Omega Force 3: The Enemy Within

by Joshua Dalzelle

  ©2014

  Omega Force: The Enemy Within

  By Joshua Dalzelle

  Copyright 2014

  Kindle Edition

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  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.

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  Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services

  http://www.moniquehappy.com

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  “The most important fight is against the enemy within.

  Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.

  Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.”

  -Sun Tzu

  Chapter 1

  CRACK!

  Jason’s head snapped back with the force of the impact. If he hadn’t been bound to the chair there was no doubt he would have hit the floor. His severely concussed brain was having difficulty focusing on what was happening around him.

  “You will tell me what I want to know, yes?” The speaker had a voice that managed to sound both raspy and yet also like bubbles coming up through sludge. When Jason had still been somewhat coherent, the effect had mildly disgusted him.

  “You’ve done too much damage. I told you to be careful,” another voice, this one reedy and thin, said from behind the chair the human was shackled to. Jason was vaguely aware of thin, bony fingers grasping his head from behind as his implants struggled to help him remain conscious. He wasn’t sure the little machines were doing him any favors. No fewer than four aliens had taken turns over the last two days pummeling him for information he honestly didn’t possess. Not that he’d have given it to them anyway. They were the worst of the worst, scum who preyed upon the weak and took advantage of their plight for simple monetary gain. But lately, the group had decided to up their game and began trafficking military grade weaponry into the hands of small time criminal elements throughout the sector. This had elevated the level of scrutiny on their operation and gained them the attention of Omega Force, a small mercenary unit that took a special interest in just such individuals.

  Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite as planned, and Captain Jason Burke, Omega Force’s commander, managed to get himself captured during a routine information gathering trip. The group suspected him of being a ConFed agent and ghosted him off to a secure location before his crew knew he was missing. They’d tried the normal array of high-tech persuasion techniques to extract information out of him, but their unfamiliarity with human physiology had led them to becoming frustrated and resorting to much more low-tech methods. The beatings had begun in earnest twelve hours ago and were beginning to cause significant injury, even to someone so enhanced as Jason.

  “If he dies I’d say that solves the problem,” Gravel Voice said with what could be considered a laugh.

  “I don’t think so,” said the being with the thin voice. “If he dies, the ConFed will sent a team of agents to find him. Maybe even operators.”

  “Humph,” Gravel Voice grunted, but not without a note of fear. Nobody in their right mind wanted to have the Confederation’s Special Operations Section coming after them. “Let’s give him some time to think about it.” A moment later the heavy door swung shut with a clang. A few more minutes and the motion-sensitive lights went out and plunged the cell into blackness, but not before Jason had already lost consciousness.

  *****

  Drip.

  Drip.

  The steady sound of something dripping onto the floor was the first thing Jason was aware of as he struggled to regain his senses. His implants had done an admirable job against the head trauma and, despite the excruciating pain, he felt much better than he had before he passed out. Barely. The liquid splattering noisily onto the ground turned out to be his own blood that was seeping from a dozen deep gashes in his face. Normally the tech in his body would have staunched the flow already, but the nanobots in his bloodstream were trying repair the underlying tissue and couldn’t do that working around blood clots, so they continued to let him bleed out for the time being.

  He raised his head painfully and tried to look around. The room was pitch black so he switched spectrums in his ocular implants to infrared. A thin band of light showed through his partially open right eyelid; the left eye was still swelled completely shut. He switched back to the visible spectrum and allowed his head to sink forward to try and ease the pain. This didn’t go exactly like I’d planned it.

  The door clanged open again and Gravel Voice and his wispy-toned friend sauntered back in. Jason raised his head and cracked his right eye open to look at them. They weren’t carrying any new implements of torture with them, so that was good.

  “You’re a tough one, I’ll give you that,” Gravel Voice said. “But soon it won’t matter how tough you are. We’ll be leaving shortly and will have no further need for you. We’ll even try to make it look like an accident. I’m sure your ConFed friends will still bury what’s left of you with full honors.”

  Jason had to work his mouth several times before he could speak. He had healed up enough to open his jaw, but it was going to hurt.

  “You sure that’s a good idea, Corenntal?” Jason asked. Both beings started visibly as he used Gravel Voice’s real name. Up to that point he had played dumb during the entire interrogation. “I’ll tell you what,” he continued, pausing to let some drool and blood flow out of his mouth to clear it, “if you just set me outside and be on your way, this doesn’t have to be done the hard way.” The two laughed uproariously in their own bizarre ways.

  “So you admit you know who we are, yet you still try to bluff your way out of this? You must have been hit very hard in the head indeed,” Wispy said, still chortling.

