt beside his captain, and the look he gave the man who'd clubbed McKeon made the trooper step back involuntarily. Ransom watched contemptuously as Walker examined McKeon, then helped him back to his feet. McKeon swayed, leaning on his ship's doctor, and dragged the back of one hand across his smashed mouth. He gazed down at the blood on it almost dispassionately, then looked straight at Cordelia Ransom.

"I hope your cameras caught that." The words came out slurred and thick, but understandable. "It should be an important exhibit at your trial after the war."

Ransom paled, and for an instant, Caslet was afraid she was going to have the Manticoran killed on the spot. But then she inhaled deeply and shook herself.

"If there are any postwar trials, they won't be mine," she said icily. "And you won't be around to see them. Citizen Captain de Sangro!"

She jerked her head at the hatch, and de Sangro barked fresh orders.

The guards began shoving the prisoners towards the hatch, and Caslet sat back in his chair with a sense of sick, weary defeat. The "interview" had been shorter than he'd feared and, despite what had happened to McKeon, less ugly. But it had also been a parody of all he'd been taught to believe in, and...

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute!"

Caslet's head snapped back up, and Ransom wheeled from her conversation with Vladovich as the rumbling voice cut the air. Senior Chief Harkness stood stubbornly in place, not so much resisting the SS trooper who was trying to drag him away as simply ignoring his efforts. The senior chief stood like an oak tree, but his battered face wore an expression of panic Caslet had never expected to see.

"Wait a minute!" he shouted again. "I ain't no hero, and I damned well didn't lose anything at this Camp Charon!"

"Senior Chief!" Venizelos barked. "What do you thin..."

The commander's shout died in a grunt of anguish as a gun butt slammed into his belly. Harkness didn't even turn his head, for his eyes were locked on Ransom with desperate intensity.

"Look, Ma'am, Ms. Committeewoman or whatever you are, I've been in the Navy for damned near fifty T-years. I didn't volunteer for any damned war, but it was my job, see? Or they told me it was, anyway, and it was the only job I knew. But this war ain't putting any extra money in my credit account, and I don't want to rot in prison for some rich son-of-a-bitch's fight!"

"No, Harkness!" Scotty Tremaine stared at the senior chief, his face twisted in horrified disbelief, and his outburst bought him a gun butt, as well. He went down, retching, and this time Harkness did look back.

"I'm sorry, Sir," he said hoarsely, "but you're an officer. Maybe you think you've got to go down in flames. Me, I'm only a petty officer, and you know how many times I got busted before I ever made chief." He shook his head and turned back to Ransom, his expression a blend of shame, fear, and desperation. "If you're offering transfers, Ma'am, I'll surely take one!" he blurted.

Chapter Twenty-Four

"She what?"

Rob Pierre stared at his com screen in angry disbelief, and the man on it swallowed hard. He wore the lapel pin of the Ministry of Public Information and a nameplate which said L. BOARDMAN, second deputy director of information, and his lack of enthusiasm for this conversation was obvious.

"I could send you the chips, Citizen Chairman," his words tripped over themselves with the haste of an underling desperate to avoid blame. "I mean, I don't know all that much, Sir, and they make it all much clearer than I possibly could, so..."

"Shut up."

Pierre’s frozen helium tone cut Boardman off in mid-blither, and he clamped his mouth shut. The Chairman of the Committee of Public Safety glared at him, dark eyes deadly, then made himself relax... some. The bureaucrats terror underscored the vast gulf between them in a way which made him feel distantly ashamed. He could have the other man destroyed, literally or figuratively, as the mood took him, on a whim, and both of them knew it. That sort of power was dangerous, Pierre reminded himself. There was a corrosiveness to it he must guard against constantly, yet for all his wariness, the corrosion tasted sweet, as well. Surely he could indulge himself in it just a little... couldn't he? When the entire galaxy seemed hell-bent on exploding in his face, where was the harm in proving there were at least some irritations he could crush with a word?

He inhaled deeply and cleared his throat, then leaned closer to his pickup.

"Of course I'll want to view the chips," he said, in a tone whose enormous patience added the word "idiot!" without actually quite saving it. "Until I do, however, just give me the salient points. Now."

"Yes, Sir!" Boardman seemed to come to attention in his chair. His hands were outside the field of his pickup, but his shoulders twitched as he fumbled at his desktop for a moment. Then paper rustled as he found the hardcopy notes he'd jotted down.

"Uh, let's see," he muttered, dabbing sweat from his forehead as he sca

He paused, regarding his own handwriting as if he expected it to change if he took his eyes off it. Or, Pierre thought, as if he couldn't believe what he'd just said. Which was reasonable enough, given how regularly Harrington had kicked the asses of any PRH naval officers unfortunate enough to encounter her. But the pause stretched out long enough to become a fresh source of irritation, and Pierre cleared his throat with a sharp, explosive sound that snatched Boardman out of whatever reverie had possessed him.

"Uh, excuse me, Citizen Chairman!" he said quickly. "As I say, Citizen Rear Admiral Tourville captured Harrington and sent word back to the Barnett System, where Citizen Secretary Ransom was informed of it. The propaganda aspects of the event were obvious to her, of course, and she directed Tourville to return Harrington to Barnett."

"I understood that part of it!" Pierre snapped. "What I want to know is what the hell she thought she was doing after that!"

Boardman cringed, his eyes sick with panic. Internal clashes between members of the Committee were rare, publicly, at least, but when they happened, the disappearance of one of the disputants normally followed, and Rob Pierre was usually careful to avoid anything which could be construed as public condemnation of any of his fellows. Not because he didn't get angry, but because someone with his power dared not show that anger. If he made a clash public, then his position as head of the Committee would give him no choice but to eliminate whoever had angered him, for any lesser action would undermine his own authority and position.

Boardman knew that... and he also knew that, as one of Cordelia Ransom's senior assistants, any fallout from Pierre’s fury at her could scarcely be beneficial for him. Of course, if he failed to shore up his patron's position and she survived, she would certainly learn of his lack of support... with equally fatal results. But at the moment, Ransom was light-years away, whereas Rob Pierre was barely sixty floors up in the same building, and the bureaucrat made himself meet the Citizen Chairman's eyes.