“Go ahead but most are out of the system.” Schultz smiled at Halsey. “You are going to have to wait for them to return to get a quorum to call a meeting.” Chuckling he sneered at Hulsey. “I sent Vice Admiral Ditzen to take command of the Station and assess the Enemy Alien problem with the Approval of the Council. It won’t be my fault if Ditzen decides the Aliens need to be eliminated along with the traitor Turner. By the time you get a quorum my squadron will have salved the problem once and for all and we can start building up the so called Hulk Station as a completely human facility since it is in a perfect location for an entry base we can let the enemy find and destroy thinking it is The Rock.”
“What you think Turner is just going to let your squadron waltz in and slaughter tens of thousands of aliens and humans that know the truth?”
“He won’t have a choice. His reports said that his ship is little better than a hulk and without reaction mass the Destroyers are even more worthless than they are with reaction mass. We will get a chance to see what these new battleships can do against the enemy ships even if they are hulks and if they are not, that is even better.”
“You can’t possibly think Turner is a traitor. The Destroyer Wing Commander as well as the Tanker Captains backed Turner up about everything in his reports.”
“That does not matter. They could have guns pointed at their heads or maybe the aliens are controlling their minds.”
Halsey rolled his eyes. “If the aliens can control minds we have already lost you moron.”
“Not if we stay away from them and kill them and anyone that come in contact with them first.” Smiling from ear to hear.
Halsey could not believe the childish paranoid crap spewing from his mouth. Except that he had already sent forces to exterminate them. “You paranoid Ass.” Then cut the connection.
Halsey started shuffling through reports and accessing buried raw communication files.
Slapping the Comm an hour later. “Get me Admiral Clark.” It took a couple of minutes to get through as he went through top security files pulling up orders and lists of ships headed for the Hulk Station that his security rating as an Admiral could finally access again.
The screen lit up across his desk. “Glad to have you back Halsey. I made sure the transports got off to the Hulk Station. I don’t know what you were worried about. Shultz has been very cooperative. What I am worried about is that we have not heard from the area for a couple of months now and the transports are not returning. We have lost some 50 transports now. I have been hearing rumors that the Spiders are capturing them and their crews in that area.”
“Bull shit. I just talked to Schultz and he thinks the only good alien is a dead alien, including Turner. I have been looking over his orders and records of ship deployments. I don’t think he has been as cooperative as you think. None of the transports have gotten through to the Hulk Station simply because he has made his orders clear that if the Captain farts he is to head for a Quarantine assembly area instead of the Hulk Base. They are all stuck there not captured by Spider Battleships. The Red Pepper and Thousands of rescued crewmen and civilians are on emergency ration bars and MRE’s according to the dispatch reports that have been classified as garbage and not decodable so they are not entered into the comm channels for delivery. It only took my system a few seconds to decode them.”
“Come Halsey, Schultz has the whole Rock and construction base to worry about. He can’t supervise everything. I am sure the Comm foul-up is simply negligence by some recruit technician. As soon as the squadron he sent reaches the Hulk Station with the transports I saw leave with them they will have plenty to eat. Once the situation there is stabilized and the facts are established, I am sure all the restrictions will be lifted.”
“And what if he slaughters all the aliens and most of the refugees which is what he has ordered?”
“No one is going to slaughter anyone if they surrender without a fight. There is a lot we need to find out about them and the enemy through interrogation if they won’t cooperate.”
“Jesus Crist Superstar Clark. Take a look at the reports that did not get decoded from Turner. I am sending them to you know. There are tens of thousands of pages of detailed information all about the damn enemy including what color their shit is. The Technology the Exslaves are willing to help us gain will win the war. They are already cooperating. Schultz did not need to send a fucking super prison mega transport he had specially built for the operation with dissection labs and torcher chambers instead of repairing the Orange Dwarf.”
