The shooters didn’t know anything worth carrying back to Tau Ceti.
The end door on the right side was a centimeter open when Kowacs saw it, slamming shut an instant thereafter. He hit its latch bootheel-first, springing fasteners that were intended for privacy rather than security.
The interior lights were on. There were two people inside, and a coffin-sized outline taped to the back wall of the room. The people were a man and a woman, both young, and they were starting to lock down the helmets of their atmosphere suits.
The man’s gauntleted hand reached for the sub-machine gun across the bed beside him. Kowacs fired, but Bradley fired also and at point-blank range the rifle bullets were lost in the plate-sized crater the shotgun blew in the target’s chest.
The back wall exploded outward. The outline had been drawn with adhesive-backed explosive strips, and the vaguely-familiar woman detonated it as she finished fastening her helmet.
The other side of the wall was hard vacuum.
The rush of atmosphere sucked the woman with it, clear of the Headhunters’ guns. Loose papers, bedding, and the helmet from the corpse sailed after her.
The mask of Kowacs’ emergency air supply slapped over his nose and mouth, enough to save his life but not adequate for him to go chasing somebody in a proper suit. The suit’s maneuvering jets would carry the woman to a regular airlock when the raiders left and it was safe to come back.
The room lights dimmed as the atmosphere that scattered them into a useful ambiance roared through the huge hole. Kowacs reached for the male corpse, lost his balance and staggered toward death until Sie’s huge hand clamped the slack of his equipment belt.
“Let’s go!” she shouted, her voice attenuated to a comfortable level by the AI controlling Kowacs’ headphones. “We’re timing out!”
“Help me with the body!” Kowacs ordered as the three of them fought their way back into the corridor. The wind was less overmastering but still intense.
“We don’t need dead guys!” Bradley shouted, but he’d grabbed the other leg of the body, clumsy in its bulky suit.
“I got it,” said Sienkiewicz, lifting the corpse away from both men. She slammed it through the gap at the barrier in what was half a shove, half a throw.
“We need this one,” Kowacs wheezed.
The corridor was empty except for Syndicate corpses. Headhunter pickup teams had gathered the casualties as well as the loot and headed back to the module. It’d be close, but Kowacs’ team would make it with ten seconds to spare, a lifetime. . . .
“We need this deader . . . ,” he continued as they pounded down the hallway against the lessening wind-rush. Sie had the body. “Because he’s wearing . . . ensign’s insignia . . . on his collar.”
The module was in sight. A man stood in the open hatch, Grant, and goddam if he didn’t have his arm outstretched to help jerk the latecomers aboard.
“Fleet ensign’s insignia!” Kowacs gasped.
* * *
The receptionist looked concerned, and not just by the fact that Major Kowacs carried a full load of weapons and equipment into her sanctum.
Or as much of his weapons and equipment as he hadn’t fired off during the raid.
The escort, rising and falling on the balls of his feet at the open door of these third-tier offices, was evidently worried. “Come this way, please, sir,” the youngster said. Then, “He’s been waiting for you.”
“I been waiting for a hot shower,” Kowacs rasped. Powdersmoke, ozone, and stun gas had worked over his throat like so many skinning knives. “I’m still fucking waiting.”
The escort hopped ahead of Kowacs like a tall, perfectly-groomed leprechaun. Kowacs could barely walk.
The adrenaline had worn off. He seen the preliminary casualty report—with three bodies not recovered. There was a ten-centimeter burn on the inside of his left wrist where he must have laid the glowing barrel of his assault rifle, though goddam if he could remember doing that.
There were bruises and prickles of glass shrapnel all over Nick Kowacs’ body, but a spook named Grant insisted on debriefing him at once, with your full equipment, mister.