The Veritian Derelict (Junkyard Dogs)

by Nolte, Phillip

"How many personnel?" asked Murdock.

  "If we had two teams, we could work on both ships at the same time," replied Harris. "I think probably six people minimum and maybe... eight for a maximum on each end. If we have any more than that, people will just be getting in each other's way. We'll need both Rovers, I can pilot the Rover II and, of course we'll need Hawkins and Murdock. Oh, and don't forget Carlisle. She can pilot the other Rover and her command of all the reference material is likely to be badly needed before we get this project finished."

  "I almost hate to ask this," said Kresge, "but what about the control systems? Can we use the Greyhound's commercial control systems for this swap?"

  "I knew the subject would come up sooner or later," replied Harris. "To tell you the truth, this is the one area that is likely to give us the most trouble. We might be able to get the current control systems on the Greyhound to communicate with the new power plant and drive systems but all of the military hardware is so much more robust than the commercial stuff. That and the military hardware has capabilities that the commercial systems don't even have, like military strength shielding and far higher precision microjump capability, for starters. No, I'm afraid we'll have to install the control systems from the Terrier onto the Greyhound. This is another area where I'm really glad that we have Dr. Talbot --sorry, I mean Frank -- involved."

  "She's your ship, Helen, what do you think?" asked Kresge, turning his attention to the Captain of the Greyhound.

  As both Captain and owner of the ship in question, Helen Murdock had been following the conversation with great interest. She chewed on her lower lip for long moment. Finally she spoke.

  "Let's face it, right now the Greyhound is not even a proper ship. She's got no interstellar capabilities at all. All she's got is an outmoded reaction drive. I suppose we could throw in the towel and just use her to provide us with living accommodations, but with our almost total lack of ships out here and another war apparently on the way, I'd say we need to see this ship fully operational again. I support going ahead with the transplant."

  "I support the upgrade as well," said Kresge. "How soon can we start?"

  "We can be ready to go in less than half an hour," said Harris, with a glance at his two companions. Carlisle and Hawkins nodded in assent.

  "I'll start getting people transferred to the Istanbul and the Dingo so they're not here when we take the power off line," said Murdock. "That might take a half a day or so."

  "I don't see any need to for further delay," said Kresge. "Get on it!"

  ***

  Harris, Carlisle, Talbot and the other personnel they had selected for their team met in cargo hold three of the Greyhound where they loaded additional tools and other paraphernalia onto the Rover II. They then headed back out into the scrap cloud to where the Terrier was positioned. They pulled the Rover II up next to the old destroyer and used several of her assorted power tools to remove a large panel on the underside of the ship, right below the engine room. The one-piece panel, made out of double thickness hull material, was about ten meters wide and twenty-five meters in length. Once the panel had been removed, they could begin the task of removing the power plant and drive system.

  At the same time, another crew, headed up by Hawkins and Murdock and equipped with the Rover I, began the task of dismounting the power plant and the ruined drive systems from the old cargo ship. Norbert, Steuben and Nate Hawthorne, another member of the team that had defended the Orbital Station and also a skilled electrician, made up part of the team.

  Chapter 29.

  UTFN Reclamation Center, on board Naval cutter UTFN C1033 newly arrived from the New Ceylon Orbital Station, December 4, 2598.

  The cutter carrying Irene Marshall and the other evacuees from the New Ceylon Orbital Station arrived at the Scrapyard midway through the following day. The little craft was probably the last transport that would be coming out from the planetary facilities for the foreseeable future. The passengers made their way over to the Greyhound through the cutter's temporary docking tube which had been connected to the airlock door on the old cargo ship. With nearly everyone at the Scrapyard busy working on various projects, the group's arrival came and went without much fanfare. The newly arrived passengers were instructed to wait in the front hold of the Greyhound to await further directions. They had only been waiting for a few minutes when Helen Murdock, taking a quick break from her repair duties, came in to greet them.

  "Hello, Helen," said Irene. "I certainly didn't expect to see you so soon again."

  "These are perilous times, Irene," said Murdock. "Is anyone left on the station?"

  "Kathy and Sal and a few other brave souls, just enough to keep the place running."

  Murdock looked around at the group of new people.

  "First off, I suggest that none of you get too comfortable for the time being. The Greyhound is undergoing a major refit and everyone is going to have to go over and spend a couple of days on the Dingo while we complete the repairs. Okay?"

  The newcomers nodded or murmured their consent.

  "Good. On to business," Murdock continued. "Irene? With your permission, I can put you in with Oskar, he has a small private room." Irene smiled at the prospect and nodded. "Allison? I think we still have a spot where I can get you and Orville in a private room as well." Murdock went efficiently through the rest of the personnel, assigning a berth to each. The majority of them would be accommodated on the Greyhound, after the repairs were completed, but about a third of them were to be housed on the Dingo, at least for the near future. Finally she looked at Amanda Steuben, the only person left without an assigned berth. "Now, where are we going to put you, young lady?" Murdock thought for a moment. "I hate to put you right to work right off, Irene, but will you see what you can do get these people transferred over to the Dingo for the time being? Amanda, Allison? Come with me. We're going up to the bridge. "

  There were very few people in the Scrapyard entourage that were younger than twenty years old. Some, like Hawkins, Talbot, Murdock and many of the delegates who had come unexpectedly with the Ambassador were considerably older than that. In fact the only other person who was in the same age group as Amanda was Faiza, Ambassador Saladin's daughter. Amanda and her mother stood by while Helen called the Ambassador. After a short discussion, it was determined that suitable quarters were not only available but that Amanda was welcome to stay onboard the Istanbul.

