The Veritian Derelict (Junkyard Dogs) (42 page)

Chapter 6
1.

UTFN Reclamation Center, December 16, 2598.

Onboard the wreck of the UTFN
Lexington
, somewhere in the scrap cloud.

"
That
e
nemy soldier reentered the wreck in the same spot where you just did, Vixen
," sent Faiza.

Carlisle,
in hiding behind the marginal protection of the hatch door, replied: "
Thanks, Pointer, I think I'm ready, let me know if the
Skorpios
starts to move again."

"Will do."

Within a minute, Carlisle could see the soft glow of someone's suit lights in the corridor outside. She braced herself behind the hatch door. Ten seconds later, the muzzle of the enemy's pulse rifle poked partway into the chamber. Carlisle grabbed the muzzle of the gun with her left hand and slammed it into the rim of the hatch opening while swinging the heavy hatch door towards the closed position with her right. The massive hatch door crunched into the front portion of the pulse rifle just behind the terminal end where Carlisle had grabbed it, flattening it to about half its original diameter. There was a small explosion of debris from the damage dealt by the door. Without allowing any time for her enemy to react, Carlisle swung the hatch back open and jerked as hard as she could on the damaged weapon. Her adversary was gripping the weapon so tightly that she was drawn into the capacitor chamber, still holding on to the now useless gun!

It was the first time that either of them had gotten any kind of a look at their adversary and both were somewhat surprised to find that their opponent was also a woman.
Carlisle could just make out a pair of intense ebony eyes through the face plate of the reconnaissance suit.
This has to be the woman that Hanna warned us about.
She thought.
Fahada, her name was Fahada and Hanna said she was extremely dangerous!

Fahada
immediately demonstrated the validity of Hanna's warning by being the first to recover and the first to act. She released the now useless pulse rifle and swept her arm down, reaching for the pulse pistol clipped to her suit's utility belt; the very same pulse pistol that Carlisle had lost a few minutes earlier. Reacting just in time to the movement, Carlisle managed to grab Fahada's wrist before she could bring the deadly weapon to bear and the two of them struggled for control of the pistol. A pulse from the pistol momentarily lit up the space and scarred the paint on the ceiling of the capacitor chamber without harming either of the combatants. Another harmless shot followed, hitting the floor of the compartment.

In
this direct physical confrontation, the altercation turned out to be somewhat of a mismatch. Fahada was a little taller than Carlisle but she soon discovered that she wasn't nearly as strong as the powerfully built, Spacer-conditioned Federation warrior. Not only that, but Carlisle's prototype command suit was much more flexible and provided far more agility than the thruster-equipped reconnaissance equipment that Fahada was wearing. After a short struggle, Carlisle slammed Fahada's wrist into the edge of the hatch door and the pistol spun free from her grasp.

With Carlisle momentarily
off balance after disarming her foe, Fahada brought her cocked left leg up between them, put her foot in the middle of Carlisle's chest and shoved with all her might. Carlisle's lost her grip on her adversary and floated lazily out into the chamber before making hard contact with the front wall and ceiling of the chamber.

At that moment,
Fahada got a message from the
Skorpios
.

"
Fahada? You must get off that wreck immediately! Something totally unexpected has happened, the
Perseus
has surrendered! We are retreating! The
Arabian Star
will pick you up on the way out!
"

Fahada looked at her enemy, who was just then regaining control of her body and
keyed her suit radio to a general communications band.

"This is
n't over," she hissed, "Next time, you die!"

Fahada
quickly slipped out of the chamber through the hatch, pulled the door closed and, to delay any possible pursuit, gave the wheel a spin. She then headed back down the corridor towards the same damaged area where she had entered the ship. She threaded her way out of the old ship and awaited pickup by the
Arabian Star,
one of the ships that had been carrying boarders.

Harris, huddled down in the superstructure of the wrecked ship, watched as an enemy freighter came within ten meters of the wreck he was on and a figure from his ship used a thruster belt to perfectly target the open airlock of the freighter.
The airlock doors slid shut. The cargo ship hadn't even slowed down!

