Lt. Martin Dover was at the computer station where he tied into the ship’s sensors.
“I’m not detecting any other ships or any Confederation transponders,” he reported and then added, “Where could they be?”
“Steady on,” Alistair Dover said to his friend from the helm station. He could hear the distress in his old classmate’s voice.
“Commander, the Cody and the New Orleans report that the Randori hasn’t come through this gravity well,” Mister Lewis said sounding a little stressed.
“She did have a lot of damage to her outer hull,” Chief Burke at fire control commented.
“Send out fighter patrols and launch probes to check the areas around the system’s other gravity wells,” Hope ordered knowing that the Wolf’s sensors were some of the best in fleet and if they weren’t detecting them they probably weren’t here.
“Scan for smaller debris fields and wreckage,” Richards added saying out loud what some of them were thinking.
“Should we go back sir?” Lt. Dover asked from the pilot’s chair.
Captain Hope paused in thought as everyone seemed to turn and look at him for an answer.
“No, they entered the gravity well before we did. If they had to abort, then we would have detected it. They may have had to do an alternate bend due to some unknown circumstance,” he said as everyone turned away and returned to their jobs.
“Sir,” Commander Richards prompted from his left.
Hope had been lost in thought for moment as his first officer pulled him back to reality.
“Right, have the Spider detach and make repairs to the New Orleans and the Cody. Have all repair robots, droids and damage control teams get to work on repairs and maintenance,” he ordered. “Also start refueling operations.”
“Aye sir,” Richards replied and started repeating his orders.
The Hawk stared at his main viewer and then brought up a holo map of the nearby systems. Studying them for several minutes he left his command chair and walked over to Martin Daily at the computer station.
“Mr. Daily,” he said surprising the young man.
“Sir?” Martin said looking to his right at his former headmaster.
Hope leaned down, “I want you to figure out what systems Mr. Collins could have made it to if he had only one bender drive.”
Martin smiled and nodded, “Yes sir, I’ll have that for you ASAP.”
The old captain nodded and put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder and squeezed it once before he returned to his center command chair.
His XO quickly joined him there.
“Mr. Collins is a resourceful officer and he has a good crew. I’m sure that he will meet up with us at our alternative rally point or along our route of advance,” Richards said trying to both elevate his own worries as well as those of his captain.
Captain Hope remained silent for moment looking at the holo map of the nearby systems.
“Perhaps, we’ll have to wait to see,” he replied his gruff face frowning as he sat down and pondered the fate of the young officer and his ship.
The Randori spat from the gravity well and entered the system. It was a short but rough ride and the crew felt the worse for it.
“Damage report,” Mike called out as his bridge crew pulled themselves together.
“What happened?” Thornton asked from the helm station. The lurch of the ship entering the well had caused him to slam forward and hit his head on his control console. A thin trickle of blood dripped from a small gash in his forehead.
“We had to subvert the jump as one of bender drives is malfunctioning,” Ensign Stevens reported from the computer and navigation station.
Mike ignored them, “Scan the system for enemy ships,” he ordered knowing that the Task Force had bended to another region of space altogether.
“Sir, where are we?” a crewman asked.
“Sector JM-3476B,” Collins stated having been to this sector once before when he was the third officer on the Wolf.
“Captain, scans indicate that there are no other ships in the system,” Specialist Byrd announced.
“Sir, the system has a red dwarf star, one class I Ice Giant and seven rocky worlds,” Chac-Ras reported right after his friend.
Mike nodded, “I was here once with the Star Wolf. The third world is Class K and is pretty barren with a very thin non-breathable atmosphere. It has a decent gravity field and I believe it is called Carter’s World after the Galactic Trading Company’s ship captain that explored this system.”
“No colonies or outpost?” Thornton asked.
“Nothing here of value and the GTC only invests in sure things,” Collins remarked.
He never liked the practices or the heavy handed nature of the Galactic Trading Company finding them to be too much like the old British East India Company of colonial times. Their attitude, and that of the British government was screw the colonists and make as much profit as possible every chance you got. Mike preferred the Ameri-Corp Company, which seemed to genuinely care for the people that worked for them and who they served. The Emperor’s family ran that company and they did it well.
“Take us away from the gravity well and let’s go deeper into the system,” he ordered and added, “retract all turrets and commence damage control operations.”
A chorus of “Aye Sir,” quickly answered him as the crew hurried to carry out their jobs.
A moment later the bridge’s main door opened and Jack Masters entered. The tall older man looked tired but he smiled at his young captain and friend.
“Glad you made it back Top,” Mike said with a smile.
The old marine nodded, “It was a close one but we managed to get both shuttles on board in time. We do have seventeen Karduan prisoners and five injured humans who needed more attention than they could provide on the New Orleans.”
“Where are they now?” he inquired.
“Our people are in sickbay with the corpsman and the Blues are in the brig,” he said looking up to the main viewer. “Where the hell are we?”
