Junkyard Dogs 1: The Scrapyard Incident Page 15

  "You're weightless, Lass, so you gotta make sure you're properly braced, or it'll be spinnin' you around and not the bolt. Whatever you be doin', you must na' hold it like this," he said, repositioning the wrench to a somewhat awkward angle in his hand, "or you could be breakin' a finger or even your wrist."

  Carlisle shifted into memory chant mode.

  "Three wires, Tamara...brace your body...don't be stupid when you use the wrench... Okay, I think I'm ready."

  She crawled back into the smallish space, dragging the bulky cable behind her. In spite of Hawkins' coaching, the hex nuts on the terminals proved to be very difficult for her to get loose and she spent fully five minutes trying to find some sort of position that would allow adequate bracing for her body without putting her fingers and wrists at risk.

  "Hooray!" she called out, "I finally got one!"

  Once she had figured out the proper technique, the rest of the job was mercifully straightforward. After another ten minutes, she had removed the old cable and had the new one connected. She made her way back out to where her companions were waiting. The entire group retraced their steps back through the ship and connected the cable to the Rover's power supply.

  With the capacitor bank connected, they then turned their attention to the other assemblies of the gun emplacement.

  "Okay, Ensign, bring up that schematic again, let's find out if we can get power to the turret while we're at it," said Harris.

  Carlisle brought up the hologram again and the three of them consulted it.

  "It looks like the turret machinery is on the deck just below us," said Harris, "right down that hatch over there. Let's go check it out."

  A quick search of the area revealed the same problem they had encountered before, no room to work while wearing a standard utility suit.

  "Good thing you'll be havin' that fancy suit, Lass," said Hawkins. "We could nay do this without you."

  After consulting the schematics again, Carlisle slipped into the cramped space that contained the turret machinery. Her disappointment was obvious.

  "I don't think we're going to be able to get this to work," she said. "Whatever fried the capacitor banks also did a damned good job on the motors for the turret. Everything in here is burned to a crisp!"

  "Not good," said Harris. "Now what?"

  "Can't we do like the enemy does and just aim the entire ship?" asked Carlisle, as she rejoined the two men.

  "Looks like we might have to," said Harris.

  "We might be able to be doin' better than that," said Hawkins. "If the damage in there has nay jammed something, there be hand-cranked manual overrides inside the turret. We can be usin' them to aim the gun. Come on, let's be seein' if they still work."

  "Are you sure, Hawk?" asked Harris. "That seems like an awful lot of mass to move with a hand crank."

  "It's nay so as bad as you think, Lieutenant. There also be a release lever inside the turret that disengages the motors and drive gears, in case there was bein' a loss of power. We practiced with the manual system while I was onboard the Belfast and it worked pretty well."

  The group made their way up into the turret assembly. Hawkins disengaged the turret drive system with a lever underneath a cover in the floor before sliding into the gunner's seat. He pointed to and explained each of the controls. In addition to the fire control periscope, there were cranks for each gun within easy reach of the chair, each of them a wheel about thirty centimeters in diameter and each equipped with a swivel handle for extra leverage. A horizontally-mounted crank operated the side to side movement of the turret and vertically-mounted ones elevated or depressed the guns. Hawkins fastened the still-intact safety harness and, firmly braced in the gunner's chair, operated two of the cranks in turn. To the immense relief of the defenders, the cranks moved freely. The turret moved left and right and the starboard gun moved up and down. Because of the masses involved, many turns of the crank were needed for left-right corrections, and movement of the turret occurred with agonizing slowness. The up and down corrections of the railgun barrel itself went much more quickly.

  "That will have to do," said Harris, relieved.

  Finally they were ready to attempt to charge up the capacitor bank. Hawkins remained sitting in the gunner's chair and kept an eye on the charge meter for the capacitor while Harris went back out to the Rover I and applied power to the makeshift cable. Carlisle stayed inside the turret with Hawkins. In spite of the situation they were in, she hadn't forgotten her research project and she couldn't help thinking that actually operating one of the old projectile weapons would have been something she could never have witnessed under normal conditions. She could barely contain her excitement.

