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Gordy said, “Clear sky. Plan Delta. I say again, Plan Delta. Spacedock in ten…nine…eight—”

  Chapter Forty

  Stone shouted over the increased noise level. “Plan Delta, people. Weapons free.”

  Captain Vedrian, Lieutenant Hammermill, and every non-com in the shuttle bay echoed him.

  Stone did a quick look around him and gestured over his shoulder at Hector.

  Tuttle spun around, slapped Hector’s faceplate closed and flicked the safety off his hand-held external assault rifle. She gave him a quick thumbs up and disappeared behind her suit’s gilley setting.

  Stone reached over his shoulder and pulled his TDO-960A into position. His suit had much more powerful and deadly weaponry, but the old slug thrower felt comfortable. He clenched his jaw shut and flexed his knees. He wanted to bounce through the opening the minute Gordy threw the hatches open.

  The hatches blew open.

  As quick as the drascos were, they could have been through the hatches first, but they held their ground. Both platoons of Galactic Marshals poured through the hole, long since giving up the pretense of being simple deckhands. Each platoon consisted of sixteen men and women: one officer, three non-coms, and twelve deputies. They were divided into four deputies per fireteam with four teams per platoon. Allie and Hammermill led their platoons from the front. Allie was griping because Plan Delta allowed Hammermill’s platoon to rush through the door first.

  Plan Alpha was Preacher Mary’s favorite choice. It would have been implemented if active, mobile Hyrocanian warships were in the dock area. Then Mary could begin her sermons, preaching hellfire and raining damnation down on any enemy ship, while the Galactic Marshals jumped into the Vance for a combat insertion onto the spacedocks.

  Plan Bravo was everyone’s least favorite choice. It would have been implemented only if there were too many Hyrocanian ships in space near the docks. The plan called for the Platinum Pebble to make the fastest jump back into hyperspace they could manage and run for Lazzaroni.

  During their planning sessions everyone decided if Plan Alpha or Bravo were not required, they could only progress once it was known where the Platinum Pebble could snuggle up to the spacedock or if a shuttle ride was needed. Plan Charlie was designed for ground troops if the Platinum Pebble berthed somewhere in the middle. Allie’s platoon would disembark to starboard and Hammermill’s would turn to port. Plan Delta would be activated if Gordy could only find a free parking space at the end of a long row of ships. Kat Emmons’s computer spoofing programs would allow them to dock unnoticed.

  Stone frowned behind his faceplate.

  Jay asked, “What’s wrong, Mama.”

  Stone keyed his P.A. comms to his drascos only. “I just don’t like Allie getting so far ahead of us.”

  Peebee wonked in excitement. “Isn’t she always ahead of us?”

  Stone sighed, “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”

  Jay said, “Don’t worry. Our Hammer is leading the way. She will be safe.”

  Stone mentally shook his head. Hammermill was a thoughtful leader, but he never hesitated to commit to combat with both feet. If Hammermill got into trouble, it would be Allie who would have to pull his butt out of the fire. If Allie got into trouble, it would be up to him, his babysitter Barb, two civilians, and two raging drascos to get them all out of trouble.

  He stopped himself from racing forward as Numos’s team of civilian veterans activated their camouflage. Every one of them was more than happy to receive a Stone Freight Company specialty designed combat suit. UEN veterans were used to less-than-cutting-edge government suits so they spent time in suit simulations and practiced in the various empty warehouse bays and shuttle docks during the transit time. The last two weeks offered them additional time for intensive suit training.

  Stone clenched his teeth as he held his ground, barely able to keep from tapping his foot with impatience. The Galactic Marshals platoons were the blast front. It was their job to clear the docks of all hostile actors. Following them was every crewmember Numos could spare from ship operations. Their job was not to fight. They were to infiltrate every ship being built, to scuttle or secure it, depending on what they found. Each civilian, from Numos down to a second deputy engineering assistant, carried weapons, bags of explosives, privacy lockout dead bolts, and welding torches. They were to remain camouflaged and do as much damage as possible before any alarm was raised.

