In Enemy Hands

he'd learned from the ex-InSec personnel who'd trained him. But Ransoms orders not to damage her prevented him from doing any such thing. In fact, he was more than a little afraid of how the Committeewoman was going to react anyway when she set eyes on her prize once more.

Regulations had demanded the deactivation of Harrington's implants, but he hadn't counted on what that would do to her face. Nor had he expected the tech who deactivated them to actually burn them out, leaving no way to reverse the process. He didn't expect Ransom to be pleased to have her prisoner looking like a pre-space stroke victim, nor did he expect her to be happy at how gaunt and starved looking Harrington had become. But that wasn't his fault, damn it! He'd fed her regularly! In fact, he'd...

The ship lurched. It was more of a tremor, actually, but even that was enough to make him stiffen. The battlecruiser massed the next best thing to a million tons. Only something frighteningly violent could send a shock through something that huge, and Timmons turned towards the security console... just as a second shockwave lashed through the ship.

The second one was more pronounced than the first, and Timmons moved faster. Citizen Private Hayman jumped out of his way as he stepped behind the console, but the lieutenant hardly noticed. He stabbed the com key just as the ship trembled for a third time, but nothing happened.

Timmons frowned and punched another key, but still nothing happened. He felt ripples of panic beginning to spread through his subordinates as yet another concussion echoed through the ship, and his own panic rose with theirs as he entered still a third com code and got no response at all.

People aboard starships rely absolutely upon their technology, and nothing is more terrifying than to have that technology fail, especially for no apparent reason. Timmons was no exception to that rule, and he snarled at the communicator's dead display, then reached a decision and thrust a hand into his tunic pocket for his personal com.

As the commander of the brig security detail, he'd been issued a personal communicator, to be used only in the direst of emergencies. Outwardly indistinguishable from any other, it had one important difference: it didn't go through the main com net. Instead, it was a secure link to Citizen Colonel Livermore, CO of Tepes' ground force and security detachments, via a stand-alone system which had absolute priority.

'Yes?'

The single word, without any identification, was hardly correct com procedure, and Timmons recognized the confusion and fear within it. Yet simply hearing it was still a vast relief.

'Timmons, Brig Detail,' he said crisply, drawing the comfort of proper protocol about himself. 'Our communications are out down here. What's happening?'

'How the hell do I know?' the unidentified voice snarled back. 'The whole frigging ship is coming apart, and...'

Hanson Timmons never learned what else the voice might have said, for at that moment, the lift doors slid open. His head snapped up, and he wheeled towards them in confusion, for the tone to signal an approaching lift car hadn't sounded. His confusion deepened as he looked into the darkness of the shaft and realized the tone hadn't sounded because there was no car... and then the first flechette gun coughed.

The brig passageway opening off the lift formed a dogleg to the right on its way to the cells. LaFollet didn't know if that was a deliberate security feature, but it certainly had the effect of one.

He and Candless had been ready when the rest of the rescue party opened the lift doors manually... which was more than could be said for the half-dozen people standing there in their black-and-red dress uniforms. Each had a flechette gun slung over his or her shoulder, and a pulser rode at each right hip, but most of them had been looking away from the lifts, at the officer behind the security console at the bend in the corridor. Their heads started to turn as the doors slid apart, and one of them actually shouted something and clawed frantically at his slung weapon, but he was too late. Andrew LaFollet and James Candless had debts to pay, one to their Steadholder, and a very different one to her enemies, and their eyes were merciless as they squeezed their triggers.

Flechette guns were designed for shipboard combat. The modern descendants of pre-space shotguns, their grav drivers punched out masses of knife-edged flechettes. With much lower velocities than pulser darts, they were less prone to dangerous ricochets or punching holes in important pieces of equipment, but they were lethal against any unarmored target. Their projectiles dispersed into deadly patterns, controllable by the 'choke' setting on their pistol grips. They could be set to cover a cone over a full meter wide at a range of five meters from the muzzle, or as little as fifteen centimeters across at a range of fifty meters, and flesh and bone meant very little to the razor- cruel flechettes.

LaFollet and Candless had set their weapons to maximum dispersion and full automatic. The cycle time on a flechette gun was much slower than that of a pulser, but that hardly mattered given their wide area of effect. The guns coughed rhythmically, belching death and destruction, and the waiting SS guards exploded in a bloody mist.

'We're under attack! We're under attack!' Timmons screamed into his com even as he flung himself down behind the security console. Flechettes slammed into it like deadly sleet, and he scuttled down the passage on his elbows and belly. A single flechette, licking through the gap between the console and bulkhead, caught him just as he rounded the bend, and he screamed as it chewed into his thigh. Slower than a pulser dart or not, it was still traveling at three hundred meters per second, and it sliced the back of his leg like a high-velocity axe. The lieutenant dropped his com involuntarily to clutch at the bloody wound with both hands, and the communicator slithered away across the deck. He heard the shouted questions from the other end even through his own sobs of anguish, but he had no time to worry about answering them. Most of his people were down already, but the two he'd posted as formal guards outside Harrington’s cell had been shielded by the bend in the corridor. That pair had been intended as window-dressing for the formal transfer of the prisoner, but stationing them here had had the effect of giving him a reserve, and he bared his teeth in a pain-stretched snarl. 'Get ready!' he gasped at them, and took his right hand from his gashed leg. His fingers were slimy with his own blood, but he drew his pulser and covered the bend as he shoved himself along the deck on the seat of his trousers and his wounded thigh left a bright red blood trail behind him.

'Go!' LaFollet snapped, and Robert Whitman vaulted from the lift shaft into the brig passage. 'At least one got around the turn!' LaFollet warned him.

The other armsman nodded, but he never slowed in his dash for the security console. He went down on one knee, weapon ready, and stiffened as he heard a voice.

'Timmons! Timmons! What the fuck is going on down there?'

He realized instantly what he was hearing, and that whoever was on the other end of that com link would be sending help as quickly as he could. Time had just become an even more deadly foe, and he looked back over his shoulder at LaFollet and Candless, just starting to climb out of the shaft.

'Open com link!' he shouted, and then, before anyone could stop him, rolled out of his cover with the flechette gun on full automatic.

Timmons heard the shout and grinned viciously. The bastards knew someone would be coming up their backsides any minute now. All he and his remaining men had to do was hold out, and he suddenly realized how he could do just that. These idiots had to be here to rescue Harrington, so all he had to do was open her cell and drag her out into the middle of the firefight, and...

His thoughts broke off as someone rolled out into the very middle of the passage. His sudden appearance took Timmons totally by surprise, and he gaped at the apparition in shock, unable to believe anyone would deliberately throw himself into what he knew had to be a deathtrap. But that was because he'd never encountered a Grayson armsman whose Steadholder was in danger. Robert Whitman had only one purpose in life, and his very first shot tore Citizen Lieutenant Timmons to bloody rags.

The two men further up the passage poured fire back, but the bare bulkheads and deck offered no cover... for anyone. Deadly clouds of flechettes shrieked past one another, intermingling and then separating, all of them set