Omega Taskforce Series: Books 1 - 3: A Military Sci-Fi Box Set

by G J Ogden

  “Captain? Can you hear me?” cried Banks, helping him to his feet.

  “It was McQueen,” Sterling replied, cutting to the chase. “She’s still alive.”

  Banks' mouth fell open, but before any words came out the lights in the corridor went dead. A red glow then bled up from the alert lights at waist level and a series of solid thumps thudded along the walls. Sterling and Banks stood back-to-back. Then the doors to the crew quarters slid open and the turned crew of the Invictus darted out, like crazed zombies thirsting for flesh.

  “Go!” Sterling cried out, though his shout was barely audible over the fizz of his and Banks’ plasma pistols.

  Crew member after crew member fell, filling the cramped hallways with the familiar smell of burning flesh. Sterling glanced ahead to the docking hatch leading into the umbilical that connected the Imperium to his own ship. His heart skipped a beat as he realized it was closing.

  “Mercedes, get the hatch door!” Sterling called out, peeling the plasma pistol from Banks grasp. Banks’ head snapped toward the hatch, then she ran, ploughing through two more turned crew members like a bulldozer. Plasma blasts flashed from the pistol in each of Sterling’s hands, but still the crew of the Imperium came on. They were emerging from stairwells and pulling themselves out of crawlspaces, across the smoldering bodies of their fallen comrades.

  “Blast the hinges!” Banks cried. Her hands were wrapped around the hatch door, which creaked and groaned as the motors fought against the inhuman strength of the officer.

  Sterling turned one of his pistols toward the door, still shooting at the advancing horde with the other, and opened fire. The metal of the hinges cracked and then grew hot until the plasma pistol’s cell ran dry.

  “That’s all I’ve got,” shouted Sterling, kicking one of the turned crew in the chest then blasting him through the neck at point blank range. There was an earsplitting howl from behind him. It was a scream of raw, primal effort, louder and more aggressive than any sound Sterling had heard before. It was followed by the grind and wail of fractured metal. Sterling glanced back to see Commander Banks, holding the docking hatch above her head, his first-officer’s face red and eyes burning with rage.

  “Get back!” Banks yelled.

  Sterling pressed himself to the wall as Banks launched the slab of metal toward the approaching crew members. It tore through them, smashing bone and crushing muscle so that the flesh of the turned crew popped like ripe tomatoes. Teeth gritted, Banks advanced, but Sterling caught her arm, feeling the swollen, rock hard muscle through her tunic. Banks glared at him, and not for the first time, the sight of his enraged first officer struck fear into his soul.

  “Mercedes, that’s enough!” he yelled, but Sterling could see in Banks’ eyes that he hadn’t reached her. Tapping his neural interface, he tried again as his first-officer pulled her arm free of his grasp with ease. “Mercedes, snap out of it and get on board, that’s an order!” Sterling yelled. Suddenly, the raw brutality left her eyes, but still Banks did not move. “NOW, Commander!” Sterling added, screaming through his mind.

  Finally, Banks shook her head and her jaw unclenched. “Aye, Captain,” she said, appearing embarrassed. She then spun on her heels and waited for Sterling to move ahead.

  More turned crewmembers clambered over the broken docking hatch and the bodies crushed beneath it, but Sterling was already through the tunnel and back on-board the Invictus. He hit the button to close the hatch even before Banks had fully made it through. Gears whirred and the slab of metal slid shut, but the turned crew of the Imperium were relentless. Running into the hatch at full speed, several of the turned humans slid their fingers through the gap between the door and the frame. However, despite the enhancement to their metabolism caused by the Sa’Nerran neural weapon, the turned crew lacked the primal, animal strength of Commander Mercedes Banks. Unable to overcome the motors driving the hatch to close, the door crushed the fingers and hands of the turned crew, leaving bloody, pulpy smears behind. The hatch light then turned green and a moment later the Invictus powered away from the Sa’Nerran ship yard.

