Battlecruiser Alamo: The Price of Admiralty by Richard Tongue Page B

response, which did nothing to dispel her puzzlement. The two veterans reached the junction, and the corporal dropped to his knees, both of them raising the tubes to their mouths, sliding a dart into the end, carefully drawing in a deep breath. With a chopping motion from the sergeant, the two of them blew at the same instant, the darts flying through the air to land on their targets.
    One of the two guards went down instantly; the other took a few seconds to go down, grabbing at his collar as if he was unable to breath. Hunter sped back to the waiting troops, gesturing them on to the door, while Corporal Clarke quickly checked over the two fallen guards, reliving them of the clips for their sidearms.
    Esposito whispered to her sergeant, "What the hell was that?"
    Hunter pulled the blowgun out of his pocket again, "Primitive but extremely effective at close range. Don't show up on a scanner, and the drug on the tip of the dart knocks you cold for hours. They don't cover them in Basic anymore since the officers took over."
    "Got any more of them?"
    "Couple of spares."
    "Get some more. And I want at least two men in each squad trained in their use as soon as possible."
    He raised his eyebrows, slightly surprised. "I'll make it happen, ma'am. Very easy to fabricate . I guess we've got some crates to move."
    The squad filed in through the doors, a pair of troopers taking position on either side while the guards were dragged inside. Their trousers were close enough to uniform-issue to pass a cursory inspection, and their jackets fit the troopers reasonably well.
    As she walked into the storeroom, Esposito pulled out the datapad with the required inventory and started scanning for the ident tags they were looking for. The room was huge, more than a hundred meters across, with racks scattered liberally around the room in what was probably someone's idea of order, crates scattered ten or twelve high around the room. The only sound was the whirring of air recirculators overhead not quite working properly.
    "Hey, Sarge, look over here!" said Riley, pulling a box down from on top of a large stack. "This place is a god-damned treasure trove."
    Hunter frowned for a moment, but Esposito shook her head, "Only take any crates that have 'Alamo' written on them or that match the tags I'm scanning for. We're going to have enough problems getting our own stuff home without dragging anything else with us."
    The Sergeant looked a little disappointed, but nodded, "OK, you bastards. You heard the officer. Clarke, Flanagan, see if you can find something we can get this stuff out on. The rest of you start stacking crates, and I'd better not see you slipping anything else in our load!"
    Sergeants were still renowned for their creative use of language, Esposito briefly mused. She was quite confident that anything of value that could easily be pocketed would be removed from the room upon their departure, and equally confident that none of it would ever be found.
    While the troopers started to load crates, grumbling about the weight, she looked around the back of the room. A thin layer of dust covered some of the older containers, and she rubbed it from the label to get a proper look at it, squinting at the unfamiliar characters.
    "Anyone speak Mandarin?" she yelled.
    Voldinski put down the crate she was moving, slapping her hands against her side as she bounded over to the far side of the room, "My grandma was born in the Lunar Republic. What you got, ma'am?" Esposito gestured, and the private bent over to read it out, giving a long whistle, "Mark III Plasma Pistols, off Republic Spaceship Ma Kong . Date about two years ago."
    "That's a lot better than the sidearms we've got back on the Alamo, ma'am," Hunter offered.
    Esposito looked back and forth between the crate and the door. "Will our clips fit these sidearms?"
    "Might have to do a little work with the energy interface, but I reckon our armorer can manage it," the sergeant replied.
    "Grab 'em."
    That