Narrow passageways branched off to the left every fifty meters; they led a short distance to a parallel passageway, most didn't have hatches opening into compartments. Schultz stopped and carefully peered around each corner, then sprinted for the next, with the rest of third platoon following. At the sixth, he stopped and asked for confirmation before turning onto it. The passageway was as wide as the one they were on and led all the way across the dreadnought. Almost midway along it was a two-way lift to other levels. That passageway was the first place third platoon saw crew--a gaggle of sailors under the command of a chief petty officer scrambled out of the lift when Schultz was still fifteen meters from it.
They spun and pointed their weapons at the sound of approaching footsteps. Schultz opened fire as he dove for the deck and rolled to one side of the passageway. He got off two shots before Claypoole fired from the passageway's other side. Half a second later MacIlargie fired over him. All four shots hit. None of their blasters were on low power, so those first four shots took down seven sailors, three dead. The unwounded scrambled back into the lift, their panicked voices fading as they traveled away. None had returned fire.
Schultz pushed himself up and bolted for the lift. Claypoole and MacIlargie went with him. MacIlargie thrust the motion detector between them, into the lift; it showed the sailors going down.
"Let's convince them to keep going," Claypoole said, pointing his blaster down the lift shaft. He fired a bolt so it ricocheted off the shaft wall. Schultz grinned behind his chameleon screen and fired off two bolts.
Screams from below answered the bolts, and they heard the sailors scrambling out of the lift.
Another shaft was next to the lift. It held a ladderway, stairs so steep they could barely be descended by an agile person.
Claypoole gave a quick report of the action and got the order back, "Climb the ladder."
"Going up," Claypoole told his men.
Schultz headed for the ladder and started up.
Bass ordered first squad to bandage and secure wounded sailors, then follow second squad and leave the prisoners in place.
Two levels up they ran into more sailors. Schultz had just turned the corner to climb to the next level when three members of the deck crew ran by. They heard footfalls on the ladder; they couldn't see anything but fired anyway. Fléchettes pinged off the Marines' armor. By the time Schultz turned around to fire back, Claypoole and MacIlargie had already killed the three.
"Go, go, go!" Ensign Bass shouted over the helmet comm.
They resumed climbing.
Three levels higher--the bridge level--Schultz stopped without exposing any part of himself through the ladderway exit. "Give me," he growled into the fire team circuit. He held his hand back and Claypoole passed the motion detector to him. The big man held it near the ladderway entrance for a moment and studied the display, then tucked the detector into a belt pouch.
"A squad to each side, more straight ahead," he said.
Claypoole eased around him and took a look. In addition to the cross-ship passageway, a three-meter-wide passageway led straight away from them. He saw a small group of armed sailors clustered near its end. They seemed scared, ready to start firing at any sound. The passageway looked like it opened into a large compartment where the armed men were. A double-wide airtight hatch was on the far side. A lighted sign said, ADMIRAL ON BRIDGE.
Claypoole pulled back and reported what he'd seen and what Schultz read on the motion detector. Before he was finished with the report, Sergeant Linsman pushed past him for a quick look. Charlie Bass and Captain Conorado joined them seconds later and took a quick look for themselves.
When the two officers pulled back, Bass pulled his gloves off and used his hands to tell Conorado what he wanted to do.
Conorado raised his screens and nodded. He approved of Bass's plan.
"Rat," Bass said, "get two fire teams ready. Send one left, the other right. Take out anybody they see. Hold your other fire team ready to help if either of the first two need it. Rabbit, get first squad in position to charge for the bridge as soon as second squad is out of your way. Questions?"
There were none; his orders were clear.
The Marines moved fast. They were ready to go in less than a minute. So far, they hadn't been detected on this level.
"On my mark. One, two, three, GO!"
Schultz went first, with Claypoole and MacIlargie right behind. They spun left through the entry and began firing even before they acquired targets. Corporal Kerr led the first fire team past them to the right, and they also began firing immediately. First squad was on their heels, with Corporal Dornhofer, Lance Corporal Zumwald, and PFC Gray in the lead, firing as they raced to the end of the facing passageway.
