She nodded, her face set in a grim expression.
The flanking maneuver would be a lot more effective if Mallory or Toni were armed. But if they were lucky, there’d only be two people coming.
There were three; a trio of men with long greasy hair and scraggly beards. The lead one was thin and wore a bandanna wrapping his hair around a pale bald spot, the second wore a studded leather jacket and pants, and the third one was a head taller than either of them and easily topped a hundred fifty kilos. They all had shotguns at the ready, and stepped into the loading area with the situational awareness of a potted plant. They were already through the doorway before the first one even started to turn in their direction.
Thank God for small favors.
Mallory hit the alert button on his own comm, and the one by the elevator began whooping, drawing the attention of the shotgun-wielding trio.
He jumped at the bandannaed one. In the low gravity, his feet did not touch the ground between where he’d stood, and where he straight-armed the guy across the trachea. Mallory’s victim was caught completely by surprise. He tried to bring the butt of the shotgun up to ward Mallory off, but he slammed into the floor before he got his movements coordinated. Behind him, Mallory heard a shotgun blast. He winced inside, but the shot came nowhere near him.
The man beneath him choked and sputtered and swung the butt of his gun ineffectively into Mallory’s side. Mallory brought his comm down, smashing it into the man’s temple. That was enough to stun him so he could wrest the shotgun away from him.
Another shotgun blast, and Mallory spun to bring his commandeered shotgun up to face the enemy. The guy in studded leather was still in the midst of falling backward, away from the doorway, his chest a shredded mess.
Toni stood in the doorway, smoke slowly curling up from the barrel of the gun she held. The huge man who had taken the rear was sprawled on the floor behind her, staring up at the ceiling with his head angled oddly.
The guy on the floor behind Mallory recovered enough to reach for the shotgun, and Mallory brought the butt of the gun down on the man’s face, knocking him out.
After a couple of breaths, he turned back toward Toni.
“Now?” Toni asked.
Mallory pushed himself up from the floor and said, “The main control room.”
Stefan stood on a catwalk overlooking the
Wisconsin
’s main control center. His takeover had been frighteningly easy. The
Wisconsin’s
security forces had collapsed in the face of an organized threat, and the communications had been simple to disrupt. It had taken less than twenty minutes to get from the habitat to where he stood now.
Below him, the control room spread out in three directions. To his left was security, to the right, traffic control, and in front, operations. The operations section was dominated by a schematic holo of the
Wisconsin
. In the wireframe representation, all the elevators between the core and the three habitats were flashing red. He had completely isolated physical access from the habitats to the core control section.
The communications channels were just now lighting up as the occupants of the space station began to realize something was wrong. The people who thought they were in charge were beginning to realize they weren’t.
Down at one of the consoles in operations, one of Stefan’s men called up to him, “I have the Regal
,
on-line.” The Regal was the hotel where the faux leaders of Mallory’s faux navy were meeting.
Stefan stepped over to a console mounted on the catwalk, and the holo obligingly lit up from hibernation when he approached. “Can you route the call up here?”
“Yeah, sure, give me a minute.” It took the guy a bit longer than a minute. Stefan shook his head while he waited. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, and he had had to settle for a rather lower tier of revolutionary when he massed his small army. Most were criminally inclined Bakunin natives, but the type of criminals that weren’t particularly successful even in an environment where “criminal” activity was perfectly legal. Their main advantage was sharing Stefan’s desire for self-preservation, combined with a rather low reluctance to use violence to achieve that goal.
After five minutes, Stefan’s man downstairs figured out how to forward the call to Stefan’s console. The spinning “W” logo in the holo dissolved in favor of a view of a meeting room somewhere in the Regal.
He looked at the faces present in the room and said, “Where the fuck is Mallory?”
One of the men spoke up, “Mr. Stavros, we—”
“
Shut up!
” he snapped. “I’m driving this thing now! That whole habitat can be vented to space if I want. Understand?”
Everyone in the holo slowly nodded.
“Now where’s that damn priest?”
The same man spoke up again. “We don’t know where he is.”
“You. Don’t. Know?”
“We were taking a recess in negotiations when—”
Stefan held up a hand and said, “Just stop talking.” Mallory wasn’t the reason he was doing this. It shouldn’t matter if the damned priest was there or not. “Let me tell you what it is I want.” He licked his lips. “I need three fully charged tach-ships and supplies, and I want them in the next hour.” Enough for him and seventy-five people to evacuate themselves from this insanity.
The folks around the conference table all started talking at once.
He heard some commotion below him and said, “I’ll give you ten minutes to discuss it,” and muted the call.
He turned and bent over the catwalk to call down to the guys working the security consoles. “What the hell’s going on down there?”
The woman working the main security console shouted back without looking up from her station. “We have a major problem off of dock thirty-six.”
That was the berth for the
Daedalus
. He swallowed and called down, “What kind of problem?”
“Look.”
The main holo over the security station switched to a camera pointing down one of the
Wisconsin’s
corridors by the docking facilities. The corridor was long and four times as wide as it was tall. Air lock numbers were stenciled along the walls every fifteen meters or so. Just in front of the camera, a group of Stefan’s people, about ten or so, ran down the corridor. Men and women bearing shotguns liberated from
Wisconsin
security.
Something flashed from down the corridor, and one of the leaders of the charge found a leg disappearing from underneath him. The charge broke apart as people hit the floor, or flattened against the walls, taking cover in the too shallow recess of an air lock door.