  Sterling was thrown to the deck from the sudden burst of acceleration, but Banks reacted with lightning instincts. His first-officer held onto his chest armor, sparing Sterling from being slammed into the bulkhead like a rag doll. Grasping a hand hold on the wall to steady himself, Sterling saw the Imperium slip away behind them. Then the exhaust trails of two torpedoes snaked out from the Invictus and their sister ship was incinerated in a ball of fury and flame.

  Chapter 22

  A rapid getaway

  Sterling felt the thump of rock and ice hammering against the Invictus’ hull as solidly as if it were his own chest that had borne the impact. He had barely any time to recover before the ship then veered hard to port and Sterling was slammed against the corridor wall. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d been tossed around the cramped interior of the Invictus during his short journey from the docking hatch to the bridge. His shoulders were bruised and his hands were cut and bloodied from repeated falls. Yet his resolve was not weakened. Nothing short of being blown out into space through a breach in the hull was going to stop him from reaching his post.

  “Report!” Sterling called out as the door to the bridge whooshed open and he staggered inside.

  “We’re on course through the ring system,” Commander Graves called back, while practically falling off the command platform to allow Sterling through. “The shipyard has launched twenty Wasps, and they are pursuing us with haste. There is no sign yet of the Sa’Nerran strike force.”

  “They’re out there,” said Sterling, grasping the sides of his captain’s console and smearing his own blood along the metal panels in the process.

  Through the viewscreen, Sterling could see clusters of rock and ice the size of houses flashing past the ship like gigantic cannonballs. Then he peered down at his console and brought up a reverse camera view of the pursuing Wasps. This was the moniker that Fleet personnel had given to the single-seater Sa’Nerran fighter craft that were on their tail. It was on account of the fact the ships were annoying and able to deliver a painful sting, but were rarely lethal. However, twenty Wasps was enough to take down a ship like the Invictus. Sterling knew that if the Sa’Nerran fighters concentrated their attacks on the Invictus’ engines, their ability to escape would erode as quickly as their armor plating. Then the much more powerful strike force, led by MAUL, would be free to close in for the kill.

  Sterling glanced over to Keller, intending to ask his helmsman how much longer they had to go before they broke out of the ring system. However, the young officer was in an almost trance-like state of concentration. The last thing the pilot needed was his captain barking at him for an update, Sterling reasoned. And in truth, he didn’t need to be apprised of the situation. There were really only two possible outcomes. They either made it out in one piece or were smashed into oblivion against a hunk of rock and ice. Sterling considered that the chances of the latter occurring were far greater if he distracted his talented ensign than if he did not.

  “Thank you, Commander, you’d better get back to the med bay,” said Sterling, turning back to Graves. “We have wounded, and we’ll have more before this is over.”

  “Aye Captain,” said Commander Graves, calmly stepping away from the command platform. “I shall prepare my butcher’s knives in readiness for the inevitable influx.”

  “You do that, Doc,” replied Sterling, a little taken aback. He then cocked an eyebrow in the direction of Commander Banks, who had also now managed to drag herself to her station. She tapped her neural interface and opened a private link to Sterling.

  “The scariest part is that I don’t think he’s joking,” said Banks, watching the medical officer depart with the unruffled calm of a surgeon.

  “I don’t think Graves and humor are compatible,” replied Sterling before closing their link and adjusting his gaze to the viewscreen.

  More thuds hammered the h
ull of the Invictus, but the volume and timbre of the sound had changed.

  “Damn it, those aren’t rocks hitting us,” he said out loud. “We’re being shot at.”

  Sterling hurriedly checked his console and saw that the Wasps were gaining, pushing their single engines to their limits in order to charge the Invictus down. Two of the compact fighters had already been obliterated by flying rock and ice. However, Sterling couldn’t rely on the billions of fragments that made up the planet’s ring system to take care of the pursuing ships. Turning to the weapons console, he expected to see Shade’s night-shift relief officer in the post, given that Shade had taken a plasma blast to the back during their retreat from the shipyard. However, the lieutenant was standing tall at her station, as if she’d never left it.

