In Enemy Hands

"My God, Harkness." McKeon sounded even more stu

"Staging a breakout, Sir," Harkness said matter-of-factly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

"Where to?" McKeon demanded. Which, Caslet reflected numbly, was an eminently reasonable question, given that they were a hundred and thirty light-years from the nearest Alliance-held real estate.

"Sir, I've got it figured out, I think, but we don't have time to stand around talking about it," Harkness replied, still matter-of-fact but with urgency. "We've gotta pull this off in a real tight time window if we're going to make it work, and..." He broke off, staring at Caslet as if the Peep's presence had just registered, and his mouth tightened. "Oh, shit, Commander! How long have you been here?"

"I..." Caslet began, then stopped. He didn't have any more idea of what was happening than the Allied officers about him had, but he knew his own status had just changed. He'd gone from being one of their captors, albeit an honorable and respected one, to the lone enemy officer in a compartment full of desperate men. But was that really true? Was he their enemy anymore? And, for that matter, could they possibly be any more desperate than he'd become over the past month?

"I've only been here a few minutes, Senior Chief," he said after a moment. "Not more than five or ten."

"Well, thank God!" Harkness breathed, and looked back at McKeon. "Captain, will you please just trust me and get your butts in gear, Sir? We've gotta haul ass if we don't want to end up with a real bad case of dead!"

McKeon stared at him for another second, then shook himself and nodded sharply.

"You're certifiably crazy, and you're probably going to get us all killed, Senior Chief," he said, taking one of the gun belts, "but at least we know what we're up against this time." His broken-toothed smile was grim, and his eyes were cold.

"If it's all the same to you, Sir, I'd just as soon get out of this alive," Harkness replied. "And I may be crazy, but I think we've got a shot."

"All right, Senior Chief." McKeon waved the others forward, and wolfish smiles blossomed as they relieved Harkness of his load of weapons. Most of them were spattered with bloodstains, despite Harkness' efforts to wipe them clean, and McKeon glanced into the passage and pursed his lips as he saw the lake of blood surrounding the guard details mangled bodies.

"Is there a reason we don't already have SS goons coming out our ears, Harkness?" he asked almost mildly.

"Well, yes, Sir. As a matter of fact there is." Harkness handed the last flechette gun to Andrew LaFollet and fished the minicomp out and displayed it. "I sort of hacked into their computers. That's why I was worried by the Commander here." He nodded to Caslet. "I've set up a loop in the imagery from the surveillance cameras in this section."

"A loop?" Venizelos repeated.

"Yes, Sir. I commanded the cameras to go to record mode five minutes into the current watch and stay there for twenty minutes. They started playing that back as a live feed for the folks watching the monitors up-ship about sixteen minutes ago. Unless they send somebody down to look, they're go

He shrugged, and Venizelos nodded. But he also turned and gave Caslet a long, thoughtful look, then quirked an eyebrow at McKeon.

"He goes with us, Andy," the captain said firmly. Caslet blinked, and McKeon smiled grimly at him. "I'm afraid we don't have much choice, Citizen Commander. Much as we all like you, and grateful as we are for all you've done, you are a Peep officer. It'd be your duty to stop us from, well, from doing whatever the hell Harkness has in mind. And leaving you locked up behind us wouldn't do you any favors, either, now would it?"

"No, I don't imagine so," Caslet agreed. His grin was crooked, but there was also genuine humor in it, and he wondered if McKeon was as surprised to see it as he was to feel it. "They'd be bound to figure I'd had something to do with it, wouldn't they?"

"You've got that right," McKeon agreed, and turned back to Harkness. "Can you open the other compartments?"

"No sweat, Sir. I lifted their combinations from the security desk over there."

He jerked his head at the console, and McKeon suppressed a slight shiver. Not only was the deck coated in blood, but unspeakable bits and pieces of what had been the guard detail were splattered across the console and bulkhead beyond it. To get to the computer, Harkness must have had to stand right in the middle...

The captain looked back out into the passage at the bloody footprints stretching from the console to within less than two meters of the compartment hatch. He stared at them for a moment, then drew a deep breath and returned his attention to Harkness.

"In that case, pass the combinations to Commander Venizelos and let him get them open while you tell me just what the hell it is we're doing, Senior Chief," he invited.

"...so that's about it," Harkness said, looking around at the men and women who'd been released from their prisons. Aside from five of the noncoms, he was junior to every one of them, but he had their undivided attention. Especially that of Scotty Tremaine, who couldn't seem to take his glowing eyes off him. "I've got the security alarms shut down throughout most of the ship, and I've got the route to the boat bay mapped, but I couldn't set timers on any of my surprises because I couldn't tell how long it'd take us to get ready. That means we'll have to send the activation code once we're in position, and that means someone's go

"Understood." McKeon rubbed his chin, looking around at the twenty-six frightened, grimly determined faces clustered around him and Harkness. As a professional naval officer, he thought the senior chiefs plan had to be the most insane thing he'd ever heard of, but the really crazy thing about it was that it might just work.

"All right, we're going to have to split up," he said after a moment. "Chief, give Commander Venizelos the memo board."

Harkness nodded and handed over the memo board he'd taken from the security console. He'd downloaded the plans of Tepes' air ducts and service ways to it, and he tapped a recall key as Venizelos took it from him.

"We're right here, Sir," he said as the display flashed. "I've highlighted what looks like the best route to the brig, but I'm not sure how accurate the plans are. These fuckers are real paranoids, and I've hit a few places where I'm pretty sure they deliberately incorporated disinformation into their own computers. And even if this..." he twitched the board "...is all a hundred percent, you're go

"Understood, Senior Chief." Venizelos gazed down at the display for a minute, then looked back at McKeon. "Who else?" he asked simply.