Crown of Slaves

first coherent orders to his own personnel. The security man's voice still didn't sound anything remotely like calm, but at least he sounded as if he was beginning to think, not simply dither, and that had to be an improvement.

Didn't it?

* * *

'Okay, Thandi,' Ruth Winton's voice said in Thandi's ear. 'Their military commander-his name's Arnold, if it matters-is starting to get his act together. Do you want a direct feed from his com link?'

Thandi managed not to roll her eyes. Anything less like proper military procedure than Ruth's idea of communications protocol would have been impossible to imagine. On the other hand, how often did a tactical commander have the opportunity to actually listen in on her opponent's instructions to her troops? Still…

'Not a raw feed,' she decided. 'I don't know enough about the station's internal layout to be able to interpret movement orders. It'd only confuse me if I tried. Captain Zilwicki?'

'Here, Lieutenant,' a deep voice rumbled.

'Please monitor the op force communications. Don't worry about the details. Just keep me informed of anything you think I should know.'

'Check,' Zilwicki acknowledged, but then he continued. 'Ruth's done a little better than you know, Lieutenant. She's not just into their communications net now. She's managed to tap into the visual pickups of their internal security systems.' Thandi could almost hear the savage smile in his voice. 'We can actually see their troops moving into position.'

'Can we, now?' Thandi murmured, and she had no doubt at all what Zilwicki heard in her voice.

'Indeed we can,' Zilwicki assured her. 'In fact, Ruth is still pulling in information, and it looks like she's just found the master schematic for the entire station. We're integrating now against the visual input from their security cameras. Give us another couple of minutes, and we ought to be able to begin giving you the other side's positions and movements.'

'Like fish in a barrel,' Thandi heard Lieutenant Colonel Huang murmur over the command net, and she nodded, not that anyone could tell from outside her armor.

'Yeah,' Zilwicki agreed. 'Pity, isn't it?'

* * *

Major Arnold, unlike Thandi Palane, didn't believe in leading his troops from the front. To be fair, it wasn't out of any particular cowardice. He simply saw no reason to leave his own command post. All of the space station's security systems reported to him there, which meant it was the best place from which to monitor the battle. And it wasn't as if his troops were the sort to inspire a commanding officer with the kind of mutual loyalty which led to nonsense like commanding by example.

'-sorry ass up to Level Twelve,' he said, glaring at the anxious face on his com screen. 'I've got Maguire's team covering the lifts on Ten and Eleven. But so far, it looks like these bastards have a pretty damned good idea where they're going and how to get there. So if you don't get up there in time to block Axial Three, the sorry sons of bitches are going to march straight past you into Command Central. Now move, dammit!'

The woman on his screen gave a nod somewhere between curt and spastic, and Arnold punched for a fresh connection to another of his team commanders.

* * *

Captain Zenas Maguire decided he'd been an idiot to ever sign up with Manpower, however good the money had been. Of course, it was beginning to look as if it were a bit late for second thoughts, but still-

He took one last look at the schematic of his units' positions and nodded to himself. It was the best he could do, and at least his teams of plasma gunners were positioned to make it suicidal for the attackers to approach along any of the main passageways. He hadn't actually seen any of the imagery of the initial break-in into the dock gallery, but he hadn't had to see it to realize that whoever was coming after him was a hell of a lot better trained than his people were. But at least the defenders were intimately familiar with the vast, labyrinthine maze of the space station's confusing internal passageways.

'What d' you think's going on?'

Maguire turned to look at Lieutenant Annette Kawana, his second-in-command. Kawana had once been a Solarian Marine sergeant, herself, although she hadn't exactly left the Corps on the best of terms.

'I think Manpower is about to get buggered,' he said flatly. 'And unfortunately, it looks like we're going to get the same, only harder.'

'What the fuck do they want?' Kawana demanded, and Maguire managed not to throttle her by telling himself that the question was obviously rhetorical.

'I don't know,' he told her with massive restraint. 'On the other hand, I think it might be good idea for someone to ask them that question. Don't you?'

* * *

'All right, Lieutenant. They're in position and settling down.' Anton Zilwicki's voice was a rumbling murmur, almost as if he were afraid the Manpower security goons might overhear him, Thandi thought with a flicker of amusement.

Of course, he's busy listening to them, so maybe it isn't quite as silly as it seems. Not that keeping his voice down is going to make any difference!

'Acknowledged,' she said, keeping any trace of humor out of her reply. 'Wait one.'

She checked her tactical display. Colonel Huang had been right about the fish and the barrel, she thought. Of course, it helped that the other side obviously couldn't have poured piss out of a boot without printed instructions on the heel. Thandi's Marines had been systematically knocking out the security scanners as they advanced, but by now it should have occurred to at least one of the Manpower morons that certain of her people had been dropping steadily out of sight.

Ruth Winton's penetration of the space station's surveillance net allowed her to do more than simply spy on the enemy. She'd also managed to compare the master schematic for the station to the surveillance coverage, and she'd discovered that the central ventilation system wasn't monitored at all. The access points were, but once the cameras in any given section of corridor had been knocked out, there was no way for anyone on the other side to know who-or what-might be slipping quietly into the ventilation shafts.

Seems like I end up crawling around the guts of every space station I go aboard, she thought sardonically. Maybe my lunatic ancestors included a little rodent DNA in the mix? She snorted. Not that I'm about to complain.

'Decoy One,' she said.

'Yes, Kaja?' It was Donald, in charge of the Ballroom gunmenwho continued ostentatiously, if slowly, advancing down the direct route towards the Manpower blocking position. She'd left a half dozen Marines to keep an eye on things, but it was Donald's command.

'We're just about ready,' she told him, 'but Lara's team is about four minutes behind, and you're only two hatches from contact. Slow down just a bit. We want them looking your way, not spooked, and she needs to catch up.'

'Understood, Kaja.'

'Kaja, clear.'

Surely by now someone on the other side should have noticed that over three-quarters of her battle-armored personnel had disappeared. She certainly would have. But maybe she was being a bit harder on them than was fair. They were getting only glimpses of the front of Donald's column before their visual