Even before the pilot had begun his excited shout, Peter Wu yanked open the taxi's aft hatch and leapt
out onto the Invader's hull. Privates Nakamura and Akida followed quickly, the latter carrying a large
ballistic nylon satchel. Seconds later, the taxi's superstructure thrummed as the shock wave generated by
five kilos of pentaglycerine cast into a highly efficient shaped charge smashed the pressure hatch's lock.
As the portal cycled open, Ryan felt a second and third explosion through the soles of his feet. Through
the NL-42's open hatch, he saw Wu launch himself feet first into the open pressure hatch.
"Hatchway clear." The young commando's voice was tight with adrenaline and the joy of battle.
"All right! Go! Go! Go! Ronin One is going in." The rest of the assault party had already joined Wu
inside the airlock before Ryan's armored feet touched the Invader's hull. There, the troopers could use
more subtle methods for opening the hatch. Leaving his bag of explosive tricks alone, Akida simply
yanked open a circuit panel, grateful for the Kage suit's enhanced strength, and hot-wired the hatch
override.
The DEST team swarmed out of the lock and into the corridor beyond, where they were met by laser
fire. A detachment of the Clan ship's security force had assembled in the crew's common area adjacent to
the pressure lock. Five armored Elementals launched an attack on the invading commandos.
"Chiksho!" Ryan cursed as a burst of automatic weapon fire stitched a line of shallow divots in his Kage
suit's breastplate. The suddenness and intensity of the Elemental's onslaught caught him by surprise. He
had expected resistance, but the Qanners seemed driven more by rage than by a desire to defend their
ship.
Kashira Raiko desperately pumped a half dozen shots into a charging Elemental before the hulking
warrior pitched over onto the deck. The Clan warrior fell less than a meter from Raiko's position. Charlotte
Sior and Ralph Carter, acting, as always, like a single pair of hands, laced the torso armor of a second
Clanner with highly accurate laser fire. Only the combined assault of two Blazer rifles, firing in rapid
volleys, dropped the massive trooper before he could fire his third shot. When they checked the downed
warriors, the DEST troopers saw the thick black sludge that characterized the Elemental suit's reaction to
severe trauma, flowing into the wounds. The Elemental which Raiko believed he had killed, or at least
incapacitated, was struggling to rise. He finished the Clanner off with a point-blank laser blast to the
head.
In the face of the sudden, unexpected ferocity of the strike team's response, the remaining Elementals
took shelter in the open doorways of the crew quarters. Ryan's men were forced to root them out. Twice,
laser bolts flashed uncomfortably close as he directed the assault. The scientists who had developed the
Kage suits had tried to assure him that the armor could not be damaged by most anti-personnel weapons,
but Ryan knew better. There was no body armor that was absolute proof against all small arms. The
desperate street fighting in Imperial City during the Smoke Jaguar invasion of Luthien had proved that. It
was proved again, right in front of him, when another Elemental was hurled back against a bulkhead, his
armor shattered by a high-explosive armor-piercing grenade from the launcher carried by Teji Nakamura.
Ryan was grateful that the Elementals were limited to using light anti-personnel weapons rather than
the more powerful 'Mech-killers their suits had been designed to carry. Small lasers, heavy machine guns,
or flamers stood a good chance of damaging one or more of the JumpShip's vital systems. The short-
range missiles normally carried in the twin triangular shoulder mounts were likewise useless. Their big,
armor-piercing warheads might penetrate the ship's thin armor, opening a breach in the hull.
The DEST troopers were similarly limited in their choice of weapons. Teji Nakamura had, rather vocally,
expressed his desire to carry one of the new, man-portable Gauss rifles, until Ryan pointed out the effects
of explosive decompression.
The last Elemental threw himself into an insane, berserker-like charge. Talon Sergeant Raiko showed
why he had lived long enough to become one of the most senior noncommissioned officers in the DEST
program. Even encumbered by the Kage suit's bulk, Raiko spun like a top. A sharp hum filled the air,
followed by an unpleasant screech. The decapitated Elemental collapsed in a heap. The sergeant ended
his graceful, almost dance-like movement in an en garde position, with his faintly glowing vibrokatana
held above his head, the blade parallel to the deck.
"Are you finished, Sergeant?" Seeing that his opponent was down, Raiko relaxed out of his jodan posture, nodded at his commander,
smoothly returning the weapon to its sheath.
"Finished."
Ryan grinned behind his armored mask. "All right, move out."
Quickly, following the deck plan mapped out on their suits' navigational systems, the strike team set
off for the JumpShip's bridge. Once, during that short trip, they were engaged by Clan security troops.
The attack left private Ralph Carter nursing a right leg lacerated by shell fragments and splinters of his
armor. An unarmored crewman had opened fire on the team from the cover of a half-closed access hatch.
Careless of what damage he might inflict on his own ship, the Clansman loosed a five-shot burst from a
gyroslug carbine at the advancing commandos. Three of the mini-rockets impacted on Carter's Kage suit.
Though the battle armor was designed to stop all but the heaviest of small-arms attacks, the laminated
steel, plastic, and ceramic armor failed to completely deflect the high-velocity explosive-tipped slugs.
