Wasteland of flint

passageway, running as quietly as he could to catch up.

Hadeishi caught a glimpse of a broad passage lined with working, reasonably clean overhead lights. There were even 3v posters of beaches and wooded mountainsides on the bulkheads. Tonuac punched the access plate of a door facing them as Felix and the chu-sa reached his side. The two Marine privates were crowding in behind, shipguns covering the hallway in either direction.

The door hissed opened and a man – a crewman with short, sandy hair and an armload of briefing binders in his arms – stepped through into their midst.

Hadeishi froze, startled. Felix smashed the butt of the Whipsaw into the man's face without so much as a heartbeat's hesitation. The miner jumped back with almost equal speed and the gunstock slammed into his binders. They flew everywhere in a spray of paper and diagrams.

'Intruder…urk!' The man's scream was cut off abruptly. Felix seized the throat of his braided jacket, lifted him bodily – an easy task for her suit – and flung him back through the hatch. Tonuac had already leapt ahead – the map showed a cross-passage leading to a maintenance shaft which rose to the bridge deck – and slewed to a halt, cursing.

Instead of a narrow, pipe-lined corridor, there was a ready room with an entertainment center, a wet bar and four very startled-looking miners. The clerk crashed past the Marine and took out a card table in a clatter of shattering plastic and plywood. The other men leapt up, shouting in alarm.

'Other way,' Hadeishi and Felix shouted simultaneously. Tonuac short-stroked the trigger on his shipgun and jumped back through the doorway. A sharp bang! flung a room-suppression munition into the compartment. The miners scattered away from the bouncing black sphere.

'Portside,' Felix shouted, shoving Hadeishi past her. Maratay darted ahead, still concentrating on the hardwire spooling out in a silvery ribbon behind him as he ran. The heicho cranked a round from the Whipsaw into the access panel for the compartment door. A violent, concussive boom followed and smoke billowed out of the wall. A second, muffled whoomp followed hard on its heels as the room suppression munition blew apart inside the ready room.

'Schematic is offset ten meters,' Hadeishi commented into his throat mike as they charged down the corridor. 'Reset and relay to my handheld.'

Maratay skidded to a halt at another compartment door. 'This one?'

'Knock it in,' Felix shouted, waving Clavigero past. Tonuac had already dashed ahead of the chu- sa to take flank-point. The little Rajput Marine swung the comm relay onto his shoulder, hoisted up his gun and jammed the access keypad with the muzzle. The door cycled open.

An alarm began to blare, filling the corridor with eardrum-crushing noise.

Maratay sighed. The maintenance corridor was stacked floor to ceiling with crates. 'No go!'

'Keep moving,' Felix said, shoving her chu-sa ahead. 'Go to access route plan three.'

They jogged forward and suddenly a wide cross-passage opened to the right. Men in dark-blue uniforms were running toward them, overhead lights gleaming from steel-gray weapons. Hadeishi leapt aside and back – there'd been a compartment door – shouting 'Sureshot! Sureshot!'

Tonuac and Felix had already spun to cover the new threat. Both froze as the chu- sa's order registered. Maratay threw himself out of the line of fire, staying on task, but Clavigero skidded into the open and his shipgun twitched sideways automatically. His finger clenched tight and a burst ripped from the weapon, filling the side-corridor with a stuttering series of sun-bright flashes.

Hadeishi threw the wardroom door aside with his shoulder and rolled in. A man rose in surprise from a computer station, a still-smoking tabac dangling from his lip. Maratay rolled the other way, flipping the hardwire around the doorframe. Mitsu realized no one else could deal with the miner and sprang across the table separating them.

The man shouted, fell backward over his chair and Hadeishi jammed him to the deck with the point of his elbow. The suit-magnified blow slammed the man's head into the carpet, stunning him. Encapsulated in complete, unhurried calm, Hadeishi rolled the miner over and pinned him with a knee. 'Maratay – restraints?'

The Marine tossed over a set of zipcuffs from a pouch at his belt.

Outside, the echo of Clavigero's shipgun had been swallowed in a roar of beam weapon fire. A lurid red glow flooded the hallway. Felix and Tonuac dropped through the door and swung to covering positions. A smoking, scarlet beam licked past, searing a three-meter scar on the opposite wall. The heat of the blast singed Hadeishi's combat suit, but his hands did not pause in securing their prisoner.

'Chu-sa?' Felix hissed, gesturing for Hadeishi's attention. 'We've got to break out of here. Get ready!'

'Wait one,' Hadeishi said, making a sharp quelling motion. 'Clavigero?'

Here, kyo. The man's voice was harsh with adrenaline. I'm in the main corridor, fell back to the last space-frame.

'Hold position, Marine.' The chu-sa clicked his throat mike. 'Kosho, how many men in the cross-corridor?'

Six, two down. Susan's voice was refreshingly cool in his earbug. He had a very clear mental image of her in the command chair on the bridge of the Cornuelle, watching the combat v-feed with dispassionate, professional interest. More will reinforce from the galley area.

Hadeishi caught Felix's eye. The heicho was very tense and seemed ready to leap out into the corridor and take the miners on with her bare hands. 'Sureshot, Heicho. No casualties.'

'Two down now, Chu-sa,' she replied, eyes flicking between his face and the angle of the corridor she could see. 'Their blood will be up. N is high.'

Hadeishi nodded. Fleet training assumed every operational plan would reach a point of failure at an indeterminate point of time offset from the 'go' moment. The possibility of failure was termed 'n', which began accumulating even before operational kickoff. Some planning officers believed n accumulated for individuals as well – eventually your day came and there was nothing you could do to erase the failure-debt you'd accumulated. 'Clavigero – suppress the backside corridor. Felix – exit options?'

The heicho dragged out her handheld, scanning through the level schematics. Outside, there was a sharp coughing sound as the Marine in the passageway fired two RSM rounds down the main corridor toward the galley. Hadeishi could hear men shouting in the distance, but their voices were drowned out by a heavy whoomp-whoomp!

'We're backed up against a bulkhead here, kyo.' Felix pointed at the rear wall. 'But both sides lead into other compartments… What's he got?'

Hadeishi rolled the unconscious miner over. His name tag read GEMMILSKY and the tag for his ship department indicated he was a system tech. Eyes narrowing in consideration, Hadeishi rose, stepping to the miner's computer display.

'Ship's librarian,' he said slowly. 'Maratay – get the relay over here and jack in. Felix, we need some breathing room.'

'Hai, Chu-sa!' Felix signed to Tonuac. The Zapotec craned his head to look outside, muttering under his breath to Clavigero. The Marine out in the hallway replied, but Hadeishi was concentrating on disassembling the desk. Maratay reached in, handing him a spare multitool and between the two of them they had the tabletop unscrewed as fast as humanly possible.

'Susan,' he said, stripping a dust cover away from the comp unit hidden in the desk, 'get Smith on this circuit. We need to break into their shipside comm.'

Understood. A soft chime sounded as the midshipman came on channel. Standing by.

Hadeishi identified the comm interface and Maratay handed him a cluster of adhesive leads. Been a long time since I had to do this, Mitsu thought, his thoughts blurring into action as quickly as he could find the circuit ports and nudge the leads into place.

Under the watching snout of Felix's Whipsaw, Tonuac darted out from the door and across the passageway to the opposite bulkhead. Parts of the deck and junction facing were on fire, spilling a bitter, acidic smoke into the air.