by David Weber
The indicated route blinked on the display. Like the Alpha Route, it followed the line of a river valley which actually merged with Alpha about forty kilometers west of Landing. For the most part, the going was at least as good as for the Alpha Route, too, although there was one stretch that passed through a virtual gorge—a narrow, cliff-walled, twisting gut of a passage where the larger Melconian mechs would have no choice but to advance in single file.
"Bolos aren't subject to wishful thinking in enemy intention analyses," she replied. "If it were me, the maneuver opportunities would make it very tempting, too. On the other hand, I have to admit that I may not be quite as immune to wishful thinking as Lazarus is, and I'd certainly prefer for them to come that way."
Jeffords nodded, once again reflecting on how fortunate they were to have had Maneka Trevor in military command. Her insistence on mapping every possible approach route looked as if it was about to pay off in a huge way.
Purely on the basis of the surface topography, Route Charlie would have to be attractive to the Melconians. It threaded its way through a series of passes broad enough to give scope for tactical maneuvers and rough enough a single Bolo would find it extremely difficult to prevent light units and infantry from worming their way forward around its flanks. And while there were several places along it where a defensive force could make an effective stand, in every case except the gorge Jeffords had already noted, there were alternate approaches through flanking valleys. If Maneka had still commanded a pair of Bolos and had both of them on the ground, they could easily have blocked Route Charlie by operating in support of one another. As it was, Lazarus could engage an attacking column and bottle it up temporarily at any one of those natural defensive positions, but except for the gorge section, there was nowhere he could hold the entire force. And if he let them pin him in position, they would simply flow around him through one of the alternate approaches.
But unless they had access to the deep-scan radar mapping Maneka and Lazarus had carried out, there were aspects of Route Charlie which might just come as a nasty surprise to them.
"I have to admit," he said frankly, "that I was one of the people who thought you'd gone beyond thorough to paranoid, Maneka. But now I'm beginning to wonder if you weren't clairvoyant, instead."
"Hardly." Her mouth tightened and bitterness edged her voice. "If I'd been clairvoyant, Guthrie Chin and Mickey would both be alive and this assault transport would have been blown out of space on its way in. And even if they come down Charlie, we're still facing one hell of a force disadvantage."
"Agreed. But at least we can hurt them."
"That's probably true enough," Maneka conceded. "In the meantime, I've decided it's time to saddle up for Sidekick."
"Agreed," Jeffords said again, steadily, although a part of him wanted to protest angrily. Fourth Battalion was his most effective unit. If the Melconians got past Lazarus, he was going to need Atwater's men and women badly. But he didn't even consider voicing that concern because, bottom line, if the Melconians got past Lazarus with their forces anything like intact, Landing—and the entire colony—was doomed. So if sending Fourth Battalion out to support Lazarus improved the Bolo's chance of stopping the enemy short of Landing, there was no question of where Brigadier Peter Jeffords wanted those troops employed.
"I'll have them moving aboard Lazarus' pod within ten minutes," he assured his youthful commander's image.
* * *
"That way."
Corporal Ka-Sharan pointed out across the huge compartment. The blast doors had slammed into place, as he'd anticipated, but the compartment was so vast, and so crowded with industrial machinery, that the chunks between the doors were big enough for an entire company to maneuver through, far less his own four-man team. And before the doors closed, he'd had time for his suit's computers to read the schematic the Humans had so kindly posted on the bulkheads. He knew exactly which way to go to get to the command center, and on a platform this large and this heavily automated, any possible opposition would have to be located there.
* * *
"They're out of Bravo-Seven," someone said tersely, and Lauren nodded. The Dog Boys were moving faster than she'd hoped they could, and they'd burned their way through the first set of blast doors with what seemed absurd ease. A platoon from Captain Glenn Smyth-Mariano's company of vacuum-trained militia was on the way, but they were going to get here too late. At least Lauren had gotten most of her people off in the lifeboats, so if the Puppies did have a demolition charge and popped it off, they would kill only her and her command crew.
