had just come out of a cruiser that ferried twenty-one transports crammed into three overcrowded landing bays. With a little creative packing, we could have fit a thousand transports inside one these behemoths.
The barge did not have landing bays. It was designed for quick evacuations; and the slow act of towing transports in and out through launch tubes and atmospheric locks did not fit the mode. The hulls of the barges were dotted with landing pads, hard points with magnetic clamps and retractable entryways. These ships did not have weapons or shields. They were leviathans, giant whales traveling the galaxy, defenseless against attack.
The first four transports to leave the spy ship had to fly double duty. While the rest of the transports docked, they would return to the cruiser for a second set of Marines, who they would deliver to a second barge. The transports themselves were meaningless. Even if everything went according to plan, we would lose them when we broadcasted out. They would fall from the clamps along the hulls of the barges like flakes of dead skin.
Our transports touched down on the landing pads, and the entryways automatically extended. They attached to the rear hatches of our transports, creating a seal. I reminded myself that entering the barges would, in theory, be no more difficult than entering a grocery store.
Time was of the essence. I left the cockpit, breezed across the short catwalk, and slid down the ladder. As lieutenants and sergeants organized the platoons, I made my way to the hatch.
The muffled bang and thud of the struts touching down sounded through walls, and the metal floor bounced and settled under our feet.
There we stood, in the dark metal can that was our military transport, our ranks organized into fire teams, squads, and platoons, our M27s ready in case of resistance.
My heart pounding hard and steady, my combat reflex already begun, I stood at the front of my company, like a private on point duty, my finger already over the trigger of my gun as I watched the doors of the transport slowly grind open.
Since the barge had hundreds of landing pads along its hull, there was no way a skeleton security patrol could have guarded every entrance, so it was no surprise when the hatch opened to an empty tube.
From that point on, I would no longer speak to the entire team on an open frequency. A designated coordinator would take control of the mission. The platoon leaders called the shots with their men.
We charged down the entryway—two platoons, each with its own commanding and executive officers. I led the way. We were one hundred men entering a ship designed to ferry 250,000 people at a time.
The entryway was a hall wide enough for ten men walking side by side. As I ran ahead, the shifting field of gravity played with my balance. The floor was a gravitational field that twisted along the outside wall like the thread of a screw. What had been the ceiling when I entered the tube became the floor twenty feet in. To the men behind me, it must have looked like I was running upside down. When I reached the exit, the orientation of the entryway floor matched the deck of the barge.
Though I had seen the barges during the evacuation of Olympus Kri, I had never set foot on one. The grand size of it took me aback. Maybe it would look smaller crowded with people; but seeing the long, empty deck overwhelmed my senses. It looked like an unfinished spaceport. The floors were flat and wide and open. The glint of naked aluminum girders accented the ceiling. The walls were so far away that they seemed to press themselves into a distant horizon. The frame supporting the deck above us was so low that I could reach up and touch it. Had Freeman come on this mission, he might have bumped his head every few steps.
Dozens of spiraling stairwells twisted up from the floor like giant corkscrews. There was no furniture.
Since I had assigned myself to point position, Major Ritz expected me to report. He asked, “General, do you see anyone?”
“Either they’re hiding in the heads or this deck is secure,” I said. “Head” was Marine-speak for bathroom.
“Aye, sir, I’ll send a couple of men to flush out the head.”
I started to laugh at the man’s juvenile pun, then realized that he had made the pun inadvertently. “You do that. We don’t want anyone sneaking out from behind the toilets.”
“Aye, sir.”
Then I said, “Tell your men to stay alert. If there’s anybody on this bird, they’re going to hit us as we go up the stairs. That’s how I would do it. The stairs or the cockpit.”
“Stairs and cockpit, aye, sir,” said Ritz.
A couple of men split off to check the toilets, the rest of us started toward the stairs. That was when the shooting began.
Ritz divided his men into platoons, then he broke the platoons into squads, allowing him to cover eight sets of stairs at one time. The spiral stairwells were a natural bottleneck. Even worse, they were a bottleneck with a blind spot. Anyone climbing the stairs would be defenseless as he passed through the ceiling and entered the floor above.
The stairs were wide enough for three men to climb at a time, but we stuck to procedure, offering up a point man who peered from the top of the stairs into the next deck as a vulnerable gopher climbing out of its hole.
We sent men up eight flights of stairs, and every single one came rolling back down with blood leaking from large holes in his helmet. The men guarding this bird used guns with bullets. That was good. It meant they were wearing standard armor. If they’d been wearing shielded armor, they would have fired flechettes that left little pinprick holes.
On any other mission, we would have lobbed grenades up the stairs. We would have hit them with grenades, then come running in on the heels of the explosions to mop up any survivors. We couldn’t do that on this mission, though. We needed the barge in working condition. Even a low-yield grenade might cause the walls to buckle in this enclosed environment.
As Major Ritz pulled his men back, I sprinted aft, away from the action. As wide as the barge was, built to carry ten thousand passengers on each of its twenty-five decks, there were hundreds of sets of stairs. They’d need an entire battalion to cover every set of stairs on a bird this big.
I sprinted a couple of hundred yards to reach the far side of the deck and climbed the last set of stairs. I crept up quietly, paused just below the ceiling, my finger on the trigger of my M27. I peered up from the top of the stairs and saw a wideopen floor. I spotted the unfriendlies, but they were a long way away and very distracted at the moment. They did not notice as I continued up the stairs to the next deck.
I called Ritz once I was safely stashed one floor above the disputed deck. “Do you read me?” I asked.
“General.”
“Got any flash grenades?” I asked as I crept across the empty deck. I lay on the floor and stared down a stairwell at the attackers. They were not dressed in armor. I got the feeling they were maintenance, deck sweepers, and latrine wipers ; but I could not get a count of their numbers.
“Yes, sir.”
“Lob a couple up the stairs, then give me a few seconds to clear out the debris,” I said.
Flash grenades did not make a violent percussion. They might burn the floor, but they would not blow holes in walls or change the air pressure.
“Are you up there?” asked Ritz.
Borrowing a tactic from Freeman, I answered the question by ignoring it. Instead, I told him, “Make sure your grenadiers know which pills to throw; we can’t afford to damage the ship.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Ritz, make sure your men don’t shoot me when they come up the stairs. I’m the only one wearing combat armor.”
“Aye, sir,” said Ritz.
I activated the tint shields to protect my eyes as I lay still and waited. Two, maybe three, seconds passed, and the explosions began, brilliant flashes that changed the atmosphere from brightly lit to blinding. I only saw a trace of the flash through the tint shields. The glare evaporated quickly, and I switched back to tactical vision as I leaped down the stairs.
The two nearest men to me lay squirming on the floor. I shot one. The other climbed to his feet, leaving his