  Piglet suits did not have gilley settings. Either their technical engineers had not figured out how to reverse engineer that part of a combat suit or they had not had time to include it in their initial suit build. Stone was tempted to give the suit specs to his piglet engineers, even though giving human tech to non-aligned alien races had been one of the court-martial charges against him. After all, these piglets were on his ship. As far as he was concerned, that was as aligned with the empire as they could get.

  He looked over the piglets group. There were a lot more piglets on his ship than he realized. They milled about looking as anxious to get into the fray as he was. The piglets were required to hold back initially. If the drascos and piglets were seen it would spoil the advantage of surprise, a major concern for everyone except the drascos and piglets. All of them expressed their displeasure at having to wait.

  Peebee said, “Don’t be mad at us, Mama.”

  Stone asked, “Why would I be angry at you?”

  “It’s because Jay and I can’t become camouflaged. You could go invisible and go fight now, but we have to wait.”

  “Peebee is right, Mama. You, Barb, and Tim could disappear and go fight now while we and the piglets have to wait while we have the element of surprise. Even the FNG can do that with his new suit, but we can’t. When can we and the piglets get gilley settings?”

  Stone ignored the question about camouflaging the drascos. They were hard enough to keep out of trouble when you could see them. Instead, he asked, “Where did you learn to say FNG?”

  Jay wonked and said, “It’s right, isn’t it? Barb said means the Frakking New Guy. Hector is the Frakking New Guy, isn’t he.”

  “Yes, he is. But girls, it isn’t a polite thing to say.”

  Peebee snorted, “Why? He can’t hear us.”

  Stone turned and slapped Barb on the side of her helmet, keying his comms to speak to his small unit. “You taught my daughters to say FNG?”

  Barb grunted and rocked back on her heels. Stone could see a finger twitching on her suit’s left-hand missile launch trigger guard. Even her voice slipped into a higher register than normal. To Stone, it was evident she was not scared, but anxious to get into the fight and filled with adrenaline.

  “Yeah. I did. They’re part of our Galactic Marshals platoons and might as well talk like it. I taught them SNAFU, REMF, and GAF, too, just like I taught them blowjob, rimjob and handjob. You want—”

  She was interrupted by a vibration in the deck. The muffled whump of a heavy explosion barely registered in their audio pickups. The wailing warble of a warning alarm drifted through the open hatch from the Prophet’s spacedocks.

  Stone leaped forward in a suit-enhanced, muscle-fueled bounce, skimming low to the deck like he was flying low. He grinned, realizing his single bounce took him farther than the Wright Brothers on Old Earth had flown during humanity’s first airplane flight. As fast as he was, a gaggle of piglets beat him to the hatch. They scattered out of the way as Jay and Peebee barreled through the opening.

  A dozen piglets angled a bounce to come down on Jay and Peebee, each clinging to a strap or edge of the drasco’s armor. Bags of tools and the odd assortment of weapons jangled and jiggled as the drascos allowed the piglets to cling to their backs, much like his cousin Melanie had done once when they were just babies. Full grown, they could now carry more piglets than there were piglets to carry. Stone had not thought to ask Jay and Peebee to give rides to anyone. Aside from his personal relationship with the drascos, the piglets and drascos appeared to be more connected to each other than human
s were with either species.

  The spacedock corridor was massive. From deck to ceiling it was almost a hundred meters high and was the same distance from bulkhead to bulkhead. Alternating ramps to ships were visible into the far distance. Each ship had a kilometer of space between it and the next vessel. The corridor was clear of boxes, containers, and general dock debris at this end of the corridor. Stone’s HUD spun up to view farther down the corridor where all manner of goods and construction material was scattered in a jumble. Hoists, catwalks, cranes, and pulley’s clustered around each ship ramp. A wide, tracked delivery vehicle lay catawampus, its undercarriage still smoking from some explosion.

  The Galactic Marshals blast front had cleared the hatchway to half a dozen docking stations. Their scrawled markings over hatches signified what ships were clear of hostiles. Piglets swarmed into each one, heading to bridges and engineering decks to secure each one, plant explosives to scuttle the ships, make hasty evaluations of the ship’s readiness, report their findings to Gordy, and move on. The hatches to the ships also had human engineering markings.

