LEVIATHAN WAKES

“We are moving with all speed to the keel elevator banks,” Kelly said through the radio link. “They’re locked down because of the boarding alarm, but I can get the doors open on one and we’ll float down the shaft to the hangar bay. Everything is on the double. If you see boarders, do not stop. Keep moving at all times. We’ll handle the hostiles. Roger that?”

“Roger, Lieutenant,” Holden gasped out. “Why board you?”

“The command information center,” Alex said. “It’s the holy grail. Codes, deployments, computer cores, the works. Takin’ a flagship’s CIC is a strategist’s wet dream.”

“Cut the chatter,” Kelly said. Holden ignored him.

“That means they’ll blow the core rather than let that happen, right?”

“Yep,” Alex replied. “Standard ops for boarders. Marines hold the bridge, CIC, and engineering. If any of the three is breached, the other two flip the switch. The ship turns into a star for a few seconds.”

“Standard ops,” Kelly growled. “Those are my friends.”

“Sorry, El Tee,” Alex replied. “I served on the Bandon.Don’t mean to make light.”

They turned a corner and the elevator bank came into view. All eight elevators were closed and sealed. The heavy pressure doors had slammed shut when the ship was holed.

“Gomez, run the bypass,” Kelly said. “Mole, Dookie, watch those corridors.”

Two of the marines spread out, watching the hallways through their gun sights. The third moved to one of the elevator doors and started doing something complicated to the controls. Holden motioned his crew to the wall, out of the firing lines. The deck vibrated slightly from time to time beneath his feet. The enemy ships wouldn’t still be firing, not with their boarders inside. It must be small-arms fire and light explosives. But as they stood there in the perfect quiet of vacuum, everything that was happening took on a distant and surreal feeling. Holden recognized that his mind wasn’t working the way it should be. Trauma reaction. The destruction of the Canterbury,the deaths of Ade and McDowell. And now someone had killed Shed in his bunk. It was too much; he couldn’t process it. He felt the scene around him grow more and more distant.

Holden looked behind him at Naomi, Alex, and Amos. His crew. They stared back, faces ashen and ghostly in the green light of their suit displays. Gomez pumped his fist in triumph as the outer pressure door slid open, revealing the elevator doors. Kelly gestured to his men.

The one called Mole turned around and started to walk to the elevator when his face disintegrated in a spray of pebble-shaped bits of armored glass and blood. His armored torso and the corridor bulkhead beside him bloomed in a hundred small detonations and puffs of smoke. His body jerked and swayed, attached to the floor by magnetic boots.

Holden’s sense of unreality washed away in adrenaline. The fire spraying across the wall and Mole’s body was high-explosive rounds from a rapid-fire weapon. The comm cha

“Inside!” Kelly shouted. “Everybody inside!”

Holden held back, pushing Naomi in, and then Alex. The last marine-the one Kelly had called Dookie-fired his rifle on full auto at some target around the corner from Holden. When the weapon ran dry, the marine dropped to one knee and ejected the clip in the same motion. Almost faster than Holden could follow, he pulled a new magazine from his harness and slapped it into his weapon. He was firing again less than two seconds after he’d run out.

Naomi yelled at Holden to get into the elevator shaft, and then a viselike hand grabbed his shoulder, yanked him off his magnetic grip on the floor, and hurled him through the open elevator doors.

“Get killed when I’m not babysitting,” Lieutenant Kelly barked.

They shoved off the walls of the elevator shaft and flew down the long tu

“Dookie isn’t following us,” he said.

“He’s covering our exit,” Kelly replied.

“So we better get away,” Gomez added. “Make it mean something.”

Kelly, at the head of the group, grabbed at a rung on the wall of the shaft and came to a jerking stop. Everyone else followed suit.

“Here’s our exit. Gomez, go check it out,” Kelly said. “Holden, here’s the plan. We’ll be taking one of the corvettes from the hangar bay.”

That made sense to Holden. The corvette class was a light frigate. A fleet escort vessel, it was the smallest naval ship equipped with an Epstein drive. It would be fast enough to travel anywhere in the system and outrun most threats. Its secondary role was as a torpedo bomber, so it would also have teeth. Holden nodded inside his helmet at Kelly, then gestured for him to continue. Kelly waited until Gomez had finished opening the elevator doors and gone into the hangar bay.

“Okay, I’ve got the key card and activation code to get us inside and the ship fired up. I’ll be heading straight for it, so all of you stick right on my ass. Make sure your boot mags are off. We’re going to push off the wall and fly to it, so aim straight or you miss your ride. Everyone with me?”

Affirmative replies all around.

“Outstanding. Gomez, what’s it look like out there?”

“Trouble, El Tee. Half a dozen boarders looking over the ships in the hangar. Powered armor, zero-g maneuvering packs, and heavy weapons. Loaded for bear,” Gomez whispered back. People always whispered when they were hiding. Wrapped in a space suit and surrounded by vacuum, Gomez could have been lighting fireworks inside his armor and no one would have heard it, but he whispered.

“We run for the ship and shoot our way through,” Kelly said. “Gomez, I’m bringing the civvies in ten seconds. You’re covering fire. Shoot and displace. Try and make them think you’re a small platoon.”

“You callin’ me small, sir?” Gomez said. “Six dead assholes coming up.”

Holden, Amos, Alex, and Naomi followed Kelly out of the elevator shaft and into the hangar bay and stopped behind a stack of military-green crates. Holden peeked over them, spotting the boarders immediately. They were in two groups of three near the Knight,one group walking on top of it and the other on the deck below it. Their armor was flat black. Holden hadn’t seen the design before.

Kelly pointed at them and looked at Holden. Holden nodded back. Kelly pointed across the hangar at a squat black frigate about twenty-five meters away, halfway between them and the Knight.He held up his left hand and began counting down from five on his fingers. At two, the room strobed like a disco: Gomez opening fire from a position ten meters from their own. The first barrage hit two of the boarders on top of the Knightand hurled them spi

Kelly folded up the last finger on his hand, planted his feet on the wall, and pushed off toward their corvette. Holden waited for Alex, Amos, and Naomi, then shoved off last. By the time he was in motion, Gomez was firing from a new location. One of the boarders on the deck pointed a large weapon toward the muzzle flash from Gomez’s gun. Gomez and the crate he’d been taking cover behind disappeared in fire and shrapnel.

They were halfway to the ship and Holden was starting to think they might make it when a line of smoke crossed the room and intersected with Kelly, and the lieutenant disappeared in a flash of light.

Chapter Fourteen: Miller

The Xinglongdied stupid. Afterward, everyone knew she was one of thousands of small-time rock-hopping prospector ships. The Belt was lousy with them: five- or six-family operations that had scraped together enough for a down payment and set up operations. When it happened, they’d been three payments behind, and their bank-Consolidated Holdings and Investments-had put a lien on the ship. Which, common wisdom had it, was why they had disabled her transponder. Just honest folks with a rust bucket to call their own trying to keep flying.