receiving a chorus of “no”s in reply, pushed on. “Okay, let’s do it.” Small tight smiles were all the response he got as the group split up.
Forty-five frantic minutes later, everything had been done to Ribot’s satisfaction, and Michael stood at the back of the combat information center watching as Armitage ran the clock down to the pinchspace jump. They were in for an interesting trip, and Michael hoped to God that there weren’t any Hammer ships out there that could turn interesting into fatal.
At 22:45, with its jump report sent,
Friday, September 11, 2398, UD
The economy class lounge was a large compartment that normally was studded with comfortable chairs around low tables and filled with the gentle buzz of conversation from passengers making the most of their enforced idleness.
But not now.
The tables and chairs were gone. Packed into the center of the room, wrists held together with plasticuffs, were the survivors of the brutal attack mounted on the
In the front were the bloodied bodies of the seven crew members-three men and four women-who had held out until the last. Their knives and homemade clubs had provided no defense against assault carbines.
The man standing in the door, corn-gold hair falling untidily across his forehead down into hard gray-blue eyes, watched the group as they absorbed the implications of the callous and brutal display of power they had just witnessed, a low murmur of shocked conversation rising and falling like a strange chant. He held up his hand to quiet the assembly.
“My name is Andrew Comonec, and I want you to listen to what I have to say very, very carefully.” He paused until he was sure that every living soul was focused on him and what he was about to say.
He nodded casually at the bodies at his feet. “That, my friends, is what happens to those who do not do what we tell them to do. And just in case any of you still do not understand”-Comonec nodded to the guard nearest him and watched impassively as the man walked to the front of the group, pulled out a small pistol, and without visible emotion shot an elderly woman in the head-“what I am saying, then perhaps that little demonstration will make things clear for you.”
He paused as a low moaning sound washed over the group, the sheer terror of the moment threatening to turn to hysteria. The passengers nearest the dead woman were screaming in panic.
Comonec lifted his voice, willing his control onto the mob. This was the moment of greatest risk. If a group rushed them, they were dead. Assault carbines or not, they couldn’t kill enough people to win. But Comonec was a gambler, and he stretched the moment until he knew he had won, the pure pleasure of the adrenaline rush that came from controlling the minds of hundreds of people flooding through him.
He smiled. “Good. I think you do understand. If you do what you are told, the rest of you have nothing to fear. Nothing at all. You have my word. I will personally see to it that you are all safely reunited with your families and loved ones. But you must do as you are told as soon as you are told. If you do, you will be fine.” He smiled again, the smile of someone who cared, a smile completely at odds with his eyes. They weren’t smiling. They were dreamy with the pleasure of the kill, of fresh blood.
“Now, what I want you to do is this. We will comm you in alphabetical order so that we can check your details to make sure we know who you are and who we have to contact to let them know you are okay. We’ll also remove the plastic ties around your wrists. I know they must be hurting by now, so the sooner we do this, the better. When we’ve done that, we’ll ask you to go to your cabins and stay there for the moment until we get things sorted out. We’ll then let you know what happens next with meals and so on. Okay?”
The minute nods of shocked acceptance confirmed Comonec’s victory, and his body flushed with the exquisite pleasure of the win. “Right. Let’s get on with it, shall we? Andreesen family first. Please come up.”
Slowly and reluctantly, a man, his face gray with shock, barely able to control the trembling that shook his body, stood up, closely followed by a woman and two children who seemed catatonic, so slow were they to move.
“Come on. Please hurry. We won’t hurt you.”
Thirty minutes later it was Sam’s turn. No matter where she looked, she couldn’t see her mother, and she was almost frantic with worry. Oh, please God, let Mom be okay, she prayed desperately as heart-pounding panic rose in waves, threatening to overwhelm her.
“Helfort, Kerri and Samantha.”
Sam rose to her feet, and as she did, she saw her mother, way across the room, rise to her feet also. “Oh, Mom,” she sobbed, “thank God you’re all right.”
They came together at the front of the room. Sam was trembling visibly, tear-filled eyes spilling glistening wet tracks down a face ash-gray with shock and stress as she tried to avoid the blood pooled across the carpet, her head turned away from the shattered bodies of what had once been ordinary people like her. Her mother took Sam’s hand and started to embrace her, to tell her everything would be fine and not to worry, but Comonec stepped forward.
“Later, later. There’ll be time for that later,” he said, pushing them through the door with a brutal roughness completely at odds with his comforting assurances that all would be well.
As Kerri and Sam stumbled through the door and out of sight of the remaining passengers, strong hands grabbed them. Sam started to panic again, and even as that panic spurred her into a last desperate attempt to escape, a gas-powered inoculation gun was jammed into her neck, with only a brief puff of high-pressure air and a short stabbing pain that was gone almost before she could feel it to mark the injection.
“Oh, God,” she sobbed. What were they doing to her? Fear turned to terror as the terrible thought that this was the end hit her. With a horrible sense of the inevitable, she realized that it all made ghastly good sense. What good was she to the hijackers? None, none at all. Even as a creeping gray fog started to overwhelm her, she reached out to her mother, who was still struggling desperately to keep a gas gun-wielding hijacker at bay. But to no effect. Even as Kerri Helfort took Sam’s outstretched hand, the gas gun hit home.
“Mom,” Sam croaked, her voice strangled into an in-choherent croak. “Mom, help me.”
“Sam, Sam,” her mother said, her voice fast being choked off by whatever the hijackers had just pumped into her. “Sam, listen to me. This is just something to keep us quiet, so don’t worry. It’ll be okay, I promise.”
Sam nodded, and then the gray fog overwhelmed her. As her grip on reality began to slip away, the last thing she could hear was her mother muttering to herself: “I knew there was something wrong with those bastards. You should have trusted your instincts, and none of this would have happened. You old fool. You…”
And then the fog claimed her.
Three hours later, as the Zanussi family disappeared through the door, Comonec felt the last traces of tension seep out of him.
They had done it. By God, they had done it.
Over a thousand crew members and passengers brought under control by just thirty men. And no casualties. Well, none on his team, anyway. He hoped that the faceless man who’d commissioned the mission didn’t get too upset about the
“Well, screw him, whoever he is,” Comonec muttered. The entire exercise had been a work of extreme professionalism, even if he said so himself, and his unknown sponsor was just going to have to see it the same way. What did a few damn Fed lives matter, anyway?
He turned and strode through the door to see the unfortunate Zanussi family moving like zombies back to their cabins. A wonderful drug that Pavulomin-V, he thought, even if being caught with it was a federal offense punishable by ten years in jail. He now had an entire mership’s worth of people who would do everything and
