In Enemy Hands

in the first place, we'll have plenty of guns to hold it.'

'All right, then,' McKeon said, with a sharp, decisive nod, and smiled grimly. 'As Dame Honor would say, people, 'Let's be about it.''

Thirty-one minutes later, McKeon and Harkness stood panting for breath in a lift shaft with Carson Clinkscales. Scotty Tremaine stood with them, the grim lines which had etched themselves into his face over the past month still evident but no longer harsh and old, and the rest of their party was spread down the shaft behind them in a long line, bodies pressed into the inspection tunnels that grooved its walls. At least a dozen lift cars had passed them during their cautious journey, but none of those cars' passengers had suspected what was moving along the shaft beyond the thin walls of their conveyances. Now McKeon rested a hand on the ensign's shoulder and looked him in the eye.

'Are you up for this, Carson?' he asked quietly, and Clinkscales nodded. It was a choppy, abrupt nod, but there was a strange maturity to it. Carson Clinkscales was still young, but only physically. The last month had burned the youthfulness out of him, and a corner of McKeon's brain wondered if it would ever return. He hoped so... but at the moment, what mattered was that the hard-eyed young man in front of him was no longer the awkward and uncertain kid he'd been aboard Jason Alvarez and Prince Adrian.

'Yes, Sir,' the ensign replied, unaware of the thoughts running through his seniors mind.

'All right, then,' McKeon said, and pulled out a hand com. Half an hour ago, it had belonged to Citizen Sergeant Innis, and using it constituted a risk, though not an enormous one. All personal communications aboard Tepes were recorded as yet one more of StateSecs precautionary measures, and it was remotely possible one of the recording techs would actually be listening in and overhear what McKeon was about to say. But that was a chance they had to take, and he punched in the combination of the com which had once belonged to Citizen Corporal Porter.

'Yes?' Andreas Venizelos answered almost instantly, and McKeon glanced at Harkness and Clinkscales.

'The present is here,' he told Venizelos. 'Is your part of the party ready?'

'We need another ten minutes,' Venizelos replied, and McKeon frowned. It would be better to wait until the chief of staff's group was actually in position, but every passing minute added to the chance that McKeon’s own group would be discovered... or that someone would discover one of the bodies Harkness had left in his wake. And even if he moved right this instant, it would probably take close to ten minutes to put his own part of the operation into action. The problem, of course, was that as soon as either group moved, the fact that escaped prisoners were running around the ship would become quickly evident to Tepes' crew.

He thought for ten silent seconds, then sighed. There wasn't really much choice.

'We'll make delivery on schedule, then,' he said.

'Understood,' Venizelos responded, and McKeon killed the circuit and nodded to Harkness, who handed Clinkscales the minicomp. The senior chief hated the very thought of letting it out of his hands, but he had no choice. Even if every single member of their party had been armed, the odds against successfully storming a single boat bay, even with total surprise, would have been astronomical, and they needed control of all of Tepes' bays for this to work. And, unfortunately, there was only one way to pull that off.

'Now look here, Mr. Clinkscales,' he said in exactly the same calm voice he'd used to generations of junior officers. 'All you've got to do is walk into the bay, slide the 'puter into the slot, and hit this function key here. That'll transmit Johnson's access code, log you onto the system, and then execute the programs, got it?'

'Got it, Senior Chief,' Clinkscales replied, and Harkness blinked at the sober steadiness of the response. This kid sounded like he meant business, and that was good.

'Then go get 'em, Sir!' he said, and thumped the youngster on the shoulder.

Carson Clinkscales gathered himself and bent to step through the service hatch Senior Chief Harkness and Captain McKeon had opened for him. It was more of a fast, awkward crawl than a 'step,' really, something that had to be done quickly, lest someone happening along the passage see him and wonder what he thought he was doing, and he stumbled on the hatch coaming. He flung out an arm to catch his balance, half-hopping and half-falling across the narrow passage, and for one dreadful instant the memory of every awkward, humiliating disaster of his adolescence seemed like a garrote about his throat. In that instant, he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was going to screw this one up, as well, and when he did, all the people counting on him would die.

But then his outstretched hand smacked into the bulkhead opposite the service hatch and he caught himself. Panic hammered in the back of his brain, but there was no time for that, and he ground it under a ruthless mental boot heel. He couldn't do anything about the rapidity of his pulse, yet he straightened his spine and squared his shoulders as he pushed away from the bulkhead which had arrested his fall. He tugged at his tunic sleeves, Johnson’s arms had been shorter than his, and looked casually in both directions, and his pulse slowed just a fraction as he realized there was no on in sight.

Well, there shouldn't be anyone down here, he told himself. This passage was normally used only to service the docking and umbilical arms of Boat Bay Four. If small craft operations had been underway, there would have been an excellent chance of running into someone, but there were no launch orders on the schedule Harkness had pulled out of the main computers. Even if there had been, they wouldn't have used Bay Four... unless Cordelia Ransom had decided for some reason that she had to make an all-up assault landing on StateSec's own prison planet.

Clinkscales actually felt himself grin at the thought, then drew a deep breath and moved off with a calm expression and a steady tread which he found distantly surprising... and which anyone else who had ever known him would have found amazing.

Andreas Venizelos looked at the bulkhead in front of him, then down at the memo boards display, and muttered a venomous curse. Andrew LaFollet’s head snapped around at the sound, and the focused purpose in the armsman's gray eyes hit Venizelos like a fist. That purpose came dangerously close to desperation, if it stopped short of that at all, and Venizelos reached out to grip the other mans shoulder hard.

'We're doing the best we can, Andrew,' he said quietly. 'Don't you go taking any stupid chances on me. I need you, and so does Lady Harrington.'

LaFollet nodded curtly, but his eyes held Venizelos', demanding an explanation for the commanders curse, and the Manticoran sighed.

'There's a discrepancy in the schematic,' he explained. He took his left hand from LaFollet’s shoulder to point at the alloy which turned the ventilation duct in which they stood into a 'T' intersection. 'According to the plans, that ought to be a four-way intersection, and the one in front of us ought to lead right to the brig. As it is...'

He shrugged, and LaFollet’s grip tightened on his heavy flechette gun. 'So which way do we go instead?' he asked harshly, and Venizelos pointed to the right.

'That way. But it looks like they did an even more thorough job of sealing the brig off from the rest of the hull than Harkness thought. This...' he nodded once more at the bulkhead that shouldn't be there '...must've been an add-on. I'm guessing that when they decided to hand Tepes over to StateSec, they decided to cut off all the cross connected ventilation shafts as an additional security measure. They could probably get away with that, because this section backs right up against one of their environmental plants. All they'd really need is supply and return ducting to that; anything on this side of the brig would be part of the distribution system for the rest of the ship. But if they were paranoid enough to seal ventilation ducts, you can bet they did the same with the service ways.'

'Which means?' LaFollet demanded.

The armsman hated being dependent on someone else to plan his Steadholder's rescue, and it showed. But despite all the time he'd spent aboard starships with Lady Harrington, this wasn't his area of expertise. It was Andreas Venizelos', and Venizelos recognized fury born of devotion when he heard it. He kept his own voice calmer and more level than he'd really believed he could and squeezed LaFollet’s shoulder again.