Battlecruiser Alamo: The Price of Admiralty (27 page)

"Candero," he called down to the squad's combat engineer, "get up here now. I need this lock broken."

The ship began to rock underneath him, back and forth, playing on the thrusters. Not enough to shake them loose, but enough to keep them secured. Marshall was about to order Candero to keep his position when the trooper detached himself from the ship and started to climb, hand over hand, trying to judge the movement of the ship before it happened.

It was a deadly guessing game to play, and with the squad secured to the ladder, he was pulling himself up by whatever hand-holds he could find, leaving a trail of damaged equipment in his wake. As he finally got up to Marshall's level, he began to slip, running out of secure footing; trusting in his safety cord lasting for long enough, Marshall let go, swinging down to grab the trooper by the arm, sending them both crashing into the side of the hull.

"If they didn't know before, they'll know we're here now," Stiles said, sotto voce.

"Ninety seconds, Candero. Get moving," Marshall said.

The trooper nodded, and pulled a pair of small boxes out of a pocket on the outside of his suit, carefully placing them on either side of the magnetic locks, then attacked a wire between the two. He leaned back, and started to count down from ten, while the rest of the squad waited impatiently.

When he reached zero, the door slid open, and Candero was the first inside, followed by Marshall and Stiles; in full armor, the small emergency lock could barely hold
the
three
of them
. The lock cycled, taking more seconds. Just two more minutes before he had to be hitting that button. They crowded into the nook above the elevator, Marshall reaching to activate the emergency release. Stiles grabbed his hand.

"Has to be me, Captain. Greatest risk is for the first man in, and you've got to enter that course change."

"Corporal," Marshall began, before being interrupted.

"You want to waste time arguing, sir?" Stiles grabbed the release and pulled open the cover, leaping in, immediately followed by Candero, then Marshall. Behind them, the airlock was cycling again, the first wave of their reinforcements on their way to join them. Even if they'd had the time to wait for them, there simply wasn't enough space for any more bodies in that crawlspace. They hefted their weapons, ready to burst in. Stiles tapped the emergency release, then swore when it failed to open.

"Time for my magic," Candero said, reaching into another pocket for a pair of shaped charges. As Stiles moved out of the way, the trooper said, "Looks like I get to go first, Corp."

This time there was no delay. With an immediate fizzing noise, a white line seemed to seep between the two charges, and with a small but satisfactory pop, the locking mechanism broke away and the doors slid open, to reveal a pair of alert guards in the form of Cole and Tyler, their sidearms at the ready, which they fired at the first shape to emerge from the door – Candero. The two of them were excellent shots, and extremely familiar with the weak spots in the suit armor.

With his final breath, the Lance-Corporal managed to collapse forward on top of them, sending them sprawling under the weight of the armor, crimson blood seeping out of two gaping holes in the side of his neck close to the helmet seal. Stiles leapt over the body, firing a pair of rounds at Cellini at the guidance control station, sending the traitorous helmsman collapsing over the console, his arms falling limp.

Marshall's first thought, besides getting to that guidance station, was for tactical, a carefully placed shot sending Khachaturian to meet his maker. A heartbeat later, Stiles fell to his side, clutching at his neck, gasping for breath, and Marshall leaned across to avenge his death, three shots sending Zakharova to the deck, spasming by the communications console.

The next group of espatiers were scrambling into the room, Private Blake throwing himself down by the dying Corporal, the contents of his medikit spilled on the deck as he attempted to save his life, the other two keeping Cole and Tyler covered. Retaking the bridge had taken less than twenty seconds. Marshall pushed Cellini's body out of the way and slid the data crystal into the guidance console in a single action, then started to implement the course. An error message flashed up on the screen and he closed his eyes, shaking his head as he sat at the console.

"What is it, sir?" One of the troopers turned his head to him while he placed Cole under restraint.

"We've missed the window, Ballantine. Nine damn seconds too late. We can't intercept the transport." He gestured towards the communications console. "If you've got them secured, put that basic training to use and get a flight crew up here, and medics for Stiles."