Silently, shotguns began firing down the corridor, and other weapons fired back. In the holo, Stefan saw ten of his people torn apart as shadows emerged from the gunsmoke haze.
“Holy shit,” someone said from below him, “they got a whole squad of powered armor.”
Stefan watched the screen and shook his head. Not powered armor, these were EVA hardsuits. He knew because he recognized the paint jobs.
“Hard core bastards,” someone else said, as the suit with the demon paint job passed by in front of the camera. That one had been Stefan’s EVA suit.
“Shit.” If he had been thinking ahead, he would have sabotaged the damn suits. He just never thought of anyone wearing one into combat. One of the shotguns that
Wisconsin’s
security favored
might
be able to damage one if it got close enough.
Stefan reached into his waistband and pulled out the gamma laser that had come from his own stores. Unlike military-powered armor, the EVA hardsuits from the
Daedalus
wouldn’t protect much against energy weapons. He leaned over the catwalk and called down, “Davis, you got the plasma rifle—you and—” he pointed out three more people downstairs who had gamma laser sidearms—“you and you and you. Intercept that group.”
“What the hell, Boss?” Davis stared up at him. “They got powered armor.”
“They’re wearing fucking EVA suits. They have zero mobility, and they’re sitting ducks for any sort of energy weapon.”
They stared up at him.
“Do you want to get out of this place or not?”
Davis grunted and waved the others toward him. Between the plasma rifle and the three gamma lasers, they should be able to hold off those bastards from the
Daedalus
, at least long enough for them to seize one ship. He ran over and shouted down at traffic control.
A shirtless bald man was bent over one of the consoles. He was one of the few good hackers Stefan had gathered for his crew. “Reggie! How are we on getting access to a tach-ship?”
“I’m throwing the stats up on the screen,” he said. “Problem is anything big enough for us already has some crew on-board.”
“Highlight the ships that don’t have a crew present.”
“Like I said, they’re too small—”
“Just do it!”
A half-dozen berth numbers flashed across the screen. He noted the craft types; all two- or three-person ships. Two were on the opposite side of the
Wisconsin
from the control room.
“Unlock berths 87 and 102.”
“Okay, but it isn’t going to do us any good—”
Reggie was interrupted by cursing that seemed to come from just below the catwalk. “
Quick!
” Stefan shouted down at him.
Reggie did something at his console and the green “docked” light started flashing amber. “There, but—”
Below, Stefan heard Davis’ voice call out, “
Get the fuck out of my shot!
” Followed by two or three shotgun blasts.
What the hell?
Between here and the
Daedalus
, there had to be at least twenty of his people. Even if they completely collapsed, that squad of EVA suits couldn’t move quickly enough to get here.
“What’s happening outside?” he called down to security. No one answered him. He looked at the other stations, as he heard another shotgun blast, but the consoles were deserted.
They could have gone to reinforce Davis, but somehow Stefan doubted it.
Well, if these bastards fold at the first sign of resistance, it just means I’m not obliged to worry about them.
He pulled out a grenade and his gamma laser.
Mallory and Toni turned up the corridor toward the main control center for the
Wisconsin
. They passed three dead and disarmed members of
Wisconsin
security and open doors marked “authorized personnel only.” The one at the end of the corridor was still closed, but Mallory saw the dome of a security camera set above it. He leveled his shotgun at the camera and said, “When they come out—”
He never finished the sentence, because the main door opened and four of Stefan’s thugs started walking right toward them. The one in the rear had a plasma rifle.
Mallory immediately lowered his shotgun as the guy with the plasma rifle screamed, “
Get the fuck out of my shot!
”
The three men in front of him scattered to flatten against the walls, but before he fired the plasma rifle, Mallory and Toni fired, hitting him in the chest and stomach and sending him in a microgravity tumble back through the doorway.
One of the three others pointed a gamma laser in Mallory’s direction, and Toni pumped a shell into him. Another one fired, but had no idea how to aim from a prone position and merely melted the polymer sheathing on the ceiling behind Mallory.
With two more shots, Toni and Mallory cleared the hallway.
He and Toni held their position, flat against opposite walls, staring into the small slice of the control room visible through the open door. Beyond, Mallory could see ranks of unmanned consoles, and part of what looked to be a pile of blue-jumpsuited corpses piled against the far wall. His military training kept him from reflexively crossing himself, but he did offer a whispered prayer for the victims.
He saw some movement going away from their position.
Toni glanced at him, and he pointed at the open door, and made a gesture with his hand,
slowly.
She nodded, and they eased up on the doorway along opposite walls, aiming the shotguns to give them a decent crossfire on the entrance. They were within a meter when a hand darted out from around the doorway, tossing a small round object into the hall between them.
He barely had the first syllable of the word “grenade” out his mouth when the world was filled by a blinding white flash and a roaring as if the
Wisconsin
tore itself apart around him.
Toni II stopped her squad when they reached the main corridor leading to the
Wisconsin
’s control room. She could see signs of a firefight, and she told the main body to hang back while she went forward.
No peep of resistance met her advance, and as she walked through dissipating white smoke, she saw a quartet of hostiles decorating the entry of the control room. The corpses weren’t armed with the
Wisconsin
-issue security shotguns. She saw three high-power gamma lasers and a plasma rifle. Good thing they were dead.