Free War of Alien Aggression 4 Taipan by A.D. Bloom

engines.
    It was the fastest anyone had ever landed a junk without crashing - fast enough that he made it out of the air locks and up the tube to the next deck in time to see six Witt's personal Staas Guards marching Jordo down the passageway in restraints. As Matilda Witt's goons turned to go down the tube, he shouted for them to halt. He ordered it, but the Staas Guards kept going. They weren't his Staas Guards. They'd only obey Witt.
    Questions came at Ram from the redsuits up and down the passageway. "Mr. Devlin, what the hell is going on?"
    "Where are they taking those pilots?"
    Ram caught up on the next deck. Six more of the hired, company goons were already there, holding the Hellcat squadron leader as their prisoner. When the six guards escorting Jordo met their friends outside the airlock into bay 2, their squad leader looked right at him and reached up for the airlock control panel. The maintenance crews in the passageway looked like they wanted to do something and Ram actually considered letting them before he noted that the Staas Guards from Taipan had worn their sidearms.
     Lucy Elan and the boarding parties were just landing now. They were still prepped and loaded for bear. "Lucy, this is Ram," he said using suit comms, "Get your boarding party down to Primary One, Deck 2. Full arms."
    "On my way."
    The Staas Guards' squad leader put the flight helmet on Jordo's head, secured it, and then made sure Pooch's was locked down tight as well. Then, he and the rest of his dozen put on their own helmets and disappeared into the airlock. By the time Ram got to the doors, they were all inside, waiting to cycle out to the vacuum. On the far side of the doors was their longboat. The launch bay was already open. Seconds after they got out that lock, they'd be gone.
    "Lucy!" he shouted into comms as he reached for the airlock control panel.
    "Thirty seconds..." she said. "We're almost there."
    Ram fumbled inputting his command codes to override the airlock's cycle. He cleared the register and began to punch in the twenty-digit sequence again when alarms went off and made him jump half out of his suit. The red light glowed solid above the airlock doors. Inside the airlock, the Staas Guards mashed at the button, telling the doors again and again to open, but they wouldn't open more than a few centimeters before closing again. It happened over and over. The squad leader mashed the button five times every time it happened.
    Ram grinned when he saw that. Someone had used a software daemon to crack into the airlock door's command queue. It inserted multiple countermanding orders for every order the Staas Guard gave. Repeated pressing of the button only added to the long list of commands in the system queue and ensured the Staas Guards remained trapped.
    "My redsuits are jock-blocking them," Chief Lee said. "They'll never get out now." They did that sometimes during contract negotiations. Nobody would get out of that lock until someone cleared the queue manually.
    The shoulders of the Staas Guards in the airlock slumped as they realized they weren't getting away as cleanly as they thought. They turned around and looked through the porthole at Ram. Jordo and the Hellcat squadron leader kept their faces pointed at the far-side doors. Ram swore if Colt turned around and smirked, he'd draw Mickey's gun and burn a hole right through the airlock doors, right through Colt's helmet and out the back.
    Lucy Elan and her boarding party entered the passageway from both ends at once. They ran forward in full suits and took up positions with their MA-48s only ten meters from the airlock doors. She winked at him.
    "You're late," he said.
    "We can leave and come back if you're busy now."
    Ram said, "I'm opening the doors." Lucy nodded as he began to input his command codes into the airlock control panel to clear the queue. Fifteen seconds later, the re-pressurized airlock opened and there was nothing but thin atmo between the Staas Guards and