"We're in position, Peter," Maneka's com image informed the militia commander. "Is Fourth Battalion

"Affirmative," Jeffords replied tautly. "I still say you ought to take Jessup's company with you, too."

"No," she said firmly. "They don't have the armor or the firepower to go toe-to-toe with a Puppy medium, much less a heavy. But they could be a nasty surprise for any air cav that get around us."

Jeffords looked rebellious, but he didn't argue. Mostly because Maneka was his commanding officer, but also because he knew she was right. Captain Jessup's single company of light, manned tanks had never been intended to stand up to the sort of firepower which was probably headed Landing's way.

She/they considered the numbers once again. A full-strength Melconian heavy assault brigade had a roster strength of over three thousand. Sixteen hundred of that total were in the three battalions of its infantry regiment, but the real heart of its striking power was its armored regiment. The twelve Heimdalls of its recon company could probably be handled by Jessup's fifteen Whippet tanks, but the six Surturs and twelve Fenrises would smash anything short of Lazarus himself with contemptuous ease.

It was a sobering comment on the sheer size of an Atilla-class transport that it could pack that much armor aboard, the Maneka component of her/their personality reflected. The Surtur was at least as big as most Bolos—over twenty percent larger than Lazarus himself, in fact—and even the Fenris came in at over nine thousand tons. Thermopylae could carry a maximum of two Bolos plus another hundred thousand tons of lighter vehicles or seventy-five thousand tons of vehicles and up to five thousand infantry and their equipment. But the Sleipners carried their Bolos externally, whereas all of the Melconian transport's personnel and vehicles were carried internally. And unlike Thermopylae, she was atmosphere-capable and designed for rough-field landings. If the Melconians had been prepared to accept externally-mounted transport for their heavy armored vehicles, they could have packed even more punch aboard the big ship. But they would have had to sacrifice its ability to land its troops directly, and that was strictly against Melconian doctrine.

"Which is a damned good thing," the Maneka component thought at the Lazarus component. "Six Surturs are bad enough."

"True. But we do possess significant advantages the Battalion lacked on Chartres," the Lazarus component observed in reply.

Which was true, Maneka realized. The only question was whether or not their advantages would be enough.

"We've got a hull breach!"

Lauren's jaw clenched, and her eyes darted over the schematic in front of her.

"Pressure loss in Sector Bravo-Seven-Charlie," a computer voice remarked calmly. "Initiating containment."

A strident audio alarm began to sound, but the voice continued in those same, calm tones.

"Containment procedures terminated," it announced. "Atmosphere loss has ceased."

"And you think that's good news, you stupid bitch?!" one of her watch-standers snarled. Lauren was too busy to endorse the remark, but she certainly understood it. India Mike Three's AI was an idiot, compared to a Bolo. All it cared about was that the hole in the module's skin was no longer leaking air.

The fact that whoever had made the hole must have sealed it behind them didn't mean a thing to the computers.

"They're into Bravo-Seven," she said over the all-hands channel. "Alf," she looked at the tech who'd replied to the AI, "close the blast doors manually. Then start locking down every powered door you can.

Hannah," she turned to another woman, "get on the horn to whoever's running the cutters. We need somebody in here with some damned guns—fast!"

Death Descending bulleted downward, shrieking through the ever thicker planetary atmosphere at a dangerously high velocity. Unlike Human military transports, Death Descending's huge hull was sleekly aerodynamic, designed for atmospheric insertions exactly like this one, but Captain Na-Tharla was painfully well aware of the fact that there was a Bolo waiting for him. Everything suggested that the Bolo in question would be unable to engage his ship as it descended, but the fact that everything suggested that would be very cold comfort if it turned out not to be accurate. At the moment, he missed the rest of Admiral Na-Izhaaran's squadron more acutely than he had in many months, because they were supposed to be there to offer supporting fire as he penetrated his objective's atmosphere.

On the other hand, he reflected as he watched his ship's skin temperature climb, our original objective would have had orbital defenses worth worrying about, too. Which this target doesn't, thanks to Lieutenant Sa-Chelak's platoon.

He spared a tiny corner of his brain to send a silent prayer winging to Sa-Chelak's family gods on the lieutenant's behalf. It was all he could afford to spare, and he returned his total attention to his radar-mapping display as Death Descending screamed towards its selected landing site at three times the speed of sound.

More crimson lights glared on Edmund Hawthorne's damage control panel as the intruders burned their way through the blast doors. Those doors were intended to contain atmosphere, and to resist fairly severe explosive damage, but they weren't exactly slabs of duralloy armor. No one had ever intended them to serve as armored bulkheads capable of containing energy-weapon armed infantry for any length of time, after all.

The pattern of damage control reports told him what objectives the Dog Boys had selected for themselves, for all the good it did him. They were headed for Engineering ... and the Bridge.

Exactly where I'd be headed myself, he conceded coldly. Which isn't a great deal of comfort just this moment.

At least he'd managed to get all of his people armed, however barely, before their unwelcome visitors arrived. And he'd managed to figure out how those visitors had gotten aboard his ship in the first place once Master Chief Halberstadt had maneuvered one of Thermopylae's external hull maintenance mechs around to the area of the hull breaches.

A single Melconian special ops insertion boat was mechanically grappled to Thermopylae's skin.

Hawthorne had never encountered one of the insertion boats, nor had anyone else in his ship's company, but Iona's memory had obediently disgorged more information than he could possibly use about them.

The two really relevant facts, as far as he was concerned, were, first, that the insertion boats were pure transport vehicles, with no onboard armament. And, second, that they had a maximum capacity of twenty, falling to only fifteen if the personnel aboard them were suited for vacuum ops. Which told him that his twenty-two-person crew had the invaders outnumbered.

Except, of course, for the fact that we're scattered all over the ship. And that these are highly trained special operations troops and we're Navy pukes. Not a Marine among us.

"Open Gamma-Seventeen, Jackson," he said to the exec. "Let's get Mallory and his team up here to the command deck before the Doggies get here. There's no point leaving them where they are, and I want as much firepower as we can get on this side of the shin-breaker."

"Aye, aye, sir," Lieutenant Lewis acknowledged. He unlocked the indicated blast door long enough for the power tech petty officer to lead her three-person party through it, and Hawthorne tried to look confident.

It wasn't easy. Given the speed at which the Dog Boys were moving, they'd get to Engineering at least ten minutes before Jessica Stopford could get the powered armor up and running. And they'd get to the Bridge deck a good minute before that. Mallory's people probably weren't going to make enough difference when they got here, either. On the other hand, there was the shin-breaker. And despite their rapid progress, it was unlikely, to say the least, that the Dog Boys knew about it.