Battleship Destroyer (79 page)

Jack slapped the comm off then looked around the compartment the shuttle wa
s in. Shaking his head he slapped the comm. "Mr. Wilson, you can start shuttling the boats over to pick up equipment as we strip this hulk. Use the guns to blast landing zones in the hull as the we move around the ship and put together more landing teams and as many of the marines as you can spar to help strip it. Oh and you can clamp the life boats together into long transports to help. Out." Turning to the pilot. "Mr. Parker. Guard the shuttle and be ready to pull out as soon as you are loaded. You can help coordinate the other shuttles to landing zones as we make progress through the ship. I only want to have to guard a small bubble around each company as we move up and down the ship. No landings at any but designated and guarded landing decks." Then left the bridge.

At the hatch to the lock into the evacuated cargo bay the rating held out weapons for Jack and the Ensign as
they sealed their suit's helmets. "Regulations Captain. No one goes out unarmed when boarding enemy ships."

Placing the pistol
belt on his hip Jack entered the lock with the Ensign by his side. "Jack, did you look at the other hot spots yet. There seems to be a lot of movement in them but I cannot make out or understand what it is except that the upper top one seem to be growing."

Jack reached over and cut the lights in the lock and stood staring up
through the deck above them. "Ya I can't tell what or how many. The energy around the compartment is washing out most of the details but it does look like a lot of ghosts. Hopefully it will get clearer as we get closer." Jack glanced around the decks above and then below them and saw nothing alive but a few power cables anyplace close. Looking up again he saw one big set of cables with power running to a medium sized gun turret. "That looks small enough to take back to the ship. I will head for that to start with. You want to go in the opposite direction? Just be careful and establish a landing zone every few decks and keep your crews together. Don't let them spread out. I don't want to lose anyone in isolated traps. There are too many dark area's I can't see into and I don't know why. Do you?"

"No I have never seen that before on any of the ships I
docked close enough to look at over the years. Most of them though touch the outer hull someplace. The only thing I can think of is that they are open to the cold and vacuum of space and long abandoned."

Outside the shuttle an officer came up to them. "You may want to see this Captain.
It is very strange." They followed the officer to what the Ensign had thought was a Comm terminal on the fare side of the compartment toward the center of the ship. What Jack saw before he reached it was a mass of switches and cathode ray tube screens.

"No wonder it was putting out so much radiation and heat. This is unbelievable." Jack let his gaze wonder over the crude equipment and then to the
row of terminals lined up along the bulkhead next to that one, with half the tubes and switches missing. Reaching out he touched the dead but intact terminal next to the powered one wiping away a layer of dirt from it. The next terminal over was just a shell with rust streaks and dents in the casing and even a shattered glass picture tube monitor in one of the holes. Jack looked around the compartment suddenly not looking at the equipment still intact but the junk littering the corners and bulkheads that included old cathode ray tube monitors and realized that most of the junk was not damaged by the blast opening the holes in the side of the hull but of old age. "My Godstar, most of this crap most be hundreds of years old."

"No Jack." The Ensign
straightened up from closely examining a pile of what looked vaguely like a terminal at the opposite end of the row of terminals. "This pile has to be thousands of years old. The metal is mostly rust or corrosion and the plastic insulation on the wiring is so brittle it falls apart with the least pressure not to mention the thick layer of dirt over everything inside it." She worked her way along the row of terminals. "It looks like instead of fixing things they just replace them with new units when they finally broke down too much to fix. That would explain the modular gun and engine pods and why there is such a discrepancy in numbers between their ships." Pulling out a vacuum tube from the shell a few terminals away. "Fricking Vacuum tubes sir." She pulled out another tube and looking at it. "Ok. A vacuum tube with a microcircuit making up part of the tube's insides." Setting it down on the shell she looked around the good working terminal and smiled through her suit helmets visor. "A half dozen connections and this terminal can be moved intact." Looking up through the deck. "That would explain all the interference from the other hot spots. It is going to be interesting to find out just how primitive the electronics are in this ship and whatever else we find around the ship." Walking over to a row of cabinets on the side bulkhead she opened one to find rows of electronic tubes of various sizes and specifications and turned to the crewman working on the good terminal. "Take this with us as well as most of the junk around the compartment as you can. We need to see if any improvements have been made over the life of the terminals."

As the crew
disconnecting the terminal, Jack grabbed the shoulder of one of the techs.  "Make sure you test and record every cable you disconnect for power voltage and frequencies as well as any comm signals going to or from it. Should help figuring it out later."

The Tech looked up shaking his head. "Yes
Captain, I will follow the book. Been recording all its inputs and outputs while you looked it over sir. We are also going to grab a couple of the other terminals that do not seem to be working to use for dissecting before we touch this one along with the tower just outside on the hull." The tech turned back to what he was doing as one of the other terminals was jerked away from the bulkhead towered the shuttle.

Jack turned to watch a steady stream of equipme
nt being rushed into the shuttle gig as a marine Commander walked up. "We will be ready to move out in 5 minutes, as soon as they finish loading the shuttle Captain. Did I hear right that you are accompanying us up the ship?"

"Yes Commander
Murphy. I want to head for a turret 5 decks above us that looks like it is still intact. I want to inspect it before we have the ship blow us a landing zone in the side of the hull. I don’t want to damage it before we know what we have."

"Very w
ell sir. I will have the squad start edging that way now. Is there a rout you want the platoon headed down south to take?"

