Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [117]
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 each of the cloths. “You just have to fasten these to a power source, like the battery pack of a Mark IV suit.” The electrician’s mate shook his head and looked at the officer skeptically. “Are you sure they’ll do what you want them to?”
“Not at all,” Jackson replied, wishing he could be more cheerful. “But this is the best idea I’ve been able to come up with. Nice work.” The LT picked up one of the cloths, folding it and tucking it into the pocket of his coveralls. “I’ll give the other one to Master Chief Ruiz when he gets back.”
As if on cue, the other two members of the detachment came up to join them. “I think we found a place that’ll work, LT,” the master chief said. “There’s an empty storage locker about twenty meters away from the door to the prisoners’ quarters. Harry was able to pick the lock, and it’s just big enough for our needs.”
“All right,” the officer said, glad for the chance to do something. He nodded at the small duffel bag Ruiz was carrying. “And that?”
The Puerto Rican smiled tightly. “Two Eluoi uniforms, sir, carefully sized to fit Teal and Baxter. Their original owners, um, don’t have any further need for clothing.”
Jackson nodded; he didn’t need to hear any more details to know that his men had accomplished the task he had asked them to do.
“Any luck on getting through to the frigate, sir?” the master chief asked.
Jackson only shook his head in disgust. Then he handed the cloth, with its weave of copper wires, across the table. “But here; Baxter made this. I’ve got one, too. We’ll put them on when we get into our pressure suits.”
If they made it that far in the plan, he thought disgustedly. “Dammit, this is a helluva time for my comlink to fail!”
“We found something that might be useful,” Ruiz said. “They have a communications center, a commercial one, about half a klick from here. You go in and pay your credits, and then you have access to a high-power radio, kind of like a phone booth to the rest of the star system.”
“Well, that might be worth checking out,” the LT said. He was reluctant to trust a commercial circuit with