“Where is the Chaos?” Mike asked looking to Gunny. He had expected the express freighter to be parked with the other merchant ships.
Masters’ old face smiled as he pointed further to his right.
“She’s over at the repair station,” he said.
Collins increased his shuttle’s speed and closed in on the station.
The repair docks had once been in orbit around Austro Prime serving merchant and military ships alike. It was where Mike and Gunny had once worked and where they had secretly repaired and stolen the Star Wolf. After the last battle at Austro Prime they had taken the facility and moved it to the Wolf’s Den. Here the station could be used more effectively and away from enemy surveillance or civilian interference.
After a few minutes of flight Mike could now clearly see the six docking berths of the station. On the port side he saw that the ISS Lexington was occupying two of the berths. He had read that she was being restored to service and in another two weeks would be fully operational again. He had to admit she looked better than the last time he saw the old auxiliary carrier. At that time, she had been nothing more than a burned out hull, having suffered an out of control interior fire from a missile strike during the Battle of Jericho Six.
She was one of the reasons why Captain Hope was planning this daring mission. To buy time to complete repairs and training before the enemy found their safe haven. Once back in service the Lady Lex would carry forty-eight star fighters into battle.
On the starboard side of the repair station were two Karduan warships and the Chaos. The enemy ships had been salvaged from former Wolf battle sites. The larger of the two enemy ships was a Companion Destroyer, which was the equivalent of a Confederation light cruiser. The other ship was a frigate sized destroyer escort.
Mike wasn’t surprised to see the Karduan ships being restored but he was surprised to see the Chaos at the station. The former pirate ship had already had two upgrades that he had known of. The first was at the hands of the pirate - Peter Alexander. The privateer captain had upgraded her with light armor around her key systems and added several more offensive weapons turrets.
Alexander supposedly had used her to capture a Karduan DE, which he called the Anarchy. This made him a local media star but after Mike had caught him attacking a Confederation frigate they now knew his true colors. The former crew of the Chaos during interrogation admitted that he was in league with the Karduans and was both a traitor and spy for them. He had escaped their last encounter but Mike was hoping for another chance to bring the fiend to justice.
The second upgrade was after they had captured her from the pirates. The Chaos had been damaged in a surprise attack from the ISS Mammoth and after surrendering had been towed into her repairs docks. There the Mercury class express freighter was once more repaired and refitted.
The express freighter had been upgraded with a torpedo tube, heavier armor around her engines and a half dozen more Karduan energy weapon turrets. The Chaos had already had engine modifications, extra weapons and armor, which in combination with her new armaments made her into a formable adversary.
“What the hell happened to her?” Collins exclaimed looking at the once armed freighter.
As he piloted his shuttle closer he could see that she still had armor but almost all of her offensive and heavy hitting turrets had been removed. She was reduced down to just point defense gauss cannons and one short-range twin barreled fusion turret.
Masters kept his smile to himself.
“The Captain had some modifications made to make her look more vulnerable,” he said.
Mike shook his head thinking that the freighter was back to prewar armaments and would be a sitting duck in battle.
“What did I do to deserve this?” he mumbled opening a channel to the express freighter and requesting permission to come onboard.
It took a minute but then a familiar voice responded to his hail.
“Shuttle, please dock at Airlock C,” Rufo’s voice said sounding a bit odd in his formality.
Normally, Mike would have docked at the airlock closest to the bridge though he knew that Airlock C was on a cargo deck. Maybe they wanted to show him the cumquats they’d be carrying into battle he thought still brooding over the condition of the former pirate ship.
Hitting the automatic docking sequence, he waited as the shuttle’s magnetic clamps attached to the ship’s hull and their two airlocks pressurized. Getting a green light, they moved to the airlocks and passed through them to the freighter.
Mike was both not surprised and very surprised all at once. He was not surprised that it was a plan cargo deck of a merchant ship. He was very surprised that there was a company of forty-five crewmen standing at attention and in formation.
A whistle sounded piping him aboard. Behind him Jack gave him a gentle shove sending him into the cargo hold.
The officer in front of the ship’s company was a very familiar one.
Lt. Rufo Cappillo snapped a perfect hand salute along with his normal shit-eating grin.
“Captain, on the deck,” he called out.
Mike returned his salute.
“So you’re in on this too,” he said frowning at his friend.
“Welcome abroad Captain,” he replied sounding un-customarily formal.
“What’s going on?” Mike said a little more sternly.
Rufo continued to smile, “Would the Captain like to inspect the crew?”
Mike looked over his shoulder and saw several interesting things. The first was that this freighter’s crew was much larger than it should have been. The Chaos normally had a complement of fifteen men usually in five-man duty shifts. A freighter didn’t require the same manpower that a warship would have.
The second thing he noticed was that several of the faces were well known to him. He spotted several old gray wolves from the Star Wolf including Chief Reynolds and Chief Bell. Both were elderly veterans and Bell had an artificial left eye that glowed red. It was pretty hard to miss the man that the rest of crew called Cyclops.
