* * *
"I hate freefall," St. John (M) said as he hugged the hull of the ship.
Their EVU packs were gone, and the two Marines were now flat on their faces behind a tiny exterior catwalk. The first emplacement, a missile launcher, had been undefended. But by the time they made it to the second and last, a heavy plasma cannon, the Saints had suffered a rush of common sense and sent one of their few "free" heavy weapons to protect it. The ship-to-ship cannon itself couldn't depress far enough to engage the Marines, or they'd already have been reduced to constituent atoms, but the heavy bead gun that had popped out of the firing port had them well and truly pinned. Because of the angle it had, they couldn't even back up and swing around.
"Mom always said we'd come to a bad end," St. John (J) said.
"Don't go all heroic on me, Bro," Mark said. "There's got to be a smart way out of this."
"In about thirty seconds, the prince is going to come over the horizon, Mark." John readied his plasma cannon. "So you've got exactly twenty seconds to figure something out."
"Oh, that's not hard," Mark said ... and stood up.
The first bead took him in the left arm. The heavy projectile smashed the ChromSten armor like tissue paper, severing the limb just above the elbow in a spray of gas and body liquids.
"Pock, not again," he gasped as he aimed his cannon one-handed at the base of the defensive platform and locked the trigger back.
* * *
"Pollution," Giovannuci whispered as he turned away from the display. The armored form had taken three bead rounds before the plasma platform went up, but it was still firing. Whoever it was had to be dead. But he kept firing until Emerald Dawn' s last space defenses turned into floating bits of wreckage.
"What does it take to kill these people? Who the fuck are they?"
"Sir," his com tech said, "you have got to hear this."
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
"Saint ship, this is His Highness Prince Roger MacClintock. Cease resistance to this legal boarding, and you will be detained for eventual repatriation as prisoners of war. Continue your resistance, and you'll be considered unlawful combatants under the laws of war. In two minutes, I will be performing a forced boarding with the remainder of Prince Roger's Own. You have until then to comply."
* * *
"Is there any indication which shuttle that's coming from?"
"Negative, Colonel Giovannuci. It's being rebroadcast from all four."
"Pity," Emerald Dawn's commander murmured, then shrugged. "Put me on."
* * *
"Approaching shuttles, be aware that the prince is dead. He was killed in a shipwreck. So you're not him."
Roger looked at the communicator and shrugged.
"Believe what you will, but the report of my demise was exceedingly exaggerated. One minute, twenty seconds."
* * *
"If we surrender, they'll probably do what they say," Beach said over the discrete command channel. "These can't be jackers. Only Imperial Marines are this precise. Its Empies, all right."
"And that means it might be the prince," Colonel Giovannuci mused. "But it doesn't really matter. If we surrender and they repatriate us, the clerics will send us to the wall. The only real choice is to win."
He considered the situation, regarding the monitors covering the three main fights. He knew that Beach, like most naval officers assigned to SpecOps, resented the tradition which put Army officers in command of the ships assigned to them. He was even prepared to admit—privately—that the Navy's arguments against the practice might have a point when it came to naval actions. But this was his sort of fight, not Beach's, and he thought about his options for a moment longer, then looked up at the commando lieutenant at his elbow.
"I don't like them holding the Bridge passage. I want some freedom of movement. Take some of the Bridge guards and work around to the other side of them. Then we'll try to nutcracker them between us—clear them out and get ourselves some room to maneuver. While you get into position, I'll be dealing with this pompous oaf."
* * *
"Prince Roger, or whoever you are, thanks for the offer. But, no. I think we'll take our chances."
Roger shrugged again and flipped the schematic to show the approach vectors.
"Have it your way. See you in a few minutes." He changed frequencies and nodded at the image of Fain that appeared on the monitor. "Captain, when we dock, send one platoon to the Bridge, one to the Armory, and one to Engineering."
"As you command, Your Highness," the Diaspran said.
"I'll be going to the Bridge. I recommend that you take one of the other locations." Roger turned to the Vashin who shared the compartment and waved a hand. "Rastar, I want your guys to head for the boat bays, but other than that, just spread out and slow down these Saints that are trying to sneak their way to the Armory. Send one unit to Captain Pahner, though, for him to use as a reserve."
"Okay," Rastar said as the acceleration finally came off. "That's a relief," he added with a sigh of bliss as the shuttle changed to freefall.
"Don't get used to it," Roger advised ... just as the deceleration hit.
"Aaaaaaahhhh ..."
* * *
"Colonel, we're getting killed down here," Beach said. "I've slipped a few people through to the Armory, but they're just making up for our losses. We're stalemated."
She looked at her schematic and shook her head with an unheard snarl.
"And we've got somebody moving around. I just lost a team by Hold Three."
"I know," Giovannuci replied, watching his own displays. The internal systems hadn't been designed to handle a pitched battle, but he'd been able to use the monitors to follow at least some of the action. Not that very many of them were left; the invaders had been systematically shooting them out. He could more or less tell where they'd been from the breadcrumb trail of smashed pickups in their wake, but not, generally, where they currently were.
"The bad news is that they're about to receive reinforcements," he told his executive officer. "We need to break the stalemate before that happens, or at least to get some mobility going for us."
"Suggestions are welcome," Beach said tartly.
"About the only thing that might work is hitting one of the defense points and breaking out," the colonel said. "It will only take a couple of minutes to get set. We'll hit them simultaneously in five minutes."
"Works for me," Beach agreed laconically. "And I hope to hell it works for all of us. If the Empies don't kill us, the clerics will."
* * *
Eva Kosutic slid along the passage, using her turned-up audio and movement sensors to search for hostiles ... and trying very, very hard not to let anyone on the other side know where she was. The majority of the Saints were in light body armor and skin suits, so fairly light weaponry was capable of penetrating it with carefully aimed fire. In her case, she'd loaded one of her dual magazines with low-velocity penetrator rounds. Designed to avoid damage to important systems in shipboard actions, they left a very small hole in their victim and didn't tumble or expand upon entry. But they were capable of defeating light armor points and portions of helmets. And for Eva Kosutic, that was all that was required.
Her sensors told her there was another group moving along the same passage, trying to infiltrate past the various Marine groups to the Armory. She looked around, and then lifted herself into an overhead position, holding herself in place against the deckhead with one hand and both legs planted.
* * *
"I'm going to send all these Pollution-damned Empies straight to Hell," Sergeant Leustean said. The commando NCO twisted his hand on the foregrip of his bead rifle and snarled. "Straight to Hell."