Seas of Venus(52)

Of course, the most immediate bad luck if the raiders were discovered would be that of the Angel crewman, smashed into a bulkhead by Johnnie's burst of explosive bullets.

The armored curve of A Turret barbette bulged into the corridor. Visible beyond it was the barbette supporting B Turret. Johnnie broke stride, trying to remember the layout of a dreadnought from schematics studied at leisure and the brief glimpse he'd had of the Holy Trinity's armored reality as he followed Sal Grumio.

"Sir, should we—"

—enter the barbette and go up to the shelter deck through the turret? he would have concluded if Uncle Dan, a rifleman faceless behind his reflective visor, had not broken in with, "No, the next compartment forward should be the lower conning room. We'll take the access ladder straight from there to the bridge."

"And take it easy when we're in the ladderway," Sergeant Britten added in a low-voiced snarl. "Remember, even if they're all half asleep, they're going to wonder if it sounds like there's a soccer crowd stampeding toward the bridge."

The lower conn was well within the main armor belt, so the compartment's bulkheads were thin, barely splinter-proof. Even so, the hatch cycled slowly and unwillingly, a minor mechanical fault that Maintenance hadn't gotten around to correcting.

Johnnie took a deep breath in the enforced pause. His body shivered with reaction.

"Let's go," Dan said, leading through the hatchway.

Lights went on as soon as the presence of humans tripped a circuit. Johnnie crouched to spray the first movement, but the lower conn was empty save for the Blackhorse raiders. The hatch to the ladderway was open, for ventilation or from the sheer lazy disinterest of the last man through.

"Sorry, sir," Johnnie muttered to his uncle.

"Nothing to be sorry about," Dan said as he entered the armored staircase behind the muzzle of his rifle.

The helical treads of the ladderway were barely wide enough for men to pass in opposite directions, and there was no way that ten booted humans could climb them without sending a mass of vibrant echoes through the narrow confines. Johnnie reminded himself that the constant flexing of the dreadnought's whole tens of thousands of tons was loud enough to conceal the ringing footsteps from the bridge watch, but there was no emotional comfort in what he knew intellectually was true.

Dan paused briefly on the landing outside the conning tower, directly below the bridge. Again the hatch was open and the compartment empty. Vision slits, presently unshuttered, gave a shadowy view forward over B Turret.

"Force Prime," muttered the command channel in Sergeant Britten's voice, "I ought to be leading."

"No sir," Johnnie gasped. Because of the weight of his pack and the monotony of the steps, he'd had to make a conscious effort to keep his eyes lifted above the next tread. "I should."

"Both of you, shut—" Commander Cooke snarled.

The tak-tak-tak of gunfire, not loud but penetrating because it was the sound they all feared, cut him off.

A fuzzy voice over the intra-ship channel crackled, ". . . at the accommodation la . . ." and blurred off as the sound of another burst rattled the night. It was impossible to pinpoint the direction of the echoing sound; from the words, the stern team had run into guards at the accommodation ladder raised along the dreadnought's aft rail.

Johnnie plucked the transmitter cup from his helmet.

"Forget that!" bellowed Uncle Dan. "Come on!"

The massive bridge hatch was opening. An enlisted man, slinging a sub-machine gun and looking back over his shoulder to hear a shouted order, was halfway through the opening when Dan's rifle blew him back in a sparkle of explosive bullets. Muzzle blasts in the confined space stung Johnnie's bare hands and chin.

Dan jumped through the hatchway, firing. The hatch staggered, then began to close. Johnnie brushed both the hatch and its jamb as he followed his uncle into the bright-lit interior.

A junior lieutenant lay against a bulkhead painted with his blood. He'd been reaching for his pistol, but his outstretched left hand had already thrown the master switch that closed and dogged all the bridge hatches.

Dan fired. His shots blasted a console and the bulkhead beyond the ducking officer of the day.

Johnnie killed three techs still at their consoles, two of them scrabbling for pistols and the third—the dangerous one—shouting into his communicator.

Training held. A pair of explosive bullets hit each man in the head. One of the techs leaped to his feet and sprang across the bridge, caroming between consoles and bulkheads and spraying blood in a fountain. The officer of the day jumped up, screaming in horror at the sight.

This time Dan's bullets stitched him across the chest.