Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [104]
Even before they had completed that grisly task, the rest of the Team had moved up, flying up the long, curving tunnel that had reminded Sanders of an airport jetway. They came around another right-angle corner where the passageway curled up to merge with the air lock in the belly of the large cargo shuttle.
There they encountered one of the zero-G trains they had observed in the station concourse. Piloted by a single driver, the jet-powered tractor hauled a string of floating cylinders that swayed freely as the fellow made the turn into the tunnel. From the easy movement, Sanders guessed that they were empty.
“Hey!” shouted the driver, uttering his last word as a suppressed burst of three rounds from Keast’s G15 hit him in the chest. He flopped backward, held in his seat by a belt, and the uncontrolled tractor careered down the tunnel toward the SEALS.
“Chief Harris!” Sanders barked into his communicator as the jet-powered tractor carried its trailing cars past him. “We got a runaway train coming your way. Stop it before it gets away!”
“Roger, sir,” the chief replied, as if this was nothing more than he’d expected.
Trusting that the matter was under control, Sanders burst upward through the air lock and into the hold of the cargo shuttle. He spotted two soldiers, Eluoi ray guns in their hands, watching a half dozen crewmen secure a series of long crates along one wall of the hold. Here, too, the element of surprise was complete; the two armed hostiles were taken out with suppressed bursts, and the terrified crewmen were herded into one corner of the hold. Robinson and Keast covered them while the rest of the Team continued through the ship.
A large air lock, currently open, connected the main hold to smaller holds toward the bow and the stern. Sanders, Dobson, and Robinson swept into the after compartment to find the hold nearly full of the same crates that the crew had been storing in the main hold. A quick inspection failed to reveal any hostiles lurking there, so they quickly shot back through the belly of the vessel.
“Bit of a train wreck in the jetway, sir,” Harris reported laconically, rising through the hatch. “But it’s not going anywhere from there. Might make a nice redoubt if they send a party after us, though,” he allowed.
“Nice work,” Sanders replied. “But I intend to be out of here before they can even think about a rescue.”
LaRue, Falco, and Rodale already were moving into the forward hold. Sanders came after them just in time to hear the lethal whisper of a suppressed G15. Another of the Eluoi soldiers, his gun floating from his lifeless hands, drifted slowly across the compartment. Beyond the dead man Sanders could see the hatch leading up from the hold to, presumably, the crew quarters and the bridge. He propelled himself toward the aperture, fearing at any second that he would see the hatch close in his face.
“Stay open, you bastard!” he hissed. Although it wouldn’t necessarily be disastrous to have to force their way through a hatch, he desperately needed to capture this ship in working order, and that meant that the number of explosions caused by the attack would have to be held to an absolute mininum.
Here, at least, no explosive would be necessary. He pushed through the hatch into a narrow shaft extending perhaps four meters upward, with another open hatch at the opposite terminus. He came up through that point of egress with his G15 cradled in both hands. Falco came right behind him, oriented to face the other direction when he emerged. One after the other the two SEALS burst into the shuttle’s flight deck, where they found a very startled pilot and copilot. Neither Eluoi was armed, and they quickly hoisted their hands over their heads, so the officer allowed them to live.
While they were covered by Falco and several more Teammates who quickly joined them, Sanders settled into the pilot’s chair. He didn’t even try to read the array of alien dials and instruments before him. Instead, he activated his communicator.
“Captain Parvik,” he called.