35
“Incoming missile destroyed, sir!” Zhou reported excitedly.
“Excellent work, Zhou,” Liu said. If there were a time to give praise to build morale, now was it. “Is the platform recycling?”
“Affirmative, sir. Capacitor banks are recharging and the emitter is cooling,” Zhou said with a self-assurance he hadn’t displayed before. “It will be several minutes before it can discharge again.”
Liu already knew that but indulged him for now; the young man had just taken direct control of their remote laser platform and successfully taken a snap shot that destroyed an imminent threat. He would be in line for a commendation when this was over. “Very good, Lieutenant. Make their shuttle your next target. It is a nuisance we do not need.” He turned to Wu. “Activate the primary fire-control radar and target the Borman’s propulsion module. The time for gloved hands is past us. If Simon Poole does not hand over control of his ship to Captain Huang, then it will not leave this orbit.”
A new alarm sounded in the control cabin, a shrill warbling tone. “Radar lock!” Wylie said. “They’re painting us, sir.”
Which Poole fully expected, but it was no less disturbing. “Spin up the PDCs.”
“Damage control protocols?” Wylie asked, a procedure they had drilled repeatedly but whose possibility had always seemed remote, at least from hostile fire.
“Negative. Don’t depressurize the habs yet,” Poole commanded. He waited by the engineering station, watching the external camera feed from the port airlock. “I’ll take care of that myself.” He pressed the mic switch for his headset, calling to Garver on their secure channel. “Take them, Chief. We’ll set up the others for you.”
Garver answered with two rapid mic clicks. He and Rosie each lined up their sights on a PRC spacer, the ones with the bulky maneuvering packs taking stations above opposite sides of the med module. Crosshairs and range markers appeared in their visor, heads-up projections from the targeting lasers on the carbines mounted to their chest packs. Garver looked in her direction.
“I’ve got the guy on the right, Chief,” she said, anticipating the question.
“I’ve got the left,” Garver said, and checked a setting on his MMU. “Recoil compensation?”
“Active, Chief.”
“Copy. Take the shot on three.” Garver rested two fingers on the M55’s big paddle trigger, an abomination to an earthbound marksman but a necessity for shooting in a bulky pressure suit with limited dexterity. He steadily increased pressure as he counted down. “One . . . two . . .”
On three, he felt the thump of recoil and the shot of compensating maneuvering jets push at his back. There was puff of fire as the caseless 10mm round erupted from the muzzle, almost immediately landing where the glowing crosshairs in Garver’s visor sat: center of mass on a PRC spacewalker hovering about five meters to the left of their big P-3 airlock door. For a moment, Garver wondered if the guy would’ve considered himself lucky to be shot while parked just outside of the only emergency medical unit in this part of the solar system. Clouds of red and white mist erupted from the suited figure, spraying his vital fluids and oxygen in a bloody arc as he spun about from the impact.
To Garver’s right, the other sentry was having perhaps even worse problems. Rosie had flinched, grabbing her trigger paddle with a hair too much force. Instead of a clean shot through her man’s center of mass, the round had pierced his combined life-support and maneuvering pack. He was clearly still alive and in one piece, flailing for control as his MMU sent him tumbling. With one hard bounce against Borman’s hull, he went spiraling into space behind a cloud of violently expelled maneuvering gas.
“Rosie, report.” It was Garver.
Rosie gritted her teeth and cursed. Her instinct was to go after him: She was a rescue spacer, not a shooter. What the hell was wrong with these people? Did they really think we were just going to let them take our ship? And what was the deal with that TIE fighter or whatever the hell it was they’d hidden at RQ39?
“Rosado,” he said firmly.
“Right side is secure,” she said, and swallowed hard. “Threat . . . neutralized.”
“Left side secure,” Garver said. “Stand by for action,” he announced to the team.
Captain Huang checked his team inside Borman’s big emergency-receiving airlock, then began comparing the reality of it to his mental notes from their intelligence reports. While the ship’s specifications were perfunctorily classified, much of it had been crafted from the kinds of multipurpose modules American contractors had spent years building for NASA. How they functioned and were connected was no mystery; how they were configured inside was another matter. It had taken some work to pry those secrets loose, but with so much American technology based on Chinese products he assumed prying those secrets loose had only taken marginally more work. What he had seen so far had been predicted accurately enough to confirm his suspicions.
He searched by the inner door and quickly found the cabin controls, a touch-screen system that should open up views of the rest of the ship. He navigated through its short menu using the English phrases he’d memorized, though so much of it was graphic that he’d had little need for them. Finding the environmental controls was easy, as was pinpointing their location relative to the rest of the pressurized modules. The door would be held in place by the nearly sea-level 14 psi air pressure. Stronger than any lock they could have devised, it was a smart move.
As he moved to vent the module ahead, clearing their way inside, a shout in his earpiece stopped him cold. It sounded like Chen. He would have corrected Chen for abandoning radio discipline but for hearing him exclaim what sounded like “ambush.”
“Chen, report!” Huang called. “Specify your location!”
“Off structure, no control sir! We have taken enemy fire and they disabled my maneuvering pack!”
“Where is Sergeant Gao?”
“Unknown, sir.” Chen gulped, as if trying to keep his stomach down. “I could only get a brief glimpse of him.” He paused. “I apologize, Captain.”
Huang immediately called for the other sentry. “Sergeant Gao, report!” he repeated, but there was no answer. He looked back at the remainder of his team, who had heard the entire exchange. The men were ready, he decided, and primed for a fight. They were about to get one.
“Charge weapons and prepare to board,” he said. As they racked the bolts on their vacuum-proof QBZ bullpup-style carbines, he moved to clear their entry by depressurizing the rest of Borman.
Simon Poole locked down his helmet and made his way down the corridor, stopping in front of the medical bay. The inner airlock door at the far end was still closed, with a PRC breaching team on the other side. They could either pressurize the ’lock and get in, or vent the rest of the ship. That held the advantage of disabling or isolating the crew that they had to presume were still aboard; if he were a doorkicker for the bad guys, that’s what he’d do.
He tapped an intercom control on his wrist, calling Wylie in the command deck. “You’re still buttoned up, right?”
“Roger that, Skipper.”
“Good. Stand by.” He reached out for the med bay’s door just as he saw a status light above the far hatch turn amber. Air whistled by him as the bay began to vent its atmosphere. Here they come.
Simon pulled the door shut along its sliding track and dogged down the latch, sealing off the rest of the ship for now. He watched a nearby environmental panel—it turned red, signifying the med bay was now in vacuum. He waited to see them open the inner door, giving them enough time to get it fully open.
He locked his feet beneath a restraint loop in the floor and took a deep breath, counting to three. He grabbed the latch and heaved it open.
Air exploded around him as the entire ship’s atmosphere tried to vent at once through that single door. The med bay swirled in chaos as the PRC boarders scrambled for any handhold they could find before being swept back into space.
Poole slapped his mic switch as they tumbled out into the void. “Garver!” he shouted. “Weapons free!”
Muzzle flashes erupted from the surrounding debris cloud, giving away the team’s positions. It was a risk they had to balance against trusting the enemy to not behave like an enemy, and that was a loser’s bet. Their fire converged in a cloud of lead, turning the space outside the P-3 airlock door into a killing zone.
The howling wind subsided as the remainder of Borman’s atmosphere vented into space. Now in vacuum himself, Poole reached for the door to pull it shut and repressurize the ship. As he did, a gloved hand thrust out from behind it to grab him.