The Fleet 01
Page 33
Though he didn’t suppose he ought to blame this on the Khalia. They just happened to have been around as role models.
“One more!” Sienkiewicz said with false brightness as her boots crashed to the floor and she followed Bradley into the hallway again.
The squad from Second Platoon had been busy enough to leave a sharp fog of propellant and explosive residues as they shot their way into the sleeping rooms on the opposite side of the corridor. They hadn’t turned up any additional kills, but they were covering Kowacs’ back as he’d ordered, so he didn’t have any complaints.
He and his non-coms poised at the third door in this section. It jerked open from the inside while he and Sienkiewicz took up the slack on their triggers.
Neither of the rifles fired. Bradley, startled, blasted a round from his shotgun into the opening and the edge of the door.
The airfoil load chewed a scallop from the thick wood panel and tore swirls in the smoky air of the room beyond.
“Don’t shoot!” screamed a voice from behind the door-frame, safe from the accidental shot. “I’m unarmed! I’m a prisoner!”
Kowacs kicked the door hard as he went in, slamming it back against the man speaking and throwing off his aim if he were lying about being unarmed. The room was an office, almost as large as the kitchen, with wooden filing cabinets and a desk—
Which Sienkiewicz sprayed with a half magazine, because nobody’d spoken from there, and anybody in concealment was fair game. Splinters flew away from the shots like startled birds, but there was no cry of pain.
Starships or no, the Khalia weren’t high tech by human standards. In a human installation, even back in the sticks, there’d have been a computer data bank.
Here, data meant marks on paper; and the paper was burning in several of the open file drawers. The air was chokingly hot and smoky, but it takes a long time to destroy files when they’re in hard copy.
The man half-hidden by the door stepped aside, his hands covering his face where Kowacs had smashed him with the panel.
He didn’t wear a red sleeve, but there was a tag of fabric smoldering on one of the burning drawers.
What had the bastard thought he was going to gain by destroying the records?
Kowacs was reaching toward the prisoner when the man said, “You idiots! Do you know who I am?”
He lowered his hands and they did know, all three of them, without replaying the hologram loaded into their helmet memories. Except for the freshly cut lip and bloody nose, the Honorable Thomas Forberry hadn’t changed much after all.
“Out,” Kowacs said.
Forberry thought the Marine meant him as well as the non-coms. Kowacs jabbed the civilian in the chest with his rifle when he started to follow them.
“Sir?” said the sergeant doubtfully.
Kowacs slammed the door behind him. The latch was firm, though smoke drifted out of the gouge next to the jamb.
“They’ll wipe the chips,” Kowacs said.
“Sir, we can’t wipe the recorders,” Bradley begged. “Sir, it’s been tried!”
“We won’t have to,” Kowacs said. He nodded to Sienkiewicz, who was lifting the plasma weapon with its one remaining charge. “We’ll leave it for the brass to cover this one up.”
And they all flattened against the wall as Sienkiewicz set the muzzle of the big weapon against the hole in the door of the camp administrator’s office.
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