Junkyard Dogs 1: The Scrapyard Incident (27 page)

Chapter 49

New Ceylon Orbital
Station,
spoke one stairwell area, October 9, 2598.

Kresge led his group
of fighters over to their objective stairwell. This stairwell was closest to
the governor's suites and, by virtue of its location, had become the main
objective in the minds of all the Resistance fighters. It was also, according
to their intelligence, the most heavily guarded. In anticipation, the station
Resistance had concentrated the bulk of their firepower against this single
guard station. Kresge's attack force consisted of Salvdor Vasquez and four
other security officers, each armed with stun rods, Davis-Moore with his
anachronistic hunting rifle and himself with his pulse pistol. Several others,
also armed with stun rods,
who
would be needed to help
secure the enemy's battle armor and weapons if the attack were successful,
waited in the relative safety of the corridor. Kresge was also resigned to the
fact that it was also here at this stairwell that the enemy would absolutely
find out that the station personnel were no longer hiding in fear and no longer
totally under enemy control.

Kresge and his
group of attackers, unlike any of the other groups so far, had to contend with
multiple guards, which meant they would have to take out several raiders at
once. From the near darkness of the fourth level staircase, Clancy Davis-Moore
nervously centered the face of one of the battle armor-clad guards in the
crosshairs of the high-powered scope on the replica rifle, aiming for a point
directly between the man's eyes. Kresge made ready to target the head of the
other guard with this pulse pistol, setting it to fire a three pulse burst.

They waited.

An unarmored
guard sauntered out into the stairwell
area,
his pulse
rifle cradled in the crook of his elbow, and approached the two sitting guards.
It looked like he was carrying a couple cups of coffee or some other beverage
for his two companions.

"Clancy,
have you got a shot?" whispered Kresge.

"I do,
Commander, just give the word." Davis-Moore replied as he forced himself
to calm down.

"I've got
the armored one on our right. Just reload that beast as soon as you fire, in
case I should happen to miss the third guy."

"Okay,
Commander."

"Three, two, one, Fire!"

The sharp bark of
the high-powered rifle startled everyone except Davis-Moore, who was the only
one present who had ever heard the sound it made before. His target, the head
of the raider guard on the left, disappeared in a red mist. The still-potent
projectile ricocheted down the corridor. Davis-Moore worked the bolt on his
rifle, chambering another round. The other raiders froze for a vital second as
Kresge's three pulse volley caught the second of the armor-clad terrorists full
in the face. The remaining unarmored man dropped his two cups of coffee, but
only had time to turn halfway around before Kresge cut him down with a burst to
the torso. In little more than a heartbeat, three more raiders were out of
commission.

"Quickly,"
Kresge didn't shout but his voice carried to all the members of his small
group. "Get up there and secure those weapons. And then take cover! This
noise is bound to bring out more of them!" He turned to Davis-Moore.

"Good
shooting, Clancy."

Davis-Moore was
visibly shaking. He nervously brushed at his moustache with the back of his
hand.

"I...
I've
 
never
shot a
human before," he said. "I'm not sure I care for it."

"It's best
not to get used to it," replied Kresge.

"I'll try
not to make a habit of it."

"Do you
think you can manage for at least a little longer?"

"I guess
I'll have to."

Six of Kresge's
men ran up the stairs. Two of them grabbed the pulse rifles of the deceased
raiders and the others dragged the armor-clad bodies down the stairs to the
second deck. They stripped the dead raiders of their armor and began to get
their own men into the heavy suits.

"Are you
ready with that armor yet?" asked Kresge, his eyes glued to the stairwell
above them.

"We'll need
a few more minutes, Commander. This one suit is kind of a mess."

Kresge made a
decision.

"Leave it
for now. Hobbes, Barker, keep working on the clean armor. Join us when you get into
it. The rest of you, come with me, we have to keep the pressure on!"

Kresge's group of
eight Resistance
fighters,
armed with a mixed
assortment of weapons including the three pulse rifles of the now deceased
guards, several security stun rods, Kresge's pulse pistol, and Davis-Moore's
high powered projectile rifle, stormed up the stairs and took defensive
positions in the first level stairwell area. A few minutes later, they were
joined by Thomas Barker in the newly captured armor; someone handed him a pulse
rifle. Barker's timing was near perfect as a group of three raiders, the lead
one in full armor, including a helmet, came down the corridor towards the
stairwell. The two unprotected raiders did their best to stay behind their
armored companion. One of the unarmored raiders spoke frantically into a small
communications device.

