Clidepp Requital (28 page)

"Major," Luscome finally said on Com-Two, "This generator is kaput. It's in even worse condition that the one in the CPS."

"Understood, Chief. We'll keep looking."

Hour after hour, the Marines scoured the yard. Dawn was no more than an hour away when Alpha-Six reported finding a possible GA generator. Luscome, with his two guards, Blade, and Sydnee raced to Alpha-Six's location.

The generator looked to be in excellent condition, but external appearance could mean next to nothing with electrical and electronic equipment.

"I'll be damned," Blade said, as he looked at the unit that Luscome was already examining.

"What is it, Major?" Sydnee asked.

"Look at that," Blade said, pointing to part of the unit's cover.

Sydnee looked closer. There was a tag glued to the surface. It said, 'Sold 98S28R34051 Hold for Melorriat.'

"I'll be damned," Sydnee said. "This is the unit Melorriat intended for you, Major."

"It would appear that way, Captain."

Looking around at the enormity of the reclamation center, Sydnee said, "What are the odds that we would stumble across this?"

"We had an advantage," Blade said.

"Which is?"

"Melorriat obviously made arrangements to buy this. Before that, it might have been buried under a million tons of other salvage. They pulled it out, cleaned it up, put a hold on it, marked it for easy identification, and left it where access would be easy."

"True. But I'm glad we finally stumbled across it."

"After eight hours of searching."

"This unit appears to be functional, Captain," Luscome said.

"Great, let's get the oh-gee blocks on it and move it to the MAT."

The generator was soon floating half a meter above the ground, courtesy of oh-gee freight-handling blocks. Once raised above the ground, one person could move almost any weight, but it was imperative that the movers remember that every floating object still had mass and could get out of control. Weightlessness removed the burden of gravity but didn't affect the laws of physics with relation to inertia.

Blade recalled his team with instructions to rendezvous at the front gate, while Chief Luscome, his protection detail from the gate, and the two SO Marines guided the generator from the location where it had been found. Blade and Sydnee followed along behind.

The teams converged at the gate and everyone was ready to depart as soon as the MAT was loaded. The generator was almost to the gate opening when someone yelled on Com-One, "Behind you!"

Sydnee spun in time to see one of the two previously stunned beasts towering over them with razor-sharp claws extended. She, Blade, and Luscome were trapped between the brute and the generator. Sydnee and Blade were wearing armor but Luscome had none. Without hesitation Sydnee threw herself between Luscome and the enormous animal that was about to fall on him. The weight of the beast had to be a metric ton, so as it reached Sydnee, it knocked her into Luscome, who was knocked into the generator.

Personal armor is able to absorb energy weapon fire and prevent penetration of teeth and claws, but the need for the wearer to move easily meant that it wasn't solid like the armor a medieval knight might have worn. However, the Dakinium fabric reacted in a microsecond at the subatomic level to outside force, strengthening many times over, which is how the armor prevented serious damage to the wearer from small projectiles. If Sydnee hadn't been wearing the armor, her body and Luscome's would have been utterly crushed by the weight of the beast. As it was, Luscome benefited from the characteristics of Sydnee's armor even though he wore none himself. Sydnee's arms were straddling Luscome's form as the armor strengthened, reducing the crushing effect of her body into Luscome's. Best of all, the brute's claws never penetrated Sydnee's armor. Even so, the animal's bulk couldn't help but cause some serious damage to the two Terrans as they were squashed between it and the generator.

As the weight of the animal overcame the inertia of the generator, it was sent careening into the gate, whereupon the oh-gee blocks came loose and the generator crashed to the ground. Sydnee and Luscome were injured and lying helpless as both beasts reared up to attack anew. A light show of laser fire suddenly lit up the pre-dawn darkness as dozens of bolts came from every direction and struck the two beasts.

One of the two animals fell over backward, never to move again, but the other fell forward, on top of Sydnee and Luscome. Marines immediately rushed to pull the creature off the downed officer and chief.

"Are they dead?" Sydnee asked as she was uncovered.

"Aye, Captain, they're dead," Blade said. He had only narrowly missed being run down himself.

"How's Chief Luscome?"

