Junkyard Dogs 1: The Scrapyard Incident (23 page)

Harris nodded
solemnly. "Will do, Hawk."

"Thanks,
Lieutenant."

"No problem.
I'm going to go get some sleep now. Wake me in four hours."

Harris headed for
the other side of the bridge.

Chapter 39

The Veritian Way, also referred to as
"The True Path," is a Christian fundamentalist sect noted for their
views on the strict interpretation of Biblical teachings, with special emphasis
on Old Testament guidelines for living a pure and righteous life. Most members
are located on Heard's World, a planet originally colonized by them, in a
remote corner of the Santana Quadrant where they live simple lives in a more or
less agrarian communal setting. While their doctrine is mostly pacifist in
nature, Veritian Way members are allowed to enter military service and even to
engage in combat, if the cause is deemed justified. Because of the austere
lifestyle and their narrow views on racial purity, they never were a very large
group to begin with and their numbers have been in decline for the last several
decades. Recently many followers of the Way have rejected the racist views of
the founders and have embraced a more universal view wherein they openly
welcome individuals of all human races to join their movement...

...A more sinister offshoot of the Veritian
Way is the radical Veritian Brotherhood of Christ
Resurgent,
a reportedly violent sect that seeks to spread this group's more strident and
traditional doctrines on racial purity and the intolerance of other belief
systems by force. The leaders generally rise through the ranks and are said to
be anointed to the post by the Lord God Almighty Himself. This group was openly
sympathetic to the Opposition viewpoint during the Succession War with many of
its members boldly participating as combatants for the Opposition cause. At the
turning point of the Succession War, they were the sole operators of
God's
Almighty Sword
, an Excalibur Class heavy
cruiser. The Brotherhood has never retracted or apologized for any of these
actions...

...Members of this group usually abandon
their given names and take instead a name they have chosen for themselves. The
names are taken directly from scripture or have strong Biblical connotations...

Hartwell Wrist Comp
reference notes highlighted for further review by Tamara Carlisle. Excerpt is
from "Life on the Fringe: Oddball Religious Groups of the
Federation," by Betsy Harcourt Schumacher.

New Ceylon Orbital Station, Governor's
Suites, October 8, 2598.

Hanna Jordan
finished changing the dressing on the wounded security officer's leg and helped
him limp back over to the makeshift hospital bed that he had been resting on.
This man was her only patient and he was from the orbital station, not from
among the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood soldiers, in their old but still quite
serviceable battle armor, had suffered no casualties whatsoever during the
brief skirmish accompanying their invasion of the station. This poor man had
been shot just because one of those trigger-happy goons of Ezra's had wanted to
shoot someone. They had, in fact, killed at least two dozen people during the
short raid, all of them for no good reason and all of them innocent civilians,
even that poor, brave security chief who had only been armed with a stun rod.

The whole thing
made her sick to her stomach. That spawn of Satan, Ezra, with his silver tongue
and persuasive ways, had been lying to her and Caleb the whole time about the
purpose of their mission.
All those people dead at the
Reclamation Center, here at the the orbital station, and onboard the
Boise
.
She felt dirty and used.
She was also badly frightened. What she had overheard just an hour ago, the
Brotherhood's horrifying plan for the Meridian
Ambassador,
had made up her mind for her. She had no
choice,
she
was leaving the service of that scoundrel and his henchmen as soon as she
could.

What she and her
husband had been taught and had been living -- The Veritian Way -- was a means
to preserve a righteous and just life style that was rapidly disappearing. It
was not an excuse for the hatred and racial purging and other ungodly things
these men claimed to be doing in the name of God. The Veritian Brotherhood, she
sniffed in disgust, what a bunch of hypocrites and misfits! Besides, if they
found out about what she had overheard, she had no doubt that she would be
their next victim!

She had a sudden
bout of sick worry. What about Caleb? Her husband had been on the ship that had
gone back to the Scrapyard to "tie up some loose ends," in Ezra's
words, and no one had heard from him or anyone else aboard that ship for way
too long.

