The Santana Nexus (Junkyard Dogs Book 3) (29 page)

Chapter
42.

Catskill-Soroyan System, near the Piedmont mining station, January 10, 2599.

The Captains of the two mining ships had positioned their craft between the
Aladdin
and the mining station but they hadn't actually allowed their respective ships to come totally to rest as yet. Neil Patrick contacted the
Donegal
on an open channel that had been deliberately chosen because the miners knew it would be received by the enemy ship. "Seamus?" he said, "We're havin' that problem with the thrusters again. They aren't turnin' off properly. I'm gonna run a quick test before we try to move again. Will you observe?"

"Roger,
Glendaloch
, we'll be glad to take a look at your thrusters for you."

"We are preparing to send boarders,"
said the Captain of the
Aladdin
, his tone beginning to sound a little panicky
, "You will not perform any tests until we give you permission!"

The
rear thrusters on the
Glendaloch
fired before the
Aladdin's
Captain finished his warning.

"Oops!" said Patrick, "Sorry
! Too late!"

The
Glendaloch
began to creep slowly forward, away from the mining station and towards a point somewhere to starboard of the armed cargo ship.

"You will cease maneuvers this instant!"
came the angry order from the Aladdin.

The turret on the top of the cargo ship
swiveled smoothly to starboard, to target the slow-moving ship.

"The damned thrusters are stuck!
Shut 'em down, Helm!" said Patrick, over the open comlink.

"You will cease maneuvers or we will fire!"
shouted the Captain of the Aladdin.

"Okay, okay!" returned Patrick, "Engineering will shut them down,
we just need a little more time!"

"I do not know what your game is, Glendaloch, but your time
is running out!"

"Hartmann?" said O'Connell, "Have your men
launch that decoy sled now."

"Roger, Seamus"

The sled came rumbling out from under the
Glendaloch
and angled steeply upwards headed towards a point above and way over to starboard of the armed cargo ship.

"What are you fools up to
now?"
shouted the captain of the Aladdin.
"You will cease this activity at once!"

The turret
mounted on the top of the Aladdin swiveled even further to starboard while the single projector rotated upwards, targeting the unoccupied mining sled. When the projector came into alignment with the sled, a pulse bolt lashed out. A direct hit on the mound of ore on the front of the sled resulted in a harmless but very impressive explosion accompanied by a spherical cloud of debris.

With the
Aladdin
occupied by the distraction, Hartmann ordered the launch of the other sled and its crew of heavily armed men. Maneuvering carefully, the skilled pilot of the sled kept the bulk of the
Donegal
between them and the cargo ship.

"Chris?"
sent O'Connell, over the private mining channel
, "What's the recharge time on that cannon, do you know?"

"We've been watching them. I think it's somewhere around eight seconds between pulses."

The captain of the
Aladdin
, finally realizing that something badly amiss was up and that he was losing control of the situation, began firing his pulse cannon as quickly as it would recharge. With the projector of the
Aladdin's
gun emplacement already pointed in the general direction of the
Glendaloch
, the Sheik's men targeted her next. Another pulse bolt lashed out from the
Aladdin's
turret and struck the armored nose of the
Glendaloch
.

The heav
ily shielded front of the mining ship bore the scars of countless impacts from blasted rock and other mining debris. If the pulse bolt left a mark, it was hard to distinguish it from the thousands of other nicks, gouges and shallow craters that marked the shield already.

Meanwhile,
Hartmann and his boarding party had latched onto the belly of the cargo ship.

The Captains of the two mining ships made sure that the crew of the
Aladdin
had plenty of activity to keep them distracted while Hartmann and his men worked on the airlock entrance.

"You, Bastard!" sent O'Connell, "You fired at
one of my ships! Hans? Charge up the mining laser; I don't think I like this guy's attitude!"

Meanwhile,
with the security team safely under the cargo ship and out of the line of fire of the pulse cannon, the
Glendaloch
used maneuvering thrusters to dive under the
Aladdin
and pivot around until she was lined up directly astern of the armed cargo ship.

"I guess these thrusters work
okay after all," said Patrick. "My mining laser is charged as well, Seamus. I wonder what a continuous beam from a 10,000 gigajoule laser will do to the drive tubes of a cargo ship?"

"Good question," said O'Connell. "I've got mine pointed right at the bridge."

The turret on the top of the cargo ship was frozen at a point somewhere between the two mining ships, as if the gun crew didn't know which target represented the bigger threat. Meantime, in the confusion, the security forces and the armed miners from the mining sled had managed to gain entrance to the cargo ship.

"Seamus?"

"What is it, Hartmann?"

"We're
in! These idiots were so overconfident that they hadn't bothered to secure their main airlock!"

"Good luck, Hartmann,"
said O'Connell.

"Damn it!" said Patrick, "I really wanted to find out what would happen if I fired this laser
up his drive tubes!"

"
Looks like it'll have to wait for another time, Neil."