"Yes, sir." The private's face was downcast. Marshall smiled.

"Don't worry, Private. We took the bridge, and we'll have our ship back in a few minutes. We won the battle." As the private headed over to the console, Marshall muttered to himself, looking down at Candero's body on the deck, "But I think we might have lost the war."

Chapter 23

The squad marched across the snow, spread out in loose clumps into t
wo
fire teams making their way to preselected positions, Hunter taking point. Half a mile to the rear, the wrecked truck continued to smolder; it was only as the squad drew closer to the landing strip that Coop had stopped complaining about the 'vandals' who had ruined it.

The transport was to come down in a shallow crater, the ruins of a long-ago asteroid strike, surrounded by high peaks. A series of beacons had started to light as they approached, their red lights bathing the horizon in an eerie glow. There was less than an hour to darkness, and computer control or no, landing under dark conditions in an environment such as this was a risk that few pilots would take.

"Where are the rebels?" Esposito said, looking at Forbes to her left.

He looked around, "A couple of guys are probably already dug in down there. The rest will wait until the shuttle's down and move in – probably half a dozen trucks, I reckon. They'll want to get everything out before the Governor's forces arrive."

"And if they do?" Orlova asked.

The prospector chuckled, "Then our little war will probably be decided right here in one big battle. Both sides will be committing most of their effective forces to this one."

The espatiers took up their positions around the rim of the deep crater, being careful to mask their tracks as they walked, each fire team covering a different approach angle. None of their weapons were likely to be able to put much of a dent on the transport itself, except the grenades – and without a launcher, they were rather too hazardous to risk except as a last resort. Hunter looked around at the crater, shaking his head.

"This might all have been for nothing if Alamo managed to intercept it," he said, a trace of bitterness in his voice. At Esposito's raised eyebrow, he continued, "Not that I don't want the boys upstairs to have captured it, ma'am. It's just that since we came down here we've been taking shit from everyone, and I want to be the one dealing it out for a change."

His sentence was punctuated by a loud sonic boom, drawing all of their eyes to the sky. A thin contrail was spiraling down from the upper atmosphere, a small black dot at the far end of it. Esposito pulled out her binoculars, considered for a moment, then passed them over to Orlova. She carefully adjusted the magnification, and a wide grin began to creep across her face.

"Jackpot. One transport coming down, and it looks Republic to me," she said. "They're really tearing down. I'd say we've got company in about ten minutes."

Hunter and Forbes slapped each other on the back and readied their plasma rifles, siting in on the only way into the crater on the ground. As defensible a spot as it was, as good a landing site, it was also an excellent place to spring a trap. A faint rumbling started to sound, and five trucks came rumbling over the horizon at full speed.

A pair of figures emerged from the rocks, breaking cover, and ran out toward the trucks; Esposito was tempted to take a shot, but the transport could yet abort its landing if it saw that anything suspicious was taking place on the ground. Until it had landed, its engines turned off, there wasn't much they could do.

A series of bright flares flashed across the ground from the transport's engine as it pulsed towards a landing; at this point there was nothing the pilot could do to make the landing particularly stealthy, the only sensible goal being to make the touchdown as short as possible. The trucks waited outside the crater, not wanting to get caught in any exhaust from the final descent. A cluster of landing legs extended down, and landing jets began to fire, a gentle touch of thruster one way or another guiding it down to the flattest part of the landing site. Orlova caught herself nodding at the pilot's skill, and carefully looked over the lines of the ship.

A blockade runner, though technically called a 'Fast Transport' for military parlance, not a million miles away from the models the Martians used in the war to get needed elements in from the interstellar mining outposts. Where the flag of the Lunar Republic would normally be proudly displayed there was instead a black and red flag separated by a yellow stripe, a pair of stars on either side. She looked across at Forbes, puzzled.