  Stone saw smoke whirling through the air from above and caught sight of a fireteam moving through the corridor like specters through a graveyard at midnight. They must have been the rear guard as they each walked backward. A whump of new smoke and the vibration reverberating through the decks did not cause the rear guard to flinch or glance over their shoulders, as they poked and prodded weapons and spears of light into every nook and dark cranny.

  Each hatchway looked similar to the main hatch on the Rusty Hinges. They must have been made using the same blueprints. Without reviewing engineering compartments, Stone thought the ships looked complete and ready for delivery.

  Barb grunted. “Looks to me like if we waited for the navy to drag their sorry asses over here, the next time anyone saw these ships would be across a battlefield.”

  Allie’s voice rang in his ears, “Stone—civilians—starboard—docking ramp…eight.” Each gap was punctuated by a sharp report of gunfire.

  Stone shouted, “Okay, team. On the bounce, dock eight, starboard side. We have reports of civilians. Let’s see if we can gather up a few of the empire’s lost sheep.” He finished the sentence in midair as he bounced in long, low strides. Checking his HUD, he noticed that Hector had fallen behind. The man was bouncing too high and losing forward momentum. He was about to shout, when Jay doubled back, caught the FNG at the bottom of a bounce and carried him forward at drasco speed.

  Stone would have reached the hatch long before Tuttle and Dollish could catch up to him by using his capabilities. But, getting too far ahead of your team was as stupid as not having any backup. He made his last bounce high to the ceiling of the spacedock corridor. Letting his TDO-960A rifle retract into its bracket at his back, he grabbed a catwalk stanchion with one hand and ramped up his suit optics to see through the smoke.

  Rolling his options through infrared, x-ray, visible light and other modes, he spotted what looked like a mobile Hyrocanian bunker about four kilometers ahead. The bunker was slowly rolling towards them on tracked wheels. Fireteams scrambled up bulkheads and ducked behind ship construction gantries. Seeking clear shots, they fired and ducked from the bunker’s return fire. Everything sent at the bunker exploded ineffectually or ricocheted off.

  The Galactic Marshals were too close, their angle of fire was restricted to the roof of the bunker.

  Stone selected the vidcast in his HUD display and channel hopped through dozens of visual signals until he found Hammermill’s video pick up. Turning up the sound, he heard the lieutenant shouting and gesturing at his fireteam.

  “Lee and Gunner, back up until you can get a decent angle to pop the lid on that bastard. I can’t get a shot into that tiny window from here. Nance, cover me. If Lee can’t get a quick shot, I’m going to shove a satchel charge right up his ass.”

  Stone said, “Sorry to interrupt, Hammer. Please duck, I got this.” He twitched a finger on his right hand, launching a rocket from a chamber over his left shoulder. The recoil swung him backward, but not enough to lose his grip on the catwalk. The rocket’s little engine curled smoke as it tunneled through the murky air. The infrared guidance did not need his attention. It was a point and shoot weapon that would go where aimed regardless of what Stone did after he launched it. But he watched anyway.

  The rocket danced slightly, getting pushed off course by an explosion from a hanging office complex between two ramps. The rocket curved back onto its initial course, not adjusting to the new angle, but turning back to its original line of attack and turning again. It arrowed straight through the bunker’s firing port.

  For a split second, Stone thought the rocket was defective. Through his audio connection to Hammermill, he heard a dampened blast. Rather than blow apart, the bunker expanded like a bellows before shrinking in on itself. A few quick pops later and it seemed to melt into a puddle. A hatch opened between the tracks on the bunker’s belly, but nothing and no one exited.

  Hammermill whooped, “Ooorah, navy! Now, you mind your own knitting and quit kicking sand on my toys.”

  Stone chuckled, “Aye, aye, LT. Sorry to spoil your fun.”

  Hammermill laughed, “Plenty more fun to—dammit, Lee. Don’t dance with that thing. Kill it. Like this—”

  Watching through Hammermill’s visuals, Stone saw the lieutenant reach around Lee and shove a suit gauntlet into the open mouth of the Hyrocanian. He twisted to break all four sets of teeth, grabbed something at the back of the alien’s throat and yanked it out. The view was temporarily blocked by Hyrocanian blood splattering across Lee and Hammermill’s faceplates. It cleared as the non-stick faceplate allowed the goo to run off like rain on a greased window.

