Wolves at the Gate (Star Wolf Squadron Book 3)

by Shane VanAulen

  Schmidty crossed to him and looked in the open panel.

  “That’s the way it is lately. I open them up and find that they’re not that bad,” he said.

  “Do you have a manifest or work order of what was wrong with them?” Collins inquired as he closed the panel.

  “Yeah, right here,” he said reaching to a shelf where he grabbed a palm pad and passed it to him.

  Mike stood up and took the pad and looked over the work order.

  “It says is had a systematic cascade failure,” he announced in disbelief.

  The old Petty Officer shrugged his shoulders.

  “I don’t even look at the manifests anymore. I simple do a diagnostic to find what’s wrong and then strip the good parts off.”

  Mike rolled it over and activated the droid’s startup program.

  The droid came to life and sat up

  “Repair Droid 465 ready for operational use,” the droid said as it pulled itself up to a standing position.

  “Who is in charge of the general repair station? Who made this diagnostic?” Collins demand as he panned down the manifest and found the name of the officer who made these horrible decisions. Seeing the name, he let out a sigh and tossed the pad onto the table.

  “Who was it, sir?” Schmidty asked.

  “Ensign William Porter, my slob of a roommate,” he informed still wondering how this guy ever graduated from the Star Academy.

  After twenty years in the service, Petty Officer Schmidt knew better than to get involved in problems that clearly fell into officers’ territory.

  Over the next few days, they managed to get four more droids back online. Mike then put the new droids to work helping the petty officer. Collins only spent two hours a day in the salvage station but by the end of the week, he was surprised at the sight of the rectangular room. The droids were diagnostic and repair droids so once they were put to work they would fix one thing and then find the next thing to repair on their own.

  Schmidty wondered what they should do with them and suggested sending them back to the general repair office. Mike agreed and they sent one droid back with a note saying that it was repaired. The droid showed back up an hour later with its central processing unit pulled out and smash with a note saying that the droid was for parts. After that, they decided that “someone” probably didn’t want to get in trouble for messing up.

  Petty Officer Schmidt shrugged his shoulders and said that he was in enough trouble and didn’t need to rock the boat. Mike nodded and agreed with him remembering what Commander Hunter said about keeping his cool and staying out of trouble. That left the question of what to do with the repaired droids?

  On his way to his last ship orientation class, he found himself in a lift all by himself.

  “Pal, can you hear me?” he said towards the lift’s ceiling.

  “Yes Mike, what can I do for you?” the A.I. answered.

  “I have several repair droids that we fixed down in the Salvage Office. What departments could use them? I’m looking for a home for them as the General Repair Office doesn’t want them back,” he explained.

  “I’ll compile a list for you of the various departments’ tables of organization and equipment along with their needs and send it to your palm pad,” Pallas replied.

  “Thanks, oh and we’ll need a transfer order,” Collins suggested.

  “I have to work on that,” Pal answered sounding uncertain for a computer.

  At that moment, the lift door opened and two crewmen entered ending their conversation.

  As Mike hurried to the orientation class he noticed several crewmen glance or stared at him as he passed them in the corridor. He had noticed this happening for the last week. At first, he thought it was because he was part of the Leper Colony but now the looks have been getting longer. A few people even nodded to him as if they knew him as they passed him by. Perhaps they knew enough to give him a wide berth as he was on the Commodore’s shit list.

  The last ship orientation class was shorter than normal. There was a short test which was easy and then they had a guest speaker. Commander Rick Hemmings, the Pallas’ executive officer had come to speak to the class. Mike was happy to see his godfather but kept a straight face.

  The Commander welcomed them to the Pallas’ family and congratulated them on completing the orientation course. He then opened the forum up for a question and answer session. Most of the questions were pretty simple or had already been covered in the class. It also seemed that many of his classmates had gotten the word about the conditions on the battle carrier since the command of Granny Essex started.

  After the class was dismissed for the last time, a couple of young officers stayed behind to speak with the XO. Collins stayed as well, blending in with the others. Before Commander Hemmings could start to hear their questions another group of crewmen came in to use the classroom.

  Stepping out into the corridor some of the young officers looked nervous. Mike quickly suggested the mess hall down the corridor for a little more privacy. Hemmings agreed, saying that a cup of coffee would be a good idea.

  The mess hall was empty as was usual for this time of day. Mike took the opportunity to get a meal as well as a cup of coffee. He had a half-hour until his officer’s course class would begin. Leading them to his normal table they sat down with the ship’s executive officer.

  Collins ate and listened as the others asked their questions. Most of their inquiries were of a personal nature about duty assignments, quarters and one very hesitant question about a transfer to another ship. Commander Hemmings sipped his coffee and answered their questions one by one.

  As they were discussing life on board of a battle carrier the mess hall filled up with pilots anxious for their noon meal. Once more the four pilots walked over with their trays to Mike’s table. Closing in on their table they saw that he was not alone but that didn’t stop them as they hurriedly moved right up to the table’s edge.