  "Do you think it'll work, Hawk?"

  "It would nay surprise me," said Hawkins, almost gleefully. "This old Terrier, she be a bonnie Lass!" He watched as the charge meter swung over into the green zone. "Okay, Lieutenant, the meter says she be havin' a full charge. I'll be dry firin' it, and then we can be chargin' it again and see how long it be takin'."

  "Sounds good, Hawk. Anytime you're ready," said Harris.

  "Firin' in three, two, one...fire!" said Hawkins, and he pressed the firing stud.

  All three of the survivors felt a short, sharp tremor in the old ship.

  "It worked!" exclaimed Carlisle, her mouth wide open in wonder.

  "Now we wait for a few minutes, to see how long it takes to charge up," said Harris.

  "I'll wager it be somewhere around five minutes," said Hawkins.

  "One shot every five minutes?" asked Carlisle, looking over Hawkins' shoulder as she watched the charge meter slowly creep back towards the green zone.

  "One shot up the drive tubes of a cargo ship with an explosive shell should be more than enough, Lass. We just have to be hittin' it!" said Hawkins.

  "Can you do it?" asked Harris.

  "Aye, Lieutenant, that I can. Cap'n Lovell made sure each of us had cross trainin' on several jobs onboard ship. Especially jobs that be involvin' emergency or fightin' systems. He was wantin' to be able to fight the ship even if he lost gun crew or engineering crew or any critical personnel."

  "You still remember?" asked Carlisle.

  "Aye, I remember it well 'cause I really liked shootin' the guns. Here, Lass, hop in the chair and I'll be showin' you."

  Hawkins moved out of the seat and Carlisle complied eagerly.

  "Look through the periscope." She did so. "You'll be seein' the cross hairs?"

  "Yes."

  "You'll be linin' them up on your target. Now turn the horizontal crank."

  Carlisle grasped the knob on the crank and began turning it rapidly.

  "It moves so easy!" she exclaimed. The crosshairs moved slowly until they were aligned just above the wreck of a battlecruiser on the other side of the central clearing. She switched to the other crank and a watched as the crosshairs came down into perfect alignment with the bridge of the old cruiser.

  "I got it lined up with that cruiser over there," said Carlisle. "Like you said, it isn't hard at all."

  "It be even easier with the power controls up there on the periscope housing. You got to remember that all this manual stuff, even the powered controls, was just bein' backup, usually all the aimin' and firin' was done from the fire control computer on the bridge."

  "Okay, she's charged again," said Carlisle, seeing the gauge go into the green zone. "How long did it take?"

  "About like I be thinkin', four minutes forty-five seconds," said Hawkins.

  "I think we should try firing a live shell," said Harris. "We've got plenty of ammunition and if we think we're going to use this gun, we'd better make sure that it's actually working."

  "How about I be firin' an armor piercing shell at the cruiser that the Ensign sighted in on over there?" asked Hawkins.

  "Looks like as good a target as any," said Harris.

  "We'll have to be gettin' one of the projectiles from the port side magazine. This one be empty. Give us a couple of minutes."
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  Hawkins and Carlisle went over to the port magazine and each grabbed a projectile. The projectiles were just under a meter in length, one hundred and thirty millimeters in diameter and massed about a hundred and ten kilos each. They maneuvered the projectiles carefully back to the starboard side and into the turret. Hawkins showed Carlisle how to manually load the gun.

  "Okay, Lieutenant, I be ready to fire."

  "Just a minute, Hawk, I want to go outside with the Lieutenant and watch from there when you fire," said Carlisle.

  Hawkins could see how excited she was.

  "I suppose that's nay too much to ask, Lass."

  Two minutes later, Carlisle was tethered beside Harris onboard the Rover I.

  "Okay, Hawk, fire when ready," said Harris.

  Hawkins performed the same countdown as before.

