Jack looked at the pilot’s Cockpit wishfully again then turned back to being Captain of the Phoenix.
Jack did a double take as the Doctor/Steward walked through the bridge hatch still breathing a little hard. “Sorry I had to take a break in the air lock. I didn’t realize you needed me until just before you were ready to leave. Almost didn’t make it.”
“Ok and why do I need you?”
“I may be a terrible sensor operator but I am still a damn fine Doctor and even if I don’t get the sensors figured out I can still take care of the wounded and I am still your steward.” Smiling at Jack as she sat down at a station at the same relative place. “But the thing is I am finding all kinds of similarities with scanners and sensors we use all the time on the body in surgery and the wards, in a lot of the ship’s external sensors and scanners. I just may be able to tell you if some of those ships are dead or not. I may even be able to trace where the live ones have gone if they are hiding or driven to a few compartments.” Frowning as she kept tapping on the board’s screen. “That is if I can get this damn board to cooperate. Just give me a few more minutes. I may not be able to do much now but in time I should be able to tell you if a ship has a flee infestation.” Chuckling. “Fact is if what I think I saw on the other board is correct, if you pull up within a couple miles of a ship, I should be able to scan the whole crew and tell you which ones are sick and what treatments they need once I get the board down pat. Make some hell of a ship’s call. Is that what you had in mind Captain?”
“Ya I think that will do Truitt.” Jack could not help but chuckle himself. “Damn Truitt. You are out of uniform. You are now my ships aaa. Damn. I need to make up a new tittle or position… Yes… I can’t have my Medical Scanning Officer running away to treat patients every time someone skins their elbow. And here I was just getting used to your tea and flapjacks.”
“Don’t worry Captain I still love cooking. You will still get your tea and flapjacks.”
“No Truitt, you are going to be way to busy training new Medical sensor Techs. Right now figure out how to tell if there are any Apes or slaves on the ships we are going to be approaching in a few minutes mixed in with the humans. I really don’t want to risk sending troops into traps to rescue humans that are already as good as dead. It will also save us a great deal of manpower if we don’t have to worry about our backs or wasting time hunting for the survivors.”
Truitt started licking her lips. “I am still learning Captain but I think this board is broken or at least different than the one I was just on. It looks the same but it is not. I am having to start over again.”
“Damn. Yes these are new boards and combine the best of both Humans and the Gods. Number One, get the techs, aaa, the sensor man from auxiliary control up here to help her and the rest of the bridge crew figure out the new boards. This is important.” Sitting back in the Command Chair as an Alturian (Jack recognized as one of the Test engineers) rushed in to sit next to Truitt as several others did the same around the bridge. A Yellow and purple manikin dropping down on a jump seat next to the pilot. Jack suddenly remembering that it had taken a few minutes for him to get used to the slightly different placement of a few of the controls in the pilots cockpit. Chuckling at the thought that he may get to pilot the ship after all if the pilot found the new configuration to different but was quickly disappointed when the pilot seamed to already know most of the changes as did the rest of the bridge crew. Evidentially they had not been sitting on their hands over the last week either even if they were on the other DD’s.
Turning back to the Doctor as he started thinking about what she had said and smiled. ‘If she thought she could do all that with the old sensors and controls on the Red Pepper, I can’t wait to see what she will do with these.’ Jack said to himself. The exslaves and the human crews and refugees had had months now working together at upgrading the Republic sensors and equipment and were pulling off some damn surprising work. Most of those upgrades had not even been put on the Red Pepper yet but did manage to get slapped onto the Phoenix while it was strapped to the Spider Battleship hulk. Evidentially the exslaves and republic engineers had been a little afraid of going too far with advances on the Red Pepper for fear of failing so they concentrated on simply matching what the Red Pepper already had as they mixed the two technologies. The Phoenix was different and they had gone hog wild using the best from both Techs to do things neither could do on their own. That Tech was already paying off with what Jack was able to see as he studied the large bay in the cloud.
-------------------------
“Approaching the Scout deployment Marker sir.” The Navigator said a half hour later.
Jack turned away from the tactical screen showing the junk yard the Recon Pebbles with the enhancements the new tech on the Phoenix had helped reveal. Each hulk was showing signs of activity and repairs. Small power sources were scattered across most of them with no Main Central Power Cores on any of them (hot enough for the little pebbles to pick up anyway) except the core energy leaks on several hulks that were obviously being stripped. The Station did show a central heavily shielded power core sending power to most of the decks but like all the hulks it was going out of its way not to radiate any active signals including any more power than it had to. Which was actually doing quit good for a 200 year old Power Core that used a design that was out dated when it was new, Jack told himself. The only Battleships that looked like they were in fair shape were docked at the Station taking what little amount of power they were using from the Station.
