"Okay, we've all done this before, on the Greyhound." Caleb Jordan keyed his spacesuit radio. "Rahgib? Run that power plant up to full power, we're ready to charge some capacitors."
"Roger, Caleb," was the almost instantaneous reply.
The salvage crew felt an immediate increase in the intensity of the power plant's vibrations. Caleb worked the controls at the capacitor console.
"Here goes," said the little weapons tech as he hit the button that would route power to the starboard capacitor."
The vibration deepened and within about thirty seconds, Caleb's console indicated that there was a full charge on the starboard capacitor.
"Starboard capacitor charged," he announced, "Charging port capacitor, now!"
Within another half minute, the charge indicator lit up for the port capacitor as well.
"Both capacitors charged," said Caleb, "We should be ready to discharge weapons!"
Carlisle and Jordan listened in while Harris notified Kresge and requested further instructions.
"Commander, Kresge? This is Harris. We have charged weapons, what are your orders?"
After a short pause, the crew on the Gibraltar received his reply, "Do you have fire control or will you have to aim and fire manually?" asked Kresge.
"The fire control computer is up and running, Commander."
"You'll still have a hard time hitting anything at the current range," replied Kresge. "I'm afraid we'll just have to let them get a little closer. Standby!"
"Roger, Commander."
"You should give Steuben a hand at the fire control console, Ensign," said Caleb, "We can at least have these guns aimed in the right direction when we get the order to fire. I can handle this console by myself."
"Good idea," replied Carlisle. She left Caleb at the capacitor controls and headed back up to join Steuben at the fire control console.
The two of them managed to locate the enemy formation on the fire control screen and operated the turret controls to get the big guns trained in the right direction. Carlisle picked out one of the lead destroyers and began following it with the starboard projector.
Everyone waited for a very tense twenty minutes or so until the enemy ships closed to within two thousand kilometers, very near the extreme range of the main batteries on the destroyers.
"You may commence firing any time you have a target," said Kresge at last.
Carlisle double-checked the aim of the starboard projector, made a fine adjustment and pressed the firing stud.
Nothing happened.
She pushed the firing stud again, with the same result
"Caleb? The damned gun won't fire," shouted Carlisle, "What do we do now!"
"Hang on!" shouted Caleb.
Caleb reset several of the controls on his console and shouted, "Try it again!"
Carlisle rechecked the aim of the projector, made a small adjustment and tried again. The gun still refused to fire!
"That's enough on the starboard system, Caleb," said Carlisle, "Quickly, we have to try the port side!"
They concentrated their efforts on the port gun but after a couple of attempts they came up with the same disappointing result.
Carlisle headed back down to the capacitor chamber where Caleb was frantically running through the control systems on the control console.
"Why won't the gun fire, Caleb?" asked Carlisle
"I think something's wrong with the connection between the capacitors and the projectors," said Caleb, "There must be a circuit breaker that's tripped or we missed a break in a cable. Maybe we can double check..."
"...Ship bottom...belly gun...There's no time!" said Carlisle, "Quickly, we have to head downward and see if the belly gun works. This late in the game, it's our best chance!"
Caleb nodded and got up from the capacitor console.
"Stueben? Get down here right away!" Carlisle shouted out to the electrical tech who had remained in the turret above where they had left him, manning the fire control computer for the topside weapon. Within a few seconds, Steuben had joined them in the capacitor chamber.
"What's up?" said Steuben.
"Something's wrong with this projector system. We have to get down to the belly turret."
"I'm right behind you!" replied Steuben.
The three of them headed out of the capacitor chamber and made their way downwards through the interconnected compartments that contained atmosphere.
"Harris? This is Carlisle," said the Ensign over her suit radio as the trio was in the process of negotiating the maze of compartments that connected the topside turret to the belly emplacement.
"What is it, Tamara?"
"We got the capacitors charged up but we couldn't get the topside projectors to fire. We're heading down to try the projectors in the belly turret now. We should be there in five minutes or so."
Carlisle had her wrist computer displaying a schematic of the battleship and was using it to guide the three of them on the most direct route to the bottom turret.
"Let us know as soon as you get there, Ensign! We've cut back on the power until we hear from you again."
"Roger," she replied.
Chapter 21.
Deep Space, near the UTFN Reclamation Center, on board the destroyer MIS Sultan, January 4 2599.
In the meantime the enemy formation had gotten within easy range of the main batteries of his destroyers. Captain Shaloub was looking over the shoulder of his ship's sensor operator.
"Can you detect the charged capacitors?" he asked.
"Aye, Sir, these red areas on my display indicate places within the scrap cloud that are heat sources. Some of them are almost certainly charged capacitors. Ah! Here's one right now!"
The technician zoomed the view in on the wreck of a cruiser near the outside of the scrap cloud. Shaloub could see the dark outline of a main battery turret with a red blob glowing beneath it.
"Target that turret and open fire," said the Captain.