  “I know who he is,” Jason said, nodding slightly towards Corenntal. “Nobody gives a shit about you.” Wispy was right, however. He was trying to bluff his way out of his current predicament. While they may have been petty thugs, they were at least smart enough to put him in a location with enough shielding to block his tracking signal. Corenntal stopped laughing and walked up to punch Jason in the solar plexus as hard as he could. Jason hunched forward against the restraints and struggled to get a breath in through his damaged airways.

  “Don’t insult my brother,” Corenntal said ominously.

  “Brother?” Jason said doubtfully through fits of gasping. He opened his mouth for another clever insult, but thought better of it. Besides, he wasn’t sure if this species even had mothers. “Last chance, bud. Walk away and this will just be a horrible misunderstanding.” This again elicited bouts of laughter from the two and even from the other thugs that were just beyond the door, listening in. Jason could count four distinct voices out there. The laughter was loud enough that he almost missed the subsonic h
um that was building in intensity. By the time they stopped and began to take notice of the sound, it had grown into an all-too-familiar rumble that was shaking fixtures and could be felt through the floor.

  “Too late,” Jason said with a grim smile.

  “What—” Before Corenntal could finish his thought, there was a muted explosion somewhere in the building and the power failed completely, plunging the facility into darkness. “Get down there and find out what happened!” he yelled. Two of the hallway dwellers jogged off at his command, bumping into the walls and each other as they went.

  BOOM!

  A sizable section of the ceiling in the corridor outside of the room collapsed. The passageway was filled with choking dust and debris as Corenntal’s underlings tried to get a light source to see what had happened.

  “I think I found an emergency light,” someone called down the adjacent corridor, just as there was a loud whump from where the ceiling had collapsed. As Corenntal and Wispy peered into the gloom, faintly illuminated by the weak light streaming through the hole, two crimson orbs ignited from within the dust cloud and the loud whine of weapons charging could be clearly heard.

  An enormous battlesynth burst from the dust and debris with blinding speed, firing his arm-mounted plasma cannons down the corridor as he made short work of the guards in the passageway. A second dark shape dropped through the hole in the ceiling and strode directly towards the still-open door with heavy footfalls. Corenntal and Wispy were so fixated on the battlesynth they didn’t see it.

  The emergency lighting kicked on just in time for the pair of criminals to see Crusher filling the entire doorway, his face a mask of unmitigated rage. When he looked down and saw Jason chained to the chair and beaten to a pulp, he leapt across the room with a deafening roar and smashed a closed fist into Wispy’s head. The alien was dead before he hit the far wall. Corenntal was struggling with a small blaster when Crusher grabbed his arm and twisted it around, breaking it in several places.

  “Wait!” Jason struggled to get out, the dust clotting up all the blood and making it hard to breathe or talk. “He’s the one we’re after. Don’t kill him.” Crusher lifted Corenntal up by the neck until he was at eye level and let out a rumbling snarl as he seemed to debate on whether or not to do as his captain had asked.

  “Lucky!” Crusher bellowed down the corridor. “Get in here!”

  A moment later, the battlesynth shouldered in through the doorway. Between him and Crusher the small room now seemed even smaller as Jason fought down waves of vertigo.

  “Captain,” Lucky said crisply. “Please do not move.” A whine and sizzle let Jason know that his friend was using a cutting laser to remove his restraints. When the arm chains let go he nearly pitched forward onto his face, and was only stopped by a gentle but firm metal hand on his shoulder to catch him. He could not feel or move his arms as they’d been cinched tightly behind him for days, and they now hung uselessly at his sides.

  “I’m taking this sack of shit to the ship,” Crusher said. “I’ll be back to help you with him.” With a yank the Galvetic warrior hefted Corenntal off the floor and carried him back through the doorway by the neck. Corenntal was in so much pain from the shattered arm he barely made a whimper. “Phoenix, I’m coming up the beam with the primary objective. Stand by,” Crusher said into the com as he stomped back to their ingress point.

  “We were quite worried about you, Captain,” Lucky offered in the silence. “It will not be long and then Doc can address your injuries.” Jason’s mouth had filled back up with blood so he just nodded. He was overwhelmed with relief that began when he saw Lucky’s eyes glowing through the debris of the hole that had been blasted through the compound. He had felt his ship, the Phoenix, approaching as her engines began to shake the compound, and he had been praying they would know where he was. Looking at how close their ingress was, he fervently hoped they had meant to breach that close and it wasn’t just dumb luck that kept them from collapsing the ceiling on him.

  “We’re good to go,” Crusher said as he came back in. “I’ll carry him, you take point.”

  “Affirmative,” Lucky said as he switched back to combat mode and moved towards the door.

  “We can’t risk taking you up the transit beam with your injuries without securing you to a litter first, but we have to get moving … there are more of these clowns roaming the corridors,” Crusher said quietly as he knelt in front of Jason. “Doc is taking the ship and will meet us near one of the entrances.” Jason nodded that he understood and made an effort to stand, even as he heard the Phoenix throttle up and move off.

