Wolves at the Gate (Star Wolf Squadron Book 3)

by Shane VanAulen

  As the fleet moved into the gravity well they still had at least an hour left of work on the old bender drives before they would be able to follow.

  Lt. Collins watched from his bridge as he casually reached up and tapped his subdermal implant that was hidden behind his ear. The clandestine comm. link sent a signal to the only one out there that would be monitoring his frequency.

  “Yes, Mike?” Pallas answered.

  “Just wanted to say goodbye and good luck,” he said.

  “And to you too, my friend,” the A.I. responded.

  “Thanks again for all of your help.”

  “I didn’t do much,” the supercomputer responded and then asked, “What do you want me to do with the charges you filed against Commodore Essex?”

  “Yeah, I guess that is now a problem. He didn’t murder or abandon the prisoners, so I have no grounds for those charges,” Mike commented.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Will there still be a record that I had filed the charges and a copy of our heated discussion?” he asked.

  “Yes, both are part of my permanent records and copies have been sent to other officers and ships as well as to your own,” Pal explained.

  “Ok, then I officially drop the charges,” Mike announced and added, “But don’t tell the Commodore until you are a couple bends away.”

  “I see you want to …” the supercomputer said pausing as he made sure he had the right euphemism, “… make him sweat.”

  “Sounds good, and take care my friend,” Collins said.

  “I will and watch your … back,” the A.I. said in concern.

  The link ended and Mike looked around his bridge as his crew ignored his conversation with no one as they could only hear one part of it.

  Lt. Collins ignored them as he sat down in his chair and the 34th Attack Fleet disappeared into the gravity well.

  “Now that they are gone, let’s get us a new turret,” he said as his bridge crew broke into grins.

  “Aye sir,” Ensign Pitt said from the helm.

  “Set a course for the destroyer escort first,” he ordered.

  “New heading laid in, full impulse engaged,” the helmsman replied.

  The 34th AF had sent boarding parties to collect prisoners and any remaining military intelligence from the two heavily damaged enemy ships. They had even halted their ships’ momentum that was taking them towards the radioactive nebula. If they hadn’t, the ships would have entered the nebula before they could have gotten everyone off.

  Mike had convinced his godfather not to give them a nudge and send them into the cloud of toxic gaseous for two reasons. The first was that he needed a particle turret to replace the one he lost in battle. The other reason was that though these Karduan ships had taken some major hits they were now behind the new front and could be salvaged for part or even restoration. The ISS Mammoth or her sister ship, the ISS Mastodon were both easily able to take these hulks within their bowels for transport or repair.

  Coming alongside of the destroyer escort, they scanned as well as visually inspected the wreck and a wreck it was. There were several hull ruptures, the bridge and forward upper decks had taken a pounding and showed it. The DE’s fusion drives were fragged but the bender drives looked like they had only taken minimal, almost superficial damage.

  The turrets were just as bad as the rest of the ship and of the larger energy turrets only one fusion turret looked undamaged.

  “Well, I think we’ll pass on this ship,” Mike announced, “Adjust course and take us to the destroyer.”

  “Yes sir,” Ensign Pitt responded as he hit the EM thrusters and altered course.

  The Destroyer KD54 had taken severe damage; its bridge was completely gone from a Blitzen torpedo strike as well as from several missiles and particle hits. It had hull damage throughout its length from where the waves of missiles that had gotten through its overwhelmed defense grid had hit. It had also taken a standard torpedo to its port side that hit almost perfectly amid-ship leaving a gaping hole.

  Its maneuver drives had taken a pounding from the frigate’s fusion turrets when it had first refused to surrender, now leaving it with nothing but a few operational thrusters. The destroyer’s bender drives appeared to have taken only minimal damage from a missile hit and were probably still functional.

  “Full sensor scan, let’s find us a turret,” Mike ordered as they neared the crippled ship.

