The Log of the Gray Wolf (Star Wolf Squadron Book 1)

by Shane VanAulen

  Besides the pilot, copilot, and computer stations, the entire area had been expanded to include a double rack of bunk beds, a small kitchenette dining area, and a door that presumably led to a shower wash closet. Storage lockers lined any open wall space, and a table with two chairs filled the remaining floor space.

  The table was set for a dinner for two, right down to the salad forks and center candle. The bunks were empty and neatly made.

  “Where the hell is the body?” Gunny asked, looking the room over again.

  Mike crossed to the controls and found that the ship’s systems were set on automatic pilot with a stationary course programmed into the system. If for any reason the ship veered off course, the computer would make adjustments to bring it back into orbit. The program also had provisions for the ship to refuel when needed. According to the logs, minor adjustments had been made, but it hadn’t needed to refuel in the four years it had been stuck in orbit.

  Taking the ship off autopilot, he had brought the fusion engines online and then opened a channel to the attack cruiser.

  “Wolf, this is Collins, we have the Pay Dirt under our control and it seems to be in good shape.

  “Good job, break orbit and set a course to catch up with us,” Richards’ voice called back.

  “Roger that!” he replied, and then ordered Bell and Pendleton to come across. He then cut the automated distress call. Signaling Cappilo and Rabb in the armored grav shuttle, he waited until the corridor was retracted. Once that was complete, the two shuttles set parallel courses to catch up to and follow the Star Wolf.

  Gunny and his two helpers had finished searching the cabin area and had failed to find a body. Sending Bell and Pendleton to check on the cargo area and engine room, Masters turned his ten years of police experience on the room.

  “The ship logs have been erased, and there are no personal logs or even a crew roster on the computer’s memory chips,” Mike reported, and then called over to the Wolf to get Martin to download a recovery program. Once the program was installed, he put the shuttle back on autopilot while he went to help the Gunny.

  “What do you have, Top?” he asked, seeing the old marine busily searching through the lockers.

  “There were two crewmen on this shuttle, not just one,” he announced, laying out two sets of clothes, two sets of pistols, and sawed off auto shotguns. He then held up two sets of space boots, which were clearly different sizes.

  “Anything else?”

  “A hammer is missing from the tool kit, and the readings from my scanner indicate that the floor by the bunk area was treated with an acidic cleaning solvent,” he said, moving back to the bunks.

  There, he passed his palm pad over the floor several times. “In fact, I’d say that the area was washed at least a dozen times or more.”

  Mike had already put two and two together, and looked at the old veteran curiously. “Sounds like a murder scene.”

  “I’d place good money on it.”

  Moving back to the computer station, Collins shook his head as he read the recovered logs. “You’re right; there were two crew members, a Jeff Klinton and a Marcus Devin. They were partners in a minor mining operation where they were dropped off by a freighter. The deal was that they would mine the gases of the planets for six months and then the freighter would return to get them. In and out, nothing fancy, just make a quick profit and go. Unfortunately, the war with the Karduans had started, and the freighter had never come back to get them. Even though they had a year’s supply of rations, it just wasn’t enough to last.”

  It reminded Mike of the story of the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke. In 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh, with a charter from Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen, planned to establish a colony in Virginia. Virginia was explored by Raleigh and named after Elizabeth’s nickname, the Virgin Queen, a name that she didn’t especially like. The colony was his second attempt, the first having failed, and was luckily rescued by Sir Francis Drake in 1585 who had stopped there to make repairs to his ship.

  The Roanoke colony was led by John White and had 121 colonists including the governor’s daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter, Virginia Dare, who had been born just days after they had arrived to the New World. The colonists realized that they wouldn’t have enough supplies to make it through the winter, and sent White back to England to obtain them.

  Unfortunately, Spain had decided that summer -- with the execution of Mary Queen of Scots as an excuse -- to send their Armada to invade England. All ships where needed to defend England, and White would have to wait almost three years to return to the colony. When he arrived, there was no sign of the colonists. They had seemingly disappeared.

  All that was left was the word Croatian carved into a tree. The colonists were supposed to leave a carving of where they had gone in the event of trouble. Traveling to Croatian Island, where the friendly Croatian Indians lived, White could find no trace of his family or the other colonists. To this day, no one knows what had happened to them?

  “So where are their bodies?” Gunny said, checking the wash closet a second time.

  Mike scanned ahead in the logs and read how desperate the two men were becoming when they realized that for whatever reason they were on their own. They had searched the system desperately looking for edible life.

  Their sensor logs were extensive, giving the breakdown of the cornucopia of minerals, chemical gases, and even water, but no food was found. None of the worlds were habitable, and their hopes of rescue were exhausted.

  At this point in the logs, it became apparent that the author, Marcus Devin, was becoming wild and erratic in his writing. Mike could see him slowly loosening his sanity as they slowly starved to death. His writing then suddenly became more coherent, and as Mike read on, he found their answer.

  “Shit!” he exclaimed as he read the passage.

  Masters leaned his head out of the wash closet doorway. “What?”