Using the information from the sensor operator, the gun crew of the Sultan's front battery targeted the red blob and discharged their weapon. Afterwards, an inspection of the target area revealed a main battery turret that had a large hole blasted into one side. The edges of the hole were glowing red but fading fast. The red blob beneath the turret was no longer registering on the sensor console.
"Excellent," said Shaloub, "We can locate their weapons! Give me a channel to all ships!"
"Communications to all ships enabled, Sir!"
"This is Captain Shaloub to the Strike Force. Our enhanced sensor settings will allow us to identify and destroy the enemy's charged weapons! Target the heat sources and fire at will!"
***
UTFN Reclamation Center, onboard the wreck of the FWS Gibraltar, January 4, 2599.
The With Caleb in front, opening the hatches, Carlisle in the middle consulting her wrist computer display and Steuben bringing up the rear and sealing the hatches behind them, the Gibraltar's gun crew made good progress through the wreck. Harris called to inform them of the latest developments.
"Harris to Ensign Carlisle?"
"Carlisle here, go ahead Lieutenant!"
"Bad news, I'm afraid. The enemy has figured out how to identify our charged weapons, They're just sitting outside of the scrap cloud and picking them off, one by one. They located two of them already. We need to do something quickly if we can."
"Roger, Lieutenant, we're almost there."
"You realize that this means we could also wind up being a target, don't you?"
"That can't be helped. We'll do our best, Sir!"
A minute later, the gun crew burst through the hatch that led into the capacitor chamber for the belly gun. This compartment was all but identical to the one they had just vacated. Caleb sat down in one of the operator's chairs and powered up the console. He keyed the communications toggle and called up to engineering.
"We are ready to try again, Lieutenant," he said, "Run that powerplant back up."
The three of
them could feel the effects of the power plant coming back up to full power."
"Power running at full capacity," announced Harris. "If you can't get that gun to work, we'll have to abort!"
Caleb activated the series of switches that would initiate a charge on the port capacitor. His efforts were rewarded as the indicators came to life and the port side capacitor began to take a charge. Thirty seconds later, the charge indicator went green.
"We have a full charge on the portside gun!" shouted Caleb, unable to completely control his excitement. "I'd better stay here and monitor this console, Ensign. There's no time to waste! You and Steuben get down below and man the fire control computer."
Carlisle and Steuben descended into the turret below. Steuben slid into one of the operator's chairs and switched on the controls for the fire control computer, quickly familiarizing himself with the layout on the console. To his relief it was all but identical to the one he had been working with in the topside turret. The only difference was that this fire control computer station was located on a balcony just below the opening of the hatch that led upwards into the capacitor chamber.
The board lit up but...the monitor did not!
"I'll check the monitor on the starboard console," Carlisle said frantically. She dashed through the hatch in the bulkhead that divided the turret and switched on the starboard console. A moment later she was confronted with the same result, a board that lit up just fine but a targeting monitor that did not. Carlisle had a thought.
"Try the weapon movement controls, Steuben" said Carlisle.
Steuben rotated the turret control from twelve o'clock to one. To their immense relief, the turret responded to the controls and moved majestically to the right. A moment later they were able to get the projector to elevate as well.
Carlisle shouted up to Caleb, "We have attitude controls but the monitors aren't working!"
"Ensign, you get down there and get into the gunner's chair," shouted Caleb, "We'll have to see if we can shoot this weapon manually!"
"But I..."
"Go! We've run out of time. Don't overthink it! It'll be just like shooting the guns on the Greyhound, these are just a little bigger. Even if you can't hit any of their ships, you're bound to get their attention!"
Carlisle gulped at "just a little bigger" but immediately realized that with time running critically short, there was really no other way for them to get into the fight. She made her way over to a steep ladder and began to head down into the projector chamber.
"What do we do now, Tamara?" asked Steuben.
"There's no time to fool around with the monitors, we'll have to aim and shoot the port side gun manually. The starboard gun might take a charge but there's no time."
"What about Caleb?"
"He has to stay up in the capacitor chamber. Somebody has to monitor the capacitor charging console."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Stay right there at the fire control console. I'll call up coordinates to you and you'll be running the turret controls."
"Is that going to work?"
"I sure as hell hope so! You'll do the gross movements from that panel and I'll use the fine adjustment controls from the gunner's chair. Even if I don't hit anything, when they figure out what it is that's shooting at them, it'll have to at least slow them down!"
She also realized that it would also make them a prime target but thought it best not to voice the thought.
She finished descending the ladder that led from the fire control balcony to the projector area, climbed swiftly into the gunner's chair and double checked the rough adjustments she had made to the controls just a few hours earlier. She tweaked the chair elevation a tiny bit before sliding her feet into the control pedals that regulated the fine aiming adjustments for the projector. Finally she pulled up the battle periscope and flipped the optical module over in front of her, all the while thinking that this confounded, upside down control system was just...wrong!