"We'll know in a minute," Lt. MacDonald said as she tried to make her friend more comfortable by straightening her legs, which caused Sydnee to scream in pain. "Uh-oh, I think we have a problem, Major. The Captain might have a broken leg, or perhaps two broken legs. She was crushed against Luscome and the generator. I hope she doesn't have extensive internal injuries."

"Luscome is unconscious," Blade said as he hovered over the engineering chief. "Someone bring two stretchers," he shouted.

"Major," Sydnee said, "have Weems bring MAT-One over here, then load up the generator and our people. Once the two ships are loaded, Weems should link them together. They're designed to operate as one ship, so he'll have full control over all engine functions and controls of both ships. Get us out of here before someone shows up for work. We don't want to get into a firefight with security guards."

"Aye, Captain. Rest easy. We'll get everyone back to the safety of the ship. Weems, did you hear the Captain?"

"Aye, Major, I'm listening in on all non-private Com channels. I've already lifted off and I'll be there in seconds."

MAT-One appeared in the sky over the gate area before Weems even finished his message. He set the craft down next to MAT-Two outside the gates, leaving enough room between the small ships so they could be easily loaded.

"How's the generator look, Padu?" Blade asked the Marine who was directing the effort to get it upright and loaded onto oh-gee blocks again once Sydnee and Luscome were taken away on stretchers.

"The outer case is a bit banged up, sir. I don't know if the unit itself is damaged or not. Chief Luscome will have to answer that."

"Yeah, if he lives."

"Did he look that bad, sir?"

"Impossible to tell. The Captain threw herself between him and those monsters. It's not the same as having armor, but it kept the brute's claws from harming him. If he lives, it's because of her, but she's seriously injured as well."

"We're almost ready to leave here, sir. Should we lock the gates?"

"It's not like they won't know we were here. Don't bother. Just get that generator into the MAT and we'll get out of here."

"Aye, sir."

* * *

As soon the MATs linked with the CPS, Sydnee and Luscome were rushed to the sickbay. The corpsman did a quick triage procedure and decided to work on Sydnee first. He administered painkillers before he started.

"How's the Chief?" Sydnee asked as the corpsman worked to remove her armor and then determine the exact damage to her legs, arms, and torso.

"He's got some serious internal injuries, but I've stabilized him for the moment. I'll work on him as soon as I take care of your legs. Now just lay back and relax, Captain, and let me concentrate on healing
you
. Both legs are broken, you know."

"Yeah, I kinda figured that was the case."

By the time the corpsman had finished with Sydnee, hundreds of thousands of surgical nanobots were coursing through her veins, searching for damaged bone and soft tissue, then collecting in those areas to work on correcting the damage. She had multiple simple fractures in both legs and one cracked rib. The corpsman had placed air splints on her legs to immobilize them as the nanobots performed their repair efforts.

Sydnee then watched from her bed as the corpsman worked on Chief Luscome with speed and efficiency. Corpsmen often worked long, hard hours without receiving all of the recognition they deserved.

When the corpsman was done and sat down to rest, Sydnee asked, "How is he, Doc?"

"He'll be fine in a few months. He has multiple broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a fractured disc in his spine. I've reinflated the lung, and the nanobots will repair the damage to it and the damage to the ribs and spine."

"How soon can he get back to work?"

The corpsman chuckled. "Work? Captain, he has to remain immobile for at least two weeks. Perhaps in six months he'll be ready to return to full duty. He can return to light duty in three."

"How soon can he direct engineering work from here if we set up a monitor above his bed?"

"Perhaps a week, but he must remain perfectly immobile. He won't even be able to manipulate a robotic arm for at least two weeks."

"Then I guess we're stuck inside this damn volcano for a while."

"We're in a volcano?"

"You didn't know?"

"No ma'am. The last I heard, we were on some tropical island, but we couldn't go outside because there might be dangerous plant or animal life."

"That was almost two months ago. I didn't feel the island was secure, so we moved to a dormant volcano, a different volcano than the one we're in now."

"I guess I should start spending more time with the guys. I've been staying in here because I've been studying to upgrade my skills and hopefully earn a promotion."