Meanwhile, back in the capacitor chamber,
Carlisle had shaken off the effects of her impact with the wall and shoved down from the ceiling of the capacitor compartment to recover her pulse pistol. She briefly considered giving chase but almost immediately decided that her original mission was more important. The
Greyhound
was depending on her!

"
Vixen?
This is unbelievable
! sent a breathless Amanda over the wristcomp network. "
The
Perseus
has just surrendered!
"

"
What? How
?" replied Carlisle.

"
The guys on the
Donegal
hit the ship with their mining laser and totally destroyed the front turret! That old destroyer is your main target now!
"

"
Returning to the aft turret now
," replied Carlisle, as she pulled her weightless body up the ladder to the projector compartment. She went immediately to the gunner's chair, strapped herself in and began searching for her target.

***

TFN Reclamation Center, somewhere in the scrap cloud.

The
Skorpios
, with her shields mostly recovered and her power plant stabilized, prepared to leave the Scrapyard. She was to depart last and provide cover for the retreating troop transports. The Captain and crew pulled out of their temporarily sheltered spot and began to turn the ship end for end to head back out of the Scrapyard on the same route they had come in on as quickly as they could. The maneuver brought her right into the line of fire of the aft turret of the
Lexington
.

Carlisle drew a bead on the
bridge and pressed the firing stud. As before, the blast didn't damage the old ship but her shields flared back up to near incandescence. As Carlisle switched her attention to the other projector and started lining up the shot, both of
Skorpios
' turrets began to swing in the direction of the emplacement that Carlisle's was in.

"
Easy, Tamara
," she spoke to herself again, "
just line it up and take the shot
."

***

UTFN Auxiliary Ship
Greyhound
.

Meanwhile
Kresge gave the order to implement his plan.

"
We will be engaging that enemy ship within the next two minutes," he announced over the ship's intercom. "Gun crew? A slight change in plan. I want both projectors set to fire pulses with all four of the capacitor modules engaged. Repeat, I want maximum-power pulses from each gun on my order. Caleb? That leaves us with only two pulses before we will have to recharge, so don't take any shot that you aren't absolutely sure is going to be a hit!"

***

UTFN Reclamation Center, somewhere in the scrap cloud.

Carlisle drew a bead on the front turret of the
Skorpios
but she could see from how quickly the enemy's turrets were revolving that she would be cutting things really close. She clenched her teeth and finalized her aim, pressed the firing stud and immediately made a beeline towards the central hatch leading downward. She took a couple of extra seconds to pull the hatch closed and give the locking wheel a spin, an action that may have saved her life. As she reached the hatch in the aft wall of the capacitor compartment that led out into the main corridor she felt a horrendous impact. The last thing she saw was the ceiling of the compartment opening to space as the turret above was totally destroyed. Carlisle felt herself slam into something and she lost consciousness.

***

UTFN Auxiliary Ship
Greyhound
.

Kresge and the
Greyhound
came upon the scene just as Carlisle fired her second beam and they saw the flare of the destroyer's badly overloaded shield. He and the rest of the bridge crew then watched in horror as the destroyer fired her aft battery and the turret on the
Lexington
went up in cloud of debris a few seconds later. Because Carlisle had been drawing their fire, the
Greyhound
came upon a
Skorpios
that had both main battery turrets pointed almost directly away from the old cargo ship. Not only that, her shields were blazing nearly white from the strain of absorbing and dissipating the energy from two high-powered pulse bolts.

"Target the bridge,
Caleb!" said Kresge. "All four capacitors channeled to the Port side projector. Starboard side prepared to fire if needed. Fire when you have a solution!"

The
Skorpios
was still desperately trying to bring her guns to bear on the new threat when the full-intensity bolt from the port side projector of the
Greyhound
flashed into her bridge.