“Quit exaggerating Halsey and I agreed to let him slow up repairs on the Orange Dwarf until the engines were ready. Now the Council’s oversight committee authorized him to send a squadron to investigate and stabilize the situation and clean up the damn mess your Captain Turner has made of things enlisting fucking enemy aliens into the Navy, and that is all he will do. Now I have work to do and so do you. We need those Dwarfs ready on time to strip the next system and I see you still have those god damn Destroyers plugging your docks. Get too it and leave the damn enemy aliens to the people whose job it is. If they don’t resist and fully cooperate, they will not be harmed much. Now I don’t want to hear another word about it from you. Out.”
Chapter 9; Mutiny on the Bounty.
Jack carefully touched down on the bow of the two ships welded together and engaged the parking anchor gluing the Bomber/Transport to the hull. Unfastening his belt he turned and climbed out of the Cockpit and back across Red using her knees being careful not to grab her breasts hanging out of the suit (that was unzipped to her navel), to pull on as she lifted him across to the deck just aft of her. Then she went back to tuning the sensors for being in direct contact with the ship’s hull.
Jack started checking Pan’s suit. “You sure you don’t want to stay in the Transport? I don’t know what we are going to find inside. It could be dangerous.”
“And worry about what was happening to you and Red? No I am going besides I sent my people on those assault shuttles and I have to find them.” Turning to Chump. “You don’t have any aaa Irons in the fire to use a human expression. You need not go.”
“Stay here by myself and wait for the Boggy man? To use another human expression I think is so cute.” Chump smiled at Jack. “I do so love your children’s books.”
Shaking his head Jack finished checking Pan and started checking Chump.
“Captain, I am not getting any signs of life on the upper decks at all.” Red said from the terminal. I still don’t understand why the bow would be empty unless it is damaged and in vacuum but I get signs normal air and heat. I do detect several of the crews birthing compartments lower down with many people in the middle bunks and others I think are females walking around from bunk to bunk carrying things and interacting with the people on the bunks with some of those in very strange positions. This does not make sense at all. Is this some kind of group sexual aaa orgy if I remember the word right?”
“Well get your suit zipped up over those monsters of yours and your helmet on and we will find out. That is if we can get through the damn lock. I would rather find out what the logs say on the bridge before we make our presence known which was why I picked the bow to enter at. I could not find anyone on the Officer Country decks so we should be able to reach the bridge without being spotted if we are careful with the internal sensors.”
Jack gave Red a Quick once over since he already knew she could handle vacuum. Then stepped to the ladder hatch. He was surprised to watch a vacuum lock extend from the hatch down to the hull but knew it was a waste of time to use it since Red could not fit through the hatch and started venting the transports air.
“Aaa Captain, if you please.” Red took his hand off the vent and stepped onto the elevator hatch next to the ladder hatch. “Shall we go?”
Jack stood up getting a feeling of embarrassment as Pan and Chump joined them and with a smile Red hit the control panel.
The elevator/hatch quickly dropped down to t
he hull as an air curtain formed around the sides between the platform and the hull of the transport. Red stepped off the platform with a smile pushing through the almost invisible shimmering curtain. “Much easier Captain.” And headed for the lock in the hull.
Jack followed feeling stupid. Hoping he would not feel even more stupid when he found the damn hatch was manually locked on the inside or that they had changed the universal lock codes.
When the hatch popped open the first time he tapped in the open command he was pleasantly surprised and tremendously relieved. Helping Red through the hatch when she got stuck firsts with her big butt and then with her boobs in the way, took a few seconds of pulling and pushing on the monsters to work them through the small round hatch but they were finally in. Jack was glad to see that the inner hatch was the size of a normal door hatch and once the air was equalized Red only had to bend over to get through.
They had entered the forward Torpedo Room and was glad to notice that all the torpedo’s were in their storage tubes and had not been fired. Meaning that whatever the problem was about all the signs of combat on the hull it was probably not pirates but left more questions.
