Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [68]
The LT squirmed forward to see Sanchez rolling on a catwalk about ten feet below. The scout bounced to his feet with his G15, noise suppressor attached, in his hands as he scanned the chamber, which was large, clean, and filled with machinery. As Jackson dropped behind him, Sanchez extended a hand, allowing the officer to land on his feet. The SEALS had landed on a catwalk that circled the entire compartment; they were some four meters above the main floor, but because of pipes and more ductwork they could see only a small portion of the room. The lieutenant waved his scout forward and waited to assist the next man, Dobson, who came tumbling out of the duct.
Sanchez ran a dozen meters along the catwalk and then fired a burst, slugs spattering blood out the back of a humanlike guard who had recovered from the initial shock to come charging forward. The G15 was whisper-quiet but deadly, and two more armed men were cut down before they could raise their weapons. The trio had been standing near a large door.
Jackson moved along the catwalk in the direction away from Sanchez as Dobson helped the next SEALS out of the duct. There were other men on the floor of the compartment, but they didn’t seem to be armed; instead, they scrambled for cover behind the large domed device that dominated the chamber. Jackson couldn’t be certain, but he guessed it was a nuclear reactor, probably the power source for the whole installation.
As the Team streamed into the large room, the CO took stock of their surroundings. He’d counted nearly a dozen men diving for cover and took them to be technicians.
“Take out any potential shooters,” he barked into his communicator. “Capture the rest of ’em.”
By then Sanchez, Dobson, and two more SEALS had skidded down gridwork stairways to the floor of the room. They wasted no time rounding up the workers, corralling them in a section of office cubicles and covering them with the suppressed muzzles of their lethal G15s.
“LT,” the scout reported, sounding more than a little surprised. “These are some green-eyed operators down here. I think we’ve dropped in on an Eluoi base.”
“You don’t say?” Jackson replied, unsurprised. After multiple violent skirmishes with the Eluoi on Batuun, he had no regrets about fighting more of them, and it seemed logical that this ice moon was peopled by more than the fur-covered brutes the SEALS had christened yetis. Still, that fact supported his and Carstairs’s observations about the destroyer orbiting this world, which clearly had been an Eluoi ship. He filed the data away for future reflection as his men secured the rest of the reactor room.
“Eleven prisoners, sir,” Ruiz reported. “Three guards, all dead.”
The officer looked over at the terrified workers. They were huddled together, wide-eyed and in many cases trembling. They wore matching green coveralls; none of them seemed to be armed. He couldn’t bring himself to order them killed, but neither did he want to split up his unit by detaching even a single fire team to watch over POWs.
“All right. Any place we can secure these guys?”
“Got a storage locker over here, skipper,” Schroeder reported, emerging from a small chamber off the main room. He indicated the metal lever that operated the door latch. “We can secure it from the outside.”
“Did you look around inside?” Jackson asked Schroeder. “Any weapons or anything useful in there?”
“Some crates of supplies. They seemed to be small items, paint, and the like. Oh, and there was an intercom on the wall, but I smashed that.”
The LT nodded, feeling the need to move out in a hurry.
“You!” Jackson barked, striding up to the prisoners, waving the menacing barrel of his assault rifle at them and then indicating the door. “Get in there!”
He didn’t know if they had the typical translating devices implanted, but even if they didn’t, his gestures made his meaning clear. The Eluoi technicians practically