going to sling your ass on a plate. Remember section seven, bylaw four sixty five point one, punishment for disregard of standing battle orders and leaving assigned position?'

    Jensen said nothing. He sat straight in his chair, his hair was like combed ebony, and his fingernails trimmed short like a model's. Harris pressed switches and sequenced the Shearborn's condenser coils into recharge for FTL. Then Jensen fussed with the adjustment of his chair belts, as Harris shrugged, punched up the gravity drive, and wrenched their little chaser out of Station.

    Immediate protest issued from the ship-to-ship com speaker mounted above the controls.

    'Commodore Meier, howling for both your balls,' surmised Harris. His fingers hesitated ever so slightly above the flight board.

    'Just carry on!' Jensen tripped a switch, and the angry voice of their superior became buried in background noise as the power banks gunned maximum thrust into the engines.

    Harris grinned in that cocksure manner indigenous to pilots. Skill of his caliber was too scarce to waste; when the boom came down, he could count on some measure of immunity.

    Against the wrath of irate brass, Junior Grade Lieutenant Michael Christopher Jensen, Jr, had only the far-reaching influence of his politician father; if, that was, Jensen senior chose to bend his public stance of calling no favors for his son. Harris preferred to believe that paternal sentiment would prevail as he spun the chaser in a neat turn and opened throttle.

    The lieutenant in command knew otherwise. Heart pounding, Jensen expected that hell would freeze before his family would bail him out of trouble. It had been his father's imperiousness about carving his fortune on his own that had tangled his fate with that of the skip-runner captain in the first place. The Shearborn's pursuit simply resumed unfinished business.

    Vigorous protest arose right on schedule. Commodore Abe Meier's voice barked angrily on emergency interrupt. 'I'11 have your officer's bars, boy, and a mark for desertion on your record that even God can't erase.'

    Slammed back into his crew chair by inertia, Jensen laced his fingers to stop their shaking. No threat could make him reconsider; by now, their course was committed. Harris's cocky grin was gone, dissolved into a frown of sweaty concentration.

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