  “All of its forward energy turrets are either damaged or destroyed,” Curtis called out from his station.

  Collins let out a low sigh hoping that he wouldn’t have to settle for the DE’s fusion turret instead of finding something bigger and better to use.

  “Take us around and let’s see her backside,” he said.

  “Aye sir,” Pitt answered maneuvering around the larger ship.

  “There!” PO2 Baker called out from the fire control station. She wasn’t looking at her controls but was staring at the main viewer and pointing.

  “Where?” Curtis said.

  “The turret furthest back, just forward of the engine section,” she said still pointing.

  “Right, computer, magnify view,” Mike instructed as the screen’s picture changed and it now showed a close up of the rearmost particle turret.

  “It still looks intact,” Pitt remarked with a grin.

  “Ok people, let’s get our tools and some droids as we’ve got a little of work ahead of us,” Lt. Collins said getting up from his chair to lead the mission.

  “Sir?” Ensign Pitt said turning around in his seat with a look of concern on his young face.

  “I’m experienced at this and the faster we get this done then the faster we get out of this system,” Collins explained already guessing his first officer’s protest.

  “Yes sir,” Jeremy replied but didn’t really like it.

  “Good and you have the bridge,” he said and look to the comm. station before he continued, “Ryan, signal Chief Schmidt to assemble an engineering boarding party.”

  “Aye sir,” the specialist acknowledged.

  By the time he got down to the shuttle bay he found CPO Schmidt and a five-man salvage team waiting for him. They were busy loading tools and portable power packs on board the shuttle. Both repair droids were already on board, holding onto the handrails and letting the seats open for the human crewmen.

  “This will take at least four hours depending on the turret’s condition and then another four or five hours to mount and connect it,” Schmidty remarked not even mentioning all the tests they have to go through to get it functioning correctly.

  “Yeah, I know but I’d rather have a long-range energy weapon here and now then wait for four or five days until we get to Austro Prime,” he explained moving to the shuttle’s helm station and prepping the Karduan shuttle craft for launch.

  “Just checking, sir,” the Chief said and then called for his people to hurry it up and that they didn’t have all day.

  Mike smiled as he heard him yell, thinking that Chief Petty Officers were the same throughout the service.

  Reaching the destroyer’s rear particle turret, he landed briefly and had the repair droids disembark. They would work in zero gravity on the turret outside of the ship while the human engineers would work inside. From Mike’s experience on the last turret extraction he knew this would save them some time. He then took the shuttle down along the side of the destroyer to its lower airlock. The airlocks that were closer to the turret housing were all damaged so they were forced to hike through the interior of the ship.

  Matching airlocks was easy as this was a Karduan shuttle. Interior sensors were still online and read that it still had limited power as well as heat, gravity and air.

  “It’s still running on battery power but I wouldn’t give it more than four or five hours of power left,” the Chief said reading the data from his palm pad.

  “That should be just enough time,” Mike said with a nod moving to join them at the airlock. />
  “Also, several sections are exposed to space and the emergency bulkheads are locked in place in those section,” PO2 Billy Wallace said reading the environmental status and deck schematics.

  “Let’s find a way to the turret or we’ll have to try a damaged airlock,” Collins said pressuring the airlocks and hitting the open sequence.

  The lights were on but dimmed as they headed down the corridor. Mike was tempted to stop in the engineering section but didn’t as time was limited. Heading to the central lift they passed several doors some of which were closed while others were locked open. The Chief was right behind him and suddenly stopped at the entrance to an open door.

  “Sir, a machine shop!” he exclaimed looking inside the room.

  Mike looked back, “Maybe, if we have time but we’re on the clock.”

  “Aye sir,” he said hoping that he could find the Karduan equivalent of a digital parts copier.

  Reaching the lift, they found it not operational – no power. They had an emergency generator for their tools but it probably couldn’t power a lift filled with men and equipment.

