Idrem nodded in that direction. “Apparently, the right-hand turn is clear.” Meaning that the most direct path to the bridge was open.
Brenlor was unconcerned. “By the time the upt’theel reach the rotting bait I’ve thrown down the hall, they will smell the Aboriginals who are approaching.”
“And this is why we remain with suits sealed?” Jesel asked.
“Yes. As long as the upt’theel cannot smell us, we are of no more interest to them than the bulkheads.”
Stony, screeching disputes — probably over Brenlor’s morsel of bait — rose, and then were suddenly still.
“Ah,” said Brenlor, “they have the new scent.”
Jesel made toward the corner aggressively, his needler coming up.
Brenlor put a restraining hand upon his arm. “Give them a moment to get started. It’s easier for us. And more gratifying for them.”
Around the corner, a fusillade of panicked gunfire erupted, followed closely by high-pitched human screams.
* * *
Ayana could not breathe as she watched the monitors displaying the approaches to airlock C-2. A swarm of small creatures akin to crustacean weasels had emerged from one of the attackers’ containers and were now flowing like a low, rolling tide toward a half dozen defenders preparing an ambush in the corridor beyond the ruined barricade.
The creatures’ sinuous, serpentine advance ensured that only a few were hit by the crew’s gunfire, mostly by their one autoshotgun. Then, as the strange animals neared the defenders, they launched into what appeared to be a somersault.
But the somersault did not end. With their eight liberally jointed legs rolling them forward, their exoskeletal back plates worked like the rim of a wheel. The defenders, apparently perplexed as much as unnerved, fired wildly. The duty-suited humans splattered a few more of the attacking beasts into chunks just before discovering that they had emptied their magazines. The rolling creatures bore in among them like a herd of animate hoops.
The small predators used the speed they had accumulated by uncoiling straight out of their final revolution into a mouth-first leap at their prey. Even before the creatures’ claws and legs started slicing at and embedding in the flesh of the defenders, their sawlike jaws were at work, burrowing into viscera. Ayana felt bile jet up into her mouth as the killer weasel-crustaceans became more akin to gut-burrowing worms, their progress marked by intermittent spurts of blood and ruined intestines. Their screaming victims tried yanking them out, only to slice their hands open on the knifelike edges of the beasts’ bodies and legs.
“Jorge — Captain!” Ayana cried, knowing she could not regain full vocal composure. “The boarders have eliminated both layers of defense for airlock Charlie-Two. Repeat: the—”
As if being progressively drowned by an advancing wave of darkness, the screens in the bridge went blank, one after the other. The carrier signal in her earbud died as well.
Piet spread his hands upon the bridge controls. “What just happened? How did—?”
Ayana interrupted, looking at the sensor logs. “We were just swept, from the docking cradles to the bridge, with some kind of focused EMP wave. Our less robust electronics have been disabled. The rest seem compromised.”
Piet leaned aggressively over his console. “That’s not possible.”
“Apparently, it is,” Kozakowski muttered.
Ayana turned on him, her sidearm out of its holster with considerable speed. “Tell us what you know about this weapon. Now.”
“Kn-know?” Kozakowski stammered, his hands rising in a mix of haplessness and tentative surrender. “I don’t know anything. There are rumors that the Ktor might be capable of such things, but I have had no contact with them or their technology.” He blinked rapidly. “Now, put up that pistol, Ms. Tagawa. I am not the enemy.”
“That,” she said, “remains to be seen.” She turned away from Kozakowski, but did not reholster the gun. “Mr. Brackman?”
“Yeh, Ms. Tagawa?”
“Since you no longer have a bridge station to run, concentrate on trying to raise the captain through one of the hardwired emergency intercom sets.”
Piet frowned. “This megacorporate econobucket doesn’t have an extensive intercom system, sir.”
“Do your best. We must inform the captain that the boarders are not attacking toward the bridge, as we anticipated. They are heading straight toward him.”
Chapter Thirteen. IN CLOSE ORBIT V 1581 FOUR
As Team Two moved by leapfrog toward the Aboriginal defenders in the cargo and docking modules, Idrem’s helmet comm buzzed: a private channel from Nezdeh. He toggled it with a push of his chin. “It is Idrem.”
“The deck plans indicate you are approaching the defenders’ primary concentration. Do you expect that Brenlor will be able to defeat the Aboriginals with only minor damage to the facilities?”
Idrem wondered at the directness of her question and what it implied: that she was depending upon him, Idrem, to attempt to limit the operational excesses of their mission’s nominal commander. “Yes, I can see to it,” Idrem replied.
Nezdeh was apparently not expecting that answer: she was silent a moment before asking, “How?”
“Before leaving Ferocious Monolith, I purloined several canisters of antipersonnel heat-seekers and marker nanites. I have already convinced Brenlor that this would be the most expeditious, and least damaging, means of securing the ship.”
“That could be a risky operation, Idrem.”
“Do you trust my competence, Nezdeh?”
Another pause. “Yes.”
“Then I shall not do anything to risk the success of this mission, nor shall I fail you.”
“Very well. I must coordinate with Brenlor now.”
“Acknowledged.”
The circuit closed at the same moment that Brenlor paused to shoo some of the upt’theel away from an Aboriginal corpse. After he used a spray bottle to douse the body with chemicals that the creatures found aversive, they came wriggling up out of the thoracic cavity, dripping gore and whining irritably. He herded the remaining dozen beasts forward to break up another knot of defenders who had been too late to help their comrades at airlock C-2.
Judging from the flags on the sleeves of the corpses, and from snatches of their panicked exclamations, they were all from the human political entity known as the Trans Oceanic Commercial and Industrial Organization bloc. Usually referred to as TOCIO, its acronym was neither a subtle nor coy referent to the capitol of the nation state that was its dominant power. Many of the bloc’s nationalities were represented among the casualties inflicted thus far. Other than the red ball of Japan itself, Idrem had identified national patches indicating that their wearers were from Brazil, India, Myanmar, and Chile.
Even without control of the ship’s command systems, defeating the ill-equipped Aboriginals had not posed much difficulty and even less threat. Only the Japanese nationals had been carrying truly dangerous weapons: dustmix battle rifles which, at these ranges, were certainly just as deadly as the Ktor’s own needlers. However, they did not have the muzzle velocity that made it possible to penetrate almost every wall or floor in the ship except for vacuum-rated bulkheads and hatches. But for the Ktor, constrained to wearing only the light armor augmentations that were standard issue for the crew of a patrol hunter such as Red Lurker, there was still risk involved if they rounded a corner into a torrent of automatic fire from the Japanese rifles.