Commander Green, who had briefly been the Sundance’s captain and had recently taken command of the captured and restored destroyer IPS Crocket raised his hand.
“Sir, what can we expect the enemy’s strength to be?”
Kirkland shrugged and looked to Hope, who was sitting nearby. The senior captain’s face was not smiling and seemed as if it was set in stone.
“The Karduan escort ships consist of a full squadron including a battle destroyer and a super destroyer.”
This information had an expected effect as the various ship captains and officers rumbled amongst themselves. Many of these officers had not seen combat yet or at least not in recent years and were hesitant about going into battle against such a powerful force.
Sitting and listening to the debate that had broken out Mike’s anger slowly grew. He believed that these older and more experienced officers were less than bold.
Commander Hutton and his friend Alister sensed his rage and the older officer placed a hand on his arm to restrain him.
“Calm down and let it play itself out,” Hutton advised in a whisper.
“Sir, even if we defeat the enemy squadron how could we rescue the prisoners without getting them all killed?” Commander Oman inquired.
Since the return of the Wolf he had been transferred to the destroyer IPS Bowie. The captured destroyers were the next most powerful in their growing fleet just behind the Wolf, Patton and were at least equal to the Bastogne.
“That is the question before us,” Kirkland agreed, trying to get the assembled officers to put forth suggestions.
“It sounds impossible!” an officer from across the room declared as the rest of the officers grew quiet in agreement. No one wanted to just give up, but the odds of defeating the enemy fleet and saving the captives were overwhelmingly against them.
Collins had heard enough and quickly stood up before his former teacher could stop him.
“Sir, we have to do something!” Mike insisted, his words almost sounding like a demand. His passion was up and the recent news and attitudes revealed during the staff meeting was enough to make his blood boil.
The assembly of older officers turned to look at this upstart pup. Many of them were frowning at him and a few actually laughed.
“And what do you suggest Lieutenant?” Commander Oman asked, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. The senior officer was of mixed Euro and Arab decent and was one of the ones who was smirking at him.
Mike ignored them and looked to the officers who he knew had faced enemy fire and who knew both risk and victory.
“Sirs, we could ambush them as they try to make a bend from Austro Prime. We could load the fighters on the armed freighters and have them and the sloops in orbit around the planet. When the Karduans try to leave the system our squadron would bend in with the captured ships in the lead. The enemy would think that we were another Kardie squadron and we would not only have the element of surprise, but also we’d catch them between our two fires.”
The room was stunned for moment as they gawked at this young officer. It only lasted a moment before debate broke out amongst them. Several of the freighter captains were concerned at being cut off from the gravity well and also at losing their trading anonymity with Austro Prime.
The captains of the Karduan prize ships were equally concerned with being the point of the spear with inexperienced crews. They also argued about the effectiveness of the trap and possible ramifications.
Mike sat down, now being ignored in the discussion of his own plan.
Hutton leaned over to him and patted him on the back.
“An excellent plan, but I don’t think they will support it.”
Collins shook his head, “I don’t care what they say it is what Captain Hope and Captain Kirkland think that counts.”
Of the men in the room he respected the two senior captains as well was the commanders of the Patton and Bastogne. The other officers were from the Austro Defense Force and hadn’t seen action or commanded a real ship in years.
It reminded him of the American Civil War when the Union’s generals turned out to be great organizers, but lacked the spirit to jump into the fray. Hesitation kills just as surely as impudence.
After fifteen minutes of debate it seemed that it was decided that even if the young officer’s plan could work they still would not be able to rescue the prisoners from the enemy freighters before the ships could either execute them or self-destruct.
The meeting broke up with Kirkland telling them to work on other options and not to give up hope. Mike was disgusted with his fellow officers and wished he were still trapped on the Alamo inside the captured Mammoth. Looking to Captain Hope he saw the old Hawk met his stare as their eyes locked for a moment.
The captain then turned away leaving the young officer with no impression of support or displeasure. With such a mixed feeling from him, Mike didn’t know what to think and felt that the politics of command were even worse than an enemy squadron.
The thought of rescuing the captives and the dilemma in how to accomplish it troubled him for the next couple of days. Angelique sensed his wondering mind at dinner and made him come to bed early. Of course the couple didn’t get much sleep for the first hour.
Afterwards Mike lay next to her holding her in his arms as he thought of how they met. She had been badly burnt from her escape from the Lexington, but the Heal-X had quickly reversed the scarring and repaired the damage.
Running his hand over her skin for the countless time he still couldn’t feel a difference except maybe a slight softer feeling where the new skin had grown. In the dim light he could faintly detect a minor hint of pink coloring in the new skin’s shading. He was sure that in another month there would be no difference at all between the old flesh and the new.
As he continued to massage her smooth shoulders running his hands down her thin arms to her hips, he thought of the Alamo and how they had then taken the Mammoth. His hands froze as he suddenly had a revelation.
“That’s it!” he whispered, smiling to himself.
“What?” she asked half asleep.
Mike leaned over and kissed her.
