The Junkyard Dogs now had control of a medical shuttle along with an open invitation to board the Nexus Station!
With several of the Junkyard infiltration team dressed up in medical gear and another two dozen operatives posing as wounded men or their attendants, the shuttle departed on the short, two-minute trip to the north airlock of the Nexus. Once inside, they went through a desultory inspection before being allowed to disembark from the shuttle and board the spoke elevator for transport out to the first level of ring one where the infirmary was located. As the invaders rode the spoke elevator outward towards the ring one, the "patients" among them began to shed their bandages and other medical paraphernalia. Upon reaching the first level of ring one, the now normal-appearing personnel left the elevator area and faded immediately into the busy background hustle and bustle of the Nexus Station.
The medical shuttle, still under the command of the Junkyard Dogs, made two more runs to the Nasr before all of the infiltration forces had been shuttled onto the Station. After three tense trips of the shuttle, the Junkyard Dogs had managed to get over seventy men onto the station. The enemy was not yet aware that anything was amiss but the invading forces only had about a day, maybe a little more, before someone would sense that all was not as it should be and begin investigating, maybe even sounding some kind of alarm.
Over the course of the next three hours, the Pride of Persia and the Aladdin, both of them stuffed with fighters and their gear, also bluffed their way past the bored security people on the Hercules. These two ships parked in the Station docking area and began disembarking more infiltrators in groups of two or three people at a time.
Chapter 51.
Santana Nexus Station, ring three, level two, January 13, 2599.
As soon as they were safely on the station, Carlisle, Steuben and Kelly went with Clancy Davis-Moore to find Salaam Alwadhi who was to be their contact with the Nexus Resistance. In another effort to maintain some semblance of normalcy, the Sheik of Barsoom had allowed the population of the Nexus Station to continue communicating with the rest of the Quadrant using some forms of correspondence. One of the outlets approved for Station residents was email messages to members of their immediate families. Salaam, who had no children, had been periodically sending emails to a "daughter" named "Imani," who was actually Clancy Davis-Moore. The emails with their carefully coded messages were routed through several different Stage II communicators before being finally delivered to the Scrapyard. Though they were delivered only sporadically, these messages had kept the Junkyard Dogs and the station resistance at least somewhat up to date on each other's activities.
Salaam occupied one of shop/residence units on the third ring of the Santana Nexus Station that actually spanned two levels. His curio shop was on the first level of the ring, where most of the businesses were located, while his residence was accessible from his store by negotiating a spiral staircase located discreetly in one of the back corners of the shop. Salaam had taken great pains to disguise that staircase from the Sheiks goons. The result was that the "guards" who had robbed Salaam had no idea that his shop was a two level affair. They had looked right at the disguised entrance to the staircase on several occasions and all they had ever seen was a wall, right where it appeared as though a wall should be.
The information on which of the shop units spanned more than one deck was not really all that hard to obtain, but none of the invaders, in their arrogance and their ignorance, had thought to ask for such information. The station bureaucrats, many of whom had been allowed to maintain their regular jobs, were actually performing a service for a change by making information as hard to get as they could reasonably manage without risking their lives or livelihoods.
It was after hours and Salaam's shop up on the first level was closed and locked with the lights turned off. Clancy Davis Moore knocked on the door to Salaam's home, which was located directly below the shop out on the second level of the third ring.
"Clancy!" said Salaam quietly, but he was obviously pleased to see his old friend. "Come in, quickly!"
Davis-Moore, Carlisle and Sergeant Kelly went into Salaam's apartment. Salaam, after glancing up and down the corridor, closed the door behind them.
"Good, it looks like you haven't aroused any suspicions," he said.
"Salaam, my old friend," said Davis-Moore as he embraced Alwadhi, "How are you?"
"As well as can be expected, Clancy," was the reply. "I will feel much better when this business is over."
"As will I, Salaam. Allow me to introduce my companions. This is Ensign Tamara Carlisle, our tactician; Orville Steuben is an electronics tech from the New Ceylon station and this is Sergeant Kelly of the Federation Marines. They'll be helping us out with the liberation."
"A pleasure, Ms. Carlisle."
"Tamara will be fine, Salaam."
"Tamara, it is. And greetings to you Sergeant Kelly."
The marine nodded in reply.
"And to you Mr. Steuben."
"Nice to meet you, Salaam. Everybody just calls me, Steuben."
"Steuben it is then. I thank you all for risking your lives and coming here to help us."
"We have every bit as much to lose as you do, my friend," said Davis-Moore.
"That is unfortunately true."
"Have you been able to come up with any kind of a plan, Salaam?" asked Davis-Moore.
"Yes, we have been making some rather elaborate preparations," said Salaam, "Now that you are here we can begin to set things in motion. Don't bother to get comfortable, we are leaving immediately. There is someone you must meet."
"Who?"
"It is best that I let him tell you who he is. When you find out, you'll know why he has gone into hiding since the takeover of the station. Come, it is but a short walk." He looked at Carlisle, and frowned, "Your clothes are fine but your outfit needs one more thing."