  “I know what happened to them,” he said, spinning in his chair to face the old marine. “It seems that Devin was becoming more and more paranoid that Klinton was going to kill him in his sleep and then eat him. So he killed him first, and then butchered his friend and ate him!”

  “He went cannibal,” Gunny said, sadly shaking his head.

  “Not the first time in history; the Carib Indians that Columbus found in 1492 were cannibals. The Indian followers of Kali the Goddess of Destruction, the Aztec Indians that worshiped the serpent god Quetzalcoatl, and even the New Zealand Polynesian Maori would eat their shredded captives to gain their strength and powers.”

  Leaving the wash closet, Masters crossed to the helm and sat down in the copilot’s seat. “Well, I’ve heard of it before. The ship is in trouble, and the already strained crew goes nuts.”

  “Yeah, though people of European stock don’t have a history of practicing cannibalism; it’s been known to happen from time to time. Early Viking’s settlements in Newfoundland, the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, and, of course, the Donner Party trapped in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. All of them were cut off by snowstorms and were starving. All of them had, to some degree, resort to cannibalism, but that was usually after the person had already perished.”

  “Poor devils, but what happened to our cannibal?” Masters asked, still wondering where the body was.

  Mike returned to the recovered log, and after a minute of scanning, he reached the last entry. “It seems he was plagued with guilt over what he had done. He believed that his partner was haunting him, and he was once again starving after his friend ran out. He started to believe that his partner was still alive and on the ship. In his twisted denial, he thought that if he died, his partner would eat him. So he planned to jettison himself out of an airlock rather than wait to be killed.”

  “So no bodies?”

  “Nope!”

  As they sat in silence for a moment, both lost in thought, the door to the corridor suddenly opened, giving them a start. “Damn it!” Masters cried, jumping from his
seat and reaching for his Krager.

  “Sorry, Gunny,” Chief Bell said, holding his hands up, a little confused at their reaction. “The hold is full of deuterium and helium-3,” he reported with weak smile.

  Mike nodded, satisfied that their trip was at least profitable. “What about the engines?”

  Bell shrugged. “They could use some maintenance, but they seem to be in good shape.”

  At that moment, Mister Pendleton came running into the cabin. “I’ve searched everywhere and I still can’t find a body.”

  Mike turned back to the controls and took the shuttle off autopilot. “Don’t worry about it; the previous owner took a little walk rather than starve to death.”

  Pendleton looked to Bell, who nervously looked to Masters, who pointed to the main view screen and the space beyond.

  The Pay Dirt and Carronade chugged along slowly following the Star Wolf as she reached the other side of the stable asteroid field. There was no way the two shuttles could catch the faster cruiser unless she slowed down. Reaching the far side, they could see that there was a large, almost moon-sized asteroid at the edge of the field.

  “Take us in and to the portside of the planetoid,” Hope ordered.

  Dover wanted to look back at him, but refrained from doing so. The field was full of asteroids, and even though there was plenty of room, it still seemed cramped to the young pilot.

  As the cruiser passed the moon, several things were noticeable. The first was its gravity. Because the asteroid field was located in a stable Lagrange point, the ship’s gravity dampeners automatically reset themselves to compensate for the increased gravitational field. The dampener was still a little slow, so the crew could feel the increase in gravity as they entered. Martin quickly fixed the problem and no further pressure was felt as they continued onward.

  The second thing that became obvious was that the outer asteroids, especially the moon, were blocking a hidden view. Beyond the moon was an opening in the asteroid field that looked as if it were a corridor through the floating rocks and ice. Someone had spent a considerable amount of time either blowing or moving the asteroids out of the way to allow ships to pass into the interior of the field.

  “Gentlemen, welcome to the Hole in the Wall,” the Captain announced with gleeful smile. “Helm, take us in!”

  Though it had been fifteen years since he had been there, the old officer felt the same excitement as the first time he and three other Confederation ships had found the secret base.

  Passing through the asteroid corridor, they could see evidence of explosives damage from the scarred and darkened asteroids. Whether it was from battle or from the time of its conception was unknown to the Wolf’s crew. Exiting the passageway, the attack cruiser flew into a region cleared of asteroids. It was a vast expanse easily able to accommodate hundreds of ships.

  Within the area, there were already several occupants. Two ships of similar design were detected by their scanners as being two-thirds of the size of a modern frigate. A third ship was also detected that, by today’s measurements, was small for a merchant ship, but had once been a standard size freighter - twenty years ago.

  “Battle stations!” Richards ordered upon seeing the initial maser readout.

  “Belay that,” Hope countered. “Those ships can’t hurt anyone.”

  As more detailed readings came in, they could see on the viewer that none of the ships had power or signs of life.

  “The two sloops are the Cassidy and Sundance, which have been dead for over fifteen years. The freighter was a prize ship, which had been taken by the pirates who were planning to convert it for raiding. They had four other ships, but they were taken as prizes, being not as badly damaged as the others,” the Hawk explained, staring at the viewer as he relived the battle in his memories.

  Martin turned from his station and looked at the holo image and the old officer. “How many ships did you have, sir?”

  Hope glanced away from the viewer and looked to Daley. He let out a breath and leaned back in his chair as he started his account.

