Crown of Slaves

sensors were knocked out, after all.

She watched her display, suppressing any sign of impatience, while she waited for Decoy Two to get into position. It wasn't Lara's fault that her group had fallen a bit behind the others, and the ex-Scrag was working hard to make up the differential.

There!

'All Tango-Lima-Alpha units, this is Kaja. Standby to execute on my command.'

She waited two more heartbeats, then-

'All units, execute!'

* * *

Zenas Maguire settled deeper into his selected position. There wasn't any such thing as a good position from which to direct the defense of such a complicated tangle of passageways and corridors, so he'd had to select the best one he could find. At least it was more or less centrally located in his area of responsibility.

Unfortunately, it appeared that the attackers were headed directly for the same position, almost as if they knew that it lay at the center of his dispositions. Which was impossible, of course.

He watched the imagery from the cameras covering the last hatch between his people and them, and his belly was a hollow, singing void. He'd never expected to face serious combat as one of Manpower's hired guns. That was one reason he'd taken the job. He was tired of getting shot at for the miserly pay of a Silesian Army lieutenant, and making sure that a bunch of slaves didn't get uppity had seemed a beguiling change of pace. Not to mention how much better the money was.

Well, I guess what goes around, comes around. Whoever these people are, they obviously don't much like Manpower, which means they aren't going to like anyone who works for it, either. So the only way to save my ass is to save Arnold's and Takashi's. The sorry bastards. If they'd done their jobs properly in the first place, none of us would-

Something clanged behind him. Metal on metal, his mind reported, but what kind of metal? He started to turn towards the sound, and a blur of motion caught at the corner of his eye.

His attention flicked towards it, and both eyes began to widen in disbelief as he saw the deck-to-ceiling ventilation grate lying on the deck and the Solarian Marine, battle armor in heavy-assault configuration, striding out of the opening.

Zenas Maguire's eyes never finished widening all the way, and his brain never quite completed the identification of what he saw, because the trigger finger of Corporal Jane Borkai, Company Bravo, Second Battalion, 877^th Solarian Marines, closed the circuit on her plasma rifle first. That 'rifle' was a cannon in all but name-the sort of weapon only someone in battle armor could carry-and the ravening packet of plasma it sent screaming across the compartment wiped out Maguire, Kawana, six more of Maguire's personnel, eight bulkheads, two blast doors, three main power conduits, a sanitation main, two fire suppression control points… and all trace of central command among the defenders.

Five other ventilation grates were kicked open almost simultaneously, and five other Marines-two of them armed 'only' with heavy tribarrels-bounded through the sudden openings and opened fire. They appeared in the midst of Maguire's carefully chosen defensive positions, like demon djinn conjured out of nothingness, and their fire was devastatingly accurate. Maguire's troopers outnumbered their attackers by at least three-to-one, and it didn't matter at all. Not when Ruth had been able to steer Thandi and her Marines into positions of such crushing advantage. Almost half the defenders were killed in the first four seconds of Thandi's attack, and the sudden, totally unexpected savagery was too much for the traumatized survivors. Their stomach for combat died with their commanders, and weapons thudded to the deck amid frantic offers of surrender.

* * *

Homer Takashi watched in gray-faced shock as the green icons of friendly units vanished from his display with sudden and terrifying finality. How? How could anyone do that? It was impossible! Unless-?

The ventilation system! That was the only possible avenue, the only way people in something as bulky as battle armor could have avoided the main corridors. But that was still impossible! For it to work, the attackers would have to have known the internal layout of the space station better than people who'd lived and worked aboard it literally for T-years!

Not that it mattered. However they'd managed it, they'd also timed it perfectly. Arnold had divided his available strength into four well chosen blocking positions… and the attackers had maneuvered into position to take all four of them out simultaneously. In the space of less than ten minutes, effectively every defender, aside from the single platoon Arnold had held out as a tactical reserve, had been eliminated. And even as Takashi watched the illuminated schematic of the station, whole sectors were turning from green to bloody crimson as the invaders fanned out towards the fusion rooms, life-support, the com section… and Central Command.

And then the illuminated schematic disappeared, and Takashi swallowed hard as a beardless face replaced it. He certainly hadn't ordered the display reconfigured for communications, and a cold, numb suspicion of just how the enemy had become so intimately familiar with the internal geography of his space station filled him.

Not that he had much opportunity to digest the thought. Even as he stared at the screen, the cold-eyed man on it opened his mouth… and stuck out his tongue.

Takashi's breathing stopped. Every voice in the command center fell instantly still. The only sound was the subdued beeping of com channels and emergency alarms. Then the face on the screen spoke.

'My name,' it said, in a voice of liquid helium, 'is Jeremy X.'

'Oh my God,' someone whimpered into the sudden, ice-cold silence. The galaxy's most notorious terrorist allowed that silence to linger for what seemed a small, deadly eternity. Then his lips moved in a smile which held no slightest trace of humor.

'Surrender, and you'll live,' he said flatly. 'Choose not to surrender, and you won't. Personally, I'd prefer for you to take the second option, but it's up to you. And you have precisely ninety seconds to make up your mind.'

Chapter 46

'CIC confirms the outer platforms' reports, Sir.' Commander Blumenthal's quiet voice only seemed loud in the quiet of Gauntlet's command deck. 'Three light cruisers, two heavy cruisers, one battlecruiser, and fourteen destroyers.'

'Still nothin' from them, Lieutenant Cheney?' Michael Oversteegen asked calmly.

'Not a word, Sir,' the com officer confirmed.

'But they're not exactly makin' a secret of their identity, now are they?' Oversteegen murmured rhetorically.

'You could put it that way, I suppose, Sir,' Commander Watson agreed with a slight, sardonic smile.

The twenty incoming ships hadn't transmitted any messages or challenges-not yet. Except for one. Their com sections might not be saying anything, but they were making absolutely no attempt to hide their approach, and every one of them was squawking the transponder code of the Mesan Space Navy.

'Now, I wonder just what they could want?' Oversteegen responded to his XO, and several people surprised themselves with chuckles. It was the first time any of them had felt a great deal like chuckling over the last three standard days.

'Well,' the captain continued after a moment, 'I suppose that if they're not goin' t' be courteous enough t' open communications, then it's up t' us. Be kind enough t' put me on mike, Lieutenant.'

'Aye, aye, Sir,' Cheney responded, and tapped a stud at her console. 'Live mike, Sir.'