Mike shrugged and let out a sigh, “Damaged and separated from the task force but we survived the bend. If we had aborted, we would have been trapped and most likely captured by the enemy.”
“Sounds like the best call you could make,” his old friend said sounding like the voice of reason that he always was.
“Yeah, but now we are stuck here for awhile,” he remarked looking from his friend’s face to the viewer.
“May I suggest we send out fighters to check the system,” the Gunny proposed.
“Soon, but I’m going to wait until we get closer to Carter’s World and we are a little further away from the Ice Giant’s gravity well.”
“You don’t want them too far away in case the Kardies come through,” Jack surmised with a slight nod.
“You never know after all we just gave them a good thrashing. I’m sure their Fleet Mistress will want to chase us down. I’m just hoping that she bends to the Wolf’s maximum range and doesn’t check the systems closer to her on the star cylinder,” Collins shared.
Jack let out a sigh, “Permission to join in on the repair operations, sir?”
“Sure, but please tell me you brought back our repair droids and robots,” he said turning to look at him as he headed for the door.
“They are already working on the hull,” the Master Gunnery Sergeant replied as he left the bridge.
“Well, there is some good news,” Mike commented as the damage reports started to flood into his command chair’s console.
The Randori’s alpha bender unit had been hit during the battle and was badly damaged. The beta maneuver drive’s fuel tanks had been ruptured from a fighter’s missile hit but had luckily self-sealed. Even though they were temporality sealed they still needed to be drained of fuel and repaired. They also lost two turrets and though they had replacements it would take at least three days to repair their turret elevators as well as their gun housings.
The
hull had taken numerous breeches but the Q-Ship’s interior armor had stopped any deeper penetration. The Spider had done a quick repair of the hull but now they needed to reinforce and redo those repairs if they wanted to be able to bend again. Two Wasp fighters had been damaged during their attack run on one of the standard destroyers and had severe wing and frame damage. They were fortunate to have limped their way back to the ships. They also had five dead that Lt. Collins had to do funeral services for. It was a job he was not looking forward to.
For the next day they worked like mad men through the exhaustion to get the ship back to standard operations. A fighter sweep proved that there wasn’t any enemy or friendly ships in the area.
“Place us in orbit over Carter’s World’s western magnetic pole,” Mike ordered as they approached the third planet of the system.
It was an old trick but one that often worked using the magnetic field of the planet’s pole to interfere with an enemy’s long range sensors. Of course it also messed with your sensors as well. He didn’t care about that right now as he wanted to be invisible until his repairs were completed.
“Sir, I’m reading something funny,” Midshipman Jansen said from the communications station.
Mike moved over to where the big Nordic blond was sitting.
“What is it?”
“I’m reading a faint Confederation transponder signal but I can’t make out any of the signal’s message just a tone on the emergency channel,” Gus Jansen reported.
Mike grabbed an extra ear bud and tied into the distress channel. He knew that Jansen was a genetically altered human and probably had superior hearing enabling him to pick up the faint signal that a normal operator may have missed.
“Try boosting the signal gain,” he suggested putting the bud in his ear. A momently later he heard a faint message.
“ISS Pinckney, SOS, ISS Pinckney, SOS,” which just kept repeating over and over.
“No good sir, I can’t get a clear signal in,” Mister Jansen replied in frustration.
Mike was shocked as he suddenly realized he was hearing what Jansen couldn’t make out. Working the controls, he narrowed the signal band and enhanced the feed. The communications officer watched on in surprise.
“Here, try it now,” Mike suggested having found the right frequency and enhancing its signal.
“Yes sir, I’m getting it now and it seems that it is an SOS from a ship called the ISS Pinckney,” the middy revealed still playing with his console’s controls.
Mike looked to his navigation and computer station.
“Barry, what do you have?”
“Sir, the data base says that the Pinckney is a medium size fast transport ship used primarily for troop transport,” Ensign Steven reported.
“Captain, I’ve traced the signal to the planet below,” Midshipmen Jansen said with pride after having failed to zero in on the faint signal.
Mike looked up to the viewer and saw that the signal was coming from the western hemisphere and about a thousand miles east of their location.
“Orders sir?” the helm officer said wondering if he should change their orbit.
“Let’s send out a couple of Wasps and see what’s going on,” he said as the message was relied to the fighter bay.
In a matter of minutes two LN-28 Wasps were launched from the ship’s fighter bay.
Mike’s fighter wing commander was Lt. John Grinder, an older officer (all of twenty-eight) who joined the Wolf’s crew after being liberated during the Battle of Austro Prime. He was a highly skilled pilot who was already a star ace with five fighter-to-fighter kills. He was even happy to fly these older star-fighters as long as he was behind the stick and not stuck behind a damn desk.
His wingman was a Harpers Academy alumni, Ensign Pendleton. He had been with the Wolf’s crew since the beginning and had been part of Collins’ boarding parties back when he was a middy. Pendleton and his best friend, Will Rabb were both eager to get into fighters and were some of the first to join his crew.