Jack turned around. "The Ensign here will be taking care of routing for the southern platoon but I think what looks like a
crew birthing compartment a few decks down and a galley below that would prove interesting to start with. Not to mention what appears to be a lot of store rooms. We will want a good sampling of everything in them." Jack turned to look at the body of an alien in a space suit without a helmet laying across the compartment wedged in the corner. The bloated head was impossible to tell what it was at one time except that it had two long massive armored arms and two tree stump legs. The suit including a big pistol weapon on its hip looked like it was made of something unknown to humans which contradicted the Terminal they had just been looking at. As the body was suddenly stripped of its weapon and flopped into a body bag to be hauled into the shuttle Jack turned away. Ensign, you be careful. I don't like splitting up our forces but we don't have time to do anything else. Follow the directions of the platoon commander. Just give him as much information as he needs to decide where to go. Any resistance at all and you call in the shuttle and get out while the ship plasters the area and that is an order." 

"Yes Captain Sir." The Ensign smiled as she turned to walk toward the reinforced platoon that was mustering the crews that would go south with them as they became available.

Jack turned to the Marine Commander
. "Never leave a shuttle unguarded Commander. Leave one squad here until it pulls out then they can start dropping down. That turret may take a while to pull or strip which ever we have to do so I will be going." And headed for the hatch without waiting for the Commander to answer. His eyes wondering around the deck above and not seeing any dark spots he continued down the passageway to the nearest shaft and headed up past work crews stripping the compartments around the deck.  While he walked he kept being amazed at the corroded condition of everything he looked at including hatches that where frozen open or simply replaced if they were critical. Though most of the worst hatches that had already been opened, seemed to lead to empty garbage strewn store rooms.

Finally
reaching the deck with the gun turret Jack walked across a large compartment and over a long narrow grate in the deck that ran along the lower side of the upper 2/3rds of a cylinder laying on its side from a row of bolts around the cylinder on the hull. The grating on the deck ran back to the blunt end of the tank a hundred feet away toward the center of the hulk and disappear around the end of what could only be the long narrow power equipment compartment for the turret. Smiling at the marines using a scanner to probe the other side of the hatch leading into the turret machinery room. They prepared to open and go through into the turret. Jack opened the hatch without slowing down and stepped through. The Marines jerked the man with the scanner blocking their way across the deck behind them and piled in after Jack. Spreading out around the turret compartment they quickly cleared the turret itself then heading back into the power room. Jack followed at a slower speed checking out the turret and its equipment for several minutes. The main thing he noticed was how modern, clean and well maintained the turret machinery was. The bodies inside seemed to have been knocked across the compartment from control chairs with the seat belts hanging lose never used. Opening an access hatch in one of the consoles Jack whistled. He had never seen or heard of the electronics of the sort in front of him before except in science magazine's trying to explain new electronic concepts on the horizon. Wishing he had time to examine the console in more detail he turned away knowing they had to take this turret.

Stepping
out of the turret again he walked around the tube that made up the turret and its equipment and power storage bank. "I don't believe this. All we have to do is unbolt the damn turret cylinder from the hull and a few connections and pull it out." Tapping his suit's forearm's comm controls as he stepped into a nearby compartment. "Number One I need you to blow a hole in the ship at the marker I will place in a few seconds and have a shuttle dock with a crew to disconnect and pull this turret. You can place it in one of the vacant boat bays… No. See if it will fit in the upper empty gun deck. We have a lot of empty space in the blasted bow decks for that matter.  Vacuum won't hurt this thing along with a lot of the equipment we take out of this hulk." Jack pulled a beacon from his waste as he walked around the inside of the hull of the compartment some 50 feet away from the turret bay. Placed the beacon on the hull and activated it. He had barely left the compartment when the deck shook under him and debris came flashing out of the hatch knocking him off his feet and across the deck to slide up against the turret.

Looking back he watched the nose of a shuttle appear
through the bulging open hatch and a few seconds later the crew came running in.

An
officer rushed in and up to Jack as he looked around the compartment uneasily with a gun in his hand. His white face and blue eyes jerking around trying to see everything. "Ok Captain. What do you want pulled?"

Jack patted the
curving bulkhead behind him and then pointed at the bolts on the hull and along the deck supports. "We are taking this 8.5 inch gun turret. There are a few braces and lines plugged into the back or bottom along with the bolts on the other side and then the turret should just pull out."

A marine medic rushed up to Jack spending a couple of minutes checking him and his suit out before letting him up off the deck.
Hitting his comm as the medic worked, Jack ignored the medic. "Commander, is the squad clear of landing zone A yet. We need to move now." Jack looked around the ship above him trying to figure out the next place to head for. Should they grab another turret or just head for the hot spot that was starting to make some sense? He was starting to be able to isolate the live bodies from the cathode ray tubes, vacuum tubes and what had to be a generator of some kind but it looked and radiated such strange energy he could not be sure.

The Marine Commander walked into the Compartment
as men started pulling grates and bolts from the hull flange of the turret. "No Captain, we are not clear of the landing zone. We have 2 boats backed into it now loading equipment and cargo from the surrounding decks. I have assigned a squad to you wherever you want to head next?"

The Deck shook under his butt as a flash got his
attention from the other side of the turret and another boat backed into the new hole. Shaking his head as he looked up through the decks. "There is a ring of ships main turrets on towers sticking out from the hull a half dozen decks above us. It also has a lot of equipment lined up in long racks all over that deck I think. Let's see if we can make that deck but I can't believe they would leave it unguarded. Though the only live bodies I see are some 30 decks above that at the big hot spot that looks to still be pressurized."

The Marine Commander
gave Jack a funny look for a few seconds. Not understanding how his Captain could know that but finally taking it for granted that Jack knew. "Very well Captain we will head up ship.