“Begin collecting all the media feeds on this that you can,” Jason said, grabbing a shirt off his bed. “I’m going to go grab everyone else.”
*****
“Captain Kellea Colleren is also facing charges for her role in the deadly anti-government riots on Camderan-2, a planet currently applying for membership into the Confederation. She and her first officer were missing from Crisstof Dalton’s ship when it was apprehended by ConFed Fleet warships.”
The news broadcast was showing a picture of Kellea as well as her first officer, Bostco, although the latter wasn’t named. All the clips were more or less the same. The Diligent had been in orbit over Camderan-2 when it was attacked without warning by two ConFed battlecruisers. These were not the usual patrol ships. These were the big boys the Fleet only brought out when they wanted a serious show of force or to drop the hammer on someone who had majorly pissed the council off. Apparently a rash of bloody riots had broken out simultaneously all over the planet to protest the potential entry into the Confederation, and Crisstof was being pinned as the facilitator.
“So are we assuming this is a setup?” Doc asked as another video came up on the display. This one had a close-up shot of someone who looked strikingly like Crisstof himself, the biggest difference (besides his age) being the hair was streaked and not a solid silver/white.
“Crisstof Dalton’s First Son, Steader Dalton, expresses his shock and sadness at the charges leveled at his First Father.”
“… I just can’t believe the charges against him, at least not until I see the evidence for myself. But in any case, the victims of yesterday’s horrific violence have our deepest sympathies,” Steader was saying in a pre-recorded interview.
“I seriously doubt Crisstof was fomenting rebellion,” Twingo said with a shake of his head. “That’s the sort of thing he worries about us doing.”
“I’m inclined to agree,” Jason said. “But we don’t really know a lot about Crisstof to be honest. One thing I would hope is if he’s out kicking hornets nests like that he’d at least be smart enough not to use his flagship.”
“Are we going to bother doing anything?” Kage asked from where he sat on the bed. “No offense, Captain, but we’re not exactly in the fold anymore. I know you and Captain Colleren are close, but we haven’t heard from Crisstof for the better part of a year.” Kage was right. Although Jason and Kellea kept in loose contact with each other, Omega Force wasn’t really working with Dalton’s organization anymore. Jason had taken exception with Crisstof’s attitude and behavior when Earth had been attacked and, despite some half-hearted apologies, the rift had never fully been healed. When Jason made the decision to move out towards the frontier worlds, both parties fell out of contact.
“I think we should at least—” Jason’s com unit beeped from the bedside table, interrupting him. He grabbed it and punched in his security code to see what the alert was about. “The Phoenix just received a coded message,” he said with a frown. “The computer just alerted me that it’s flagged priority Alpha-1.” The priority flag indicated that whatever was coming in was an emergency. There were more than a few parties that could send them that type of message, but Jason had little doubt as to whom it was from this time.
“I take it we’re cutting our trip short?” Crusher asked.
“Hmm,” Jason hummed, tapping his finger against his chin as he thought. “Everybody hang loose here for a little bit and I’ll go check the message on the ship. We’ll decide what to do from there.”
*****
Twingo decided to go with Jason, so the pair walked quickly through the main guest receiving area and towards the external docking arms where the Phoenix was latched onto the station. Although he was trying to play it cool, inside Jason was deeply concerned about why the Diligent had been attacked and where Kellea actually was. He had serious doubts that she or Crisstof had anything to do with the incidents on Camderan-2, but he did have to wonder at the coincidence of them being there in the first place.
They made it to the Phoenix and quickly went about disabling the security systems so they could get into the gunship. With a final beep and a hiss, the outer hatch popped a fraction of an inch inward before swinging inward and allowing them access. Jason hurried in and went to an inconspicuous panel on the far wall and quickly tapped out a simple pattern on the seemingly-inactive control panel. Another double-beep let him know that the secondary security system had been deactivated. Due to the nature of the places they’d operated out of, not to mention the quality of character of some of their clientele, Twingo had equipped the ship with dual, redundant entry security systems on all the main airlocks. If someone managed to get through one of them and didn’t know of the other, they would be in for a nasty, likely fatal, surprise.
“Damn! Why is it so cold in here?” Jason asked as he walked through the dim main deck on his way to the stairs that led to the command deck.
“Minimal life support when she’s docked,” Twingo said, his breath fogging in the brisk air. “The cool air allows the moisture to condense and be removed more easily by the air handlers.” They hustled up to the com room that was on the aft, starboard side of the command deck and just behind the bridge.
Jason sat in one of the seats and began bringing the equipment online while Twingo stood at a control panel behind him and did the same.
“I’ll go up to the bridge and wake the main computer up,” he said as he slid by Jason.
“Thanks.”
A little over ten minutes later they were finally able to access the com buffer and see what the Phoenix had received while they were in the resort. The message had been bounced through six dummy accounts over public com networks before hitting the ship’s slip-space com node associated with their “clean” transponder codes. Jason and Twingo stared at the message for a moment, not completely understanding it.
I won’t make it home this cycle for the harvest celebration, got held up at work. It looks like I will be putting in some long hours before I can break away. Sometimes I’m not sure I could even if I tried. Hopefully we’ll see each other soon.
