Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [111]
The SEALS moved after them with ruthless determination. The Eluoi, surprised at the reinforcement, tried to turn their weapons against Sanders and his men, but the Teammates had the drop on them. A deadly web of rocket rounds burst from the G15s, slicing through the air and through the bodies of any Eluoi unfortunate enough to be in the way. Because of the accuracy of the volley, that was most of them.
And then the beam of the ray gun shot from the storage locker and cut the last three hostiles in half. Coxswain Grafton and the young sailor Roberts floated out of their redoubt and looked around in some amazement, as if they were surprised to be alive.
“Sanders to Parvik,” the officer said, breathing very hard in the aftermath of the battle. “Do you copy?”
“Come in, Lieutenant,” the pilot said from the flight deck of the docked shuttle.
“The Pangaea is secured,” Sanders reported. His whole body was shaking, but somehow his voice sounded smooth, confident, even commanding.
Twenty-two: Unwelcome Interference
Jackson flipped off his communicator in disgust. He had been trying for more than four hours to raise Captain Carstairs on the Pegasus but had been rewarded only by a whole galaxy’s worth of static. The range was too great or the power of his personal comlink too limited for the connection to be established. Whatever the reason, a previously reliable means of contact was failing him when he most needed to make a coordinated plan.
The SEALS lieutenant was becoming increasingly frustrated with his isolation. He had located the VIP prisoners being held hostage and was progressing with a plan to effect their rescue. But all his preparations would come to nothing if he led the hundred humans to the docking bay of the Bazaar only to have no way to get them off the station and quickly out of the Darius system. He had a feeling that Tezlac Catal would not take the escape of his VIP prisoners well, and Jackson wanted to be far away—far measured in light-years—before the savant came around for an accounting.
His last contact with exterior forces had been after Olin Parvik had departed in a large shuttle. In a brief conversation with Carstairs, Jackson had learned that the missing passenger ship had been located and that Sanders was going to make an attempt to retake the vessel. How that dangerous mission had fared, the LT had no idea. Dammit! He shrugged and decided that he had to proceed as if the attack had been successful. If it failed, everything was pretty much down the drain, anyway.
The officer currently was sitting by himself in one of the small shops just off the main avenue traversing the third midlevel of the Bazaar. It might have been a street in some crowded city on Earth except for the steel roof over his head and the alien spices and foods being served on all sides. He was sipping a bitter drink that was the closest approximation to tea he’d been able to discover on the whole bustling station, waiting for his three men to join him.
The first to arrive was Baxter, who slid into the seat across from the LT with a look of quiet satisfaction. “How’d it go, Fritz?” Jackson asked. “I could use a little good news.”
“Well, maybe I have that, sir,” he said. The electrician’s mate waited as a seductive Shamani waitress brought him a cup of the bitter infusion and then he placed two circular cloths on the table between them. Each was white in color but woven through with a weblike pattern of copper wires. “I was able to rent a booth in one of these commercial workshops. I used the card, just like Mr. Parvik suggested, and there were no questions asked. I made these to your specifications. I only had time to do two of them, though.”
“Thanks, Fritz. That might just be enough.”
Baxter pointed to a pair of slender wires, each tipped with an alligator clip, that trailed from