Junkyard Dogs series Omnibus

by Phillip Nolte

  "Kessler, button up that empty armor and put the helmet back onto it, would you?" said Hartmann.

  The security officer had the armor reassembled within a few minutes.

  "Now let's take both suits down to the smelter."

  The security team wheeled both sets of armor, one still occupied and the other reassembled but empty, over to the elevator and headed down to the base levels of the station. They went through several large airtight doors, making sure to frequently bang into corridor walls and hit a lot of bumps on the way, before stopping in the compartment containing the conveyers and the crusher that fed material into the ore smelter. The ore, much of it in the form of various-sized chunks of rock, was run through the crusher and pulverized to the consistency of coarse gravel before being fed into the superheated, ravening maw of the smelter.

  "Remove the helmet from the leader's armor if you please, Kessler."

  Within a minute the helmet had been removed and the occupant of the armor was breathing, gasping in relief while blinking and looking around.

  "We are looking for some information," said Hartmann.

  "You will get nothing from me! Long live the Sheik of Barsoom.!"

  "Your companion has refused to talk as well," said Hartmann. "Too bad." He turned to Kessler. "Feed that man into the smelter."

  Kessler wheeled the cart with the empty set of armor on it over to the conveyor belt that fed into the jaws of the ore crusher and rolled the armor onto the belt, deliberately aligning it so that it would enter the crusher feet first. As the horrified captive watched, the armor made a short journey on the conveyer before it began feeding slowly into the crusher. He watched as first the feet, then the calves, the thighs, the torso and finally the head disappeared into the crusher accompanied by the agonizing crunching and screeching of the armor being crushed. Battle armor was normally very tough but it hadn't slowed this machine down one iota!

  The terrorist chief watched the entire proceedings with wide eyes.

  "You people are animals!"

  "Tell us what we want to know or you'll be next," said Hartmann.

  "You would not dare, I am an officer in the Sheik of Barsoom's revolutionary Army!"

  "If you haven't noticed, we're Spacers, we don't recognize any 'Revolutionary Army' or any of the United Federation's rules concerning special treatment for prisoners, for that matter."

  In point of fact, Spacers were members of the Federation and the statement regarding prisoners was an outright lie, but Hartmann was all but certain that his captive didn't know one way or the other and he was going to do what he had to get some answers! He continued, "Perhaps you don’t understand your position. I'll clarify it for you. We're the Law out here. You and your men attacked us without provocation. If we capture you, we own you. Kessler, I'm getting tired of this man's attitude. Wheel him over to the conveyor and let's get this over with. There are others. Surely one of them will talk."

  Kessler put the cart next to the conveyor and made as if to roll the officer and his armor onto it. He had actually begun rolling the armor off from the cart when the prisoner had a change of heart.

  "Wait! for the love of Allah, wait! I'll talk!"

  "We thought you might change your mind!"

  ***

  "This is Deputy Chief of Security Hartmann calling Captain O'Connell of the Donegal. Do you read me?"

  "Donegal here," radioed O'Connell, "what can I do for you Deputy Chief?"

  "We got some important information from two of the terrorists we captured."

  "How'd you manage that? Those guys are fanatics!"

  "Let's say that we can be very persuasive when we need to be, Captain. Here's what we got: A ship will be coming through here within the next twenty-four hours or so to reinforce the raider crew that we are currently keeping bottled up in the main airlock area. They were supposed to secure the long-range communications and take over the station to get at our cache of valuable metals. They accomplished half of their objective, they did manage to destroy the Stage II communicator."

  "Yeah, we saw that," replied O'Connell. "Casualties?"

  "Minimal, thank the stars, but the communications tech is MIA. Our informant told us that the terrorist's next target is to be the Santana Nexus. I suggest you and the Glendaloch take that NITrans freighter with you and head over to Patagonia. Have them use their stage II communicator to warn the people on the Nexus. I don't know if you can get there in time or not. Then see what you can do to get the Federation Navy to lend us a hand out here. New Ceylon is only a couple of jumps from Patagonia, they might be a good bet. If I were you, I wouldn't come back here without some serious firepower!"

