Sten, Alex, and the Gurkhas dropped down to the gun deck through an overhead shell hoist. Fifty meters away a knot of Praetorians was crowding a down-passage.
Twenty of them—and Sten's eyes registered that one of the Praetorians had seen him and was shouting an alarm.
As Sten went down, his hand slapped a red switch on the wall. The switch read load.
A Goblin missile sitting on the overhead of the gun deck slid smoothly down track toward a launcher on the far side of the Praetorians.
The system could launch one missile per launcher every six seconds, so the missile moved very, very rapidly down the loading track, approaching a speed of nearly 60 kilometers per hour when it intersected the Praetorians. One thousand kilos of steel contacting a few hundred kilos of flesh at that speed produces casualties.
By Kilgour's count five Praetorians were down before the remaining fifteen found shelter behind launchers, gun tubes, and such, and opened up.
"Ah hae quite enow a' this drakh," he muttered and took action.
The Normandie's armament was intended not only for deep space but also for planetary action. Of course atmospheric weapons such as chain guns were normally mag-locked in place behind the sealed ports they fired through. An assortment of weapons was racked on the bulkhead, but all were intended for firing from a mount, and—of course—out-ship. One of those devices was a flare projector which, under normal circumstances, took four men to wrestle to the firing port.
Sergeant Major Alex Kilgour, heavy-worlder, was not normal under any circumstances. He had the projector off the wall, loaded, aimed, and the firing switch keyed before anyone could react.
The flare burst down the long corridor, hit the far bulkhead, ricocheted, and... flared.
A signal flare that is intended to be seen for about half a light-second makes quite an explosion when it goes off in a ten-meter-by-ten-meter passageway. The Gurkhas and Sten had barely enough time to flatten ahead of the oncoming fireball before the Normandie's automatic extinguishing system yeeked and dumped several tons of retardant on what it perceived as a fire.
Too late for the fifteen little mounds of charcoal that had been Praetorians.
Sten and his troopies hot-footed down that melted companionway to find their Emperor.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Marr and Senn had taken refuge inside an enormous sonic oven. They were in the vast stainless-steel kitchen of the liner when the massacre began. When they heard the hysterical shouts on the PA system, they had wisely decided to stay put.
Senn hugged Marr close. "When they're done," Senn said with a shiver, "they'll hunt us down and kill us, too." He stroked the fur of his lifelong companion. "Oh, well. It's been a good love, hasn't it?"
Marr suddenly rose to his full height. "Bugger them," he said.
"Do we have to?" Senn asked.
"One thing we know, dear," Marr said, "is kitchens. And if those brutes invade my kitchen they are going to be a sorry set of humans."
He began bustling about, getting himself ready for the final confrontation. Senn saw what he was doing and leaped up, all thoughts of a tender death swept from his mind.
They started with the sonar oven. It was about three meters high and as many wide. Inside were many cooking racks and a retractable spit that could hold an entire bullock. The cooking source was a wide-beam sound projector, which looked somewhat like a large camera, mounted on hydraulic lifts. When the oven was operated, thick protective safety doors automatically locked, and the projector swept across the food, spitting bursts of ultrasound to cook whatever was inside.
The first thing Marr did was smash the safety lock. Then the two of them muscled at the sonar cooker.
Many boots thundered just outside the kitchen, and the two turned to see the Eternal Emperor back into the huge room. He was dragging Tanz Sullamora with him, and firing back through the doorway. A split second later they saw first the chamberlain and then the two remaining Gurkhas follow. Naiks Ram Sing Rana and Agansing Rai shouted defiance at their pursuers and sprayed them with their willyguns.
They ducked as the Praetorians returned fire. Behind them, the stainless steel walls of the kitchen hissed and bubbled and turned to molten metal.
"This way," the Emperor shouted, and he led his tiny group toward the kitchen's emergency exit. Just beyond that was a tunnel leading to the main storehouse area and then the engine rooms.
A thunder of Praetorians followed them. Ram gave a soft cry and dropped as a willygun round sizzled into his abdomen. The rest of the Praetorians crowded toward the Emperor's group, who were just disappearing through the emergency-exit door.
Without hesitating, Senn turned his body into a furry ball and rolled out of the oven they'd retreated to. He palmed the kitchen steam-clean button and then dove back into the oven.
Steam hissed from nozzles in the walls. Sanitation sniffers instantly analyzed the area for foreign—meaning biological—objects and then directed the huge volumes of steam on the invading organisms.
Eleven Praetorians opened their mouths as one to scream. Their lungs filled with intensely hot steam and were parboiled before sound could reach their lips. Their flesh swelled and blistered, then the blisters broke and ran.
The cleaning process took only thirty seconds—just as the instruction manual predicted!—before shutting off. By then, all eleven Praetorians were dead. Or dying. The human body is tough.
More bootheels, more firing, and another group exploded through the doorway, Fohlee at the head. He saw Senn's small face peering from the oven. "Kill them!"
Fohlee shouted. A squad leapt forward as Marr and Senn rolled out of the oven. Fohlee and four of his Praetorians ran for the emergency exit the Emperor had taken. But the door was momentarily blocked.
Meanwhile the flying squad of Praetorians was pounding toward Marr and Senn.
"Help me!" squeaked Marr, and Senn slid his tiny shoulders under the sonar cooker and strained upward.
Slowly... slowly... it came up.
" Now!" Marr shouted, and the two of them jumped through a rain of willygun fire. Marr just had time to hit the cooker button before they were safe behind a steel food bin.
The lens of the sonar cooker blinked and then glowed full on. The invisible but deadly beam coned outward as the squad of Praetorians charged directly into it.
Marr and Senn huddled behind the bin, listening to the terrible sounds of the Praetorians dying. Within seconds every member of the squad had been cooked. The high-frequency waves heated from the inside out, and so, even before the flesh began to curl and smoke and brown, their internal organs exploded outward, spattering fifty meters of kitchen wall with gobs of flesh.
Marr peered out at the gore and shuddered. Senn tried to peek out after him, but Marr pushed his lover back, saving him from what he knew would be a lifetime trauma. Marr felt a small place of beauty shrivel inside him.
Many shouts and thundering. Marr looked up at the main entrance to the kitchen and repositioned himself at the cooker control button again. Whoever came through the door would die like the squad of men before. His finger was almost hitting the button when he saw the slim figure crash into the room.
In one heartbeat he recognized Sten and his finger brushed past the button. Marr didn't even wait to see what happened next. He dropped back behind the bin, beside Senn.
Marr looked at the large luminous eyes of his friend. "I almost killed our young captain!"
He buried his face in Senn's soft fur and wept.