Operation Orion - Kevin Dockery [32]
At least the prisoner’s answer had confirmed that something had been taken off the pirate ship. That allowed some hope that they might be able to find it somewhere on the asteroid if only they had enough time.
Ruiz’s voice crackled in his earpiece. “LT, I see Tommy and Mikey coming in for a landing.”
“Thanks, Master Chief. Attention, SEALS. Make ready to evacuate the wounded.” Jackson made his way out the blasted air lock in time to see the two drop boats, flying in horizontal orientation, come to rest like a pair of flying PT boats on the rocky flat just outside the pirate base. Each boat rested on four ski-like skids, and in that low-G environment, the LT understood that they would be able to lift off again.
Sanchez, resisting attempts by his fellow SEALS to help him walk, made his way out to the landing zone. Keast, with an apparently broken leg, was borne along by leaning on Smokey Robinson’s sturdy shoulder and eased by the gravity that caused him to weigh something like twenty pounds. In both cases, Jackson observed with relief, the self-sealing features of their pressure suits had patched the punctures immediately, saving the lives of the wounded men.
“Grafty, can you take these men back to the frigate? I want Mikey to stay here while we finish our search.”
“Sure thing, Lieutenant,” the coxswain said.
While they were carefully loaded aboard Tommy, Jackson used the drop boat’s stronger radio to raise the frigate. “Captain Carstairs?”
“How’d it go, Stonewall?” the CO asked from the frigate. The planet-to-orbiter comlink delayed the sound slightly, but the sound was as clear as a digital soundtrack despite the fact that nearby space was littered with asteroids.
“Successful so far, Captain. The enemy is neutralized. But we haven’t had any luck locating the shield driver. I’m sending Coxswain Grafton and Tommy back up with two wounded men. If you’ll allow it, I’d like him to bring Consul Char-Kane down to help us in our search. She’s the only one along who’s familiar with what we’re looking for.”
“She’s right here, Tom.” Jackson waited through a brief pause. “She’s willing to come down. I’ll get her outfitted with a suit so she can depart as soon as Grafton gets here.”
“Thank you, sir. Tommy will be on its way momentarily.” Jackson took a few seconds to talk to his wounded men, neither of whom wanted to be evacuated, to assure them that the entire Team would assemble aboard the frigate in a matter of hours. After that, he jumped down from the open cockpit and took a couple of long, leaping strides to carry him away from the danger zone.
With a blast of four evenly spaced rockets, the drop boat lifted off the asteroid and quickly flashed into space. Jackson watched the flare of the engines for half a minute until they were swallowed by the distance and then turned to matters on the ground.
Most of his men were still busily searching every nook and cranny of the captured installation, but he saw Ruiz and Baxter nearby with the captured energy gun. He bounced over to see what they had discovered.
“It’s like a combination laser and cutting torch,” the master chief explained, showing Jackson the device. The weapon was like a long rifle with a series of rings surrounding a barrel that looked like clear glass. The battery pack was connected to the gun with a pair of stout cables and displayed a series of dials and switches that were marked with symbols Jackson had come to know as Eluoi hieroglyphics.
“No way to tell for sure how much juice it has left,” Baxter noted. “But the master chief took three or four practice shots, and this little dial here moved over a bit each time. If I had to guess, I’d say it still has half power remaining. And this knob here, on the barrel, seems to control the strength of the blast. It was only at about 20 percent while the shooter was using it. I wonder what kind of range and killing