  "Will you folks be alright on the mining station, Deputy Hartmann?"

  "Affirmative, Donegal. There are only twelve to fifteen terrorists left, but we've been picking them off one by one. It's actually rather entertaining, once you get the hang of it. Our informant says they'll be back with larger forces, but we'll just withdraw down into the rock if that happens. They'll have a heck of time even finding us. If they do, I guarantee they'll get way more than they bargained for!"

  "I don't envy them! We'll be leaving within the hour, Deputy. Thanks for the info. Donegal out."

  "Safe journey, Donegal. Hartmann out."

  Chapter 20.

  On board a shuttle from the renegade destroyer Skorpios, somewhere in the Heard's World Star System, December 2, 2598.

  The shuttle craft from the newly-named Skorpios cautiously approached a small, nondescript moon in the Heard's World system. The moon, more of an asteroid really, was an oblong, roughly potato-shaped object some five kilometers long by about three wide. As they drew closer, Jubayr, the head engineer of the hijacked destroyer, questioned Caleb Jordan.

  "Where is this wrecked cruiser?"

  "It's on the floor of a deep crater. I remember that it was in shadow the whole time I was here before. I'm pretty sure it was this next big one." Caleb pointed to a large crater, just coming into view in the screens of the shutttle.

  "Why can't these instruments detect the ship?"

  "Everything has been powered down for more than fifty years. That and the original crew pulled a stealth net over it. I don't think the ship will register on these older detectors. We should have a visual on it pretty soon though.

  "Ah yes, I think I can see it now," said Jubayr.

  A little over ten minutes later, the pilot of the shuttle had set the small craft down next to the hulk of the ancient heavy cruiser. In the dim light of the shadow cast by the crater's rim, the old warship dwarfed the tiny shuttlecraft. Caleb and several of the men had put on spacesuits before boarding the shuttle and were ready to begin investigating the battered old wreck immediately after the shuttle landed. Caleb wasn't overly concerned about the welfare of the people who had kidnapped him but he did care about what might happen to him and his wife if anything went wrong. He gave the men a warning.

  "We need to be very careful on board this wreck," he said, "The ship took a fearsome amount of damage before they landed it here. There are a lot of sharp edges and other very dangerous areas. The light gravity of this moon can also be a bit tricky. Be careful, we don't want anyone getting hurt."

  "My thanks, Christian," said Jubayr. "We shall heed your advice."

  "I might also suggest that we start our inspection from the stern of the ship, there's a lot less damage back there."

  The group followed Caleb's suggestion and boarded the old ship through one of the large, irregular, jagged holes in her hull near the stern. Once inside the ship, the salvage crew made their way down a corridor and through several hatches, each of which were sealed and had to be opened manually, until they reached one of the apparently undamaged beam emplacements that was part of the cruiser's secondary battery. There had originally been twenty of these single-mount pulse beam turrets making up the formidable secondary armament of the cruiser. Three of the most forward mounted of the turrets had been outright missing, and another four loca
ted amidships appeared to have taken severe damage. The remaining turrets, those towards the aft portion of the ship, appeared to be mostly intact. The emplacement that the salvage crew encountered first was on the port side and was one of the two stern-mounted turrets. Caleb entered the control room of the turret with Jubayr behind him. After a quick look around, the two of them opened a hatch in the floor and descended downwards into the capacitor area of the weapons system. Caleb was barely able to hide his elation when a quick inspection revealed that this set of components was obviously damaged beyond repair. They exited through a hatch in the rear wall of the capacitor chamber.

  Caleb had been part of a crew that had salvaged components from two of the larger gun emplacements from this very ship just a few months earlier and he remembered having to bypass several of those emplacements before finding one that was intact enough to be useful. Maybe all of the remaining guns of the secondary armament were damaged as well. The thought went through his head but he was to be disappointed almost immediately, when the components for the projector of the aft-most starboard emplacement, the next one that they examined, appeared to be in very good condition.