  For a second he thought about trying to enter through one of the hull breaches but they’d still have to deal with the locked emergency bulkheads and depressurizing any areas that still had environment.

  “Wallace, you’ve been mapping the decks and where the power is still on, right?” Mike asked.

  “Yes sir, and trying to figure out where the emergency bulkheads are in place,” he said.

  “Good, where is there a lift that still has power?”

  He looked at the readings on his palm pad for a moment before he answered, “The port side lift is reading as operational.”

  “Let’s go,” Mike said hurrying on down the corridor.

  Reaching the end of the hallway, he paused for a moment looking both ways that the corridor turned. Instead of turning right he turned to the left,

  “Sir?” Wallace asked wondering where he was going.

  “Shortcut,” he said taking them through the ship’s lower mess hall which he knew led to the corridor with the lift they needed.

  The automatic lights came on as they came in and they cut through the kitchen. Heading to the rear service door they walked by several large food storage lockers. It was Mike who stopped and drew his weapon in what was a blink of an eye. He stood there in a half crouch as he scanned the room with his Krager gauss pistol held at the ready. The men of his team froze being engineers they didn’t react like he did and hung onto their toolkits instead of dropping them and grabbing their weapons.

  “What’s wrong, sir?” CPO Schmidt finally asked.

  “Can’t you hear it?” Lt. Collins asked sounding like he was a bit crazy.

  “Hear what?” Wallace inquired looking around the empty kitchen.

  “The breathing,” he remarked taking a step closer to a storage closet.

  Now his men got freaked out and a couple of them slowly set their toolkits down and moved to draw their sidearms.

  Mike pressed the panel to open the closet’s door. It didn’t work and he turned back for a second and looked to the chief.

  “Get this door open!” he ordered stepping back but keeping his pistol leveled on the door.

  PO2 Wallace and PO2 Ditz moved up and opened a toolkit getting out an EM powered Door Wedge that was used to open stuck doors. While they did this the Chief was busy scanning the access panel.

  “This access panel has been locked on purpose,” the Chief announced and continued, “Hold on, I think I can override it.”

  Wallace and Ditz moved up despite their Chief’s optimism.

  “What the hell is that on the floor,” Ditz said looking down.

  Petty Officer Wallace stepped back and also looked down at the pool of liquid by the door’s edge.

  “I think it’s piss!” he announced.

  At that moment, the door slid open and a half-dozen people fell out with another half-dozen stumbling behind them to get out of the crapped and tightly packed storage closet.

  “What the fuck!” Ditz swore jumping back from the avalanche of bodies.

  “Are they alive?” one of the other crewmen asked but no one answered as they could hear the moans coming from the all but asphyxiated people.

  “They’re Karduans,” Wallace said stating the obvious as they all could see that they were Blues.

  “Yes, but they are males,” Collins said holstering his pistol and kneeling down to pull them off of each other.

  His men then grabbed hold and helped pull them up off the floor or carried them out of the closet.

  One of them was partly coherent and started to panic when he saw the faces of their human enemies.

  “Calm down,” Mike said in Karduan.

  “You speak my language,” the Blue stated in surprise.

  “Yes, I do, are you Believer disciples?” he asked guessing why the Blue Ladies would leave a part of their crew behind when they surrendered and evacuated their ship.

  “Most of us are, that’s why we were locked up as they suspected us of being Believers in the Redeemer,” he said still finding it hard to believe that they were alive. He was also amazed that their rescuers were not only the enemy but that the humans spoke Karduan and knew about the Redeemer.

  “What’s your name?” Collins inquired.

  “Wa-Ben,” he answered.

  “Sir, a couple of these Blues are dead, it looks like they were in the back of the room and had suffocated,” PO2 Ditz reported.

  Mike looked to the Wa-Ben, “Please, tell your people that we are friends and not their enemies. We will be taking you to freedom where there are other Believers and you will not be harmed.”

  The Blue male nodded and proceeded to tell the others as they recovered from their ordeal.

