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Just behind him, the overhead suddenly bulged, then exploded as another SAP
broke through. Garroway decided not to wait for a possible volley of friendly
fire, but he tagged the opening with a small transponder that would show the
bulkhead breach to anyone following him, then plunged through himself.
The shaft interior was in complete darkness, but his armor s shoulder lights
illuminated his surroundings in harsh, shifting patterns of white light and
black shadow. A moment later, he became aware of other lights above him, as
other Marines broke through into the shaft and began the descent into the
monitor s core.
He was no longer alone& a very good feeling indeed.
Kicking off from the entrance breach, he drifted down several meters  down,
of course, being a relative term in the sudden falling emptiness of
microgravity. He triggered his suit thrusters and moved more quickly, using
his hands to guide himself along the piping and tightly tied bundles of fiber
optics lining the shaft walls.
He moved through the shaft for what seemed like hours, though his implant
timer insisted it was only three minutes. At last, though, Achilles
highlighted an area of tunnel wall just ahead.  There, the AI told him.
 That will give you direct access to your objective.
The tacsit feed continued to give him a ghosted overlay of what was behind the
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surrounding bulkheads.
Pulling himself up short alongside the indicated section of the tunnel, he
hung in emptiness for another few seconds until five more Marines reached him,
snagging hold of conduits and coming to a halt at the designated level.
An armored form bumped against him, steadying itself on a conduit. The
660-armor s surface Nanoflage
made the figure almost ghostly in the tunnel s gloom, but a
transponder-relayed ID appeared on
Garroway s helmet display Gunnery Sergeant Ramsey. Garroway felt an almost
overwhelming sense of relief, so much so he could feel his knees trembling.
He d not wanted to go through that bulkhead alone.
 Hey, Gunnery Sergeant, he said.  I guess this is it.
 Looks that way. Wait until the others get here.
Three more armored figures arrived down the shaft in short order Sergeant
Richard Chu, Corporal
Marin Delazlo, and PFC Sandre Kenyon.
 Okay, people, Ramsey told them, pulling a breaching charge from an external
suit pouch.  We breach and we go through, standard one-by assault. Everyone
set?
 Ready, Gunnery Sergeant, Garroway said. He was focusing on damping down the
fear.
 Fire in the hole! Ramsey announced, slapping the self-sticking breaching
charge to the sealed hatch.
The Marines rolled away, and an instant later an intense gout of white-hot
metal erupted from the charge, as a nano-D thermal-decoupler turned titanium
alloy to a spray of liquid and gaseous metal. The spray grew brighter,
expanding into an oval patch roughly 2 meters high& and then the metal burned
through with a brilliant flash.
Ramsey was the first Marine through the still-hot opening, but Garroway
crowded through just behind him. Both Marines tumbled once more into gravity,
this time within a large and circular chamber filled with control consoles,
work stations, and a number of men and women in PE uniforms, reclining on link
couches as they directed their side of the battle through the ship s Net.
Operating under Achilles instructions, Ramsey turned his pulse rifle against
one particular bank of instrumentation, slamming it into junk. The salvo
seemed to shock the reclining enemy officers, as their link with the Rommel s
AI net was broken and they were dropped out of their command virtual reality.
Achilles identified one threat an armored Marine standing near the
compartment s single hatch. The guy s armor would be proof against flamer
fire. Instead, Garroway triggered a burst from his mag-pulse rifle, the stream
of high-velocity slugs catching the enemy marine high in the chest and
slamming him backward into the hatch.
The other Marines were coming through the opening into the compartment as
well. One of the enemy officers pulled an ugly handgun from a holster and
fired from his couch; the round ricocheted off
Ramsey s helmet. Chu took three steps and placed the black muzzle of his
flamer against the man s skull.
 Drop it, monsieur, he growled.
The chances were good that the language spoken by Rommel s crew was Deutsch,
not Français, but the message was unmistakable. The man, eyes bulging, dropped
the pistol and raised his hands. Other men and women in the room were already
doing the same.
Other Marines, guided by Achilles, were attaching nano-D charges to specific
consoles and link stations, and Ramsey was jacking a small, heavily armored
box into a particular computer access relay. Garroway and Chu, gesturing with
their weapons, herded the PanEuropean personnel off of their link couches and
across the compartment, lining them up on their knees, facing an empty
bulkhead, their hands behind their heads.
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This compartment, Garroway knew, was one of three auxiliary control rooms
buried within the Rommel.
Some of the others might be destroyed, or isolated by damage, or Marine
assault squads might already
be breaking into them.
All they could do now was wait. Garroway kept the POWs covered, while Ramsey
worked his computer link and the other three Marines kept their weapons
trained on the sealed hatch. They wouldn t fire the nano-D charges unless they
absolutely had to. The idea was to capture the monitor, not junk her& but they
would render the huge ship harmlessly inert if they couldn t force her to
surrender.
 Okay, Ramsey said after a few moments.  Achilles has interfaced with
Rommel s AI suite. We re in.
 Ooh-rah! Garroway cried, and several of the others joined in. Sandre Kenyon
was, by chance, standing close by. Keeping his weapon still trained on the
kneeling POWs, Garroway reached out and gave Sandre an awkward one-armed hug,
their black armor clashing as it came together like a pair of colliding tanks.
 It s gonna be close, Ramsey said a moment later. He was getting things on
his tactical feed that weren t funneling through to the rest of the squad.  We
have three more enemy ships arriving from in-system.
Another destroyer& and it looks like a couple of light escort cruisers,
Pegasus& and Sagitta. Our fighters are reforming to meet them.
His momentary rush of enthusiasm cooled, Garroway stood, covering the
prisoners, and waited.
Rommel, apparently, was still in the fight, though only intermittently now as
more and more of her Net circuitry was shut down or compromised. Garroway
tried to figure out what was going on through the platoon tacsit feed, but [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]