The shields of the Skorpios flared to an impossible color before a white flash
and a cloud of debris erupted from the center of the ship. Sections of bow and stern cartwheeled lazily outward from the site of the explosion. The stern section impacted with one of the wrecks in its path, knocking the wreck so that it began rotating downward while the stern section careened off in a new direction. The bow section somehow grazed past several wrecks and wound up spinning lazily outward towards deep space.

Harris, who had been shielded by the bulk of the wreck during the whole encounter,
lifted away from the
Lexington
on his two man sled. After a short search he spotted a small, white space-suited figure spinning limply among the debris created from the destruction of the aft turret of the
Lexington
. With a lump in his throat, he went to retrieve the Ensign. He feared the worst, she was not answering calls to radio or to the girls on the cranial network. To his relief, her suit appeared to be intact, at least she hadn't suffered from decompression or loss of oxygen. He prayed that she was only knocked unconscious.

The rest of the terrorist
force made it out of the Scrapyard and rendezvoused with the
Carpathia,
who, with the Sheik of Barsoom on board, had remained outside of the scrap cloud with the reserve destroyer and therefore remote from any danger. As a group, they migrated out of the scrapyard and, with their tails between their legs, microjumped back towards the hyperlink point to translate out as quickly as they could.

***

UTFN Auxiliary Ship
Greyhound.

Less than an hour
after the aggressors had departed the system, Kresge was still trying to determine the status of all the scrapyard personnel when he got a call from the bridge.

"Commander Kresge?"

"Yes, what is it?"

"
Several more ships have just come through the hyperlink point."

"Can you tell wh
o it is?"

"It'll take a few moments, Sir. Wait,
we're being hailed."

"
Federation Destroyer
Asimov
calling the New Ceylon Reclamation Center."

"It's the
Asimov
, Sir!"

"The last thing I expected was reinforcements," said Kresge. "Can't say I'm sorry to see them though.
Put me through to them."

Epilogue

In the sickbay of Imperial Meridian Diplomatic Ship
Istanbul
, December 17, 2598.

Dr. Ensign Tamara Carlisle came groggily to consciousness. She was in a comfortable bed and the lighting was dim. There was someone sitting near the bed but since her eyes wouldn't focus
and lighting was poor, she couldn't tell who it was. Whoever they were, they were no more than a blob, just a fuzzy silhouette. She attempted to sit up and discovered immediately that she hurt. All over. That and there were tubes and wires from various places on her body connecting her to a number of what were obviously medical devices.

"Where
the hell am I?" she said, her voice little more than a croak.

"In the sickbay
of the
Istanbul
," replied a familiar voice. "Don't try to move, you took a real beating. You've got a concussion and maybe some broken ribs."

Some coherence began to trickle back.

"Harris?...Ryan?...Is that you?"

"Yes, Tamara, it's me."

"What happened?"

"Against all odds, we won! Thanks to you and your father."

"My dad?" More recent memories phased in. "Oh, yeah, I remember now. They were here when we got back from Heard's World?"

"He used the mining laser
on the
Donegal
to destroy the front turret of the
Perseus
. The
Perseus
surrendered shortly afterwards. Meanwhile, you managed to hit the
Skorpios
twice and overloaded her shields so that Kresge and the
Greyhound
could do some real damage. The
Skorpios
won't be bothering us anymore."

"So we're all safe?"

"For now."

She lay quietly for almost a minute. Harris thought she had gone back to sleep
when she spoke again.

"I'm hungry
," she said, softly.

"That's no surprise, you haven’t eaten anything
since we had lunch yesterday. I've signaled the doctor, I'm sure they'll give you something as soon as they've taken a look at you."

She reached for his hand.

"Will you stay? I hurt and I'm tired but... it feels good having you near..."

"As long as you need me, Tamara, I'll be here."

***

Santana Nexus, December 17, 2598.

