Op File Sanction Page 13
“Name and rank. How are you feeling?”
“Salim Ayana, Lieutenant,” Firethorn said. “But I’m still cold.”
“And you will be, ma’am,” Sergeant Natsuki informed her. “Toasty isn’t in the Marine Corps’ vernacular. Cold and alive is preferable to warm until your battery runs down and you popsicle. Let’s collect my crates.”
“I still can’t move very well.”
“We don’t expect you to, Lieutenant,” the Sergeant informed her. “It takes a Marine several runs over a confidence course to get accustomed to wearing it.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Ayana promised.
They walked to the two big boxes and wheeled them over to a stack of supply crates. The Sergeant climbed up with one then the other box. Natsuki pulled out two remotely operated guns and four-legged stands. After hammering the legs into the tops of the crates, she attached control cables and tossed the loose ends over the side. By then, Firethorn had muscled boxes of ammo to the top. Two boxes of ammo were hung from each gun and the Sergeant and pilot climbed down.
“This is your fire control pad. It’s simple to operate,” Natsuki explained as she manipulated leavers. The monitor displayed a view down each barrel plus a scene of areas adjacent to the targeted area. “Up, down, rotate left and right. I’ve disabled the automatic search and fire feature.”
The mounted machineguns spun in different directions. One tracked the supply deck, targeting sections as it rotated. The second gun spun around and faced open space.
“I thought this was your specialty?” Ayana questioned. “Why show me?”
“If I go down, the team needs someone on the guns,” Natsuki informed her. “Right now, you are the gunner. I have to disable the exterior hatch. Can’t have the Constabulary closing us in.”
Sergeant Misaki Natsuki jogged to a column on the right side of the huge exterior hatch. Taking hold of the lowest rung, she began climbing a series of pegs. At the top of the frame, she opened a panel, and exposed a pair of motors. Then, she glanced over her shoulder.
Across the width of the supply bay, Natsuki located Warlock. Master Sergeant Alberich stood on the top rung of a ladder. A spark flashed letting Natsuki know the retired Marine was working on opening the maintenance port. Pulling out her wrench, Sergeant Natsuki turned back to her task and began unscrewing the cover on the power connections for the pair of motors.
Chapter 14 – Clamps, Cables, and Claustrophobia
The port presented the most difficult entrance into the Constabulary ship. While the resupply bay was technically inside the hull, its dual function as storage for extra equipment and atmosphere required all the entrances to be secured from the other side of the bulkheads. Although high up, small in size, and with the bolt heads on the other side, its location made the effort worthwhile.
That’s what Poet said when they walked into the resupply bay on the Doric Pillar. Most of the Constabulary naval vessels were built in the same style as older Galactic Council Navy ships. Except for launch and recovery tubes for flight assets, the Constabulary escort looked remarkably like the Pillar. Guessing the bay would resemble the one on the Elf, Walden suggested they study it for possible routes. From the deck, eyeing the port at the top of a ladder, and hearing Walden’s explanation of the process for removing the bolts, preventing atmosphere from escaping, and opening the hatch sounded easy. At the top of the ladder in Elf-09, it was anything except.
Warlock placed the end of a long rod against the end of a bolt and the chemical weld sparked. Reaching over her shoulder, she extracted the final rod from the pack on her back. After welding it to the bolt, Diosa turned the handle attached to the end and backed the bolt out of its hole. When the rod moved freely in the bolt hole, she grabbed the handle on another rod and screwed that bolt out of the threads. Six loose rods later, the port cover was held in place by a final bolt.
If she simply shoved the hatch inward, atmosphere would gush out and set off breach alarms. To prevent being discovered by a Constabulary repair crew, Warlock carried a sheet of air curtain. The edges of the sheet were sealed around the port creating a cocoon that encompassed the entire port and the top of the ladder. As the final bolt backed out, a blast of air puffed up the air curtain. Although stretched tight, the fabric and tape held.
