On their VR goggles, they saw it for the futility it was. Three torps made it out. Lasers destroyed them and the tube. Soon thereafter, the HB missiles flew past that part of the Bangladesh. The mighty beamship shuddered as the surviving HB torpedoes slammed into the ship.

  “Those are all now aboard the Bangladesh,” the Tracking Officer said.

  “Thank you,” said Admiral Sioux. “That makes sixty to seventy enemy soldiers. What do you think, Chief? Can Security take them?”

  “Depends on how good those soldiers are.”

  “That’s the wrong answer, Chief.”

  “We can take them, although I’ll need damage control to pitch in.”

  “Pilot, one-G acceleration until otherwise ordered.”

  “In what direction, Admiral?”

  “Where else?” asked Admiral Sioux, “toward our rendezvous with the flotilla.”

  13.

  Nadia Pravda hesitated as she stood before the stealth pod’s airlock.

  For seemingly endless days after she’d left the Mercury System, she had slept, watched videos and thought deeply about her life. When she’d noticed she was putting on weight she had exercised religiously and tried to eat less. Finally, the boredom had overwhelmed her. So she’d broken open a baggie of dream dust, snorted, and fantasized until she had come down days later, dehydrated, ravenous and the baggie empty. So, she had drunk water until she’d been ready to vomit. Then, she had eaten and for several hours just gazed at the stars. Slowly, the desire to return to her fantasies had come upon her. The realization that she was about to commit suicide jerked her upright in the pilot’s chair. She had paced in the light gravity until she found herself in front of the airlock.

  If she broke open another baggie, she would doubtlessly snort dust until she died. Maybe that wasn’t a bad way to go. The truth, however, was that she didn’t want to die. She wanted to live. But the boredom was so awful. Still, it was better than being stuck with Hansen and Ervil.

  She drank water and, like a zombie, found herself approaching the stored dream dust yet again. She stared at it for a long, long time. This was her stake in the new world. Without it, she would be without credits, valueless in the cold calculations of the habitats. But if she kept it, she would use it, and if she used it, she was dead.

  Slowly, after much hesitation and doubt, she put baggie after baggie into the airlock. Finally, all the pod’s drugs were piled in the pressure chamber. She closed the inner hatch, rested her forehead on it for fifteen minutes and then activated the outer hatch. She gave the pod a tiny jolt with an attitude jet, enough to send the drugs out of the airlock.

  She went to a side port and watched the powder drift into space. She cried afterward. Then, she went to sleep. When she woke up, she was still bored. “But I’m alive,” she whispered. And in a year, she should reach the Jupiter System. So she did two hundred jumping jacks and settled into the pilot’s chair for another movie.

  14.

  Ten trolls prowled through the Bangladesh. At least that’s what they looked like to Marten. Attached to the gorilla-sized battlesuits was the mission’s complement of munitions, all they had to take over the beamship. Extra laser-juice, more plasma coils and batteries, oxygen rechargers, suit-fluids and rations and more neurostims, Suspend and Tempo.

  The beamship’s corridors were dark. It didn’t matter, though. The battlesuits turned radar and motion scans into VR-images on each of the shock troopers’ HUDs. Visual information, a grid and targeting crosshairs were all shown holographically on the inner surface of each helmet visor. To the left side of each visor was a grid map of the beamship. It showed their position. The Bangladesh had a similar configuration to a Zhukov-class battleship, although there were differences, and sometimes those differences had surprised them.

  After the initial breach and slaughter of some unarmed ship’s personnel, the outer portion of the beamship seemed to have been evacuated. Thus, they tramped down long, empty corridors, crossed various rooms and blasted booby-traps and door-locks.

  “Tank coming at three o’clock,” Vip said, who had point in the latest corridor.

  “They’ve recovered from their initial shock,” Marten said. “Stay alert. We’re finally going to see what they have.”

  “What the—Gas!” Lance said.

  “Where?” Marten asked. They were in a recreation area with tables, chairs and a music unit.

