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in mid-stride, a bullet tunneling through the back of her knee and shattering her kneecap. She fell to the floor of the shuttle in a heap, writhing in pain.
    "Now that I have everyone's attention," he said loudly. "Since y'all seem to know who I am, we can move right along to 'this is a stick-up.' Pilot: do not descend or prepare to land, we are turning this craft around. Do NOT call for help or I will put a bullet in the back of your skull. I can fly this aircraft as well as you can, I don't need you. Raise your left hand to acknowledge, please."
    The pilot, whose left hand had been near the communications panel, raised his left hand in the air.
    "Lainne, please be so kind as to divest these fine law officers of their weapons and handcuffs and bind them to the nearest seat."
    Lainne looked at Heck like he was crazy. He actually wanted her to touch these people? She was about to voice her displeasure, but his grim face and the dangerous glint in his eye made her fear him more than her dislike of getting dirty or bloody. She certainly did not want him to shoot her!
    "I'm sorry," she said as she picked up the gun dropped by the man that Heck had shot first. She held the lightweight pistol with just two fingers, cringing as though it were a dead bug. "It was  his  idea, not mine."
    The man just groaned in pain, one hand over his bloody shoulder. Then he started mumbling in a foreign language, she thought it was some variety of Slavic as she removed a pair of handcuffs from a pouch on his belt in the small of this back. Then she handcuffed the man's uninjured arm to the base of a seat.
    "Both of his hands, Lainne," he instructed. "Hurry up!"
    "He's hurt, I can only do one hand."
    "I'm so glad you're worried about his well-being."
    "I'm trying, Heck Thomas!" she shouted back, offended. "I found his wallet, and he's mumbling in Russian or something."
    "Now the woman."
    Just as Lainne was about to step over the man in the narrow aisle, his hand shot up and he grabbed her ankle. Then the man thrust a tanto style knife up toward her thigh with his uninjured arm, aiming for her femoral artery and a potentially killing blow.
    Before the blade struck home another shot rang out in the shuttle cabin and the man went limp. Lainne jumped back with a shriek as she saw gray matter dripping from a gaping hole in the man's head.
    "What happened?" she asked, frightened.
    "He was so happy you were nice he tried to kill you in gratitude," said Heck. "Now, the woman!"
    Lainne stumbled over to the unconscious woman. She took the woman's gun and her purse, and found a pair of handcuffs hidden within. Heck instructed Lainne to handcuff the woman to the nearest seat, both hands. Then he told her to do the same to the man who was seated beneath the ex-lawman's gun. Lainne had to use a few of straps from the floatation devices strapped to the seat-bottoms to finish securing the hostile looking man's legs.
    With each of the man's hands secured to the armrests, and his feet secured to the bottom of the seat, Heck gave Lainne a gun and made her guard him.
    "Shoot him if he tries to escape," he growled. Lainne nodded dutifully, but doubted she could pull the trigger if it came to that. She was frightened of this man, there was nothing in his eyes but death and hatred. The man returned Heck's cold glare with an icy stare of his own as Heck searched his pockets. He found a small pistol and a pair of throwing knives hidden in secret pockets, but nothing else.
    Then he flipped through the wallets that Lainne had recovered, nodding to himself as he perused the identification cards within. "Commonwealth Transportation Security Agency," he growled. "Figures." He tossed the wallets onto the seat next to his prisoner and left Lainne to her duty.
    Heck approached the pilot with caution and was suspicious of the man from the start. A small tattoo of a crescent moon and dagger logo was visible on his dark skin above the collar of his t-shirt. He placed the barrel of his