Omega Force 09: Revolution

by Joshua Dalzelle

  The familiar, easy friendship that he had developed with Russ Johnson and Marcus Webb, while filling a need for human interaction he hadn't realized existed, did have the downside of making him mildly homesick whenever the conversation ended. He'd ended up having to keep his friendships semi-secret because Crusher and Twingo became bizarrely jealous and petty when he would share news from Earth during meal times, and it would last for days afterwards.

  The rest of the packet was specs on the Pathfinder-class ships, some recent pictures of the development efforts on Terranovus, and something that made him tear up: the address and access codes for the slip-com broadcast node from Earth to its entire fleet. His access was restricted to the one thing he really wanted: media broadcasts. He did the conversion in his head and realized he'd missed last year's football season but that hockey season was still in full swing.

  He archived the rest of the data for further review, put the video messages into his own encrypted network location, and closed out the terminal. He'd heard a few people walk by on the way to the galley and he knew Lucky was probably hovering outside, waiting to use the equipment to begin his analysis, so he decided to grab something to eat and then see how many of his favorite shows were still on the air.

  "Good news about the brat?" Crusher asked around a mouthful when Jason sat across from him with his own tray.

  "I heard he was okay as far as Marcus knows," Jason said.

  "Still no direct contact?" Twingo asked.

  "I don't know if you remember our first meeting, but Junior doesn't exactly have a stellar opinion of dear old Dad." Jason had to try to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "Ed and Jess tried to explain things to him, but he blames me for the fact they lived in isolation and, oddly enough, for not being there when Taryn died."

  "Doesn't seem fair," Crusher said. "You'd think having a father that was a hero would have some impact."

  "He's not exactly at a reasonable age," Jason said. "I'm sure Galvetic adolescents aren't any more rational than human teenagers."

  "True enough," Crusher said. "So now what in the hell are we doing? Flying circles again?"

  "You got somewhere else to be?"

  "Actually, yes," Crusher said. "And since my friends keep leaving me behind for every little scrape they get into, I don't see why I even need to be here."

  "His pouting aside, we are just burning fuel with no real mission goals," Twingo said.

  "No, we're conducting an extensive shakedown cruise of the Phoenix's upgrades," Jason corrected. "In the process, we're also helping a good friend with something that's important to him. Or did you want to go tell Lucky that his problems aren't of any interest to you?"

  "Well … that kills that argument," Crusher said. "I'll be in the cargo bay training. I'd suggest you join me. I'm sure all your time spent playing farmer has left you soft and slow."

  "We'll see." Jason pushed his tray away. "Get ready to have your ass kicked."

  It was just like old times. Jason let himself be lulled into overconfidence while Crusher sandbagged the early matches and then, once he'd overextended, beat the crap out of him. It was one of those beatings that left Jason unable to breath without pain. Crusher hadn't walked away without taking some hard shots himself, but Jason was once again reminded why he stood supreme even among a race of skilled and aggressive warriors.

  "WHAT THE HELL happened to you?" Twingo started at Jason's appearance.

  "Crusher decided to take his annoyance at being excluded recently out on my face," Jason said. "What've you got for me?"

  "I took apart this thing you pulled off those amateurs on Pinnacle and had Kage run a detailed analysis on the software." Twingo waved to the disassembled device on his bench. "They were partially correct. It's definitely Kheprian in origin and it is made to be used against battlesynths specifically, but it doesn't immobilize them."

  "Go on," Jason grunted as he lowered himself painfully into a seat.

  "It's made to temporarily inhibit a battlesynth’s secondary actuators and onboard weaponry," Twingo explained. "In other words, it turns them into roughly the equivalent of a normal synth for a time. We weren't able to figure out what the delay is. It's possible it could vary for each individual. You said Lucky was immune to it?"

  "Didn't even faze him," Jason said. "And he didn't seem surprised by that either … I think he had some inkling of what the thing did. From what we gathered off those idiots, it seems that someone on Khepri used the shotgun approach to track down any loose battlesynths that may have missed or ignored the recall order. These guys weren't waiting on Lucky specifically."

  "So every major transfer or service hub probably has roving gangs of morons waving these boxes at every synth they meet." Twingo rubbed his chin. "How does that help us?"

  "By itself it doesn't," Jason said. "We already knew about the recall order. But there was also a slip-com node address that they were supposed to use once they'd made contact or neutralized a battlesynth. The instructions were very specific that the 'unit' had to be intact. The strange part—what?" He interrupted himself at Twingo's sudden sour expression.

  "I know you don't know this because it was well before your time out here, but this really throws what we knew about the pru and the synth program out the airlock," Twingo said. "The general consensus in the quadrant was that they were benevolent creators and, out of the goodness of their hearts, freed their accidentally sentient creations to be a free people. This business of recalls and bounties seems to refute that, at least as far as battlesynths are concerned. It looks to me like they're still slaves."

  "That thought had occurred to me," Jason admitted. "It's why we're pressing ahead with this mission despite whatever side angle Mok is playing."

  "You don't have to convince me, I was getting a bit bored puttering around on S'Tora anyway. So, what's next?"