  Before any of them could speak, Commander Hemmings half turned in his seat to see who had arrived. He had been sitting with his back towards the new arrivals and they also couldn’t see who he was. All they could see was Collins and three other junior officers who weren’t pilots sitting at their table.

  Mike had to keep from laughing when he saw the looks on their faces as the ship’s XO looked over to them and smiled. Hemmings invited them to join them just as two of the other officers from the orientation class excused themselves to leave for other duties as their questions had all been answered.

  The four pilots looked nervous but hastily sat down saying very little. The good commander was explaining to the last officer from his class on how to apply for a transfer but also explained that he had no control over the process or where he would be sent if he received a transfer.

  Mike had finished eating and quickly excused himself as he had to get to his next class. He really wanted to talk to Uncle Rick as he had a lot of questions and a few complaints, especially about his ever-increasing schedule but he knew that this was not the place to have that conversation.

  Before he slipped away, the executive officer signaled for him to wait for a moment.

  “Ensign Collins, I’d like to meet with you in the maintenance office before your next duty shift tonight if you have the time,” he said.

  Mike nodded and simply said, “yes, sir.”

  Taking his tray to the disposal bin he noticed two things: The first was that some of the other officers in the mess hall were watching him as he crossed the room. The other thing was that as he reached the exit and looked back to his table he saw Commander Hemmings talking to the four pilots as they all leaned in closer to him. The last thing he saw was the commander put something on the table that looked like a data crystal. Whatever it was, it would have to wait as his next class would be starting in a few minutes.

  His officer’s basic course class was as usual filled with all the things he already learned and had been previously tested on. Even though he had passed
the class before he still studied and did all of the readings again.

  After class, it was off to the salvage and repair office. Entering the office, he found the repair droids hard at work and Schmidty was watching a holo-vid. It looked like one of those old Hollywood action movies that the modern Hollywood would never make today.

  Ensign Collins was about to lose it on the petty officer when he realized he knew this movie, in fact, he had lived it. It took him another second to recognize that it was a vid of the Randori’s and the Cody’s desperate battle against the rear half of a Kardie squadron.

  Mike hadn’t seen the record vid of the battle not really wanting to relive that desperate fight. They had won but at a cost. He and Commander Hutton had both lost their ships as well as fifty percent of their crews. That was a lot of good people who ended up dead on his watch and he didn’t need a reminder of that.

  Petty Officer Schmidt finally noticed that the young officer was standing there. Lt. Collins’ blue eyes were glued to the holo-projection and he looked upset.

  “Sorry, sir,” the Petty Officer said cutting off the holo-projection.

  “Where did you get that vid?” Mike asked.

  “I got it from a buddy in my old engineering section,” he explained and added, “he said that the record vids were being passed around and that almost everyone was watching them.”

  “Vids?” Mike repeated.

  “Yes, sir. They start with the Star Wolf’s escape from Austro Prime and ended with the Battle for Sargasso Station,” he informed.

  Mike leaned on the table as he pondered what this all meant. Someone had made public the records that he had given to the Commodore. He had also given a copy to Cmdr. Hemmings and of course Pallas had access to them.

  Uncle Rick said he had a plan to give them to the other ship captains that he trusted. Maybe they had been released by one of them or more likely by Hemmings himself.

  Captain Hope had wanted the Admiralty to see what they had done but he had also leaked similar vids to the Templars at Blue Rock. He had to entice them into the war and it had worked. Perhaps that was what Commander Hemmings was doing. It would explain what he saw earlier in the mess hall.

  “Mister Collins, you took part in all of these actions?”

  “Yes, along with hundreds of other men and women,” he answered.

  “And you were the captain of the Randori at this battle?” Schmidty continued.

  “Yeah,” he replied watching holo-image as the battle played out in faster than normal time. The battle had taken six or seven hours but in this holo version, it had been edited for time.

  “It was an amazing victory, sir,” the Petty Officer stated.

  “We were lucky, the enemy was spread out and my Q-ship had a few surprises for them that they weren’t expecting.”

  “Commodore Essex and Admiral Yancy demoted you after seeing this?” he said shaking his head.

  “I don’t know if they actually watched the entire thing or even read all of the reports but yeah they stripped me of few things,” he said reaching over and deactivating the holo-imager. He had seen enough and really wished that he was back with the Star Wolf.

  “That’s just not right, I actually did something but you …” he said just as the ensign cut him off.

  “… Shouldn’t worry about it,” Mike finished for him.

  The petty officer shrugged his shoulders as his face made a grimace.

  Collins looked down the aisle at the busy repair droids working at the main table.

  “I’m going to be sending four of the repair droids to the sections that need them the most. The four maintenance teams all should have a repair droid as part of their equipment list but they currently don’t have any,” he explained.

  “That’s good because they will soon be out of things to do here,” Schmidty said and explained further as he got up and walked down the opposite side. “They are already done going through all of the salvage for parts. I then put them to work on checking the inventory of stored parts to see if they are all serviceable.”

  “Sounds good, what’s down there,” Mike asked seeing several units sitting of the far end of the work table.

