Jason’s relationship with Kellea was complicated. When they had first met, she’d looked at him like something she would like to scrape off the bottom of her shoe, but after his crew’s successful thwarting of an attack on a heavily-populated mining settlement that had nearly killed them, she had warmed up to him. Over the last year the beautiful captain and the human mercenary seemed to be more than just business associates at times, but she would just as often turn a cold shoulder to him.
“It seems you have a lot of explaining to do, Captain,” Taryn practically hissed into his ear before marching away herself to catch up to her parents. Jason just gritted his teeth and followed along, but not before he could hear Twingo, Kage, and Crusher giggling behind him.
The dining facilities aboard the Diligent were a thing of wonder to a mercenary crew that lived aboard a small gunship with only a single food processor and few stores onboard. Large buffet lines stretched along either wall of the mess deck, and everything appeared to be quite fresh. Crusher sighed lustily at the sight and made his way towards the omnivore line (vegetarian was along the opposite wall). The rest of Omega Force knew to crowd in behind the Galvetic warrior as nobody in their right mind dallied in line when in front of him.
Taryn, having recovered from her earlier peevishness, watched in awe/horror as the crew fell upon their heaping trays of food in a wordless assault. Even the normally proper Doc was making odd groaning sounds as he shoveled food into his mouth. Once they had gorged themselves, they sat back and drowsily reflected on their current situation.
“So I assume we’re now declaring war on Deetz,” Doc said, cutting to the core of the matter.
“Do we all agree it’s in our best interest to neutralize him?” Jason asked, seeing nodding heads all around. “Lucky? You’ve been quiet about all of this so far.”
“I have been conflicted about my emotions on this matter, Captain. I feel a certain amount of responsibility for Deetz being able to perpetrate such an attack on a helpless population, as I advised you to let him go.” The battlesynth was sitting in a chair at their table, a rare sight as he normally preferred to stand.
“The decision was mine,” Jason asserted, “the blame, and the guilt, stops with me.”
“Not entirely,” Lucky disagreed. “I understood what you were asking me that day and I tailored my response so as not to have to destroy another synth. Had I been less of an idealist, I would have told you to destroy him while he was restrained.”
“We were all idealists back then, bud,” Jason said, slapping him on the shoulder. “That’s not the point. The question is: what do we do now?”
“Kill him,” Crusher said simply.
“Kill him,” Lucky agreed. “He’s proven too dangerous to be left alive.”
“Okay,” Jason nodded. “Now for the easy part; how the hell do we find him? Despite being a conniving, evil bastard, he is still frighteningly intelligent and resourceful.”
“I suppose we should wait to see if Crisstof dug anything up on the attackers,” Kage said as he picked at the remains of his meal. “That should hopefully give us a starting point.”
*****
“What we have is very thin,” Crisstof Dalton began, standing at the head of the long table in one of the Diligent’s conference rooms. “We downloaded the sensor logs from the Phoenix and we concur with Twingo; these ships appear to be at least four or five hundred years old. They also seem to employ some other method of FTL travel than the slip-drive; there were no slip radiation trails leading out of this system when we arrived, save for the small ship that escaped your initial counter-attack.”
“This much we know already,” Jason said. “Were you able to cross-reference the ships to any particular builder?”
“None of the known yards in this part of the galaxy built those ships,” Crisstof continued. “But, we may have found something. There were markings along the hull that we weren’t able to identify as any known language within travelling distance, so we expanded the search parameters to include stylized symbols, links to splinter societies, and anything else it could find. The results were a massive data dump but one hit looks promising, though I’m hesitant to bring it up.”
“Why?” Doc asked.
“Because, frankly, it’s absurd; the writing is a close match to the written language of a species we know as the A’arcooni. The problem is that the species was cataloged centuries ago and was in a post-industrial revolution stage, much like your own species. There was no indication they were working on ships of that level of sophistication then, and given the age of the ships they would had to have been building them during the survey missions.” Crisstof splayed his hands wide. “While interesting, I don’t see how it helps.”
“So the A’arcooni government isn’t a member of the ConFed? Let’s suspend disbelief for the moment and assume that somehow they built these ships without being noticed,” Jason said, mostly thinking out loud. “Why wouldn’t they have modern ships if they were already building this type way back then? And why would Deetz be associated with these people? There have to be any number of mercenary outfits that would agree to attack Earth if only for a chance at a hold full of precious metals.”
“You might be surprised,” Kellea spoke up for the first time. “While the ConFed may be corrupt on many levels, they do not tolerate attacks upon primitive species, no offense intended. Any outfit with enough muscle to move in on an entire planet wouldn’t likely be foolish enough to risk bringing the ConFed fleet down on its own head.”
“Not only that, I doubt Deetz has that sort of money right now,” Doc said. “This has the feel of a desperate move.”
“Which brings us back to the A’arcoon,” Jason said. “Send the coordinates for their world to the Phoenix and we’ll check that out first, at least as a starting point.”
“It’s a long flight, but I can think of no other logical starting point,” Crisstof conceded. “When do you leave?”
“As soon as our bird is fueled and Twingo has a chance to make sure we didn’t strain anything when I slammed her into the atmosphere.”