Diosa climbed to the hatch and shoved it back to the length of the rods. After crawling into the frame and under the suspended hatch cover, she rose to face a narrow passageway and the reason for choosing that specific maintenance port. At this level, she was only two decks below the bridge and one and a half decks below her destination.
***
The narrow corridor extended deep into the warship. As a Striker, Warlock had been aboard Constabulary vessels. One feature always stood out. The passageways and cabins had been immaculate. In this corridor, dust clung to the overhead pipes and a thin layer coated the deck. Once the hatch was shoved closed and the bolts run down finger tight, Diosa jogged away, confident the lack of maintenance meant the corridor was rarely used.
‘In,’ she typed on her PID.
Per mission parameters, Sergeant Natsuki didn’t respond. And to keep their infiltration from being discovered, the signal wasn’t strong enough to reach The Talon and Poet. Unaware of the progress, he and Corporal Katla circled on the backside of the planet waiting for a sign.
Warlock passed storage rooms but no intersecting passageways. Noting the limited access to the corridor, she worried about the placement of stairs. If the passageway beyond the hatch she approached had down or up steps, it presented a problem. The plan required her to remove another panel further down. She wasn’t happy with the idea of doing it in the open. Constabulary Travelers, the Empress’ officers, and her soldiers, the Troops might have something to say if they climbed up or came strolling around a bend to find a woman in a flight suit with an oxygen tank unscrewing bolts from a wall panel. She would fight. But the fabric of the flight suit, while necessarily light for the mission, didn’t provide the protection of Marine Corps fish scale armor.
Diosa moved to the hatch, spun the locking wheel, and opened. The passageway curved away in the distance. Just as it bent, she noted a pair of elevator doors. Not only was the elevator shaft an escape from detection in the open corridor but, crossing it placed her closer the final destination.
***
Once the lift doors were parted, Warlock slipped through and balanced on the narrow ledge as they slid shut. While the apprehension of discovery faded, the black hole of the elevator shaft presented another kind of uneasiness. As a Striker, gripping cables to climb and reach the other side of the shaft wasn’t anything she hadn’t trained to do. It was the limited space if a car rose or descended. Shipboard elevators came in two types. Some were huge platforms for moving large, heavy items and had wide or open gaps around them. Others, similar to this shaft, had little space between the walls and the cars. And certainly not enough for the elevator to pass by a body clinging to the inside of the shaft.
Warlock snapped on the lights attached to the sides of her helmet then leaped to the cables. Hand-over-hand, she climbed searching the back of the shaft for an access door.
It only had two handles securing the panel, was at the proper height, and because she didn’t need a tool to open it, was easily accessible. Everything a Striker could ask for as a way out of the shaft and into the area beneath the bridge deck. With one hand and a foot on the cable, Warlock spread-eagled and stretched out a hand for the first lever. Using two fingers, she rotated the handle.
Then the cable and Warlock shot upward taking her away from the panel. Far below, the elevator car rose to a deck and stopped. Her options were to stay where she was and ride the cable hoping the car returned to where it originated. Or dropping down the cable and chance the car wouldn’t descend and take her lower than the panel. Considering she had Marines exposed on the resupply bay and Poet in The Talon circling in enemy territory, Diosa released her grip and dropped. Three meters down, she grab
bed with both hands and locked her legs around the cable to halt her fall.
Unsure when the car would move again, Warlock gripped with her hands and kicked off the cable letting her legs bridge the distance. A heal strike rotated the handle and the panel swung open. Then a slight tremor ran through the cable as the elevator doors closed. Her feet had just come back from the panel when the cable shot upward again. Raising her feet, she collected them under her, released her grip on the cable, and leaped down for the opening.
While Diosa flew downward aiming for a small black rectangle, the elevator car roared upward filling the shaft with noise. Cables vibrated and tracks guiding the rising car shuddered as the roof approached the opening. The snug fitting elevator and the arched body of the retired Marine resembled a fist punching up to strike an open hand.
