The Veritian Derelict (Junkyard Dogs) (33 page)

Carlisle targeted the enemy ship and increased her rate of fire
to as rapidly as they could manage with their makeshift equipment. With the gun crew still having to manually switch one of the charged capacitors on line for each shot, their maximum rate of fire was one pulse every twelve seconds. The Ensign had plenty of time to align her next shot while the gun crew went through their preparations and she continued to make small adjustments to her aim between shots. Her accuracy continued to be excellent with one hit and one near miss before the
Greyhound
dropped her shields in preparation for the Jump to Whitney psuedospace.

"Dropping shields
...  Now!" said Hawkins.

Carlisle fired her next to last shot and was pleased to see it score
yet another hit on the
Skorpios
. Since the
Greyhound
had begun firing, the destroyer crew had failed to even come close to hitting the old cargo ship. She drew a bead, preparing to take the last shot...

"Jumping in
...three...two...one...Mark!"

Carlisle felt the
Greyhound
phase into hyperdrive. The enemy ship she had been drawing a bead on suddenly dissolved from the view in the periscope as the
Greyhound
phased into the murky embrace of Whitney psuedospace.

"Is everybody
okay?" asked Murdock.

A cheer went up from every member of the
Greyhound's
crew.

Chapter
47.

UTFN Reclamation Center, on board the Meridian Imperial Diplomatic Ship
Istanbul,
December 12, 2598.

"Commander?"
CPO Marvin Jenkins called out softly. Jenkins was looking over the shoulder of the tactical officer on the bridge of the
Istanbul
. It was early, just after 0530, but Kresge had been too keyed up to sleep any longer and rather than fidget in bed and keep Irene from getting any sleep, he had gone to the bridge to check on the latest developments.

"What is it,
Chief?" replied Kresge.

"Could you come over here for a minute?
We think we might've found something."

Kresge grabbed his cup
of New Ceylon Arabica and headed over to the tactical displays to have a look at the plots that Jenkins had been working on.

"Okay, what am I looking at?"

"Well, some of this is speculation...but we still think you'd better take a look, Sir."

A three dimensional plot of the Santana Quadrant floated in the air above the display.
The
Istanbul's
tactical officer, a Meridian Imperial Navy Lieutenant named Jalpa, took over the briefing.

"
We have been tracking the terrorist activity in this part of the quadrant during the last several weeks, Commander. There have been attacks on all of these remote locations." Jalpa tapped a command on his workstation keyboard and a series of red dots appeared in the display. "The latest that we know of, courtesy of our new guests, are the Catskill-Saroyan and the Patagonia systems...here, and here." Another couple of red dots appeared.

"
Damn, that's an awful lot of red dots!"

"Ye
s, but up till now we've been looking at most of these attacks as the work of independent operators," said Jenkins.

"You
two think otherwise?"

"Take a look at this
, Commander," continued Jalpa. "I have highlighted what could easily be attacks on local clusters of outposts by several independent terrorist operations."

Three distinct clusters of activity
lit up the display.

"
Okay, that seems to make sense."

"That's what
we thought too, Commander, but then we had another thought. What if all of this activity is more organized than that? What if these three separate clusters of activity are part of a coordinated effort by a single, much larger terrorist group?"

Kresge looked at the display again. "Can you highlight those clusters again, in the order that the attacks have occurred?"

"Certainly, Commander," replied Jalpa. He typed in a string of commands and each of the possibly related clusters of activity lit up, this time in chronological sequence.

"Reports are sketchy, Commander
, the terrorists have been destroying or disabling the stage two communicators after they attack, but it appears that these attacks were carried out by single ships and these..." the tactical officer highlighted several of the more recent attacks, "...were executed by teams of two ships or more."

"I don't like the looks of that at all," said the Commander.
"Each of those systems is only a single jump, maybe two from the others."

"
That's what we thought, Sir," said Jenkins, "It looks like several sets of attackers might be linking up. If this third set of attacks is also the work of some larger group then they are heading towards a rendezvous. If our projections are right, it looks like they'll be linking up in the Heard's World system or maybe in Catskill-Soroyan."

"And
either of those systems puts the whole batch of them only one jump from New Ceylon."

"That was
our conclusion too, Sir," said Jenkins.

"Any estimate on when they might be getting here?
"

Jalpa hesitated for a long moment before replying, "
Naturally, it is difficult to be sure, Commander, but they haven't spent more than a week in any of the systems they've terrorized so far. I'd say we could look for them in a week at the most. More likely they'll be here sometime in the next three or four days."

Kresge shook hi
s head, appreciatively. "This is not good news, obviously, but you had to bring up the possibility. What are the chances that the activity is unrelated?"

"I would have been more skeptical if not for the last two systems that were attacked
," replied Jalpa. "The one place that seemed out of sequence is the attack on Heard's world. I couldn't figure out why they attacked out there. Maybe they had to make a detour for some reason and changed their plans. If Heard's World is their new rendezvous point, then it all makes sense."

"
I agree," said Kresge. "How many ships?"

"There
'd have to be at least three ships, Commander, probably -- very probably -- more than that."

"
I wonder what kind of ships we might be facing?" asked Kresge. "Maybe the
Greyhound
will have more information for us. Damn it! I really wish they would get back here. If we have terrorists coming, we're going to need all the firepower and all the ships that we can get!"

"Sorry, Commander," said the
Chief."

"No apologies necessary,
Chief. It's your job to keep me updated, no matter how unpleasant the news is." Kresge sighed. "By the way, good work, you two. Have you told anyone else?"

"Not as yet, Commander," repl
ied Jalpa.

"Keep it that way for the time being," said Kresge. "
We need to inform the Ambassador."