"He's
calling for help!" shouted Kresge. "Take that man out!"

A hail of pulse
bolts came blasting down the corridor towards Kresge and his men. One of the
Resistance fighters took a bolt to the midsection, spun around and lay still in
the open. Kresge readied himself to return fire, but hesitated for a second,
wondering how to effectively attack the fully-armored terrorist. Barker, clad
in the newly captured armor, put on a superb display of courage as he boldly
exposed himself and began firing bursts with the captured pulse rifle. The
unarmored raider who had been sounding the warning went down. Barker took
several bolts to the chest area of his armor without suffering any apparent
damage, but he became disoriented and began flailing around with the pulse
rifle, his fire no longer effective. The remaining raiders slowed their
advance.

Suddenly the
sharp bark of Davis-Moore's high powered projectile rifle crashed loudly down
the corridor again. The armored raider went down hard as the high velocity
projectile penetrated the brittle faceplate of the outdated helmet. The
remaining terrorist turned around to run, but was cut down by at least five
pulse bolts. The short and, in hindsight, somewhat lopsided battle was over in
less than two minutes. The terrorists had badly underestimated the numbers and
the capabilities of the Station defenders.

"Once again,
good shooting, Clancy!" said Kresge. He shook his head. "I must admit
that your weapon may not be the most up to date, but it is quite the most
frightening thing that I've ever experienced!"

Davis-Moore
smiled grimly at him.

"I thought
that armor might have some weaknesses!"

For the moment,
the fighting seemed to have died down. Several of Kresge's soldiers, with
Barker in front, went down the corridor towards station two and the encountered
no resistance. A few minutes later, they were joined by their own people coming
from the other direction.

The teenaged,
red-headed runner came up from the wired handset station in the lower part of
the spoke on stairwell one.

"Good news,
Commander," she said. "Haines and Jenkins have also taken over at
Stairwell eight."

"Tell them
to begin moving towards the Governor's suite in five minutes," said Kresge.
"We need to consolidate before we make our next move."

The runner dashed
off eagerly.

"Good work
everyone!" said Kresge. "Now don't get complacent. Stay alert! Send
someone to find me if you see anything you don't like. Be sure to keep your
breathing equipment on and don't let the oxygen run low. Vasquez, round up your
men and come with me. Be ready for anything, there's no telling what these
bastards will do next!

***

New Ceylon Orbital Station, Governor's
Suites, October 9, 2598.

Ezra Brimstone, his mind working more slowly than normal for some
reason after Ezekiel Christchurch's warning, reflected on his next course of
action for about ten seconds.
So, someone on the station had decided to
mount a counterattack. He'd half wondered when and if that was going to happen.
He looked around the Governor's suite and shook his head. This area left him
too confined for his comfort and, besides, it would be a prime target.
Time to move.
He began to bellow orders.

"Joshua, get
your men in here. Get the governor and his family ready to move, I feel kind of
boxed in here. We're going up to the spindle area. Come on, get a move
on!"

A big man in
battle armor came immediately into the room and began to prod at the Governor
and his family, getting them to their feet. The family members moved
sluggishly; all four of them had actually been sleeping.

Things are not going according to plan,
thought Brimstone fuzzily.
Better come up
with some kind of response.
He smiled grimly.
Oh well, the Lord will provide.

Just before they
left the governor's suites for the waiting maintenance cart, an extraordinarily
loud bang reverberated down the corridor. A few minutes later, the communicator
clipped to the belt of Brimstone's coverall began spewing out another message.

"Ezra, this
is Luke. Stairwell one is under attack! Three men down! We're attempting
to..." The communication was cut short, followed by another loud bang over
the communicator, followed seconds later by the same sound booming loudly down
the corridor. Brimstone whipped the maintenance cart around. They would go the
other way, over to stairwell eight. Joshua and his two companions herded the
Governor and his family onto the cart and the entire entourage headed down the
corridor as fast as they could go.

As the fleeing
raiders and their captives approached the eighth stairwell, Brimstone began to
reconsider the entire plan. Maybe he'd better find a way to get off the orbital
station while he still had his health. Good thing he still had some pretty
important hostages.

That and he had
another card he could play.

Chapter 50

UTFN Reclamation Center,
somewhere in the wreckage, October 9, 2598.

