Crown of Slaves

There!

"All Tango-Lima-Alpha units, this is Kaja. Standby to execute on my command."

She waited two more heartbeats, then—

"All units, execute!"

Zenas Maguire settled deeper into his selected position. There wasn't any such thing as a good position from which to direct the defense of such a complicated tangle of passageways and corridors, so he'd had to select the best one he could find. At least it was more or less centrally located in his area of responsibility.

Unfortunately, it appeared that the attackers were headed directly for the same position, almost as if they knew that it lay at the center of his dispositions. Which was impossible, of course.

He watched the imagery from the cameras covering the last hatch between his people and them, and his belly was a hollow, singing void. He'd never expected to face serious combat as one of Manpower's hired guns. That was one reason he'd taken the job. He was tired of getting shot at for the miserly pay of a Silesian Army lieutenant, and making sure that a bunch of slaves didn't get uppity had seemed a beguiling change of pace. Not to mention how much better the money was.

Well, I guess what goes around, comes around. Whoever these people are, they obviously don't much like Manpower, which means they aren't going to like anyone who works for it, either. So the only way to save my ass is to save Arnold's and Takashi's. The sorry bastards. If they'd done their jobs properly in the first place, none of us would—

Something clanged behind him. Metal on metal, his mind reported, but what kind of metal? He started to turn towards the sound, and a blur of motion caught at the corner of his eye.

His attention flicked towards it, and both eyes began to widen in disbelief as he saw the deck-to-ceiling ventilation grate lying on the deck and the Solarian Marine, battle armor in heavy-assault configuration, striding out of the opening.

Zenas Maguire's eyes never finished widening all the way, and his brain never quite completed the identification of what he saw, because the trigger finger of Corporal Jane Borkai, Company Bravo, Second Battalion, 877th Solarian Marines, closed the circuit on her plasma rifle first. That "rifle" was a ca

Five other ventilation grates were kicked open almost simultaneously, and five other Marines—two of them armed "only" with heavy tribarrels—bounded through the sudden openings and opened fire. They appeared in the midst of Maguire's carefully chosen defensive positions, like demon dji

Homer Takashi watched in gray-faced shock as the green icons of friendly units vanished from his display with sudden and terrifying finality. How? How could anyone do that? It was impossible! Unless—?

The ventilation system! That was the only possible avenue, the only way people in something as bulky as battle armor could have avoided the main corridors. But that was still impossible! For it to work, the attackers would have to have known the internal layout of the space station better than people who'd lived and worked aboard it literally for T-years!

Not that it mattered. However they'd managed it, they'd also timed it perfectly. Arnold had divided his available strength into four well chosen blocking positions... and the attackers had maneuvered into position to take all four of them out simultaneously. In the space of less than ten minutes, effectively every defender, aside from the single platoon Arnold had held out as a tactical reserve, had been eliminated. And even as Takashi watched the illuminated schematic of the station, whole sectors were turning from green to bloody crimson as the invaders fa

And then the illuminated schematic disappeared, and Takashi swallowed hard as a beardless face replaced it. He certainly hadn't ordered the display reconfigured for communications, and a cold, numb suspicion of just how the enemy had become so intimately familiar with the internal geography of his space station filled him.

Not that he had much opportunity to digest the thought. Even as he stared at the screen, the cold-eyed man on it opened his mouth... and stuck out his tongue.

Takashi's breathing stopped. Every voice in the command center fell instantly still. The only sound was the subdued beeping of com cha

"My name," it said, in a voice of liquid helium, "is Jeremy X."

"Oh my God, " someone whimpered into the sudden, ice-cold silence. The galaxy's most notorious terrorist allowed that silence to linger for what seemed a small, deadly eternity. Then his lips moved in a smile which held no slightest trace of humor.

"Surrender, and you'll live," he said flatly. "Choose not to surrender, and you won't. Personally, I'd prefer for you to take the second option, but it's up to you. And you have precisely ninety seconds to make up your mind."