My Own Kind of Freedom, page 149 by Steven Brust
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, if some bad happened, you let us do what good we can do, to sort of make up for some of it."
Wash came through the door.
"Wash!" said Jayne. "I almost put one through your gorram head!"
Wash ignored him, and spoke to Kit. "I got it," he said.
"Verify it."
"How?"
The captain said, "Wash--"
"One second, Mal."
Kit said, "Slide the little brown button on the back the other way, then hit start."
Wash said, "Two green lights."
Okay, here we go. It happens or it doesn't.
Kit rotated his whole body until, weapon and all, he was facing Sakarya. He said, "Filo Bursa, alias Filo Sakarya, you are bound by law for violations of Alliance Labor Code section nineteen part three, forced indenture, and section seventeen part five, child labor, and additional charges to be determined by a duly authorized court."
Then he waited.
Sakarya's office
He so badly wanted to pull the trigger; to watch Bursa fall to the ground twitching. To shoot him in the chest, so he'd just have enough to time to know he was dying.
But it wasn't that gorram simple.
He'd never felt this way in a firefight.
Even as a young recruit, when he didn't know how to handle himself, he'd done as well as could be expected: keeping his head down and shooting in the general direction of the enemy. But this was different. It wasn't clear. It wasn't obvious. There were too many answers, and all of them had some right and some wrong.
When the fed pointed his gun at Bursa, Zoë had immediately turned hers toward the door; now he heard the report of her carbine at the same time as Jayne's pistol, and two more of Bursa's security force fell in the doorway, next to their companions, one of whom was moaning and writhing, while the other wasn't moving at all.
"Sir," said Zoë, without turning her head, "whatever you're going to do, I'd suggest doing it soon."
"Real soon," said Wash,