“We’ll bend out of here, make repairs and then bend back,” Hope said to no one in particular.
Whether he was sharing his plan or just thinking out loud didn’t matter as much as it relieved the nervous crew. They had twenty-six friends on the Alamo not counting her trapped crewmen and they were wont to abandon them to the enemy.
“Mister Collins is smart and resourceful, I’m sure he’ll figure out the situation, hunker down and wait it out,” the first officer commented, trying to make not only the captain and crew feel better, but also give himself a little hope for the boarding party.
The Hawk nodded in agreement, but his eyes were locked on the main viewer and the distant image of the Alamo.
“We’ve got a problem,” Martin whispered, coming up to where Mike was busily melting the last foot of ice with the plasma torch.
Pausing he handed the torch to the crewman working next to him who was hacking away at the ice with a ship’s sword.
“What’s up?” he asked, following his friend to the ship’s comm. panel.
“I’ve been monitoring the Wolf’s communication’s channel and they just sent a coded message for the freighters to make ready to bend.”
Mike didn’t understand, “So? They always say that any time there is a fight.”
Martin’s head shook, “I managed to get the Alamo’s external sensors online,” he said, bringing up a picture on the view screen.
Collins watched the distant battle and the retreating ISS Star Wolf as she streaked away from enemy ships and towards the gravity well.
“She could be trying a drawing tactic to fake the Karduans into pursing her,” he suggested “or she might be having trouble with her weapon’s systems or she is damaged and has to escape.”
“Should we give them a call?” Daley asked with a frown.
Cringing in reply he shook his head.
“No communications, if she does bend out of here, we’ll have to play possum until we can either get the Alamo repaired or the Wolf returns.”
“Right, may I suggest we get the rest of the boarding party back onboard.”
“Yes and have them get back to work on the ship’s systems, also have them take anything off the Carronade we can use as well as food, weapons and medical supplies. I want you to set up the shuttle’s remote pilot in case we need to release her and send her into the debris field,” he instructed. If the Karduan’s found the shuttle docked to the frigate, then they’ll know that there were still humans onboard.
An hour of hard work brought them two things. The first caused them to pause in their efforts as they watched in disbelief as the Wolf and the two freighters disappeared into the gravity well. The second thing was that they had cleared the last of the ice wall and the bulkhead door was all that remained for them to open to get to the engineering section.
The heavy door had taken some damage and its locking mechanism had been stuck. Martin and Cappilo tried several methods including jury-rigging the power unit to its system and even heating the lock, but still the door refused to budge. Finally, Mike was ready to either burn through the door or blow it open using explosives.
“Sir, I don’t know about you, but if I was inside I would have locked it to keep the enemy out,” Gunny Masters remarked, coming down to check on his pups. “Oh and from here to the bridge we have sealed the hull with emergency plates in the areas where the emergency bulkheads were missing or were non-operational.”
Martin didn’t waste another moment, “Engineering, if you have the door sealed or locked on your side open up.”
There was a silent pause as Daley repeated the call. After another minute the heavy bulkhead door groaned as it slid to the side. Inside the room it was almost dark, running on only red emergency lighting. The Alamo’s crew had turn off their lights on purpose hoping the change of lighting might give them an advantage if this was all a Kardie trick.
A dirty, thin looking group with beards to match greeted the Wolf’s boarding party. They were armed with Browning hyper-shot assault rifles, 8mm Colt starburst automatic pistols and an assortment of tools held as if they would go down swinging.
Mike’s crew also had their weapons drawn and almost fired at the sight of their guns, but he held his hands up and called for everyone to hold their fire. Stepping closer he let them get a good look at him as he held his hands high.
“I’m Lt. Collins of the ISS Star Wolf, we’ve come to help, so in God’s name don’t blast us.”
“Thank God!” someone gasped from the other side, which was followed by uncontrolled sobbing. One person was outright crying and several others cheered for joy.
A second later all of their weapons were holstered as the men of the Star Wolf rushed into the engine room to help. The twenty-eight survivors looked pretty bad. All of them had some kind of wound and they were suffering from malnutrition and mental exhaustion.
“Who is in charge?” Mike asked, scanning everyone’s collars for rank.
From among the tattered crew a young woman stepped forward. She was in her early twenties, with ash brown hair that was pulled back into a ponytail. Her eyes were green and though she seemed tired they were bright and clear.
“I’m the ranking officer, sir,” she said almost hesitantly as her thin athletic form slipped by two crewmen to offer him her hand.
“Ensign Jamie Kelly.”
He took her hand and gave her a big smile.
“No worries, now where are your critically wounded people?” he asked.
“Over here,” she said, leading him through the crowded doorway to the engine room’s interior.
The room had served as a communal living area for them for over a month. Though they had tried to keep it clean as time wore on and hope slowly died so did the room. It was a wreck with emergency blankets and empty battle rations packets scattered about the room. The place also smelled like human waste and rotten meat.
It was clear to him that someone had died in there.
“How many did you lose?”