The message was terse and unsigned. “So?” Twingo asked. “Do you know what it means?”
“It’s definitely Kellea,” Jason answered. “The bit about the harvest celebration is something she told me about the area on her homeworld where her family lives. If you’re asking if we have a secret code prearranged that would explain the rest … no, we don’t. But just some simple deduction tells us that she’s trying to break away and that she doesn’t think she can. In other words, she’s trapped on Camderan-2 and the ConFed is actively looking for her.”
“Simple enough. Well … except for the part where she only narrowed it down to an entire planet. That’s a bit loose on the details, don’t you think?”
“We could reply to this message,” Jason said, thinking aloud. “But the ConFed isn’t that stupid. If we try to speak directly, chances are good they’ll see through this clumsy attempt at talking in code and either get to her first or be waiting for us. Although … if we replied to it once we were already there, we could get in and grab her before they had a chance to zero in on us. We could be off-world before they would have time to dispatch a team.”
“Vacation over?” Twingo asked.
“Vacation over,” Jason confirmed. “Get her fired up. I’ll go collect the other idiots and grab your stuff while I’m at it. We’ll check out, get our clearance, and be on our way.” Twingo was already heading to the bridge to begin the startup of the main reactor and the engines. Before Jason had even stepped back onto the docking arm the lights in the ship came up fully and the environmental systems were heating the air. He snuck a glance at the Phoenix as he jogged back down the gangway and could see her marker lights blinking and the long grav-drive emitters already beginning to glow blue.
It took him a few minutes to fast-walk back to the rooms, trying not to garner too much attention as he went. Thankfully the others were still just loungi
ng around and hadn’t dispersed throughout the facility yet. “Pack it up,” he said without preamble. “We’re flying out of here within the hour.”
“We were expecting that,” Kage said as he sipped on something that had been sitting on a room service tray. “We’re already packed up and the front desk is expecting us. We’ll have our departure clearance as soon as we’re back on the ship.”
“Excellent. Good job,” Jason said as he looked around. Even his own bag, as well as Twingo’s, was lined up neatly on the bed in the room he had shared with Lucky. “If we’re ready, let’s get to it. Twingo is already on board getting the engines hot.”
“One day …” Crusher sighed.
“What’s that?” Doc asked as they filed out of the room.
“One day we’ll actually get to take a full vacation,” the warrior replied.
“Don’t count on it,” Jason said over his shoulder. “You should have read the fine print on your contract.”
Chapter 6
“O’rethal Platform Docking Control, this is the Ph—Lark,” Jason caught himself quickly. “We’re ready for you to release the clamps.” The station insisted on the antiquated tradition of verbal communication between pilot and controller to direct traffic to and from the docking complex. While the others found it annoyingly quaint, Jason found it refreshing.
“Copy, Lark. We are releasing the clamps. Please reverse thrust to a velocity of five meters per second. Once you clear two hundred meters, contact Departure Control to coordinate your exit vector. Thank you for staying at O’rethal Platform, we hope to see you again soon. Docking Control out.”
“Clamps are off,” Kage reported from the copilot’s seat. “We’re free navigating.”
“Copy that, I have the ship,” Jason answered and flicked his thumb over the hat switch that controlled the small docking thrusters. Puffs of compressed gas erupted from the nose as the Phoenix began to ease away from the station. He kept toggling the thrusters until they were at the prescribed velocity and then held steady as the gunship backed away from the complex at a relative crawl. “Go ahead and contact Departure Control and get us a vector out of here. Twingo, get the slip-drive prepped.”
“Already doing it,” Twingo answered from the engineering station to his right. Jason leaned back as Kage negotiated with Departure Control and began feeding the navigational data over to the pilot’s station. The Veran had also taken the extra step of entering their optimum mesh-out point along that vector so all Jason would have to do was accelerate away and engage the slip-drive. The nice thing about a good crew is that they make me look like I know what the hell I’m doing. Most of the time ...
“Departure Control says we’re clear,” Kage said.
“You’re clear to bring up the main drive, Captain,” Twingo chimed in as Jason kicked the left pedal to bring the nose around. The Phoenix was inertially decoupled so she spun like a top on the Y-axis until her nose was pointed the opposite way and their course still was taking them away from the station. Once the nav panel let him know they were coming up on their exit vector intersect point, he reached over and engaged the main drive. The main drive was a gravimetric-type drive that was smooth and quiet, unlike the four big main engines—the thrust-type motors that were tucked up in two nacelles under each wing-root that could shake a person’s teeth out at full power.
Once they were free to accelerate out of the system, Jason smoothly advanced the throttle and the gunship surged along the new heading. “I want eighty percent slip velocity,” he said as they closed on the mesh-out point. “We’ll make a decision on increasing velocity once Twingo says it’s OK.” They flew along in silence for another few moments before the nav panel alerted him again.
“Here we go,” Kage said. “You’re clear to engage the slip-drive. Next stop, Camderan-2 and likely an ass-load of trouble.”