Carter let out a yelp of surprise and pain as his leg collapsed under him. Peter Wu, the team's advance
guard, snapped off a burst of Blazer fire, but the ambusher had already dodged behind the heavy steel
hatch cover. When Wu and Corporal Hollis darted forward to engage the Clanner at close range, he
slammed the hatch in their armored faces.
"Dammit! He locked it," Wu growled, tugging with all of his suit-amplified strength.
"Don't worry, Pete," Kenichi Akida said, chuckling as he extracted a pre-packaged breaching charge
from his carryall. "I remembered to bring the keys."
Carlotta Sior gave no attention to the vignette being played out at the hatch. She was kneeling beside
Carter's damaged suit.
"Genki des, Lo," Carter snarled, more embarrassed than hurt. "I'm all right. He just peppered me,
that's all."
"He more than just peppered you, boy," Sior gazed in shocked horror at the miniature craters in
Carter's leg armor. "You got a couple of good-size holes in your suit. Thank God the whole ship isn't
decompressed, or you'd be painted all over the inside of your armor by now."
"I tell you I'm fine, Lo." Carter slapped his partner's claw-hands away and struggled to his feet. "The
medi-pack is taking care of the wound, and if you'll slap an armor patch over those holes, I'll be fine."
Before Sior could reply, the cry "Fire in the hole," sounded from her commline.
Three seconds later, a sharp bang, loud enough to be heard plainly through the suit's thick helmet,
resounded in the passageway. Wu and Hollis dove through the shattered hatch, rolling to their feet in the
area beyond. Sweeping the room, their weapons following their eyes, the troopers saw no sign of the
Clanner, alive or dead.
Carter spat out a torrent of invective, calling down curses on his assailant and his family, forgetting
that the ambusher, like all trueborn Clansmen, had no real parents or family, except for his or her sibkin
all derived from the same eugenics program. Winding down, Carter's voice dropped to a wicked hiss.
"Good, that just means I get a chance to kill the beggar."
Sior paused in her efforts to apply the self-adhesive patch to Carter's suit.
"Ralph, I've never seen you like this."
"You've never seen me shot before. When someone puts a bullet in me, I take it kind of personally. It's
one of my faults."
"Carter, you okay to stay with us?" Ryan's voice held a note of concern, both for the condition of his
injured man and for the status of his mission.
"Yeah, boss. I'll be fine." Carter gestured at the new, black square of high-strength composite his
partner had affixed to his suit. "Just as long as the bad guys don't take this patch as a mark to shoot at."
Ryan nodded, forgetting for a moment that his helmet and faceplate masked the gesture.
"Okay, move out. Wu, take the point."
The DEST team had only gone a couple of dozen meters when Ryan's helmet commline buzzed with an
incoming message. "Ronin One, this is Ronin Two. Primary objective secured. Casualties light. Ronin Two is moving against
secondary objective."
The brief, cryptic message meant that Ronin Two, consisting of DEST Teams Four and Five, had
managed to attack and seize the Invader's engineering spaces without sustaining any serious casualties,
and were now on their way to assault the JumpShip's docking bays. Ryan acknowledged the report,
adding that he and his team were two decks below the bridge, their primary objective.
* * *
Ten minutes later, Ryan transmitted his own "objective secure" message. The bulk of the Elemental
security force had settled into a defensive position in the tiny secure area just outside the JumpShip's
bridge. The fighting had been short, fierce, and brutal. Three of the Elementals, including one whose
armor bore the double gold bars of a Star Commander, were killed during the initial assault. Two more
died in the close-quarters fighting that followed. The remaining three were badly wounded.
Ryan's team did not get away undamaged. Kenichi Akida was seriously injured when an Elemental
grabbed his Kage suit by its folded stub wings, hurled him against the bulkhead, and rammed the fisted
battle claw into the DEST trooper's middle. Before the Clanner could finish the job, Raiko lopped off both
of the massive Elemental's arms with a pitiless swipe of his vibrokatana. Akida dropped to the deck,
writhing in agony, as the Talon Sergeant sent the Clanner to greet Kerensky in person, with a thrust so
powerful that the slightly glowing tip of the high-tech katana came out through the back of the man's
armor. Frank Hollis was nursing a couple of cracked ribs, inflicted when an Elemental, bigger than any
he'd ever seen, back-handed him into a steel bulkhead. If not for the protection afforded by the suit,
Hollis would have probably been killed. As it was, the communications operator had had the breath
knocked from his lungs. He recovered in time to blast a pair of deep, steaming holes into the assailant's
armor.
When DEST Team Six burst through the door onto the Invader's bridge, they were met by a scene of
chaos and destruction. The Elementals had sold their lives to give the bridge crew a few minutes to wreck
every panel, display, control, and readout they could lay their hands on.
As Peter Wu forced open the locked door, a crewman lifted a heavy half-rifle. The powerful laser bolt
struck Wu's right pauldron, leaving a deep furrow in the armored shoulder-piece and a slight burn on the
trooper's upper arm. A few more shots were traded, with the unarmored Ghost Bears getting the worst of
the bargain, be fore a large Clansman with blood-stained white hair got his crew under control.
* * *