  “Whoa! Not so fast,” Crusher stopped him. He reached and scooped Jason up as if he were a child and moved to follow Lucky out the door, carrying his captain. Jason felt utterly ridiculous, but he knew he couldn’t walk and they needed to move quickly. He marveled at Crusher’s strength as they moved quickly down the corridor to the left. The big warrior was moving like Jason’s two hundred and twenty pounds was nothing.

  “Stand by,” Lucky called from up ahead. “Movement near the passage we need to take.”

  “How many?” Crusher asked. Lucky ignored him and moved out into the open, weapons fully deployed.

  “Engaging,” he said simply as his plasma cannons started barking; he advanced on the unprepared thugs who were milling about waiting for orders that would never come. Judging by the sounds coming from the adjacent corridor, the enemy didn’t put up much of a fight. “All clear,” Lucky called. Crusher moved around the corner quickly and crowded up close behind Lucky, using the battlesynth’s body to shield an unprotected and gravely injured Jason.

  “Phoenix, let us know when you’re in position,” Crusher said into the com.

  “We’re ready when you are, we’re standing off from the main hangar and can blow the doors when you give the word,” Twingo’s voice came back. The group hurried along, engaging the sporadic resistance they met on the way to their goal: the compound’s main hangar. Once they made it to the door that led into the large, open bay they stopped and Crusher nodded once to Lucky.

  “Phoenix, blow the doors,” Lucky said. A split second later horrendous impacts shook the entire facility, and the sound of secondary explosions and wrenching metal could be heard through the door they crouched behind.

  “You’re clear, ground team,” Twingo’s voice came through again. “There may be a few stragglers so be careful.” Lucky responded by punching through the alloy-clad door and ripping it from its frame. He then moved into the hangar on a search-and-destroy mission that would leave no one in their way to impede their egress. There were a few isolated shots and even a bit of returned fire before he called the all-clear.

  Crusher raised carefully and, still cradling Jason to his chest, moved across the charred floor of the hangar at a dead run just as the Phoenix drifted down into a low hover and lowered her rear ramp. Lucky was running equally fast backwards while covering their retreat with his raised weapons. Once Lucky’s feet hit the ramp it began to rise. The last thing the sole remaining thug saw (who happened to be smart enough to play dead) was a pair of glowing red eyes before the ramp fully closed and the big gunship roared away.

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  “Get him to the infirmary, NOW!” Doc ordered as soon as he saw Jason. Crusher didn’t hesitate as he leapt up onto the mezzanine from the cargo bay deck in an incredible display of power and agility and hurried as quickly as he dared to place Jason gently on the bed in the ship’s infirmary. The human drifted in and out of consciousness while Doc tried to stabilize his condition. Despite the great care taken by the ground assault team, the moving and jostling had exacerbated his already serious injuries. “Crusher, go help Twingo! I’ve got him,” Doc practically shouted. He knew the big warrior would “hover” if he didn’t give him something else useful to do.

  “Who’s … Who’s driving if you’re … here?” Jason labored out as his good eye focused on Doc.

  “Twingo, currently,” Doc said, looking
at Jason sharply and making adjustments to the equipment.

  “Oh … shit …”

  “Be still, Captain,” Doc said as he worked, allowing his machines to put Jason under so he could begin to repair the damage the days of torture had caused. When the human finally fell completely unconscious and his body began to relax, Doc was able to really go to work and see just how bad the situation was.

  Chapter 2

  “How are you feeling?” Twingo asked, his ears drooping down a bit as he looked at his best friend still lying inert in the infirmary.

  “Not bad, all things considered,” Jason croaked through a dry throat. They were the first words he’d spoken in two days, as Doc had kept him heavily sedated while he administered care. If it had just been a normal thrashing Jason would have been in his own bed and good as new in no time, but the gang that had captured him had inflicted severe head trauma and Doc wanted to be absolutely certain everything was fine before he let loose a swarm of nanobots into his bloodstream to begin the repairs to the rest of his body.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re running at a leisurely twenty percent slip velocity on our way to drop off our package. It’s giving both you, and him, time to heal. We had a tough time keeping Crusher from killing him over the last couple of days. He’s still extremely angry about what happened to you,” Twingo said as he pulled up one of the stools to sit next to the bed.

  “I’d imagine he’s angrier that I let myself get captured,” Jason said as he reached for the cup of water on the stand next to him.

  “There is that,” Twingo admitted. “I wouldn’t expect to go on any more solo missions for a while if I were you. Honestly, I’d consider it a favor if you didn’t … while we were looking for you, he was an absolute horror to be around.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Jason said with a dry chuckle.

  “So what happened?”