She looked around
the makeshift infirmary and scooped a few meager supplies into her medical kit.
She checked her patient one more time, assuring herself that he was resting
quietly and slipped out of the door. Ezra and his lieutenants were having a
meeting in the posh former office of the station's governor and weren't likely
to be back for more than an hour, at least.

Hanna got past
the guard station by simply saying that she needed more supplies from the
druggist shop down the corridor. The guards, bored out of their heads, absently
waved her through. She knew that the station had eight stairwells, each aligned
with a spot where one of the spokes connected with the torus of the station
proper. Her plan was to get to one of them and make her way to the outer levels
of the station. Maybe then she could find somewhere to hide out. Or maybe she
would simply curl up somewhere and die. With Caleb gone...

She prayed softly
out loud.

"Dear
heavenly Father, I beseech you. You have ever been my guiding light. Show me
what to do. I was led astray by a very wicked man and I fear I have lost my
beloved husband. Help me, Father..."

She went on for
several minutes, as was their way, and finally, as praying always did for her,
she began to feel a little better. Well enough to function anyway.

"...Thank
you, Almighty Father. Amen."

The key to her
escape plan was the druggist's shop. The invaders had arrested the petrified pharmacist
and dragged him off somewhere. They brought Hanna in to take inventory of what
was in the shop and to stock up on medical supplies, which were in very short
supply among the terrorist group. While she was inspecting the shop, she found
a door in the back that led to a hidden spiral staircase that led downward. She
had carefully, and fearfully, inspected the staircase and discovered that it
went into a residence located just below, on the second deck of the station.
Apparently the pharmacist lived there. Perhaps there were many places on the
station with stairs between levels but this was the only one she knew of and
she was pretty sure that Ezra and his men weren't aware of it.

As expected, the
drugstore was empty as she made her way carefully back through the aisles to
the door where she had seen the staircase. With her heart hammering, she went
down the stairs to the residence below. The outside door to the residence had
been designed to keep people out, not to keep the residents in. She simply turned
the door handle and found herself outside in the main corridor of the station,
on the second deck. She walked about a quarter of a kilometer until she came to
one of the main stairwells. She peeked carefully around the edge of the
stairwell to check the status of the guard up at the top. To her immense
relief, the man was slumped on his chair, obviously asleep. With another silent
prayer, she went as quietly as she could to the downward set of stairs and
descended. She kept going down until she was all the way at the bottom. With no
idea what to do next, she said another prayer and, after a short hesitation,
went to the east. After wandering for more than twenty minutes someone
challenged her.

"Who goes
there?"

The gruff voice
startled her.

"My name is
Hanna and I'm lost." That much was certainly true. The stress of the last
three hours along with the loss of her husband and the horrifying results of
the mission she had been deceived into being a part of were finally too much.
She burst into tears.

"Please...Please
help me."

"You need to
get back to your quarters, Ma'am."

"I...I'm not
from the station. I have nowhere to go!"

The two guards
looked at one another for a long moment.

"Can you
keep watch for a while, Tommy? I'll take her to Irene."

"No problem,
Kyle. Bring me back somethin' to eat would you?"

The man treated
her gently, despite his rough voice, and apologized when he blindfolded her. He
spun her around a few times and then took her by the arm and led her off in a
direction she could only guess at. After probably half an hour, which seemed
much longer, during which they rode a maintenance cart, stopped and greeted
another guard station, changed carts, stopped and negotiated several airtight
doors on foot, they finally went through a smaller doorway -- she was short and
she had to stoop to get through it -- and the guard took her blindfold off.
They were in a long, narrow room with a low ceiling. Scattered groups of people
were clumped together talking, some of them heatedly. Over in one corner there
was another group gathered around a makeshift viewscreen. The guard led her
over to a tall, beautiful woman with auburn hair who was working with
another five or six women
, one of whom was holding a baby.
The women were in the middle of preparing a large meal. The guard handed off
his charge.