Tamara Carlisle
watched as the raider in his battle armor cautiously poked his head into the cargo
bay of the old battlecruiser searching for her. His suit lights immediately
found the vacant
Rover II
with the
old crane boom still attached. Both Carlisle and the raider noticed some
flickering and flashes of light that filtered into the cargo bay from the
battle between the two ships out in the Scrapyard. Neither one knew whether
their ship was winning or losing or if, in fact, the battle was already over.
It remained pitch black inside the bay so Carlisle could easily see where the
raider was by his suit lights. To her relief, the man's movements appeared
clumsy and erratic; indicating that he probably did not have a lot of
experience with the finicky, ancient battle armor. From her own experience with
battle armor, this didn't surprise her. To become proficient required a lot of
training and constant practice. The older suits were probably even more
demanding.

"Surrender,
unbeliever!" the raider taunted her over the suit radio. "We found
your pitiful scrap ship; by now your friends are dead. You don't have to die.
Surrender. How can you possibly go up against full battle armor? I don't know
of any man that could win this fight."

The raiders had
probably spotted, or their sensor system had reported, a space-suited figure on
the sled as it had sped down the access corridor. That would not have revealed
much about the size or the gender of the person operating the sled, however.
The raider thought Carlisle was a man.

She used a vocal
command to switch over to the raider's communications frequency.

"Good thing
I'm not a man," she replied, grimly.

"A woman?
This'll be even easier than I thought!"

She did not
reply. Instead, she waited until the raider was fully inside the cargo bay and
facing in her direction. He was at the other end of the bay and near the
bottom, on the far side of the first set of reinforcement beams, at a distance
of about thirty meters away when she launched her attack. She centered the red
dot of the pulse pistol's targeting laser between the battle armor's two suit
lights, about where the man's chin was inside the suit, and squeezed the firing
stud. She calmly walked a five bolt burst up across the helmet of the battle
armor, scoring several hits directly on the face plate. Her attacker, driven
backwards slightly, was blinded and momentarily stunned by the attack. She
immediately kicked diagonally downward and to the right from her post in the
far upper corner of the bay, coming to rest at the base of the nearest
reinforcement beam, out of sight of the raider.

The man recovered
from her attack within a few seconds and, after struggling to stabilize his
suit movements, sprayed the corner that Carlisle had just vacated with a five-
pulse burst from his far more powerful pulse rifle. The pulse impacts left
scorch marks and clouded the corner with bits of wall material and chips of
charred paint.

"Oho! So the
lady has a bite! Or is it more of a nip? Go
ahead,
shoot at me again, so I can see where you've gone."

He kept the gun
aimed roughly towards the corner where she had been in as he inexpertly used
his suit thrusters to move towards her last position. He passed the
reinforcement beam at his end of the bay. In the nearly complete darkness of
the cargo bay, Carlisle peeked carefully out from behind her own reinforcement
beam, monitoring his movements. Awkward in the heavy battle armor, the raider
turned his head to scan the area. When his helmet was facing her again, she
expertly took aim, walked another burst across his face from chin to forehead
and immediately kicked upward from her hiding spot, the one meter width of the
reinforcement beam hiding her movement. The attack staggered her attacker again
and she was long gone before he recovered his equilibrium and peppered the area
where she had been with another burst from the rifle.

"You're
starting to annoy me," said her adversary. "Surrender now or it will
not go easy for you!"

She kicked across
the top of the bay, behind the top cross beam, stopping at the center. Her
attacker used his suit thrusters again to move closer yet, to effectively cut
down on the volume of the bay that she could hide in. He passed under the beam,
placing both of them on the same side of it. Meanwhile, Carlisle calmly clipped
a tether to the beam, coiled her legs against the seam between ceiling and beam
and waited for him to turn around and look her way. He haltingly used his suit
thrusters to center himself near the far wall of the bay, where he could look
back and see that entire side of the reinforcement beam. She waited until he
had turned fully around, but hadn't yet brought his weapon to the ready and
launched her attack.

She kicked down
powerfully from the top beam section, directly at her adversary, firing the
pulse pistol with deadly aim at the helmet and the vulnerable face plate. As
she streaked across the distance between them, she fired repeated bursts from
the pistol, each burst scoring multiple hits to the helmet of the battle armor.
Inside the bulky and clumsy armor, the inexperienced raider was stunned,
possibly even injured, his pulse rifle splayed out to one side. She had fully
intended to hammer the faceplate with the pulse pistol until it failed but the
gun abruptly stopped firing, either the mechanism had overheated or the charge
had been depleted. She threw the now useless pistol at the faceplate of her
adversary and used the tether to flip around, catching the temporarily helpless
raider full in the chest with both feet.

