The first L-6 suddenly altered course with a rapid burn. It had probably picked up the wrong idea about a scruffy little ship in an area of space that was frequently populated by pirates. One of its spars wheeled ninety degrees almost instantly, looming in the TIV's viewscreen on collision course.

“Abort abort abort!” Sicko yelled. “Brace brace brace—”

He was cut short by a screech of tearing alloy that shuddered through the TIV, and suddenly it wasn't the tight gut-exhilaration of a boarding but the desperate scramble to survive. The impact spun the TIV off and the last thing Fi saw as he somersaulted involuntarily was Sicko pulling on the yoke and punching a stabilizing burn to stop the spin.

There was nothing Fi or the squad could do. It was all down to the pilot. Fi hated that moment of helpless realization every time. The display in his HUD shuddered like a cheap bootleg holovid as he hit the bulkhead harder than he thought possible in zero-g.

“Incoming! Returning fire.”

And then there was light: brilliant blue-white light. The instant hot rain of fragments peppered and pecked on the hull. Sicko had neutralized the incoming missile. The second L-6 powered up and punched back into hyperspace in a flare of light.

“Chew on that,” Sicko said, and slapped his fist hard on the console. “Foam deployed … hull breach secure.”

“What's that?” Fi said, suddenly ice-cold and focused, and not nauseous at all.

“BRB.”

“What?”

“Big Red Button. Emergency hull seal.”

The remains of the freighter's missile cartwheeled slowly into the distance, trailing vapor. It was the kind of self-defense many freighters felt the need to carry these days: wars created useful opportunity for the criminal community.

Niner sighed. “Oh, fierfek, everyone knows we're here now …”

“Anyone get his license number?” Fi said. “Maniac.”

“Yeah, and more maniacs along shortly, too.” Sicko turned his head toward the scanner readout. “Next one's due in sixty seconds … and the next one two minutes later, I reckon. I hope he doesn't call for assistance, or we're going to have to bang out of here really fast.”

“Tell me they're not going to notice that little fracas.”

“They're not going to notice that little fracas.”

“Vor'e, brother.”

“You're welcome.” The pilot didn't take his eyes off the scanner. “Happy to lie to a comrade anytime, if it makes him feel better—there you go …”

The next freighter fell out of hyperspace fifteen hundred meters from their port bow, and its pilot definitely noticed. Fi knew that because the immediate bright arc of laser cannon shaved the elint mast mounted on the TIV's nose just as Sicko let loose a sustained volley into the freighter's under-slung drive. It was still showering debris as Sicko brought the TIV about and swung back under the freighter to loop over its casing from its starboard quarter and bring the TIV, totally inverted, to rest hatch-to-hatch with the target.

And there was nothing the crippled freighter could do about it. Sicko was too close in, too far inside the minimum range of its cannon, and now riding a very angry Ralltiiri tiger.

“This is where you get off.” Sicko's voice was just a little shaky. “End of the line.”

“Stand to!” Niner said. The skirt of coaming shot out of the TIV's hatch housing and sealed tight against the freighter's hull while the grapple arms held it secure. The pressure equalization light flashed red and the TIV's blastproof inner hatch opened, then the outer one. “Dar, take it!”

Dar slapped the frame charges on the freighter's hatch, the inner hatch snapped shut again, and a muffled whump vibrated through the TIV.

How Sicko had managed to bring the TIV alongside the port hatch without ramming the vessel—or ripping the deck-head out of the TIV—Fi would never understand, but that was what trooper pilots did, and he was in awe of them. The inner hatch opened again. Darman bowled in two flash-bangs blinding, deafening stun grenades—and Niner was first through the hatch.

“Go go go—”

Fi, buoyed up on a wave of adrenaline, plunged through after him, DC-17 set to blaster mode. The TIV and Sicko were swept from his mind from that moment as time disobeyed all the rules and he was caught in an infinite, slow-motion split second while the squad burst through the hatch and the L-6's artificial gravity smacked him down hard on the deck. The impact ran up through the soles of his boots. He was running for seconds before his proprioception caught up with the gravity and his body said I remember this.

But there weren't many places to run on an L-6 freighter. It was a cockpit and a couple of cabins bolted to a durasteel box of nothing. Atin moved ahead and simply opened up with the Deece's new PEP laser, knocking two men flat in a massive shock wave of sound and light as they came out of the starboard cabin firing blasters.

Fi's anti-flash visor darkened instantly. Even with armor, he felt the shock of the PEP'S unleashed energy. They all did.

Fi ran on over Atin as he dropped to one knee to cuff and search the men, wrists to ankles, as they lay struggling for breath, whimpering. A PEP round was like being flashbanged and hit in the chest by several plastoid rounds at once.

It was usually nonlethal. Usually.

Two down, three—maybe—to go.

The cockpit doors didn't open when Niner stood back and hit the controls. Atin caught up with Fi again and they stood catching their breath.

Niner motioned Darman into position at the cockpit doors. “Shame that PEP doesn't work through bulkheads.”

“Confirmed, three still inside,” Darman said, running the infrared sensor sweep in his gauntlet up and down the seam of the doors. “Nothing in the port cabin.”

Intel had it right for once: there were five bandits on board.

“Encourage them to step outside, Dar,” Niner said, checking his Deece's PEP setting. He peered at the power readout. “This thing actually scares me.”

Darman unrolled a ribbon of adhesive thermal charge and pressed it around the doors' weak points. Then he pushed the det into the soft material and cocked his head to one side as if calculating. “All that fuss getting in and now we just walk over them. Anticlimactic, I think the word is …”

There was a dull echoing thud and screech of metal that vibrated through the deck. For a second Fi thought the det had gone off prematurely and that it was all a trick of his adrenaline-distorted perception, and that he was dead but didn't know it yet.

But it wasn't the det.

Fi looked at Niner, and Niner looked at Atin, and Fi saw in Darman's viewpoint icon that he was staring at a fragment of flimsi that whipped past him as if snatched by a sudden wind.

It was being carried on a stream of air. Escaping air. Fi felt it grab him and they all reached instinctively for a secure point to anchor them.

“Hull breach,” Fi said, arms tight around a stanchion. “Check suit seals.”

They went into an automatic and long-drilled check of their suit systems. Katarn armor was vacuumproofed. Fi's glove sensor confirmed his suit was still airtight and the thumbs-up from the rest of the squad indicated that their suit integrity was holding up too. The temporary gale of escaping air was abating.

“Sicko, you receiving?” said Niner.

Fi had the same thought, and judging by the rapid breathing on the shared comlink, so had Atin and Darman. The decompression was via the hatch. And that meant the seal formed by the TIV had been breached.

On their comlink there was only faint static and the sound of their own breathing and swallowing.

“Fierfek,” Atin said. “Whatever it is, he's gone.”

Niner motioned Darman to stay by the cockpit hatch and beckoned Fi to follow him. “Let's see if it's fixable. You two stay there.”