The Honor of the Qween

Sir!'

Hart turned towards him, and Manning tensed to spring. But then he made himself relax, for there was at least one other armed man behind him.

The com officer leaned over the helmsman's shoulder and punched controls. Nothing happened, and he straightened to snarl at Manning.

'What did you do?' he demanded.

'Me? Nothing at all. Maybe PO Sherman did something before you murdered him,' Manning grated.

'Don't lie to me, you fucking heretic!' Hart hissed. 'I don't—'

An alarm shrilled, then another, and another, and his head twisted around in disbelief as Tactical, Astrogation, and Communications all went down at once. Warning lights and crimson malfunction codes glared on every panel, and Manning smiled thinly.

'You seem to have a problem, Lieutenant,' he said. 'Maybe you peo—'

He never heard the crack of Hart's pistol.

* * *

Captain Yu took a chance on the lift. He didn't have time to play safe, and Valentine and DeGeorge covered the passageway with drawn pulsers while he fed in his personal ID override and punched their destination.

'In!' he barked, but someone shouted even as they obeyed, and bullets spanged off the closing lift door.

'Shit!'

Valentine spun away from the door, clutching his left thigh, and Yu swore as he saw the wet, red stain. DeGeorge shoved the engineer down and ripped his trouser leg wide, and Valentine groaned through clenched teeth as he probed the wound with rough haste.

'I think it missed the major arteries, Captain,' he reported quickly, then looked down at Valentine. 'It's going to hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, Jim, but you'll be okay if we can get you out of here alive.'

'Thanks for the qualifier,' Valentine gasped. DeGeorge laughed—a hard, sharp sound—and more cloth ripped as he fashioned a crude bandage.

Yu listened with only half his attention, for his eyes were locked on the lift position display. It blinked and changed steadily, and he started to feel a bit of hope, then punched the wall as the display suddenly froze and the lift stopped moving. DeGeorge looked up at the sound of his blow and raised an eyebrow even as he knotted Valentine's bandage.

'Bastards cut the power,' Yu snapped.

'Just to the lifts, though.' Valentine's voice was hoarse, but he raised a bloody hand to point at the status panel. The red light which should have indicated emergency power was dark, and his face twisted with more than pain. 'Reactors're still up,' he panted. 'Means Joe didn't make shutdown.'

'I know.' Yu hoped Mount was still alive, but he had time to spare the lieutenant only a single, fleeting thought. He was already wrenching up the decksole to get at the emergency hatch.

* * *

Major Bryan paused just inside the closed service crawlway hatch to catch his breath and wished fervently that he had some way to see through it. But he didn't. He and his men just had to go in blind and hope, and that wasn't the way Bryan had survived to become a major.

'All right,' he said quietly. 'I'll go right. Marlin, you go left. Hadley and Marks are with me; Banner and Jancowitz are on Marlin. Understood?'

A soft chorus of grunts answered him, and he gripped his flechette gun and rammed his shoulder into the release lever.

The hatch slammed open, and Bryan went through it in a dive. He hit on his belly, brain already noting people and positions, and fired his first shot even before he stopped sliding.

His weapon burped, and its bundle of flechettes screamed down the boat bay gallery. A Masadan officer exploded across the armorplast bulkhead in blood and scraps of tissue, and his three rifle-armed men whirled towards the Major in terrified surprise.

The flechette gun burped again, and again, so quickly only one of the Masadans even had time to scream before the razor-edged disks ripped him apart, and the Havenite personnel they'd been holding at gunpoint hurled themselves to the deck. Another flechette gun coughed to Bryan's left, this time on full auto, and Masadan firearms crackled in reply. He heard the wailing keen of ricocheting bullets, but he was already walking his own fire into the Masadan reinforcements trying to force their way through the boat bay hatch.

His flechettes chewed them into screaming, writhing hamburger, and then Hadley tossed a boarding grenade from behind him. The fragmentation weapon went off like the hammer of God in the confines of the passage beyond, and suddenly no one else was trying to come through the hatch.

Bryan climbed to his feet. Marlin was down, bleeding heavily where a rifle slug had shattered his left arm, but it could have been far worse. He counted at least eighteen dead Masadans, and the bastards had found time to herd over twenty Havenites into the boat bay for safe keeping.

'You men find yourselves weapons,' the Major snapped, gesturing at the blood— and tissue-daubed Masadan rifles and pistols cluttering the deck. Shaken personnel scrambled up to obey him, and he punched his com. 'Young, Bryan. We're on our position. What's your status?'

'I've got thirty-two men, including Lieutenant Warden, Major.' The cough of flechette guns and rattle of rifles came over the link with Young's voice. 'We're taking heavy fire from One-Fifteen and One-Seventeen, and they've cut One-Sixteen at the lift, but I blew the Morgue before they got in.'

Bryan's mouth tightened. The armory was cut off from the rest of the ship. That meant no more of his men were going to be able to join Young there, and the fact that Young had been forced to destroy 'the Morgue,' the powered armor storage and maintenance area off Passage One-One-Five, meant the people he did have were going to have to fight in their own skins.

'Load up with all the ammo and weapons you can carry, then pull out,' he said harshly. 'Meet us here—and don't forget your going away present.'

'Yes, Sir. I'll remember.'

* * *

Alfredo Yu glided headfirst down the inspection ladder, grasping an occasional rung to pull himself along while the counter-grav collar hooked to his belt supported him. DeGeorge's people had cached a dozen collars under each lift at Yu's orders before Thunder ever arrived in Endicott, and the captain blessed his foresight even as he cursed himself for letting Simonds sucker him this way.

He glanced back up the lift shaft. DeGeorge had rearguard, with Valentine sandwiched between them. The engineer was still game, but his white face was sweat-streaked and his trouser leg was dark burgundy, and he needed both hands to cling to the ladder.

Yu reached a cross-shaft and checked the markings, then pulled himself into it. The shafts were only dimly lit, and his eyes ached from staring into the gloom, but the last thing he needed was a hand lamp to give himself away if any of the—

Something rattled ahead of him. His hand flew up, stopping the others, and he swam silently forward, left hand poised to snatch a handhold while he cradled his pulser in his right. Something moved in the dimness, and his free hand locked on a rung to anchor him against the recoil as he raised his pulser. His finger squeezed—then relaxed as he realized the three men in front of him were unarmed.

He swam slowly closer, and one of them saw him and gasped a strangled warning. Heads snapped up, faces turned, and then he saw them twitch in relief.

'Captain! Are we glad to see you, Sir!' a petty officer called, and his low-pitched voice warned Yu to keep his own voice down as he swam right up to them.

'We were headed for the boat bay, Sir,' the noncom continued, 'when we almost ran right into an ambush. They've got the lift doors open at Three-Niner-One.'

'Have they, now?' Yu murmured. DeGeorge arrived behind him, towing Valentine. 'Any idea how many men they've got with them, Evans?'

'Maybe half a dozen, Sir, but they were all armed, and none of us—' The petty officer gestured to his two companions, and Yu nodded. 'Jim, give Evans your pulser and collar.' The wounded engineer handed his gun to the petty officer, then started digging magazines out of his pockets while Evans unbuckled his grav collar. Yu looked at