Like most space stations of its size and type, Manpower's installation in Congo boasted modestly respectable space-to-space defenses. There was no point trying to build something which could hope to stand off an attack by regular fleet units, but out in the back of beyond, people had to look after themselves. More than one unarmed station had been overwhelmed and looted by the equivalent of barbarian raiders in space-going rowboats, so it was generally considered a good idea to provide valuable pieces of real estate with sufficient defensive capability to at least make them unattractive targets for low-budget pirates.

In addition, however, Lassiter's station served as not just the command center and freight transshipment point for the entire system, but also provided the primary defensive node for the planet of Congo itself, as well. Just as the guards in a prison were unarmed in order to prevent the inmates from seizing their weapons, the administrators and overseers on the surface of the planet had very few heavy weapons at their command. They scarcely needed them, with the equivalent of a battalion or so of Marines ready to drop on their heads at a moment's notice... supported by kinetic strikes from orbit. And especially not when Manpower had made it crystal clear that they would punish any rebellion attempt with a brutal ferocity that beggared the imagination.

While it would have been impossible for anything which happened on the surface of the planet to directly threaten the space station, it was always theoretically possible that, despite everything, a desperate slave uprising might succeed in capturing some of the system's heavy-lift cargo shuttles while they were planeted and using them to attack it. If that happened as the first stage in an insurrection, then the lightly armed enclaves on the planet would be essentially at the mercy of the slaves who hated their inhabitants with a blazing passion. So, remote though the threat might be, Manpower's planners had provided the space station with sufficient light weaponry to annihilate any such attempt.

Then there were Manpower's LACs. By the standards of the Royal Manticoran Navy, they were hopelessly obsolete, but there were fifteen of them. Theoretically, they were simply Verdant Vista's "customs patrol," with a secondary legitimate function as additional pirate discouragers. They, too, could be used at need to suppress any insurrection by Congo's enslaved labor force, however. They could also have made mincemeat out of the Felicia if they'd chosen to do so. Of course, their commanders had also been informed of precisely what HMS Gauntlet would do to any LAC stupid enough to open fire on a merchant vessel whose passengers included a member of the House of Winton.

All those factors had played their part in the planning for Operation Spartacus. While it was extremely unlikely that any of Manpower's forces currently in the star system would be foolish enough to challenge Gauntlet or attack Felicia directly with "Ruth Winton" on board, it was only too likely that they would attempt to beat off any attack craft Felicia launched, and they had more than sufficient firepower for that. At worst, that would result in a blood bath for the attackers. At best, it would create a standoff which would force the abandonment of the attack or else require Gauntlet to engage the defenders in an obvious act of aggression.

That was the reason all of Thandi's personnel were assembled in the slaver's "cargo bays" as the big merchant ship crept slowly into her designated mooring position off Space Dock Eleven. Thandi watched the tiny holo display projected against the visor of her battle armor, the relayed imagery from Felicia 's external visual pickups as the big ship maneuvered cautiously under reactor thrusters alone. It was impossible for any vessel to approach this closely to another one under impeller drive, and her lips thinned in a hungry smile as she saw the bright light shining through the docking bay gallery's transparent armorplast. She could actually make out a handful of moving figures on the far side of that armorplast, and her smile grew still hungrier as she contemplated the surprise they were about to receive.

Felicia 's tractors reached out and locked on to the space station as she killed the last of her relative movement and the boarding tube reached out to nuzzle against her main personnel hatch. Normally, the station would have supplied the necessary tractor lock, but "Templeton" had contemptuously dismissed Lassiter's offer to do so this time. Not that it really made any difference at this point, Thandi reminded herself, and reconfigured her visor's HUD. The imagery of the illuminated bay gallery vanished, replaced by her command and control schematic. The lieutenants commanding her platoons glowed as golden triangles in the schematic, with their platoon sergeants and squad leaders shown as golden and silver chevrons, respectively.

"Tango-Lima-Alpha leaders, this is Kaja," she said, remotely surprised, as always, to hear how calm her voice sounded over her own com. "Prepare to execute Alpha One on my command. Acknowledge."

Four gold triangles flashed brightly in obedient response, and she suppressed a grunt of satisfaction. Then—

"Now, Thandi," Ruth's voice said quietly in her ear bug.

"Tango-Lima-Foxtrot, execute now!" she said instantly. "I repeat, execute now, now, now!"