  ***

  Amanda and her bundle of gear were transported over to the Ambassador's ship on the Rover I during a quick run to the diplomatic ship on Scrapyard business. Sondia and Faiza met her at the main airlock. The two young women had barely been introduced before they discovered something important that they had in common.

  "That's a Hartwell wrist computer, isn't it?" said Faiza, right after the introductions. She peeled back the sleeve of her coverall to reveal her own device. "See. I have one too!"

  "Have you had it very long?" asked Amanda.

  "Father got it for me about three months ago."

  "Three months? That's like a lifetime with one of these!" said Amanda, looking somewhat relieved. "Irene Marshall just gave this to me yesterday. I'm doing okay with it, but I could really use some pointers." Her look became serious. "She told me I had to get as good with it as Tamara Carlisle!"

  "We can start lessons anytime you want," said Faiza. "How about if I give you a quick tour of the ship and then we settle in somewhere and get started?"

  As is often the way with youth, the two of them were chatting like old friends within a few minutes.

  "A short tour is fine," Sondia interrupted. "In fact, I think it's a good idea but afterwards I suggest that the two of you stay out from underfoot. There are a lot of busy people on this ship!"

  The two girls bobbed their heads in unison, barely seeming to hear her. Amanda had a small overnight bag slung over her back as the two young women excitedly left the main airlock area of the Istanbul to make their way through the ship. Sondia smiled to herself
. The youngsters seemed to be getting along well which was good since the two of them were to be roommates.

  After Faiza gave Amanda a short tour of the diplomatic ship, the two of them disappeared into what had been Faiza's private quarters but was now home to the two of them. While this somewhat unorthodox arrangement may not have been workable under normal circumstances, the start of a war and the lack of other suitable quarters made it necessary. Amanda stashed her gear and made a few other arrangements to get herself settled in before the two of them sat down on one of the beds.

  "The first thing we need to do is link the two computers," said Faiza, "then we can communicate with each other from almost anywhere. It's also supposed to make them even more powerful because they combine their computing power." After they paired up the two computers, Faiza then spent most of the next hour showing Amanda some of the more advanced features of the device that she had experimented with during her longer experience with it. Amanda caught on very quickly and was soon performing tasks that had seemed way beyond her abilities just a short time earlier. Finally the two young women moved on to other topics of interest.

  "So, your mom is a truthseer?" asked Amanda. "Do you know anything about it?"

  "I'll never be as good as she is, I don't think I have near as much natural ability, but she has given me some of the training. Would you like a demonstration?"

  "Sure!"

  The two young women experimented with a truthseer training device that Sondia had given Faiza in the hope that it would help her daughter develop the skill. Faiza tried a doing a reading on Amanda with modest success. After getting a few pointers, Amanda tried to do a reading on Faiza. Either of them may have had some ability, but neither had any of the rigorous training. Mostly they amused themselves for the rest of the afternoon.

  It seemed like harmless fun at the time.

  Chapter 30.

  UTFN Reclamation Center, December 4, 2598.

  The replacement of the Greyhound's drive system was going to involve more than just the replacement of the drive modules. In order to take advantage of the more powerful, military-grade drive systems and shields of the Terrier, the team would also be replacing the Greyhound's aging fusion power plant. After checking the specifications and then actually measuring the power plants of the two ships, the group determined that the military and civilian units were actually based on very similar templates. Since the two ships were of roughly similar vintage, this discovery wasn't overly surprising.

  Replacement of the power plant was going to be, essentially, a bolt-in operation. The most challenging part of the transplant was going to be making provision for the military-grade drive systems, which were far more robust than their civilian counterparts. Even this situation shouldn't cause too much of a problem as the team determined that the drive bay of the Greyhound, configured as it was to accommodate a range of different drive systems from a range of competing manufacturers, was of a proper size and shape for the Terrier's drive systems to fit. The systems would fill up all of the available space, but they should fit.

  ***

  With the Greyhound's nonessential personnel temporarily evacuated to the Dingo, the actual repair operations could finally begin. To the surprise and relief of all involved, the power plant and drive system swap went about as well as could be expected. The integrated fusion plant and drive systems from the Terrier, after some expert cursing, jockeying around and the fabrication of mounts to adapt the new systems to the old ship's mounting points, were installed without major incident. The control systems were a mixed bag. The drive and power plant consoles from the engineering section of the Terrier, along with the special wiring harnesses required were, again, fairly simple, bolt-in replacements.