The pair of fighters headed around the circumference of the planet and then entered the atmosphere.
“Random Leader, be advised that there is a large electrically charged cloud and possibly storms passing through your area, we recommend a course change,” Ensign Steven reported as the fighters descended towards the source of the signal.
“Nose cams,” Mike remarked from his seat, wishing he were with them.
In another moment the Random flight group activated their onboard cameras and the bridge’s main viewer displayed what the pilots could see.
Carter’s World was a barren wasteland of gray hard stone rock and not a whole lot of anything else. It had numerous mountains in some places, while in others it seemed to have gravel bluffs and plains. The sky was dark and the Randori was right about the angry gray clouds as they could see blue lighting striking the plant’s surface further north from their position.
Following the signal, they passed over a mountain chain into a rugged valley. It was at this point they could see that there was a huge trough in the gravel surface. As the fighters followed the channel in the earth, they also saw broken metal panels and other twisted pieces from a space ship. After several minutes they reached the crash site and saw the broken remains of the transport ship.
As Mike watched, he thought it was not only a horrible wreck but that there couldn’t be any survivors. The bender engines had been ripped from their housings from along the sides of the ship. The bow was torn, crushed and rolled into a ball of metal. Numerous cargo containers had been shot out and tossed loose from the holds and littered the area along the route of the crash. It kind of reminded him of picture he once saw of the Titanic after it hit an iceberg and was ripped into multiple pieces.
“What a mess!” someone finally said.
In another moment the fighters flew by the broken hull of the ship. It had come to rest by the side of a mountain and was partially covered in rocks from an avalanche. Their first past was fast and the fighters came around slowing their speed for a second look. This time they could see numerous square shaped objects lined up near the area of the wreck. The linear formation looked too straight to be caused from the crash.
“Randori, I’m going lower,” Lt. Grinder said as he headed down for a closer look.
“Enlarge the picture,” Mike said not waiting for the fighter to make another pass.
On the main view screen, the image blurred for a moment as Ensign Stevens at the computer station enhanced the picture. Now the image was clear enough to see that they were looking at a line of grav tanks.
“Tanks!” Chief Baker yelled.
“Order them to pull up and get them out of there,” Mike called out as Mister Jansen repeated the command for them to break away.
“Why sir?” Cha-Ras asked from sensors station.
Mike didn’t take his eyes from the view screen as he answered.
“Even if all of their people are dead, the tanks could be on sentry mode which would mean that they would defend an area even if they were unmanned or if their crews were killed in battle. With them lined up like that it makes me think that they are still functional.”
“What are your orders Randori?” Lt. Grinder called back moving his flight to safe altitude.
“Hail the tanks,” Mike suggested.
“Roger that,” Random leader replied and proceeded to call down to the armor unit beneath him.
“This is Confederation fighter patrol, calling any Pinckney or Confederation armor personnel on the surface. We are answering your distress call, please come in.”
Everyone held their breaths for a long moment until they thought that it was useless to hope.
“Hello fighters, thank God that you found us!” a tired yet happy voice called back.
“Who are you and what is your status?” Grinder requested as he and Pendleton circle above the crash site.
“Hold one for our officer,” the tried voice said.
A moment later a yo
unger voice answered the channel.
“This is Second Lieutenant Frank Stanton, Confederation Colonial Marines,” he said and added, “Who am I speaking too?”
“Patch me through,” Mike said before Grinder could answer.
“Lieutenant, this is Lt. Michael Collins, Captain of the Imperial Q-Ship Randori. We are in orbit over the planet and picked up on your distress signal.”
“Thank God, you found us sir!” he said as several voices behind him made noises sounding like a mixture of laughter and sobbing.
“Can you give us a visual?” Mike asked wanting to see who he was talking to.
“No sir, not from this tank as it only has an audio system that’s working,” Stanton replied.
“What is your status and condition,” Collins requested.
“Sir, we have twenty-three marines and one navy personnel,” he said and continued, “Five of my marines are in pretty bad shape but are in stable condition.”
“How long since you crashed?”
“If our chronometers are correct it has been three months, three weeks and six days,” the young marine officer reported.
The bridge crew got quiet at the thought of being stranded for so long on a hostile alien world.
“Right, we’ll get a cargo shuttle down there to evacuate you and your people so just hold tight,” Mike replied.
“No sir, that will have to wait,” he answered and then explained, “there is a huge electrical storm coming up and if you try to land a shuttle it will probably get toasted. You better pull your fighters out of the area as well.”
Mike nodded even thought the marine couldn’t see him.
“Ok, we’ll be down as soon as the storm is over so just hang tight,” Collins advised.
The marine officer’s laughed an odd kind of chuckle.
“After so many months a few hours is nothing,” he said and cut off his comm. link.
The fighters were recalled and repair operations continued on the Q-ship as they all waited to rescue the survivors of the downed transport.
Wolf's Run: The Chase of War (Star Wolf Sqaudron Book 2) Page 15
