Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(45)
“Into the corner,” Sergeant Philbrick orders. He uses his armored bulk to nudge Dmitry and the colonel toward me and behind one of the support beams just in front of the bulkhead. His squad fans out and takes firing positions, aiming their rifles back up the way we came just moments ago.
“Security police,” a magnified voice booms in the corridor behind us. “Drop your weapons, or we will employ lethal force.”
Improbably, Corporal Nez chuckles. “?‘Employ lethal force’? Who the hell talks like that?”
“Don’t kill anyone ’less you have to,” Philbrick orders. “They shoot first, we take ’em down.”
The sheltered space between the support truss and the nearby bulkhead is pitifully small. I am keenly aware of the fact that I am in an enclosed space with a bunch of troopers about to shoot at each other, and that I am not wearing battle armor.
“Keep the Russian safe,” I say. “He goes down, nobody’s going back through to Fomalhaut.”
Philbrick removes the sidearm from his holster and hands it to me butt-first. I take it and check the chamber.
“Drop your weapons,” the voice in the corridor shouts again.
“Not a chance,” Philbrick shouts back. “You shoot at us, you die.”
I chance a look around the support beam that is shielding me inadequately. The cops in the corridor behind us—I count at least four—are wearing heavier armor than the SPs who arrested us earlier, and they’re carrying PDWs. The four SI troopers with us outgun them by a fair margin, and they’re seasoned combat troops besides, but there isn’t much space in the narrow confines of this space station corridor. If both sides open fire, it’ll be a bloody mess.
“All the airlocks on this concourse are sealed,” the cop shouts. “No way out but through us. Tactical response team is going to be here any second. Don’t be stupid, jarhead. Put ’em down.”
Staff Sergeant Philbrick exhales slowly. Then he shakes his head. “We don’t have time for this shit. Watch your target markers. Low bursts. On my mark.”
He looks at each of the SPs in turn, and I know that he is using his suit’s targeting computer to send priority target data to his fire team through the TacLink.
“One, two, fire.”
The SI troopers raise their rifles as one, and four trigger fingers tighten to execute the order. One of the SPs sees that the balloon is about to go up, and he flinches back and fires a burst from his PDW. The high-pitched rattling of the PDW’s report rings through the concourse. The projectiles hit Corporal Nez in the chest and side, and he jerks back in turn.
Then four M-66 rifles hammer out simultaneous bursts. The two nearest cops are cut down instantly, swept off their feet by the impact of dozens of tungsten fléchettes their light armor has no hope of stopping. Sergeant Philbrick gives a signal, and the two privates get up from their crouching position and advance on the two remaining cops. One of them sticks his PDW out from behind the support strut he’s using as cover and starts pouring bursts down the corridor blindly. I pull back behind my own cover and try to meld with the wall.
There are two more bursts of rifle fire, and then there’s silence.
“Clear,” Philbrick shouts.
Corporal Nez gets up from the rubberized deck and checks his armor. The small, high-velocity rounds from the cops’ PDWs have left silver-gray smear marks on his hardshell plate. I see that the SI troopers chose to go heavy—their armor is fitted with the optional add-on ballistic plating we only wear when we expect to do a lot of heavy close-quarters battle. It adds twenty pounds to an armor suit that’s already one weighty bitch of a load to carry, but the heavy kit can shrug off anything short of an armor-piercing shell from an autocannon.
The four SPs are on the ground, all motionless. Sergeant Philbrick stands over them, kicks their PDWs aside, and shakes his head again.
“Dumb shits,” he says. “Civvie cops against combat troops.”
I check myself for extra holes and don’t find any. Colonel Campbell and Dmitry are unscathed as well, although the vertical support strut we were hiding behind shows evidence of bullet impacts not ten inches from where my head was just a few moments earlier.
“We need to get the airlock open,” I say. “Tac team’s going to have bigger guns and better armor.”
“No shit.” Philbrick waves us over. “Skipper, over here. We need to use the master key for that hatch. Crouch in the corner and cover your ears. Nez, Watson, load HEAT.”
He plucks a grenade from his harness and sticks it into the open breech of his underbarrel grenade launcher. I can see the color code on the base of the shell: red, white, red. The high-explosive antiarmor rounds for our grenade launchers are fairly useless against vehicles clad in modern armor, but they do a number on steel airlocks and walls, which is precisely why we use them for breaching fortified positions.
Dmitry sees what the SI troopers are about to do, and he doesn’t need to be told to retreat to the nearest corner and cover his ears. I do likewise and take up position next to the Russian.
“Aimpoint is dead center. On three. One, two, fire.”
Three underbarrel launchers thump, and the dull but authoritative explosion of hollow-shaped charges pounds my eardrums and knocks me off balance. I get back to my feet and turn toward the airlock, which now has a half-meter hole in its center. Overhead, the smoke alarm goes off, a wailing trill that’s even more annoying than the security alert.