In Enemy Hands

McKeon turned where he stood, watching the rest of his people scurry about their tasks, and even as he barked orders, a corner of his mind continued to marvel at Horace Harkness. The senior chiefs "defection" had fooled even McKeon, and the captain fully intended to sit on him, if that was what it took, to get the entire story out of him. But that would have to wait. Just now, all that mattered was that Harkness' crazy plan actually seemed to be succeeding.

The fact that Tepes was a State Security ship worked in their favor at the moment. Each of the assault shuttles in the boat bay was configured to drop one of StateSec's outsized infantry companies, approximately seventy-five percent bigger than a Royal Manticoran Marine company, at minimum notice. That meant their onboard guns and external ordnance racks were left permanently armed... and that the weapons in their small arms racks were kept charged, with ammunition ready to hand. His people had many times more firepower than they could possibly use, all courtesy of StateSec, and they were employing everything they had the manpower to fire with savage satisfaction.

But not all of them could be spared to shoot bad guys. Harkness had moved his precious minicomp from the access slot Clinkscales had used to the cockpit of one of the shuttles and put it into straight terminal mode to wage war against the Peep computer techs who had belatedly realized what was going on. The senior chief had two enormous advantages: he was a better programmer than any of them, and, unlike them, he knew exactly what he'd done in the first place. But he had two matching disadvantages, for there were more of the Peeps and, unlike him, they had physical access to all the ships systems. After twenty minutes of trying to take control back from him, they'd begun shutting computers down, or ripping them out, and going to manual control.

Fortunately for the escaped prisoners, Harkness had pla

"Ready to launch, Sir!"

McKeon turned at Geraldine Metcalf's shout. She stood just outside the docking tube to the bay's number two assault shuttle, and he waved acknowledgment. His tac officer swam down the tube while Anson Lethridge unlocked the docking arms. Then the shuttle's thrusters flared as Metcalf sent it drifting out of the bay, and McKeon took a moment to breathe a silent prayer that Harkness really had gotten the Peeps' weapons shut down.

Geraldine Metcalf took the shuttle up the side of the battlecruiser on reaction thrusters alone. The big assault boat felt logy and clumsy, and a part of her screamed to kick up the wedge and get more acceleration, but that was out of the question. She had a very specific job to do, and any betraying emissions would keep her from doing it.

She settled into position above the ship, passive sensors searching down past its hammerhead bow. If anything came up from Camp Charon, it was almost certain to come in from ahead, and she glanced sideways at Sarah DuChene as her copilot ran her fingers down the weapons panel and green standby lights began to burn an ominous scarlet.

"Message from Camp Charon, Citizen Admiral," Harrison Fraiser a

"Wonderful," Bogdanovich growled. "The bastards still don't want us anywhere in their sky, do they?"

"Now, now, Yuri," Tourville said mildly, watching Honeker's eyes for any flash of condemnation. He didn't see one, and he filed that away for future consideration...

"Down!"

Andrew LaFollet tackled Honor as gunfire suddenly broke out ahead of them. The fall drove the breath from her, and she coughed, fighting for air as the whine of pulsers and the heavier coughing of flechette guns filled the shaft. There were shouts and screams, and LaFollet released her and went crawling up the shaft. She started to follow, but a hand closed on her ankle and she jerked her head around.

"You stay here," Andreas Venizelos told her flatly. She opened her mouth, and he shook his head. "You're a commodore. More to the point, you're that man's Steadholder, and he didn't come all this way to get you just to have you killed now."

Pulser darts shrieked as they ricocheted from some projection in a shower of sparks, and LaFollet ducked involuntarily. But he never stopped moving, and he quickly caught up with Candless and McGinley. They were bellied down behind a flange supporting one of the shafts pressers, with an excellent field of fire. Unfortunately, the Peeps further up the shaft had an equally excellent field of fire, which meant the escapees' best covert route to Boat Bay Four was blocked.

More pulser darts screamed down the shaft, and Candless moved to the side to hose the enemy with flechettes in response. He had the dispersion pattern set for medium coverage, and he tracked his fire across the entire width of the shaft. A horrible, gurgling shriek answered, and he drew back into cover just as more darts whined past.

"How many?" LaFollet asked.

"I don't know," Candless replied, eyes sweeping the dimness ahead. "It was pure luck we saw them in time to take cover. I'd guess there're at least fifteen or twenty. No heavy weapons, yet, or they'd already have taken us out, but that's going to change."

"If they can coordinate well enough," McGinley put in. She sounded much tenser than Candless, but then, this wasn't exactly her kind of fight. "If Harkness' sabotage worked, their communications're probably at least as screwed up as ours are."

LaFollet nodded absently. Their own stolen communicators were getting only gibberish, which probably meant Harkness' efforts to cripple the Peeps' central communications net had worked. But the presence of those people up ahead was proof it hadn't worked completely... and that somebody on the other side had figured out at least part of what was going on. If they hadn't guessed what was happening, they wouldn't have known to block the lift shaft between the brig and Boat Bay Four, and if they hadn't had at least some communications ability, they couldn't have gotten these people here to do the blocking. But how much com capability did they have? If it was any more than fragmentary, he'd never get the Steadholder to safety, because there were simply too many people aboard this ship. If their officers could tell them where to go to intercept the escapees...

"I'll take it," Candless said calmly. He hadn't even glanced at LaFollet, and he never looked away from the shaft now, but his conversational tone proved he'd been thinking exactly what LaFollet had. "Head back about sixty meters and try that service tu

"Now wait a minute!" McGinley began. "We can't just..."

"Yes, we can," LaFollet said softly. "Here." He thrust the memo board at her, then jabbed a thumb back down the shaft. "Go," he said, and his flat voice held an implacable note of command. McGinley stared at him for a moment, then inhaled sharply, turned, and slithered into the dimness, and LaFollet looked at Candless.