"Sam Patch didn't know about these," he said. "I had Gunsel make one for each man on the crew, sort of an extra reward to be given out when this job was done. I think we have an early use for ours." He grinned unpleasantly. The depleted uranium bullets should be able to penetrate the Marines' armored vacuum suits. "Now get behind something, don't give those Marines a clear shot when they come in."
They waited.
The gunshot reverberated loudly enough in the confines of the bridge compartment to drown out all other sound. But the bullet missed Charlie Bass, who was moving through the hatch and to the side as soon as the plate began sliding out of his way. Henderson's reactions were so fast the bullet almost miraculously made its way through the tiny time and space gap between Bass and Claypoole.
Henderson was shifting aim, looking for the first man through, and missed his chance to shoot the third man in. But Bass had instinctively dived for cover the instant he heard the report, and Henderson didn't have a target. The big man picked a place where the Marine might have gone and shot anyway. The four crew members with Henderson shot wildly-none of them was willing to risk showing himself to look for a target. Their bullets poked holes in the bulkheads and overhead. Fortunately, none of them pointed their rifles toward the ship's outer skin.
Henderson's second shot plowed through a navigation console inches above Bass, and the Marine NCO skittered forward. More shots rang out, but none came anywhere near him.
Bass toggled on his external speakers, jacked the volume high, and boomed out, "I'm Gunnery Sergeant Charles Bass, Confederation Marine Corps. We have taken control of the ship. Lay down your weapons and surrender and no one will be harmed."
Sergeant! Henderson harshly barked out a laugh. The Marines didn't even bother to send an officer to take the bridge? Who did they think they were dealing with? And they didn't control the bridge, he did, and he'd know if they took over Engineering. The Marquis de Rien was still his! He cranked off another shot at where he thought the amplified voice came from, his bullet plowing through an unoccupied acceleration couch and punching through the bulkhead into the next compartment. The others let off strings of undisciplined fire.
"Flame them," Bass ordered.
Kerr, from his position on the right, had damped down his external acoustics and listened carefully to the dampened sounds of gunfire. He'd barely had time when he entered the bridge to look at its layout, but he was sure he knew precisely where two of the shooters were. All he had to do was move twenty centimeters and one of them would be cleanly in his sights. He bent his knees, braced his elbows and toes against the deck, and scooted forward so the top of his head protruded beyond the console he lay behind. Right, only a few meters away, close enough that were he on his feet Kerr could take one step and jump onto him, was one of the smugglers. The man was looking directly at him. Kerr whipped his blaster into firing position and the smuggler threw his rifle away.
"I give up," the crewman said, throwing his arms into the air. "Don't shoot, I give up!" He rose awkwardly to his feet.
"Traitor!" Henderson twisted around and shot him. The depleted uranium bullet plunged through the man and slapped into the outer bulkhead. The largest fragment of the bullet penetrated to the vacuum outside the ship. The ship's atmosphere rushed the weakened hull surrounding the bullet hole. They could hear the shrill whistle of escaping gas....
MacIlargie took advantage of the distraction to pop up and look for a target. He saw Henderson, but another crewman was closer. He aimed and pressed the firing lever. The reduced power plasma bolt set fire to the man's hair and the bolt's sudden heat shattered his skull. Bone fragments plunged into his brain case and made mush of his brain. He was dead before he caught a whiff of his burning hair.
Claypoole also popped up. He fired at Henderson, but the ship's captain dropped as soon as he fired and the bolt missed, spattering against the bulkhead opposite him. The bulkhead bubbled and smoldered, but the damped-down plasma bolt wasn't enough to breach it.
Kerr swore when he saw the man who was surrendering get shot. He levered himself farther forward to a position from which he thought he could see into Henderson's hiding place.
"I count two of you down," Bass boomed. "Nobody else needs to die. Surrender now."
"After you saw me kill someone?" Henderson laughed. "That's a murder charge. I'm not getting arrested to face a capital offense charge." He fired again at where he thought Bass's voice came from, but once more Bass had moved.