Jack wondered why the Battleships in decent shape were at the station and not a few of the many damaged ships so they could use the Station’s help to make repairs. After all, that was what Stations were supposed to do… Well there was final outfitting and supply’s before deploying but that did not make sense here. Did it? But then nothing made sense around the station and the Bay (or small sea) around it in the cloud. What really worried Jack most was the question of what had happened to the transports that were supposed to have been sent here. He could not see any signs of them anywhere. “Very well, Pilot follow the left bomber trial at quarter impulse. That will put us coming out at the back side. Comm, get me the assault Transports.”
The two Assault Transports Captain’s appeared on Jack’s screen.
“Deploy your scoops using minimum power with a wide sweep to slow and stop here at the marker then kill them. I don’t want to take the chance they may see your engine exhaust if you turn around to decelerate. I am continuing in to check things out. If I call you in, get straight in fast so we can get the job done. But if we uncover a hornet’s nest, don’t wait for orders, just get the hell out of here as quietly as possible under full stealth. We will leave by a different route for them to chase. You are not to engage the enemy under any circumstances unless I order it. Is that clear? If this is a trap we are going to be so out gunned so badly we won’t stand a chance without reinforcements and a lot of planning and recon work. Is that understood Captain Renalds? Captain Nolen?”
Both Captain’s grimaced. And forced out an answer. “Yes sir. Run to fight another day Admiral.”
Taking a breath Captain Nolen got stubborn. “But what of the …”
Jack interrupted him. “If this is a Trap there won’t be anyone to rescue Captain no matter how inviting and desperate they may look or sound. By the time we got to them they all would be dead. That is if we lasted for more than 5 minutes.” Jack grimaced himself. “If it is possible to get them we will come back and get them but playing our game not theirs.”
“I can’t believe that those are not our ships Admiral.” General Meyers said.
“They are our ships Captain but they may not be our crews. Or they could have guns to their heads. There is no way a bunch of hulk battleships got here all the way from the Fringe Battle on their own and if they were Republic controlled crews they would have gone to any one of a hundred systems on this side of Earth instead of here. Is that understood?” Jack
took a breath. “I hope that this isn’t a trap and that these ships and their crews are just lucky ass holes that managed to do the impossible for some idiotic reason that we can’t fathom but that is very unlikely since they have not contacted anyone in The Cloud. Most likely it is a trap outright or even a Trojan horse hoping to be taken back to The Rock so a tracking device we cannot detect or is not transmitting yet or the brain washed crews can destroy The Rock or both. Whatever, the Task force fleet remnants strange behavior and the fact they are here has got to be explained and it looks like the Phoenix is the one that has to do it. You just have to follow orders even if I stay behind with the fleet while you return to New Home to protect and help build a new fleet. Is that clear?”
Both Captains grudgingly acknowledged the orders and Jack broke the connection.
The entire bridge crew except the Pilot sat staring at Jack still shocked at what they had heard. One by one they returned to their work.
“Ensign Truitt, how are my new sensors coming along?” Jack smiled. “Sorry for forgetting to swear you in but I signed your commission this morning. You can get a proper uniform as soon as your shift is over.”
The Doctor/Steward now Ensign turned back around to face Jack. “Ensign? Aaa, they are coming. With Engineer Tuleen’s help it is looking good.”
The Alturian next to her smiled an Alturian smile which looked more like a human hated frown than smile though to them he was beaming. “We should have something for you in a few minutes. It will be very crud but I am amazed at what I think we can do in time Captain. We did not think to consult with medical engineers. Who would think to use sensors in these ways and in such strange combinations? Then the strange things she is tuning the sensors for were not even thought of.”
The Phoenix slipped around to the other side of the Staging area around behind the monster Asteroid that was some distance behind the Station away from the hulks with a bunch of smaller rocks around it. Jack was glad to be able to take a good look at its backside through the cloud to see no indications of anything small or large hiding there as it slowly tumbled. The Destroyers sensors never did see the Scout fighters or bombers but then they had added the human stealth tech coatings combined with the crystal armor the slaves had added and he was not expecting to see them while they were still in the cloud but he had them look anyway just to reassure himself. Hoping that if the smaller craft were well hidden then the bigger Phoenix was doing just as good. Later he would find out that the Phoenix had spent most of its time off the scopes of the Assault transports only a few miles behind them long before they had gotten to the deployment markers. The Red Pepper loosing Phoenix shortly after it had left the squadron while the Assault transports and the other destroyers stayed on their sensors the whole time.
But not knowing that at the time. Jack had finally let out his long held breath as they drifted slowly into the 20 mile wide cavern that made up the bay with the Station in the middle surrounded by some 50 wrecks with still no signs of the missing transports. Once they were out of the interference and fog of the clouds, information started flooding into the ship from her advanced sensors. Immediately finding that most of the hulks had at least one of their Main Power Core’s going on minimum but with all the shielding the Battleships had around them the Pebble’s simple sensors could not detect them. The Station itself turned out to be more alive as well. The hulks without active shielded power cores turned out to be in the process of being repaired using parts from the leaking running power core’d hulks.
