Admiral Rica Sioux made a fist and kept tapping the arm of her command chair with it. The Bangladesh accelerated at one-G for rendezvous with the flotilla of spacecraft that would all join near Venus’ orbital path—the planet wouldn’t be there. It was over sixty days from reaching that point in its orbit. The HB missiles had all passed the beamship or were destroyed. One Doom Star accelerated toward them, although it no longer fired its long-range lasers. It would take several weeks for the enemy to reach them. The other Doom Star had turned back for Venus. General Hawthorne’s ploy of sending battleships at Venus had worked to pull that Doom Star off them.
Despite all these pluses, Admiral Sioux scowled. Her officers huddled by the Tracking Officer’s module. They whispered among themselves and kept glancing at her. She hadn’t given them the gun-locker key yet. It rested in the middle of her fist, the one that tap, tap, tapped her armrest. Enemy soldiers were on her beamship. They were few in numbers: less than one hundred versus her two thousand ship’s personnel. That was twenty to one odds. It shouldn’t be a problem defeating these handfuls. But to use all two thousand personnel meant she would have to give up the code to the weapons bins. Her officers would also demand to be armed. Some might even want to leave the armored command capsule in order to help fight the invaders. But once they were armed—could the Bangladesh’s two thousand stop the enemy space marines? Because if they couldn’t… once her people were armed, she didn’t think the officers would let her blow the beamship. Yet if she didn’t arm ship’s personnel would her Security teams be able to defeat the enemy?
Her chair’s speaker unit blinked. She opened the comlink channel.
“Security Chief here, Admiral. I’m ready to attack the smaller concentration.”
A sinking feeling filled her. “I thought by now you would have slain those few.”
“They’re a tough bunch, Admiral, and very clever. They slaughtered those I sent to keep them busy. Now I’ve left a covering force to slow down the bigger concentration. I want to wipe out these few first so they can’t do anything cute while I turn and overwhelm the bigger concentration with everything we have.”
Her chest constricted and she found breathing difficult. She was the Admiral, the one in charge. She had to make the decisions. Yet space combat was so different from infantry action. She wasn’t sure what to do. “Should I arm everyone, Security Chief?”
He didn’t answer immediately. “Some of the lower personnel might have long memories, Admiral.”
“You mean when we liquidated the mutinous ringleaders while we were in near-Sun orbit?”
“Right,” he said.
“Maybe they will have long memories, Chief. But I’m sure they won’t remember until after the enemy is slain.”
“You’re probably right.”
“So what’s your recommendation?”
“I’d arm everyone and use them. These space marines are tough and obviously highly trained and armored for exactly this type of fight.”
Admiral Rica Sioux massaged her ancient chest. Nothing was guaranteed. “No one is taking my beamship,” she whispered.
“Admiral?”
She punched a sequence of buttons on her armrest panel. “I’m initiating the locker codes now.” She pressed the last button, blowing the locks on the weapons bins in the outer beamship.
“Very good, Admiral,” said the Security Chief. “I’ll swamp this smaller concentration and wheel and hit the bigger one. Out.”
She sagged in her chair, forcing air into her lungs. Slowly the constriction in her chest eased, although now her bad knee started throbbing. She noticed the First Gunner approaching her.
“Yes, First Gunner?” she said.
“Shouldn’t we open our own gun-locker?” he asked.
“Do you want to join the Security Chief?”
The First Gunner stiffened. He wore his tan uniform and hat, a lean Pakistani with deep brown eyes. “I’m not ground-troop trained, Admiral.”
“Ah.”
“But if something should happen,” he said. “It seems the height of reason that we be armed.”
The others now edged toward her. A determined look had settled upon them. Always command, the Admiral knew.
“Tracking Officer,” she said.
“Admiral,” the officer said, saluting.
“Open the gun-locker and pass out ordnance.” She threw the key to the Tracking Officer, who snatched it out of the air and turned smartly toward the locker beside the outer door. Then Admiral Sioux slumped in her chair. It was two thousand or so against seventy-odd enemy. They should easily win. She wondered then why she felt so gloomy about the future.
16.
“Let’s take a breather,” Marten said. “Vip, Wernher, stand guard at either end of the corridor. Everyone else, re-supply yourselves.”
“They’re hot on us,” said Lance.
“We’ve got thirty seconds, the way I time it,” Marten said. They were in a wide corridor, a service ramp. Whenever the beamship entered space-dock, vehicles would use this ramp to bring in heavy equipment and supplies.
Marten knelt an armored knee, reached back and unclipped a laser pack. He powered his heavy laser-tubes with the old pack, pumped the rest of the juice into recycling and then detached the drained pack, slapping the fresh one into place. He rolled ten grenades at his feet and inserted a fresh tube into his launchers. Lastly, he relieved himself, letting his battlesuit take care of wastes, gulped some concentrates and drank a lot of water. While he did that he made two bomb-clutches with the grenades, looked around and rigged one to the pipes overhead, flicking on a motion sensor with a forty-second delay so they could get away. The other clutch he stuck to the corridor wall, timing it to blast in sixty seconds. As Lance had said, the enemy was hot on them.
“See anything, Vip?”
“I killed three scouts while you all lounged around. There are a lot of others working up their nerve in the room just behind those three. Most are armed with las-rifles, useless against our armor.”
“Don’t get cocky, Vip,” warned Lance.
“I hear you,” Vip said. “And I ain’t.”
“Is everyone ready?” asked Marten.
They said they were.
Marten scanned their surroundings, checked the ship’s blueprint and said, “Through the six o’clock wall. Go, go, go!”
BLAM, the hole was made and they charged off the service ramp.
“They coming!” Vip said, who stood guard in the corridor.
“Go!” Marten said. “Run!”
“Relax, Maniple Leader,” Vip said. “I’m slaughtering them. None of them have any armor and like I said, all this bunch has is las-rifles.”
“They’re throwing fodder,” Kang said, “to make you overconfident.”
“I rigged the corridor to blow,” Marten said. “Retreat, Vip! Do it now!”
“Roger,” Vip said. “I’m on my way.”
Marten kept blowing through corridor walls and then using a corridor for a two-hundred-meter stretch. He kept switching methods to keep the enemy off guard and guessing. They entered a large engineering section, with plenty of floor space and big domed generators with panels attached. According to specs, the generators charged the proton beam, or at least they started the process here.
“This is perfect ambush territory,” said Lance.
“So perfect that even they would realize it,” Marten said. “Keep going.”
Nine shock troopers in battlesuits charged past the many domed generators. Their radar pinged and the motion-detectors scanned.
“Should we booby-trap anything?” asked Lance.
“Negative,” Marten said. “Let them get mad at themselves for being too cautious. Then they’ll start getting cocky again and that’s then we’ll hit them. That will turn them even extra cautious later on.”
They exited the huge engineering area. A few stray las-rifle shots hissed near as the boldest SU soldiers entered the generating room.