Rich Man's War (51 page)

Tanner glanced up from his work binding the hands of one prisoner. Baldwin trained
her rifle on his position to cover him. He could hear her perfectly well now that he was out of the jamming field. “Sorry, I couldn’t wait. They were still talking,” he said. “I couldn’t tell if they’re on a local net or if they were calling for help. It’s not like I could tell them to shut up.”

“I understand,” she replied. “Just don’t forget you’re not alone here.”

Tanner bound all three prisoners in the sort of riot tape police resorted to when making mass arrests. As he finished with the last, Baldwin turned away to help Rivera lower the injured marine into the compartment. By that time, more boarders had found their way to the open turret and began following through.

“Hustle up!” Baldwin warned them. “We’ve got wounded and prisoners, and we can’t finish with either of them until we’ve got air in here again!”

“Belay that!” grunted one of the newcomers. “There’s no time! We need this access point. We’re not taking prisoners.”

Tanner looked up from the gunnery console to argue that, but Baldwin beat him to it. “Who the fuck said that?” she demanded.

The newcomer stood almost a foot taller than the young woman. He wore the blue vac suit and officer’s insignia of a marine captain. The tag on his combat jacket named him MacAllan. “You’re looking at a higher rank, girl.”

“And you’re looking at a Master at Arms, so should I bother citing Rules of Engagement, or do I skip straight to stomping your nuts and then wrap you up with the other prisoners right now,
sir
?”

Though his helmet made it impossible to see, Tanner was fairly sure
MacAllan’s jaw dropped. It was much the same reaction Tanner had, though he recovered quicker. “Private,” Tanner said, pointing to another marine, “is anyone else coming through? If not, close the hatch.”

“You two are not in charge here!”

“Due respect, sir, take a breath,” Tanner told him as he stepped around the console again. “I can see this is your first combat. You’re right, you’re in charge, but we need to do this. We’ll get the hatch open again once we’re finished. We just got here and we’ve already silenced a defense gun. We’re doing good, sir.”

The marine private behind the captain hesitated. Tanner didn’t blame him, but thankfully
MacAllan grunted, “Private, seal it up. Someone hit the vent controls. We have a corpsman here? Okay, good. Baldwin. Malone. Finish up with your prisoners.”

The brief standoff ended as soon as it began. Baldwin took a couple of backward steps, her eyes staying on
MacAllan until she turned to join Tanner. With the hatch sealed, air rushed back in. Before long, the whole group could hear the alarm claxons and announcements warning of boarders.

“Now I kno
w why you’re here,” said Tanner over the person-to-person channel.

“He only backed down because he
saw your nametag,” Baldwin grumbled.

“I don’t think so. I think he’s hiding behind that now to salvage his pride. Regardless… thanks.”

“For what?”

“For leading by example,” he winked.

Baldwin let out a huff and shook her head, but she didn’t argue the point. She just kept working.

As soon as their own helmet indicators read a viable air pressure, Tanner and Baldwin set to removing their prisoners’ helmets to manually deactivate their communications systems from t
he inside. With that settled, they put the helmets back in place on each prisoner.

Tanner glanced over to Rivera and the injured marine, but Rivera seemed to have that under control. His patient sat still against the far bulkhead while Rivera cut open the leg of his vac suit, gave him a couple of injections and then wrapped a gel pack with an automated corrective bandage around his calf. “Captain, we’ll be good to go in a minute,” Rivera announced. “I can wrap this in an airtight seal and he’ll be okay if we open up the hatch again.”

“Can we leave him here and move on?” MacAllan asked. “Will he get along on his own?”

“I didn’t give him anything that would mess with his head. How do you feel about it, Private?”

The injured marine nodded, his helmet still securely on. “I’ve got my rifle. Prop me up on the other bulkhead and I’ll cover the door once you’re gone.”