Suddenly, a rifle slid across the deck. "I ain't standing up for Sly to kill, but I'm surrendering," a voice called from behind a console. "Don't shoot if you can see me."
"You're a prisoner," Bass boomed. "Lay on your back with your hands stretched out above your head so we can see you don't have a weapon in them."
"You're dead, Flinders!" Henderson screamed. "Soon as we finish with these Marines, I'm going to kill your fucking ass!"
"There're four of us and two of you;" Bass boomed. "Give it up."
Another rifle slid across the deck. "I'm not dying for you, Sly," a voice called out. "Mr. Marine, I surrender. I'm on my back like you told Flinders. Don't shoot me."
"Well, to hell with all of you! That leaves just that much more for me." Henderson bolted to his feet and dashed to a side bulkhead. It seemed to Bass that he'd watched too many bad action trids if he thought he could expose himself in the middle of four armed men like that and not get shot. Four plasma bolts hit him almost simultaneously. He didn't even have time to shriek before his dead body slid up to the astrogator's couch.
"Anybody else?" Bass boomed.
"Nossir, that's everybody," someone said.
"Show yourselves. Now!"
Shakily, the two men stood up, their faces drawn and frightened. They held their hands high above their heads.
"Check the bridge," Bass ordered.
Kerr rose to his feet and gestured at Claypoole and MacIlargie. The three Marines quickly swept the bridge. Nobody else was alive.
"You're Flinders?" Bass asked one of them.
Flinders nodded. He tilted his head toward the other prisoner. "His name's Raj."
"Is anyone else on this level?"
"Nossir, Mr. Marine, sir. Only us on the bridge."
"Who else is on the ship, where are they, and how many are there?"
"Uh, the stone people are on level three. Four of them. I don't know where the security people are, there's four of them. And Engineering on level six."
"Secure these two," Bass ordered Kerr. "I'm going to check on first squad." He left the bridge.
That's when atmospheric pressure pushed the bullet fragment embedded in the hull into the vacuum beyond, and the edges of the tiny hole the bullet fragment had punched gave loose.
Engineering was by far the largest habitable deck on the Marquis de Rien. Although it had the basic pie-layout of the upper decks, it was a warren of large and small compartments.
How am I going to search and secure this place with only six of us? Ratliff wondered. Well, he was a Marine sergeant. When in doubt, act decisively.
"Second fire team, stay here. Pasquin, when Quick gets back, leave him here with Dean. Bring Godenov and join the rest of us. Got it?"
"Got it," Corporal Pasquin replied.
"Good. Hammer, lead out." He nodded in the direction he wanted Schultz to go. "Me, then Hayes."
Schultz popped a hatch and went through it in a blur. "Clear!" he shouted even as the other two were racing through the hatch.
They were in a small compartment filled with hand tools in racks.
"Keep going toward the hull," Ratliff ordered.
Schultz went through the next hatch the same way he had the first. It led into a larger compartment lined with equipment none of the Marines recognized. Ratliff pointed to a hatch on the right bulkhead. Schultz popped it open and shot through.
Two men lay in acceleration couches. They stared at the Marines and slowly lifted their arms to show their hands were empty.
"Where are the rest?" Ratliff demanded.
One of the two men pointed.
"What's there?"
"E-Engine control room," the man stammered.
"How many are there?"
"Th-Three."
"Anybody else on this level?"
"N-Nossir."
Ratliff looked back the way they'd come. He couldn't leave the two men alone, but couldn't afford to leave anybody to guard them. He saw Pasquin and Godenov headed toward them and breathed a sigh of relief.
"Corporal Pasquin, guard these prisoners. If they attempt to attack you or try to escape, flame them."
Pasquin looked at the two prisoners. His expression was grim and he swung his blaster toward them. "Roger. If they attempt to attack or try to escape, I flame them," he repeated. He shifted his grip on his blaster meaningfully.
The prisoners did their best to look immobile and unaggressive.
