“Tank coming at three o’clock,” Vip said, who had point in the latest corridor.
“They’ve recovered from their initial shock,” Marten said. “Stay alert. We’re finally going to see what they have.”
“What the—Gas!” Lance said.
“Where?” Marten asked. They were in a recreation area with tables, chairs and a music unit.
“It’s coming through the vents.”
“What kind of gas?”
“It’s not combustible or corrosive,” said Lance. “My guess is it is knockout gas.”
“There are guys behind that tank,” warned Vip.
“Wernher, set up the cannon,” Marten said.
“Roger,” said Wernher, who followed close behind Vip.
“Kang, Conway, watch the rear,” Marten said.
Kang grunted. He’d given tactical command to Marten while he considered strategy.
“The tank stopped,” Vip said. “Now it’s belching grenades!”
“Omi, Lance, burn through the right walls and flank them,” Marten said.
The two shock troopers stuck a breach bomb to the wall and stepped back as Omi activated it. BLAM! The shape-charged blast disintegrated a portion of wall. They bounded through the smoking hole.
The sound let Marten know that this section of ship still had an atmosphere. He switched to Omi’s HUD, putting it on his. They used another breach-bomb to tear through another wall, using the ship’s blueprint on their HUD to show where they had to go to flank Vip’s tank. HB tactics stressed surprise and doing the unexpected. Fighting through the laid-down corridors, which the defenders would always know better than the invaders, would give the tactical advantage to ship’s personnel. Creating new corridors and bursting through walls to make attacks would heavily favor the side that had the ordnance to do so and that was practiced in such maneuvers.
Marten checked Vip’s HUD. The tank had stopped at an intersection of corridors. He studied it. It wasn’t really a tank. He flicked through an itemized list of known SU ship equipment. Ah. The ‘tank’ was a damage control vehicle normally used when the beamship was under eight-G acceleration. The grenade tube attached to it was no doubt a jury-rigged device. That told Marten somebody on their side was thinking fast and turning decisions into commands.
“The tank’s coming forward again,” Vip said. “There are at least ten people behind it.”
“Back up,” Marten said. “Wernher, get ready with the cannon.”
“Should I leave them any surprises?” asked Vip.
“Negative,” Marten said. “Just back up to Wernher.”
The seconds ticked by.
“Ambush!” said Lance. “Omi’s taking hits.”
“Coming,” Marten said. He mentally berated himself for getting sloppy. Somebody on the other side definitely thought on their feet and had already incorporated the wall-breaking tactic into their battle considerations. They had used it to ambush them!
Marten ran though the wall openings that Lance and Omi had made, with two other shock troopers following him. They were the reaction team. He read Lance’s HUD. Omi lay on the floor, a gaping hole in his battlesuit. Lance crouched behind a bulky unit of unknown nature. He fired at the enemy, his heavy laser burning holes in the walls and through personal body-armor. Then Lance dove aside as a plasma glob touched and vaporized the unit he’d been hiding behind. Marten hoped superheated plasma wasn’t what had hit Omi. He sprinted down a different hall with the long glide they had been taught to use in ship corridors. He checked the blueprint grid and slapped a breach-bomb to a wall. Seconds later, he and his two mates burst through the wall and behind the enemy. In two heartbeats of glaring red lasers, enemy jerked, screamed and curled like burning leaves. Then it was over. Marten’s battlecomp counted ten corpses, three of them suited with SU security gear.
“We keep going and flank the tank,” Marten said. “Lance, check Omi. Close his battlesuit with construction foam.”
BLAM, BLAM, BLAM the reaction team burst through three more walls and came upon the damage control vehicle with its jury-rigged grenade launcher and the fifteen people crab-walking behind it. Laser beams and several grenades took them down before the enemy even knew they had been circled. This wasn’t a battle, it was butchery.
As he stood over the dead SU remains—a hulking mechanical troll in the guts of the Bangladesh—Marten finally allowed himself to worry about his friend. “Report,” he said.
“Omi is out,” said Lance.
Marten hesitated, part of him terrified to ask more. He had to, though. “Is he dead?”
“I shot him with Suspend,” said Lance.
Marten couldn’t breathe. He didn’t dare close his eyes even to mourn his friend. This was just one more mark against the HBs. No. It was more than that. He tasted his sweaty battlesuit air before he asked, “Was he dead when you did it?”
“No,” said Lance. “But is chest is badly burned.”
Why Omi? Why not Kang? Marten forced himself to hang onto the fact that Omi wasn’t dead. But a plasma burn and with no medical facilities for millions of kilometers—
“Bring him along,” he said.
“We don’t have the luxury to carry our dead. …To take anyone who’s out,” Lance finished lamely.
“You carry him,” Marten said.
“Maniple Leader—”
“Do it!” Marten said. “That’s an order. We’ll all carry each other. No shock trooper leaves another behind. We’re all we have in this lousy universe.”
“Roger,” said Lance.
Marten didn’t want to think about Omi, his one true friend, his only friend ever since Nadia had been torn from him. He switched to the command channel. “What do you think, Kang? Do we continue to lunge at the command capsule or do we go for the engines?”
“Highborn battle-tactics always say to lop off the brain first,” Kang said.
“True. But what’s in our best interest?” Marten asked.
“Meaning what?”
“Have you contacted any more shock troopers?”
“I would have told you if I had,” Kang said. “But they’re jamming pretty heavy down here. So how can we know or not?”
“We can’t know,” Marten said. “So we have to assume the worst. With nine of us the best we can do is bargain.”
“With these pansies?” Kang said. “You’re kidding, right? We’re slaughtering them.”
“Omi is out,” Marten said. “What does the Bangladesh hold, two thousand personnel? We can’t afford to keep trading losses at the present ratio and win.”
“Then we’re dead,” Kang said. “We might as well shoot ourselves and save them the trouble.”
“Why do you figure that?” Marten said. “We take over the engines and make a deal.”
“What kind of deal?” Kang asked.
“They take us to the Jupiter System where we all get off.”
Kang laughed harshly.
“Isn’t that better than dying?”
Kang was silent. “What if more shock troopers show up?”
“They haven’t so far. But if they do… why not talk them into the same deal? What’s the use of working for the HBs when nine out of five hundred make it to target?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Listen to me, Kang. The enemy will expect us to go for the command capsule. With nine men, we have to do the unexpected. It’s our only chance for victory.”
Kang was silent for several seconds. “You have a point. But HB battle-tactics say—”
“Screw the HBs! We’re on our own, Kang. Nine of us! You gotta think like a gang leader again, like a Red Blade in the heart of Sydney’s slums.”
More silence, then Kang said, “Yeah. Let’s do it your way.”
Marten switched to open channels. “We have a little change in plans.”
15.