“Then hustle up, corpsman,”
MacAllan grunted, his eyes on a holo screen generated at his left wrist. He seemed somewhat calmer than he’d been when he first dropped in, though everyone’s voice carried an edgy note. “Is everyone else ready? Just like in training. Stack up on the exit. Malone, you and I are in the lead.”

Tanner unslung the pulse rifle from his back. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said, glancing at Baldwin as he moved over to join the others. Baldwin followed.

He heard MacAllan take a breath. “Remember, a lot of the crew here will be unarmed, but don’t take any risks. Non-lethal weapons only if and when you’re sure your target is unarmed and if you’ve got the chance to switch. Taking prisoners is secondary to the mission and to your own safety. Just like the Rules of Engagement say,” he added, though it didn’t sound at all conciliatory. MacAllan took another look around at his team: just three navy ratings and three marines besides himself.

“We make for the command bridge. Don’t be shocked if the deck plans on your holocoms turn out wrong. That’s all public consumption stuff, so the real layout of this ship will probably be different. Best guess, people. Ready?” He waited until he received seven confirmations, and then nodded to the marine private with his hand on the manual hatch controls. “Go!”

Tanner and the captain tossed stun grenades through the hatch as it opened to allow for some cover in either direction. Then they stepped around the sides, Tanner going left while the captain and most of the party went right. Tanner found a passageway devoid of any living soul, ending in another sealed hatch twenty meters away. The other pair of hatches along the way were likewise shut tight. Alarm lights continued to flash. “Boarders on decks one, six and eleven!” announced the PA. “All hands, secure your compartments! Repeat, secure your compartments and repel boarders! Security and marine detachments, go to channel delta!”

Nothing offered resistance.
MacAllan waved the group forward, with Tanner taking up the rear. Grey bulkheads offered few signs to keep anyone oriented, and the few placards Tanner could make out from here spoke of nothing of immediate importance. Just the same, he kept his eye on each hatch as they passed, preferring the possible shelter of any random yeoman office or gear locker to exposure in the middle of the passageway.

“Boarding team,”
MacAllan spoke on the broader comm channel, “this is Captain MacAllan on Deck One. Am advancing to the fore with my team…”

Tanner didn’t listen. The group stuck too close together, moving along the passageway as if they were perpetually stacked up on a door and ready to breach. Janeka and Everett taught Oscar Company to spread out, leapfrogging from one point of cover to the next. Marines learned it in weapons and tactics school, too. Everyone here knew better, or should. Tanner glanced back and found Rivera in close with everyone else and realized it was a case of first-time combat nerves.

“Spread out, guys,” Tanner urged. “Back up if you have to, we can’t bunch up like this.”

MacAllan
turned back to look at Tanner. With his faceplate down, all Tanner could see of the captain’s face were his eyes, but they looked unhappy. “Did someone put you in charge—?”

“Cover!” someone yelled out. “Hatch up ahead—
!“

Tanner moved without hearing the rest. He rushed right past
MacAllan, grabbing at the handle of the gear locker to his left. Marines and ratings knelt against the bulkheads to either side. One or two hit the deck and readied their rifles. Tanner let the pulse rifle in his right hand drop back, its shoulder strap catching at his elbow, so he could snatch Baldwin by the collar of her combat jacket and heave.

The opposition directly ahead led with stun grenades. While
MacAllan’s team was prepared for the flash and thunder and got straight to shooting, the enemy did the same with ferocity. Tucked partly inside the locker, Tanner and Baldwin saw MacAllan picked up off his feet by a hail of bullets before he fell back on the deck.

Baldwin recovered quickly, kneeling and shooting around the hatch while Tanner leaned over her to do the same, firing his rifle one-handed and therefore with no serious accuracy. Yet any return fire at all, even piss-poor shooting, was better than none in such a situation. In four seconds, the team had been all but cut in half by what looked like a squad of NorthStar ship’s security on the other side of a reinforced hatch that offered excellent cover.

Wounded men screamed. MacAllan’s comm channel went dead. Rivera fired back from the other side of the open passageway, hanging on only by virtue of the inadvertent protection offered by the dead marine slumped in front of him.