“What about me? Us?” Taryn asked from one of the seats lining the wall. During the course of the meeting she, and her parents, had sat in wide-eyed wonder at the conversation as the breadth of their galactic neighborhood became clear.
“You will be staying here on the Diligent,” Jason said.
“Not likely!” Taryn retorted hotly. “I’m going with you guys.”
“This is non-negotiable,” Jason said firmly. “We have no idea what we’ll be running into along the way on this mission, and I am not putting you at that kind of risk.” She sucked in a breath, making it clear she was going to argue the point, and he cut her off. “My ship, my rules, my choice,” he said sharply. “Under no circumstances will I allow you to be onboard when we’re likely to see ship-to-ship fighting and God knows what else.” She glared at him a moment and then stood, turned, and walked out of the conference room. Nobody made any attempt to stop her; the entire port side of the deck they were on was a hospitality area so there was little she could do other than go sulk and stare out a window.
“That could have gone better,” Jason said, regretting his tone.
“Not really,” Ed spoke up with a lopsided grin. “You know her as well as anybody. She wouldn’t have let it drop.”
“Since there appears to be nothing else,” Kellea said as she stood. “If the Browns will follow me, I’ll take you to the steward who will be assigned to you during your stay, I’m sure the Omega Force crew has a lot of work to accomplish in a short time before they depart.”
In reality, only three members of the crew had anything useful to do. As per Omega Force’s standard operating procedure for ship’s maintenance and repair, Twingo and Lucky did most of the work, with the assistance of Kage. Jason hovered around and annoyed them with his lack of understanding of the Phoenix’s systems and the principles under which they operated, while Crusher snuggled in between the wh
eels of the main landing gear, using them as a sort of hammock, and was soon snoring loud enough to be heard over the noise of the hangar deck.
After Twingo’s inspection, he cleared the Phoenix for flight and supervised the fueling crew as they topped her off. The rest of Omega Force began shuffling things around, including a few crates of fresh commissary items they had liberated from the Diligent’s mess deck, and strapping everything in place. Three hours after their meeting with Crisstof and they were ready to launch. Jason stood at the bottom of the ramp, looking at the hangar deck exit contemplatively.
“Are you going to go say goodbye?” Doc asked.
“I think it may be best if we just launch and be on our way,” Jason said. “I suck at goodbyes, and she has a talent for getting what she wants out of me no matter how bad an idea I think it is.”
“Seems females are the same the galaxy over,” Doc chuckled. “We’re ready when you are.” He turned and left Jason at the bottom of the ramp as he walked back up into the ship. After a moment longer Jason turned and followed him up, stopping to close and lock the ship.
“We’re already cleared, Captain,” Kage said as he walked onto the bridge. “You can taxi at your leisure, we’re launching off the forward platform.” Jason gave his displays a once-over as he hopped into the pilot’s seat and then flipped on his external indicator lights, a sign to the ground crews in the hangar that the ship was preparing to move. After a moment, while observing the rear video feed, he slowly backed the Phoenix out of her parking berth using the jog control down on his left. The gunship backed out at slower than a walking pace before taxiing ahead to the forward elevator to be lifted up to the launch deck.
Once the elevator stopped and locked, the Diligent’s com officer sent them their launch clearance. “Gunship-class vessel Phoenix; you are clear to start primary flight systems and launch at your discretion. Please bear to starboard after you lift off. Happy hunting. Diligent out.”
“Bring the main drive online and align the navigation system,” Jason ordered unnecessarily.
“Main drive is online and available, Captain,” Twingo reported. “You’re clear to lift.”
“Lifting off,” Jason said. “Retract the landing gear and let’s get this hunt started!” His last statement was met with cheers from the bridge as he gently accelerated the gunship to drift ahead and to starboard in relation to the Diligent before throttling up and accelerating towards their mesh-out point. The longer they served together the more these small rituals seemed to manifest as they went about the day-to-day task of their chosen profession. Being a military man, Jason knew it served to stave off complacency and instill a sense of purpose and cohesiveness. For him, they were a comforting and familiar way to either start or end a mission.
“Course plotted and entered, Captain,” Kage reported. “You’re clear to engage the slip-drive.” Jason looked down at the large blinking green button to his right. The old, boring control had been replaced with an animated switch face that enthusiastically said “Burn Baby Burn!” in dancing characters. He slapped it; instantly the canopy darkened and there was a whine and shudder as the ship transitioned into slip-space. Now came the hardest part of the job; even travelling at well over a thousand times the speed of light, the distances were just unfathomably huge, so the crew was used to flight times lasting often more than a week. This one would be ten days. Sighing inwardly at the inevitable, Jason decided he could use some sleep and headed off to his quarters after waving to the crew.
