Free The Santana Nexus (Junkyard Dogs Book 3) by Phillip Nolte

supply on one side and an obviously jury-rigged cable a centimeter or so in diameter connected it to a modern computer on the other.
    "I have copied what I could access to this computer. I may be able to get more of the data with some deeper probing techniques, but I haven't had the time yet."
    "Can you transfer what you have to my wrist computer?"
    "I should be able to. Go ahead and put your computer into receive mode."
    "Just a moment," said Carlisle. She fished around in a pocket on her coverall and pulled out a delicate , almost gossamer, net. She pulled the net down over her hair, made a few adjustments to get it properly aligned and touched the centimeter-diameter, flat, circular plate that was positioned over her right temple. Her eyes seemed to glaze over for a couple of seconds. The Ensign rotated her head side to side and announced.
    "Done."
    "But you didn't do anything," said the technician.
    "This web is the cranial net that came with my wrist computer," said Carlisle, waving her open hand over the top of her head.
    "I had heard of such nets, but have never seen one." Heskim looked the net over more closely. "Ingenious!" was all he could say. "It gives you full access to all of the computer's functions?"
    "Yes, and it can do even more," said the Ensign, "I really don't know how I got along without it. It's really nice when you're wearing a spacesuit. Here, watch this..."
    Carlisle brought up a hologram in the air between them, a schematic of the Istanbul , something that Heskim was certain to be familiar with. The schematic began to rotate.
    "Remarkable! It has been rumored that you can do things like this, but until now I have not seen it done. I begin to see how useful such a device must be."
    Heskim dragged his attention away from the hologram with an effort. "So you are prepared to download this information?"
    " Anytime you're ready."
    Heskim sat back down and consulted the monitor for the workbench computer. He selected a file and punched a button on his keyboard. Meanwhile, Carlisle had switched her display to another view and the schematic of the Istanbul dissolved and was replaced by a display that consisted of scrolling columns of text and numbers as the download proceeded. The download took about thirty seconds.
    "That's it," said Heskim.
    "I should be able to do something with this," said Carlisle, as she skimmed over some of the information she'd just received. "It's encoded but it almost has be in an old cipher of some kind. The Federation broke these codes way back during the Succession War. Hopefully I can find the right key without too much trouble. I can already see what looks like some date stamps and other stuff." She nodded her head. "Yes, I can definitely work with this." She turned her attention back to the computer tech. "You say there is some damage to the drive?"
    "No, it's really more like deterioration. As you pointed out yourself, this drive is at least sixty years old."
    "I guess it could be worse," said Carlisle. " I got it out of a computer on the bridge of an old ship that was abandoned on a moon at the end of the Succession War. There was no atmosphere and, naturally, it was cold but the ship was mostly in permanent shadow so a least it wasn't subjected to widely varying temperature fluctuations."
    " That had to have helped," said Heskim, "So far I have extracted only the data that was easy to get. I'll have a look at some of the other areas of the drive when I get time. I'll warn you now that some of the information on this drive is almost certainly not going to be retrievable anymore."
    " Whatever else you can get will be fine," replied the Ensign, "Thanks, Heskim. Let me know if you have any luck. In the meantime, it looks like there's more than enough here to keep me busy for a while. See you later?"
    "My pleasure, Dr. Carlisle."
    With a portion of the data from the old drive now in her possession, Carlisle left the electronics lab and returned to her quarters. She had