Wasteland of flint

The intruder alert continued to blare, now joined by the honking of a fire alarm. The hallway leading toward the galley billowed with sleepgas from Clavigero's RSM rounds. Tonuac's visor adjusted automatically, shifting into multispectrum range. The resulting gray-tinted image showed him unconscious men scattered in the corridor. No one seemed to be moving that way.

'Mop up,' he hissed at Clavigero, waving the Marine toward the ready room. 'Sureshot, remember. Use tanglewire.'

As the private loped off into the smoke, Tonuac glanced over at Felix, received the go-ahead and plucked a spare-eye from his belt. Sliding the hair-thin video camera around the corner, he watched the feed on a heads-up inside his visor. The enemy was gathering – the two men Clavigero had knocked down were gone, dragged away – and at least twenty miners were crouched along the walls. They had an amazing number of weapons to hand – but Tonuac didn't see a single man with a rocket launcher or in armor.

'Waited too long, my friends.' Tonuac laid the eye down on the floor so it could continue to transmit. He checked to make sure his shipgun was set to fire RSM, caught Felix's eye – she nodded, the Whipsaw raised – and poked the muzzle around the corner.

Instantly, the air curdled with the snap-snap-snap of beam pistols. The wall beside his head blew apart as plastic and light metal atomized. Tonuac felt the shockwave slap his shoulder and neck, but the absorptive composite of his suit shrugged the blow aside. His shipgun coughed twice and he scuttled back before someone hit him with something big enough to punch through his armor. Felix waited for him to clear her line of sight, then overhanded a tanglewire grenade into the adjoining corridor.

The whoomp-whoomp of the RSM rounds detonating amid the miners was drowned by a chorus of exited yelling. More thick gray smoke flooded the passage, disguising the detonation of the tanglewire. The grenade bounced once and then shattered. Thousands of monofilament spools unwound at near- supersonic speed. Adhesive thread-ends blew in all directions and dug deep into the bulkheads, overhead and deck on impact. Within six seconds the corridor was blocked by a misty, half-seen web of magnetically active wire. Wherever the strands touched they adhered and fused solid.

The tone of the fire alarms changed, dropping in urgency. Flame suppression foam flooded from vents in the ceiling, smothering the fires licking along the walls.

Tonuac held position, waiting for Clavigero to return. On general principles, he fired an RSM round down the other branch of the main hallway. More sleepgas and smoke billowed up, making sight difficult for anyone not already in combat armor or using goggles tuned to the 'clear' wavelengths designed into the Imperial smoke.

'Four minutes at the most, Chu-sa,' Felix reported, watching the v-feed from the spare-eye. The miners were milling about, confused by the smoke. Some of them had fallen down, overcome by the gas.

'Get me a directory.' Hadeishi attached the last of the relay leads to the desk. Now the local network could be directly accessed by the Cornuelle. 'And update our floorplans if you can.'

Understood. Smith's voice was already distracted, concentrating on overwhelming the refinery ship's security systems. Five minutes.

'Maratay – we need a way out.' Hadeishi consulted his handheld, then pointed at the upship-side bulkhead. 'Through there.'

The Marine nodded, slinging his shipgun. Between the two of them, they ripped away racks of data packs and printed books to get at the wall. Maratay dug into a thigh pouch and produced a reel of cutting gel. Hadeishi stood back, letting the private sketch the outline of a door.

'Kyo – they've seen the tanglewire.' Felix was still watching the corridor. Her chrono was spinning, counting the seconds. 'Someone's taken charge – they're falling back with a guard left behind. They'll flank us left, right, up, and down.'

'Smith-tzin?' Hadeishi started to scan through the schematics of the level above and below their position. They were inside the main hab area, which meant the overhead – in particular – was the deck of the room above. Their own floor lay atop a maze of service ducts.

Working…the midshipman replied. We have comm access. And registry information.

'Master's name?' Hadeishi crouched down, turning away from the upship-side wall. Maratay knelt as well, then triggered the electrostatic charge in the gel. Felix, still covering the outside passage, didn't even flinch as the bulkhead ruptured with a rippling, strobe-bright wham-wham-wham!

Ketcham, Tristan, R. Born Chatham, Duchy of Kent, Lower Skawtland, forty-three years old… Kyo, he's ex-Fleet! Discharged nine years ago.

'Clear,' Felix barked and Maratay knocked the broken section of wall into the next compartment. Hadeishi waited for the Marine to sign the room was safe, then ducked through the opening. The new compartment was filled with racks of comp equipment. Some of it was on fire, ignited by the blast. 'Tonuac, Clavigero – let's go!'

Hadeishi stood aside, away from the burning equipment, while Felix slid into the room, her Whipsaw drifting from side to side, a tireless shark. 'Smith, pull his service record. I need reason for discharge. And get me those deck plans.'

Working.

Tonuac bounced in, his armor spattered with smoking, still-molten plastic. Maratay and Felix were already at the far side of the room, trying to clear racks of equipment away to get at the wall. In the first room, Clavigero darted in and spun into cover. Stabbing bolts of beam weapon fire followed, setting the walls alight again. The Marine found a refractive grenade on his belt, pitched the stubby cylinder into the passage and rolled forward through the breach in the wall.

Another crump! followed and the main passageway filled with a cloud of metallic flakes.

Nozzles opened in the overhead of the equipment room and Hadeishi's environment sensor started to squeak about lethal levels of carbon monoxide outside his suit. Ignoring the alert, the chu-sa strode to the far end of the room. 'We've got to go up,' he snapped at Felix. 'Schematic says there's a laundry on the other side of that wall on this level. We'll never get through.'

Susan's voice interrupted his train of thought. Kyo, we have a tap on their shipside comm. Ketcham took a voluntary discharge after being denied promotion to command rank. Hadeishi heard a pause in her voice, and guessed the rest even before she continued in a clipped, angry voice. He filed a letter of protest with Fleet, claiming a Mйxica officer of lesser demonstrated ability received command of the heavy cruiser Dundee in his stead. Thai-sa Four-Mountain was named as the other officer.

'Understood.' Hadeishi understood perfectly. He'd even met the captain of the Dundee once. A fine example of the high-clan patronage endemic to Imperial capital ship squadrons. Four-Mountain wasn't a bad commander today, but he would have been very, very inexperienced nine years ago. Probably best suited for an exec's slot, not an actual Fleet command. For an aggressive commander, for a man wanting to make his life in the Fleet, being passed over in such an obvious way would have been hard to swallow. Ketcham was neither the first nor the last officer who'd left the service after being snubbed in favor of someone closer to the Seven Hundred Clans.

While he was thinking, Felix and Tonuac had made a hand-and-hand brace. Maratay climbed up, bracing one leg in their grasp and the other against a rack-array of data packs. The little Rajput drew a fresh circle of cutting gel on the ceiling.

'Wait one,' Hadeishi said to Felix after Maratay dropped down to the deck again. 'Stand by. Smith – patch me onto the shipside comm, direct channel to Ketcham if you can pick out his ident code.'

There was a pause. Things seemed to have quieted down outside. Mitsu presumed this meant the miners were preparing to attack their position by some means. He unsealed his sidearm holster.

You are in-circuit, Susan said and a confused babble of voices flooded Hadeishi's earbug.

'Not here, Paulson,' Ketcham barked, turning on the riggers crowding the hallway behind him in their z-suits, gloves clutching beam cutters and wrenches. 'Go round to the 6-D gangway and up to level thirty-six. Secure the rooms above the 78-H junction and make sure they don't burn through the roof and move up a level.'

Confused but spoiling for a fight, the riggers turned around and ran off down the passage.