Jack went to the armored hatch and stared at it or (through it) for a few moments and then opened it and stepped through glad to find no traces of fighting. They headed down with Jack checking every deck without finding any damage or crewmen until they reached the Bridge. The passageways around the bridge was covered in blaster and laser marked pools of dried blood trails leading onto and off the bridge.
The bridge was a mess with most of the consoles destroyed by both laser and blaster fire but again the corrosion and dried blood said it had happened months before.
Jack found a small maintenance screen in one corner hidden behind a blasted chair that had not been destroyed and started taping on it. Only taking a few minutes to bring up the ship’s security logs.
For an hour they watched clips of the two ship’s crews fighting each other for no apparent reason going back month by month and then the two ships were cruising along one behind the other down a narrow tube through the clouds when a shock wave hit them and suddenly the two ships were deep in the clouds at a small percentage of the speed of light.
The bridge of the ship Jack and his little party was on showed alarms going off as the stern quickly started to melt from the friction of the Cloud as the Commodore ordered his ship to fall in behind the lead ship to use it as cover from the deadly cloud. The Chief Engineer begging the Commodore to let them cone the drive engines using the directions Jack had given them to clean a tunnel out of the cloud in front of them. The Commodore said that coning the drives to dig out a tunnel was impossible and they would just use the other ships as it burned up in the cloud as protection. The ship’s engines finely burned out just as they approached the tunnel the other ship ahead of them was making. Word coming across the speaker that the Engineering Chief had ordered the engine rooms abandoned.
The ship suddenly stopped bucking as it fell into line behind the ship in front of them. Then only a few minutes later as their screens cleared the other ship loomed ahead that was still rapidly slowing from friction. The Commodore ordered the helmsman to ram the other ship to continue using it as a shield and suddenly they hit the bow of the other ship driving their stern down into the other ships bow. Suddenly the ships Helmsman was busy fighting to keep the two ships now locked together lined up with the stern of the other ship to the cloud as superheated plasma streamed back along the sides like any planetary atmospheric entry.
Finally the plasma stopped streaming past the two ships. It took weeks for the stern of the ship still lodged into the bow of the other ship to cool enough start work to try to get to the other ship down past the engine room wreckage. The Cloud still streaming past making it impossible to go outside and down the hull to the other ship.
And yet more weeks to get through what was left of the bow of the other ship and make contact with what was left of the other ships crew.
It did not take long listening to the recordings to figure out that the Commodore had put all the aliens Jack had sent to be taken to The Rock and their equipment on the other ship. Not wanting any of the filthy stinking aliens on his ship. Once the two ship’s crews had made contact he immediately took command of both ships since the Captain of the other ship had died with half the crew when the ships collided with the destruction of most of the bow of the ship and immediately started blaming the Aliens for what had happened.
When the Commodore started killing Aliens, the other ship’s Executive officer now the highest ranking officer left alive stopped him using the Gronks and Marines Jack had sent along with the ship’s own marines. Kicking the Commodore and his crew off his ship and back up to the Commodore’s own ship.
It wasn’t until the lower ship’s Executive officer started broadcasting an emergency distress signal that the Commodore scared that the enemy Spiders that had been attacking when they left would use it to home in on them that the war started in earnest. The Commodore trying to kill all the Aliens and stop the emergency beacon and destroy all communications gear on the two ships while the Exec kept raiding the other ship to scrounge enough Comm gear to reestablish the signal each time the Commodore succeeded in stopping it.
The recordings stopped when the bridge was destroyed in a raid to take the transmitters to reestablish the emergency beacon. Jack down loaded everything to his suit and then headed down ship to put an end to the war. Stopping at the long range Comm Compartment Jack could only shake his head at all the incredible damage. Not one circuit board or light block remained intact. The Comm equipment and anything that could be used to transmit a signal had been destroyed several times over with almost as much blood in and around the compartment as the Bridge. A body with a hole burned in its chest lay in the corner under a destroyed cabinet that had to be only days old. A comm tech’s patch on her shoulder. Though Jack had no idea what either ships patch looked like he figured that the ships patch on the other shoulder was probably from the lower ship since a glass laser circuit board from a long range comm was still clutched in her hand. A laser pistol in her other hand was half hidden. Her finger still pulling the trigger.
