Junkyard Dogs series Omnibus

by Phillip Nolte

  "We have been tracking the terrorist activity in this part of the quadrant during the last several weeks, Commander. There have been attacks on all of these remote locations." Jalpa tapped a command on his workstation keyboard and a series of red dots appeared in the display. "The latest that we know of, courtesy of our new guests, are the Catskill-Saroyan and the Patagonia systems...here, and here." Another couple of red dots appeared.

  "Damn, that's an awful lot of red dots!"

  "Yes, but up till now we've been looking at most of these attacks as the work of independent operators," said Jenkins.

  "You two think otherwise?"

  "Take a look at this, Commander," continued Jalpa. "I have highlighted what could easily be attacks on local clusters of outposts by several independent terrorist operations."

  Three distinct clusters of activity lit up the display.

  "Okay, that seems to make sense."

  "That's what we thought too, Commander, but then we had another thought. What if all of this activity is more organized than that? What if these three separate clusters of activity are part of a coordinated effort by a single, much larger terrorist group?"

  Kresge looked at the display again. "Can you highlight those clusters again, in the order that the attacks have occurred?"

  "Certainly, Commander," replied Jalpa. He typed in a string of commands and each of the possibly related clusters of activity lit up, this time in chronological sequence.

  "Reports are sketchy, Commander, the terrorists have been destroying or disabling the stage two communicators after they attack, but it appears that these attacks were carried out by single ships and these..." the tactical officer highlighted several of the more recent attacks, "...were executed by teams of two ships or more."

  "I don't like the looks of that at all," said the Commander. "Each of those systems is only a single jump, maybe two from the others."

  "That's what we thought, Sir," said Jenkins, "It looks like several sets of attackers might be linking up. If this third set of attacks is also the work of some larger group then they are heading towards a rendezvous. If our projections are right, it looks like they'll be linking up in the Heard's World system or maybe in Catskill-Soroyan."

  "And either of those systems puts the whole batch of them only one jump from New Ceylon."

  "That was our conclusion too, Sir," said Jenkins.

  "Any estimate on when they might be getting here?"

  Jalpa hesitated for a long moment before replying, "Naturally, it is difficult to be sure, Commander, but they haven't spent more than a week in any of the systems they've terrorized so far. I'd say we could look for them in a week at the most. More likely they'll be here sometime in the next three or four days."

  Kresge shook his head, appreciatively. "This is not good news, obviously, but you had to bring up the possibility. What are the chances that the activity is unrelated?"

  "I would have been more skeptical if not for the last two systems that were attacked," replied Jalpa. "The one place that seemed out of sequence is the attack on Heard's world. I couldn't figure out why they attacked out there. Maybe they had to make a detour for some reason and changed their plans. If Heard's World is their new rendezvous point, then it all makes sense."

  "I agree," said Kresge. "How many ships?"

  "There'd have to be at least three ships, Commander, probably -- very probably -- more than that."

  "I wonder what kind of ships we might be facing?" asked Kresge. "Maybe the Greyhound will have more information for us. Damn it! I really wish they would get back here. If we have terrorists coming, we're going to need all the firepower and all the ships that we can get!"

  "Sorry, Commander," said the Chief."

  "No apologies necessary, Chief. It's your job to keep me updated, no matter how unpleasant the news is." Kresge sighed. "By the way, good work, you two. Have you told anyone else?"

  "Not as yet, Commander," replied Jalpa.

  "Keep it that way for the time being," said Kresge. "We need to inform the Ambassador."

  Kresge requested an audience with the Ambassador and was informed that they could meet at 0700. Since he also wished to discuss options for arming the Istanbul, he took the unusual step of inviting Amanda and Faiza with their wrist computers and recent knowledge of suitable weapons in the Scrapyard. Raghib, the chief engineer for the Istanbul, Chief Jenkins and Lieutenant Jalpa were asked to attend as well. The group met in one of the small conference room on the Istanbul.

  After a short exchange of pleasantries, the Commander began the meeting. "I'm afraid we're going to have to step up the program to arm your ship, Excellency," said Kresge. "We have just analyzed information on the pattern of attacks in this part of the quadrant and it appears that there is a high probability that we can expect an attack by multiple ships on this system, probably sometime soon."

  "How long?" asked the Ambassador.

  "In as little as two days, maybe as long as a week," replied the Commander.

  "You are correct, Commander," replied the Ambassador. "We had better take some kind of action. My question is this: Do we have sufficient time to get this ship armed? It would be a disaster if we were attacked while the ship is partially disassembled and undergoing what amounts to a major refit. We wouldn't even be able to run effectively. We would be as you say 'sitting ducks.'"

  "I know, Excellency," replied Kresge, concern on his face. "All the more reason to get started without delay."

  Amanda nervously raised her hand. Kresge recognized her. "What is it, Amanda?"

  "We...We may have a another option, Commander," said the young redhead.

  "At this point I'm open to almost anything; what is it?"

  "In spite of her status as a diplomatic ship, the Istanbul has the power to operate some very powerful beam weapons."

  "Of course, that's one of the reasons we're trying to arm her."