Warlock’s arms, head, and upper body flew through the hole and slammed into a platform. But her legs hung in the path of the speeding elevator. Flexing the muscles in her lower back and hips, the Striker drew her knees into her chest. Both feet were knocked into the panel’s frame after contact with the side of the elevator as it screamed by the opening.
Spinning to face the shaft, she reached out, and grabbed the panel’s door. It screeched on broken hinges and the door looked more like a sheet of crumpled paper than a machined piece of alloy. Warlock managed to get one latch hooked, then she turned around. Allowing her lights to survey the area, she peered into the darkness to see if she was near the correct location for the next phase.
‘Two,’ Diosa typed on her PID. The text let Sergeant Natsuki know Warlock was alive, in the right compartment, and continuing the mission.
***
Although her lights gave a limited prospective, Warlock could make out a sloping surface. The elevator shaft rose where it was and the corridor bent because nothing was allowed to bisect the enclosed combat control center. Resting beneath the command deck, it was a round, hardened bunker. Half the warship might be disabled, but the combat control center would still function.
Warlock jumped from the platform onto the slope. Only by grabbing a support strut did she manage not to slip off the globe and fall into the gap. Once steady on her feet, she walked upward pulling herself along by using the beams.
In simulator training, gunners practiced chipping away at computer-generated warships. The good ones picked off sections of the hull until only the egg remained on the screen. It made the personnel assigned to combat control centers nervous although, they had to admire the targeting skills.
Warlock’s trek up the armored egg became easier and she stopped using the struts. Above her, the underside of the command deck forced her to duck walk up the summit. Beside an elevator tube that connected the bridge to the combat control center was a thick bundle of fiber-optic cables. Some of the cables, like the tube lift, attached the bridge with the combat center. But unlike the tube, most of the bundle separated and stretched out to reach every department on the ship.
If the bundle was cut, maneuvering would be impaired briefly. Then the combat center would take over and manage the ship. Warlock had no plans to damage the bundle. But she did plan to tap into it.
After unbuckling a pouch, she pulled out two small boxes and a large one. The large one got fitted to the bottom of a small box and the unit was set off to the side. From the last box, she unrolled four optic lines with clamps on the ends and rested it in her lap.
‘The,’ she sent to Natsuki. Then Diosa drew her combat knife, sliced down the bundle, and peeled back a segment of wrapping material. With the individual fiber optic cables exposed, she picked up two of the four leads.
***
Walden Geboren explained the first step involved finding two fiber optic cables carrying information into the ship’s computer system and then two outgoing cables.
Diosa attached the first two clamps and one showed green meaning the flow was inbound. But the other glowed red. Two tries later, she got a green. Then Warlock attached the two out-flow clamps, checked her PID, and waited.
A pair of benign codes began searching for routes through the Constabulary computer system. They didn’t attempt to infiltrate any programs, just flowed in, drifted through the processors, and out searching for pathways to their counterparts. Once the two inward streams located the fiber optic cables with the out-flow clamps, they created and maintained a circuit. A tiny light on top of the box flashed green.
Warlock reached out and pulled the large unit to her lap and unrolled four more lines. Those clamps were placed above the original clamps. Now, the search feature piggybacked on the benign codes. As they passed through the system, they touched on subprograms and began creating an image of the interior workings of the computer.
As Poet described, all he needed was a mirror image of the computer’s messaging center. The search program wouldn’t attempt to reprogram or write anything. If it did, an antivirus program would activate and stop the download.
Warlock sent the word, ‘Light.’
Until then, there had been no official timeline for the mission. No one could guess the time needed for the infiltration. The download, according to Walden, required forty-five minutes. When Warlock sent the word, Light, the true mission clock started and, shortly after, so did the trouble.
***
“Movement,” Lance Corporal Benigno reported. “Three tangos, unarmed.”
A side hatch had opened and three figures in vac suits came onto the resupply deck. One pushed an empty cart. The other two lagged behind and closed the hatch once the cart cleared the frame.
