An instant later, the rocket projectile smacked the wall and ricocheted, a dud because Wade had removed the base fuze. The wet slap of plastic explosive deforming was lost in the snap of Belgeddes’s next two shots and the roar of Holly’s submachine gun as she entered Corridor 7 from the bow side.
The bomb skittered a further moment until its motor burned out. The case had burst open. Volatiles from the explosive added their sharpness to the residues of rocket fuel, gunpowder, and the blood mingled with feces that was the smell of violent death.
“No time to lose,” Wade warned crisply as he stepped out behind Holly. He had reloaded his projector with a live bomb, just in case. A submachine gun was slung across his back.
“Right,” Wanda said in a cold, dry voice. “We’ll take the Embarkation Hall next.”
“There’s always time to reload, Dickie,” Belgeddes said with arch disapproval. He thumbed loose rounds into the magazine to replace the three he’d fired.
The bridge of the nose, the left earhole, and the point where the spine of the flattened woman entered the back of her skull.
The bitter gases poisoning the air made Wanda cough as she swapped magazines. That could have been responsible for the way her eyes were watering also.
* * *
Ran Colville hummed “Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey?” as he got out of the drop shaft, pushing the food cart before him. He moved at a deliberate pace, like a steward who wanted to avoid a rocket from his superiors but wasn’t trying to set any speed records.
Moving, basically, at the pace of a steward who doesn’t expect much of a tip at the end of his journey no matter how quickly he reaches it
The Engineering Deck was laid out for cargo operations, besides being narrower than all but one of those above it. The single corridor, 15, kinked around bays intended for passengers’ hold luggage. There was no point, as there was on the passenger decks, where a three-man team could dominate four hundred meters of straight corridor with their weapons.
Ran couldn’t be sure where he was going to meet Grantholm troops, or even whether he would meet them. It was unlikely that there was no one guarding engineering control, however; and the Empress’s Cold Crew would be a special problem for the hijackers.
“I’ll do the cooking, honey,” Ran whistled. “I’ll pay the rent. . . .”
The Grantholm team, all three of them male, stood in front of the open corridor hatch giving onto the engineering control room. When Ran appeared a moment behind his off-key whistle, the soldiers tensed as cats do when starting their stalk.
One man faced sternward, though so far as Ran knew there was nothing but long-term cargo stowage in that direction, and no way to enter those bays except through the hull while docked. Maybe the Grantholmers thought somebody was going to come out of a bulkhead to get them.
“Halt!” the team leader ordered over the sights of his submachine gun. “What are you doing here?”
Ran stopped where he was, twenty meters from the soldiers. “It’s dinner for a Mr. Schmidt,” he called. “Look, don’t point that thing at me. This is just a job, okay? I’m just doing my job.”
“I didn’t order dinner!” objected the soldier aiming at the blank wall. He twisted to look over his shoulder. Then, when his leader didn’t shout at him, he pivoted to face in the same direction as his fellows.
“Tubby Schmidt?” the third soldier asked. “Only he’s with the bridge crew, isn’t he?”
“He would be if he’d made it aboard,” the leader said briefly. Then he added, “Cover me,” and walked toward Ran and his cart
“Look,” said Ran. “They told me Schmidt at engineering control and look lively. That’s all they said, Schmidt.”
“It can’t be Lieutenant Schmidt,” the third man mused aloud. “He’s out on the hull, and they can’t come inside so long as we’re in sponge space. We are in sponge space, aren’t we?”
“How the hell would I know?” snarled his team leader. He peered at the dishes on the cart. They were sealed with optically-clear covers which were opaque in the infra-red spectrum, so that their contents could be viewed but stayed hot.