Allan Cole - Sten

The watch officer decided it was going to be a very long shift. He tried to keep it formal. "We're getting readouts," he began.

"I know what you're gettin'," Ida said. "We got terminals too." She eyed the watch officer. "I tol' you, kid, it'd turn out to be somethin' simple."

"What do you mean?" the security officer asked.

"That bracelet. You hang that much alloy near a terminal, it's gonna get crazy. Figures."

"But that's the automatic screen. We've always worn them. And nothin's happened before."

"Yah. An' those clottin' Migs haven't tied up the computers before either. You tellin' me every one a' you patrol geeks wears them?"

"Yes."

"Dumb, dumber, dumbest. Get 'em out here."

"Huh?"

"Everybody on the shift, stupid. Maybe this one'll be easy, an' the only problem is somebody's got a bracelet that's signaling wrong."

"We can't call in every patrolman," the watch officer started. Ida shrugged.

"So great. Me an' cutie here'll go on back and file that we couldn't properly evaluate the situation. Sooner or later somebody, else'll come around and try to fix that computer."

The officer eyed the screen. The flying objects were still there. Looked at the third-class Tech, who slipped him a sympathetic and very warm smile. Made a decision. Turned to the com and keyed it open.

"Third shift—no emergency—all officers report immediately to central security. I repeat, all officers report immediately to central security."

Bet slipped two bester grenades from her pouch and stood up. Bravo Project's security officers were crowded inside the small office. Ida stood near the door.

"This everybody?"

The watch officer nodded.

Bet hit the timer on the grenades and dived for the door. She landed on top of Ida.

The two grenades detonated in a purple flash.

The Bravo Project patrolmen crumpled. Bet rolled off Ida and helped her up. Ida wheezed gently, muttered something in Romany, and shrilly whistled between her fingers.

Sten and the other members of the team hurried into sight, running toward them.

"We'll hold the back door. You stand by." Ida stepped inside and lifted the toolbox tray, extracted two folding-stocked willyguns, readied them, and tossed one to Bet as Sten and the others ran into the Bravo Project lab.

Meanwhile, Ida had turned the watch commander over. "What're you doing?" Bet asked curiously.

"Private revenge," Ida replied, planting one hoof firmly in the unconscious man's groin. "I suspect he thought nasty things about me."

She lifted her other foot off the ground. Bet winced and turned back to look down the long empty corridor.

"Wouldnae it be simpler," Alex suggested, "to just blow th' whole shebeen?"

"Clot, yes," Sten said. "But if we did"—he gestured up to the ceiling—"we'd be soyasteaking all those Techs up there." He grinned. "Damfino why I'm stickin" up for 'em."

"Because," Doc said, "mission instructions were to obliterate this lab with minimum loss of life." He waggled tendrils at Alex. "Ignore him. Simple minds find simple solutions."

Alex ignored Doc. "Ah gie ye pocket-size destruction, i' ye'll tell me where Ah begin."

The lab ceiling lofted high above them. High enough, Sten decided, for the hangarlike building to have its own weather. Frick and Frack curvetted among the ceiling lights. In the middle of the lab was a small space freighter, its cargo doors agape. Mysterious apparatus sat around it on the main floor. Doors opened off the sides into rabbit warrens of minor labs.

"Set charges on any information storage file," Sten decided. "Any computer. And any piece of equipment that doesn't look familiar."

"Finest kind," Jorgensen moaned as he shouldered back into his pack. "That means he's gonna shoot anything that don't look like a sheep."

Alex wagged a finger. "Frae yon teddy bear Ah take abuse a' that nature. But no frae a man wi' his feet still i' the furrows."

And they went to work.

Thoresen, in spite of his fascination with weaponry and martial arts, had never been in combat. Nevertheless, as he entered the corridors that led to Bravo Project, he had sense enough to drop back and put two squads of the fifty-strong patrol company in front of him. Thoresen was still analytical enough to realize he was in a response situation. He might, he considered as he unobtrusively dropped back in the formation, still be running late.

Bet wiped sweaty hands on the plastic willygun stock. "Deep breaths," Ida said calmly. "Worry about them ten at a time." She suddenly realized what she'd said, and chuckled. "On the other hand, do you think a surrender flag would be a better idea? Now!"

Bet pulled the willygun's trigger all the way back. The gun spat AM 2slugs out into the packed mass of oncoming patrolmen.

Screams. Chaos. Ida thumbed a grenade and overarmed it down the corridor, then crawled under the deck plating as riot guns roared.

Bet dropped the empty tube from her gun and slammed a new one home. She was mildly surprised that she wasn't as scared as she'd been watching the patrolmen come in. "Ida!"

"Go," the heavy woman said, without taking her eyes off the corridor. She squeezed the trigger.

"If I was with Delinqs," Bet managed, "I'd say the time has come to haul butt."

"But you ain't. You're with a big-time Mantis Section team. So what we're gonna do is haul butt."

Ida rolled out the door, finger locked on the trigger, then through the entrance to the labs. Bet slid after her. The two women turned, and sprayed down the corridor, then dashed toward the main lab.

Alex sang softly to himself as he unspooled the backup firing-circuit wire back toward the center of the lab.

"Ye'll set on his white hause-bane,

An I'll pike out his bonny blue een;

Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair.

We'll theek our nest when it goes bare. . ."

Clipped the wire and fed it into the det box. Ran his firing circuitry through his mind, and glanced at Sten. Sten high-signed him, and Alex closed the det key.

"Ye ken we best be on our way. An hour an' yon labs'll be a mite loud for comfort."

Then Ida and Bet doubled into the room. Ida crouched next to the door and sprayed down the corridor.

"The patrol," Bet shouted. Slugs spattered through the lab doors, and the team members went flat, scuttling for cover. Ida emptied her magazine and scrambled toward the ship.

The team formed a semicircle perimeter just before the freighter. Sten ducked behind a large machine resembling a drill press as the first of Thoresen's troops burst into the lab.

"Can you stop the charges?" Sten shouted.

Alex cut down the patrolmen inside the lab, then said calmly, without turning his head, "Ah may've outsmarted mesel' on this one, lad. Each an' every one a' those charges I fitted a antidefuse device to."

"Sixty minutes?"

"We hae"—Alex checked his watch—"nae more'n fifty-one now."

Tacships, darting in front of the Guard's assault transport, hammered through the drifting security satellites off Vulcan, not knowing that Bet's massacre of the Creche workers meant most of them were unmanned.

Monitors moved straight for Vulcan. Over the past months, Thoresen had acquired some moderately forbidden antimissile devices and installed them in blisters on Vulcan's outer skin. The combination of the Guard's sudden attack and the half-trained status of their crews, however, meant only a few went into action before the monitors' own missiles wiped the positions out.

Obviously the normal canister-dispersing assault transports couldn't be used. Conventional freighters had been laboriously modified for clamshell-nose loading and unloading. Proximity detectors clacked, braking rockets shuddered the transports down to a few kilometers per hour, then still slower as the pilots dived out of the control positions, sealing locks behind them as the transports crashed through Vulcan's outer skin, half burying themselves into the world.