“Hold. Let’s see what they’re doing,” Natsuki directed. She rotated one of her guns, zoomed in over the rows of crates, and watched the three Constabulary sailors stroll across the deck. “Auður. I have eyes on Benigno’s visitors. Be sure we don’t have company from the other side.”
“All hatches are sealed and quiet,” the sniper replied a few seconds later.
Two rows over from the hatch, Lance Corporal Benigno stepped behind a container and elevated the barrel of his automatic weapon so it didn’t show around the corner.
“They’ve opened a container,” the Sergeant described. “Steady people. We may get through this without announcing our presence.”
The three sailors vanished into a storage unit. When they reappeared, each had a box in his arms. Several trips later, the wheeled platform was stacked high with supplies. Two got behind the cart, grabbed the handle, and began pushing. The third closed and latched the storage crate.
Sergeant Natsuki breathed a sigh of relief. Her unit might get by without being discovered.
It wasn’t that the Marine NCO feared a fight. But just holding a position on an enemy warship provided enough adrenaline. And their job wasn’t to search and destroy or to assault. Their mission required stealth and cover, not a firefight. Then the third sailor motioned to his companions, turned, and pointed at the top of the storage unit.
They waved him off but he held up his arms as if to say why not. With a final gesture, he placed a hand on the ladder built into the side of the container.
“Benigno standby. We might have a sightseer,” Natsuki advised.
The Constabulary sailor reached the top of the container and gazed over the rows of the crates of stored supplies. His view of black space didn’t offer much scenery but it was a change from the interior of a spaceship.
So far, he hadn’t noticed the mounted guns on the distant crate. But any movement of them might draw his attention.
“Auður. Your target is on top of a crate in Benigno’s sector,” the Sergeant directed. “I can’t get a sight on him without inducing motion attraction.”
“I’ve got him,” the sniper replied.
“Unless he gets excited, we’ll let him go,” Natsuki instructed.
The Constabulary sailor nodded his head as if to signal he’s had enough of the featureless view. He started to turned towards the ladder. Then he paused and cocked his head. Something on a distant crate caught h
is attention. Then he raised both arms signaling the two on the deck and pointed directly at the twin mounted guns.
“Auður, take him,” Natsuki said releasing her sniper.
Two large holes from fifty-two caliber rounds appeared in the sailor’s chest. He toppled off the container.
“Benigno, clean them up,” the Sergeant ordered.
The heavy weapons specialist lowered the barrel and swung the machine gun across his body. As he came from behind the container, the weapon was already targeting the two remaining sailors. Kinetic rounds peppered one of them and Benigno pivoted in the harness so his body faced in the direction of his rounds. Advancing, he finished a magazine, inserted another, and resumed firing.
Benigno was an expert with the weapon. Most of the forty-five caliber kinetic rounds impacted with the designated targets. But the huge sailors didn’t die. Injured and bleeding bright red, they scrambled for the hatch. It took all of his second magazine before they expired.
“Clear,” he announced. “Those big boys died hard.”
“Those are Troops. The Empress’ sailors and soldiers,” Natsuki informed the team. “I expect they will be missed. Our next customers will be armed and wearing armor. Check your weapons and stay alert.”
Then the Sergeant sent a text she hoped wouldn’t be necessary. ‘Contact.”
***
Warlock didn’t respond to the sudden but not unexpected text. Fifteen minutes remained on the download. The bay was heating up and the Striker had no recourse but to sit in the dark waiting on the flow of light through fiber optic cables. Until the computer was charted, the Marines would have to hold the area. All the logic and acknowledgment of the constraints did not relieve her frustration.
She pulled her MC forty-five handgun and checked the magazine and its charge. Then she shifted the position of her combat knife and the baton. Nervous fidgeting and needless movement went against her training.
“You cannot control the situation,” the Marine Corps’ instructors explained. “But you can control yourself. When idle, settle down and use your senses.”