  “My squadron was comprised of the frigates Yarmouth, Acteon, and the brig Nymph. My ship was the Hero class heavy cruiser Theseus, and thus, I was given command of the squadron. We had been trying to track or trap the pirates for several months with little success. Every time we got close, they seemed to know that we had set a trap for them and escaped. Finally, we managed to get them to bite on a cargo of cry chips. Too valuable to pass by, yet it spelled their doom.”

  The bridge had grown quiet, and everyone had turned to listen to the old hero. No one was about to interrupt him, for it was a rare moment when you got a chance to hear such a tale from the man who actually did the deed.

  “We followed our tracker to this system and fought our way through the corridor of mines. There used to be two missile batteries on these two asteroids at the mouth of the opening,” he said, pointing with his laser to the two scorched-looking and pockmarked rocks.

  “We then faced the pirate squadron. A Captain Samuel Leech, who had been given the nickname “Life Leech” or “Blood Leech”, led them. I can’t seem to remember which one having thought at the time that it was a stupid name.”

  “He had served, much to their shame, in the British Naval Space Force before the combining of all Earth fleets under the Confederation. Leech had seven ships at his command, and we had already taken heavy damage from the minefield just getting into this place. They were like rats cornered in a burning building, and were forced to turn and fight.”

  “I positioned the Acteon and Nymph to either side of the Theseus, and we waded into them like a plow to the earth. The Yarmouth was positioned at the mouth of the corridor with orders not to let anyone get by them. The pirate ships weren’t as big or as heavily armed as ours, but all things considered, it was still a close fight,” he paused for a moment as everyone waited, wanting badly to say “And?”

  “At the end of the day, we had won, but took severe damage. The Yarmouth had held the corridor and none of the pirate ships had escaped, but at a price. She had taken a hit to her bridge, killing her captain. The Acteon had been hulled, but was still fighting. The brig Nymph was forced to break from battle, having taken several hull ruptures, and was in real danger of blowing up.”

  “The Theseus had fared the best of all our ships. With her heavier armor, she had been like a scythe to wheat. Captain Leech was killed in the battle and his fleet, crushed, was forced to surrender. It took us almost two weeks to repair the damage to our ships and repair the pirate ships that could be salvaged. We had sent for help, but the admiralty could only send two freighters and an old frigate to help with cleanup operations.”

  Hope grew quiet as he remembered the feeling of doing a good job and then being left to clean up the mess. It was his job, and the three relief ships had carried technicians and medical personnel, but still, he had hoped for more of a reaction. When he returned home, no details of the battle had been reported to the public.

  “Sir, how is it that we never heard of the facts of this battle?” Chief Parker inquired, almost reading his mind.

  The old hawk smirked at the question that he was just thinking about himself. “The admiralty had decided to keep the location of the battle top secret. They didn’t want other pirates using the system as a base in the future. It was reported that a Confederation squadron had destroyed the pirate group that had been responsible for the recent raids, but no details were forthcoming. The media had quickly lost interest in the story as other news stories arose.”

  Chief Parker had open channel to the Pay Dirt and Carronade as well as the rest of the ship so that the entire crew could hear the Captain’s story.

  “Mister Dover, bring us to station-keeping. Chief Parker, open a channel to Mister Collins,” Hope ordered as a pair of “ayes” sounded out in response.

  The comm. chief really didn’t have to do anything, for the channel was already open. All Parker had to do was open the receiver so they could h
ear the Pay Dirt’s response.

  “Channel open, sir.”

  “Mister Collins, I’m sending you the coordinates of an old underground mining facility that is on one of the larger asteroids. The original mining company that found this system used it while they searched for minerals, but most of the asteroids are rock, ice, and iron. The company abandoned it after going bankrupt. The pirates later found it, took it over, and had since expanded it.”

  “We have the coordinates, sir.”

  “Good, take the shuttles and go check the facility out. I want a full report by the time you get back,” he ordered. The base had been left relatively intact when he was last there; hopefully it still had supplies they could use.

  The Pay Dirt signaled “Roger” and “Out,” and changed course with the Carronade close behind.

  The Hawk turned to his first officer as he stood up from his chair. “Commander Richards, secure the ship. I want a systems report in two hours. Have all hands go on standard eight-hour shifts, and make sure they get some rest; they deserve it.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “This is going to be home for some time, so let’s settle in. You have the bridge. I’ll be in my day cabin,” the old captain said, walking stiffly to a door just off the bridge where his office was located.

  “You heard the man,” he said and continued looking to all the section chiefs. “I want a report in forty-five minutes as well as a section duty roster for the next twenty-four hours,” Richards commanded, sitting down in the captain’s chair. “Also, let’s get someone into the galley to start whipping up a hot meal. Everyone could eat, right?” he asked, looking around as a series of happy sounding ‘ayes’ and ‘yes, sirs’ were called out in response.

  Following the captain’s course, the two shuttles moved away from the Wolf and headed towards one of the largest asteroids ringing the interior of the expanse. It looked like any other big rock, except, as they got closer, they could see that it was leading them into a crater.