Other members of the crew included the newly promoted Ensign Joe Pendleton, who was part of Harpers Academy’s wolf pups. He was a pilot with the Star Wolf’s fighter group and had also been a member of Mike’s boarding party team.
Others included maser operator Specialist Jim Byrd who had been rescued from the Karduan Star Destroyer. Standing next to him was his Blue friend Chac-Ras. The Karduan male was a Believer disciple and had not only help Mike take the massive Star Destroyer, but had also volunteered to join their cause. This meant fighting his own people but he didn’t see it that way as the Karduan males had been subtly resisting the matriarchal rule of their females for centuries.
Midshipman Gustov Jansen was also standing amongst the ship’s crew. The big man was of Norwegian decent and was a head taller than everyone else. He had been a midshipman at Harpers Academy and was one the middies that had been left behind when they had escaped. Now he and all of the rest of the remaining midshipmen had joined them. Mike made eye contact with him and noticed that he was smiling. In fact, they all were smiling at their new captain.
“Mr. Cappillo, dismiss the ship’s crew,” Lt. Collins ordered.
“Aye, aye sir!” he replied and saluted again before doing an about face.
“Company dismissed!” the Italian engineer called out.
The reaction was immediate as the crewmen relaxed and started leaving the cargo deck to head back to work.
“Ok give!” Mike said when his friend turned around.
“Why what do you mean, sir?”
Collins let out a breath as Rufo grinned on.
Behind him Gunny Masters spoke up, “You’d better tell him sir or he may blow a gasket.”
“I don’t know, he looks good in that shade of red,” Rufo said turning his head slightly towards the old Marine.
Mike ignored them both.
“Why does this ship have such a large crew complement?” he asked and continued “are th
ey a prize crew for when we capture enemy ships?”
Rufo let out a sigh realizing that his friend wasn’t going to play along.
“No, that is the standard crew, we haven’t been assigned any personnel as prize crews yet.”
Mike was a little taken aback at this news but knew his friend had all the answers.
“So start talking, why so many crewmen and what happened to this ship’s gun turrets?”
Lt. Cappillo reached into his pocket and produced a palm pad computer. With a touch of the screen his finger activated the computer’s holo screen-interface. A projection of blue light created a ship’s diagram for him to see in mid-air. Mike knew his friend didn’t like holo interfaces and he had actually seen him produce multiple palm pads back when they were both on the ISS Mammoth.
Staring at the floating image of the express freighter he could see that the merchant ship had been given extensive renovations. This reminded him what the repair crew of the Mammoth had nicknamed Cappillo – Lt. Frankenstein.
“What have you done to her?” Mike asked trying to put it all together.
“Well boss, I’ve got quite a tour planned for you,” he replied.
“Well then lead on Macbeth,” the reluctant would-be captain said and turned to head to the central lift.
Reaching the corridor just outside of the Cargo Bay 1C Mike turned left and Rufo turned right.
“What going on?” Collins asked a little confused.
“We’ll have to use the aft lift as we no longer have a central one,” Cappillo remarked as he hurried down the corridor.
Mike wanted to ask if they still had a forward lift but was preoccupied with the width of the corridor. Merchant ships were often tight on space but this corridor was just wide enough for two people to pass each other and only if they turned a little sideways.
“What happen to this hallway?” he asked as they reach the aft lift.
“Well, we had to make room for various new systems and internal armor,” he said entering the lift and announcing his destination, “E-deck.”
Again Collins was caught between two questions, “Why are going to E-deck and how much armor is she now carrying?”
“We left on the exterior armor that the pirates added as well as what we put on her key systems after we captured her. We added armor to her interior super structure including all outer walls, corridors and interior bay walls.”
“So if she takes a bay hit her inner walls would be armored and be able to withstand the hit,” Mike finished for him.
Cappillo nodded, “C-deck is the only deck that still has a standard cargo holds.”
“So why are we going to E-deck?” he asked knowing that this was the lowest deck on the ship and usually the dankest. These smaller holds were usually reserved for smaller and tightly packed cargo containers.
The lift doors swooshed open and Mike could see that the hold wasn’t as it should be. In front of him was a makeshift hanger bay complete with missile lifts and refueling stations. Twelve LN-28 Wasp star-fighters sat on the deck along with an armored grav shuttle.
“It looks like a slightly larger version of the Wolf’s fighter bay,” Mike commented moving over to the closest Wasp star-fighter.
He liked the older Wasps, as they were small, fast and maneuverable. Though the SF-86 Saber was larger, slightly faster and could carry more ordinance. Both were hard to hit and these Wasps now had a much better ECM packages than the ones they once had as well as being made with TPA or Trans-Poly Aluminum. The Wolf’s crew had used these old Wasps out of desperation and discovered in battle that even though they had older ECM tech the enemy couldn’t easily detect them due to their TPA frames and hull coatings.
Rufo pointed to the cargo bay’s doors, “We still have to depressurize to launch as we haven’t had time to make a launch tube.”
Mike nodded as he scanned the bay and stopped suddenly. Raising his arm, he pointed to the far right of the bay.
“Is that a twin particle turret?” he asked turning his head and looking at the inverted weapons system.
