Steel Walls and Dirt Drops (36 page)

Chapter
Fifty-Seven

"Hey, Chief?" Clancy called across the intelligence office. "We aren't getting squat monitoring internal communications. Where the hell is this jamming coming from?"

Chief Brown looked up from the readout on her glass-pack. "Damfino
where it’s coming from. Did you run a diagnostic on jammer signal strength?"

Cuffs said, "No, Chief. Why would we do that? I mean we can't pinpoint the location without a good triangulation
."

Brown snorted, "
Hunh? Are you sure about that? Did you try a shooter or a bump and run? No? I didn't think so. What do you think the DIRT file is for?"

When she got blank looks from everyone in the
room, she sighed. "Okay, kids. Remember way back on your first day aboard we downloaded onto your glass-packs a bunch of files for you to study? Yeah? Well think harder. DIRT stands for the Dummies Intelligence Reference Text. I personally wrote it for you dummies, because there are things you need to know and I won't always be here to hold your hands."

Clancy smiled, "Yeah, I read part of it.
It was mostly checklists and odd bits of information about obsolete equipment. Sorry, Chief, but it was pretty dry stuff."

Brown smiled back
with genuine humor, "Yeah, it is dry. It’s a working reference guide not a romance novel."

Cuffs
scanned data on his glass-pack, "What was that? A shoot and run or a bumper? No, um, wait a tic. Here it is. And I quote 'of the three methods for locating a signal generation point, best is the triangulation method.' We know that one from technical training. This goes on a bit, let's see, yada yada yada..."

Brown snarled, "Excuse me,
spacer. I wrote that and I distinctly remember writing clear and concise instructions. I do not blather on or write 'yada, yada, yada’."

"Yeah, I know Chief, just trying to get to the salient points."
Cuffs said without looking up at the hooting and woofing going on around the room. "What?"

Brown laughed, "Salient points?"

Cuffs said, "Um, yeah you know, Chief. Salient: the important, the prime-"

Brown laughed
harder, "Damn, Cuffs. I know what it means. We're just surprised you know what it means and we’re even more surprised that you could use it in a complete sentence. You've been sandbagging us? No. No. Don't deny it, just get back to reading. I love it when I get my own words quoted back to me; just get it right without the yada parts."

Cuffs nodded. "Yes
, Chief. Okay, 'a shooter is when a signal is piggybacked along the incoming jamming signal. By sending a signal shooting along the incoming signal, using varying strengths and duration, a technician can monitor the shooter signal return signature or running bounce back, thus determining the strength of the jammer signal. Plotting the strengths along the signal line and matching it to the attached chart you should be able to locate the general vicinity of the jammer signal generation point.' Wheew! That's a load."

Brown snarled, "A load of what,
spacer?"

Cuffs replied, "Sorry
, Chief. I meant a mouthful. But, yeah I can see where that’d work, somewhat, I think?"

Brown shook her head, "Clancy, why won't this work?"

Cuffs said, "Won't work? I thought you said-"

Brown shook her head and pointed at Clancy. "Speak up."

"Well, Chief. I think we may have too many bulkheads in the way. This would be wonderful to try in space, but in the confines of a vessel, well, the interference factor would be too high to provide reliable data. But, what the hell; it beats nothing. Let's try it."

Brown said, "Don't get your knickers in a knot,
girl. Hold on." She pointed a finger at Cuffs and said, "Read on."

"Okay Chief. It says a bump
and run is when the searching signal is bounced off a stationary object, such as another spacecraft, a planet or a moon, to provide an additional signal line for the location of the jammer generation point."

"
That won't work either," Gan Forrester said.

Startled,
Brown jumped. She had forgotten he was sitting quietly in the corner. She thought, "Damn that man is so grey he can hide in plain sight." She said, "Okay, Marshal. Fill us with your wisdom."

Forrester smiled back. "
It won’t work for the same reason as the other method, there are way too many bulkheads causing interference. That’s also why we only have intermittent jamming. Even a jammer signal can't be transmitted cleanly through this maze of steel walls and metal bulkheads. Both methods would only have application in open space or near a planetary orbit."

"Correct,
Marshal," Chief Brown smiled. "Everyone get that? Good."

Cuffs said, "Damn it
, Chief. Why did we have to go to all this trouble to read it if you knew these methods wouldn't work?"

Brown stood up
, stretched, and looked Cuffs in the eye, "First of all, spacer, don't cuss at me. I am old enough to be your mama, so talk to me civilly. Second. I am not here just to make you snot-nosed brats do your job, I’m here to teach you how to do your job."

"Sorry
, Chief," Cuffs apologized. "I didn't mean to cuss. It just slipped out."

"Damn right it slipped out. So don't let it happen again. No cussing in this f
rakking office, hear me?"

A chorus of
raucous calls rang out.

Brown nodded. "Good, just so we have some sort of understanding. Now if we can't do a
shooter or a bump and run, what is left? No guesses? That leaves us with a triangulation, doesn't it?"

"Okay
, Chief,” Cuffs said, “I'll bite on this one. We are in one place. To triangulate we need to shoot the jammer signal from two locations."

Brown slapped her forehead, "Why me, Lord? Why me? Think
, all of you. Are we really all in one place?"

Clancy said, "Yeah, Chief. Except for a couple
of guys we have sleeping across the corridor, but that isn't a wide enough distance for triangulation separation."

Cuffs said, "Yeah. That's it, except for…oh, shit
, Chief. I mean, damn. Sorry, what the hell am I thinking?! The Major and half our crew is up in the FO. They can shoot the second leg of the triangulation from there. Gods, I am stupid today."

Brown
smiled broadly and gave Cuffs a thumbs up. "Good thinking, spacer."

Clancy said, "Yeah, it was good mental work. But you knew it all along, didn't you, Chief? Why didn't you just say so?"

