Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [105]
“Right here, Lieutenant,” the pilot came back.
“We have captured a shuttle. What say you come aboard and fly it out of here for us.”
In another ten minutes the Assarn had joined them. He contacted the station controls, which seemed only too happy to do whatever he asked. The docking bay was depressurized, and shortly thereafter the upper door slid back to reveal a vista of stars. The shuttle’s engines thrummed, and with Olin Parvik at the controls, the captured ship moved out of the station and into the crowded space over Darius III.
“All the way out to Pangaea?” the Assarn pilot asked.
“Negative,” Sanders replied. “I’d like to stop by the Pegasus first and pick up some reinforcements.”
Twenty-one: Reclaiming the Mother Ship
The stop at the frigate lasted barely twenty minutes, and then the little cargo shuttle was off toward the big starship. It was less than an hour later when, with Olin Parvik at the controls, the shuttle slid smoothly up to one of the Pangaea’s docking bays. At the same time, another shuttle departed from the next dock over, a burst of engines firing as soon as it had drifted away from the big Earth ship. With the fading of those rockets, the departing shuttle began the return trip to the industrial station. The SEALS on their stolen ship waited for the command.
The Pangaea had four docking berths on the outside of her hull, and the shuttle was affixed to the first one of them, the air lock closest to the bow. Even so, they would be a good two hundred meters from the ship’s bridge when they emerged. Neither Sanders nor any of his men had been aboard the massive spaceship before, but they had the advantage of detailed deck plans that had been downloaded from the Pegasus.
After a thorough briefing, they knew that they would emerge into a large pressurized docking area inside the air lock. The chamber extended along the hull for a hundred meters and included the air locks for all four docking ports. The shape was roughly cylindrical, and it led to three passages into the interior of the ship: a forward transport passage for personnel, a larger middle passage for personnel and supplies, and the after hatch, which was the largest of all—some four meters in diameter—and was used primarily to carry supplies from shuttles into the great ship’s hold and operating areas. By docking the shuttle at the most forward of the four ports, Parvik ensured that the SEALS would be as close as possible to the bridge, which was their initial objective, when they emerged.
Lieutenant (j.g.) Sanders took a breath. His last communication from Jackson had wished him well, but he was acutely conscious that he was on his own, responsible not just for the ten SEALS under his command but for Lieutenant Wesling’s twenty hastily trained navy troops and, beyond that, the whole contingent of passengers, crew, and diplomats from the Pangaea herself. It was a crushing load of responsibility, but once the air locks had snapped together, locking the shuttle to the big spaceship, he forced it from his mind and turned to the task at hand.
The Team and the sailors had gone over the plan in such detail that there was no need for talking. Some of the sailors seemed to take comfort in the quiet professionalism of the SEALS and tried to copy them. Wesling’s men were to remain in the docking bay, holding it against any Eluoi counterattack and acting as a reserve should the SEALS need help. Sanders would lead his reduced platoon—reinforced squad, he kept telling himself—directly to the bridge of the big ship. Using the element of surprise for as long as it lasted and then continuing with aggressive tactics once they were discovered, he would attempt to wrest control of the ship from the Eluoi raiders who had taken her over. Because of the weightless condition of the ship, each of the SEALS was armed with recoilless rocket rounds for his G15; the navy complement of the group would have to make do with the standard 6.8-mm caseless ammunition that, though low in recoil, could send a shooter tumbling unless he or she was