maintenance ladders, and catwalks. There was no other way through or round the bulkhead. The only route forward from the Hexagon was through the lock,
It’s impregnable, Colman thought to himself as he lay prone behind a girder mounting high up in the shadows at the back of the antechamber and studied the approaches to the lock. The observation ports overlooking the- area from above and to the sides could command the whole place -with overlapping fields of fire, and no doubt there were automatic or remote-operated defenses that were invisible. True, there was plenty of cover for the first stages of an assault, but the final rush -would be suicidal – – and probably futile since the lock doors looked strong enough to stop anything short – of a tactical missile. And he was beginning to doubt if the demolition squad suiting up to go outside farther back in the Hexagon would be able to do much good since the external approaches to the module would almost certainly be covered just as effectively; he knew how the minds that designed things like this worked~
“The best thing would be to blow that door with a salvo of AP missiles before we move, and hope they jam it open,” he murmured to Swyley, who was lying next to him, examining the far bulkhead through an intensifier. “Then maybe drench the lock with incendiary and go in under smoke.”
– “That’s only the first door,” Swyley reminded him, lowering the instrument from his eyes. “There are two of them. Whatever we do to that one won’t stop them from closing the second one.”
“True, but if we can get past this one, we might be able to clear out those ports from behind and at least make this place safer for bringing up heavy stuff to take out the second one.”
“And then what?’ Swyley said. “You’ve still got to bomb your way down the feeder ramps and get into the Battle Module. Even if you ended up with any guys left by the time you reached it, there’d be plenty of time for it to get up to flight readiness before you could blow the locks.”
“Got any better ideas?” For once Swyley didn’t. –
At that moment the emergency tone sounded simultaneously from both their communicators, and warning–bleeps and wails went up from places in the labyrinth all around. They looked at each other for a second. The noise died away as Colman fished his unit froth his breast
pocket and held it in front where both of them could watch it, while Swyley deactivated his own~ A few seconds later, the faces of Wellesley, Borftein, and Lechat appeared on the tiny screen. Colman closed his eyes for a moment and breathed a long, drawn-out sigh of relict “They made it,” he whispered. “They’re all in there.”
“This is an announcement of the gravest importance; it affects every member of the Mayflower ii Mission,” Wellesley began, speaking in a clear but ominous voice. “I am addressing you all in my full capacity as Director of this Mission. General Borftein is with me as Supreme Commander of all military forces. Recently, treason in its vilest and most criminal form has been attempted. That attempt has failed. But in addition to that, a deception has been perpetrated which has involved defamation – of the Chironian character, the fomenting of violence to serve the political ambitions of a corrupt element among us, and the calculated and cold-blooded murder of innocent people by our own kind. I do not have to remind you.
“That has to give us the rest of the ship and the surface,” Swyley said. “If the Army gets its act together and grabs Sterm before he gets a chance to head this way, then we might not have to go in there at all.”
Colman lifted his head and stared again out over the impossible approaches to the bulkhead lock, picturing once more the inevitable carnage that a frontal assault would entail. Who on either side would stand to gain anything that mattered to them? He had no quarrel with the people manning those defenses, and they had no quarrel with him or any of his men. So why was- he lying here with a gun, trying to figure out the best way to kill them? Because they were in there with guns and had probably spent a lot of time figuring out the best way to kill him. None of them knew why they were doing it. It was simply that it had always been done.