"No, wait!" Otis shouted, he had to pull himself physically from his superior officers grip before darting across the room to one of the men Kaiden had shot. He tore open the mans vest and pulled a small electronic device, a personal data unit from the thugs belt. Shouts sounded from one of the corridors and Sabatine raised her impeller and fired three rounds in the general direction, the shriek shattering masonry and a cloud of vaporised plaster filled the air, hopefully encouraging any would be reinforcements to consider their choices. Otis ran in a crouch his head down scuttling back passed the officers and stumbling towards the kitchen as Kaiden shoved him. Sabatine's opinion of Otis rose several notches. His ship handling might be crude and his astrogation might be little better than the standard computer solution but the RCN would always have a place for officers who could keep their heads when the shooting started. "Time to go," Kaiden announced and Sabatine turned and ran back into the kitchen. Contrary to orders, several of the spacers were in the basement door, including Higgs who grabbed Otis and half guided half shoved him down the stairway. As soon as he saw Kaiden and Sabatine moving he turned back down the stairs. "Clear the lock!" he shouted at the riggers below and the thunder of feet told Sabatine that the whole detachment had been in the stairway, ready to rush forward if needed, but the bosun's shout cleared the way as effectively as a plasma blast would have. Wary of fouling Kaiden Sabatine jumped up and let her momentum slider her along the stainless steel table like a skatter taking a high speed fall on ice. She slid of the end and broke her momentum by slapping her back against the wall beside the door, her impeller pointed back at the dining room. Kaiden arched an eyebrow but didn't delay to insist she should go first, simply running down the stairs with the surety of a man who has run companionways a thousand times before. Sabatine stepped through after him pulling the door closed. She thrust the barrel if the impeller through the locking bar as an improvised bolt and took the stairs two at a time to the guardroom below. "Thank the Gods," Tilda breathed as Kaiden appeared. It turned out that a few of the spacers had hung back to keep the reporter out of the way as the XO had instructed and to guard the prisoners. That was good, not that Sabatine cared if Kaiden tossed the chit out on her nicely rounded ass, but she would certainly have been trampled in the rush at the stairway. "Move out!" Kaiden ordered and they began to doubletime back down the access pipe two abreast. Colby, an engine wiper who had the sour look of a man who had been away from booze long enough to be resenting it, hauled one of the prisoners to his feet. "Ma'am what do we do with these?" he asked. The question probably should have been directed at Kaiden but Colby wasn't the brigtest star in the firmament and his longer familiarity with Sabatine made her the obvious choice. Sabatine glanced at Kaiden who shrugged. "Press'em," she ordered decisively. Colby laughed and hauled the prisoner to his feet, another spacer did the same with the other survivor. Impressment was a time honored tradition in the RCN, though normally the victims were merchant spacers rather than random thugs. "I doubt any of these lot know an airlock from their asshole," Colby commented, not questioning the order but in nasty humor at what the RCN's newest recruits could look forward to over the next couple of days. "Well that is why the Gods gave us Bosuns Colby," she agreed as the group got moving heading down the tunnel at a jog. And if the worst thing these thugs had to look forward to was being beaten half to death by Higgs while they learned the ropes, then that was better than the deserved. "Besides," she said with a dark grin, "there is a war on." -------- "Lieutenant Hickoring," Micha snarled through clenched teeth, "What in the name of the Gods possessed you to pull a stunt like this!" Kaiden and Sabatine were in Micha's day cabin. A small 8x8 foot space that adjoined the captains bunk. It was luxurious by the standards of a starship, which meant that any civilian would have thrown their hands up about living in such a tight space. They had made it back to the Vickie without further incident, and had dispatched Ottis to the medicomp for a full scan. Micha had not been pleased, both at their delayed return and at the fact that Sabatine had effectively circumvented his authority. For her own part Sabatine hadn't had a chance to clean up and was still covered with masonry dust, giving her utility uniform an odd leporous cast under the lights of the day cabin. The small hairs on her right hand had been burned away and there was a slight grey sheen of redeposited metal from the impeller slugs she had fired. "No excuse sir!" Sabatine replied, her eyes fixed at a point just beyond Micha's right shoulder. It was the academy answer and Micha's grinding teeth were all but audible. He glared at her for a long moment. "I don't hold you to blame Lieutenant Caladwarden, you are new to the ship and doubtless were unaware that I had told Miss Hickoring to let the local authorities handle it," he told Kaiden his voice holding a touch of deference to his aristocratic better even if his rank gave him power of Kaiden. "Until I say otherwise you are on permanent anchor watch Hickoring, and be thankful that your gallivanting didn't cost us more than it has already." Sabatine wasn't sure what her 'gallivanting' had cost them, seeing they had Ottis back more or less in one piece and the wogs would know not to fuck with the RCN in future, but there didn't seem to be much advantage to asking. "You sounded the recall sir?" she asked, glad to change the subject. Micha blinked as though surprised. "Ah yes, there was an extraction on the fringes of the system that the customs boat picked up, the ship wasn't identified and we think it may have been an Alliance scout." "I see sir," Sabatine said in a neutral voice. She didn't really, more than likely the extraction was merely a merchantman taking star sights and in an hour or so they would jump close enough to the world to approach on high drive. Even if it was, they were in a secure harbor protected by anti-ship batteries, there was hardly any cause to recall the spacers mid liberty. "We will be lifting in two hours, we can't risk being caught on the ground if the Alliance has declared war," Micha concluded. "Sir." Sabatine responded without inflection. That seemed to draw Micha's ire as his eyes blazed and he seemed on the verge of another outburst. "You are dismissed Lieutenant," he snapped instead, and Sabatine turned on her heel and marched out of the room, leaving Kaiden alone with the Captain.