  “It’s coming through the vents.”

  “What kind of gas?”

  “It’s not combustible or corrosive,” said Lance. “My guess is it’s knockout gas.”

  “There are guys behind that tank,” warned Vip.

  “Wernher, set up the cannon,” Marten said.

  “Roger,” said Wernher, who followed close behind Vip.

  “Kang, Conway, watch the rear,” Marten said.

  Kang grunted. He’d given tactical command to Marten while he considered strategy.

  “The tank stopped,” Vip said. “It’s launching grenades!”

  “Omi, Lance, burn through the right walls and flank them,” Marten said.

  The two shock troopers attached a breach bomb to the wall and stepped back as Omi activated it. The shaped charge blast disintegrated a portion of wall. They bounded through the smoking hole.

  The sound let Marten know that this section of ship still had an atmosphere. He switched to Omi’s HUD, displaying it on his. They used another breach-bomb to tear through another wall, watching the ship’s blueprint on their HUDs to see where they had to go to flank Vip’s tank. HB tactics stressed surprise and doing the unexpected. Fighting through the laid-down corridors, which the defenders would always know better than the invaders, would give the tactical advantage to ship’s personnel. Creating new corridors and bursting through walls to attack would heavily favor the side that had the ordnance to do so. And that was how they had practiced.

  Marten checked Vip’s HUD. The tank had stopped at an intersection of corridors. He studied it. It wasn’t really a tank. He flicked through an itemized list of known SU ship equipment. Ah. The ‘tank’ was a damage control vehicle normally used when the beamship was under eight-G acceleration. The grenade tube attached to it was no doubt a jury-rigged device. That told Marten somebody on their side was thinking fast and turning decisions into commands.

  “The tank’s coming forward again,” Vip said. “There are at least ten people behind it.”

  “Back up,” Marten said. “Wernher, get ready with the cannon.”

  “Should I leave them any surprises?” asked Vip.

  “Negative,” Marten said. “Just back up to Wernher.”

  The seconds ticked by.

  “Ambush!” said Lance. “Omi’s taking hits.”

  “Coming,” Marten said. He mentally berated himself for getting sloppy. Somebody on the other side definitely thought on their feet. They had already incorporated the wall-breaking tactic into their battle considerations and were using it to ambush them!

  Marten ran though the wall openings that Lance and Omi had made, with two other shock troopers following him. They were the reaction team. He read Lance’s HUD. Omi lay on the floor, a gaping hole in his battlesuit. Lance crouched behind a bulky unit of unknown nature. He fired at the enemy, his heavy laser burning holes in the walls and through personal body-armor. Then, Lance dove aside as a plasma glob touched and vaporized the unit he’d been hiding behind. Marten hoped superheated plasma wasn’t what had hit Omi. He sprinted down a different hall with the long glide they had been taught to use in ship corridors. He checked the blueprint grid and slapped a breach-bomb to a wall. Seconds later, he and his two mates burst through the wall and behind the enemy. In two heartbeats of glaring red lasers, all the enemy jerked, screamed and curled like burning leaves. Then it was over. Marten’s battlecomp counted ten corpses, three of them suited with SU security gear.

  “We keep going and flank the tank,” Marten said. “Lance, check Omi. Close his battlesuit with construction foam.”

  BLAM, BLAM, BLAM. The reaction team burst through three more walls and came upon the damage control vehicle with its jury-rigged grenade launcher and the fifteen people crab-walking behind it. Laser beams and several grenades took them down before the enemy even knew they had been flanked. This wasn’t a battle, it was butchery.

  As he stood over the dead SU remains—a hulking mechanical troll in the guts of the Bangladesh—Marten finally allowed himself to worry about his friend. “Report,” he said.

  “Omi is out,” said Lance.

  Marten hesitated, part of him terrified to ask more. He had to, though. “Is he dead?”

  “I shot him with Suspend,” said Lance.

  Marten couldn’t breathe. He didn’t dare close his eyes even to mourn his friend. This was just one more mark against the HBs. No. It was more than that. He tasted his sweaty battlesuit air before he asked, “Was he dead when you did it?”

