Of Fire and Night - Kevin J. Anderson [84]
"General, can they overhear this chatter?"
Lanyan scowled at the cadet. "Not unless you're dumb enough to be on an open channel, soldier."
"No, sir, that would be against regulations."
He gestured with a gloved hand. "We're going to clear this whole bottom level and use it as our staging area. We'll show the damned machines what it means to be methodical. Once we scrape the launching deck clean, I propose a direct assault on the bridge. We can't let the compies keep working on the systems or we might lose the whole ship again. Once we capture the bridge, then I'm in control, and it's all over except for the bookkeeping. We can clean up the rest of the walking scrap metal at our leisure."
He reminded his trainees to check their weapons, prepare spare rounds of ammunition, and adjust charge packs so they could swap out depleted components in half a second. By the book. When a chorus of shouts announced that the primary sweeper teams were ready, Lanyan instructed them to reanchor themselves to the deck. "When we open the door, there's going to be an outrush of air. You don't want it to bowl you over."
Simultaneously, point men cracked open the access hatches that led from the bay to the interior of the ship. An invisible storm swept past them and spurted into space as the entire bottom deck emptied of atmosphere. Air was easily replaceable. Human soldiers were much more difficult to come by.
A dozen or so Soldier compies had crowded against each hatch, preparing to fight, but the sudden decompression gust took them by surprise. Many lost their balance; some were sucked out through the open hangar doors. A barrage of projectile fire blasted the rest back.
"Take them out of the defensive equation," Lanyan lectured. "Just like in your lessons back at base."
Now that the deck was open to space, wispy steam curled from beneath closed cabin doors. Splatters of blood froze to iron-hard paint on the walls as the remaining moisture boiled out of the crimson smears.
The sweeper teams split up according to the mission plan. Before suiting up, all of Lanyan's people had studied engineering diagrams of the Goliath. Any recruit whose memory was faulty, or who simply couldn't think straight in a panic, could call up projected diagrams on a backlit display within their helmets.
Now the pumped-up kleebs ran forward, yelling into comm lines at the top of their lungs. Unaffected by the vacuum, Soldier compies emerged into the line of fire. Lanyan felt a satisfying recoil against his shoulder armor as he fired his projectile rifle. A depleted-uranium slug drove the nearest clanker backward with enough force to topple two of its companions. Normally, no sane soldier would fire such powerful projectiles inside a spaceship: Superdense slugs could easily puncture a hull or shatter a porthole. Right now, though, Lanyan didn't give a damn about a few pinholes or cosmetic damage to the Juggernaut. Those things could be fixed.
Lanyan's trainees continued to fire. Destroyed compies clattered aside while others emerged to take their places. "They keep coming, General!"
"So keep shooting. The reason the damned clankers succeeded in the first place was that they took our people by surprise. This time there's no excuse."
Lanyan barked at them to stay in formation as he moved down the corridor door by door, opening each chamber, destroying Soldier compies hiding inside bunk rooms. This mission reminded him of his younger days, when he had trained for urban warfare, prepping EDF soldiers to raid rebellious colony towns that had thumbed their noses at the Hansa Charter. But fanatic rebels were a lot softer than compies. . . .
Human bodies lay strewn on the floor or stuffed into closets and storage chambers. When the greenhorn soldiers looked at their dead comrades, Lanyan knew they were ready to puke into