Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [108]
Another officer spun away from his chair and dived across a wide console. Schroeder killed him with a single shot to the temple, but even as he died, the man’s hand came down on a red button. Immediately a warning siren started to wail.
But that was the last act of any of the bridge’s defenders. In ten seconds it was over, with every one of the Eluoi complement killed except the officer who still cowered under Marannis’s menacing glare. All the while, the siren continued to blare and the lights flashed on and off in a clear visual warning.
“Falco, LaRue,” Sanders snapped. “Check A Deck!”
Immediately the two men shot through the hatch in the center of the upper bulkhead, emerging into the domed lounge that formed the prow of the Pangaea. They found several Eluoi soldiers diving for the hatch, presumably in response to the alarm, which was honking there as loudly as on the bridge. The hostiles were carrying their guns at the ready, but even so they were unprepared for the sudden death that came shooting up through the hatch. The two SEALS snapped off a couple of bursts each, killing all four hostiles before the Eluoi could get off a shot. A few of the lightweight rocket rounds missed the targets, but the slugs spattered against the sturdy Plexiglas of the dome without causing so much as a dimple. Moments later the two SEALS floated back down to the bridge to report that A Deck was secure.
“How many troops do you have aboard?” Sanders demanded, confronting the lone prisoner.
For a second the man looked defiant, his green eyes darkening almost to black. Marannis hoisted his breaching tool, the ax blade still gory from the residue of his first kill, and the captive reconsidered.
“Sixty!” he said at once.
“Where are they?” the junior lieutenant pressed.
“Mostly in the living cabins, J and K Decks. Some will be in the after hold,” he said.
“And officers?”
“Just us, those you found here. Please, don’t kill me!”
“Maybe I won’t,” Sanders said calmly. “If you continue to cooperate.” He gestured to Marannis and Sanchez. “Tie him up and keep an eye on him.”
The rest of the men were moving through the bridge, turning on the equipment and checking for information about the ship’s status. Falco, Keast, and Schroeder were the most tech-savvy of the group, and they sat at the main consoles, bringing up screens and consulting pages of data.
“I got the internal cameras here, sir,” Keast reported from one bank of computers. Sanders floated over to him and saw some twenty small viewing screens, each with an image of a different section of the ship. Keast twisted some dials, looking into the after hold, where several agitated soldiers were ordering a dozen workers to clear away from the hatch. Then he scanned through the interior halls. The alarm klaxon, accompanied by flashing lights, was sounding on every deck of the big ship.
“Here’s trouble, Lieutenant,” Keast reported suddenly. He had come upon an image of the ship’s main gallery, the wide deck that served as a grand ballroom and extended as a single huge compartment across the midpoint of the ship’s hull. A number of Eluoi, at least a couple of dozen, were gathering there.
“That hatch, there,” Keast said, indicating the port that was clearly the soldiers’ objective. “That leads right into the docking bay, where our navy friends are watching our backs.”
“Damn!” Sanders snapped. He switched his communicator to full power. “Wes!” he barked urgently.
“What is it, Sandy?” replied Lieutenant Wesling in the hold.
“Get your people ready. You’re about to have some unwelcome visitors.”
Coxswain Grafton listened to the chatter over his helmet’s communicator, deciding that the SEALS were damned terse when they were busy.