  “No,” said Lance. “But is chest is badly burned.”

  Why Omi? Why not Kang? Marten forced himself to hang onto the fact that Omi wasn’t dead. But a plasma burn with no medical facilities for millions of kilometers—

  “Bring him along,” he said.

  “We don’t have the luxury to carry our dead. …To take anyone who’s out,” Lance finished lamely.

  “You carry him,” Marten said.

  “Maniple Leader—”

  “Do it!” Marten said. “That’s an order. We’ll all carry each other. No shock trooper leaves another behind. We’re all we have in this lousy universe.”

  “Roger,” said Lance.

  Marten didn’t want to think about Omi, his one true friend, his only friend ever since Nadia had been torn from him. He switched to the command channel. “What do you think, Kang? Do we continue to lunge at the command capsule, or do we go for the engines?”

  “Highborn battle-tactics always say to lop off the brain first,” Kang said.

  “True. But what’s in our best interest?” Marten asked.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Have you contacted any more shock troopers?”

  “I would have told you if I had,” Kang said. “But they’re jamming pretty heavy down here. So how can we know?”

  “We can’t know,” Marten said. “So we have to assume the worst. With nine of us, the best we can do is bargain.”

  “With these pansies?” Kang said. “You’re kidding, right? We’re slaughtering them.”

  “Omi is out,” Marten said. “What does the Bangladesh hold, two thousand personnel? We can’t afford to keep trading losses at the present ratio and win.”

  “Then we’re dead,” Kang said. “We might as well shoot ourselves and save them the trouble.”

  “Why do you figure that?” Marten said. “We take over the engines and make a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?” Kang asked.

  “They take us to the Jupiter System where we all get off.”

  Kang laughed harshly.

  “Isn’t that better than dying?”

  Kang was silent. “What if more shock troopers show up?”

  “They haven’t so far. But if they do… why not talk them into the same deal? What’s the use of working for the HBs when nine out of five hundred make it to the target?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Listen to me, Kang. The enemy will expect us to go for the command capsule. With nine men, we have to do the unexpected. It’s our only chance for victory.”

  Kang was silent for several seconds. “You have a point. But HB battle-tactics say—”

  “Screw the HBs! We’re on our own, Kang. Nine of us! You gotta think like a gang leader again, like a Red Blade in the heart of Sydney’s slums.”

  More silence, then Kang said, “Yeah. We’ll do it your way.”

  Marten switched to open channels. “We have a little change in plans.”

  15.

  Admiral Sioux made a fist and kept tapping the arm of her command chair with it. The Bangladesh accelerated at one G for rendezvous with the flotilla of spacecraft that would all join up near Venus’ orbital path. Of course, the planet wouldn’t be there. It was over sixty days from reaching that point in its orbit. The HB missiles had all passed the beamship or been destroyed. One Doom Star accelerated toward them, although it no longer fired its long-range lasers. It would take several weeks for that enemy to reach them. The other Doom Star had turned back for Venus. General Hawthorne’s ploy of feinting battleships at Venus had worked to pull that Doom Star off them.

  Despite all this good news, Admiral Sioux scowled. Her officers huddled by the Tracking Officer’s module. They whispered among themselves and kept glancing at her. She hadn’t given them the arms-locker key yet. It rested in the middle of her fist, the one that tap, tap, tapped her armrest. Enemy soldiers were on her beamship. They were few in number: less than one hundred versus her two thousand ship’s personnel. That was twenty to one odds. It shouldn’t be a problem defeating these few. But to use all two thousand personnel meant she would have to give up the code to the weapons bins. Her officers would also demand to be armed. Some might even want to leave the armored command capsule in order to help fight the invaders. But once they were armed—could the Bangladesh’s two thousand stop the enemy space marines? Because if they couldn’t… once her people were armed, she didn’t think the officers would let her blow the beamship. Yet, if she didn’t arm ship’s personnel would her Security teams be able to defeat the enemy?

