That Way Lies Camelot by Janny Wurts Page B

clarity of adrenaline rush, he noticed that MacKenzie James said nothing at all; but his steely eyes bored with steady and unsettling intensity into the Fleet officer who had gunned down his mate. He seemed almost to be listening for something.
    Jensen discovered why a moment later. Marity' s engines died to a whisper. There followed a peculiar hesitation in time, that blurring transition which signalled the drop into FTL.
    Jensen knew a chill of apprehension. He had not killed swiftly enough. Now she hurtled through deepspace toward a destination only MacKenzie James and his dead first mate would know. Still, though the ship was untraceable to the courier, Jensen did not lose control. The prize, the skip-runner captain whose capture would gain him advancement, was still at his mercy.
    Jensen dug in the pouch sewn into the Freer robe for another round of ammo. His fingers snagged in the fabric; he swore and wrestled them free, while from the deck, MacKenzie James broke his silence.
    'Most Freer carry their weapons on a belt across their chests. The pouch is for pills to kill parasites, and the clip on the seam hangs their water skins.'
    Jensen clamped his jaw tight, methodically busy with reloading. If Mac James chose to make conversation, he would have a purpose other than boredom.
    'Godfrey, who's left to shoot but me?' The skip-runner never glanced at the corpse, oozing blood an arm's length from him.
    Jensen snapped a fresh round into the magazine of the gun and tried to figure why Mac James might wish to distract him with chatter. Quite dangerously, the stakes had altered. He might hold the upper hand, but the captain was not entirely at his mercy. With Marity' s major controls stripped of function and her FTL hurtling her toward an unknown destination, Jensen shoved back the first, creeping stir of doubt. He could defeat the retina lock over the drive access hatch by dragging his captive down below and manhandling him up to the sensors. But disabling Marity' s FTL condensers would do no good if he had no inkling of her position. Jensen stepped over the mate's sprawled feet. Most of the screens were opaque, empty of data as the rest of the controls. As he surveyed the opened cowling and tightly racked maze of exposed boards, it occurred to him that Mac James might have prepared his own diabolical sort of defense: Marity was probably inoperable by any hand but her captain's. Jensen clenched his hands, rage at his predicament momentarily making him dizzy. He would come out of this on top, with the promotion he was long since due. Freshly determined, he searched out the stop-marker coordinates that glimmered on the navigational board.
    The fix was still within Carsey Sector, and surprisingly familiar. That James would wish Marity to emerge only hours away from the wreckage he had left on Point Station bespoke unsettling confidence. Jensen hid his hands in his robe, too careful to give way to elation as he identified the fix as Castleton's World, a lifeless planet until recently, when Fleet Command had cut ground there for a large-scale outpost. Two squadrons patrolled there, with a dreadnought in synchronous orbit to maintain security for the duration of the construction.
    Jensen turned slowly from the controls, starded to find that MacKenzie James seemed to be sleeping. Ripped with an irrational desire to destroy the man's nerveless peace, the Fleet officer said, 'Castleton's isn't the refuge you hoped for, not anymore.'
    MacKenzie James replied without opening his eyes. 'You're not much in the confidence of your superiors, are you, boy? Or maybe the news is too recent, or the planned assault on Bethesda makes Fleet brass too busy to keep current.'
    The assault on Bethesda was supposed to be top secret. Horrified that a common skip-runner should be party to Fleet secrets, Jensen stiffened. He leveled the barrel of his pellet gun just as the gray eyes of his captive flicked open. They reflected a cold and bloodless amusement