“Can’t argue your logic,” Jason said as he smacked the control to engage the skip-drive. With a whine and a shudder the Phoenix meshed out and disappeared from real-space.
*****
After ten hours of steady slip-space flight Twingo cleared the engines to throttle up to ninety-five percent, the hardest they pushed them unless it was a dire emergency. This put them a mere two and a half days from the Camderan system, practically next door by interstellar standards.
“So what are we flying into, Doc,” Jason said as they combined their evening meal with a preliminary intel brief.
“Camderan-2 … Tier-3 world petitioning for membership into the Confederation. It looks like they may have had the votes in their legislature to ratify the request,” Doc said as he read off his data pad. “Now this is interesting. They don’t have a centralized government; there are a handful of outlying nations and one highly industrialized superpower that seems to be calling the shots.
“This is a bit unorthodox. Normally the ConFed won’t consider membership until the world has a demonstrable ability to exist under a single, unified government. They’re not specific on what type of government that has to be, they just don’t want civil unrest interrupting whatever it is they find useful about that planet.”
“Why is this important?” Crusher asked impatiently.
“It may not be. But we have nearly two days before we arrive and a little bit of context helps if we’re going to operate on this world to get Captain Colleren and Commander Bostco out. Even though it’s a Tier-3 planet, there is a level of sophistication that could prove problematic for us,” Doc said. He was used to speaking to an unwilling audience during these initial briefs and had learned not to take offense to the yawns, rude comments, or simply being ignored. Actually, just being ignored was preferable.
“Anyway … According to what Kage was able to glean from local news reports, Crisstof is accused of helping these outlying players plan a series of attacks on populated areas and providing them with the military-grade hardware they used during same. It was a pretty bad attack, over four thousand civilians dead and a lot of damage to key infrastructure.”
“Not to mention the psychological impact on the populace,” Jason said as he pushed his tray away. “I’m assuming this attack was in response to the ConFed petition?”
“That’s the general consensus, but there hasn’t been any confirmation of that,” Doc said.
“Which leads us to another interesting question,” Twingo said. “What was the Diligent doing there in the first place?”
“I suppose that will be one of the first things we ask Kellea,” Jason said.
“Do you think she’ll tell us the truth?” Kage asked.
“I couldn’t say either way,” Jason admitted with a shrug. “Her first loyalty will be to Crisstof. I’d hope that since she’s dragging us into this, she would also have the decency to let us know everything that she knows.”
“Are you so certain the message was from Captain Colleren?” Lucky spoke up for the first time since they’d started.
“There was some specific information in the message that leads me to believe that it was her,” Jason said.
“Was it something that could have been coerced out of her?” the battlesynth pressed. Of them all, Lucky was the most pragmatic and least likely to trust that a situation was as it appeared on the surface.
“I guess it could have been, but that makes no sense,” Jason answered. “If they tortured a bit of trivial information out of her to put in that message, that means not only do they already have her, but they’ve set up an elaborate ruse to specifically capture us. There are easier, and cheaper, ways to accomplish that.”
“Yeah … just wait us out,” Kage interjected. “We’re bound to get ourselves killed or captured with no help needed from the ConFed.” This earned him a slap on the back of the head from Crusher. “Ow!”
“OK, Lucky,” Jason said. “Spit it out, there’s something you’re holding back.”
“I only hesitate to say this, because I know the unluckiness of it being true,” the battlesynth started. “What if this is an
elaborate ruse, as you put it? Do you remember what Deetz said before he died? Something about what this ship was carrying?”
“I wouldn’t put too much stock into what that piece of shit said at any time,” Jason said, “much less when he was begging for his life. He’d have said anything to keep you away from him. We’ve had no indication there is anything unique about the Phoenix compared to any other DL7, and we’ve had her torn down to the frame. Hell, half the major components are new. No, my gut tells me this is what it appears, at least on the surface. Whether or not Crisstof’s hands are clean in the recent uprisings … I’m not willing to speculate on that. So for right now our priority is getting to Kellea and Bostco and getting them off Camderan-2.”
The rest of the flight was uneventful as they meshed into the Camderan system and began the long subluminal flight towards the second planet from the primary star: Camderan-2. Since they were still flying as the Lark, they were forced to make the normal approach any other micro-freighter would, and spend an additional twenty-two hours flying though the system.
Jason had engaged the autopilot and was restlessly pacing in front of the steeply raked canopy. At this distance the star, Camderan Prime, was just a brighter speck in the sky and the scenery was nothing but empty space. He stopped his pacing and stood staring out into space with his hands on his hips. The patience required for covert operations wasn’t something that came naturally to him; he’d much prefer a blazing flight across the system followed by a smash and grab topped off with a harrowing escape. But the sneaking in method proved to be much more reliable nine times out of ten.
“You’re wearing a hole in the deck plating,” Twingo said from his station. Jason bit down his sarcastic reply and actually gave his friend a lopsided smile as he walked back to the pilot’s seat.
“I guess I’m just getting the pre-op jitters early,” he said.
“We’ll get her out of there,” Twingo assured him. “When do you want to send a message to that account?”
Omega Force 3: The Enemy Within Page 4