Taking prisoners had to wait until there were enough Headhunters out of the module to secure the area.
Bradley ran for the corridor marked D on the maps from Eight-Ball Command and 6 in yellow on the girdered lintel. Kowacs followed his field first toward what was the transient wing of the base according to data sucked from the prisoner’s brain. The major fired a short burst into a glazed office, shattering the clear panels and sending the staff to cover behind banks of short-circuiting equipment.
As usual, Corporal Sienkiewicz carried the considerable weight of a shoulder-fired plasma weapon in addition to her regular gear. She lighted the bay with a round of plasma into the nose turret of both courier vessels on her side of the intrusion module.
The dazzle and crack! of the miniature fusion explosions forced their reality onto the huge room. One of the turrets simply slagged down, but ammunition detonated in the other. Balls of ionized gas bubbled through the vessel’s open hatches.
The navigational computer of that boat wasn’t going to be much help to the spooks back at Port Tau Ceti, but the raiders couldn’t risk somebody arming the turrets before teams detailed for vessels in dock got aboard the couriers.
Coming back without the desired information was better than not coming back. Even Grant, monitoring all the teams from the belly of the module, would agree with that.
Bradley carried a bottle of stun gas. It was a volatile liquid intended for contact application, though the fumes would do the job if they had to. The sergeant directed the bottle’s nozzle into the office Kowacs had shot up, angling the fine jet so that it sprayed the terrified personnel hiding behind their bullet-riddled equipment.
Pickup teams would secure the prisoners later, though they’d be stacked like cordwood beneath Headhunter boots during extraction. Provided casualties didn’t clear too much of the module’s hold.
The corridor formed a Y. Bradley followed the left branch, as planned.
There were rooms on both sides. The third door down quivered as though in indecision. Kowacs riddled it. He was switching to a fresh magazine when the fat man in garish silks and ribbons tumbled out into the corridor, still clutching his pistol.
He’d have been a good one to capture—if that had been an option compatible with Kowacs staying alive.
Belt-fed plasma weapons fired short bursts from the docking bay. Timmes’ platoon was taking an active definition of perimeter security. Light reflecting down the corridor angles threw momentary harsh shadows.
The docking bay was out of Kowacs’ direct sight. He could have viewed the module by switching his visor to remote images, just as he could follow the progress of any of his Marines either visually or by a digital read-out.
He didn’t bother. The Headhunters were too experienced to need their major looking over their shoulders—
And anyway, their major had enough on his own plate.
An emergency barrier began to slide across the corridor twenty meters ahead.
“Down!” Kowacs shouted as his left hand snatched a grenade from his equipment belt. He flung the bomb sidearm as he flattened.
A pair of security men in helmets and uniforms ran from a cross-corridor just beyond the sliding barrier. They leveled sub-machine guns. Bradley sent an arc of stun gas in their direction, but the bottle didn’t have quite enough range and Kowacs, sliding on his right shoulder, couldn’t twist his assault rifle on-target fast enough to—
The anti-tank grenade struck the barrier, clung for an instant, and went off with a deafening crash. The barrier bulged inward, jamming in its track. The shaped-charge warhead blew a two-centimeter hole through the metal and cleared the corridor beyond with a spray of fragments and molten steel.
The shockwave skidded Kowacs back a meter from the blast area. The frangible casing powdered harmlessly, as it was intended to do, and commo helmets saved the Headhunters’ hearing.
“Go!” Kowacs cried.
Sienkiewicz was already on her feet and past the barrier, the near limit of the station’s transient accommodations. The corporal paused beside the first door to make sure Bradley was ready with his stun gas, then smashed the panel open with her boot.