Kresge requested an audience with the Ambassador
and was informed that they could meet at 0700. Since he also wished to discuss options for arming the
Istanbul
, he took the unusual step of inviting Amanda and Faiza with their wrist computers and recent knowledge of suitable weapons in the Scrapyard. Raghib, the chief engineer for the
Istanbul
, Chief Jenkins and Lieutenant Jalpa were asked to attend as well. The group met in one of the small conference room on the
Istanbul
.

After a short exchange of pleasantries, the Commander began the meeting.
"I'm afraid we're going to have to step up the program to arm your ship, Excellency," said Kresge. "We have just analyzed information on the pattern of attacks in this part of the quadrant and it appears that there is a high probability that we can expect an attack by multiple ships on this system, probably sometime soon."

"How long?" asked the Ambassador.

"In as little as two days, maybe as long as a week," replied the Commander.

"You
are correct, Commander," replied the Ambassador. "We had better take some kind of action. My question is this: Do we have sufficient time to get this ship armed? It would be a disaster if we were attacked while the ship is partially disassembled and undergoing what amounts to a major refit. We wouldn't even be able to run effectively. We would be as you say 'sitting ducks.'"

"I know, Excellency," replied Kresge, concern on his face. "All the more reason to get started without delay."

Amanda nervously raised her hand. Kresge recognized her. "What is it, Amanda?"

"
We...We may have a another option, Commander," said the young redhead.

"
At this point I'm open to almost anything; what is it?"

"
In spite of her status as a diplomatic ship, the
Istanbul
has the power to operate some very powerful beam weapons."

"
Of course, that's one of the reasons we're trying to arm her."

"But the Meridian government didn't spare any expense when they converted
her into a diplomatic ship. They turned her into a sort of 'mobile palace.' They didn't just use wood paneling and carpeting in the areas where the gun emplacements would have been, they did it right."

"Yes, that has proven to be difficult
for our purposes."

Amanda took a deep breath.
"So why don't we abandon the attempt to arm the ship?" she asked. "We don't have the time or the manpower to get the job done. But we might still be able to put up a pretty good fight."

"I don't think I'm following you?"

"We got this idea from looking at the hand weapon charging station down in the engineering section. Why can't we rig up a charging cable of some kind? The cable that was supposed to power the farthest forward turret was installed but it isn't connected to anything. Maybe we could use it somehow? We have the
Istanbul's
power plant and there are beam weapons all over the Scrapyard that are already mounted and just need to be charged up."

Faiza chimed in, "We
did some checking, Commander, and a capacitor bank will hold a full charge for weeks, maybe even months. That means we should be able to charge up a capacitor bank and leave the guns armed and ready before we need them. Remember that the guns and the turrets can all be operated manually."

"Exactly what are you proposing?" asked Kresge.

"We locate a half dozen turrets with guns in them that work and charge up the capacitors," answered Amanda. "The
Istanbul
can rove around and provide the power. We would need to man the guns but we see them used more in ambush mode than any other way. This way, the
Istanbul
would still have her heavy shielding for protection and she could still run if she had to. Maybe we can arm her before this war is over but right now, we don't have the time, the equipment or the manpower to get that done."

Kresge looked
at the two young women, dumbfounded. He shook his head side to side as he ran the ramifications of the unorthodox proposal over in his mind, considering it from several angles. He still had a somewhat astonished look on his face when he finally exclaimed, "This could actually work! What a terrific idea! Excellent work, both of you! I say we'd better start scouting out gun emplacements on the wrecks and figuring out what we have to do to the
Istanbul
right away."

"We have some suggestions," said
Faiza.

Using the Scrapyard inventory files copied from Carlisle's wrist computer to
research their plan, the two young women had located a cluster of five cruisers, some of which had undamaged weapons on them, and several other individual ships scattered here and there throughout the Scrapyard, that looked promising. Two teams were assembled to investigate further. It took the better part of the following day to scout out the candidate ships
.

***

The Scrapyard weapons teams met with Kresge and the Ambassador in the late afternoon. Kresge called the meeting to order.

"Okay, what do you have for me?" he began. "
Can we make this plan work?"

"We'll have to get right on it, Commander," said Jenkins, "but I think we c
ould have some operational weapons within the next day or so. Here's what we have to do." Jenkins outlined his suggestions. "Due to the design decisions that were made when this ship was converted to diplomatic duty, it appears as though the portside main battery cable is available for us to use. Faiza? Could you bring up the schematic, please?"

A schematic view of the
Istanbul
, the hull transparent, appeared in the air in front of them. Jenkins continued, "You'll note that the portside cable was never connected to the power plant. On the other side of the ship, the starboard cable was not only connected but supplies power for the ballroom, the other meeting rooms and the residential quarters in the entire bow region of the ship. Lucky for us, the port cable had been intended to operate what would have been the forward turret and because of that it's about fifty meters longer."

"What do you propose?" asked the Ambassador.

"First we'll have to connect the port cable to the main power plant..."

Seeing
the Ambassador's doubtful look Raghib added, "The connections are still there, Excellency, we've checked."

The Ambassador
nodded.

"Then we'll have to strip the cable out
from the forward third of the ship and route it to the outside."

Another
doubtful look ensued.

"
It may not be as bad as it sounds. For much of its length the builders actually ran the cable through a dedicated tube. As you can see from the schematics, the bulkheads and other structures were designed to allow the tube, with the cable inside, to pass through them. This arrangement makes it easier to maintain ship integrity if any of the compartments that the tube passes through suffer damage that leads to atmospheric loss. More importantly, for our purposes, we should be able to just slip the cable out of the tube without having to depressurize any compartments and without the cable hanging up on anything."