Jack took the laser pistol checking it over and then quickly disassembled it. Fixing its malfunctioning power clip by turning the clip around to line up properly. Wondering how the gal had managed to force the clip in backwards in the first place but realizing that in the heat of battle inexperience could do many amazing things and in this case probably cost her, her life. Jack was just glad that he had some kind of weapon now. So much for a milk run with no weapons and no emergency beacon.
Turning to Red. “You did send out the message torpedo didn’t you?” Even though he remembered telling her he could not remember hearing or feeling the thump that should have accompanied the launch. But then he was a bit busy at the time.
“Yes Captain. Though it is going to take some time to get back to the ship even following the trail we cleared.”
Pan turned from watching out the Comm Compartment’s hatch. “Are we going to go back to the Transport and wait for reinforcements Captain? I don’t think these people are going to be too friendly.”
Jack looked down through the deck shaking his head. “No Pan. I can see both laser and blaster fire down the ship. No. A lot of people are probably still dying and it needs to be stopped. Though it would probably be a good idea if you all went back to the Transport and informed who ever shows up what is going on. I can handle this on my own.”
Chump turned from digging in another corner. “Pan you and Red go back when we are done here. The Captain is going to need someone to tell our people on the other side. They won’t know the Captain from a bilge rat.”
Red hauled a console that had been blown off its pedestal from some kind of blast, off another body and pulled out a 4 foot long curved bladed saber laying under it. “Hey! I am not staying behind. I am your only tank on this little foray. Those laser pistols are
n’t going to hurt me much.” The saber blade had Gronk markings on the blade and hilt. The hilt fit her hand perfectly but then it was made for Gronks. The blade came alive with the edge lighting up when she grasped it firmly. The whole blade shimmering with a hum as she brandished it around sweeping it through the air slicing what was left of a steel stanchion off at the end.
“Ya but laser assault guns will and even a laser pistol can blind you. Not to mention the blasters that have probably been captured on this side.” Jack wondering how the man even as big as he was managed to heft the big 4 foot blade.
“Well I am not staying behind Captain. I will be fine.”
“Then that leaves you Pan. We will stay in contact. Lock the hatch behind you and if nothing else, you can tell the relief forces where they are holding us when they get here.”
Pan swallowed licking her lips. “No. I am not going back alone. I will stay with you. I can set up a recording to inform who ever shows up later where to find our bodies.” And started tapping on her pad.
Chump had Red cut up a flat steel bar he pulled from a console into three inch triangles that he stuffed into his pockets. Then looked at several pieces of conduit running along and down from the overhead until he found what he wanted and had Red cut off about a 4 foot piece. Stripping the wires out of it he sighted down it and smiled. “Perfect.” He had her cut a slightly smaller diameter conduit that fit nicely into the first into short 3 inch long lengths to Jack’s consternation as he took up watch at the hatch.
“Come on Chump. We need to be going.”
“Just a few minutes, Cap.” Chump said with a strange clipped voice as Jack’s mind was flooded with mischievous pride. Reaching out to Jack. “May borrow gun. Please.”
Bewildered, Jack handed over the pistol as Pan went back into the compartment.
Chump turned down the heat of the pistol and started melting one end of the short steel tubes. Fashioning them into points. Then dropping them into a bucket of water Pan had gotten from a cleaning closet. While he was closing off the end of the short tubes, Red was cutting up what was left of the steel bar he had used to make the little triangles from, into narrow strips.
Battleship Destroyer 2 (Battleship Destoryer) Page 37