The combination
of repeated blasts of the pulse pistol and the direct impact of Carlisle on his
chest,
drove the raider back into a bone-jarring
contact with the wall, effectively pinning him there for a few seconds. In
desperation, she grabbed the pulse rifle with both hands and shoved herself
away from him with both legs. The rifle tore from his grasp, but as she floated
away from him, the raider made a desperate lunge and managed to grab her around
the right ankle with his left hand. She kicked at the armored gauntlet of the
suit in an attempt to break free but the man's grip was too strong. Meanwhile
the raider had recovered enough to pull
his own
pulse
pistol out of its holster. With her life on the line, Carlisle reacted the only
way she could. She swung the powerful pulse rifle around to bring the laser
sight to bear on the center of her adversary's face plate. For a split second,
she thought she saw a pair of wide, panic-stricken eyes staring out at her.
Unmoved, she pressed the firing stud. The five pulse burst blasted through the
face plate and out the back of the helmet.

"No, I don't
think I want to surrender!" she said tersely.

She grabbed the
raider's pulse pistol, shoved it into her belt and made her way back to the
Rover II
as quickly as she could. She
snapped a tether onto the railing of the utility sled, strapped into the
pilot's chair and maneuvered the sled out of the battlecruiser hold. Time to
join the fight out in the Scrapyard!

***

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

Harris and
Hawkins had the enemy ship lined up in their sights but were forced to hang on
in lip-gnawing frustration while their makeshift weapon continued to charge up.
Meanwhile, the pilot of the enemy ship employed his still operating yaw
thrusters to alter the alignment of his ship. The two defenders had watched,
unable to interfere but daring to hope, as Carlisle's well-aimed booster-ram
construct bore down on a direct course for the raider ship. The enemy,
desperately using every last bit of his limited maneuverability and a
surprising amount of skill, attempted to swing his ship clear of the path of
the onrushing ram. With less than a second to spare, the stern of the raider
ship arced slowly out of the way and the booster grazed past, so close that the
exhaust wash rudely slammed the cargo ship into a new round of erratic
tumbling. By pure chance the vector that Carlisle had placed the booster on
sent it down the open access corridor and out into open space without
contacting any other wreckage. For the crew of the
Terrier
, the disappointment was heart-wrenching. Forcing the enemy
ship to avoid the ram and restabilize had bought precious extra time for Harris
and Hawkins but the renewed winking of the thrusters on the armed cargo ship
meant that the enemy would soon be in position to attempt another shot!

The wait was
agonizing.

"Just about
been havin' a full charge, Lieutenant. Here it
be
...
now!"

At that the same moment, the enemy ship's bow came into alignment
with the
Terrier
.
Hawkins
fired, the projectile clearing the launch tube a nanosecond before the enemy triggered
his pulse beam weapon. The enemy pulse bolt, moving at nearly the speed of
light, passed the projectile between the two ships as though it were
motionless. The entire bow section of the
Terrier
lit up with a sickly yellow fluorescent glow and a crazed spider web of
coruscating, jagged ropes of energy pulsed through the layer of hastily applied
SFN reaction fluid as the bolt slammed home and the makeshift protectant
coating performed the unlikely job of absorbing, then dissipating, the energy
of the pulse beam.

Harris saw the
initial flash and then...nothing as the energy of the beam washed over the
Terrier
and the
Rover
I
and spent itself in the gooey
shield. A split second later, while the
Terrier
was just passing maximum glow from the overexcited fluid, the projectile hit
the raider ship. In his haste, Hawkins had, once again, inadvertently loaded an
armor piercing shell. This time, however, it turned out to be the perfect
choice. The projectile arrowed through the open doors of the front cargo bay,
past the makeshift pulse beam mount, and punched through two bulkheads, leaving
neat, round holes, before detonating against the midship's bulkhead in almost
the exact center of the converted freighter. The entire ship disappeared in an
expanding sphere of glowing plasma and debris.

Hawkins, at the
controls of the now dead projectile launcher, and a horrified Carlisle, onboard
the
Rover II
rushing towards the
scene were the only witnesses.