"Our flag," Forbes said over the roar of the engine. Nodding, she turned back to watch the last stages of the landing, smoke and steam rising from the ground from the heat of the jets. Immediately after touchdown, with speed obviously gained from long experience, the trucks rolled forward and a series of hatches on the side opened up. Men began to spill out of the trucks and race towards the transport, crude breathing apparatus clamped to their faces to protect themselves from the shuttle's hot exhaust.

Esposito hefted her weapon once more, sighted one of the trucks, and yelled, "Let 'em have it!" She managed to get in the first shot, a green ball dancing across the sky, slamming into the rock near a cluster of men. Immediately the air was full of the crackle of plasma fire and the occasional rat-tat-tat of bullets from Coop's old machine gun. Bodies lay strewn on the ground, but the rebels quickly recovered from the surprise attack and threw themselves into cover, reaching for their own weapons to return fire. A fusillade of shots rang out from the ground, and from the yells it was obvious that some of the bullets had found their mark.

"We've got to finish this quickly, or the transport will just lift off," Esposito said, firing a burst to keep a particularly accurate rebel's head down.

"Not to mention that we're exposed like hell to a rear attack," the sergeant replied.

Order was rapidly disappearing from the battlefield; Esposito could see that one of the fire teams had been badly mauled, only firing the occasional plasma burst. She spotted a rocky outcrop a couple of dozen paces down the side of the crater wall; not enough cover to keep anyone hidden, but enough to give them some protection. More importantly, an excellent place to start a crossfire from.

Without any warning, she leapt out of her hiding place and started to sprint towards the outcrop, weaving from left to right. A torrent of shots rained down around her, blasting chunks out of the rocks. As she drew close to her target she slipped when a rock gave way underneath her, sending her falling to her side and the rocks tumbling down the war. By a miracle she was able to roll into position, grimacing slightly at a pain to her ankle. Another pair of shots sent a shower of pebbles dropping on her head; her return shot sent the shooter falling to the ground.

"No retreat now," Hunter muttered, looking across at Forbes. There was no trace of reluctance on the prospector's face as he fired shot after shot into the ground, though he had more of a tendency to pin them down than hit them. The sergeant looked over at Coop; the old woman was glancing down at her watch, then turned to him, smiling.

"Any second now."

"What?" Orlova replied.

The answer came when a trio of low-level fliers burst over the hill, roaring their engines and letting off a series of shots onto the rebels on the ground. One of them exploded a few seconds later, a smoke trail suggesting that someone had been quick off the mark with an anti-air missile. As the fire from the Triplanetary squad became erratic, limited to the occasional target of opportunity, Orlova ran over and grabbed Coop by the collar.

"What have you done?" she yelled.

"What Forbes suggested. I contacted the Governor and told him about the transport. Rather hoped he'd send in the cavalry."

Orlova staggered back; the lack of cover didn't seem to matter, with no-one on the ground paying any attention to the rim now. Hunter looked around, confused, moving his gun from target to target, as the pilot lifted her borrowed binoculars to her eyes, trying to work out what was going on.

"The transport's getting ready to move out," she said.

Clarke looked up at her from his vantage point, asking, "How the hell do you know that?"

"Common sense, Corporal." A pair of loud roars echoed across the crater, followed by a pair of explosions on the far wall. "I would in her place."

"Great."

"We came here to get that transport. The rest is just incidental." Orlova stood up, daring the fire, pointing at the transport. "Troopers, get that damn transport! That's an order!"

She fell down on the ground, Hunter's hand pulling her down by the belt. He looked into her face, his teeth bared, then over at the second fire team. Two of them were lining up shots on the transport's landing legs, and a pair of bolts raced down to the ground. The other troopers rapidly got the idea, pinning the vessel down, and one of the government fliers swooped around to take a pass at it, soaring dangerously close.

"Who the hell are you to be giving orders!" Hunter yelled.

"Relax, Sergeant, she's right. Someone had to do it," Coop said. "Let's get on with this."