Although I’ll bet today’s escapade might change that. Dieter nodded to his team. “Ready, team. Steersman, we go on ‘three.’ Cycle the valve in one, two, THREE-”
The iris valve at the front of the boarding pod contracted out of the way with a shuddering hiss-and they were in tiger-country. Dieter revised that assessment after a quick look through his thermal imaging goggles: they were in dead tiger country. To an unpracticed eye, it would have appeared to be the aftermath of a fevered abattoir nightmare, but knowing the sequence in which the hull had been breached and entered, Dieter had a precise forensic understanding of what he was seeing.
The lowest layer of kzin corpses, barely visible under the others, had been the first to die: they were both blasted and pulped. These were the ratcats who had been tasked with intercepting whatever came out of the human pod that had been sighted boring through this part of their hull. God knows what they expected to achieve beyond suicide. The gravitically tamped breaching charge had blasted in against them with the force of a 250-kilo bomb, then there had been explosive decompression tugging them right back out an instant later, until the pod made its hard-dock. There wasn’t much left of that first kzin welcoming committee.
The second scattering of corpses was piled atop the first. These were more conventionally riddled and dismembered: the late responders, or maybe simply those with enough self-control to hang back around a corner until all the carnage of the initial boarding was over. They had, however, come face to face with the first packages to emerge from the small payload bay at the front of the pod: small, self-propelled cluster-bomblet robots, most of which, like bees, had destroyed themselves in making their attack.
The third, less numerous and more scattered, group of corpses, were those that had run into the gunnery sergeant’s remote-operated attack drones. More responsive than simple robots, these partially autonomous systems had gunned down any remaining defenders, and were now watching Dieter’s flank and rear.
He glanced up to check his HUD’s objective locator guidon and aimed his hand aft. “This way. Follow me.”
Despite all the precautions and the support robots and ROVs, Alpha Team still had some problems. About halfway to their goal, they had a short, sharp meeting engagement with a trio of kzinti who had evidently been moving aft to protect the objective area. It had been a point-blank firefight, the muzzles of the contending beamers and coil guns almost touching as they discharged. The humans got off the first shot, accomplishing that only because the point-man’s thermal-imaging goggles showed a split-second haze of approaching body heat before the lead kzin came around the corner. The savage fight lasted four seconds, and Dieter’s one casualty wasn’t even inflicted by weapon fire: it was a melee kill. The unfortunate trooper’s coil rifle had taken off the gun hand of a kzin only two meters away. It had also punched a hole, big enough to see daylight through, through his right lung. But without breaking its stride, the kzin closed and scooped out the trooper’s Adam’s apple with one sweep of his remaining, claw-sprouting hand. Then the rest of Alpha Team reduced him to a riddled and seared mélange of orange fur and red blood.
Just before reaching their objective, Alpha had another gunfight, which lasted longer due to the team’s intentionally decreased firepower. Rather than take any chances, Dieter had already ordered that two of his remaining five men go over to non-lethals. It simply didn’t make any sense to get so close to the objective, only to destroy it themselves.
But the kzinti facing them-either because their communication was down, or because they were still trying to adapt to the rapidly changing scenario-did not anticipate that there would be a whole new contingent of human boarders converging on the objective. So when the six commandos of Gamma Team arrived, unbloodied and alert, they made quick work of the remaining kzinti defenders.
Dieter now cautiously scanned the wide, high-ceilinged objective area: it looked vaguely like a gymnasium. “Report.”
The response “Clear” came from the four point men moving gingerly among structures that looked like a cross between jungle-gyms and torture devices.
Dieter toggled his open channel. “All teams, Alpha and Gamma are at the objective. Beta Team, continue toward rendezvous. All other teams, converge into defensive positions ringing objective, as per op order ‘Sierra.’” Dieter used his chin to choose his own team’s tactical channel, and discovered that there was already too much chatter on it. “Pipe down. Sergeant Aquino?”
“Yes, sir?”
“On me. Let’s see what we’ll be dealing with.”
As it turned out, there wasn’t much to deal with at all. They easily found the door leading into the terminal objective: it was completely unlike the efficient naval architecture and fittings that surrounded it. The doorway was an irregular frame of crude, hand-beaten brass, distressed to impart the impression of great age. It was what Dieter would have expected at the threshold of a dragon’s lair. Which, on reflection, pretty much defined the room his team was about to enter.
Naturally, it was locked and he had no doubt that the mechanism was sturdy. But not sturdy enough to shrug off his gravitically tamped charges. His demo specialist was almost done with setting the four-point package when Aquino, whose ears probably rivaled those of their kzinti opponents, held up a hand. “Wait. I hear something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at the brazen-bound portal. “Almost like-rabbits screaming.”
Dieter felt the hair on the back of his neck stand suddenly erect as a chill washed through him. “Finish and blow the package.”
“But sir-”
“Do it. NOW!” Dieter scrambled back. “Fire in the hole!”
Three seconds later, as the demo specialist dove past him, the charge went off with a shuddering roar, followed by a metallic clangor as the brutally twisted doorframe went cart-wheeling away.
And in the wake of that sound arose mewling cries of confused, mortal terror-counterpointed by what sounded like a ragged chorus of snarling sobs.
Dieter leaped up and toward the deformed, blackened doorway. “On me, all numbers!”
Aquino and one of his troopers were through the door before Dieter, but they lagged to a halt as they crossed the threshold, not understanding what they were seeing at first. But Dieter had anticipated this, had argued with the command staff to have it included in the training materials, had worried about it from the moment he had been given the clearance to see Dr. Yang’s full report. So he was the first to act.
He brought up his needler and dumped half a clip of its tranq-gelatin wedges into the closest kzin female, who was about to tear off the head of her own kit. She swayed, but the drug didn’t take effect fast enough. Her raking claws were off the mark, but still lethal-just not clean and swift. The small kit, no more than four weeks old, dropped to the deck, shriek-mewling, one of his lungs and much of his intestines spilling out.
Damn it: they’re too strong to succumb to the drugs immediately. Now if they’d given me the high-octane non-lethals I’d asked for-but that was all spilt milk. And Dieter had no time to cry over it. “Switch back to lethals. Two-tap the females-all of them.” He dropped his needler and snatched up his coil gun, already tracking across the loose throng of kzinretti and putting two rounds in each one that danced through his sights.
A moment later, his men followed suit. Some, lately arrived, did not understand the nuances of the situation, and actually shot a pair of kits. Aquino knocked their muzzles aside and shredded them with oaths as pointed and lethal as the projectiles of their own coil guns.
But critical damage had been done to the nursery’s precious population, overwhelmingly inflicted by the female kzin themselves. Walking through the litter of bodies, Dieter called out to the xenomed specialist every time he found a live kit. He did not call out very often. He worked deeper into the collective safehold of the harems of the senior flag officers.