In Enemy Hands

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 gonna go right on seeing what they always see, and according to the Security files, nobody's scheduled to come calling until they send in the goons to collect you and the other officers for transport dirtside. That's what gives us our window, assuming everything goes right. But if I'd caught the Commander's arrival and they saw him come in twice without leaving in the middle, well...'

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 gonna have to get my 'puter here into an access slot at the right time. And I couldn't get into the systems that control the brig area, either. That's the highest security area of the ship, and their computers are stand-alones. There's no direct interface between there and the main system, and just getting there physically’s going to be a bitch, Captain. We can do it, but if the brig detail gets time to hit an alarm button, it's gonna go off, 'cause I can't get to it to stop it.'

'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 gonna have to move fast to make it before the shit hits the fan.'

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

'I'm going to need Scotty, Sarah, and Gerry in the boat bay,' McKeon thought aloud. 'And Carson, of course.' Ensign Clinkscales blushed as all eyes turned to him. He felt conspicuous and odd in the StateSec uniform, but he was the only person for whom Johnson's clothing was anything like a proper fit, and that was going to be important in the boat bay. McKeon stood a moment, rubbing an eyebrow, then sighed.

'I'm coming at this the wrong way. There's no point sending anyone after the Commodore without a gun, and we don't have enough of them to go around, anyway.' He thought a second longer, then nodded. 'All right, Andy. You, LaFollet, Candless, Whitman...' Alistair McKeon knew better than to try excluding any of Honors armsmen '...and McGinley. That's six. We'll give you three of the flechette guns and three pulsers. That'll leave one flechette and three pulsers for the break-in to the boat bay.'

'Will that give you enough firepower?' Venizelos asked anxiously.

'We shouldn't need much for the actual break-in, Commander,' Harkness reassured him. 'And if we get in