The passageways filled with the crack-sizzle of blaster fire and the shouts and screams of frightened, wounded, or dying sailors.
Only a few of the sailors were able to return fire. Those who survived the first few seconds dove for cover, threw their weapons away, and raised empty hands in surrender to the enemy they couldn't see.
Corporals Pasquin and Dean raced each other to be the first to the entrance to the bridge. They reached it simultaneously, but Dean's hand fell on Pasquin's when they both reached for the button that opened the hatch. Pasquin's fierce grin was wasted behind his screens.
"Wait one!" Bass snapped before Pasquin pressed the button. He stood at attention, left of the hatch, and raised his helmet screens to show his face. Conorado stood to his right; his screens were still up.
Conorado listened to the reports coming in on his helmet radio, then nodded and said, "Now."
Dean pushed on Pasquin's hand, and together they pushed the button to open the door to the bridge.
"Sir, a berthing compartment on level eight has been breached," the officer of the deck announced in a shrill voice.
"Why haven't the boarders been repelled yet?" Admiral of the Starry Heavens Orange demanded.
The OOD spoke into his comm, then reported, "Sir, the chief of ship has just begun issuing weapons to the deck crew."
"Just now? What took him so long?" Orange screamed, his face turning red.
Nobody answered. The OOD suspected the admiral and his staff were the only people on board who didn't know that the weapons locker was forward on level two, above the bridge and closer to the bow. The chief of ship had been in the comm shack, three levels below the bridge and farther aft. The deck crew was scattered all over the starship. The OOD was surprised that the chief of ship had reached the weapons locker and begun issuing weapons this quickly.
"What's going on?" Orange shrieked. "What are the boarders doing?"
The Assistant OOD reached past the ensign manning the vid bank and began pushing buttons. Displays showed 2-D images of the interior of the starship. One showed the breached compartment. Nobody was in it.
Then the compartment's hatches flew open and there was a hint of movement, as though bodies were darting through them.
Another display showed the passageway outside the breached compartment. Hatches along it began slamming open. There were more flickers of what might be moving bodies coming out of the first compartment, except nobody was visible.
"Buddha's hairy balls," the Assistant OOD murmured, "it's true."
"What's true?" Orange demanded.
"S-Sir." He stood and faced the furious admiral. "The Confederation M-Marines are invisible."
"What? That's impossible!"
The Assistant OOD gestured helplessly at the display that showed hatches slamming open for no visible cause. "S-Sir, I have no other explanation for that." He sounded like he wanted to curl into a ball and hide.
"Nonsense!" Admiral Orange snapped. He'd heard the same rumors, but he didn't believe them then and wasn't about to start believing now. The Marine detachment at the Confederation embassy on We're Here! certainly never turned invisible; he'd know if it had!
Vice Admiral Toke didn't say anything, even though she knew the Confederation Marine
s did have chameleon uniforms that made them invisible. She'd read about them in the Proceedings of the Naval Institute.
The bridge hatch popped open and a chief petty officer stepped in. "Sir," he said, addressing the Groovy's captain, "I have a security section here. They're stationed to defend all approaches to the bridge."
Captain Hemp cast a nervous glance at Admiral Orange, then said, "Thank you, Chief. I know I can rely on you. Carry on."
"Aye aye, sir." The chief stepped back into the passageway and closed the hatch.
Admiral Orange glowered at the closed hatch, turned his basilisk gaze on Captain Hemp. He was the senior admiral present, the report should have been given to him, not to Hemp. But this wasn't the time to address issues of protocol. There were Confederation Marines somewhere on the starship and they needed to be found and dealt with.
"Where are those Marines?" he demanded of Hemp. "Why haven't they been found and dealt with yet?"
Hemp had barely opened his mouth when the weapons officer broke in.