"This woman
says her name is Hanna and she asked for us to help her."

The tall woman
smiled kindly and held out her hand.

"Hello,
Hanna, I'm Irene Marshall."

Irene saw a
slight, scrawny woman with brown, greying hair that was done up in a single
long braid. She had a pretty, but careworn face.

"Thank
God!" the woman said. "My prayers have been answered!"

Chapter 40

UTFN Reclamation Center, on
board the wreck of
FNS Terrier
,
October 9, 2598
.

Ensign Tamara
Carlisle woke up, not fully rested, but feeling well enough to function. After
taking a few minutes to don a coverall and make sure she was presentable using
the camera in her wrist computer to view a hologram of herself, she grabbed a
food tube and went over to the command console. Harris was on the other side of
the bridge looking through the periscope but he had heard the soft sounds she'd
been making and saw her take station at the command console out of the corner
of his eye. With their argument and their awkward interactions from a few hours
earlier still fresh in their minds, both remained stiffly formal.

"Anything yet, Lieutenant?"

"Nope, still
quiet, Ensign."

"No news is
good news, Sir."

"Amen. Did
you sleep okay, Ensign?"

"Yes, I did,
Sir. I thought I'd take a few minutes while I eat to check out some more of the
ship's log."

"Good plan.
Hawkins is sleeping, it'd be best if you did something quiet for a while, he
can use the rest."

She checked her
wrist computer and input the code listed for the
Terrier
on the Captain's login page on the
Terrier's
command console. She waited for a few moments for the
video log to come online.

"Any idea
how much more time we have, Sir?"

"I make it
probably eight hours or so. I don't expect them to reach turn over for at least
another six."

Carlisle began
going through the log. After several minutes she found some of the material she
had been looking for.
That and quite a lot more.

Still mindful of
the tension between them, she nevertheless called out to Harris.

"Lieutenant,
could you come over here for minute? You need to see this..."

Harris came
across the bridge and looked at the screen over her shoulder. He was
immediately aware of his nearness to her; the clean smell of her hair mixed
with the remaining hint of the perfume that had caused so much trouble just a
few hours ago. With an effort he concentrated his attention on the viewscreen.

"Look,"
she said, pointing to the screen, "this entry is from a week before the
final battle." The screen showed a thirty-something woman from the
shoulders up. She had short brown hair cut in a neat military style and wore
Captain's bars on the collar of her khakis. Carlisle unfroze the display and
the woman began talking.

 
"...
Ship's
log, Captain Eliza Evans,
FNS Terrier
reporting.
We have all decided to go ahead with the modifications to the ship as suggested
by Commander Arthur's engineering crew. I am concerned that the
engineer
who made all these suggestions, a Mr. F. Talbot, is
just an Ensign and not a very experienced one at that. However, the
Lieutenant's personnel files show him to be a brilliant student and the chief
engineer on Arthur's flagship is impressed enough that he said he will back the
young man's theories. The only reason I am even considering making these modifications
is that these Mark IV destroyers are so obsolete and outclassed that going into
this battle is probably a suicide mission from the outset. See appendix XII of
this log for further details on the modifications..."

The report
continued, but Carlisle fast forwarded to a different date.

"This is
from two days later." Carlisle skipped past the daily introductory remarks
to the relevant section of the log. For this recording session, Captain Evans
was wearing her Captain's hat, and had done something different with her hair.