The Ensign was wearing a modest, Islamic Alliance-approved pants skirt that she had been given by the Ambassador's wife. Sondia reasoned that the split-legged skirt would allow Carlisle all of the freedom of motion she might need while, at the same time, not calling too much attention to her while she and her companions were in the Islamic sections of the Nexus Station. Salaam pulled a scarf from the closet near the outside door of the room.
"Ah, this is perfect," he said, "Tamara, if you cover your face with this scarf, we should be able to pass you off as my daughter. Clancy, you and the Sergeant can walk a few paces behind, as though you are guarding us. It is not far, we should be walking for less than ten minutes."
Carlisle used a mirror to arrange the scarf, making sure that it hid her Spacer Clan tattoo. A moment later, the conspirators slipped out into the main corridor of the second level. Salaam closed and locked the door behind them.
It was 'evening' on the station and the lights in the corridor had been dimmed accordingly. There were clusters of people in small groups, many of them obviously families, strolling up and down the corridor. Among them, the small knot of infiltrators went unnoticed. Even Kelly, with the obvious Spacer clan tattoo on the left side of his face, didn't draw any extra attention as the station population included a fair number of Spacers, many of whom were employed as bodyguards by some of the wealthier residents.
After a short walk, Salaam instructed his companions to wait in the bustling open expanse that marked the area where one of the spokes connected the first ring of the station to the spindle. Here, in this busy intersection, there were elevators and stairways that led upwards to the first level and downward to the third, fourth and fifth levels of the station. Salaam went across the spoke elevator area and disappeared into the corridor on the other side.
The three remaining conspirators conversed quietly about mundane topics while keeping a careful watch out for anything out of the ordinary. The spoke junction area was busy, which helped to hide them in plain sight. After less than five minutes, Salaam returned.
"We will be entering a restaurant. Follow me, we will go through
the establishment as though we are to be seated in the back but just stay behind me and keep following."
The four of them retraced Salaam's earlier path and were ushered into a restaurant that specialized in Old Earth mid-eastern cuisine. The heavily spiced dishes and the freshly baked flatbreads produced by the establishment smelled delicious. As Salaam had promised, they filed through the crowded establishment and into what appeared to be a private dining room in the back. They did not stop, however, but exited the room through the service entrance in the back where they were escorted to yet another of the spiral staircases that spanned two decks of the station's ring.
They took the staircase downward and outward to a compartment on the third level of the ring. Salaam went to an undistinguished wall panel and, after fiddling with it, removed it, revealing an opening into a hidden corridor. The panel was only about half of the height of the hidden corridor beyond and all of them had to stoop to negotiate the opening. Davis-Moore and Carlisle were both reminded immediately of the hideout on the New Ceylon station that they had been able to use to successfully defend that orbital station just a few short weeks ago.
"Go ahead, it isn't far now," said Salaam. He pulled a hand torch out of a pocket as his companions entered the secret corridor.
Salaam followed them in and a co-conspirator from the restaurant replaced the panel behind them.
The group followed Salaam and his light down the dark corridor through several right angle turns and the removal and replacement of several more panels before coming out into a vestibule. On one wall of the compartment was a stout, featureless metal door that was being guarded by two very well-armed and businesslike sentries. Multiple security monitors lined one entire wall of the vestibule. Having watched the progress of Salaam's group on the security monitors, the guards had been anticipating the arrival of the small entourage. The sentries greeted Salaam like he was an old friend before one of them went over to the metal door, punched a code into a number pad mounted on the wall next to it and pushed the door open for them.
Through the now unlocked door, the infiltrators were ushered into an opulently furnished room that was some ten meters square. Again, one of the walls was covered floor to ceiling with security monitors. There were half a dozen chairs lined up in a semicircle facing a desk where their Resistance contact was currently working.
If any of the infiltrators had been expecting some kind of formidable champion, they were to be sadly disappointed. An elderly, scrawny, white-haired little man sat at the desk with notes scattered here and there in front of him. He had one anachronistic affectation that was immediately visible: he was wearing a pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses that sat about halfway down his nose. The spectacles added to the studious nature of the odd little fellow. A computer terminal was on his right and he could place himself in front of it easily by simply swiveling the office chair he was sitting in.
"Clancy Davis-Moore, Tamara Carlisle, Orville Steuben, Sergeant Kelly," said Salaam, "I'd like you all to meet Harley Earl."
Carlisle was the first to speak.
"Nexus...architect...builder...are you The Harley Earl," asked Carlisle, "the architect of this station?"
"I am indeed, young lady," said the little man, "I'm impressed, not many people know much of anything about me."
"I...I have a very good memory. I was just studying about the Nexus station a few weeks ago. There was an old picture..."
"Were they kind to me?"
"All they said was that you were a recluse and they weren't even sure that you were still alive!"
"As you can see, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," replied Earl, with a wry smile. "Sit down, all of you. We have much to discuss."