"Quick, come with us." Ratliff signaled Schultz to go through the hatch the prisoner had said led to the engine control room.
Aside from the fact that he and his men weren't armed, Chief Engineer Hanks was no fool. The men who burst into the control room were Confederation Marines, reputed to be the toughest fighters in all of Human Space. Nothing, not even the possibility of life imprisonment, could induce him to resist them. He threw up his hands as soon as he saw Schultz burst in.
Ratliff had told Dean to report to Bass that they'd taken the engineering level and was wondering how to properly secure his five prisoners when a Klaxon sounded and throughout the ship hatches clanged shut.
"What's going on?" Ratliff spat at Hanks, though he felt a chilling in his gut that told him what had happened.
Hanks paled. "The ship's been holed," he said. "We're open to vacuum."
Chapter 29
Atmosphere rushed with catastrophic force out of the bridge through the hole in the single-skin hull. The Marines in their armored vacuum suits were barely staggered by the force of the air movement, but the two civilian prisoners weren't so lucky. Raj, closer to it, was slammed back first into it, blocking the hole. The atmosphere, much thinner by then, stopped flowing out. Flinders grabbed a console for support and stood gasping the thin air and gaping at Raj, whose mouth formed the O of a terrified scream, though no sound came out. His face was twisted from the agony of the cells bubbling and bursting into the vacuum at his back.
Kerr began barking orders. "MacIlargie, stand by to open that hatch—on my command, Wolfman, not before. Rock, get Flinders to the hatch so you can get him out of here as soon as the hatch opens." The two Marines moved quickly to obey, and Kerr turned to the man plugging the hole.
"Raj, you're in serious trouble. I'm going to do my best to save you. When the hatch opens, I'm going to pull you away from the hull and move you to the hatch. But you've got to work with me. Understand?"
Raj continued his silent scream, but he focused his haunted eyes at Kerr and nodded.
Kerr turned on his shoe magnets to firm up his footing, and got a firm grip on Raj's shoulder and thigh. He double-checked his grip on Raj, shouted, "Open it!" then yanked Raj away from the hull. Air gushed out of the hole, now several centimeters in diameter. Cracks radiated from the hole. Kerr's magnetic shoes held, and he gathered Raj into his arms. He turned toward the hatch. It was still closed! MacIlargie was pounding on the Open button to no effect. In the rapidly thinning air, Kerr faintly heard a computer-generated voice, but couldn't make out what it was saying.
Claypoole let go of Flinders with one hand and grasped the edge of the hatch with the other. It resisted his pulling. MacIlargie reversed his blaster and slammed its butt into the panel next to the hatch to break it open, looking for an override. There was none. The two prisoners tried vainly to suck air into their lungs. Their eyes bulged and they flushed as capillaries burst beneath their skin, then Raj went limp. A moment later Flinders did too.
All of the atmosphere was gone from the bridge.
Charlie Bass needed answers fast. He scrambled down to level five as fast as he could to talk to the pilot and navigator.
"I don't think we can open the bridge with vacuum on one side and atmosphere on the other," said the pilot, Lieutenant Stolievitch.
Lieutenant Dhomhia, the navigator, wouldn't hazard a guess.
"We need to talk to the ship's engineers," Chief Magruder said. "If anybody knows, they do."
Bass knew Engineering was taken and all the engineers had been captured. "Let's go," he told Magruder. A moment later they were on the sixth level.
"This ship is designed to close all hatches in the event of a hull breach," Chief Engineer Hanks said, "to keep any hatch with vacuum on one side closed."
"There's got to be a way to get onto the bridge," Bass said. "Or is there an alternate set of controls we can get to?"
Hanks shook his head. "The only other controls on the ship are here." He swept a hand at the console bank in the engineering control room. "These only control the engines and steering. We can change speed and direction, that's it."
"What about navigation?"
"We depend totally on orders from the bridge."
"This ship was built with a single-skin hull and without redundant controls?" Chief Magruder asked incredulously.
Hanks slowly nodded. "It was never a popular design."