  “Lt. Collins, look what I found,” Petty Officer Wallace announced pulling one of those fallen on the floor back to his feet.

  Mike looked over to see one Specialist Duffey B. Thach being picked up by the back of the collar of his soiled and smelly uniform. His escape pod must have been retrieved by the damaged destroyer while the Goliad was still in the nebula.

  Well, that explains the pee on the floor he thought while refraining from saying anything about it.

  Thach was probably the first out of the door but with all the bodies tumbling down to the floor they missed that he was with them. Now that he was clear of the pile of bodies the little man started swearing and complaining.

  “You all left me to die! You dirty bastards, you filthy punks!” he screamed.

  PO2 Wallace looked like he was going to throttle the little coward.

  Mike crossed to him and looked down at the little man.

  “Specialist Thach, you are hereby charged with dereliction of duty, desertion and cowardice in the face of the enemy.” Collins then read him his rights under the UCMJ and asked him if he understood his rights.

  “Yes,” Thach replied having calmed down a bit as he realized the new situation he was now in.

  Mike then looked to Petty Officer Ditz who was helping one of the few Karduan women in the group.

  “Ditz, find something to bind the Specialist’s hands,” he ordered. Normally, he would have had security straps with him on a boarding operation but there wasn’t supposed to be anybody still left on board.

  A few seconds later the petty officer came over to them with some fiber optic cable and tied the coward’s hands behind his back.

  “What do we do now, sir?” CPO Schmidt asked.

  “We take them back to the shuttle and I’ll have to fly them back to the Goliad,” he replied.

  “Not by yourself, there are too many of them for one man to control,” the Chief stated.

  “Schmidty, these Karduans are Believer Disciples, they are not our enemies as most Blue males are slaves within Karduan society. As they were intentionally left behind I don’t expect them to give me any trouble at all,” he explained.

  “You should still take some
one with you to keep an eye on Duffey,” the Chief advised thinking his officer was in over his head and was a little too trusting with these enemy males.

  “Agreed, you’ll take the rest of your engineering team and stay on mission. Get that turret out while I take care of our guests,” Mike said.

  “Aye sir,” the old NCO replied.

  Lt. Collins then told the Karduans what they were about to do and that they needed everyone’s help as the ship only had a few hours of power left.

  “Honored enemy …,” Wa-Ben started unsure what to call the human leader.

  “We are not your enemy and you can call me Lt. Collins,” Mike said in Karduan.

  “Lt. Collins, what has happened to the rest of our crew?” he inquired.

  “All Karduan ships have either surrendered or have been destroyed. The other survivors of your crew have been taken to other human ships and are safe,” he explained.

  “Why are you on this ship?” the Blue asked a little confused.

  “We need a particle turret to replace the one we lost in battle with your ships,” Collins said looking around.

  Wa-Ben looked back at his people and then back to the human leader.

  “We could help you, many of us worked doing such things and have done this many times before,” he said sounding eager to be of assistance.

  Mike looked at them and took a moment to think about it. They could use the help but he had so few people to watch them. Some of them needed medical attention as well as food and water.

  “No, I want to get your injured back to our ship and then we can come back with a few volunteers to help,” he said.

  Wa-Ben lowered his head which in Karduan culture was the non-verbal sign for agreement from the lower caste.

  “We shall comply,” he replied.

  “Good, let’s get your people on their feet and help those who are unable to walk,” he instructed.

  A few minutes later found them heading back to the shuttle. He had nine Karduan males and three females trailing behind him. At the end of their group were Specialist Thach and PO2 Ditz, whose job was to keep a hold on the coward as well as watch the Karduans.

  Reaching the shuttle, Mike made sure they were all buckled in before he manned the helm. The flight was short and waiting at their airlock was another half-dozen armed crewmen and Ensign Pitt. Collins had signaled ahead telling them of the situation and for them to have help waiting for them.