The
captain and crew of the cargo ship had been so flustered by the antics of the two mining ships that they had been taken totally by surprise by the boarding party. Hartmann's security detail met little resistance. Several of
Aladdin's
crew members, who had armed themselves with pulse pistols in preparation to board and inspect the mining ships, attempted to put up a fight but found themselves badly overmatched. With the battle armor-equipped Hartmann leading the way and drawing all of the enemy fire, the infiltrators were able to subdue the armed crewmen after a short exchange of pulse weapon fire. Two of the enemy were killed and several others were wounded before the few remaining armed crewmembers put down their weapons and surrendered. Within the space of less than ten minutes, the merchant ship that had kept the miners bottled up for two whole weeks, was now under their control.

With the capture of the
Aladdin
, the Federation forces had acquired another of the Sheik of Barsoom's ships, one that was armed to boot!

***

After a couple of hours to secure the cargo ship and
lock up her crew in the mining station's holding cells, Chris Hartmann found himself back in his office. He glanced at a patch on the wall that covered pulse beam damage that had been inflicted by the
Aladdin
during her initial occupation of the system.

The first order of business
after securing the cargo ship had been to release the several hundred miners who had been cooped up for more than two weeks down inside the asteroid. Many of them returned immediately to their off-duty quarters while others did their best to get the above ground station operations as back to normal as they could.

Shortly
before this unexpected and unwelcome armed cargo ship had come, Hartmann and his small group of determined security officers had held off a group of some twenty terrorists who had been abandoned by the Sheik's forces midway into a boarding operation. The terrorist forces had become trapped on the station when Seamus O'Connell and Neil Patrick had driven off the Sheik of Barsoom himself and several of his terrorist ships with the powerful mining lasers on the
Donegal
and the
Glendaloch
. At the end of that earlier altercation, however, the two mining ship captains had been informed in no uncertain terms that more powerful terrorist forces were on their way, and would be arriving shortly. O'Connell and Patrick had departed to seek help. Hartmann hadn't heard anything from them since.

During
that previous attempt to take over the station, one of the terrorist's first objectives had been the destruction of the mining station's long range communications equipment. This task had been accomplished by the Sheik of Barsoom's wily and dangerous female agent, Fahada, who had wooed one of the communications techs and seduced him into admitting her into the communications suite. The technician had died for doing her this favor. Since that time, without long range communications, news about what was going on elsewhere in the Quadrant had been totally lacking.

The announcement
to the general populace of the station that the same two mining ships which had fought so gallantly on their behalf just a few weeks earlier had returned to the system and had facilitated the capture of the armed cargo ship was good news indeed. In preparation for a face to face meeting with the two mining ship Captains, Hartmann and the colony governor, Henry Fitzhugh, were waiting in the Security Offices.

"We'll be in the docking area in just a few minutes,"
radioed O'Connell.

"Have you got a cutter or something?"
asked Hartmann.

"
All I've got are mining sleds,"
said O'Connell.
"No worries. We'll just have to wear our spacesuits."

"
Just knock on the door, Seamus!"

Some fifteen minutes later, the two
ship Captains had secured their sled to a platform near the main entrance to the mining station and had cycled through the airlock. After shedding their suits, they were escorted to the security area where they were ushered into Hartmann's office. Hartmann got up from his desk and gave each of the ship Captains a hearty handshake.

"Seamus! Neil!
It's good to see you back! You were just the distraction we needed to take over that damned cargo ship. You both know Governor Fitzhugh."

Governor Fitzhugh was a
smart, hard-working, career miner who had been elected to the position by his fellow miners. He was currently in the middle of his second term and he had proven to be a good choice. Patrick and O'Connell knew him well.

"Hello H
ank," said O'Connell as he shook the Governor's hand.

"It's been a while,"
said Patrick as he did likewise.

"
You guys are sure a sight for sore eyes!" said Hartmann.

"'Tis good to see you too, Chris
," said O'Connell, "We were afraid it might get pretty bad out here, what with all these stinkin' terrorists slinkin' about."

"So what happened after we left?" asked
Patrick.

"We were able to keep that bunch of
stray terrorists confined to the airlock area and two or three other compartments until a couple of the Sheik's destroyers came in. We just hustled everyone down into the asteroid when we saw they were coming. They must have figured that comin' in to the rock after us was gonna just be too much trouble. One of the Sheik's destroyers picked up what was left of that group that got left behind and the whole batch of them hightailed it out of here. Didn’t stay for more than a couple of hours. Can't say I was sorry to see them go. They left us alone for more than a week and we were just getting back to normal when this damned armed cargo ship showed up. He put four or five pulse bolts into the station and we decided our best course was just to go back down into the rock."

"W
e were almost hoping that some of these guys would try coming down inside the asteroid," said the Governor. "I think we would have whupped 'em good; some of these miners were really itching for a fight. Some of 'em still are!"

"Hold that thought," said O'Connell.

"How'd things go for you two guys?" asked Hartmann.

"
Not at all like we planned, Chris," replied O'Connell. "We jumped into the Patagonia system to see if we could use their Stage two communicator to call the Santana Nexus but we wound up spending several days there. That same batch of terrorists had been there before they came here. They left a hell of a fine mess behind them. They had destroyed the communications platform and most of the transport spaceships. The folks in Patagonia were hurtin' pretty bad by the time we got there. In fact, we're going back there next."