"...We head out towards the Whitney
jump point in two hours. Our modifications to the ship are complete and the
live ammunition firing of the forward railguns was successful. The junior
engineer, Ensign Talbot, assures us that with the aft capacitor banks on each
side routed to the front launchers, the projectiles will be pumped up to a
velocity of nearly fourteen thousand meters per second, and at those speeds,
they will penetrate the shields of the enemy's ships, even the larger ones. I
think there's a better than fifty-fifty chance that he's right and we can do
some offensive damage. I'm much more skeptical of the hull coating, however.
Details on the hull coating are also contained in Appendix XII, but it's really
quite simple. The engineer says that a coating of Type B SFN ion drive reaction
fluid on the hull will shield the ship from several direct hits from enemy
pulse beams, even those of the more powerful weapons. I don't have high hopes,
but, fortunately, the material was very easy to apply. The reaction fluid will
coat nearly anything it comes in contact with. Simply opening several barrels
and inverting them on the front of the hull coated the entire front of the ship
within a half hour or so. We applied a total of three barrels; the engineer
said that was all that were needed. Larger quantities wouldn't add any more
protection. I don't see how the stuff could work, but Commander Arthur has
ordered all of the destroyers under his command, including his own ship, to
make these modifications..."

Carlisle stopped
at this point.

"There's
more in here, about the battle itself, but I don't think I have time right now
to go over it. This information is exactly what I needed for my dissertation,
if I ever get a chance to use it. No wonder Talbot speaks with so much
authority, he was a junior engineer on Arthur's ship! More applicable to our
situation is the SFN reaction fluid, I know we aren't planning on taking a
pulse beam hit, but we'd greatly increase our chances of survival if we could
withstand one. Some of the best tactics involve good, old-fashioned common
sense, Lieutenant. In a battle situation anything can happen. It pays to be
prepared. Hawkins and I saw several stacks of SFN reaction fluid barrels down
in the cargo hold near the aft magazines. If all three of us went down there,
we could each bring up a barrel of the stuff, get it outside and coat the front
of the hull. What do you think?"

"It
shouldn't add too much time, but..."

"But what, Lieutenant?"
Carlisle wondered if he
was about to object to one of her suggestions again.

"We still
have to implement your decoy plan."

She turned her
head to look at him.

"You've
decided to go ahead with that after all, Sir?"

"Yes, if
you're still up for it. Hawk and I talked it over after you went to sleep. It's
probably the best plan we're likely to come up with."

She felt a slight
surge of vindication.

"Thanks for
the vote of confidence, Sir. We have to beat these guys if we can. The Veritian
Brotherhood was on the opposition side in the Succession War and the current
members still haven't given up on the cause. This whole ordeal makes a little
more sense now. The bastards make this operation look like a
Federation-approved kidnapping with a public execution as the end result and every
Muslim planetary government in this quadrant takes opposition. This plot would
more than wreck the New Ceylon trade
agreement,
it
would almost certainly start another War! Yes, Lieutenant, you're damned right
I'm still up for it!"

Her look was
deadly serious.

"It's good
to see you back to your old self," said Harris, smiling.

Hawkins came up
behind them.

"What's all
the fuss bein' about?"

"Carlisle
thinks the Veritian Brotherhood wants to start another war and that we can
protect the
Terrier
from a pulse beam
hit with a couple cans of reaction fluid."

"Three.
Three cans of reaction fluid," Carlisle corrected him.

Hawkins looked
justifiably bewildered. He shook his head.

"You two've
been busy!"

"Come on,
Hawk, get your suit on," said Harris. "We'll tell you all about it
while we get ready."

The three
defenders quickly donned their suits and headed down to the
Terrier's
hold. Under weightless
conditions, each of them was able to handle one of the hundred kilogram
containers of the reaction fluid fairly easily. Hawkins managed to get the
outside door to the hold part way open. From there it was an easy trip for each
of them to get to the front of the ship. As the others watched, Hawkins removed
the top of one of the barrels and inverted it against the hull of the
Terrier
right behind the nose of the
ship. Sure enough, the material began to ooze outward, coating the hull
material with a viscous, amber layer about half a centimeter thick. Developed
for use in the hellacious environment of
a
ion drive
engine, the reaction fluid was very strange stuff, it didn't volatilize in
vacuum, but just flowed eerily and inexorably over the hull surface
.
Harris moved about ten meters further
back with his barrel. Hawkins removed the top and they repeated the process.
Again the viscous fluid slowly began coating the hull material. They inverted
Carlisle's barrel right on top of the front gun turret and watched again as the
material flowed slowly over the turret and down the flanks of the old
destroyer. Soon the entire front of the ship was covered.