"Sir, comm has been lost with laser banks four and five!"
"What?" Orange shrieked.
The vid-bank ensign tapped buttons and two displays showed the interiors of laser banks four and five with the laser crews jerking around as though they were being manhandled. Wrist ties appeared on them and they fell as though pushed into a pile in a corner of the bank spaces. Panels fell open on their own, unidentifiable objects came from nowhere, were placed inside, and the panels replaced. After a few seconds the panels buckled violently.
"What is happening?" Orange shrilled.
"Comm lost with missile turret two," the weapons officer reported.
"Comm with the fleet lost," the OOD shouted.
The vid-bank ensign showed the interior of the comm shack. Its crew was trussed up and the comm banks were warped, as though something catastrophic had happened inside them.
"Medical alert," the Assistant OOD reported. A display splashed the picture of seven sailors sprawled on the deck outside the mid-center-ship lift on level eight. Three of them were bandaged and bound, the others were still, possibly dead. Almost immediately the Assistant OOD's voice rose as he announced another medical alert, and the display showed three sailors down outside the lift on level six--they were obviously dead.
"We've lost engineering!" the OOD screamed.
"What is going on?" Admiral Orange shrilled. "Where are they?"
Blaster fire and shrieks from the passageway just outside told him and everyone else on the bridge where they were.
The hatch whooshed open and two faces appeared in the opening.
Suspended in midair.
"I am Captain Lewis Conorado," the face on the left said in a firm, confident voice, "commander of Company L, 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team, Confederation Marine Corps. Who is in command here?"
All eyes turned to Admiral Orange. Orange stood dumbstruck, staring at the hovering faces.
"Sir, my Marines have disabled your starship's main laser and missile batteries, and your communications center. Every crew member who resisted has been killed or wounded. Those we encountered who didn't resist have been secured as prisoners. We now have complete control of the starship, or will momentarily. I respectfully request that you surrender yourself and the officers and crew of your bridge to avoid further bloodshed."
Orange slowly drew himself up. He glared at the suspended faces for a moment longer, then announced, "I am Admiral of the Starry Heavens Sativa Orange, Chief of Naval Operations of the We're Here! navy. I demand that you and your pirates put down your arms and surrender!"
Conorado removed his gloves and helmet and patiently shook his head. "Sir, I don't think you understand the situation. My Marines have control of your starship. At this moment, officers and crew from the Confederation Navy Amphibious Landing Force starship Grandar Bay are on their way to take the controls in Engineering. Your alternatives are: surrender peacefully, resist and die needlessly, or be locked helpless on the bridge. Which will it be, Admiral?"
Behind him, more suspended faces appeared as the Marines of third squad raised their screens to expose their faces.
There was a thud. Someone had fainted and fallen to the deck.
"Sir," Vice Admiral Toke said timidly, "I don't think we have a choice."
Captain Hemp cleared his throat. "Admiral, I'm sorry, sir, but I must surrender my ship before she or my crew suffer any further injury."
Moments later the Marines of Company L owned the We're Here! dreadnought Groovy. Minutes later they handed her over to the crew that came from the Grandar Bay, and a squad from second platoon escorted the two admirals and Captain Hemp to the Confederation starship, where Commodore Boreland convinced Admiral Toke to order the surrender of the rest of the fleet.
Admiral Toke needed very little convincing.
Epilogue
The Grandar Bay couldn't stay in orbit around Maugham's Station waiting for the return of the Broken Missouri and the Heavenly Mary. Commodore Boreland was under strict instructions to leave as soon as his primary mission was accomplished--which it had been once the Marines discovered the cause of the Unexplained Expirations in Ammon. So via drone, Boreland sent everything he knew about the mining operation on the Rock, as well as the refinery and transit station on Maugham's Station, in the after action report he filed with navy headquarters on the battle with the We're Here! fleet.
Filed and forgot, he thought. The navy didn't care who mined what where.