“Almost the whole crew,” she commented, which didn’t make sense to Mike. Before he could ask her more she answered his unspoken question.
“Only ten of these men are from the Alamo’s crew, I’m the assistant engineering officer and aft gunnery officer. We rescued most the other crewmen from the Lexington and a couple from the Ajax. We had been fighting a delaying action to let the other ships escape when the Lexington caught fire. The Ajax called for our assistance and held off the enemy ships while we picked up as many life pods as we could. When the cruiser took a direct hit we tried to escape, but the bridge was hulled and we were boarded. Our engineer tried to restore our damaged auxiliary controls, but he never returned. I pulled everyone I could find back to the engine room and then flooded the corridor. We were already fighting a coolant leak so it didn’t take much to exploit it. We’ve been living on battle rations for the last month as the worst of the wounded slowly died off. We’ve lost eight people to injuries and infections. Their bodies are in the maintenance closet stacked like wood,” she said with a tremble in her voice.
Four people, three men and a woman lay on the floor wrapped in blankets. They were a sad sight, pale and unmoving.
“Corpsman!” Mike hollered as he looked down at them. Moving to the closest person he saw that it was not only a woman, but also an officer. She had the rank of a full lieutenant and had the branch insignia of a medical officer.
“That’s Dr. Duarte from the Lexington,” Ensign Kelly informed, kneeling down next to him. “She took some severe burns helping to get the wounded to safety.”
Pulling back her blanket he could see that half her body had third and second degree burns.
“Over here,” Mike called seeing Chief Bell with a medical bag.
They all had automated medical kit attached to them that would read any injury, diagnose and treat it via its medical computer. The auto kit was for their use though each man had a buddy kit to treat the injuries of others and was reserv
ed for battle situations. The corpsman had a larger supply of medicines that were brought along for just such a purpose.
Mike opened the bag and searched through it for a moment. Doc. Beilor had acquainted them with the modern drugs they had gotten from the Jillian’s cargo hold and he quickly selected three needless syringes to use as he laid a medical palm pad on the hurt woman’s chest.
She was about thirty years old and very lovely in that French dove kind of way. Mike was sure that in another lifetime she would have been an actress that always got the role of Juliet. Taking the three hypodermics he placed one after the other against the side of her neck as he injected her.
“What is that?” Ensign Kelly inquired, watching him intently as he worked.
“The first was a non-addictive pain killer, the second was a super antibiotic and the last was something special, a large dose of Heal-X typed IV. It should repair much of her internal injuries and hopefully restore her burnt skin.”
Sitting next to the young doctor, Kelly watched her intently as over the next few minutes the coloring of her skin improved and her breathing became easier. Mike had already moved on and treated the next three injured and dying men. His crewmen had been busily feeding battle rations to the half starved survivors with a promise of a good cooked meal when they returned to the Wolf.
Once he had finished treating the others, he returned to his first patient.
“She looks like she’ll live,” Mike said after checking the palm pad’s readings. “We have other problems and we need to get your people to work helping to get this ship operational.”
Jamie looked up at him in confusion, “What?”
Instead of answering he walked back to the hallway pausing only to wave for her to follow. When they reached the comm. panel he activated the exterior sensors and cameras. The picture was of the Karduan squadron coming right for them.
“We have about an hour before they arrive.”
The young ensign realized the danger without his words, but the question was why?
“Where is your ship?”
“The Star Wolf was forced to bend out. I’m assuming she was either damaged or had a malfunction and will be coming back, but we have to try and escape without her,” he said trying to make it sound like an order. They had almost a full crew with his twenty-six man boarding party and her twenty-four, not counting the four badly wounded.
As the young and exhausted ensign tried to make sense of it Mister Cappilo joined their small group.
“Gunny says that he’s gotten one of the forward fusion turrets operational, Martin has finished his rebuilding of the main computer’s wiped core and Mister Rabb’s team has been working on hull breeches near the other turrets,” the smiling Italian reported giving the young ensign a wink.
“You can’t mean to fight?” she gasped in disbelief.
Mike ignored her, “How about the engines?”
Rufo continued to smile, “They’re not that bad, most of the damage was minimal and had already been repaired by our trapped survivors.”
Kelly shrugged her shoulders, “We didn’t have anything else to do and we we’re trying to get them back online to use to escape as well as for power. We had been getting by on battery power, lucky you found us because we only had enough power left for another week. Unfortunately, once we were sealed in and safe from the Blues we couldn’t get out to finish repairs.”
“How long?”
Cappilo rubbed his nose before he answered, “Give me two hours and we could try a startup, but I still have to find the disruption in the auxiliary controls or see if the bridge leads are still functional.”
Mike didn’t like it the Kardie ships would be on them or at least in the debris field in the next hour. Even if they could get power up they couldn’t out run the destroyer escorts, they had the same speed if not better than their damaged old frigate.
“We will continue repairs, but we can’t run and we can’t fight so we will wait and hide until we get a break.”
With that said the combined crew rushed to try and get the damaged ship functional. Mike had his doubt and many of them were in himself, but he had no other options other than surrender and that wasn’t something he was even willing to consider. Heading to the bridge he prayed for the Star Wolf’s quick return.