"Arnold wants to know what you want him to do," Takashi said over Lassiter's private com channel.

"I already told him what to do!" the general manager snapped back, never taking his eyes from the mobile mountain of alloy as it eased to a stop relative to his space station. He'd come down to the dock gallery from his command center. Not because he wanted to, but because he already knew that whatever happened here, and however little choice he'd had but to agree to it, his career was about to take a major hit. Under the circumstances, it was imperative that he be able to present himself as having been hands-on at every stage of the disaster. It might not do much good, but it would certainly look better than cowering safely in Command Central.

"I'm only telling you what he said," Takashi replied.

"Goddamned idiot," Lassiter growled in a deliberately ambiguous tone which might equally well have applied to his senior assistant or to the commander of Verdant Vista's security force. Then he drew a deep breath.

"Tell him," he said in a dangerously patient voice, "that he will do nothing—repeat, nothing— except stand by in the positions he and I already discussed unless and until I tell him differently. This situation is fucked up enough already without him deciding to play goddamned Preston of the Spaceways on his own!"

"I'll tell him," Takashi acknowledged, and Lassiter half-growled and half-snorted in satisfaction. Or as close to satisfaction as he could reasonably expect to feel at a moment like this. He'd allowed Arnold to issue weapons and put his heavy combat teams into their battle armor, but not without some severe misgivings. Major Jonathan Arnold was basically competent, if not particularly imaginative. Not all of his personnel were, however. In fact, in Lassiter's considered opinion, at least half of them would have been incapable of organizing a bottle party in a brewery without direction. They were a blunt instrument in Manpower's hands—adequate when it came to keeping an iron boot planted on the necks of Congo's slave laborers, but not much more than that. Indeed, Manpower hadn't wanted them to be much more, and that was why the current situation was far enough beyond the parameters of their capabilities to give Lassiter nightmares every time he thought about the potentially dire consequences of a single itchy trigger finger.

Unfortunately, it was a case of damned if he did, and damned if he didn't. If one of his security people screwed the pooch, he'd be blamed. But if he ordered Arnold to stand his people down and something went wrong anyway, someone on the Council was absolutely certain to suggest that it was all Lassiter's fault for not having made proper use of his resources. As if anything he did at this point—

That was odd. Why were they opening the—?

The docking tube had just touched Felicia 's main personnel hatch when the huge doors of her specially designed "cargo bays" snapped open. Kamal Lassiter's eyes widened, but consternation turned almost instantly into panic as human beings began to spill through the gaping openings. Not the unprotected bodies of slaves, but armed and armored figures shooting across the gap between them and the gallery with bulletlike speed.

Surprise was total. Despite all the tension and anxious precautions Felicia 's arrival had engendered, no one aboard the space station had even contemplated the possibility of an actual attack. Not after the way Victor Cachat's strategy had misdirected everyone's attention to the "terrorist Templeton's" demands. Lassiter's brain was still fumbling with the new data, trying to force it into some sort of coherency, when the first Marine breaching teams hit the gallery's armorplast.

The operations manager stumbled back a step or two as the Marines touched down on tractor-soled boots. They landed and clung as naturally as so many houseflies, and Kamal Lassiter's face went paper-white as he finally realized what he was seeing. He spun away from the sight, dashing madly for the gallery lifts, but it was far too late for that.

Six three-man teams of Marines slapped breaching rings on to the armorplast. Each of those rings was approximately three-meters in diameter. They adhered almost instantly, and the Marines stepped back and hit their detonators. Precisely shaped and directed jets of plasma sliced six perfect circles through the tough, refractory armorplast as easily if it had been no tougher than old-fashioned glass.

The consequences for the personnel inside the gallery, none of whom were in spacesuits, were as ghastly as they were predictable.

Thandi watched the hurricanes of atmosphere explode out of the breaches her teams had blasted. Computer chips, loose furniture, sheets of paper, and human beings came with them, sucked out by the hungry vacuum before interior blast doors and emergency hatches slammed shut, sealing off the air-gushing wounds.

"All Tango-Lima-Alpha units, this is Kaja. Phase One accomplished. Move to Phase Two."

The golden triangles on her display blinked fresh acknowledgment, and her assault teams began swarming through the openings as the space station's emergency procedures conveniently shut down the torrents of atmosphere pouring out of them.