Valius scurried back, a length of wire unreeling between himself and the circle of explosive.
“Blow!” the captain commanded.
And it did, incidentally, cutting the feeds for the frigate’s artificial gravity.
Corin. It was a perfectly good boy’s name, his father had told him so. It came from Shakespeare; it was the name of a shepherd or something. But there was a girl in school. She was named Cornelia but everybody called her Corey, so the boys called him Corey, too.
“Corey, Corey! Tell us all a story!” they’d yell in a mocking singsong.
And he’d come home with a black eye, still trembling, still angry, and his mother had started screaming, “Do you know who that was? That was your teacher on the phone! She told me she saw you picking a fight out there in the playground! Don’t you ever do that again!”
And the anger had surged up, and he had shouted, “Mom! He hit me first!”
“Don’t you dare shout at me!” Crack! The slap caught his face where it still ached from a punch, and she was screaming, “They always hit you first. I know your kind, you always find some way to make them hit you first.”
“They were making fun of me. They were calling me ‘Corey!’”
“There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a perfectly nice name.”
“It’s not! It’s a girl’s name! I want a boy’s name. Why didn’t you give me a boy’s name!”
“How dare you speak to your mother that way!”
This time, he saw the slap coming, and ducked.
“Oh! You little monster! Don’t you dare try to get out of your punishment!” She grabbed him by the shoulder this time and boxed him on the ear, so his head was ringing with her screams as she slapped him and slapped him again.
They saw their own hull vibrate with the blast, saw the burst of smoke, saw the sudden hole where the explosive had been, saw the mist as the air exhausted from the frigate.
“In!” The captain’s voice roared from his earphones, and Corin dived through the mesh tunnel and into the Khalian frigate, holding down the trigger button with his thumb, spraying slugs in a cone, all around him. Three of his mates jumped in with him, their cones blending with his. Who cared if the slugs pierced the Khalian’s hull? Who cared if they lost air? They had their helmets on, and they were trying to kill the Khalians, anyway ...
And they had. The hell with the bullets, too. Three dead Weasels drifted in the nets they used for bunks, half uncurled from sleep; one even had his sidearm in his hand. But little red globes drifted away from their noses and mouths. One had a big globe, as though he were blowing a bubble of death. Explosive decompression had done the marines’ work for them.
As he reloaded, Corin stared at the dead, floating Khalians, and thought, These were the easy ones.
The other boys had found out about the old folk song and jeered after him all over the playground, but he didn’t dare fight, or Mom would scream at him. His little sister, Snookie, had heard them and started singing it as soon as they came in the door.
“Wake up, wake up, darlin’ Corey! What makes you sleep so sound?”
“Shut up,” he snapped at her.
“I don’t have to shut up. This is my house, too, you know.” And she turned away, singing. “Now, the first time I saw darlin’ Corey, she was sitting by the sea ...”
“Shut up!”
“Why should she shut up?” Mom jumped on it even as she came into the room, glaring. “You don’t give orders here, Corey. She can sing whatever she likes, in this house. And don’t you dare try and stop her!”
So he had to swallow his anger and turn away, and after a while, Mom had tired of hearing the song and sent them out to play. It was catch, and she hadn’t brought the glove up in time, and the ball had hit her cheek, and, with a sick sinking in his stomach, Corin had realized what Mom was going to do to him when Snookie ran in screaming—
Unless he could make Snookie laugh it off.
So he shrieked in horror, “Snookie!” and dashed over. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. Did it hurt?”
She was still a moment. Then she laughed a little, blinked away the forming tears, and chuckled, managing a brave little smile. “Naw, it was just rubber.”
And they had gone back to playing catch, Corin with the sickening knowledge that he had caved in, capitulated, chickened out and before he was even challenged.
Corin glanced about the chamber, seeing the circular holes at fore and aft, either end—hatches, blocked now by steel plates. The Khalians didn’t waste money on anything inessential, but they had every safety feature in the book. Valius had placed his charge where the fo’c’sle was, to make sure they took out any crew who were off duty. It had worked; they had taken three out of six or seven—but as soon as the pressure had dropped, bulkheads had sealed off the fo’c’sle from the rest of the ship to limit loss of air and Khalians. Now the rest of the Weasels had both.
“Jakes and Boblatch, aft!” the captain barked. “Valius, make room for ’em.”
Valius slapped a shaped charge on the aft bulkhead.
“But, Captain,” Jakes objected, “there won’t be anyone there.”
“If there isn’t, you can come join us fore. If there is, you can join us after he’s dead. Blow it, Valius.”
The bulkhead blew; air blasted out. Jakes and Boblatch dove through into the galley.
“The rest of you come fore.” The captain turned. “That charge ready, Valius?”
“Uh ... it is now, Captain.”
“Blow it,” the captain commanded.
Smoke erupted in the hatchway, awesome in its silence.
“Don’t just stand there gaping,” the captain bellowed. “Now!”
Sergeant Krovvy hit the trigger button as he pushed himself through the hatch—and his head exploded.
Corin stared at the expanding globe of red and gray, his stomach heaving.
“You were supposed to make the sale!” the sales manager. “We don’t keep you here just so you can walk around looking important!”
“I—I’m sorry.” Corin lifted his chin and set his jaw, but he could feel his shoulders slumping. “He even had me chalking up the measurements, and then he just said that—”
“I heard what he said! I heard what he said to me! That you’re an arrogant little twit who shouldn’t even be working in the stockroom!”
“All I said was that he should wear the cuffs a little higher ...”
“If they want advice, they’ll go to a couturier! You’re just here to sell the clothes, understand?”
“But, look! If he got ’em chalked up wrong, he’d be a dissatisfied customer!”
“Don’t argue with me!” the sales manager bellowed.
“I’m not arguing, I’m trying to explain—”
“Don’t.” The boss’s eyes narrowed. “Explain it to Welfare. You’re fired.”
Corin’s mouth opened in a scream as he dove through the hatch, landing flat on his belly, slugs chattering out of his gun, the recoil kicking him back. But his heels butted against the bulkhead as two Khalians trained their own slug throwers on him. A ricochet smashed into the barrel of his rifle, stinging his hands as it wrenched the weapon away, but Lurkstein shot through to join him, as did Danvel and Parlan, their weapons shuddering. The Weasels had to split their attention, while Corin could pull his rifle back, check it, and aim his stream of bullets sweeping across one Khalian, then the other. Danvel’s body bucked, gouting redness, but the Weasels flipped backward, almost jackknifing. They were probably screaming, but they were wearing pressure helmets, and the atmosphere was gone, and they had a different com frequency from Corin’s. Then Lurkstein’s and Parlan’s slugs caught them, and their bodies spasmed in a grim dance of death, but they wouldn’t be screaming any more.