  "But the Meridian government didn't spare any expense when they converted her into a diplomatic ship. They turned her into a sort of 'mobile palace.' They didn't just use wood paneling and carpeting in the areas where the gun emplacements would have been, they did it right."

  "Yes, that has proven to be difficult for our purposes."

  Amanda took a deep breath. "So why don't we abandon the attempt to arm the ship?" she asked. "We don't have the time or the manpower to get the job done. But we might still be able to put up a pretty good fight."

  "I don't think I'm following you?"

  "We got this idea from looking at the hand weapon charging station down in the engineering section. Why can't we rig up a charging cable of some kind? The cable that was supposed to power the farthest forward turret was installed but it isn't connected to anything. Maybe we could use it somehow? We have the Istanbul's power plant and there are beam weapons all over the Scrapyard that are already mounted and just need to be charged up."

  Faiza chimed in, "We did some checking, Commander, and a capacitor bank will hold a full charge for weeks, maybe even months. That means we should be able to charge up a capacitor bank and leave the guns armed and ready before we need them. Remember that the guns and the turrets can all be operated manually."

  "Exactly what are you proposing?" asked Kresge.

  "We locate a half dozen turrets with guns in them that work and charge up the capacitors," answered Amanda. "The Istanbul can rove around and provide the power. We would need to man the guns but we see them used more in ambush mode than any other way. This way, the Istanbul would still have her heavy shielding for protection and she could still run if she had to. Maybe we can arm her before this war is over but right now, we don't have the time, the equipment or the manpower to get that done."

  Kresge looked at the two young women, dumbfounded. He shook his head side to side as he ran the ramifications of the unorthodox proposal over in his mind, considering it from several angles. He still had a somewhat astonished look on his face when he finally exclaimed, "This could actually work! What a terrific i
dea! Excellent work, both of you! I say we'd better start scouting out gun emplacements on the wrecks and figuring out what we have to do to the Istanbul right away."

  "We have some suggestions," said Faiza.

  Using the Scrapyard inventory files copied from Carlisle's wrist computer to research their plan, the two young women had located a cluster of five cruisers, some of which had undamaged weapons on them, and several other individual ships scattered here and there throughout the Scrapyard, that looked promising. Two teams were assembled to investigate further. It took the better part of the following day to scout out the candidate ships.

  ***

  The Scrapyard weapons teams met with Kresge and the Ambassador in the late afternoon. Kresge called the meeting to order.

  "Okay, what do you have for me?" he began. "Can we make this plan work?"

  "We'll have to get right on it, Commander," said Jenkins, "but I think we could have some operational weapons within the next day or so. Here's what we have to do." Jenkins outlined his suggestions. "Due to the design decisions that were made when this ship was converted to diplomatic duty, it appears as though the portside main battery cable is available for us to use. Faiza? Could you bring up the schematic, please?"

  A schematic view of the Istanbul, the hull transparent, appeared in the air in front of them. Jenkins continued, "You'll note that the portside cable was never connected to the power plant. On the other side of the ship, the starboard cable was not only connected but supplies power for the ballroom, the other meeting rooms and the residential quarters in the entire bow region of the ship. Lucky for us, the port cable had been intended to operate what would have been the forward turret and because of that it's about fifty meters longer."

  "What do you propose?" asked the Ambassador.

  "First we'll have to connect the port cable to the main power plant..."

  Seeing the Ambassador's doubtful look Raghib added, "The connections are still there, Excellency, we've checked."

  The Ambassador nodded.

  "Then we'll have to strip the cable out from the forward third of the ship and route it to the outside."

  Another doubtful look ensued.

  "It may not be as bad as it sounds. For much of its length the builders actually ran the cable through a dedicated tube. As you can see from the schematics, the bulkheads and other structures were designed to allow the tube, with the cable inside, to pass through them. This arrangement makes it easier to maintain ship integrity if any of the compartments that the tube passes through suffer damage that leads to atmospheric loss. More importantly, for our purposes, we should be able to just slip the cable out of the tube without having to depressurize any compartments and without the cable hanging up on anything."

  "Where are you going to attach to it and winch it out?"

  "You'll note that the tube with the cable in it actually runs through the upper part of the central cargo hold on the bottom of the ship. We can cut out a section of the tube, grab on to the cable and winch it out from that point. When we're done, we should have about fifty meters of free cable to work with and it will be routed to the outside from the central cargo hold. In the meantime we'll also have to get the gun emplacements on the wrecked cruisers prepared so we can connect the cable to them."

  "That shouldn't be too bad," said Jenkins. "There's a junction between the main power cables and the pulse beam capacitors for each of the gun emplacements. The Federation used a standard male-female type of connector for the power junctions. It shouldn't be too hard to disconnect the gun emplacements from the electrical systems of the ships they're mounted on. We'll just need to unplug them. Then we'll need to rig one of the standard male connectors to our charging cable." He paused here before continuing. "I won't try to downplay this, we have a lot of work to do to pull this off. Do you have any people you can spare, Mr. Ambassador?"

  "Of course," replied the Ambassador, "Raghib?"

