The Teragoid Incident

6. The Joker in the Deck

Chapter 6 – The Jokerin the Deck.

Perez ran on down to supply and grabbed the duty storekeeper (SK), who was sputtering from being rudely awakened, "Where's the damn fire!"

"Pat, I need the AuxCon Backup power plant. The whole thing. Now. An hour ago. Yesterday, " said Perez, "and I really don't have time to explain the whole thing, but I'm trying to build a station decoy that will make the bad guys think nothing have changed so they don't blow us to hell for the next month."

"Chief, I can't let you have that, it's 3 million bucks," said SK1 Pat Chu.

"Get the chop on the comm, or whomever. I need it. And I need it in Docking Bay 2, like 5 minutes ago." said Perez.

"You can't sign for that!" said Chu.

"Who can" asked Perez.

"CO, XO, Chop." said Chu.

"Any one of them," asked Perez.

"No.. All of them," said Chu.

"Hang on a sec."

He leaned over Chu's desk and slotted his PIM.

"Sally, call the CO in the Wardroom conference room."

Sally blinked twice, and the PIM flashed an icon of a flashing receiver. The display cleared and the CO's face popped into view, "What is it, Randy?"

Something murmured out of the field of view. The Captain looked down, looked back up and said, "Chu?"

"Yessir," said Chu. Thank the helpful PIM.

"Give Perez whatever he needs and send me whatever paperwork you need checked off to make it happen."

"Sir, the law requires that we get formal packages and ...."

"Chu."

"Yessir," said Chu

"Do you like your life, " said the Captain.

"... Yes Sir," said Chu

"Perez is trying to keep the Unknown baddies that are interdicting some of your supply shipments from coming and killing us all. Give him the damned backup donkey generator, and anything else you think he might need or might help," said Cohen

"Aye, sir," said Chu as Cohen cut off.

He looked up and said, "I get it Chief, what can I do?"

Perez said, "Let's go get it, and bring it down to Dock 2. I'm gonna need a gravitic generator, and some steel. We're gonna build us a space station. I've got a couple hours before I go on watch, and I can get everything started before then."

"I don't know shit about electronics or fabricating, but I got parts," said Chu.

Perez and Chu found the backup generator and grabbed a grav sled to move it. It weighed some 2 and half tons and was about 6 meters square. Perez called some of the Engineering crew to help and they moved it right down the central shaft to Dock 2. Perez and a couple of mechanics (Machinist Mates) MM2 Dusty Rhodes and MM1 Rusty Jones planned out a big cross about 100 meters long, with the fusion generator, a gravity generator and a couple of subspace radios. The scam was to put a couple of EVA modules and put a spin on it, in order to simulate the electronic and gravitic signature of the ring. Getting the exact electronic read was the trick. The general plan was to record 12 hours of every band of output, including neutrinos, and build, steal or buy an emitter for all the frequencies that they could power. The four of them were joined by a team of ET's on the off going watch section. It might even work. It had a much better chance of working long enough to transition the station to ship mode and move it somewhere less exposed.