  "Three, two, one...fire!"

  This time a far more significant tremor than what they had experienced earlier rattled the old destroyer. Harris quickly made a few deft movements at the controls of the Rover as the recoil from the mass driver tipped the bow down and drove the ship slightly rearward. With the old ship at rest, and the mass driver actually acting on the mass of a projectile, instead of the empty tube they had dry fired a short time earlier, the recoil was surprisingly violent. Stopping the movement of the old ship was a real challenge for Harris as the sled was securely, but only loosely, attached to the side of the old destroyer. At the range they were firing, the projectile, moving at nearly eight thousand meters per second, ripped into the bridge of the battlecruiser almost instantaneously. The armor piercing round went clean through the old hulk without detonating and continued out into deep space. A cheer went up from the small group of survivors.

  "Hooray!" shouted Carlisle, "The Terrier is toothless no more!"

  The group allowed themselves a few more minutes of celebration before getting back to business. Hawkins worked his way back out to the Rover, emerging from the old destroyer with a big grin on his face.

  "That could've been worse!"

  "Great job, you two!" said Harris. "Now that we've got the gun working, we need to do a better job of integrating the Rover I with the Terrier for moving her over to our ambush spot and maneuvering her if we have to fight." He checked the time on his suit display and shook his head. "We've got no time to waste. It can't be very long until they get here. When they flip over to decelerate and we can see their drive signatures, they'll only be a couple of hours away."

  "Request permission to continue working on the ramming plan as a backup," said Carlisle. "If the gun stops working, we'd still have a fall back weapon."

  "Plan B. That sounds like a good idea," said Harris.

  "The holo display showed what looks like a good hiding spot on the other side of the corridor from that cluster we talked about. I'll take the Rover II and check it out. Then I'll have to see if I can find something big and jagged to throw at them."

  "Do it," said Harris. "We're getting short of time."

  With so little time to prepare, the two men simply set the Rover I down on the hull of the destroyer in front of the bridge, right behind the forward turret, and lashed it securely in place. Destroyers were usually hauling something that wouldn't fit inside them and the decks were equipped with a large number of cleats, docking rings and other protuberances perfect for tying down the sled. The spot they had chosen also had the advantage of being reasonably close to the center of mass for the old ship, at least as close as they could get to it given the obvious limitations imposed by the requirement that they be on the outside and on top of the ship. Being close to the center of mass would make any kind of maneuvering a great deal more predictable. The addition of the highly-modified sled with its jumbled assortment of asymmetrical modifications combined with the considerable damage to the starboard side of the old ship, made the Terrier look even more like some nondescript collection of junk.

  They lengthened the makeshift cable connections that were necessary to maintain operation of the systems critical to their mission and began to reposition the old ship to the ambush position they had decided upon. The Rovers had been designed for this sort of duty and both men had a lot of experience moving ships around, so this part of their preparations went pretty smoothly. Harris practiced minor port-starboard and up-down course corrections while they were in transit to their new location and found such maneuvers to be, as expected, sluggish, but doable. He would have to do his best to keep the old destroyer aligned with the raiders and trust to Hawkins to fine tune the shot with the manual controls in the turret.

  Presuming that they needed to shoot, of course.

  "Java? I've got the perfect piece of wreckage for a ramming attack over here," announced Carlisle, her hiding spot and other arrangements apparently up to her requirements. "Looks like it might have been part of an old crane or something. It's got a wedge shape with a sharp point on it. The magnetic grappler hooked right on to it. If I aim at the enemy ship and get it moving at twenty-five or thirty meters per second, I can just cut power to the grappler and let it go! There's also a battlecruiser over here with an open cargo bay that I can hide the Rover inside of once I give the ram a shove."

  "Good work, Vixen," replied Harris. "I just thought of something else. We're about to go right underneath the tracking station. I don't know if we'll need them or not, but I think we'll stop and take the two booster modules out of the bay on the bottom of the station. If we need to reposition something really big, it'll be a lot easier with one of the boosters. Might need them if we survive this attack. With the two of us and the Terrier right below the station, it shouldn't take more than ten minutes. What do you think?"

