The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack by David Drake (ed), Bill Fawcett (ed)

just prior to takeoff, surely that had been the lock cycling closed? Evans in all probability was on board. The control panels on the bridge seemed utterly dead; but with back-up systems, even now the mate might be piloting from a remote station elsewhere on Marity . If Evans was at the helm, Ensign Shields was going to have to fly her shapely ass off to keep up. Fortunately her ability was equal to her boasts.
    Right now the primary directive was to take control before Marity gained enough charge to sequence her FTL drive. Icily composed in the half-light cast by the bridge control panels, Jensen shifted the target of his gun and squeezed the trigger.
    The light-pen in MacKenzie’s hand shattered. Fragments of casing raked his wrist and drew blood while the expended pellet screamed past his groin and imbedded in the stuffing of the adjacent crew chair.
    Mac James moved, but this time Jensen was ready. Before the captain reached cover behind the bridge cowling, the Fleet officer had him cornered. Breathing hard, and sweating beneath his Freer robes, he trained his weapon squarely on the skip-runner’s heart. “Roll over. Cross your wrists behind your back. One wrong move, and you’re dead.”
    Mackenzie James grunted, eased his weight off his right forearm, and carefully extended it behind his waist. “You’re Marksman Elite?”
    “Unfortunately for you,” said Jensen, concentrating more on the left hand of his captive than acknowledging the accolade he had striven for, and won with such pride at an exceptionally early age. Gun at the ready, the young officer loosened his robe and retrieved a pair of loop nooses, the thin, cutting type Fleet marines used to restrain everything from murderers to brawlers. He hooked the first over James’s upraised wrists and jerked tight.
    “Now raise your ankles, captain.” James did so, and the second noose shortly trussed his legs.
    Smiling raggedly from triumph and excitement, Jensen locked the ends and began to search the captain’s person. The man was tautly muscled, which was unusual enough to inspire caution. Most skip-runners were slender to the point of fragility, the result of long hours lurking in null gravity, their ship’s systems shut down to a whisper to avoid notice. MacKenzie James also carried no side arms, only a small knife in a sheath sewn into his boot. Jensen confiscated this, then shoved his prisoner awkwardly onto his back.
    MacKenzie returned a cool, appraising stare that, even behind a pellet gun, Jensen found disturbing. “You will tell me where Evans is piloting, clearly and quickly.”
    The captive smiled with brazen effrontery. “By now I expect what remains of my mate is being bundled up in a body bag.”
    “Back at Station?” Jensen resisted an urge to step close; even bound, the captain was bulky enough to roll and knock him down. “I’m not a fool, James. If Evans died on Station with the rest of the dock personnel, who guides this ship?”
    MacKenzie’s grin turned thoughtful. “Well now, I could say with reasonable certainty that Marity flies on a hardwired connection between her accelerator banks and her coil regulator. Assuming I don’t lie, any fool knows she’ll blow when the condensers overheat.”
    Jensen considered this, unpleasantly confronted by the mulish courage that had confounded so many officers of the law before him. The captain might be lying; but his reputation said otherwise, which placed Jensen squarely on the prongs of dilemma.
    MacKenzie James stopped smiling. “Don’t think too long, boy. Since you so proudly blasted my laser-pen, I’ll have to rummage around for my cutter tool to break the bridged circuit.”
    “Shut up.” Jensen needed a second to clear his mind.
    Somewhere on Marity would be a kill switch to cut the drives in the event of emergency; the other fail-safes and override systems would be nonexistent, for skip-runner captains as a rule pushed their machinery over margin. The complication that