Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [29]
Sanders activated his communicator. “Can you give me an estimate of the enemy position, LT?” he asked.
“Pretty much directly under you, Sandy,” replied Jackson.
The junior officer studied the deck. It was metal, but he reasoned that it wouldn’t need to be terribly heavy or thick in the asteroid’s very light gravity. “Sir, I suggest my squad play Santa Claus. We’ll make our own chimney.”
“Good idea,” the CO said. “We’ll try to keep their attention focused on us over here.” To underscore his point, the lieutenant popped up from behind the table he’d been using for cover and sprayed a burst of rocket rounds into the unseen compartment directly under Sanders’s position.
“Mirowski, Schrade,” the junior officer called. “Plant a couple of breaching charges right on the deck here. We’re going to fall on these assholes’ heads.”
The big Pole grinned wickedly at the suggestion, and the two men immediately affixed their C-6 charges to the deck, placing them several meters apart. Sanders’s squad separated into fire teams, and four men prepared to advance on each hole, though they backed away from the charges before the blasts. He gave Jackson the thumbs-up and signaled his men to start their timers.
At the same time, the SEALS of the first squad opened up with their carbines, spitting a spray of rocket rounds into the deck underneath Sanders’s men. The hissing, self-propelled rounds crackled through the compartment, filling the deep atrium with tracers of smoke and vapor. The junior officer saw the searing red beam of an energy weapon flash toward his Teammates, but the shot was wide and brief; the shooter presumably had been driven back into cover by the aggressive shooting of Jackson’s fire team.
Then the breaching charges went off. Flames burst upward, but because of the nature of the charges and the way they were affixed to their target, the great bulk of the blasts was directed downward. Each explosion blasted a hole more than a meter wide through the metal deck and scattered the lower level with razor-sharp shards of steel and the crushing force of the blast.
Sanchez and Marannis jumped one after the other through the nearest hole while Ruiz and Baxter led the way through the second aperture. In the low G they dropped slowly, firing on the way down. By the time Sanders followed his scouts, the first four SEALS had taken out five hostiles and were bounding around the lower deck, seeking more of the enemy.
A bolt of energy exploded from an alcove in the wall, sending the two scouts diving for cover. Sanchez grasped his arm, and the officer saw a film of red-tinged mist erupting from the rip in his suit. Sanders saw a pirate just beyond, suited and carrying one of the battery-powered weapons the Team had encountered on Batuun. That smoldering barrel was swinging toward Sanders as he snapped off a burst, centering his rocket rounds in the neat circle of the pirate’s faceplate. The impact knocked the shooter backward into the stone wall, with a burst of blood and air erupting from the shattered helmet. He slumped to the deck with an almost graceful slow-motion collapse.
“Second deck secured, sir,” Ruiz reported as Sanders went to check on Sanchez.
The scout lay on his back, his face locked in a grimace of pain. The beam had cut through his suit just below the left shoulder, but the officer saw with considerable relief that the self-sealing material had patched the cut quickly before catastrophic depressurization had claimed the SEALS’ life.
“Just a scratch, sir,” the scout grunted. “Bastard got the drop on me, but I’ll be okay.”
“Well,