“Nothing,” he said and kissed her again.
Rolling over she pulled the pillow down and over her head. “Mon due, not again!” she said exhaustedly as she felt something stir against her.
“Complain, complain,” he said, pulling the pillow away as she grabbed him and pulled him down for a deeper kiss.
The next day Mike took a shuttle from the Mary to the base. He was checking up on Rufo who had been temporally reassigned from the Wolf to the base to aid with fighter repairs. All of the ship crews had not only been working on repairs for their own ships, but also on those of the new acquisitions.
With the skilled repair crews of the Mammoth and the Varuna’s survivors added to the Wolf’s experienced crew and the base personnel they were making fast and efficient use of the past month. The base’s facilities along with the little Spider and those of the immense Mammoth made the work incredibly easier.
The recovery ship’s droids and the repair robots from the Wolf had been tasked to work on the most badly damaged ships first leaving lesser work like fighter repairs for the humans.
Docking the shuttle to the base’s exterior airlock, he noticed that the inner docking bay was full. Both the Cassidy and her sister ship, the Sundance were back from their trade missions and were directly offloading their cargos at the base.
Entering the main bay, it was hard for him to see across the floor as it was covered in boxes and containers. Skirting around the cargo containers he worked his way to the far end of the bay where fighter repairs were ongoing. The SF-18 Hornets were still being worked on out on the Mammoth by the surviving technicians from the Lexington.
Here repairs were being made to the LN-28 Wasps of which their squadron had recently grown. A trade mission to Arcadia Prime, an industrial based world, had remarkably resulted in eight of the
little and long since retired fighters. There were also four other Wasps still under repair and refit that had been waiting for repairs for over a month.
“Where did they find all these fighters?” Mike asked, seeing Rufo’s legs under a fighter’s belly.
Cappilo looked out from the star fighter and smiled.
“We found two of them with a private collector who loaned them to us only if he could join up. He was a fighter pilot ‘want-a-be’ and even though he was pushing seventy he turned out to a pretty damn good pilot.”
“Good deal, a pair of fighters and a pilot. What about the other six?”
“We found two of them at a civilian pilot school, two in a junkyard and one was from a museum,” the young Italian informed pulling himself to his feet.
Mike leaned over and gave him a hand, “That’s only seven what about number eight?”
The shit-eating grin on his friend’s face slipped for a moment.
“We found it as a part of a sign for a mom and pop restaurant called Rocket Burgers,” he said.
“Can you get them all operational?” Mike wondered aloud as he walked around one of the derelict fighters from the junkyard. Three of them were in pretty bad shape needing complete refits of their systems as well as a structural test. Mike stopped next to one of them and pulled a long strand of bluish grass from the Wasp’s frame.
Rufo took the strand from his hand put it in his mouth, pulled out a cloth from his pocket and polished the side of the beat-up fighter.
“Don’t worry about it chief, all they need is a good wash and a little wax.”
Mike laughed even though he wanted to frown.
“Good, because you get to fly these lawn mowers once they’re operational.”
The Italian’s broad smile didn’t even waver.
“No problem! Oh and look what else we got,” he said crossed back through the cargo containers.
Following his friend through the maze of boxes they stopped at a large crate as Rufo opened its door. The inside of the container was full of thin sheet metal panels.
“Trans-poly aluminum!”
“Where in the world did you find this?”
Mike didn’t think it was possible, but his friend’s broad smile got larger.
“One of our recent recruits remembered that his high school’s Tech Ed class had a whole crate of the stuff for class projects.”
“Such surprises will never cease to amaze me. Do we have enough to cover the repaired sections of the Wolf?” he asked, knowing that they didn’t have the high tech stealth armor panels to replace the damaged sections back when they first restored her. If the TPA did really defeat Karduan sensors than they could at least cover those sections and restore more of her aft section’s stealth capabilities.
“I don’t think we have that much of the paneling, but we also found a plant on Arcadia that would produce liquid TPA for us. They thought we were a little insane, but they took our order and our money. Hell, they even managed to make a test batch for us,” he said, crossing to a large tank nearby.
“Did you test it to see if it blocks the Kardie sensors?”
Rufo didn’t miss a beat as he leaned down next to the tank and picked up a piece of metal and a hand held scanner.
“This is a Blue’s weapons scanner,” he said holding out his right hand and then held up his left, “And this a piece of scrap hull plating that I’ve treated with the liquid TPA.”
Collins took the scanner and ran it over the treated scrap metal. Amazingly it failed to detect the hull fragment.
“Could you spray this on other things?”
“Not people, but as long as it was metal or something that’s heat resistant. The TPA has to be super heated when applied and that means it would melt anything that wasn’t similar to armor or hull plating.”
Mike nodded and then took the scanner and hurried back to the crate of TPA sheet metal. He struggled to pull a sheet out as Rufo gave him a hand.
“What are you doing? It blocks the scanner just like the liquid form.”
