Laser fire snapped from farther aft, sending one Marine tumbling backward, out of control. Russian marines were on the flagbridge, high up, at least relative to the command bridge deck plan, and aft, just as on board a USNA carrier. They were firinginto America’s Marines as the blast doors between command and flag bridges slowly rumbled shut. Half a dozen of McDevitt’s Marines managed to launch themselves through space and grapple with the Russian defenders, as others blew the blast door circuits with fast-repeating bolts from their plasma weapons. The doors jammed, still halfway open. Several Russian defenders were down, the others now surrendering. The air was thick with smoke, and with the screams of injured men.
McDevitt pushed off from the forward bulkhead and sailed through to the flag bridge. “Where’s the admiral?”
“The Captain First Rank is gone,” a Russian marine said. He was bloodied, his arms raised. “You won’t find him. . . .”
McDevitt scowled. It was imperative that they nail this thing down and assume full control of the ship as swiftly and as economicallyas possible. If the Moskva was anything like American carriers, there would be a secondary bridge located somewhere aft and buried in the ship’s interior,as well as alternate control centers in the Combat Information Center and in Primary Flight Control. These ships were huge,and this one might well have a crew on board of five thousand or more.
And McDevitt had fewer than 400 men and women at his immediate command.
USNA CVS America
CIC
N’gai Cluster
1632 hours, FST
Gray was in America’s CIC, aft of his flag bridge, a darkened compartment filled with intense men and women, their faces stage-lit by illuminatedscreens and data feeds.
“Colonel McDevitt reports both flag and command bridges on board the target are secured, Admiral,” Commander Randall Billingsly reported. Direct in-head communications had been interrupted by the electronic logistics of the engagement, but they were still in contact with Reaper through radio and laser-com links. “The ship has not formally surrendered yet.”
“That means he didn’t catch their admiral,” Gray said. “Not good.”
Several screens in the CIC were showing Marines’-eye views of the action over there, a confused jumble of images, health sensorreadouts, and status checklists. This was the battle’s critical moment. If McDevitt couldn’t take control of the Moskva and, by extension, of the Russian squadron, then they were still dangerously deep in excrement.
Elsewhere, the USNA fighters had been redirected to engage the four surviving Russian destroyers, but losses so far were heavy.On the Moskva, the Russians would be fortifying themselves in secondary command and control centers all over their ship. It was entirelypossible, even probable, that the Moskva would be able to continue fighting even after losing both flag and command bridges.
And Gray wanted to avoid that if at all possible.
CIC
CIS CV Moskva
N’gai Cluster
1642 hours, GMT
The aliens were a lot more bearable inside their combat armor, Oreshkin thought. The sight of those faces he found to be just about unbearable. The Moskva had picked up thirty-six of the creatures at 70 Ophiuchi and was almost home with them when he’d been redirected to interceptthe America carrier battlegroup. Nal Tok and its strike group, Oreshkin mused, had likely been surprised at having a 17-light-year jumpabruptly changed to one of tens of thousands of light years and extending into the remote past.
But then, it was difficult reading emotions in these militaristic monsters. Who could know what they were thinking? Or feeling.
In battle armor, they looked almost human: three meters tall, headless, with a torso stooped over and level with the ground, and digitigrade legs that gave themthe hulking gait of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Though still monstrous, the armor masked the face riding beneath the thing’s shoulders—thoseindependently swiveling stalked eyes and the churning mass of unidentifiable mouthparts. Two arms were three-fingered andmassive; the third, upper arm was actually a part of that mouth, a kind of lower lip that could unfold for a meter forward—withcrushing force.
“You know what to do, Nal Tok?” Oreshkin asked over the comm channel.
“Of course,” the being replied, its voice a rumble rich in cringe-inducing infrasonics. “We kill humans!”
“Not Russians! Just the Americans!”
“What’s the difference? Humans are all alike to us!”
Oreshkin couldn’t tell if it was joking or not. Did these creatures even understand the concept of humor?
Then, “They are here, Oreshkin. We go. . . .”
Leaving Oreshkin to hope for the best. He’d let the djinn out of its bottle, with no guarantees about the outcome.
Strike Force Reaper
Marine Battalion 3/25
N’gai Cluster
1649 hours, FST
“According to the deck plans we downloaded, this passageway should lead to the CIC,” Hanson told him. He sounded worried.
“We copy you on the right path,” McDevitt told him, checking the schematics. “CIC is down that passageway and ninety degreesto the side.” He didn’t tell him left or right, because such distinctions were meaningless in zero-G.
“Roger that. But . . . shouldn’t we attack?”
“Negative! We’re loading Konstantin-2 up here, and once he’s in place we’re going to try to talk them down. You copy?”
“Copy, Colonel. I just don’t like being a sitting duck in an empty passageway!”
“Protect yourselves if you come under fire. Otherwise, wait until I give you a go.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
McDevitt was still on the flag bridge, which he was converting into a forward combat command center from which he could takeover a kilometer and a half of starship. It was not going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. The ship had myriadcutoffs and secondary systems; you couldn’t just order the ship to blow itself up or to shut down the environmental system,because there were backups and workarounds and
