What to do? He was certain that all hell was about to break loose, and was torn between two powerful impulses. The first was simple survival instinct, which was shrieking at him to get out of the area now. The other was an equally powerful urge to observe what was about to happen.
After a mental struggle that lasted not more than five seconds, curiosity triumphed. With Brice, it usually did.
The question now became: From what vantage point could he watch the upcoming events without exposing himself too much?
There was really only one answer, which was the small maintenance compartment located in one corner of the command center. As was frequently the case with such maintenance stations, it was built directly into the air duct network.
There was a risk involved, though. Unlike the air ducts, that compartment was designed to be easily accessible. It wouldn't take more than a few seconds for anyone in the command center who was seized by the urge to open the access panel and climb in. There'd be no need for a hoist, either, or even a stepladder. The maintenance compartment wasn't elevated more than a meter from the deck of the command center.
So be it. Hopefully, in the event that happened, Brice would manage to scramble back into the air ducts in time.
When he got there, he was disgruntled to see that Ed had gotten there ahead of him. And disgruntled again, not more than thirty seconds later, when James piled in too.
Disgruntled, but not surprised. For Hartman and Lewis, as for Brice himself, the survival instinct was usually trumped by curiosity. Uncle Andrew said that was because they were teenagers and so part of their brains hadn't fully developed yet. Specifically, that part of the prefrontal cortex that gauged risks.
It was a theory. Plausible and attractive, like most of his uncle's theories—but, also like most of them, probably flawed. The flaw in this case was the theorist himself—Andrew Artlett, who was of an age where his prefrontal cortex should certainly have been fully developed but who was notorious for taking crazier risks than anybody.
With three of them in there, the compartment was packed tight. And their ability to observe what was happening in the command center was going to be impaired by all three of them having to squeeze next to the entrance panel. Fortunately, the panel was more sophisticated than a simple mechanical one. Instead of narrow open air slits, it had a much larger vision screen. And the screen's electrical shield, designed to keep insects from wandering into delicate equipment, also blurred anyone's ability to look into the maintenance compartment from the command center.
Unless, of course, they turned off the shield so they could look inside for a quick inspection of the compartment without having to open the panel. That was part of the design, too—and the screen could be turned off with a flick of a finger.
So be it. Life was never perfect. Which was no doubt the reason that evolution, in its cunning, had seen to it that the prefrontal cortex of adolescents was not fully developed. If you looked at it the right way, that was simply a necessary adaptation to the invariant cruddiness of existence.
Across the large command center and off to the side, Brice saw the entry hatch begin to open.
James hissed softly. "Showtime."
Chapter Eleven
Hugh Arai had seen no reason to dilly-dally about the business. They had to move quickly, in fact, or the simple and crude event-loop they'd reconfigured the camera and sensors to show would alert the slavers very soon, unless they were completely inattentive. So the BSC team went into the command center firing. Quite literally—Marti Garner, in the lead because she was the best marksman, had already shot two of the slavers in the center before she finished passing through the entrance.
Bryan Knight, coming right behind her, tossed flashbang grenades into the two corners of the large compartment that weren't in clear line of sight. Marti opened her eyes once the blast and flash were over, and quickly scoured the visible areas looking for opponents.
There was one woman behind a desk, looking very confused. She'd have been close enough to one of the grenades to be affected by it. Garner disintegrated her head—spectacularly—with a tightly focused burst of flechettes.
Hugh Arai was the third member of the team coming into the compartment. He was carrying a highly modified version of a tri-barrel pulser. The weapon was as close to a pistol version of a tri-barrel as Beowulf's military engineers had been able to design. It was a specialty gun, almost literally hand-made. Only someone of Hugh Arai's mass and strength could hope to use it effectively—or safely, for those accompanying him—and its ability to shred bulkheads might have caused some to look upon it askance in what amounted to a boarding action. The BSC was a great believer in providing for all contingencies, however. It was always possible that even slavers might have armored skinsuits available, after all, and despite its drawbacks, the weapon provided the unit with a scaled-down approximation of the sort of heavy weapons that a regular Marine unit would have carried.
Arai took position in the center of the compartment, while Garner and Mattes and Knight quickly inspected every area where someone might have been able to hide. But the place was empty now, except for the three corpses.
While they went about that business, Stephanie Henson sat down in front of the command center's operations console and began bringing up the relevant schematics and diagrams. She was swift and expert at the work, and within thirty seconds, she'd found what they needed. Less than a minute later, she'd bypassed the security locks and keyed in the instructions.
She leaned back in her chair. "Okay, Hugh. The command center is now sealed off from the rest of the turret, along with all of the surrounding air ducts. The power source is independent already, so we don't have to worry about that."
Arai nodded. "What about slaves?"
Stephanie studied the console for a moment, and then shook her head. "There are no signs of any occupants within five hundred meters of this command center except the eight people—maybe nine, if two of them are copulating right now—shown in the living quarters. One or more of them might be pleasure slaves, of course. No way to tell."
"No internal cameras?"
"They've been disabled."
Hugh grunted. That wasn't surprising. Nobody except military forces under tight discipline were going to tolerate active cameras in their living areas. The slavers had probably disabled those sensors decades ago.
He wasn't happy about the fact that he couldn't absolutely confirm that there weren't any slaves in the living quarters. But . . .
It was unlikely, given the obvious eagerness with which the slavers had reacted to the news that the Ouroboros' non-existent cargo had included pleasure slaves. And it was an imperfect universe. He wasn't about to risk getting any of his people killed in the course of a direct assault, on the off chance there might be a slave mixed in with the other occupants.
He spoke into his com. "Take out the living quarters. Stephanie will guide the shots."
They all turned to look at the screens above Henson's console which provided views of the turret from outside cameras. Stephanie began keying in locations. A short time later, the Ouroboros' concealed lasers began firing. It didn't take long before that area of the turret which contained the slavers' living quarters was blown to shreds. They were able to spot only two bodies being expelled by the outrushing atmosphere. But there was no chance that any of the slavers could have survived, unless they were already wearing skinsuits or battle armor—and Stephanie would have recognized those in her readings of the sensors.