David Weber - In Enemy Hands

His fists clenched at his sides, and he stood motionless but for the tiny shudders he couldn't quite still. But then his nostrils flared, and he opened his eyes once more. He'd already been through this when he planned the entire thing, and he'd been right then. He'd had no choice, and he knew it, and however pleasant Johnson and Candleman might have been drinking beer while they planned their next scam, they'd also been StateSec thugs. God only knew how many people they'd helped others of their kind to torture or kill. That thought might be an attempt to salve his conscience, but that didn't make it untrue, either, and he turned away from the dead men to their lockers.

Both of them were locked, but Horace Harkness had opened quite a few locks which had belonged to someone else over the course of a checkered career, and he had the advantage of having watched their owners open these dozens of times. He input the combinations quickly, and his mouth twitched in a hungry smile as the lockers' internal lights gleamed on his dead watchdogs' weapons.

He strapped Johnson's gun belt around his own waist before he drew and checked the pulser. Magazine and capacitor both showed full, and he went quickly through the belt pouches to confirm the presence of extra magazines and power packs. Then he shoved one of the corporal's uniform tunics and a pair of trousers into a laundry bag and turned to Candleman's locker. He made the same check on the private's side arm and hung the second gun belt diagonally from right shoulder to left hip like a bandoleer, then closed the lockers, scooped up the minicomp he'd used to rig the game software, and plugged it into the access slot on the compartment bulkhead.

He used Johnson's password to log on. Had computers cared about such things, Tepes ' computer might have been amazed by the quantum leap in the programming skills of Citizen Corporal Heinrich Johnson, SN SS-1002-56722-0531-HV. But computers didn't care, and Harkness flipped quickly through the pathways he'd established while Johnson and Candleman assumed he was simply rigging the outcomes of games for them.

He hadn't dared make any major changes on the main system lest one of the officers or NCOs who were computer literate stumble across his work, but that hadn't prevented him from making all those changes well in advance on the minicomp. Of course, seeing to it his little packages were activated at the proper time and in the proper order was going to be a bit of a problem, but he hoped he'd taken that sufficiently into account. And there was one bit of programming he had been forced to change ahead of time. Now he checked it and grunted in satisfaction; it had activated eighteen minutes and twenty-one seconds earlier, exactly as instructed, and he grinned. There were still a thousand things that could go wrong, but that had been the part that worried him most. Now he had to do the next most dangerous bit, and he flicked a function key.

As far as anyone else aboard PNS Tepes was concerned, nothing at all happened, but Harkness and his minicomp knew better. Throughout the battlecruiser's electronic guts, half a dozen programs changed abruptly, overwritten by the versions of themselves which Harkness had downloaded to his minicomp and altered—in most cases subtly; in others not so subtly—days or even weeks before.

Despite the size of some of the programs and program groups involved, the substitutions flicked into place with a speed which would have been inconceivable to anyone who'd lived in the days of chips and printed circuits, and the breath Harkness hadn't realized he was holding whooshed out as confirmation of his commands' execution blinked on his display. Then he logged off, pulled the minicomp out of its slot, shoved it into his pocket, slung the laundry bag with Johnson's uniform over his shoulder, and walked quickly to the end of the compartment. The ventilation grille would be a tight fit, but that was the least of his worries at the moment.

Warner Caslet squared his shoulders and straightened his spine as the lift stopped and the doors slid open. The last four weeks had been even worse than he'd expected, less because of any active unpleasantness than because of his complete impotence. He'd known exactly what was going to happen to Honor Harrington and her people, and there'd been no more he could do about that than there'd been anything he could do about whatever Cordelia Ransom intended to do with him . He was a bit surprised, when he thought about it, that she'd been content to leave her "military liaison" with the prisoners alone for so long, though that might have been because he'd underestimated her intelligence. Perhaps she'd simply realized that the longer she kept the Sword of Damocles suspended above his head, the worse it would hurt when she finally let it fall and proved any hope he'd allowed himself to feel was only an illusion.

But whatever else might be about to happen, Tepes was about to cross the perimeter of the satellites protecting the planet Hades. In fact, she was little more than half an hour out of parking orbit, though he wasn't really supposed to know that. He didn't quite understand the point in trying to conceal it from him, unless it was simply part of StateSec's mania for keeping everything to itself, but it hadn't proved particularly difficult to discover anyway. And because he knew what was about to happen, he'd decided to pay another visit to Alistair McKeon and Andreas Venizelos.

He shouldn't do it, of course. He'd been brought along specifically to take official responsibility for the prisoners' condition, but deliberately seeking additional contact with them only chipped away at whatever tiny chance of survival he might still have. He knew that, but he couldn't help himself.

Despite his official status, he'd been unable to gain access to Lady Harrington—who, after all, wasn't a military prisoner... officially—and his single attempt to ferret out a report on her condition had met with a rebuff so savage that he hadn't dared to pursue it. But he had been able to get in to see the people who were still considered military POWs virtually at will. Perhaps that was because he hadn't asked permission; he'd simply taken advantage of his rank and "liaison" duties to bulldoze his way past the StateSec lieutenant responsible for them. He hadn't really expected to get away with it, but apparently the lieutenant hadn't reported his visits to higher authority—unless, of course, said higher authority had decided to give him enough rope for a suitable noose and use the security cameras to record the proof of his apostasy. After all, what legitimate reason could an officer of the PRH have for hobnobbing with captured enemies of the People any more than his official responsibilities absolutely demanded? No doubt the HD chips would prove useful at his trial... assuming anyone bothered to give him one.

Now he stepped through the lift doors and nodded curtly to the four guards at the security console halfway down the passage. The StateSec troopers looked up in alarm, straightening their spines and setting down illicit coffee cups, then relaxed as they saw it was only Caslet. Even disregarding whatever the rumor mill suggested might or might not happen to him down the road, he was merely a naval officer, and the duty watch sergeant waved for the others to stay put as he strolled down the passage to greet the visitor.

"What can I do for you, Citizen Commander?" he asked without bothering to salute.

"I'd like to speak with the senior prisoners, Citizen Sergeant Innis," Caslet replied, and the guard shrugged.

"No skin off my nose," he grunted, and waved an arm to bring one of the other three over as he turned to lead the way to the locked hatch. The woman behind the desk answered his gesture, unracked a flechette gun, and crossed to stand five feet back, covering the hatch, and only then did the sergeant input the door lock's combination.