Chapter Thirteen
The Wolf wanted to return but she had her own problems to deal with. Again Hope had chosen a system that was relatively lifeless and once again it turned out to have more life than anyone wanted. The Brittany and Jillian’s sensors couldn’t pick it up, but the Wolf had much better hardware.
“Sir, long range sensors are picking up five Karduan ships,” Lewis started and then continued, “A battle destroyer, two destroyers, and two destroyer escorts.”
“Damn it! Isn’t that what we just escaped from?” Richards exclaimed, amazed at having run into another standard Kardie squadron.
Hope looked at the viewer and noted that the enemy’s ships were at the extreme extent of their sensor’s range.
“Have they detected us?”
A pause from the maser station was followed by a quick answer, “No sir, they seem to be orbiting a large gaseous planet with a sulfur dioxide sea and a thick atmosphere of sulfur dioxide and volcanic ash.”
Scanning the system’s map, the Hawk touched his command pad highlighting the nearby gas giant. The giant had a hydrogen and helium atmosphere and a powerful magnetic field thousands of times stronger than that of Earth. Such a field or magnetosphere would block the enemy’s sensors as well as their own long-range sensors.
“Set a course for the gas giant and have the freighters refuel. Tell engineering to use whoever they need to too get the spinal cannon back online as fast as they can.”
Richards had moved to the sensor, maser, and computer section of the bridge and was pacing back and forth between the various operators. Rushing to his own console he looked down at the data.
“Captain, it seems that the Blues are firing on the planet’s sulfur dioxide sea?”
This news caused the old gray warrior to lift a heavy eyebrow in surprise.
“What could they be doing?” he asked out loud, not really soliciting an answer. “Are we detecting anything on the planet’s surface or in its sea?”
Commander Richards shook his head, “We’re too far away.”
“Have a fighter patrol sent out and caution them to maintain radio silence. They should power down and drift following the asteroid belt. Any communications should be sent on a narrow focused carrier wave and in a single word code with five minute breaks.”
This was a risky proposition - if the enemy detected their fighters they would have to assume that there was a mother ship in the system as well and would start looking for her. Without their main gun the Wolf was in the same predicament as it had been at Jericho Six and would have to run.
Hope knew that information was an important key and they would still have hours of heads up even if the enemy ships tried to come after them. For the time being the Wolf’s stealth hull kept her from detection and the magnetic field of the gas giant would mask the freighters.
“Sir, might I suggest that we send out a pair of Wasps instead of the Sabers,” Mister Dover said, partially turning in his seat at the helm station to look towards him.
The first officer replied first, “Explain?”
“We’ve been noticing that the enemy ships don’t seem to detect the Wasp as easily as the Sabers even though the SF-86 is the more modern fighter. The Karduans also don’t appear to be able to get a positive lock on the older LN-28.”
Hope looked to Richards and the first officer nodded.
“Commander Hutton had mentioned something about that after our last battle, but we haven’t had time to check it out. Possibly the metals and plastics used in their construction are hard for them to detect.”
“Very well, launch two Wasps,” Hope ordered, leaning back in his chair. He was sure he had the worst job.
&
nbsp; Everyone else was busy at their stations whereas he got to sit and worry. What he wouldn’t give to be in a fighter or at least manning the helm. Still, his mind raced thinking about possible tactics, wondering about the curious behavior of the Karduan squadron. Though what was happening to Mister Collins and his boarding party on the Alamo was foremost on his mind.
Mike was as happy as he could be at their progress. They had placed emergency hull plating over the damaged sections in the areas that they had needed to get into. The engines, both bender and the system fusion drives were the biggest surprise. The Alamo’s crew had used their trapped time well and had repaired everything within the engine room that they could. He was even optimistic mostly due to Rufo’s big stupid smile and his report that they would have close to full power within the hour. The exterior repairs to the hull would have to wait, as would all of the non-vital systems.
They had no torpedoes or missiles, most of which had been expended during the battle and the rest being taken when the ship had been boarded by the enemy. The main particle cannon turret was damaged beyond their ability to fix. Two fusion turrets, one aft and one of the forward portside were still online as well as five anti-missile gauss cannons. It wasn’t an arsenal, but at least he didn’t feel completely helpless.
Their biggest problem was that the enemy squadron had moved to the edge of the debris field. The two destroyers had taken guard positions at each of the gravity wells just waiting for the attack cruiser to return. The battle destroyer, the two destroyer escorts and the Mammoth had positioned themselves along the circumference of the battlefield.
The captured Confederation recovery ship had sent out its heavy shuttles, which were busily towing the remains of the ISS Java into the Mammoth’s vast cargo/repair bays. Some of the others were recovering the broken remains of the SF-18 Hornet fighters and other salvageable ship parts floating around the field. Unfortunately, two of the recovery shuttles were coming straight towards the ISS Alamo.
The Log of the Gray Wolf (Star Wolf Squadron Book 1) Page 32