Then they went to
work on the decoy plan. With the
Rover I
pretty much permanently attached to the
Terrier
,
everything the group did concerning the decoy plan had to be done with the
Rover II
. They located a suitable spot
for Carlisle to hide before beginning her decoy run down the access corridor.
There was large cloud of scrap right near the entrance of the corridor that
would do nicely.

Onboard the
Rover II
, hovering near the stern of the
Terrier
just above the hastily
strapped on boosters, Harris described to Carlisle how the boosters operated.

"I wasn't
thinking properly when we discussed this the first time," said Harris,
with some embarrassment. "As you can see, each booster has a command
console in the center. You sit at the console and operate it the same way you
do a utility sled. What you probably didn't know is that the boosters can be
operated remotely, from either of the
Rovers
.
They can be operated solo or you can slave them together, for really big moving
jobs. You use this console over here." He slid a panel up to reveal a set
of controls. "This can get really tricky if you get disoriented relative
to the booster. It's probably best if you keep it pretty basic. Just keep the
booster slightly ahead of you, right side up and well beneath you or well to
one side. Believe
me,
you don't want to get into the
exhaust stream from one of these things. Got that?" She nodded in assent
and he continued. "Good. Now that you have a better idea of how these
things work, how do you want to set this up?

"Do the
boosters have a video feeds to this viewscreen?"

"Yes, the
screen will come on when we activate the booster. It's really pretty basic, the
cameras don't have any pivoting feature, you get a split screen with a one hundred
eighty degree view out in front and out the back."

"Well, not
having a death wish, I would prefer to park the
Rover
inside the hold of one of these cruisers. I could use both
video feeds, one to control a decoy, the other to keep an eye out for the bad
guys and still be out of sight and relatively safe."

"That sounds
like a good idea."

They had Carlisle
maneuver the boosters from the
Terrier
into their respective positions, to give her some experience operating them.
Like most things they had seen her do that involved piloting skills, she turned
out to be a natural. Finding Carlisle's original choice of scrap for a ram to
be nearly ideal, they moved the ram into position near the entrance to the
corridor where Carlisle could quickly rendezvous with it when the time came.
Then they took another hour or so to disguise and arm the boosters with
similar-looking scrap. There were several more cranes in the area where
Carlisle had found the original.

With the decoy
preparations complete, the group headed back to the
Terrier
. They cycled through the airlock and reboarded the old
destroyer.

On their way back
to the bridge, Hawkins stopped the two officers to look over the battle armor
that their two attackers had been wearing. The defenders had stored the armor,
along with the rest of the space suits, in the largest of the unused
compartments between the bridge and the airlock. Hawkins had converted the
space into a sort of service area for their suits.

"Have either
of you ever been wearin' battle armor?" he asked.

"I worked
with simulators, back at the academy," said Carlisle, "quite a lot,
actually, but neither of those are anywhere near my size. It would be a lot
less dangerous for me to just stay in my special suit."

"They had us
train in it a few times, just so we'd know what it's like to work with the
stuff," said Harris. "I could probably operate it. This equipment
looks pretty old though."

"I don't
think the basics have changed much over the years, Lieutenant" said
Carlisle. "Hawk will be inside the turret, he'll be the best protected of
all of us. You might want to try this smaller suit on, Sir. It looks like it's
the about the right size. I can help you make the necessary adjustments."

"It's
probably worth a try. For what I have to do, mostly working with hand controls,
the armor wouldn't hinder me much." Remembering Carlisle's comment earlier
about good tactics often starting with common sense, he added: "Might be
wise to have the protection."

"Why don't
you be takin' it back to the bridge with you?" said Hawkins. "I'll be
along as soon as I
be
gettin' the rest of these air
packs serviced and checked out before we be needin' them again."