Brown said, "You all have to learn to think on your own. If someone is always there to give you the answer, then the day when that someone isn't there, subsequently you will be well and truly frakked. My goal is to get you all to think three dimensional or to kill you trying."

Cuffs said, "I know what they have in the
FO. It can't run a triangulation. I mean Buzz is smart and could probably budge things together, but I don't see how he can put it together without a 3c914MTc module in their comm gear. Hey! We've got a spare across the hall. We could get someone to run it up there."

Forrester raised his hand, "I can do that, Chief. If you just get someone to show me wh
at is the 3C9er thing is."

Brown nodded. "
That works for me.” She pointed at a pair of young spacers. “You two run the man across the hall and make sure he gets to the flight office. Then shag your asses back here. Hey! Take those." She pointed to a couple of weapons lying on a desk by the hatch.

The spacers
picked up the sunburners, short blunderbuss-like guns with a large bell-shaped opening. They were non-lethal incapacitating weapons. Officially, they were TVOTs, (pronounced Tee-Vots) or temporary visual obstruction tools, because they shot a blast of broad-spectrum light temporarily blinding an opponent. Unofficially they were sunburners because of their obvious after affects.

The two s
pacers cycled open the hatch and stepped into the corridor. Marshal Forrester pulled a needler out of his shoulder holster and stepped through the hatchway while checking the magazine for load. A torrent of needler fire almost cut the two spacers in half. Forrester took a hit high in the shoulder. He managed to use the momentum from the shot to spin himself back into the intel office and crash to the deck.

Brown bellowed. "Everyone duck and cover. Weapons hot. Clancy, freeze
!" She stopped the woman from jumping into the corridor. "You can't help those two and you can't help me if you get yourself killed. Get armed and get on that hatch. You and you, back her up. Don't lock down yet."

She looked about the room
. "Cuffs, do what you can for Forrester. Don't argue with me. I know you’re not a medic, but you’re all he’s got, so do something."

Brown looked down and saw
that her .45 semi-automatic pistol had jumped into her hands of its own accord. She flicked the safety switch off as she stepped to the vault hatch. Exposing only her arm, she pointed the gun down the corridor and rapidly boomed out half a dozen shots. After the quiet pfft of the needlers, the mini-explosions of the gas propelled slugs fired from the handgun echoed off the metal bulkheads causing everyone in the room to jump. Stepping quickly into the corridor and taking a classic shooter stance, she pumped the remaining dozen rounds into the retreating backs of a small group of security forces. Only two made it to the corner to retreat to relative safety.

T
he slide mechanism on the .45 shot back in the open and locked position. Brown calmly thumbed the magazine release button dropping the empty clip to the deck. She expected to hear it clang as it hit the deck when she slammed a second clip into the magazine, but the expectant clang didn't happen. She fired two shots into the metal bulkheads near where the retreating security forces had fled. The glass bullets made a satisfying 'whang' as they ricocheted off the bulkhead. Without turning her head she said, "Clancy, watch my six. You other two, watch the eleven and one o'clock positions."

When the three were in place she looked down. The spent clip hadn't bounced on the
metal deck because unbeknownst to her, Brown stood straddle-legged over a spacer’s body like a mother bear protecting an injured cub. Her face twisted in a bear-like grimace of rage. Both of her spacers were obviously beyond help. Not bothering to suppress or hide her tears of grief and fury, she reached down and patted each lifeless body on the head. She tried to find the words to tell them how sorry she was, but the words choked in her throat.

The
hatchway across the hall opened a crack. She could see of her intelligence spacers. They had been sleeping in the room. Both had hidden under the bunks when the shooting started and had warily opened the hatch a crack to look out once the shooting stopped.

With a strength that belied her a
ge, Brown grabbed the bloody bodies by their utility uniform collars and dragged them out of the corridor into the newly opened room. She dumped them unceremoniously in the middle of the deck. "You two get your butts into the office. Now!" Following the two, she stepped back into the corridor. Shooting a questioning look at Clancy, she received a shake no in response. No one had poked their heads around the corner, so she waived the other two spacers back into the intel office, leaving only her and Clancy exposed. Clancy looked nervous, but held her ground with fierce determination.

Brown
’s command voice bellowed and echoed off the metal bulkheads, "All right, you sons-of-bitches! Speak up now or forever hold your piece, because I will hunt your asses down to the last man."

A voice answered, "Chief Brown? I
s that you?"

"Who the fr
ak do you think it would be, you pinhead? You storm into my corridor, blast away at my people, and you expect someone else to be here? Who the hell are you? Speak up, dammit, before I come down there and send more of you punk-ass security cretins to eternal damnation."

"Tech Sergeant Wilkins, Chief.
Hold your fire? Can we can check our wounded?"

"Let them fr
akking bleed to death, Wilkins. What are you doing shooting at AMSF people? And don't shout at me around the corner. Step out like a man with balls instead of a thick-minded stobor in jerk off mode."

"Okay, Chief. Don't shoot. I'm coming out
, okay?” The man spread both hands wide and stepped around the corner. “I'm unarmed, see?" He glanced behind him and motioned at someone out of sight to put their gun down. "Hells bells, Chief, your guys startled us and all, jumping into the corridor with those sunburners at the ready. It was just a reaction. I hope they're okay?"

"They're dead, Wilkins. Who else have you got with you?"

"I have just one other guy. He’s an FNG, a frakking new guy named-"

Brown interrupted. "I don't want to know his name. That way if I kill
you both I only have to remember your name in my prayers. Get the FNG out here to check on your people. Do it now, Wilkins!"

Wilkins desperately waved the new guy into the hall and pushed him forward to check on the still bodies before him.
It was easy to see, even for non-medical people, that none of the security forces had survived.