  By far their greatest challenge was to install the control systems from the Terrier onto the bridge of the Greyhound. The military equipment was not only more bulky than the original consoles on the ancient cargo ship but there were also a number of systems on the cargo ship that could not easily be integrated into the military units and necessitated keeping the original consoles. Their only choice was to install several additional consoles onto the Greyhound's bridge. Since the bridge area of the old ship wasn't overly large to begin with, things were going to be a more than a little cramped on the bridge after the modifications but the situation couldn't be helped.

  The new control systems on the bridge necessitated the installation of a wiring harness that ran from the control console on the Terrier's bridge down to her engine room. Unfortunately, the cable from the warship, while somewhat thicker than the equivalent cable on the freighter due to the presence of wires that were both more numerous and more robust, was also substantially shorter. After considerable head scratching, Talbot came up with the idea of removing a portion of the same cable from one of the Terrier's sister ships and splicing the two pieces of cable together.

  The level of damage to the Fairmont, Talbot's old ship, was severe enough that salvaging the needed cable from her was actually easier than it would have been from the more intact Osage. Talbot helped out with the removal of the cable but it was obvious to his companions that working onboard his old ship was very difficult for him. Far too many painful memories, apparently.

  The need for an extra length of cable actually worked somewhat to the repair crew's advantage as they were able to thread the cable through the freighter from two different directions and conveniently splice the ends together up in a remote corner within one of the minor holds of the cargo ship. A generous glob of space-rated sealant, another of the materials abundant in the Scrapyard, finished off the splice.

  ***

  Onboard Greyhound, UTFN Reclamation Center, December 7, 2598.

  About twelve hours after Harris' optimistic forty-eight hour estimate, the repair team was ready to power-up the fusion plant and test the new drive system. Down in the engine room of the Greyhound, Talbot was manning the engineering console and Hawkins, with an inspection panel propped open, was stationed at the controls for fusion plant itself,. Carlisle was monitoring the power up process via a link from the Greyhound's computer to her wrist computer and had several 3-D displays open and floating in the air in front of her. Harris stood ready to abort the entire process in case something went terribly wrong. Such occurrences were exceedingly rare but the current installation was far from a routine one.

  "Okay, Hawk, are you ready?" asked Harris, unable to keep all of the tension out of his voice.

  "Aye, Lieutenant, that I be."

  "Start the power up sequence. Keep your fingers crossed, everybody."

  Murdock reached over Talbot's shoulder and flipped the lever on the engineering console that initiated the power up process. The team then worked steadily on the step by step power-up process for the next hour and forty-five minutes. At the final step, the old ship shuddered gently before the plant settled down to normal operation. The soft thrumming sound that emanated from the newly installed power plant, while a considerably deeper tone than the original, was the welcome sound of a fusion plant operating normally.

  Everyone in the engineering section of the old ship watched their assigned readouts for the next five minutes, daring to hope that everything was alright. That milestone came and went without incident. When they hit the ten minute mark, with no problems of any kind, they dared a small celebration. Harris participated along with the rest of them as they congratulated one another before making an announcement.

  "Well done, everyone," he said, "but that might have been the easy part. Now we have to see if the drive systems are going to work!"

  A generous measure of sobriety returned to the group. During the installation procedure, Hawkins had carefully checked the various components of the drive system to ensure that all components remained within specifications and, to the best of his ability under the circumstances, everything was properly adjusted. With the power plant operating again, the drive system was, as far as any of them knew, ready for its first test as well.

&n
bsp; "Helen, you need to go up to the bridge and contact Kresge to let him know what we're about to do," said Harris. "Hawk, you need to come over here and man this drive system console. Run those diagnostics again while we wait to hear back from Kresge." Murdock left for the bridge, taking Carlisle with her.

  Kresge, temporarily on board the Dingo, quizzed Murdock from the Terrier's viewscreen for several minutes before giving the next phase of the project his blessing. Hawkins was just finishing up a complete set of diagnostics, with all systems checking out, when Murdock called down from the bridge, "Kresge says 'go' for a test run but to be really careful."

  "Will do," said Harris. "Okay, crew, let's take the ship out a few hundred kilometers as a test for the reaction drive and then have a go at a short microjump towards the hyperlink point. We should be able to get all of the jump parameters programmed on the way. Any questions?" Seeing no response, he looked around the small, crowded engineering section at his companions. He took a deep breath and let it out with a long sigh. "Good job everyone. Now let's get on with this next step. Is everybody ready?" Seeing that no one had any issues, he relayed the information to the bridge. "All systems go down here, Captain. Take her out!"

  Up on the bridge of the Greyhound, Murdock took the Captain's chair and, with Carlisle at the navigation console, activated the reaction drive, giving the ship's drive her customary ahead one quarter power request. The old ship lurched unexpectedly. Hawkins' voice came over the intercom.

  "Easy, Lass, this military unit be a lot more powerful than the original drive system. What was being the thrust level you just used?"

  "I set it on ahead one quarter, just like I always have," Murdock replied, somewhat sheepishly. "I guess I wasn't thinking."

  "Aye, no harm done, but you'll have to be rethinkin' your whole approach to movin' this old girl."