And, of course, fifteen percent of the colony's total industrial capacity.
"There are only four of the bastards," she heard herself say as she stared at the visual imagery from India Mike Three's internal sensors. "Only four!"
"Sure," Alfred Tschu agreed. "But that's four of them with armor and heavy weapons. And we've got zip as weapons." He stared at his displays for several moments, then shook his head. "Lauren, I think it's time to go, too," he said quietly.
"No! They've still got to cross all of Bravo-Six and Bravo-Four before they can get here!" she snapped, glaring at the images of the Melconian intruders.
"Which isn't going to take them very long," Tschu pointed out. "You know that as well as I do."
Lauren grunted, biting her lip hard. Unfortunately, Tschu was right. The sectors of the industrial module were mostly big open spaces, without a lot in the way of internal bulkheads. They had to be because of the nature of the processes which went on inside them. They were wrapped around the control room like the rings of an onion, but none of them was going to offer many barriers to the oncoming boarders. And whether the Puppies knew it or not, they'd picked the worst possible line of approach, from the humans' perspective. The evacuation route from the control center to the lifeboats ran right along the back side of Bravo-Four. If they just kept coming, they would cut the watch-crew off from escape before they ever reached the control center itself.
"Any more word from Smyth-Mariano, Hannah?" she demanded.
"No." The communications tech sounded decidedly shaky, and Lauren didn't blame her a bit.
"Well, contact him. Tell him what's happening. And tell him we've got maybe fifteen minutes before they cut us off from the lifeboats."
* * *
The last blast door before Thermopylae's command deck glowed briefly and almost instantaneously yellow-white, then yielded with an explosive concussion as the Melconian energy lance burned through it.
At least the ship's automated repair systems had managed to close up the hull breaches behind the invaders. The atmospheric pressure dropped noticeably, but it remained breathable, which was good, since none of Hawthorne's bridge personnel had been given time to get to their suit lockers before the entire ship went into lock down.
Something arced through the opening and hit a bulkhead with a metallic rattle.
Hawthorne recognized the grenade instantly.
"Down!" he barked, and flung himself flat behind the pedestal of his command couch an instant before a pair of sledgehammers seemed to impact simultaneously on either side of his head.
The concussion was deafening, and the flash which accompanied it blinded Lieutenant Lewis and Petty Officer Mallory. But as Hawthorne had hoped—prayed—the Dog Boys were trying to take the ship in operable condition, so they were relying on stun grenades. The cumulative effect of the Melconian flash-bangs was devastating, but God had decided to grant them at least a couple of small favors, and one of them was the "shin-breaker."
That ladder, and the raised, shin-high lip of the access hatch (which, unlike the ladder, could have been designed out), had tripped up every single member of the bridge crew at least once since coming aboard. But it also provided a shallow, built-in grenade sump, and much of the effect of the flash-bang was deflected from the bridge proper. What ought to have completely, if temporarily, incapacitated any unprotected person exposed to the blast had "only" disoriented most of the d
efenders, instead.
Hawthorne fought doggedly against the grenade's effect. He'd known it was coming, done his best to prepare himself for it ahead of time, and the additional blast shadow of his command chair had helped, but he still seemed to be moving in slow motion through atmosphere which had become a clinging syrup.
He saw his own hands, as if they belonged to someone else, twisting the safety lock on the boarding grenade, pressing the arming button, and then lobbing it back out through the smoke-streaming hatch.
* * *
Captain Ka-Paldyn slapped Sergeant Na-Rahmar on the shoulder, and the sergeant flung himself forward through the breach that ought to lead directly to the transport's bridge. So far, the rough schematic in Ka-Paldyn's suit computer had been gratifyingly accurate. As always, there were slight discrepancies—even among the People, "sisterships" often varied considerably, especially in their interior arrangements—but nothing significant.
