Lee glanced at the entry to the passageway that ran the length of the ship's keel-boom, up to the habitation modules. “We go forward. Right down the middle of that damned fifty-meter shooting range.”
“Right,” said Finder quickly. “Okay, now listen up, ratings. L.T. says we're going forward. Burns, swap weapons with Lewis; I want you on point with me for this one. Lewis, you use the bullpup to provide a base of fire. You follow the lead element at ten meters. Stay close to the outer wall of the passageway; no reason to line ourselves up like duckpins. Right, L.T.?”
Lee nodded while he wondered, what was Finder doing? Granted, Lee had indicated the next objective, and tactical deployment was the top kick's duty, but Finder had jumped in too quickly, as if he wanted to make sure that his deployment outline was the one used. And besides, Lee thought, toggling the private channel with his chin, Burns, not Lewis, was the best shot with the bullpup carbine they had brought. “Sarge,” he began—
Finder's response on the private channel was curt. “Trust me, L.T. I know Lewis isn't the better shot, but that's not what's important here.”
“Then what is importa—?”
“L.T., trust me. Please.”
“All right, Sergeant—with the proviso that we're going to have an after-action chat.”
Finder nodded. “You're the boss, Boss.” Finder switched back to general address. “Okay, Lewis, since you're our base of fire the rest of the way, you're our point-man into the passage. Get to the side as soon as you're in, and once the entry is secured, tuck down to the right; L.T. you'd go in last, and tuck down to the left. Sir, we go on your count.”
Lee nodded. “Lewis, you go on ‘three.' One, two—”
On “three,” Burns tripped the door release and Lewis drift-stepped into the passageway, Lee felt a fumbling at his left hand. Looking down, he saw Finder sneaking an odd-looking pistol into it. Well, pistol was a charitable term. It looked like a long, anorexic tube with a magazine at the rear and the manufacturing characteristics of a zip gun.
“What the—?”
Finder's voice on the private channel was a fast hiss, “Eight rounds. Gyrojet ammo. Recoilless for zero-gee. Don't use your ten-millimeter. Stay alive.” And then Finder was popping through the entry after Burns, barking orders. Lee was still so surprised he almost forgot to follow.
When he did, he discovered the rest of the team towing themselves down into crouched positions; Lee did so too, tugging his body into a ball to the left of the door.
“All clear, L.T.,” reported Finder. “Pretty quiet, for a hijacking.”
Lee kept his eyes up the corridor that dwindled away from them. “Yes and no. I wasn't expecting to find any bad guys back here, only crew bodies. One of which may be there.” Lee pointed.
Burns, squinting, nodded. “Yeah. Looks like a floater. Almost at the other end of the tube.”
“Twenty-three meters away,” reported Lewis, who was just taking his right eye away from the carbine's laser rangefinder.
“Active sensors off, Lewis,” Lee snapped. “They may not be patrolling this part of the ship, but they could have seeded with automated detection systems. So from here on, we go in old school: no sensors, no comm, hand signals only.”
“But L.T.,” Burns began.
Lee made a throat-cutting gesture with the edge of his left hand. Burns got the idea and shut up.
Finder nodded, pointed to Lee and Lewis, made a push-back gesture with his palm, raised all his fingers, held out a stationary thumbs up and waited.
Simple enough. Finder was simply reconfirming the order that Lee and Lewis were to follow at a range of ten meters. Lee replied with a thumb's up.
Finder nodded, tapped Burns on the shoulder and pushed firmly off the deck at a shallow angle, drifting to the right. Burns copied him, but drifted to the left. Lee waited until they were about eight meters away, then nodded to Lewis and copied Finder's jump.
However, being the only native Dirtsider in the team, Lee's free-jump was not as precise. He had to push back from the wall just before reaching the spot where the dead crewman was floating, Finder had already sent Burns ahead to secure the entry into the inhabited areas and now pointed at the corpse's wounds. Lee squinted through a diffuse cloud of small red globules. A small crossbow bolt had hit the crewman just above the hip. But that had not been the fatal injury. The two stab-wounds to either side of the sternum and