A security officer with a riot gun went down after taking a blast from Baldwin’s rifle, but he was replaced almost immediately by another man in an identical dark vac suit. Someone else threw another stun grenade through the hatch while the ship’s defenders kept the pressure up. Tanner looked away, his eyes searching the passageway behind them for some sort of escape route, but all he saw were the flashes of the enemy’s weapons fire shooting past.

* * *

The calm professionalism of Captain Wagner’s command bridge all but evaporated with the arrival of the first boarding team. His officers entered the fight eager to test their mettle against a relatively modern and professional navy, certain that the battle would offer a learning experience but little real danger. Safely ensconced within the armor and overwhelming strength of NorthStar’s flagship, none of Wagner’s people expected to come to serious harm. Their biggest worry was for the safety and survival of their companion ships—a serious concern, of course, but that still offered the sort of detachment one couldn’t feel while one’s own life and limb were in danger.

Wagner couldn’t blame them.
Hercules
was indeed a powerful ship. Between the battleship’s armor, her defenses and her escorts, a fatal shot against her from an opposing force like this would have to overcome odds akin to being struck by lightning in the wild. The command bridge felt like a bunker, with its low ceiling, strong and sturdy consoles and armed security watchstanders outside. Yet the sudden appearance of a genuine threat to personal safety, no matter how small in scope, tore down the illusion of invincibility. Like teenagers confronted with their own mortality for the first time, Wagner saw and heard veteran officers work with an urgency born of fear.

From what he could see in the background on his comm screen,
Eldridge had the same problem on the flag bridge.

“We have
a hundred and fifty boarders at most, Commodore,” Wagner reported. “I’ve already routed ship’s security to the worst trouble spots. We’ll take care of them. My concern is the rest of those corvettes out there—I’m betting they’re all loaded with troops.”

“My thoughts exactly, Captain,” concurred
Eldridge, waving away a worried aide. “I’m instructing the rest of the battle group to tighten up now.
Ursa
and
Andromeda
have the same problems—in fact, it looks like
Andromeda
got caught worse than we did. Now we know why they were focused on bleeding off the escort ships.”

Wagner glanced at the tactical screens. “Sir, I’m not sure that tightening up ou
r group alone is going to do it. They pried off half our escorts to create the first gap, and someone needs to take on Archangel’s cruiser.
Halley’s
close enough for the job, but that takes away our biggest escort. We’re only down one defense gun, but if we lose others before we get full control of the ship again…”

“
Agreed,” Eldridge conceded with an aggravated nod, “move us back to join Expeditionary Group Alpha. I’ll put
Halley
on that cruiser. We’ll get ourselves sorted out and then finish the job at our own pace. In the meantime, don’t lose any more of our own guns, Captain! Do whatever it takes. Get those bastards off this ship!”

* * *

“Everyone up!” Harris demanded. He stomped through the back of the assault shuttle clad in recon armor like the rest of his team. “Drop everything but personal weapons and armor! Heavy weapons and ammo on the deck. Food and supply bullshit, too. Drop it and form up outside the shuttle, on the double!”

His Rangers—still technically trainees, though all of them now combat veterans—followed his orders without question. Only
Soldan hesitated and gave him a curious look, which didn’t bother Harris at all. Soldan had long ago earned his place in the Rangers and then some. Indeed, Harris looked directly to Soldan and shook his head, holding up one hand to make sure Soldan knew he wasn’t included. Harris wanted Soldan, at least, to hang onto his plasma repeater.

Harris remained behind in the shuttle only long enough to shed his own excess baggage. Pouches and gear boxes clattered to the floor. He then stalked down the shuttle’s entry ramp to find his young team lined up in two rows ready for orders. All around them, larger shuttles carrying NorthStar troopers emptied out as well, though without the precision of the small Ranger team. A lot of the other men and women were still dumping and sorting out gear. Officers and NCOs shouted out orders, fighting to be heard over one another and the launch bay’s PA system.