She pushed the distraction aside and looked through the periscope. She swung it in the direction that she knew the enemy had been coming from and discovered, to her immense relief, that the optics were identical to those in the topside turret. As she adjusted the magnification, she was able to make out considerably more detail. All of the enemy ships were more or less stationary and they were close. Very close! There were three larger ships that appeared to be keeping station several kilometers further back. Freighters converted to troop ships, she thought. The front line of ships looked be only about a kilometer or two from the outside edges Scrapyard. As she watched, one of the destroyers in that advanced line fired her front projectors into the scrap cloud. The rear main battery turret on one of the cruiser wrecks in the cloud erupted in a cloud of debris. A second later another destroyer fired into the scrap cloud though in this case the result of the impact was hidden from her view.
Every one of those shots meant there was a good chance someone from the Junkyard had been killed. Even worse, each gun emplacement that was destroyed reduced their ability to defend themselves!
No more time to waste! Carlisle called out the coarse rotation coordinates of the ship on the end of the lead group, the one closest to them, up to Steuben at the control console.
"Set the turret attitude control at ten and a half degrees to starboard, Orv."
"Roger that, ten and half degrees to starboard!" shouted Steuben.
She felt a momentary sense of relief as she heard the clunk of the drive mechanism kicking in and felt the turret begin swinging to the right. Since they had been concentrating all of their efforts on the topside emplacement, they hadn't taken the time to test the systems on the belly turret. While the turret was rotating, she called out a rough elevation coordinate as well.
"Give me five point two five degrees elevation on the port gun."
While the turret was still swinging to starboard, the port projector also began to arc upward from the twenty-five degree elevation it had been left it at. "Upward" in this case meant closer to horizontal relative to the ship. By the time the turret had stopped rotating, the projector had already stopped at the requested elevation. Carlisle looked through the periscope again.
The enemy formation was nearly straight on to them. This meant that she would be shooting at the smallest target profile that any of the ships could possibly present. That couldn't be helped. On the plus side, the enemy wasn't expecting to be attacked while they remained outside of the scrap cloud and none of them were performing any evasive maneuvers whatsoever. This meant that she could fire directly at them and not have to deal with any messy diagonal vectors or erratic ship movements. She noted that the crosshairs were aligned a little above and a little to the left of her chosen target ship.
The foot controls for the gunner's chair were intended for fine adjustments of the turret rotation and projector elevation. Both controls were rocker pedals. If she rocked her right foot forward, the turret would swing to port, if she rocked back on the pedal, the turret would swing to starboard. Rocking forward with her left foot depressed the projector elevation while rocking back raised it.
Keeping her eyes glued to the crosshairs, she gently rocked her right foot back on the rotation control pedal. The turret moved smoothly and almost imperceptibly to the right. She returned her foot to the neutral position but noted that the turret had swung just past the target and was now a little to the right of the lead ship. She tapped forward with her right foot and was rewarded with a near perfect alignment on the lead ship. She then pressed forward on the elevation pedal to just slightly depress the gun. Meanwhile she had her right hand on the control that would actually fire the massive projector. Built into the right arm of the gunner's chair, the triggering mechanism was a simple pistol grip equipped with a firing stud and a safety interlock. As the crosshairs were coming down towards an alignment with the lead ship, Carlisle released the safety. Seconds later, when the ship appeared to be centered in the crosshairs, she squeezed the firing stud.
She was totally unprepared for what happened next.
All of her previous experience had been with smaller weapons, like the 1000 gigajoule projectors transplanted onto the Greyhound. These gargantuan battleship projectors were rated at fifty times the power! Even the sound was totally different. While the smaller projectors produced a relatively loud "thwaap" sound inside the turret when they were fired, this monster made a sound like a rushing wind followed by a loud rumble and a final sharp crack that sounded like thunder. The flash from the pulse momentarily lit up the entire Scrapyard.
At point blank range, the pulse bolt from the battleship's projector, traveling at 0.98 of lightspeed, struck instantaneously. When Carlisle could see again, the destroyer she'd been aiming at was...gone...in its place was a glowing cloud of plasma. The glow was dissipating as she watched.
"Did you get him, Tamara?" shouted Steuben.
"Enemy ship destroyed," she said, though that description was a gross understatement. Enemy ship converted to atoms would have been more appropriate! She thought.
"Good shooting!" shouted Steuben
Carlisle could feel the vibration of the capacitor recharging.
"I'm going to acquire another target, Steuben, coordinates are...," Carlisle got the numbers off from the battle periscope, "...set rotation at zero point three degrees starboard of where it is now and the elevation to...elevation is fine, I'll fine tune with the foot controls. Holler when that capacitor charge light turns green."
***
Deep Space, near the UTFN Reclamation Center, on board the destroyer MIS Sultan, January 4, 2599.
On the bridge of the Sultan, Captain Shalhoub saw some impossible readouts on his command console.
"What in the name of the Prophet was that?"
"Unknown sir," came the reply, "We're checking on it now."
Junkyard Dogs series Omnibus Page 85