  "If you don't get them now, you won't have a second chance. Better safe than sorry. Are they very hard to operate?"

  "For someone with your skills? Piece of cake!"

  The two men maneuvered into position and shifted the boosters out of the recessed bay on the bottom of the tracking station before securing them to the hull of the Terrier into two of the four empty guided missile racks. The boosters were nearly the same diameter as a missile, but considerably longer. They hung well out over the stern of the destroyer. With these additions, the old ship looked even less like something functional. The task completed, they continued moving the ship to her new location.

  "I've done all I can over here, Java," announced Carlisle. "I'm heading back."

  "Great, Vixen," replied Harris. "We're about done over here, too. We just have to finish getting some projectiles into the starboard turret. We should be done in a few more minutes. Come on back and let's eat and rest up while we can. As soon as they hit turnover, we'll all have to get back to our stations."

  The two men finished transferring equal numbers of armor-piercing and explosive projectiles into the forward turret. With none of the normal automatic loading machinery functioning, Hawkins would have to load the old railgun manually.

  Chapter 27

  New Ceylon Orbital Station, Smuggler's Lair, October 6, 2598.

  Oskar Kresge, outwardly calm, but inwardly in turmoil after learning that the Reclamation Center had been attacked, fretted and calculated for nearly an hour before making up his mind that something needed to be done. "Gibbons, Steuben," he called out, walking up to their table and interrupting their conversation, "We need to talk. Help me round up the other leaders. Grab a cup of coffee or something. We'll meet back here in ten minutes." The three of them split up and went off to round up the others.

  Within five minutes, all three men had returned. They were joined by Jenkins, Allen, and Clancy Davis-Moore. Kathy Haines arrived a few moments later. Everyone sat except the Commander.

  "I was noncommittal the last time this subject came up," Kresge began, "but in view of recent developments I'd like to discuss the feasibility of fighting back against these invaders." Seeing several frowns, he moved his hands in a calming gesture. "Hear me out. To be honest, I don't know if we have the people or the hardware to make anything happen. He
lp me. I need to know more about the layout of this station, specifically the location and operation of communications, the main power generators, ventilation, and anything else that might be important for us to have control over."

  "Most of that stuff is in the spindle of the station, Commander," said Orville Steuben.

  "If we got into that area we would control those systems?"

  "I think so, Commander."

  "How difficult are they to run?"

  "I don't know. You'd need a tech type for that."

  "Are any of them among our group?"

  "I don't think so," said Gibbons, after a quick scan of the room. "At least I haven't seen anybody. Steuben?"

  "I haven't seen anybody either."

  A recent conversation tugged at Kresge's memory.

  "Murdock," he said. "Someone get Helen Murdock, she said she was a tech here a few years ago."

  Within a minute Helen Murdock had joined the group. Kresge repeated his question.

  "It's been a while, Commander," replied Murdock, "but like most systems these days, they're pretty much automatic."

  "How many people know how to run them?"

  "Technical people that can troubleshoot and reprogram? Probably no more than a dozen. There'd be at least two of them in the spindle at all times."

  "So some of them may be in enemy hands?" asked Kresge.

  "It's possible," said Murdock. "Of course, they might have sealed themselves off in the tech area in the southern portion of the spindle. We never had to do it but that's what the manual said to do if there was any kind of security breach."

  Kresge looked at Haines. "Kathy? You said you were there during the initial attack. Do you have any idea what might have happened to the people in the spindle?"

  "I'm not sure, I headed down to the wheel," she replied. "I did hear Harmon tell Salvador Vasquez that he and the other security people remaining were to go southward down into the tech area of the spindle below, shut down the elevators and jam the hatch above them. There were six or seven of them left, I think. If they did it right, and the terrorists didn't bring some pretty serious cutting tools with them, then there are at least eight to ten technicians down there with them."