"Do you know where we're jumping to?"
Hanks shook his head. "That's Navigation. They don't tell Engineering any more than they have to."
Magruder snorted. Navigators in the navy treated Engineering the same way.
"We don't have anyone on the con. What happens when we reach jump point?"
"We go someplace." Hanks shrugged again. "Someplace" could be anywhere—in or out of Human Space.
"We need to establish comm with the Khe Sanh," Bass said to Magruder.
"Not from here we don't. Too much interference all across the spectrum."
The two men studied each other for a long moment, then Bass said, "Chief, if two old salts like us can't come up with a solution to this problem, we should retire."
Magruder grinned. "I'm not ready to retire yet, Gunny. So we have to find a solution, don't we?"
They didn't dare alter acceleration or direction. If they didn't maintain thrust, the star's gravity well could suck them straight in—and nobody wanted to guess what increasing thrust might do. Without access to any kind of external sensors to tell them what direction they were moving in, any change in vector might send them into the star. The first thing they had to do was find out where they were.
Even before that, though, Bass had to deal with the situation on the bridge.
"How are things in there?" Bass asked into the comm next to the bridge hatch.
"Total blowout of the hull;" Kerr told him. "We're all right, but the prisoners are dead."
"How big is the hole? Can you get through it?"
"Not unless we enlarge it."
"Never mind, it was an outside chance anyway," Bass said.
"We're safe for the time being, Gunny," Kerr said after he looked over his men again, looking for a telltale wisp that would show a suit breach. If they went outside and were fully exposed to the radiation from the star, the broken and bent radiators would be much more serious than the merely cosmetic damage they appeared to have suffered thus far.
"Stand by. We'll come up with some way to get you out of there."
"Aye aye, Gunny."
Twenty minutes later they had two vid-lines running between the engine control room and the cargo hold that the Tweed Hull Breacher was attached to.
"Me? Why me?" Corporal Doyle squawked. "I'm a clerk, not a vid-tech or an engineer!"
"Because you know more about the THB's control panel than anyone else here, that's why," Gunny Bass answered. "Now move it."
"But it's just the hat..."
Bass shook his head slowly from side to side.
Doyle sighed and closed his helmet faceplate.
"Besides, your armored vacuum suit gi
ves you better protection than the sailors' suits give them," Bass added.
Doyle wasn't convinced.
Sergeant Bladon leaned close and touched helmets with Doyle. "Think of it this way," he said so only Doyle could hear. "It'll look good at your court-martial."
Doyle looked at him, aghast. He'd forgotten about Top Myer claiming his ass. He'd thought maybe some extra duty; at the very worst, nonjudicial punishment and loss of a stripe. But a court-martial? That would mean serious brig time. He shuddered and went with no more complaint.
Corporal Doyle stood alone in the cargo hold. The end of the vid-line, two multispectrum pickups, and an adhesive tube dangled from his belt, and a drill was in his hand. A second vid-line cable lay on the deck. It seemed to take forever for the atmosphere to get pumped out of the hold, but entirely too soon he stood in vacuum. Awkwardly, he bent over the drill and inserted its bit into the hole a navy engineer had begun. A few zips and the hole was punched all the way through. He fed the vid-line through the hole, then cycled the hatch open and stepped through to the THB. Slowly, dragging the vid-line behind, he crossed the five-meter length of the box to its outer side. He took a moment to screw a multispectrum pickup to the end of the vid-line before drilling another, wider, hole to the outside. Moving quickly, he poked the pickup through the hole and beaded a line of adhesive around the edges of the hole. The adhesive set in seconds. Doyle tugged on the line to set the pickup against the hull, then beaded more adhesive around the line. When it set, he held an air canister next to the adhesive and gave a squirt. Assured that the seal was tight, he returned to the cargo hold and drilled another hole through the hull, just big enough for the vid-line. He fed in the line, returned to the THB, attached the pickup, back to the hold, seated the pickup, applied adhesive, and cycled the hatch closed. They had a backup in the event the THB tore loose.
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