  "All of my men are at your disposal, Commander," said the engineer. "I am also available myself and humbly suggest that I am probably the best person to head up the modifications to the Istanbul."

  "What do you think, Mr. Ambassador?" asked Kresge.

  "I say we'd better get started," replied the Ambassador.

  Several crews were assembled and work on the Scrapyard arming project began immediately. Raghib headed up the team that was assigned the task of attaching the port cable to the power plant of the Istanbul and pulling the cable out of its dedicated tube. Members of his crew went through the ship, evicting the affected patrons from their various rooms so that they could secure the hatches and ensure that all personnel remained safe if any of the affected compartments should wind up in vacuum during the rerouting of the cable. The engineers did not expect any depressurization but they were taking no chances.

  In the meantime, Jenkins headed up the crew working on the Federation side of the project. His crew disconnected the power cables from the capacitor banks of each of the gun emplacements that they thought they could use and routed them to the outside of their respective ships, where the connections could be accessed by the Istanbul. With very little time to prepare for the coming battle, the Scrapyard defense team decided that if they didn't have easy access to the inside of the wreck through some kind of battle damage, they weren't going to try to use the gun emplacement.

  For the Istanbul herself, they rigged the port main battery cable, the so called "charging cable" which, as estimated, ended up being about fifty meters long, with the Federation-style male connector so that they could readily connect to the prepared cables rigged on the various gun turrets.

  A sense of urgency permeated the entire project.

  Chapter 48.

  UTFN Auxiliary Ship Greyhound, near the Whitney Jump point of the New-Ceylon, Naccobus star system, December 12, 2598.

  The Greyhound phased smoothly back into normal space in the Whitney hyperlink point for the New Ceylon system. Harris used the Greyhound's stage I communicator to contact the Scrapyard.

  "Federation Auxiliary Vessel Greyhound calling the New Ceylon Reclamation Center."

  He received a reply on the viewscreen almost immediately.

  "Istanbul here, this is Captain Nassar. Welcome back Greyhound. We saw a ship come through the hyperlink point and we were hoping it was you. The Commander is not here right at the moment but I have sent for him. He will be very happy to see you!"

  "Nassar, thank God!" said Harris. "I can't tell you how good it feels to see a friendly face! We've just barely escaped from the Heard's World system. We've a lot to report."

  "Much has been happening here while you have been gone as well. Ah. Here is the Commander."

  "Harris," said Kresge, who couldn't suppress a relieved grin. "You guys made it! We've been worried sick! What's the situation at Heard's World? Is everyone okay? Did you find Caleb and Hanna Jordan?"

  "We ran into two hostile ships in that system Commander," replied Harris, "under the command of someone who calls himself the Sheik of Barsoom."

  "You have information on the Sheik of Barsoom?"

  "He's a real person, Commander, Hanna and Caleb Jordan met him face to face! They can tell you more about it when we get back to the Scrapyard."

  "What about the ships?" asked Kresge.

  "One of the ships was the Sheik's personal yacht but the other one was a Dagger class destroyer. The rumors about a hijacked destroyer were true, Commander, this Sheik and his men killed the Tunisian crew and commandeered the ship while it was at the Piedmont Mining Station but not before the former crew members managed to disable all the beam weapons."

  "Three ships from Catskill-Soroyan just joined us yesterday, Lieutenant. They actually witnessed the hijacking! We were wondering what happened to that destroyer."

  "The Sheik's forces somehow found out about the Veritian wreck in the Heard's World system and went there to get parts for their damaged weapons," said Harris. "They needed a weapons tech so they kidnapped the Jordans and forced Caleb t
o help them repair the main batteries."

  "So they have been able to restore the main batteries?"

  "I'm afraid so," said Harris.

  "That damned Veritian Derelict has sure as hell been no end of trouble for us out here, hasn't it?" said Kresge. "First it was two armed cargo ships and now this destroyer!"

  "Don't forget the nuclear self-destruct they threatened us with on the orbital station," said Harris.

  "Don't remind me," replied Kresge.

  "I pulled the quantum drive out of the bridge computer on the wreck, Commander," said Carlisle. "I'll try to access it if I can get some time. Maybe we can get answers to some of the mysteries surrounding that ship."

  "Good thinking, Ensign," replied Kresge.

  "There's more, Commander," said Harris, "a lot more, but we finally got our beam weapons to work, managed to rescue the Jordans and just barely held that destroyer off long enough to make it to the jump point. We were damned lucky to get out alive!"

  "I'll want a full report when you get here, Lieutenant."

  "One more thing, Commander. Hanna overheard some of them while she was being held captive on the yacht and it sounded like they were waiting for more ships to rendezvous with them. It looks like they could be on their way to this system next!"

  "We have arrived at the same conclusion, Greyhound," replied Nassar. "As I said, much has happened while you have been gone. The ships from the Catskill-Saroyan system brought information indicating that an attack on this system is imminent. We have been making preparations. The Ambassador will be greatly relieved that you have returned. I have no doubt that your talents will be appreciated, we are in the midst of a large project at this very moment."

  "Nassar is absolutely right, Lieutenant," said Kresge. "We need you as soon as you can get here."

  "We're on our way, Commander."

  ***