Torch of Freedom

Hugh Arai had seen no reason to dilly-dally about the business. They had to move quickly, in fact, or the simple and crude event-loop they'd reconfigured the camera and sensors to show would alert the slavers very soon, unless they were completely inattentive. So the BSC team went into the command center firing. Quite literally—Marti Garner, in the lead because she was the best marksman, had already shot two of the slavers in the center before she finished passing through the entrance.

Bryan Knight, coming right behind her, tossed flashbang grenades into the two corners of the large compartment that weren't in clear line of sight. Marti opened her eyes once the blast and flash were over, and quickly scoured the visible areas looking for opponents.

There was one woman behind a desk, looking very confused. She'd have been close enough to one of the grenades to be affected by it. Garner disintegrated her head—spectacularly—with a tightly focused burst of flechettes.

Hugh Arai was the third member of the team coming into the compartment. He was carrying a highly modified version of a tri-barrel pulser. The weapon was as close to a pistol version of a tri-barrel as Beowulf's military engineers had been able to design. It was a specialty gun, almost literally hand-made. Only someone of Hugh Arai's mass and strength could hope to use it effectively—or safely, for those accompanying him—and its ability to shred bulkheads might have caused some to look upon it askance in what amounted to a boarding action. The BSC was a great believer in providing for all contingencies, however. It was always possible that even slavers might have armored skinsuits available, after all, and despite its drawbacks, the weapon provided the unit with a scaled-down approximation of the sort of heavy weapons that a regular Marine unit would have carried.

Arai took position in the center of the compartment, while Garner and Mattes and Knight quickly inspected every area where someone might have been able to hide. But the place was empty now, except for the three corpses.

While they went about that business, Stephanie Henson sat down in front of the command center's operations console and began bringing up the relevant schematics and diagrams. She was swift and expert at the work, and within thirty seconds, she'd found what they needed. Less than a minute later, she'd bypassed the security locks and keyed in the instructions.

She leaned back in her chair. 'Okay, Hugh. The command center is now sealed off from the rest of the turret, along with all of the surrounding air ducts. The power source is independent already, so we don't have to worry about that.'

Arai nodded. 'What about slaves?'

Stephanie studied the console for a moment, and then shook her head. 'There are no signs of any occupants within five hundred meters of this command center except the eight people—maybe nine, if two of them are copulating right now—shown in the living quarters. One or more of them might be pleasure slaves, of course. No way to tell.'

'No internal cameras?'

'They've been disabled.'

Hugh grunted. That wasn't surprising. Nobody except military forces under tight discipline were going to tolerate active cameras in their living areas. The slavers had probably disabled those sensors decades ago.

He wasn't happy about the fact that he couldn't absolutely confirm that there weren't any slaves in the living quarters. But . . .

It was unlikely, given the obvious eagerness with which the slavers had reacted to the news that the Ouroboros' non-existent cargo had included pleasure slaves. And it was an imperfect universe. He wasn't about to risk getting any of his people killed in the course of a direct assault, on the off chance there might be a slave mixed in with the other occupants.

He spoke into his com. 'Take out the living quarters. Stephanie will guide the shots.'

They all turned to look at the screens above Henson's console which provided views of the turret from outside cameras. Stephanie began keying in locations. A short time later, the Ouroboros' concealed lasers began firing. It didn't take long before that area of the turret which contained the slavers' living quarters was blown to shreds. They were able to spot only two bodies being expelled by the outrushing atmosphere. But there was no chance that any of the slavers could have survived, unless they were already wearing skinsuits or battle armor—and Stephanie would have recognized those in her readings of the sensors.

'And that's that,' said Hugh. He spoke into his com again. 'Double-check the readings for any signs of life anywhere else in the station.'

After listening for a few seconds, Arai nodded. 'Okay, people. There doesn't seem to be anyone else alive in this place. So we can save ourselves a lot of work.'

Knight grinned. 'I love nukes. I swear, I do, even if I know it's wrong of me and I'm a bad boy.'

Henson chuckled. 'I can't think of any commando unit this side of an insane asylum that doesn't love nuclear warheads, Bryan—on those rare occasions they can use them.'

Arai spoke into his com again. 'Get the missile prepped. We'll be back aboard the Ouroboros within five minutes.'

* * *

Inside the maintenance compartment, three teenage boys took a deep breath in unison. That was almost enough to suffocate them, right there, as small as the compartment was.

'Oh, shit,' whispered Ed.

'Oh, shit is right,' echoed James.

Brice's mind was racing. There was no way to get in touch with Ganny without scrambling back through at least fifty meters of air duct. Their com units were designed for wire transmission, and the clan had never wired this maintenance compartment or any of the surrounding ducts. There'd been too great a risk of being spotted by the slavers.

It was probably a moot point, anyway, since they had no way of knowing where the commandos had sealed off the ducts from the rest of the turret. And even if it could be done, it couldn't possibly be done in time. Everything Brice had seen about this commando unit—whoever they were, which was still undetermined—indicated that they moved very quickly. In less than ten minutes, Parmley Station was going to be destroyed by a nuclear-armed missile.

He wasn't surprised that the Ouroboros' sensors hadn't picked up any signs of life in the station beyond the turret used by the slavers. The clan had spent decades carefully and systematically making sure that their whereabouts were kept completely hidden from any slavers who might be tempted to eliminate the need to pay the clan by launching a surprise attack on them. The Ouroboros probably had better sensors than anything the slavers possessed. But unless the people staffing those sensors had reason to think there was something to find, they weren't likely to have done the kind of careful cross- checking of data that would have been necessary to detect the clan.

In short, they were all going to be dead soon . . .

Anyway.

Brice decided he had nothing to lose. He started unsealing the panel.

'Hey, don't shoot!' he yelled. Yelped, rather. 'We're just kids!'

Ed and James would probably ridicule him for that later, assuming they survived. It would have been a lot more dignified to have called out something on the order of: Hold your fire! We are not your enemy!

But Brice had a dark suspicion that top-of-the-line military units were prone to shoot enemies first and determine who they were later. Whereas even hardened commandos might hesitate before shooting kids.

It was a theory, anyway. Best he could come up with on such short notice.

* * *

By the time Brice came out of the compartment, more-or-less spilling onto the floor beyond, all of the commandos had gathered around.

Well, not quite. One of them had 'gathered around'—that was the one with the slave markings—while the others had their weapons trained on him from various positions of cover.

On his hands and knees, he looked up at the huge commando. He didn't really see him at first, though, because his gaze was immediately drawn to the barrel of the man's weapon. Tribarrel, rather.