to hell with a hangover!' she repeated, sounding more like her gender than she ever had. 'We're being messed after by a goddamn ruerchanter.'

    'What!' Jensen half sprang from his command chair, then sank back with a grunt of pain. Plagued by echoes of his own startlement reflected back at him by bare, metallic bulkheads, he went suddenly cold to the core. The only 'merchanter' he could imagine near the site of a major battle against the Syndicate would be the Marity, command of the skip-runner and criminal MacKenzie James. 'Get me a registry number,' Jensen snapped through stabbing discomfort. 'Or lacking that, scan for specs.'

    Beckett read back the requested information in her usual sexless voice.

    'Marity,' Jensen confirmed. And his manner held an edge that his crew had never known.

On the dimly lit bridge of the Marity, the mate Gibsen raised baleful hazel eyes to his captain. 'Mac, they aren't minded to be sportsmen, this morning. The portside plasma turret is rotating our way.'

    'Beats hell out of being overlooked,' Mac James said laconically. 'Now give 'em something to chase.'

    Gibsen's narrow features lit in a grin, red-tinged by the lights of his console. 'Lead them on by the nose, you mean.' His delight did not fade through the split-second interval as he played his controls with a touch his Fleet counterpart aboard Kildare would have sworn on his scrotum was wizardry.

Beckett patently refused the belief that the Marity was anything other than a hard-used private hauler; she argued loudly up to the point when her screens displayed a maneuver that should by Marity's aged specs have destroyed the integrity of her hull. Caught midsentence in denial, the corn officer paused, closed her heavy jaw, then recited the formula that outlined the effects of inertia upon the Marity's supposed limitations. 'Bits,' she finished heatedly. 'We should be looking at flying bits of wreckage.'

    Cracked ribs prevented Jensen from rounding on her in a fury. As a result, his instructions to his pilot came out with unintentional control. 'Tail her. And set our coils charging for transit to FTL.

269