A few minutes later, a dozen members of “Dog Block” were escorting the Argent’s Chief Engineer to the deck 29 magneto-lifts. The ad hoc marine defensive unit had been formed by the Major from the unwounded strays and mongrels he managed to scavenge after the Aux Con Seven explosion.

Damage above and below the strike point had prevented reinforcements from helping the stranded soldiers directly, so the Major had ordered the men he could find to cut their way through to the lower deck and fight their way back to the lifts. It was the long way around, and it was dangerous, but they had finally joined up with a squad of fresh rifles without sustaining any further casualties. Now that they had access to the lifts, they could form a perimeter and isolate the threat.

“Moo to bridge.”

“That’s not going to work until we can restore power above deck six.” Yili sighed.

“How long will that take?”

“No clue from here. I have to see what they did first. My guess is the damage control parties can’t restore the connections because the intruders found their way into one of the automatic routing subsystems. Until I get up there and switch the system back to manual routing, they’re on emergency power only. That plus the fact the anti-intruder system is off controls presents us with a number of related problems.”

One of the escorting marines punched the code in for the magneto-lifts.

“What about their personal commlinks?” a fresh-faced young PFC asked.

Moo raised an eyebrow.

“Uhh– ma’am,” the PFC added quickly.

“Power levels, private. Argent has been jamming everything except wired connections. Since they set off that firecracker in Aux Seven, so have the intruders,” Yili replied. “I’m sure Zony is up there trying to make it work right now, but without those subsystems, she just doesn’t have the horsepower yet.”

“Where to, Lieutenant?” Moo asked as the gantry gate opened.

“Skywatch STC. If we can’t get to the bridge, we’ll have access to most of the command functions from there.”