  Hammermill said, “It ain’t fancy, but I learned that move from Ensign Stone. Works every time and I’ve been dying to get close enough to one of these four-armed freaks to try it.”

  Stone switched his HUD view back to his own team and relaxed his grip on the catwalk stanchion. His team was gathered at the entrance to a ramp on the starboard side. Tuttle had her faceplate up and was shouting, rather than using her comms. Taking the hundred-meter drop on flexed knees, Stone’s suit gathered up the kinetic energy from the landing and stored it for later use. To Stone, the fall was no more challenging than taking the last step off a stairway. The real challenge was initially training the human mind to relax and drop a hundred meters. Humans had thousands of years of conditioning that proved such drops are deadly. Some suit trainees required more training than others. Stone was fine with such a drop as long as it was all inside.

  He stepped around Tuttle to see what or who was causing her to shout. For a second, he stood there gaping. Gonzo had joined them. He looked tiny compared to the drascos and suited humans around him. He wore shorts and a T-shirt with a pair of blue flip-flops on his feet. When a bullet spanged past them, he did not flinch.

  Tuttle was ordering him back to the Platinum Pebble. “You moron, you’re going to get killed out here.”

  Gonzo stood his ground. He pointed at his T-shirt. Scribbled across the front was the word MEDIA. “I’m a non-combatant. You can’t stop the media.” He waved his camera around like some magic shield that would protect him from harm.

  Tuttle began, “Boss, you got to—”

  Stone interrupted, “We don’t have time for this. Whether he get’s killed by friendly fire or get’s eaten by Hyrocanian’s—it’s his own concern. Ignore him or shoot him, I don’t care.” He turned and strode up the ramp to the ship. He knew Dollish and Tuttle would not shoot the cameraman. He was not so sure about Hector, since the FNG might have had some personal history with Gonzo. Be that as it may, it was not his problem.

  The ship hatch was not the standard Hyrocanian main hatchway. This was a human freighter, small and quick like independent ships everywhere, much like the smuggler’s freighter Charles was on back in orbit around Holliman’s Rift. Whoever captained this ship was working hand-in-hand with the Prophet and
his Hyrocanian friends. Mercy would be hard won from Stone’s hand. Yanking the TDO-960A from its bracket, he followed its muzzle into the interior of the ship.

  He was hoping he did not have to shoot. Allie had said there were civilians here. He had never shot at a human before. He wanted to a few times, but he had always managed to restrain himself. Whoever was shipping in slave labor to build warships for humanity’s enemies deserved judgment, but not by him. He would question and detain. Arresting suspects was Agent Ryte’s responsibility.

  Along with civilians there might be Hyrocanians hiding in a corner. For that matter, the Prophet spoke of numerous alien species under the virion’s control. There was no way to know what he would see until he saw it.

  What he did see surprised him. Packed into the first warehouse space on the main deck was a mass of humanity. Everything from old couples clinging to each other for support to angry looking men chained to the bulkheads and deck. Stuffed into the hold, they lay on top and around each other like dirty clothes on laundry day at the Old Lady in the Shoe’s house. Everyone wore baggy, ill-fitting gray utility jumpsuits.

  Empty meal packets were strewn everywhere and the people were lying in their own human waste. It was clear that those left unchained—the very old and the very young—had tried to clean up. They had moved filth to a corner and had attempted to distribute food packets evenly. If these people had been stuck in this hold since leaving Holliman’s Rift, they had been locked away for two weeks through hyperspace. It was no wonder they were in such wretched condition.

  Stone revised his decision not to shoot humans.

  Then, he recognized a face.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Stone flipped his helmet off, letting it hang down his back. He struggled to keep his face placid, but blanched at the odor. There was more here than human waste and garbage. He had been around combat zones enough to recognize the smell of decomposing bodies.

  “We’re here to get you out. Please be patient. We have not made the spacedocks safe yet.”