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"Ah, just think of it as a stroll down to the bagel shop," St. John (J) said. He cycled his bead ca
"Them was the days, wasn't they, Bro?" Mark sighed. "Do you know the muffin man ..."
"The muffin man, the muffin man," John replied.
"Do you know the muffin man," they chorused as the EVU packs picked up speed, rocketing them towards an anti-ship missile platform. A platform that probably would be heavily defended. "Do you know the muffin man, he lives in Drury Lane!"
* * *
"Got it," Jin called. He watched the data streaming out of the ship-sys and blanched. "Oh, no."
* * *
"Sergeant Julian, this is Pahner."
Julian leaned forward and sent a stream of heavy beads down the passage to cover Gro
"Go ahead, Sir," the sergeant gasped.
"There's bad news and worse news. The bad news is that this isn't a tramp freighter. It's a Saint Special Operations insertion ship under the command of one Colonel Fiorello Giova
"Oh ... pock. Commandos?"
"Greenpeace Division," Pahner confirmed. "And in case you didn't recognize the name, Giova
"Oh ... I—" Julian paused, unable to think, then shook himself. "Go ahead, Sir."
"This is where we get to the worse news," Pahner's voice said calmly. "Gu
"Oh. A full company?"
"Yes. They are, therefore, the current priority. If the Peacers get to the Armory, we are well and truly screwed, so we're just going to have to take care of them before we can reinforce you."
"Yes, Sir."
"Cover your back. Do not let reinforcements into the Bridge. By the same token, do not let the Bridge guards, who are almost the only ones with heavy weapons, out. Understood?"
"Hold what we've got. Nobody goes in, nobody comes out. Engineering?"
"Gu
"Got that in one, Sir. What's to stop them from taking off, Sir?"
"Nothing." Julian could hear the grim humor behind that single word. "Georgiadas reports that the drive is warming up under remote from the Bridge even as we speak."
"Yes, Sir." Julian licked his lips and cursed quietly. "Sir, I'll be asked. What in the hell are we going to do? I think I'd rather face the Kranolta again."
"I'm going to do the one thing that I swore to myself I would not, under any circumstances whatsoever, especially if things were bad, stoop to."
* * *
"Go! Go! Go!"
"Your Highness, just wait!" Dobrescu snapped. "Thirty more seconds to lift. That's the optimal window. So just sit the hell down and shut the hell up."
"Goddamn it!" Roger almost punched the display, but he remembered all those centuries ago, the last time he'd been in a cramped little compartment like this one in powered battle armor and gently tapped a control panel. Yet it was hard to restrain himself. Hard. The display showed that the thirty Marines who'd lifted off to the "tramp freighter" had been reduced to twenty-four already. At this rate, there wouldn't be anyone to rescue.
"Prepare for lift," Dobrescu called over the all-hands circuit. "Helmets on! You sc—Mardukans get ready. You're going to feel realll heavy. Three, two, one ..."
"Just hang on, Nimashet," Roger whispered. "Just hang on... ."
Four Marine assault shuttles, containing the Mardukan contingent of the Basik's Own, lifted skyward on pillars of flame.
* * *
"All units, hold what you've got," Pahner called. "The cavalry is on the way."
"Satan, protect us," Kosutic snapped as a team of commandos rolled across the corridor. She winged one, but the other three got away. "We're getting outmaneuvered and outshot, Captain."
"I've noticed," Pahner said calmly. "Suggestions?"
"Let Poertena and me take it to them," Kosutic said. "Having a mobile force will force them to react."
"I'll have a mobile force here in—" He consulted his suit. "Seven minutes."
"Seven minutes is a lo
Pahner sighed and nodded.
"That it is."
* * *
"Aaaahhh!"
"Oh, calm down, Rastar," Roger grunted. The shuttles still had the extra hydrogen tanks installed, and the plotted intercept had been calculated based upon that almost limitless fuel supply. So they'd lifted at three gravities and would hit a DV-Max of almost seven. For Roger and the pilots, that was simply very unpleasant. For the Mardukans, who had never experienced more than a couple of gravities during their limited micro-gravity familiarization flights, it was a nightmare.
They'd put all of them through at least one lift, but nothing like this. The humans had managed to convince themselves that there was no conceivable situation in which the Mardukans would actually be used for a combat assault, so they hadn't subjected them to the real stresses of such a launch. And now the Mardukans, and their allies, were paying the price for that complacent gentleness.
"All hands, remember, crunch!" Roger gasped. "Squeeze your stomach like you're taking a dump, but plug your butt." He glanced over at the telltales. "There's only another ... three minutes."
* * *
"I hate freefall," St. John (M) said as he hugged the hull of the ship.
Their EVU packs were gone, and the two Marines were now flat on their faces behind a tiny exterior catwalk. The first emplacement, a missile launcher, had been undefended. But by the time they made it to the second and last, a heavy plasma ca
"Mom always said we'd come to a bad end," St. John (J) said.
"Don't go all heroic on me, Bro," Mark said. "There's got to be a smart way out of this."
"In about thirty seconds, the prince is going to come over the horizon, Mark." John readied his plasma ca
"Oh, that's not hard," Mark said ... and stood up.
The first bead took him in the left arm. The heavy projectile smashed the ChromSten armor like tissue paper, severing the limb just above the elbow in a spray of gas and body liquids.
"Pock, not again," he gasped as he aimed his ca
* * *
"Pollution," Giova
"What does it take to kill these people? Who the fuck are they?"
"Sir," his com tech said, "you have got to hear this."