Until now.
Private Ka-Morghas followed Na-Rahmar through the breach, power carbine ready to pick off the stunned, helpless Human bridge crew, and Private Na-Laarhan was right on Ka-Morghas' heels when the grenade went off directly under their feet.
It wasn't a stunning weapon. It wasn't even a conventional explosive. Instead, a small, intensely powerful, superconductor capacitor-fed gravitic field propelled several hundred flechettes outward in a circular pattern at six thousand meters per second. They were small, those flechettes, but needle-tipped and razor-edged. They punched through the Melconians' lightly-armored EW suits with contemptuous ease, and all three of Ka-Paldyn's lead troopers were turned instantly into so much mangled meat.
* * *
A handful of the lethal flechettes howled back through the hatch into the bridge itself. Fortunately, the super-dense little missiles were so sharp and carried so much kinetic energy with them that they half-buried themselves in the battle steel bulkheads instead of ricocheting. One of them didn't hit a bulkhead, however. Instead, it struck Jackson Lewis as he still stood, dazed and pawing at his blinded eyes, and his chest exploded under the impact. His body flew back, slamming into the main visual display, then slid down, painting a broad bloody streak down the display.
Hawthorne swore viciously as the exec went down, and again as two more of the errant flechettes exploded through the communications console in a spectacular eruption of arcing circuitry, but there was no time to think about that just now. His sidearm was in his left hand, covering the hatch. He was a poor enough shot under any circumstances, and he figured his chances of actually hitting anything left-handed were about the same as his chance of becoming Emperor of the Known Universe, but his right hand was occupied with a second grenade, and his right thumb was on the arming button.
* * *
Ka-Paldyn guessed instantly what had happened. Unfortunately, there wasn't much he could do about it.
Ka-Paldyn's mind worked furiously, trying to find a way around the problem. Ultimately, he knew, he could bypass the hatch entirely by cutting his way directly through the intervening bulkheads. But the bulkheads were almost as tough as the blast doors themselves, and there were more of them. They would take longer to burn through, and his own assault group had exhausted most of its energy lances getting to this point. Which didn't even consider the fact that he had absolutely no way of knowing what critical control runs he might cut trying to pry open the bulkheads. That was a minor concern, tactically speaking, but his special ops force didn't include anyone trained in Human engineering practices. Their suits' computers theoretically contained the information they would need to at least shut down the ship's drives until someone from Death Descending could get here to take over. But if they cut or disabled something critical to the management of the ship, none of them would have the least idea how to fix it.
"Jarth," he said over his suit communicator.
"Here," Lieutenant Jarth Ka-Holmar, First Platoon's commander, replied instantly.
"Problems at the bridge hatch," Ka-Paldyn said. "The passage bends sharply. There's no direct approach, and the Human command crew obviously got to their weapons lockers before we boarded.
I've lost three people."
"I copy," Ka-Holmar said. "We haven't encountered any armed resistance yet, but I've got two wounded, anyway."
"What? How?"
"The Humans are using the ship's repair mechs against us." Ka-Holmar couldn't quite keep the frustrated anger out of his voice. "They took us by surprise the first time, and Sergeant Ka-Yaru and Private Na-Erask got hit by some sort of heavy-lift mech. Ka-Yaru's right arm and both of Na-Erask's legs are broken. It was stupid, sir. I should have seen it coming."
"No plan survives the test of combat unchanged, Jarth," Ka-Paldyn quoted, more philosophically than he felt. "Those are your only casualties?"
"Yes, sir. Now that we know what the Humans are up to, we're taking out the mechs before they can reach us. Good thing, too. The last one they threw at us almost got Sa-Ithar with a laser cutting torch.
They aren't going to stop us with this sort of silliness, sir, but they are slowing us down."
"Understood. On the other hand, if that's the best they have to put up against you, maybe their Engineering crew didn't have time to draw regular weapons, after all."