“Admiral, I am picking up massive life forms on all the hulks and ships and the station.” The new Ensign Truitt said with a smile. “We should have the sensors tuned better in a few minutes now that we have targets. And then we can start scanning for individuals and numbers.”
“Hold off on scanning Ensign Truitt. We are still running silent. They don’t seem to even see us yet. Not even an IFF hit yet.”
“Captain, Tactical. I am counting now but almost half the hulks are missing most of their bows. A few have nothing forward of the engines but what looks like some kind of flexible bladder or dome across the open deck between hull bulkheads. Fact is most of the hulks being worked on or should I say repaired that are missing their bows have or are in the process of getting a dome across the open hull to form some kind of bow even if there is not much ship left. All the Battleships that are in one piece in the bay are in the process of patching over the holes in the hulls using scrap hull plates cut from the hulks. I am finding several skeletons now that don’t have a single solid strait section of hull plating left on them. The Battleships at the Station are full of patches with no detectable holes or damage on the outside and I would bet that their interiors are being outfitted using the stations services. Which would explain why they are there and not one of the wrecks that are still working on their hulls. Fact, I have a complete hulled Battleship drifting slowly toward the station now that has big gaps in its power distribution systems that is probably headed in to be re-outfitted itself and that one of the Battleships at the station is getting ready to depart the dock in about two more days from the power readings. About the same time as the ship with the newly repaired hull arrives. Though the ship getting ready to leave is showing some damn strange readings from its hull. I am reading rock more than metal.”
“Ok well that explains a lot except where are the Battleships that have already been repaired and re-outfitted. This can’t be the first one. Look for them Number One, fast.” Jack frowned trying to think. “Look for a trail leaving the Bay. They have to be going someplace. Pilot take us across the bay slowly.”
The Phoenix started drifting through the widely spread hulks as a boat sprang from a hulk on the other side of the group and headed for the Station but didn’t seem to be in any hurry.
“Captain, Sensors. I am getting some strange readings from the ships at the station and the one approaching it. The one getting ready to leave at the station has bumps of varying sizes that get rather large and even crags sticking up all over its hull and as I said is reading more rock than metal.”
“What the hell. Highlight the ship and get me a close up of it on the screen fast.”
“Captain, a boat has just left one of the hulks behind us and is approaching fast. It will pass a half mile off our port side. If they didn’t see us before, this guy can’t miss us unless he is blind.”
A ship attached to the station appeared on the main screen as the boat started to pass the Phoenix about a half mile away and suddenly whipped its tail around and started decelerating sending a stream out along its course. Coming to a stop it turned to face the Phoenix still floating slowly along on a Sunday cruise.
“Captain, Do you want me to jam any transmissions from it?”
Jack looked at the docked ship on the screen that looked more like an asteroid than a ship. Swallowing hard. “No. Let them yell their heads off.” Jack turned to look back into the cloud and the hundreds of hidden asteroids they had taken for granted were there for mining and closed his eyes for a few second.
Whispering barely loud enough to hear himself he said. “Open hailing frequencies. Keep the power low. I don’t want the whole universe to hear us.”
“Boat is screaming its head off Captain. Direct laser comm to the Station in the clear.”
With the comm light appearing at the corner of the main screen. Jack took a deep breath. “Staging Station Delta 7, this is Acting Vice Admiral Turner of the Gama 13 Basestation aboard the Destroyer USS Phoenix looking for some of my lost Supply Transports. I was told that I would find them here. It seems I have stumbled onto something I was not informed should be here. Any information concerning what appears to be the lost and Destroyed Task Force 58 and my wayward Supply Transports would be greatly appreciated. I will wait here for contact. Out.”
“Pilot bring us to a stop. Bring up our shields to full and arm our point defenses Number One. Pilot, at the first hint of an attack, I want full thrust and use Tango evasive maneuvers to get us
out of here strait across the bay and not the way we came. Stay as far away from any Rocks you can. I believe they are Battleships in disguise. Sensors, full sweep and power. If we have any Spider Battleships hiding deeper in the cloud or down the corridors our scouts have not had time to spot, I want to know about them now. I also want hard scans of the ships around us Truitt. Tell me if they have any Apes on them. I also want a scan of that monster rock. It is too big to be a damn Spider Battleship. It could be one of the Spider fighter Carriers. I want to know what it is ASAP.” Jack was suddenly regretting leaving Pan and most of the other ex-slaves behind just in case the Station was like The Rock. The last thing he needed to do was make anyone panic while he was trying to get food for the starving human crew and the refugees back at the Base Station. But he could have used Pan’s advice about the Spiders right then.
Battleship Destroyer 2 (Battleship Destoryer) Page 79
