David Weber - In Enemy Hands

"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 shaft's 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 tunnel on deck nineteen," he went on. "Commander McGinley can show you."

"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.

"Are you sure, Jamie?" he asked quietly.

"I'm sure." Candless' reply was almost serene, and he turned his head to smile at LaFollet. "We've had some good times, Major. Now go get the Steadholder out of this."

"I will," LaFollet told him. It wasn't just a promise; it was an oath, and Candless nodded in satisfaction.

"You'd better be going then, Andrew," he said much more gently. "And later, when you've got her out of here, tell her—" He paused, unable to find the words he wanted, and LaFollet nodded.

"I will," he said again, and put one arm around his fellow armsman, hugging him tight. Then he turned and followed McGinley back down the shaft.

It took him only a few minutes to reach Honor and Venizelos. They stood where McGinley had already passed them, gazing up the shaft as a flechette gun coughed again in rapid fire, and he stepped brusquely past them.

"This way, My Lady," he said, gesturing for them to follow him, but Honor didn't move.

"Where's Jamie?" she asked, and he stopped. He stood for a moment, staring after McGinley, then sighed.

"He's not coming, My Lady," he said as gently as he could.

" No! I can't—"

"Yes, you can!" He rounded on her fiercely, and she flinched before the mingled pride and anguish in his face. "We're armsmen , My Lady, and you're our Steadholder, and you can do whatever the hell it takes! "

She stared at him for a breathless moment, unable to speak, and then her shoulders sagged and her personal armsman took her by the hand, almost as if she were a child.

"Come on, My Lady," he said softly, and she followed him down the shaft while Jamie Candless' flechette gun coughed behind them.

Scotty Tremaine crawled out of the pinnace's electronics bay and scrubbed sweat out of his eyes. He'd never even imagined doing what he'd just done, and the ease with which he'd accomplished it was more than a little chilling. There were many better small craft flight engineers than he—Horace Harkness, for one—but it hadn't taken a genius to carry out the modifications, and that was scary. Of course, there hadn't been any security features to stop him, since no one in his right mind would have considered that someone might do such an insane thing on purpose .

But it was done, now, and he hoped to hell that Harkness was as right about this as he'd been about everything else. His track record had been perfect so far—or as far as they knew , at any rate—but it seemed unfair to dump so much responsibility on one man.

But we didn't "dump" it on him, did we? He volunteered himself for it from the get-go. All we did was sit around and think he'd really deserted.

Tremaine felt a fresh, dull burn of shame at the thought, even though there was no logical reason he should. Harkness had played his role well enough to fool the Peeps, and no doubt the reactions of the rest of the POWs had contributed to his success. Yet despite all that, Tremaine couldn't quite forgive himself for having believed even for a moment that Harkness could truly turn traitor.

He made himself shake that thought off and closed the bay hatch. He stood up in the pinnace's passenger compartment and nodded to Chief Barstow.

"This bird's ready," he said. "Now let's go see about ours ."

"Base, I have Tepes on visual."

Geraldine Metcalf cupped her palm over her earbug as if that could help her hear better. Not that she really needed to; the voice from the lead cargo shuttle was clear and crisp, and she watched the three crimson dots creep closer on her targeting display and wished the assault shuttle's controls felt a bit more familiar. For that matter, she would have traded three fingers from her left hand for the ability to bring her active sensors on-line. The assault shuttle was well concealed, more than half hidden in the visual and radar shadow of Tepes ' flared bow, and its passive systems seemed to have a good lock on the cargo shuttles, but that sense of being in someone else's bird—of not quite having everything under perfect control—continued to jab at her like a sharp stick.