"You keep studying medicine and taking care of our health, doc, and I'll worry about the safety of the ship."

"You've got a deal, Captain," he said with a smile.

* * *

"It appears to my untrained eye that the generator wasn't seriously damaged in the fall," Blade said to Sydnee the next day.

She had been moved to her quarters since she didn't require constant medical attention. As long as she remained immobile for two weeks and then restricted her activity for four more while always wearing the inflatable casts, her legs would heal properly. Although the armor hadn't prevented the breaks, it did prevent the simple fractures from being compound fractures.

"It's going to be a couple of weeks before Chief Luscome can even be involved in determining the condition of the generator, and then only remotely from his sickbay bed. Are any of our Marines mechanically able to function as his hands in testing and then installing the generator?"

"I've reviewed the files, and there are a couple of Lt. MacDonald's people who might fill the bill. Of my people, Staff Sergeant Padu is the most mechanically talented on the team."

"Okay. The doc will tell me as soon as the Chief is well enough to work remotely from his sickbay bed. In the meantime we stay buttoned up and ready to leave at a moment's notice. Anything on the news about the break-in at the reclamation center?"

"It's all they've been talking about. Even though we burned the ground where Lt. Barron was killed, they discovered it was Terran blood, and they've begun a manhunt in the area for any Terrans. And they're all up in arms about the deaths of their three
pets
at the facility. The animal is known as a Mulasster, by the way."

"Pets? Four meters tall with half-meter claws as sharp as filleting knives?"

"That's the way they talked about them on the news. They called them their 'beloved pets.'"

Sydney shook her head. "I guess that ends our repair efforts until the Chief is a bit healthier. Anything else?"

"No, that's all I have. I guess we just stand down for a while. Thank God the Chief wasn't killed."

"Amen to that."

Sydnee hadn't reported to the
Denver
in weeks, so she prepared a very detailed report on their situation and sent it to Captain Lidden as soon as the major left.

* * *

A little more than ten days later, the message reached the
Denver
.

"Message from the
Justice
, Captain," the com chief reported as he forwarded it to the captain's message queue.

Lidden stopped what he was working on and opened the message, leaning in for a retinal scan since the message was Priority-One.

When the message ended, Lidden sat back, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. SHQ had still not made a decision about a mission to recover the
Justice.
Meanwhile events occurring in Clidepp space seemed to be spiraling out of control. One
Justice
officer was now dead, an informant and three attackers had been killed, two Space Command personnel had been seriously wounded while breaking into a Clidepp facility, and the Clidepp government was now looking for the Terrans responsible for the break-in. If the government put two and two together, they might assume the kidnapping was also the work of Terrans. If things didn't calm down, the Clidepp Empire might wind up declaring war on the GA. If that happened, Lidden knew whose head was going to be on the block. It didn't matter that he wasn't personally involved in the problems on Yolongus. He had selected a Lieutenant(jg) over the Lieutenants he could have named to head the SC part of the mission. And it also wouldn't matter that the reason for the problems was solely owed to a design flaw with the CPS generator repository that allowed it to fill with water and then short out when they tried to use it.

Lidden sighed. They all seemed to be caught up in problems not of their making, with the crew of the
Justice
seemingly abandoned in the Clidepp Empire. And now the ship's captain was laid up with both legs broken while the crew was taxed to the limit because it was too small for the job it was being asked to perform.

~ April 20
^th
, 2286 ~

"I call this emergency meeting of the Admiralty Board to order," Admiral Moore said. "As you know all too well, during the past several months, two of our new Dakinium-sheathed Scout-Destroyers, the
Yenisei
and the
Salado
, have disappeared in Region Two. At this time, we still have not located either ship. But I'm embarrassed to say that while we've been concentrating our attention on that mystery, we've ignored another very important issue we had tabled. The CPS-14 ship sent into Clidepp space on a Special Ops mission, which suffered FTL loss as it attempted to return due to a design flaw with its generator repository, is still sitting on Yolongus. Captain Lidden forwarded a copy of a recently received message from the captain of the
Justice
.
Justice
is the name assigned to the small ship by its crew since Space Command doesn't name tugs."