  “The droids found four old repair robots that were stored on a bottom shelf. They repaired them but I don’t know what to do with them. They are old Type-Twos and aren’t used anymore or are even registered on the ship’s equipment manifest,” PO2 Schmidt informed.

  Mike walked down the aisle and saw the old Type-Two repair robots and smiled. He had worked with Type-Two and Type-Three robots before and knew them well. You had to program them to do a specific job but they were tough and reliable. The Type-Two had magnetic tracks so they could crawl about the exterior of the hull or up an interior wall to make repairs. The Type-Three had anti-grav plating which allowed null gravity and limited flight.

  Looking the robots over he easily found the activation controls and turned one of them on. The unit lit right up and awaited its instructions. Pulling out his palm pad he brought up one of his files for this type of robot and downloaded its instructions.

  “What are you doing sir?” Schmidty asked.

  “Before I helped steal the Star Wolf, I had worked at an orbital repair station. We had forty Type-Three repair robots and it was my job to program them and send them out each day to work. Later, we got repair droids and I found that if you slave the robots with a repair droid then they become the droid’s partner and helper. It also saves you from having to program them each day as they simple assist the repair droid which already has advanced diagnostic capabilities and will instruct the robot on what to do,” Collins explained.

  “That’s pretty sweet,” the old petty officer said watching as the ensign moved to the next robot and repeated the process. After a few minutes, he had all four robots tandem to the four droids he was sending to the Leper Colony’s maintenance teams.

  “We’ll send them off with the droids tomorrow,” the young officer said still smiling.

  Schmidty nodded, “There is one more thing they found but I didn’t know what we should do with it.

  The petty officer then led him to the very rear of the rectangular room to a dark and lonely corner. There crammed in a narrow space was an old medical robot or Med-Bot this one being a Model 150A.

  “There is another one in the other corner but it looks in even worse shape than this one,” he informed pointing to the semi-hidden robots.

  This model Med-Bot was old and had not been in service since having been replaced by more modern models as well by Care Giver droids. It did have medical sensors and could act as a field medic, bandaging wounds and administering drugs as needed.

  Collins looked back to the front of the room.

  “Repair Droid 461, come here please,” Mike said as the droid moved down to his position.

  “Yes, sir,” the droid said waiting for further orders.

  “Run a diagnostic on these two Med-Bots and see if you have enough parts to get one of them fully functional,” he instructed.

  “I do not have this model robot’s schematics on file,” the repair droid informed.

  “No problem,” he answered as he took his palm pad and accessed the ship’s central computer file. He then downloaded the Med-Bot’s file to the repair droid.

  A moment later, the droid sprang to life bringing the two damaged medical robots to the long table and started working on them.

  Mike didn’t know what he was going to do with an old Med-Bot but he was sure that having a field medic even an old one might come in handy.

  At 2300 hours, his normal duty shift began with the maintenance section. He had gotten a few hours of sleep as well as dropping off and picking up some of his uniforms from the laundry section. They had a pickup and delivery service but it seemed that every time he’d schedule a pickup they never came. He didn’t even ask anymore and just dropped them off and picked them up himself.

  He grabbed a coffee and Danish to go and reached Lt. Commander Huber�
��s office ten minutes before his shift started. Entering the office, he found Commander Hemmings getting a cup of coffee from her wall dispenser. Lt Cmdr. Huber wasn’t present as she usually worked the day shift. Closing the hatch, he turned and saluted. Commander Hemmings returned his salute and smiled.

  “All right enough of that, let’s sit down,” he said still smiling broadly at his godson.

  Mike pulled up a chair and sat across from him.

  “So, how’s life so far on a battle carrier?” he asked watching him closely.

  “Fine, sir,” the Ensign replied.

  Commander Hemmings looked at the young man’s face and frowned before he smiled.

  “You look just like your dad when he didn't want to tell me something that’s not very positive,” he said remembering his best friend’s expressions. He couldn’t help but look at the young man before him and see the face of his academy roommate.

  “Well sir, I don’t think this ship is going to be winning any Imperial Battle Efficiency Awards,” he said forcing a polite smile.

  “OK, spill it, what do you think?” the XO insisted not wanting a glossed over or formal answer.

  Mike paused for a moment and then gave him his honest opinion of the 34th Attack Fleet and the Pallas’s readiness. He left out his own situation not wanting to seem like a complainer.

  Hemmings leaned back and took a sip from his coffee cup. His face was blank giving away no emotion as the young officer spoke.

  “I agree,” he said with a sigh and added, “Unfortunately, there is little chance of changing that right now. What we have to do is our jobs, to the best of our ability and what we can, when we can. Real change can only come from the top but we can try to put a bandage on it until it does.”

  The young ensign shook his head not liking his godfather’s answer but after being on the station for two weeks he knew that he was right.

  “What about going to the starbase and speaking to Admiral Yancy?” he asked, after all, an admiral outranks a commodore.

  The commander shook his head and made a sour expression as he quickly swallowed his mouthful of coffee trying not to choke.