  Caleb and Jubayr squeezed into the capacitor area of the intact emplacement to see if they could confirm whether or not the parts they'd just located would work on the old destroyer. Caleb was finally able get a good look at an undamaged capacitor stack, something he had not been able to do with the twisted, burned and melted components on the destroyer. To his dismay, except for the fact that the cruiser's turrets appeared to be somewhat larger and a lot more heavily armored, the components within did indeed appear to be all but identical to the units on the Skorpios.

  He carefully inspected the capacitor assembly, wondering again just what they would have to do to get it out of the cruiser and onto the destroyer. When Caleb had helped with the salvage of the large weapons earlier, he and the other salvagers had simply taken all of the necessary components out of the old cruiser through a battle-damaged section of her hull that had not only been very strategically placed for their purposes, but had somehow left everything they needed undamaged as well.

  As he came around the bow end of the capacitor stack he noticed that a cover was missing from that end of the stack. With the inner workings of an intact assembly finally available for his inspection, he immediately noticed that the stack was actually made up of two identical modules. He nodded in understanding, with both endplates of the stack assembly removed, the individual units could be disconnected from one another and...then what?

  As he continued his walk around, heading aft, he noticed that the hatch on the aft wall of the enclosure was perfectly aligned with the capacitor stack. Intrigued, he poked his head through the hatch and shined his suit lights around, scanning the short corridor section that the hatch opened into. As he looked around, his gaze was drawn upwards by a special design feature: as the corridor approached the gun assembly, the ceiling started tilting upwards at about a forty-five degree angle some three meters before it got to the turret, before leveling off at a point even with the ceiling of the deck above. At the high point of the raised area there was a hatch that opened vertically. He shined his lights back down the corridor and nodded again. The corridor looked like it was long enough to accommodate one of the individual modules. Not only that, because of the sloped ceiling, an extracted module could then be tilted until it stood vertically in the raised-ceiling portion of the corridor. It was now obvious to Caleb that the modules and indeed the ship itself, had actually been designed to accommodate module replacement by pulling them out of the turret through the hatch in the rear wall and tilting them up in the specially-designed corridor before removing them vertically. Brilliant!

  A quick mental measurement of the modules confirmed that his theory was almost certainly correct. They would have to make sure, but now that he knew what to look for he suspected that the stolen destroyer had been designed the same way or in some very similar fashion. He and his terrorist captors would have to be really careful, but in the all but nonexistent gravity of the small moon, he grudgingly admitted to himself that they should be able to handle the extraction.

  The more he looked it over and thought it through, the more he realized that with these parts and some heavy mass shifting they had a very good chance to restore the main batteries on the stolen destroyer. Even worse, outside of some moderately risky maneuvers with the fairly massive modules that could easily cause an injury or damage a spacesuit, because of the special design of the adjacent corridor, it might not even be as difficult a task as he thought it would be at first. He was about to suggest that they look for another intact gun emplacement when Jubayr, who had finally worked his way around to inspecting the bow end of the capacitor stack, interrupted him.

  "Ha!" exclaimed the terrorist engineer. "Look at this, Christian, the capacitors are made up of individual modules. We can disassemble them and remove the modules one at a time! Did you not see?"

  Within the next two minutes, the crafty engineer had noted the hatch alignment and the significance of the special adjoining corridor as well. Caleb pretended to be surprised but couldn't be totally sure if he had pulled it off or not. He figured it wouldn't hurt his chances if the Sheik's engineer thought he was smarter than Caleb was.

  The third emplacement they inspected was damaged as severely as the first but the fourth one they looked at appeared to be in excellent condition. They had located the parts needed to repair both of the old destroyer's main batteries.

  Caleb wondered yet again what he could do to interfere with the process.

  Chapter 21.

  Santana Nexus Station, Central Spindle, December 3, 2598.