His cynicism was justified. Many reports that might have been of extraordinary interest to other government agencies got sucked into the bureaucratic morass of the Heptagon and never again were seen. And even those that were, sometimes got lost in another agency's bureaucratic morass.
But once in a while...
This was an instance where one world committed acts of war against another and, by attacking the Grandar Bay, effectively declared war on the Confederation of Human Worlds.
When the drone arrived, the duty communications officer in the drone message center on Confederation Navy Base Gagarin, the military space station in orbit around Earth, was a brand-new ensign by the name of Lit. Ensign Lit was anxious to make a positive impression on his superiors, so when he saw an incoming message over the signature of an officer he knew had been on the Grandar Bay, which he also knew had been lost in a Beamspace jump, he became so excited he read it, even though it was marked at a higher security clearance than he held. He then bypassed his local chain of command and queued the message "Urgent" to the office of the Chief of Naval Operations.
Later that evening Ensign Lit was led from the Officers' Club, where he was expounding to several other very junior officers about the message he had routed that afternoon, and placed under arrest in solitary confinement.
In the meanwhile, the message had been taken to Admiral K. C. B. Porter, CNO, within minutes after its arrival in his office. He read it, grimaced, and placed a call to Marcus Berentus, the Confederation Minister of War.
Minister Berentus agreed with Admiral Porter that the matter required immediate Confederation attention. On his own authority, he instructed Porter to dispatch a task force to Maugham's Station, both to defend it against any possible resumption of hostilities from We're Here! and to intercept the Broken Missouri and Heavenly Mary on their return.
Admiral Porter instructed Admiral Rasumbrata, his N3, to assemble a task force for that purpose, and within a day orders were on their way to the heavy cruiser Kiowa, a light cruiser, and three destroyers. En route, the Kiowa picked up a company from 29th FIST to secure the planetside facilities.
Task Force Kiowa was on station only three days when the Heavenly Mary arrived to pick up a load of refined metals. She immediately surrendered two days out from Maugham's Station when her captain was informed she was surrounded by three Confederation Navy destroyers.
The Broken Missouri showed up ten days later. She tried to make a run for it, relying on her cloaking to get away. But the starshi
ps of the task force had superior detection devices and were much faster in Space-3. The Broken Missouri's crew nearly mutinied after the Kiowa put a laser across her bow, forcing her captain to surrender.
The officers and crews of the two starships were locked into their berthing compartments and the ships were crewed by navy personnel for the voyage back to Earth.
Following an investigation by the Ministry of Justice, seven mid-level functionaries of the St. Helen's government were sentenced to life imprisonment on the penal world of Darkside. Even though the investigators tried very hard, they couldn't come up with convincing evidence that any upper level members of the government were involved in, or even aware of, the piracy that stole the Broken Missouri or the Heavenly Mary. The President and several other high-ranking politicians and industrial moguls were, however, convicted of lesser offenses and given lighter prison sentences, fined, and banned from holding Confederation or planetary office.
Admiral of the Starry Heavens Sativa Orange was tried both in Confederation and We're Here! military courts on a variety of charges ranging from conduct unbecoming an officer to interstellar piracy and incitement of interstellar war. He was found guilty on enough counts to assure he'd spend the rest of his life in prison. The entire upper staff of the We're Here! navy was reduced in rank and retired.
A board of inquiry found Commander Moon Happiness innocent of any wrong doing. He got his expected promotion to captain and was assigned to shore duty, but retired two years later when he realized he was never going to be given another starship command.
President Menno of Ammon finally had the proof he needed to pass legislation making it a criminal offense to enter the interdicted areas without presidential approval. Which legislation did absolutely nothing to dissuade the more adventurous young citizens of Ammon from heading for the planet's wild places anytime they felt like it.
Ensign Lit, who knew things he shouldn't and couldn't keep his mouth shut about them, found himself assigned to the Grandar Bay. It was a close call, though--the Grandar Bay didn't have use for any more ensigns and he could just as easily have gone to Darkside.
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