The grip of a sub-machine gun touched Johnnie's right hand from behind.
He'd been about to attack a superdreadnought with nothing but a .30-caliber pistol.
"Right," said Johnnie. He quickly snapped the weapon's sling into his epaulet, then paused. The collapsible boat was slightly broader than the opening. Johnnie braced his arms onto the armor while his feet thrust back, preventing the little vessel from crunching into the huge one. Then he jumped aboard the Holy Trinity.
There was no guard in the skimmer magazine. All twelve of the water-stained pumpkinseeds hung from their davits, swaying gently. Johnnie caught the line Britten threw him and made it fast to the rail so that the boat would hold its station. The remainder of the assault force followed him, splashing awkwardly on the water-covered rollers and cursing. Sergeant Britten was the last man—
As expected.
The boat gurgled as the sergeant stepped out of it; he'd pulled the scuttling strip, opening a six-by-thirty-inch hole in the bottom. They didn't want the boats floating in the harbor and perhaps arousing suspicion, but it was still disquieting to see the transport which had brought them this far slipping beneath the black water.
Britten reached for the line. Johnnie had already cut it with the diamond saw which formed the back edge of his fighting knife. A metal edge wouldn't have worked its way through the monocrystalline cord until dawn broke. . . .
The second boat slid to the mouth of the opening. Commander Cooke tossed Johnnie another line and clanged aboard himself. His men followed him.
"Have you opened the hatch yet?" Uncle Dan demanded.
"Ah, no, I—" Johnnie said.
"Out of the way," his uncle ordered brusquely.
Dan pushed past Johnnie and clambered over the railing to where the first boatload already waited. He pulled a suction cup on a line of thin flex from his helmet and stuck it onto the wall. "Team leaders report," his mushy voice ordered.
"One."
"Two!"
"Three present!" There was a bang as the leader of section three slipped on the rollers as he hastened to board.
"Four."
Ordinary helmet communications were only useful at line of sight for this operation, since the massive armor walls of the Holy Trinity blocked spread-frequency radio as effectively as they did incoming shells. The leaders of the various sections—bridge, bow, stern, and engine room—reported via radio since they were all in the same room, but in action they would use the same system Uncle Dan had just tested.
The transmitter in the suction cup fed the signal through the fabric of the ship itself. It could be received directly through the helmets, but replies would have to be made with the men's similar units.
A squish and a gurgle marked the scuttling of the second boat. Johnnie cut the line. Sergeant Britten reached over the railing and helped the young ensign up to the front of the assault force.
Johnnie charged his sub-machine gun. There were similar clacks throughout the compartment as all the men readied their weapons to fire.
"Remember," said Uncle Dan calmly, "if we don't have to fire a shot, then we've done a perfect job. But if there's trouble, finish it fast. We don't have any margin for error."
He touched a button. The hatch whined and slowly cranked its way outward.
19
Up the close and down the stair,
Out and in with Burke and Hare.
—Anonymous
The teams separated immediately. The eight men picked to capture the engine room, and the pair who would cut the stern cable, went directly aft on the platform deck. The remainder, the bridge assault team and the two men for the bow and bow anchor, took the companionway up two levels to the main deck before dividing again.
The dreadnought's off-duty crewmen should be sleeping peacefully in the air-conditioned comfort of their lower-deck quarters, but none of the assault force would be on that level to chance a meeting.
The bridge team, with Dan, Johnnie, and Sergeant Britten attached as supernumeraries, was officially led by Turret Captain Reiss, a senior warrant officer. As a practical matter, when Commander Cooke was present, Commander Cooke was in charge—
And when Ensign Gordon was present, he was jogging forward on point, his eyes wide open to catch movement at their peripheries and the borrowed sub-machine gun ready to end that movement before the victim knew what had hit him.
There was no cover in the dreadnought's empty, drab-painted corridors. Somebody could step out of a compartment at any time and see the Blackhorse assault force, armed to the teeth. There was no reason a member of the Holy Trinity's crew should be here . . . but there was no law of nature forbidding them, either.
Training had made Johnnie good at this sort of business. Now he realized that success required that he—that they—also be lucky, or at least not unlucky.