Stephen gripped a rifle floating from Hadley. Hadley slipped the sling as he cast Stephen into the hold, among the dozen or so Fed soldiers still waiting to cross the lines. Some of the Feds didn't realize a Venerian had boarded, but an officer fired a charge of buckshot into Stephen's right hip. The impact flung him against the forward bulkhead. He shot as he rebounded, starring the Fed's visor behind a gush of escaping air.
Recoil kicked Stephen back into the bulkhead. He pinned himself there deliberately by emptying the magazine into the nearest Feds. An officer's breastplate withstood the bullet that spun the man out of the hatch. His arms and legs windmilled; his mouth was open in a useless scream.
A light plasma cannon, a boat gun rigged as an antiboarding weapon, fired from the Wrath into the St. Lawrence's aft hold. Bodies flew out with the debris. More Venerian sailors were crossing to the St. Lawrence, using the Feds' own lines or throwing themselves unaided across the ten-meter gap. Muzzle flashes, huge for being unconfined by atmospheric pressure, fluttered within the Wrath. The fight on the gun deck wasn't over.
Stephen unclipped his cutting bar and pushed off. He couldn't find his loaders without more effort than he had time for, and the bar was the better tool for the moment anyway.
A Fed stood at the ringbolt to which a pair of boarding lines were snubbed, aiming a rifle at Stephen. The man wore full armor. His face through his visor was white because of the strain with which he pulled at the trigger. The rifle didn't fire. Empty, still on safe, simply broken-it didn't matter. Anything could happen in the panicked confusion of a battle.
Stephen slashed through the lines and continued his stroke upward. The bar's teeth spun sparks from the surface of the Fed breastplate, but they sheared in satisfactory fashion through the rifle's receiver and the thinner armor of the gauntlets holding the weapon. Air and blood sprayed from the cut.
Dole with his white-chevroned helmet sailed into the hold. Six more sailors followed him. The Wrath had been short-handed since she took the Savior Enthroned. Casualties from the gunnery fight and now the lack of these men would leave Piet with a corporal's guard to conn and fight his ship; but he'd manage, as Stephen Gregg would manage, or die trying.
The hold was empty of living Fed soldiers. The deck shuddered. The Wrath had at last begun to rotate on her long axis, tugging the Fed vessel by the line still attached in the aft hold.
Stephen jumped from the ringbolt to the companionway up from the hold. The pressure door wouldn't open. The hold brightened by perceptible degrees. Stephen turned his body to look.
Dole was spinning the power-assisted wheel on the bulkhead between the fore and aft holds. The clamshell hatches were closing, so the hold's overhead illumination reflected from their inner surfaces.
The St. Lawrence rocked from six hammer blows, then a seventh. What remained of the Wrath's port battery had been brought to bear. Ions glared through the crack still open between the mating hatches.
Hadley used the carbine to pole himself to Stephen's side. Instead of offering to trade weapons, the loader undogged the hatch with an easy spin. Air rushing from the companionway shook both men. Vents in the ceiling of the hold opened also to restore pressure.
A shock heavier than that of a 20-cm bolt whipped the vessel's hull visibly. Apparent gravity returned as the St. Lawrence got under way.
Stephen took the carbine. Dole jumped to his side.
"Feds have a lot of safety muck, sir," the bosun said. The partial atmosphere made his amplified voice sound like that of a child squeaking. "You can't open the companionway with the hold opened to space, that's all."
"Let's go," Stephen said. Hadley pulled the hatch fully back for the gunman to lead.
There was no one in the companionway. Like the Wrath, the Federation warship was built with holds and plasma motors on the lower level and all living and fighting volumes on the single deck above.
The companionway's upper hatch was closed. Stephen expected it to be locked or even welded, but the wheel turned easily in his hand. He gestured behind him.
A sailor stepped by on the narrow landing and pushed the hatch open so hard that he fell partway out into the corridor. Three half-kilogram shots slammed through his helmet and threw neon sparks across the armored hatch. The sailor's legs thrashed, tangling Stephen and dropping him into a squat on the landing.
Stephen fired twice, angling his shots to ricochet bullets down the corridor. The carbine's operating lever broke because of his hasty strength. Dole dragged the dead man back.
Something hit a huge ringing blow on the corridor side of the hatch, knocking it nearly closed. As Dole reached up to pull the valve the rest of the way home, a crew-served laser burned across the lip and coaming, missing the bosun's arm by the thickness of the dust on his armor.
"Rifle," Stephen said, dropping the useless carbine.
Open the hatch again and charge. The Feds might panic; the hatch itself was protection from whatever weapon they'd set up on the hinge side of the valve. Shoot a few, shoot at least one; and die, as the men with him would die if they followed, but that was their choice.
Stephen wondered where Philips was. Chances were that he and his loader would be together again in a few seconds, though Philips deserved a cooler part of Hell.
"Sir!" Dole said. "Please-let's go this way."
Dole had dropped his shotgun. He thrust the tip of his cutting bar against the ceiling panel with both hands. The decks were minimum clearance, two meters, so he had good leverage.
The ceiling was nickel-steel like the rest of the ship's fabric, but the plates were only a centimeter thick instead of the 10 centimeters of companionway armor. The cutting bar sliced through with a bloodthirsty howl. White sparks blazed as they fell.
Holds and power plant on the lower level. Living quarters on the main deck. And in the upper curve of the cylindrical hull, the mechanical spaces. Tanks of air and reaction mass, and the pumps that circulated both throughout the St. Lawrence. Oh, yes. There was another way to deal with this one.
The Feds could hear the cutting bar's scream. Somebody must have understood what it meant, because a moment later the hatch opened from the corridor side. Stephen blew the head off the Molt that was half lunging, half being pushed toward the companionway.
Stephen continued to pump and fire the powerful rifle. Two other sailors were shooting. Hadley thrust Dole's shotgun between Stephen's legs and loosed both barrels under the valve, into the ankles of the man who'd pulled it open. The Feds still aboard the St. Lawrence were crewmen, sailors. They didn't have the armor of the soldiers who'd boarded the Wrath.
The Feds couldn't use their heavy weapons while the corridor was choked with their own people. The armored Venerians couldn't miss and couldn't be harmed in the packed chaos. Stephen closed the hatch again.
The hatch didn't lock from this side. The Feds would bring up their laser to face the opening and try again. They were already too late, because a square meter of the ceiling clanged from Dole's shoulders to the landing.
A sailor formed a stirrup of his hands and launched Dole into the mechanical spaces. Another sailor started to follow. Stephen pushed the man aside and put his own boot onto the linked gauntlets. "Hadley, you next," he ordered as he rose through the hole with a great thrust of his arms.