Collins then drew his Krager, laid it on the floor and then placed the sheet metal over it. Running the scanner over it he was pleased to see that it failed to detect his pistol.
“I have two ideas besides covering hull plating and fighter repairs,” he said, seeing his friend’s concerned look change back to a mischievous smile.
“We’ll go ahead tell!” he insisted with an impish grin. Whatever Collins had planned he knew his friend was plotting a nasty surprise for the Blues.
Mike looked around making sure that they were still alone and out of the range of curious ears.
“Could we treat torpedoes and missiles with the liquid TPA?”
“Holy Shit!” Rufo exclaimed not having thought of that application. The TPA would make it near impossible for the enemy to shoot their incoming missiles down.
“We’d have to treat their casings before we inserted their warheads and avionics, but yes we can.”
“Good, get some of your more trusted men on it and keep it under your hat for now. We’ll only have a few days so get as many missiles and torpedoes ready as you can.”
Rufo frowned at that, but nodded his agreement.
“What about your second idea?”
He let out a big sigh and shook his head.
“Not now, get the gang together and tell them to meet me at twenty-four hundred hours at the Mary’s fitness center on the Tudor Deck.”
“Sounds sneaky, what’s up?”
“Let’s just say that I have a black-ops in mind and we shouldn’t trust anyone other than Harpers-Wolf alumni and even then only members under field grade rank. Also we’re going to need as many of those lovely little Wasp fighters as you can get operational, so pull more men on them and hop to it.”
Cappilo nodded in agreement, but wondered what mission would be so secret that they’d exclude officers like Hutton, Richards and Captain Hope.
“What about Gunny?”
“No gray wolves only wolf pups. They’d only try to stop us and for what I have in mind it is just too important. Let everyone know this is top secret, extremely dangerous and volunteers only.”
His friend’s smile faded as he nodded his agreement. Whatever was up, Collins was as serious as he was back when they stole the Star Wolf.
The second part of his plan took him across to the Priestly. The prison ship had undergone extensive renovations since the last time he had been there. The former freighter had her system engines removed, which were to be sold as scrap metal and a pair of mobile power plants had been installed in their place. There was talk of taking some recovered Karduan engines and installing them, but that was pretty far down on the priority list.
The CCF officers were also happy that the ship had no engines as it reduced the chance of the prisoners from trying to escape.
Mike had to admit he was impressed. The old ship had all of her missing hull plating replaced and her systems seemed to be fully operational. He was met at the airlock where he had to surrender his weapons and pass through a scanner. He was then escorted to the bridge where the prison ship’s command center was located. Eric Wayne and Peter Bachman met him at the door and led him to the captain’s office.
“What can we do for you?” Sergeant Bachman asked guiding him to a seat.
Sergeant Wayne crossed to the desk and sat on its edge.
“And why couldn’t we talk about this over a link?”
“You’ve heard about the Blues collecting all the Confederation prisoners from the League Worlds?”
Both men nodded in response, “Soldiers, officials and cops,” Bachman replied with a frown.
Mike took a breath before he started, “I have a plan to rescue them.”
The former Austro security men looked to each other for moment doing a kind of cop telepathy.
“We heard they shot your plan down.”
“I have a new plan and I need your help and your contacts on Austro Prime to make it work.”
They looked skeptical for a moment until he started to explain his plan in detail. By the time he was done the two officers were still skeptical, but they were also willing to help him in any way they could.
From the Priestly he headed to the privateer freighter Chaos, which had been repaired and refitted weeks earlier. The freighter had also been upgraded with additional torpedo tubes, heavier armor around her key systems and a half dozen more Karduan energy weapon turrets. The Chaos had already had engine modifications and extra weapons and armor, which in combination with her new armaments made her into a formable adversary.
The freighter was a mid size cargo ship being about half the size the Jillian and the Brittany with a streamlined hull meant for in-atmosphere landings. She was fast to begin with and could keep pace with the frigates of the fleet and even give the sloops a run for their money.
Mike had wanted to change her name, but that was something that was always frowned on in naval tradition being considered unlucky, but that’s not what had brought him there today. The armed privateer was mothballed for the time being while waiting for a crew. Many of the recently repaired ships were sidelined either because crews were waiting to be trained on the Karduan systems or they just didn’t have enough personnel to man them.
All of the lesser ship crews, including the freighters, sloops and the recovery ship had double duty assignments. In the event of their need for an all out attack or a major battle those crews would transfer to their better-suited warships to fight. Right now the freighters and sloops were needed to make supply runs and keep their information network open to the nearby worlds. Of course, the recovery and repair ships were a godsend and had been non-stop busy since their arrival.
As he approached the ship he was hailed by its maintenance team, which consisted of a total of five crewmen. A quick lie about checking her torpedo tubes got him onboard where he spent the next two hours familiarizing himself with the freighter’s systems and talking to the bored crewmen onboard. The crew seemed happy to show him around and were more than glad to breakup their dull routine by letting him access the ship’s systems.
The Log of the Gray Wolf (Star Wolf Squadron Book 1) Page 44