Ka-Paldyn thought again, considering his options. He wished fervently that he hadn't sent Na-Rahmar through the blast door first. He'd gotten overconfident, he told himself bitterly. The total lack of opposition to that point had convinced him the Humans were cowering helplessly behind the ultimately futile barrier of their blast doors, like unarmed meschu in a hunter's trap. And that conviction had led to the sort of mistake overconfidence always led to. Which was why he'd sent the person carrying his own assault team's demolition charge through the blast door to be killed.
Ka-Holmar still had his fusion charge, so Na-Rahmar's death wasn't catastrophic. Even if they failed to take the ship, they could still ensure its destruction. But it was undeniably frustrating and humiliating to have stumbled like this after First Platoon's brilliant success in accurately projecting the Humans' evasive course maneuver and getting one of its insertion boats aboard in the first place.
"I can't say for certain, sir," Ka-Holmar replied honestly. "I expected to be there already, but having to shoot the ship's damned hardware has put us well behind schedule. I'd estimate another fifteen minutes at our present rate of progress, but I can't guarantee that."
"Well," Ka-Paldyn said with a grim chuckle, "it's not like they're going anywhere before you get there to kill them, now is it? Go ahead. I'll hold here with the rest of my team until you secure Engineering. We can at least shut down the drive from there, if we have to. And if we can tie our suit computers into the ship's main net, we can probably figure out how to shut down the environmental services, as well. If they don't want to let us come in, we'll just shut off their air and see how they like that."
"Understood, sir."
* * *
"Lauren, our guys aren't going to get here before the Dogs do," Alfred Tschu said harshly. "We've got to go—now!"
"I know. I know!" Lauren felt her lips draw back in a snarl of frustrated hatred. Those bastards out there were the same ones who'd killed Kuan Yin and eighty percent of her crew, and now they were going to take India Mike Three away from her, too. And there was nothing she could do about—
"Wait!"
The word popped out of her as abruptly as a punch in the face, and Tschu paused, halfway out of his station chair. He and Hannah Segovia darted a look at each other, then turned back to Lauren with wary expressions.
"What is it?" Alf asked cautiously.
"Look at them!" Lauren jabbed a finger at the visual display which showed the oncoming Melconians.
"There are only four of the bastards, and they're moving straight along the passages towards Control."
"Yeah, there are only four of them," he agreed. "But they've got guns, and we don't. And like you say, they're headed straight this way."
"Well, yeah... ." he said slowly, but Lauren was no longer paying him any attention. She was busy giving very careful very explicit orders to the industrial module's simpleminded AI.
* * *
"We'll finish boarding the battalion in another twenty minutes, ma'am," Major Atwater told Maneka.
"Sorry we can't move any faster than that."
"Major, the fact that you can squeeze your people into the available space at all is remarkable,"
Maneka replied, taking pains to keep even the smallest hint of frustration out of her tone. Atwater was indeed doing remarkably well to be getting her people and their equipment aboard as quickly as she was, and Maneka knew her own observation about the available space was well taken. The automated depot, coupled with Lazarus' own bulk, had reduced the space which ought to have easily accommodated Atwater's five hundred militia men and women to claustrophobic dimensions. At least Maneka had offloaded the depot's spare parts and as much of the rest of the pod's cargo as possible, but the space reduction was still severe. They were fortunate that the battalion's heavy weapons could fit aboard standard heavy-lift cargo platforms. Five of them were tractor-locked to Lazarus' missile deck and the pod's flanks, which was strictly against The Book but let Maneka squeeze them aboard anyway.
"Let me know as soon as we can seal hatches, Major," she said.
"Affirmative, ma'am."
* * *
"Green board, ma'am!" Chief Harriman announced sharply.
"Thank God!" Lieutenant Jessica Stopford acknowledged, looking up from her own console, and carefully entered the necessary code before removing her thumb from the self-destruct button.