Lester Dobbins slipped into a booth in an obscure corner of crowded bar on the Santana Nexus Orbital Station. Had the station still been under United Federation control he could not have come within ten light years of the establishment. As it was, however, with the rogue forces of the Sheik of Barsoom's Revolution in charge, Dobbins had remained unrecognized and had encountered no problems with security during the several weeks he had been hiding out on the station. He was dressed in nondescript clothing though anyone observing him closely would have immediately noticed that he was very nervous, constantly checking his surroundings as though looking for threats. Dobbins was also known by his Veritian Brotherhood name "Ezra Hellfire Brimstone," but upon going into hiding after an abortive attempt to kidnap the Meridian Ambassador just over two months earlier, he had been forced to cut off his distinctive Brotherhood Mohawk and had dyed what remained of his blond hair to a dark shade of brown. He was in the bar because he was running short on resources and his many creditors were breathing down his neck even harder than usual. Dobbins was badly in need of a large infusion of cash!

Dobbins ordered a non-alcoholic drink and drank it slowly while he waited. He had been waiting for about twenty minutes when a strange
man slid into the seat next to him. The man was wearing some kind of robe with the hood up and he too kept his head moving, as though he were nervous about something.

"You are Dobbins?" the man asked, his voice a raspy whisper.

"Who's asking?" replied Dobbins.

"Serendipity," came the reply. It was the code word that had been agreed upon
.

"
I never trust to luck," Dobbins returned the correct response.

The stranger seemed to relax.

"Come with me," said the stranger. "There is a place nearby where we can conduct this business."

Dobbins looked around at the crowded bar and nodded his head. "Lead on," he said. He downed the last fourth of the drink he'd been nursing
and got up to follow.

The man led him out into the main corridor of the
first level of the station's second ring and the two of them walked for perhaps five minutes before the stranger turned and led them down a short corridor. He stopped in front of a door with the words "Authorized Personnel Only" stenciled on the outside. The two of them were momentarily alone in the short corridor. The stranger produced a keycard, disarmed the lock and motioned Dobbins through before following him inside. They found themselves in a dimly lit maintenance room. A voice came out of the shadows in the most remote corner of the room.

"Have a seat, Mr. Dobbins, or should I say 'Mr. Brimstone?'"

Dobbins narrowed his eyes at the utterance of the name of one of the most wanted men in Federation space. But, of course, these people would know who he was. It was a risk he had been forced to take. Warily, he took the proffered seat at a small table. The unknown speaker remained in shadow while the side of the table where Dobbins now sat was lighted but only dimly.

"I understand that you have certain...merchandise for sale? Is it not so?"

"I might, for the right buyer at the right price."

"What you have is a difficult thing to move, is it not?'

"I haven't been trying to sell it for that long."

"It will take a special kind of buyer."

"Yes, it will. A very wealthy one."

"Enough of this banter, I will offer you five million credits, cash."

The man's offer was more than twice what Dobbins would have been happy with and he had a very difficult time disguising his shock. He thought briefly about trying to get even more but he was alone and the mysterious buyer was accompanied by several very large and, most likely, very well-armed companions. After a short pause he said, "It appears I have found that special kind of buyer! I accept!"

After a few more minutes making arrangements for transfer of the merchandise and the money, the same hooded stranger accompanied Dobbins back to the bar.
They did not go back inside. Using a nearby public computer terminal, Dobbins checked his secure bank account and, when the money had been transferred, handed the stranger a claim slip for the item in question.

Just before they parted the man spoke.

"You will not see me again. I do not know what you have sold to that man for so much money but I feel I must give you some advice."

"And that is?"

"The individual you have just done business with is a brilliant scientist who has made his fortune by making refinements to Whitney overdrive technology. This work has made him very, very wealthy."

"That much is obvious."

"You should also know that he is stark, raving mad!"

Dobbins was speechless.

"Farewell, Mr. Dobbins," said the stranger as he turned on his heel and strode swiftly down the corridor.

Dobbins watched the man until he turned a corner and disappeared.
Now you've done it, Lester,
he told himself.
You've gone and sold a thermonuclear bomb to a lunatic
!

The End.