"There is a compartment much like this on the New Ceylon Orbital Station," said Davis-Moore, as he took a seat in one of the chairs facing Earl's desk. "Is including such rooms a standard practice?"
"It is for me," replied the little man. "I include these kinds of things in the design. Some of the hidden corridors are only used during the construction phase and are sealed up immediately after. They're fairly easy to put back into service...if and when you need them. This particular room was made especially for my own use. In fact, there is at least one like it on each of the ten rings of the station. Each is a little different and you won't find them on any blueprint."
"Impressive," said Davis-Moore.
"Yes, and quite useful in times like these."
Davis-Moore nodded his head, "Times like these...," he said, "...I understand that you've given a lot of thought as to how to go about regaining control of this station."
"Do you have the necessary naval strength to counteract the enemy's ships?" asked Earl.
"When the Sheik starts his big powwow," replied Davis-Moore, "and all of the ships are undermanned, I believe that Commander Kresge will have that pretty well in hand, but I must confess that we won't really know until the time comes. What about the station?"
"I will tell you up front that my plan is going to seem somewhat radical at first," said Earl.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures," said Carlisle.
"So true," replied Earl.
"So just what is your desperate plan?" asked Davis-Moore.
"I need to give you a little background first," said Earl, "Where to begin?" The old man thought for a moment, seemed to come to a decision, and then plunged into his explanation, "When I designed this station, the tenth ring was to be dedicated to the Military from the beginning. The Federation forces abandoned that ring when the terrorists took over a few weeks ago. The invaders didn't really meet all that much resistance. The ranks of the Military personnel had been pretty well thinned out responding to all of the terrorist attacks that were going on in other parts of the quadrant."
"That's what Admiral Kingston told us," said Davis-Moore.
"Harriet made it out?" asked Earl.
"Yes, she was injured but not too seriously," replied Davis-Moore, "She's back at the Scrapyard near the New Ceylon Colony."
"That's good news," said Earl.
"Sorry for the interruption," said Davis-Moore, "Please continue."
Harley Earl nodded and continued, "The Sheik and most of his people have remained concentrated on the tenth ring. At the present time he has nowhere near enough men to really occupy a station this vast. In fact, his men have to be very careful; some of them have gone missing from time to time." The old man gave them a wicked grin. Carlisle was reminded of a fox. Perhaps this old man was more formidable then he had appeared at first glance!
"I can give you the names of two of them who I would not mourn should they disappear," said Salaam.
"All in good time, Salaam," said the little architect. "Another thing you may not know," Earl continued, "is that each of the ten ring structures was constructed separately and then connected to the spindle and the other rings afterwards."
"And this means...?" asked Salaam.
"It means that they can be disconnected from one another, 'decoupling' we call it."
"Are you saying that you intend to physically disconnect the tenth ring from the rest of the station?" asked Carlisle.
"That's exactly what I am proposing. The Sheik's big summit meeting will mean that the vast majority of his forces will be on the tenth ring. We do our best to get the few remaining station residents that are still on the tenth ring off from it, herd or lure as many of the Sheik's remaining men down onto it as we can, and then decouple the tenth ring. With only scattered enemy forces in the other nine rings of the station, we should have little difficulty in subduing them and regaining control of the rest of the Station. With the bulk of the enemy's forces isolated in the separated tenth ring, without lights or power, they will be pretty much at our mercy."
The newcomers looked back and forth at one another as they considered the enormity of what the architect was proposing.
"Do we have to actually separate the tenth ring?" asked Davis-Moore, "Can't we just take control o
f the spindle, cut off the power and wait for them to give up?"
"I considered that," replied the architect, "but then I realized that there's just too much of a chance that something vital in the spindle could get damaged if the fighting gets too intense. Damage the wrong thing and we could wind up losing the entire station!"
"That makes sense," said Carlisle.
"Audacious!" said Davis-Moore, "but you can be certain that the enemy won't be expecting it. Sounds like a good plan. I like it!"
"It will only work if you have the naval strength to neutralize their warships," said Earl.
"We’re working on it," said Carlisle.
"How are we going to get our people deployed?" asked Davis-Moore..
"These hidden access corridors run all through the station. There are also the maintenance channels for ventilation, power and what not, that make up the bottom fourth of each of the ring spokes. We can easily gain access to the central spindle or anywhere else, for that matter, just about any time we want. I have a different plan though, something a little bolder, that should work splendidly."
"And that is...?" asked Davis-Moore.
"When the time comes, we'll just take over one of the spindle elevators for the duration."
"How are we going to accomplish that?"
"In anticipation of requiring access to an elevator, the number four spindle elevator has been randomly experiencing problems for the last several days. You know, stopping at the wrong level, taking too long to respond when a call is put on it, that sort of thing. When we need it, we'll just light up the 'out of order' warnings at each of the stops and we can move our people up and down within the spindle while we are 'repairing' the elevator. It should pose no problem."
The Santana Nexus (Junkyard Dogs Book 3) Page 31