That Way Lies Camelot by Janny Wurts Read Free Book Online

unexpectedly, you people seem to find us.' But his easy manner was belied by the tension in his stance.
    Yet skip-runners could be expected to treat strangers with caution. Careful to pronounce the name precisely as Marity' s mate had, Jensen said, 'Then Mac James is available?'
    'Mac's topside.' His appraisal abruptly complete, the mate jerked his head for the young officer to follow, then gestured toward the open jaws of the lock.
    Jensen took a slow breath, readjusted his Freer hood, and ducked under Marity' s forward strut. He set foot on the loading ramp, and quashed a panicky urge to retreat. The burning ambition which held him sleepless each night drove him forward as the mate disappeared into shadow.
    Jensen passed the lock. Marity' s interior seemed dim after the arc lamps that illuminated Station's docks. His spacer's soles clung lightly to metal grating, the sort that adjusted on tracks to vary storage according to the demands of different cargoes. But as Jensen blinked to adjust his vision, he heard the clang of an innerlock; a cool draft infused the outer hold and by that he guessed that on the far side of that barrier Marity's resemblance to a merchant carrier must end. Only a craft that carried state of the art shielding and navigational equipment would trouble to control its atmosphere while in port.
    The mate paused at the head of the corridor and called. 'Mac?'
    A grunt answered from the ship's upper level, distorted into echoes by the empty hold.
    'Company's here asking for you.' The mate waved for Jensen to pass him and continue alone down the access corridor. 'Ladder to the bridge is there to the left.'
    Startled to be left on his own, Jensen crossed the threshold of the innerlock with his best imitation of Freer poise. He set cold hands to the ladder beyond. Faintly over the mate's receding footsteps, he heard the muted grind of light-loaders laboring outside of Marity's hull. Then the innerlock hissed shut. Irrevocably sealed off from Station, and isolated amid the hum of the air-circulating system, Jensen recognized the sizzle of a laser pencil cutting through cowling.
    'Come to talk, or to tap-dance?' Marity's master called gruffly from above.
    Jensen climbed. Sweating under his Freer cowl, he emerged in the windowless chamber of the bridge. Dead screens fronted the worn couches of two crew stations. The controls beneath were sophisticated and new, and somehow threatening without the array of labels and caution signs indigenous to Fleet military vessels. Jensen repressed a slight prickle of uneasiness. The man who flew Marity knew her like a wife; his mates without exception were pilots who could punch in and out of FTL or execute difficult dockings in their sleep.
    'You're no Freer,' the captain's gravelly voice observed from behind.
    Jensen whirled, fringes sighing across the top rungs of the ladder. Bent over the far console was the skip-runner half of Fleet command would trade their commissions to jail. Through the dazzle of the laser-pen, Jensen made out a dirty coverall with the clips half unfastened, knuckles disfigured with scars, and a profile equally blunt, currently set in a frown of concentration. Shadowed from the laser's glare by a flip-shield, eyes light as sheet metal never left the exposed guts of Marity's instrument panel, even as Jensen shifted a hand beneath his robe and gripped the stock of the gun hidden beneath.
    'Care to tell why you're here?' The laser-pen moved, delicately, and the shift in light threw MacKenzie James's scarred fingers into high relief. With a small start, Jensen recognized old coil burns, from working on a ship's drive while the condensers were activated. The story was true, then, that Mac James had changed a slagged module barehanded to make his getaway the time he had sabotaged the security off Port.
    Mesmerized by the movement of fingers that should by rights have been crippled, Jensen opened, 'You run guns,' and stopped. The man's directness had rattled