  “Lieutenant Shade, you should be in the med bay,” said Sterling. He made sure to come across with the appropriate level of authority and firmness, though in truth he admired the young woman for remaining on duty.

  “I’m fine, Captain. I wish to continue my duties,” replied Shade, in a manner that was bordering on rude. Sterling often forgot the officer’s troubled history, given that it had never interfered with her work. Shade then seemed to recognize that her tone had perhaps been a little rebellious. “With your permission, of course, sir,” she added.

  Sterling cast his eyes down to the wound on the weapon’s officer’s back. A dinner plate-sized section of her armor had been melted through and some of the damaged fibers had fused with her burned flesh. However, she wasn’t bleeding, and her eyes and responses were still as sharp as ever.

  “Permission granted, Lieutenant,” replied Sterling, opting to trust Shade’s judgment of her own condition. “Though if you die at your post, I’m going to be pissed,” he added. It wasn’t a joke, and Shade didn’t laugh, not that she ever did. “Now get those Wasps off our ass.”

  “Aye Captain,” replied Shade, smartly. “I’ve already got something in mind, but I’ll need Ensign Keller’s help.”

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant,” said Sterling, as four more of the pursuing fighters blinked off his screen. Some had been destroyed by the Invictus’ plasma turrets, but the mass of rocky obstacles in the ship’s wake was also starting to take a heavier toll on the enemy’s numbers.

  “Ensign, steer us close to that large moonlet up ahead,” said Shade. “Fly past it as close as you can get.”

  Keller uttered a crisp response, but kept his eyes focused on the helm. Plasma blasts from the pursuing Wasps flashed past, but an increasing number were also landing true.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast,” said Sterling, alternating his focus from the viewscreen to the damage control readout. The ship was taking a pounding, and as tough as it was, Sterling knew that everything had its limit.

  “Hold her steady…” continued Shade as the Invictus practically skimmed the surface of the moonlet like a skipping stone. “Just a few more seconds…” she added, while hovering her finger over her console.

  Sterling watched on, unable to do anything other than wait. He fixed his eyes onto Shade’s hand, waiting for it to hit the console and fire their weapons. It was an agonizing few seconds that felt like an eternity.

  “Firing!” Shade called out.

  Sterling turned to the viewscreen and saw four torpedoes snake out from the Invictus’ aft launchers. The weapons sped toward the moonlet, and disappeared inside an inky black crater.

  “Brace for impact,” Shade called out, gripping her console more tightly, and prompting Sterling to do the same.

  The torpedoes detonated, fracturing the moonlet into a cloud of smaller rocks and dust that expanded and enveloped the pursuing Wasps. Moments later, the Invictus was hit by a shockwave that propagated through the higher-density environment inside the ring system. However, compared to the near constant barrage of rock and ice already bouncing off the hull, the blast felt relatively tame.

  “There are only four Wasps left, Captain,” said Shade, as the dust-cloud dissipated. “And they’re pulling back.”

  “Well done, Lieutenant,” replied Sterling, triumphantly thumping his fist against his console and smearing more blood onto it in the process.

  “Emerging from the ring system now, Captain,” called out Ensign Keller.

  Suddenly, the Invictus penetrated the barrier of stellar material inside the ring system and burst into empty space, like a dolphin leaping out of the ocean. Sterling’s console lit up like a Christmas tree, though he didn’t need to assess the readings to know why. Lurking just beyond weapons range was the Sa’Nerran strike force, led by the warship they knew as MAUL.

  “Ensign Keller, tell me those ships are where we expected them to be,” said Sterling.

  Freed from the constant need to adjust their course through the ring system, Keller turned back to face Sterling. His face was flushed and beaded with sweat.

  “They’re closer than we projected, sir,” replied Keller. The pilot looked on the verge of collapse, as if he’d just run a marathon and had been asked to run another. “MAUL is too smart to expect we’d just head out through the ring system on a direct course for the aperture. It looks like he’s positioned the strike force around the ring system, covering different points of exit.”