  "Let's wait and see what Lucky can dig up in that cache that was hidden behind Noyut Vulban's remains," Jason said, wincing as he stood. "In the meantime, I'm going to hit the rack and let Doc's nanobots get to work on these bruises."

  "Good luck."

  "WE HAVE A DESTINATION," Lucky announced as Jason walked back onto the bridge, feeling somewhat better after allowing his enhanced physiology and the medical nanobots to repair the Crusher-inflicted injuries. "Zeta Vandor-6. We believe the instructions left by Vulban point to someone he trusted there."

  "Zeta Vandor-6?" Jason repeated. "There's a system that has a habitable sixth planet? This isn't going to be some damn ice cube with surface temperatures in the negative hundreds, is it?"

  "It's actually a habitable moon," Kage said. "It is an odd system, but this place is right in the temperate sweet spot. There are three such moons orbiting two habitable planets in the inner Zeta Vandor system so they were counted in the ConFed's survey data."

  "Were you able to get anything else useful off those data cards?" Jason asked.

  "Oddly enough, no." Kage sounded frustrated. "They're locked with some encryption routine that's adaptive in a way I've never seen. I can't even actually tell how they're doing it, much less devise a strategy to overcome it. Lucky and I agreed that it might be best if we try to make contact on this moon and see if whomever we might track down has the decryption key."

  "Sensible," Jason said. He resisted the urge to tell Kage that he was impressed by his restraint when he saw that Lucky was physically holding the data cards. Apparently when he said “Lucky and I agreed,” what was implied was “Lucky took them and won't give them back.” "New course is entered and locked?"

  "Just waiting for your approval."

  "Let's do it," Jason said. "And crank her up. I think we've babied the new grav-drive long enough. Let's see if it was worth the money we paid for it."

  13

  "What did your team find?"

  "We tracked Omega Force to Pinnacle Station, but they'd left before we arrived." The being standing in front of Mok's desk was tall and lean with severe features etched into his light green-skinn
ed face. He went by the name Syodo and had come highly recommended from Mok's contacts within the Empire's clandestine services.

  "I'm going to want more than that, Syodo," Mok said.

  "We traced their movements from a series of violent encounters on Gallery Level Twenty-Six and below in the Engineering levels," Syodo said. "Apparently Burke and Lucky attacked a superior number of Taukkir narco-gangsters and left them in bad shape … all with serious injuries, no fatalities."

  "Captain Burke knows that needlessly leaving dead bodies in his wake leads to investigations, a headache he doesn't need." Mok smiled. "What else?"

  "The Taukkir told us that they'd been contracted to keep a look out for any rogue battlesynths roaming around and had been given a device which supposedly disabled them, but when they tried it on Lucky it seemed to be ineffective," Syodo continued. "We dug a little deeper and it seems they were to be on the lookout for any random battlesynth and not Lucky specifically.

  "We also found that he and Burke desecrated the final resting place of a Noyut Vulban and stole the remains."

  "They what?" Mok asked, certain he'd misheard.

  "Just as I said, sir," Syodo said with a double twitch of his ears, his species equivalent of a shrug. "No idea why, and we were unable to find out who this Vulban was."

  "And I suppose you have no idea where they're off to now?" Mok asked. "I could, of course, simply contact Burke and ask him, but I've found that he's more effective if he thinks he's doing something of his own volition."

  "No, the Phoenix was long gone by the time we arrived," Syodo said. "We were fortunate to discover that they were even there in the first place. One of our lookouts recognized Burke."

  "Keep at it," Mok said, stabbing his finger at a button on his desk and killing the connection. The hologram of Syodo shimmered and then vanished as the slip-com link was terminated. He spun around in his chair and looked out the floor to ceiling window, his fingers steepled and his brow furrowed.

  He'd hired Syodo and let him pick his team in a misguided effort to recreate what Jason Burke had been able to accomplish seemingly by accident. Despite having turned loose a considerable amount of resources, his team had never been able to produce the results Omega Force pulled off with apparent ease. He understood that Burke had collected a unique crew and some of his team, like Crusher, were one of a kind and wouldn't be easily replicated.

  Syodo's seven-member team had proven to be effective at discreet interdictions and pacifications, but what Mok had originally intended was to just let them loose out in the wild and then call upon them as he needed. Perhaps his mistake had been in pulling too heavily from a pool of ex-military candidates. Then again, maybe Omega Force was just one of those rare occurrences that couldn't be recreated. On the surface, no single member of that team seemed so special that Mok couldn't hire one just as good, but when trying to mix those individuals into an effective team he began to see that he may have missed the mark with his plan. The fact Syodo couldn't seem to find a way to simply track the Phoenix galled him and meant he'd have to either reach out to Burke, bring in more resources to find him, or just let it play out as it would. The problem with his second option was that Burke, always suspicious, would catch wind of it and disappear. The issue with the first option was that the human was also highly distrustful and would likely give him next to nothing. So it was to be option three, which was essentially a lack of options.

