Abbado was on her heels, though he had to shove Jefferson aside. Rank hath its privileges. At a mental level pretty well buried for the moment, Abbado was afraid to die; but he was more afraid that his squad wouldn’t follow him the next time if they had the least doubt that he was willing to lead from the front.
The airlock’s inner valve had been half open before most of the outer door hit it and tore it off its hinges. Horgen was left-handed so she turned right down the smoky corridor. Abbado went left, sternward.
Although the Kalendru had pulled the main powerplant, the corvette’s internal lighting was on. There must be an auxiliary power unit somewhere. If the lights worked, so would the guns and missile launchers.
Abbado swept the corridor with his stinger for the second and a half it took to empty the magazine, then fired the rocket in his left hand. He didn’t have a target—any target, though slender bodies writhed on the decking—but he needed his hand free to reload the stinger. Launching the rocket was faster than throwing it away.
As Abbado knelt, Jefferson stepped by him and hurled a grenade into a weapons bay. A Spook jumped from behind the control console and shot the striker in the face. The grenade detonated, blowing the shredded Spook against the ceiling.
Abbado tugged an electrical grenade off his belt left handed and threw it into the compartment’s opposite bay. A Spook hopped up from that console also. Abbado and Glasebrook shot him together. As the body fell back, Glasebrook tossed a fuel-air grenade on top of it.
When the bomb blew, the two strikers ran to the last compartment sternward. Neither man sent a grenade ahead to warn the Spooks they were coming. They’d worked together so often in similar situations that they coordinated without overt signals.
The Kalendru repair crew had removed the compartment’s upper plating in order to lift out the powerplant. A sailor was trying to climb out of the ship through the large opening. Glasebrook shot him.
An officer’s mauve-clad legs lay in the well where the Tokomak had been bolted. Abbado’s randomly fired rocket had hit him in the chest.
Two Spooks waited by the bulkhead just inside the corridor hatch. One of them managed to trigger his laser as Abbado’s stinger tore them point-blank. The saffron pulse ruptured a pouch of stinger reloads and gouged a collop from the sergeant’s breastplate beneath.
Abbado, Glasebrook, and Foyle an instant behind hosed the lockers and netting-secured bundles that festooned the aft compartment. Stinger pellets hit too hard to ricochet, but the long bursts ripped sparks from the fittings and bulkheads. The compartment roared like a megawatt short circuit, giving the air a lambent neon radiance.
Forward, a pair of fuel-air explosions thumped. There was a sharper blast and the corvette’s lighting went off. Horgen or one of the strikers with her had found the APU.
Abbado reloaded. There were no Kalendru alive aboard the ship. The seven pips on the corner of his faceshield indicated that they’d only lost Jefferson in clearing the vessel, better than he’d figured. Last year on Mulholland—two years ago?—Abbado and Jefferson had drunk their way through a case of whiskey they’d stolen from an admiral’s private suite.
“Three-three come on, we’re not done here,” Abbado ordered. “We’ve still got a hangar full of—”
“C41, all personnel,” Major Farrell’s voice broke in over the command channel. “Evacuate the port area soonest and reform in the equipment storage lot behind the warehouses west of the concrete. We’ll set up a perimeter there and wait for pickup. Soonest, people, soonest! Out!”
“What the hell?” said Flea Glasebrook. He’d been counting stinger magazines remaining. His index finger still pointed to the pouch he’d reached when the call came.
Abbado tried to suck a drink of water. He coughed and spewed it across the inside of his faceshield. “Three-three to the truck,” he ordered when he got his voice back. “Watch that there’s not somebody waiting when we come through the hatch.”
He hoped the truck still worked. He really hoped the truck still worked. He was afraid to think any farther ahead than that.