“Sure is and if you look left you’ll see a twin fusion turret. In the forward lower holds we have another pair on each side as well as other turrets in between. There even more inside the A-deck’s holds. We took all of the turrets and brought them inside placing them on air locked shafts and elevators making them retractable as well as adding a few additional turrets.”
Mike nodded understanding what this onetime express freighter had become.
“Little cargo means lots of extra armor and retractable gun turrets,” he said out loud.
“Yep, so she’ll look like a helpless freighter and yet have the bite of a wolf or at least a wolf pup,” Cappillo said smiling from ear to ear.
Mike was smiling too, “Any other surprises?”
“Forward and aft torpedo tubes,” he said leading him back to the lift.
“Standard torpedoes?” Collins asked knowing that they had used up many of their Blitzen anti-ship torpedoes in the Battle of Austro Prime. Since then they had been allocated to ships of higher importance.
Mike knew that the anti-ship torpedoes were originally named after the German tactic of Blitz Krieg or lighting war that they had used in the opening days of World War II. Since the torpedoes’ development they were simply called Blitzens but now it was after the fastest of Santa’s reindeers.
These anti-ship torpedoes had cutting edge avionics and electronic counter warfare software. They were also extremely fast, often getting to a target even before an enemy could shoot them down or before any accompanying missiles would hit. This sometimes made them a solitary target for counter batteries to shoot at, but with their extreme speed they tended to defeat even that.
“Besides a compliment of standard torpedoes, we have sixteen Blitzens, two Dashers and wait for it … a Rudolph,” Rufo said stopping the lift at B-deck.
“What!” Mike exclaimed surprised by not on the allocation of the Blitzens to the express freighter but also of the two types of specialty Blitzens.
Dashers were equipped for ECW or electronic counter warfare. They’d be shot into enemy formation to scramble their electronic, interfere with enemy ships’ target locks and send out false ship readings. A Rudolph though was the big daddy of Blitzen torpedoes being nuclear tipped with a high yield warhead.
“Yeah, we found them amongst the torpedoes we took from the Brittany,” Cappillo said reminding him of the haul of arms and munitions they had recovered from Karduan hands.
Stepping out into B-deck’s narrow corridor they moved to the deck’s starboard cargo bay.
“I do have two more surprises for you, that is if you can handle it, sir,” the young engineer said now trying to suppress his big ass smile and act all serious.
“Get to it Lt. Frankenstein,” Mike countered knowing his friend all too well.
“Ok, you asked for it,” Cappillo replied activating the cargo door’s sensor. A second later the door swished open revealing one of his various special projects.
The hold was no longer for cargo but was occupied with three larger rectangular shaped multiple missile launchers.
“You did it!” Mike replied walking over to the nearest launcher.
Rufo had wanted to make something like this back when they were on the Mammoth while hiding out as they repaired the frigates ISS Alamo and ISS Java. There wasn’t enough time back then but now it looked like he finally got the chance to complete his inspired or just crazy idea depending on your point of view.
“Yep, Captain Hope gave me a free hand on this and I ran with the ball.”
Collins walked down the first bank of missiles marveling at the multiple missile launchers or MMLs.
“How many missiles does each one shoot?” he asked as he pondered their use.
MRL or Multiple Rocket Launchers were nothing new to warfare. Several versions existed going as far back to ancient China when they created a multiple arrow launcher. In World War II the Germans had a six tub
e MRL called a Nebelwerfer while the Americans utilized a T-34 Calliope which was a M4 Sherman tank with sixty rocket tubes mounted on top.
Rufo followed him stopping for a second to look at a control panel.
“Each bank has thirty-three missiles, but they are pretty low tech so it is really a close range weapons system.”
Mike nodded understanding that even as single shot launchers, so many missiles all fired at one time would create a devastating single strike. It kind of reminded him of an Ethan Allen pepperbox pistol. Not very accurate but with six barrels you wouldn’t want to stand in front of it especially in the event of a chain fire.
He was about to ask if there were any more surprises when he remembered the second crazy idea Cappillo wanted to do to the ISS Java back when they were repairing it. Running back into the hallway he moved to the inner wall and pulled the closest access hatch open. That’s why the central lift was removed he suddenly had realized.
“Holy Shit!” Mike shouted, pulling his head out of the hatchway and looking back at Lt. Frankenstein with pride, respect and he had to admit it - awe.
“What can I say, we had a few extra parts,” Cappillo said letting his big ass grin say the rest.
Returning to the Mary Queen of Scots, Mike’s mind raced with the possibilities of the modified express freighter and what its real purpose would be. Gunny Masters had disappeared and was left behind on the Chaos when it was time to return.
Ignoring everyone he headed straight to the command level and to the office of the Captain Kirkland. He must have been expected as the E-4 receptionist to the outer office sent him straight to the conference room. Knocking once he opened the door and saw a group of familiar faces sitting around a rectangular table. Palm pads and coffee cups were covering the surface of the oaken table while floating above it was a holo map of the quadrant complete with the most recent intelligence estimates of enemy locations.
Wolf's Run: The Chase of War (Star Wolf Sqaudron Book 2) Page 4