No more shots were fired from the shaft, and McKeon heaved a sigh of relief. But he knew the respite would be brief. There were limits on the weapons the Peeps would willingly use against them as long as they held the boat bay—the explosions in the other bays had been a pointed reminder that there were things in here which didn't take kindly to combustion—but there were a lot more of them than there were of his people. And there were fewer of his than there had been, he thought, looking at Walker's body.
He pushed up and walked over to Harkness. The senior chief's face was drawn and soaked with sweat, but his hands were no longer busy on the keyboard, and he looked up at McKeon's approach.
"Looks like they finally kicked my butt out, Sir," he said, and bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. "But by the time they did, just about everything but life support got slagged right down to glass. Even if we don't make it, they're gonna be a long time trying to put this bucket of bolts back on-line."
"So they've got complete control of whatever's left?" McKeon asked.
"Just about, Sir. I don't think they can break my lock on that lift—" he pointed to the intact lift doors through which no attack had yet come "—and there's no software left down here in the bay itself. But give 'em another forty, fifty minutes, and they're gonna start getting some sensors and weapons back under manual control. And when they do—"
He broke off with a shrug, and McKeon nodded grimly.
"Now remember, Ma'am," Venizelos said, his voice low and urgent as they crouched just inside a ventilation grate, "if Harkness pulled it off, that lift'll be waiting when we get there."
Honor nodded. Their journey through the bowels of the ship had been too rushed for Venizelos to give her many details on Harkness' achievements, but he'd managed to hit the high points, and she was astounded by how thoroughly the senior chief had worked this all out. The fact that StateSec had seen fit to maintain outdated files where the brig area was concerned had thrown a monkey wrench into a part of his plans, but that was hardly his fault. And if the rest of them hadn't been working—so far, at least—the Peeps would already have reasserted control of their computers... in which case it would all be over by now.
But if it wasn't going to be over, anyway, they had to get to the boat bay—quickly. Andy and Marcia were right about that, and she leaned back against the wall of the duct, panting for breath and hoping none of the others realized how exhausted she was. The weight and muscle tone she'd lost during her confinement dragged at her like an anchor, and she forced her eyes open and gave her people—her friends—one of her half-smiles.
"At least I shouldn't have any trouble remembering the code," she said, and Venizelos surprised her with a genuine chuckle, for Harkness had used her birthday. She had no idea how he'd happened to remember it, but the senior chief was turning out to be full of surprises.
"All right," Venizelos said, and looked at LaFollet. "Andrew?"
"We go down the passage in single file," the armsman said. "I take point, then Lady Harrington, Commander McGinley, and you. Here, My Lady." He handed the memo board to Honor to take his flechette gun in a two-handed grip.
"You're sure of the route?" she asked.
"Positive." LaFollet took one hand from the gun long enough to tap his temple. "And I want you to have the map if something—"
He shrugged, and she nodded, heart aching for the risks these people—and Jamie Candless and Bob Whitman—had taken for her. She wanted to say something, to thank them, but there was no time and she didn't have the words, anyway. And so she only smiled at her armsman and put an arm around each of her staff officers, hugging them briefly.
"All right," she said then, gathering her own weapon back up. "Let's be about it."
"Warden Tresca thanks you for your warning, Citizen Admiral," Harrison Fraiser reported. "However, he thinks you may be overly alarmed, and he's confident Tepes' crew will soon regain control of their vessel. In the meantime, he's ready to deal with any small craft which may attempt to launch."
"Oh, that's just wonderful!" This time the mutter came from Shannon Foraker, not Bogdanovich. Tourville glanced at Honeker, and then, to their mutual astonishment, both of them grinned matching helpless what-the-hell-do-we-do-now? grins at one another.
"How so, Shannon?" Honeker asked after a moment, and Tourville wondered if Shannon even noticed that the People's commissioner had used her first name.
"Well, I was just thinking, Sir," the ops officer replied. "He says he can deal with any small craft that try to launch, right?" The People's commissioner nodded, and Foraker shrugged. "I'd be more reassured by that if they didn't already have at least one small craft—and an armed one, at that—in space." Honeker quirked an eyebrow, and Foraker sighed. "Sir," she said gently, "where else could the missiles that killed Charon's shuttle flight have come from?"
"Go!"
LaFollet kicked the grate loose and charged out after it, and his flechette gun coughed twice before Honor was out on his heels. Only one of his victims had the chance to scream, and then the armsman was running down the passage with Honor on his heels.
It was hard for her to keep up with him, despite her longer legs. Her heart pounded and her working eye blurred with strain as she fought to match his pace, but it took everything she had, and she cursed her long imprisonment and poor diet. She heard McGinley on her heels, and Venizelos after her, and then her blood ran cold as someone shouted behind all of them. Pulsers whined and flechette guns coughed, and despite herself, she turned her head to see Venizelos peel off as he rounded a bend. Her feet tried to stop, fighting to go back to him, but McGinley charged into her from behind.
"Go!" the ops officer screamed, and Honor knew she was right, and her legs obeyed her staffer, but oh how her mind cried out against it, and then Venizelos was down on one knee, and the last thing she ever saw of him he was firing steadily, calmly, like a man picking off targets in a gallery, covering her retreat while she ran and left him to die.
More fire echoed, from ahead this time, and she half-stumbled over a body. For a terrifying instant she thought it was LaFollet, but then she saw the StateSec uniform and knew her armsman had killed whoever it was on the run. As he was killing more people.
LaFollet had saved her life once before, from assassins—he and Jamie Candless and Eddy Howard—but Honor had been too stunned by events to truly realize what was happening then. Today was different, perhaps because Jamie and Eddy were dead and her heart of hearts knew LaFollet was damned to die for her as well. She didn't know. She only knew that this time she blinked her eye clear of the filmy blur of strain, and for the first time she saw what a lethal force he truly was.
He ran quickly, smoothly, head turning in metronome arcs to sweep the passage ahead of him. He carried the heavy flechette gun at his hip, the sling over his shoulder to steady it, and his finger stroked the trigger in elegant, precise bursts as astonished Peeps popped up before him, attracted by the clangor of battle exploding in their very midst. He was a wizard of death, dispatching his sorcery in the lethal patterns of his flechettes, for he was fighting for his Steadholder's life and anyone who crossed his path was doomed.
And then he rounded the last bend and shouted in triumph as he reached the lift doors at last.