Sitting on his bed as he pulled his boots off, Jason contemplated on whether or not he had just made another fatal mistake with Taryn by not going and saying goodbye before he left. He knew she would try to convince him to take her along, but he wasn’t sure that was because she wanted to be close to him, wanted to be there when they got revenge on Deetz, or simply didn’t want to sit on an alien spaceship with her parents. As he lay on his bed he thought back to all of the mistakes he had made, all the time he had wasted, and how things had been going along just fine for him out here before she was thrust back into his life. With troubled thoughts flitting around in his head, he finally drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 5
“Anything to report?” Jason asked as he walked onto the bridge to begin his watch shift. Kage was sitting in the pilot’s seat but had the main display scrolling a data stream at a dizzying rate. Since the new computer core had been installed in the ship, the Veran code slicer spent a lot of his free time running simulated scenarios in which he would have to defeat the computer’s security measures.
“Nope, all quiet here,” he said distractedly. “Twingo and Crusher are sleeping and Doc is messing around in the com room. Oh … there were some message fragments from the Diligent, but we’re running so hard right now that the slip-transceiver is having trouble compiling the data.”
“That’s a thing?” Jason asked, surprised.
“Only when we’ve got her really cranked up,” Kage answered as he hopped down from the seat. To Jason’s annoyance he didn’t bother to return the displays to their previous settings. “It’s the interference from the fields when the engines are nearing maximum output. When we slow down for our first maintenance check they should come through … if the Diligent keeps transmitting them.”
“Should we slow down now? It could be important.”
“The message header had it marked as normal priority,” Kage said. “I decided to leave it up to you rather than command a velocity change without asking first.”
“Okay. Go ahead and get out of here, I’ll call you if I need you,” Jason said as he climbed into the seat to reconfigure his displays. Once Kage had left, he turned to the other member of the crew that had been silently standing on the bridge. “What do you think, Lucky? Slow down and have the Diligent resend the message, or press on?”
“Since the message was not sent with high priority, I would say the risk is equal either way,” Lucky said from his station by the door.
“True,” Jason mused. “We’re not scheduled for our first throttle back for another twenty-seven hours. I don’t want to lose any more time on this trip than necessary; we’ll wait until then and have Captain Colleren resend the message.” When travelling long distances at such a high speed, Jason regularly called for a reduction in velocity so Twingo could inspect the engines and the reactor to make sure they weren’t about to break something and leave them stranded. He assumed the Diligent had some more intel to feed them so he didn’t risk slowing down for it. They would still get it well before they reached their destination.
*****
Crusher shuffled across the deck towards the galley at a careful pace. He had strained something while working out in the cargo bay and he was taking it easy for the moment, letting it heal up before they arrived over the A’arcooni homeworld. The long-burn flights were excruciating for the big warrior, someone who wasn’t a huge fan of space travel to begin with. He stepped up to the food processor and began punching in commands to get a post-workout meal so he could head to his rack.
A small shuffle caught his attention behind him and he spun quickly, expecting to see one of his crew trying to sneak up on him, but saw nothing. He tested the air with his nose and caught a faint hint of something that didn’t belong. He stepped away from the processor, breathing in long breaths through his nose, testing the air and blowing it out the side of his blunted muzzle. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.
He heard it again, something soft scraping along the deck, and it seemed to be coming from the hatch the service bots were stored in. “Rodents?” he asked himself softly, leaning down to peer into the dark tunnel that was behind the galley counter. When his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw a pair of brown eyes that were too large for any normal shipboard pest. So what was it?
“Hey,” it said.
*****
“Did you hear that?” Jason asked Lucky. Both were on the bridge. “It sounded like someone just kicked a dog or something.”
/> “I did in fact hear—”
“CAPTAIN, COME DOWN HERE!” Crusher’s bellow echoed up from the main deck without the need for the ship’s intercom. Jason leapt from his seat and raced off the bridge after Lucky. They ran down the stairs and saw a flustered Crusher standing over an equally flustered person who simply couldn’t, shouldn’t be there.
Taryn.
“You’ve got to be kidding me …” Jason’s sentence trailed off as Taryn gave him a slightly guilty smile and tried a half-hearted wave. She was disheveled and smudged with dirt, a testament to the locations of some of her hiding spots.
“Hi, Jason,” she said. “I know you’re probably mad at—”
“KAGE!” Jason shouted, cutting her off. The Veran came stumbling out of his quarters at the bellowing of his name. Before he could even take in the scene, or ask any questions, Jason pointed to the command deck. “Get up there and bring the ship back to forty percent slip and contact the Diligent. NOW!” To Kage’s credit, he raced out of the common area and up to the bridge as fast as his legs would carry him. A moment later the pitch and volume of the engines changed and the muted vibrations through the deck faded.
“Now,” Jason continued calmly, “what are you doing on board, Taryn?”
“I knew no matter how many times I asked, you’d still say no to me coming along,” she started. “So I simplified things and made sure you didn’t leave without me.”
“What … why … how …” Jason pinched the bridge of his nose, collected his thoughts, and tried again. “There’s a very good reason you shouldn’t be here. Why is it that you think being on a warship that is flying to an unknown, possibly hostile planet is a good idea?”
“Look, Earth is my home too, probably more so than it is for you at this point.” Taryn came out swinging. Her experience told her that a full frontal assault would work best against Jason, so she’d take the initiative before he had the chance to build a logical argument. “Why don’t I have the right to be here?”
Omega Force: Savage Homecoming Page 5