  What was so infuriating was that there was nothing specific he could point at, no one entity or occurrence he could focus on as the source of all the trouble. It was all a lot of speculation, rumor, and happenstance that might all just be coincidence rather than a coordinated effort to bring down the ConFed, something he wasn't even sure was entirely possible.

  "I want any communications from Captain Burke brought to my attention no matter when they're received, understood?" Mok said, knowing that the computer that controlled his office would forward it appropriately.

  "Yes, sir," the voice of one of his personal assistants came back a moment later.

  "Now … I wait," he said, trying to control his emotions. Being blind and powerless was not a pleasant sensation, nor one he was accustomed to.

  "SO THE PLANETS these moons orbit are also life-sustaining?" Jason asked.

  "Not unless you want your bones crushed under the weight of your own body," Doc said. "The gravity is so high the only things living down there are low-crawling invertebrates and ground-hugging flora."

  "Sounds pleasant," Crusher said. "So what's the plan?"

  "There are three potential contacts down on Zeta Vandor-6 that we were able to find through a localized Nexus search that could be who we're looking for," Jason said. The term Nexus, the name of a specific company that serviced the core worlds, had been quickly embedding itself into the quadrant's lexicon as a generic word for any public network.

  "One of the names was a legal counsel for the Vulban family at one time; her name popped up quite a bit in Kage's research so we'll try there first."

  "Thin," Crusher grunted. "Is that the best we have?"

  "For right now," Jason said, not wanting to get into a protracted argument about it. So far they'd been muddling along, tugging on the thin threads they came across, and he was beginning to get the feeling that whatever they were chasing wasn't meant to be easily found. It also further disturbed him that they had no clear goal in mind. Were they helping Lucky chase down answers from his past, or helping the ConFed maintain its stabilizing control over the quadrant? Not clearly knowing what the objective was made it entirely likely they were being manipulated by Mok, though to what ends Jason couldn't guess. Despite his interest in them, Jason knew someone of Mok's wealth and influence could buy a thousand small merc teams to accomplish his goals.

  "I have information on our most promising lead, Captain," Kage said. "It's a legal counsel down there named Nace Ba'an who represented the Vulban family on multiple occasions."

  "Why is that more promising than our other leads?" Jason asked. "We already knew she was attached to the family in some capacity."

  "The official records have been scrubbed as to what, specifically, she did," Kage said. "I was able to find some documents on the Nexus that were administrative records submitted by the Clerk of Tribunal. These are just procedural records, but they do show that Nace Ba'an had arrived on four different occasions with members of Noyut Vulban's family during the initial immigration process that made them full citizens of the Zeta Vandor system."

  "Damn … good work, Kage." Jason couldn't find anywhere to poke holes in the flighty code slicer's work. He also had to appreciate the Veran's ingenuity when it came to finding back-channel information when someone was actively trying to sanitize official records. "The fact the other records are altered at all makes me think you're on the right track."

  "Uh … thanks," Kage mumbled, unaccustomed to having his theories accepted right away, much less complimented.

  Zeta Vandor-6 was a relatively insignificant world with no major exports or attractions, so the traffic in orbit was sparse. The Phoenix was quickly given clearance to land at the starport of their choice, as they were flying the registration of a light courier ship. The tarmac was littered haphazardly with ships of similar size and registry as their courier so Jason didn't give much thought to paying for a hangar to hide his gunship.

  "I think we can safely make some assumptions before we go barging into this lawyer's office and begin making threats or whatever else you might have planned," Doc said once the brakes were applied and the main drive spooled down.

  "I'm listening, but I resent your insinuation," Jason said, crossing his arms and leaning back in the pilot's seat while Kage finished shutting down the flight systems.

  "This Nace Ba'an has been actively trying to detach herself from the Vulban name. I think a more subtle approach is needed to see if we can get anything useable out of her," Doc said. Before the others could interrupt or run over top of him with their own ideas, Doc qu
ickly laid out his plan and even began handing out assignments. Not having really thought of anything himself other than just walking up and asking her about the Vulban affair, Jason acquiesced and allowed Doc to run with the operation with only a few tweaks on his part.

  "I guess that covers it," he said. "Let's get to it. Kage, call for the ground cars and everyone else go get dressed for their respective roles. Let's keep the personal armament to a reasonable level, Crusher. Any questions?"

  He got two negative responses, the rest looked away as if bored. Jason, used to such treatment, walked off the bridge.

  "HOW MAY I be of assistance?"

  "My name is Doctor Jorvren Ma'Fredich," Doc said. "I was told this was the office Counselor Ba'an works out of?"

  "Quite right, it is," the young male alien that might have been a zuras beamed. "Are you expected?"

  "I'm afraid not," Doc said. "This is an urgent matter that came to my attention quite suddenly. I was hoping she would have time to see me for a few minutes."

  "Has Counselor Ba'an provided services for you in the past?"

  "No, but she came highly recommended," Doc said. The receptionist paused, his hands hovering over the terminal as he considered what Doc has said.

  "Please wait here," he finally said and walked back into the inner office.

  "So far so good, I guess," Twingo said. The engineer was pulling at his suit uncomfortably while shifting Doc's attaché case from hand to hand.