  “It’s a ship, ensign, not a ‘he’,” Sterling hit back. “MAUL is nothing more a hunk of metal with a crew, just like this one. Except this crew is better.”

  “Aye, sir,” said Keller, wiping the sweat from his eyes.

  “To make a run for the aperture, we’re going to have to go through one of those destroyers,” said Banks, looking up from her console. “We can avoid MAUL and likely outrun the Skirmishers. But there’s no getting past that ship without a fight.”

  Sterling nodded. “Then let’s give it a fight,” he said, turning to Lieutenant Shade. “Shore up the armor and point defense guns, Lieutenant. We hit that destroyer with everything we have, point blank range.”

  “Aye, sir,” replied Shade, crisply.

  Despite the situation and the searing pain she must have been experiencing, the expression on his weapon’s officer’s face had not altered. Sometimes Sterling wondered if the woman even experienced pain in the same way as everyone else. Sterling then turned to Ensign Keller, who was already looking at him, knowing that his role in what came next would be just as pivotal as Shade’s was. However, there were no specific instructions he could give the young helmsman. The Invictus wasn’t a World War One bi-plane that they could throw around the skies of Europe, maneuvering in an instant. All they could do was go hard at the destroyer and make their approach as unpredictable as possible using thrusters to alter their angle and position. Their point defense guns could handle torpedoes and mass projectiles, but plasma weapons were harder to evade. Sterling knew that all they could do was make themselves as hard to hit as possible, and hope their state-of-the-art regenerative armor was up to the job.

  “Fly as fast and as crazy as you can, Ensign,” said Sterling. “Then once we’re through, run like hell for that aperture.”

  Ensign Keller acknowledged the order then Sterling finally turned to Commander Banks. However, she was already a step ahead of him.

  “Electronic jamming is focused in on the destroyer,” said Banks, leaning on her console a little more heavily than usual. The exertion of physically tearing a docking hatch off its hinges had clearly taken its toll, even on his near super-human first-officer. “They’ll struggle to get a solid lock through all the EM soup we’re putting out. One of the warriors on board would have to practically lean out of a window to get a clean shot.”

  Sterling’s console chimed several alerts and he glanced down at it, puffing out his cheeks. “No such trouble for those other ships, unfortunately,” he said, looking at the twenty torpedoes that the other Sa’Nerran warships in the strike force had already launched at them.

  “I’m not worried about the torps,” said Banks. “It’s the pot-shots they’re taking at us with their plasma rail guns th
at bother me. A couple have already given us a pretty close shave.”

  Sterling nodded then focused ahead. They’d done all they could. No matter how well he planned, and no matter how ballsy their tactics, anyone could get a lucky shot. The pieces were all in play. All they could do now was let the match unfold and see who came out on top.

  “Thirty seconds…” said Shade, hand poised over her console, waiting till the last moment to fire.

  Through the deck plating, Sterling could feel the machine-gun like rattle of their point defense cannons firing. The guns had created a shield against the torpedoes and physical shells that the Sa’Nerran destroyer was throwing at them with relentless fury. The entire ship was now shaking, not only from the intense thruster maneuvers that Keller was performing in order to throw off the destroyer’s aim, but from the impact of the plasma blasts and projectiles that were sneaking through their defensive barrier. Sterling again focused on the damage control panel, seeing patches of regenerative armor darken and turn red. A series of powerful vibrations then rippled through the deck. Sterling knew every shake, shimmy and sound the Invictus made, and he knew the hull had been breached.

  “Hull breaches, deck two, three and four. Emergency bulkheads in place,” Banks called out, as more vibrations and thuds rocked the bridge.

  “Hold your course,” Sterling called out. It was unnecessary to say, since they no longer had a choice, but the crew hearing his voice and hearing the conviction in it was enough.

  “Firing,” Shade called out, her voice still remarkably composed.

  Sterling gripped the sides of his console and watched the plasma blasts tear out into space ahead of them, striking the destroyer cleanly on the port bow. There was a flash of light and the viewscreen briefly went white, until the external feeds compensated for the intense glare of the warship’s violent detonation.