  Tamara Carlisle watched from the observation deck of the passenger waiting area near the North end of the Santana Nexus station's spindle while the cutter from the Istanbul maneuvered carefully into the station's huge receiving bay. A bright white line traced the outline of the shuttle's cross section as the little ship nosed through the airlock "force curtain" which separated the pressurized portion of the receiving bay from the harsh vacuum of space. The cutter had arrived to pick up Carlisle and Admiral Kingston's choice for the "real" liaison to the Meridian Ambassador, Lieutenant Lawrence Harvick, and transfer them both over to the Ambassador's ship. Carlisle still hadn't met this Lieutenant Harvick nor had he yet reported to the receiving area. The marines manning the security kiosk had just finished exchanging formalities with the personnel from the cutter when Harvick finally made his grand entrance.

  A couple of enlisted men were carrying his gear and he directed them to place all of it next to Carlisle's before thanking them profusely and dismissing them. He was of taller than average height but very slender, almost fragile-looking. He appeared to be of Old Earth African descent, with ebony skin; a broad, flat nose and short, kinky hair. His personal grooming was fastidious and the appearance of his uniform flawless -- beyond even the most meticulous military standards. Following military protocol, he and Carlisle exchanged salutes. Harvick's was textbook perfect. After her interview with the admiral, Carlisle had no idea what kind of person he would turn out to be and she was, to be truthful, expecting the worst. Somewhat to her surprise, his demeanor, though a tad stuffy, was not at all haughty.

  "I take it you are Ensign Tamara Carlisle?" he said as his gaze swept her short frame up and down before lingering a moment on her left cheek for a short inspection of her clan tattoo. His voice was unexpectedly rich and deep and the patterns of his speech were precise and polished. He could easily have been an audio announcer. His slight emphasis on "Ensign" left no doubt about the fact that she was a subordinate.

  "Kingston liaison...trained diplomat...ah...Yes, I'm Ensign Tamara Carlisle," she replied.

  From Carlisle's perspective, his appraisal of her communicated a multitude of things, none of them overly complimentary. He did, however, extend his hand.

  "It is a distinct pleasure to meet you, Ensign," he said.

  "Likewise, L
ieutenant," she responded as she shook his hand.

  The personnel from the Istanbul's cutter efficiently loaded up a couple of travel modules containing spacesuits and a few larger equipment items belonging to the two Federation officers, before assisting them with their personal gear and motioning them onboard the small craft. Harvick and Carlisle took seats next to one another for the fifteen-minute hop out to the Istanbul.

  "I have been informed, Ensign Carlisle," said Harvick. "That you have not had the benefit of any formal diplomatic training?"

  "...Miltary historian...new degree...ah...No, Lieutenant, I haven't," she replied. The tall Lieutenant proved his diplomatic credentials and instincts immediately by his -- what else -- diplomatic approach to the Ambassador's choice for liaison.

  "That is, of course, most unfortunate for you in your current assignment. While I can certainly believe that the Ambassador and his wife have their own very good reasons for requesting your services, I think it best that you follow my lead on matters concerning diplomats. There are many fine nuances to the art and science of diplomacy and, believe me, it is ridiculously easy to commit a faux pas. Indeed, Kingdoms have been lost due to the utterance of a single careless phrase." He nodded sagely. "Yes, I think it best that you spend the bulk of your time, especially in the early stages of this mission, observing rather than doing. Our mission is of utmost importance and we simply must take every precaution to ensure its success. I think you will find me to be a very reasonable sort and if you merely follow these simple guidelines, Ensign, you and I will get along fine."

  Carlisle, somewhat stunned by the honey-coated torrent of words, simply nodded.

  ***

  After the outright rude or, at best, indifferent fashion in which she had been greeted by most of the Naval personnel onboard the Santana Nexus Station, Carlisle's reunion with Ambassador Saladin and his wife couldn't have provided a starker contrast. The Ambassador was just as she remembered him, tall, athletic and immaculately dressed. He was also immaculately groomed with short, neatly-combed black hair and a pencil-thin mustache. His wife, standing next to him, was a woman of exotic and exceptional beauty. Her sleek shoulder-length black hair was classically styled, with the ends curved slightly inward and bangs straight-cut across her forehead. Her hair framed the perfect, light-olive skin of her oval face. The Ambassador, his wife and all six of the guards present appeared to be of Old Earth Middle East origin.