  Her chair’s speaker unit blinked. She opened the comlink channel.

  “Security Chief here, Admiral. I’m ready to attack the smaller concentration.”

  A sinking feeling filled her. “I thought by now you would have slain those few.”

  “They’re a tough bunch, Admiral, and very clever. They slaughtered those I sent to keep them busy. Now, I’ve left a covering force to slow down the bigger concentration. I want to wipe out these few first so they can’t do anything cute while I turn and overwhelm the bigger concentration with everything we have.”

  Her chest constricted, and she found breathing difficult. She was the Admiral. She had to make the decisions. Yet, space combat was so different from infantry action. She wasn’t sure what to do. “Should I arm everyone, Security Chief?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. “Some of the lowerdeck personnel might have long memories, Admiral.”

  “You mean when we liquidated the mutinous ringleaders while we were in near-Sun orbit?”

  “Right,” he said.

  “Maybe they will have long memories, Chief. But I’m sure they won’t remember until after the enemy is slain.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “So what’s your recommendation?”

  “I’d arm everyone and use them. These space marines are tough and obviously highly trained and armored for exactly this type of fight.”

  Admiral Sioux massaged her ancient chest. Nothing was guaranteed. “No one is taking my beamship,” she whispered.

  “Admiral?”

  She punched a sequence of buttons on her armrest panel. “I’m releasing the locker codes now.” She pressed the last button, blowing the locks on the weapons bins in the outer beamship.

  “Very good, Admiral,” said the Security Chief. “I’ll swamp this smaller concentration and wheel and hit the bigger one. Out.”

  She sagged in her chair, forcing air into her lungs. Slowly, the constriction in her chest eased, although now her bad knee started throbbing. She noticed the First Gunner approaching her.

  “Yes, First Gunner?” she said.

  “Shouldn’t we open our own gun-locker?” he asked.

  “Do you want to join the Security Chief?”

  The First Gunner stiffened. He wore his tan uniform and hat, a lean Pakistani with deep brown eyes. “I’m not ground-troop trained, Admiral.”

  “Ah.”

  “But if something should happen,” he said. “It seems the height of reason that we be armed.”

  The others now edged toward her. A determined look had settled upon them. Always command, the Admiral knew.

  “Tracking Officer,” she said.

  “Admiral,” the officer said, saluting.

  “Open the gun-locker and pass out ordnance.” She threw the key to the Tracking Officer, who snatched it out of the air and turned smartly toward the locker beside the outer door. Then, Admiral Sioux slumped in her chair. It was two thousand or so against seventy-odd enemy. They should easily win. She wondered, then, why she felt so gloomy about the prospects.

  16.

  “Let’s take a breather,” Marten said. “Vip, Wernher, stand guard at either end of the corridor. Everyone else, re-supply yourselves.”

  “They’re hot on us,” said Lance.

  “We’ve got thirty seconds, the way I time it,” Marten said. They were in a wide corridor, a service ramp. Whenever the beamship entered space-dock, vehicles would use this ramp to bring in heavy equipment and supplies.

  Marten knelt on an armored knee, reached back and unclipped a laser pack. He powered his heavy laser-tubes with the old pack, pumped the rest of the juice into recycling and then detached the drained pack, slapping the fresh one into place. He rolled ten grenades at his feet and inserted a fresh tube into his launchers. Lastly, he relieved himself, letting his battlesuit take care of wastes, gulped some concentrates and drank a lot of water. While he did that, he made two bomb-clusters with the grenades, looked around and rigged one to the pipes overhead, tacking on a motion sensor with a forty-second delay so they could get away. The other cluster he stuck to the corridor wall, timing it to blast in sixty seconds. As Lance had said, the enemy was hot on them.

  “See anything, Vip?”

  “I killed three scouts while you all lounged around. There are a lot of others working up their nerve in the room just behind those three. Most are armed with las-rifles, useless against our armor.”

  “Don’t get cocky, Vip,” warned Lance.