Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon

by Joshua Dalzelle

  Once the petty paybacks and foolishness was over, the pair got back to business and moved quickly up the pipe towards their next objective. The prison had been built primarily to house the warrior class, but had been staffed by normal geltens, so there were some provisions put in place that allowed the much stronger soldiers to be managed and subdued without risking the life of a prison guard. One such provision was a tunnel system that ran the length of the first level of each cell block and served as a secure holding area that could be flooded with knockout gas, or the lights could be cut off and the labyrinth would double as a convenient solitary confinement. What made it unique was that the floors of the applicable cells could be retracted into the wall and the prisoner would have no choice but to simply fall into the tunnel.

  When the system had first been described to Jason, it seemed to him an incredibly convoluted solution to a problem that could be solved by jamming a stun stick through the bars. Connimon had told him they had tried that method, but the strength of the warrior class, as well as their resistance to non-lethal weaponry, made it a dangerous proposition. Not only that, but when one of them became violent they released a pheromone that would get the others wound up. Soon you’d have an entire floor of warriors trying to tear the prison apart. So they devised a solution that allowed them to evacuate the cell the moment one of them became agitated.

  The plan was for them to access this now-unused tunnel system and extract Fordix through it when they learned he was being held on the first floor. After their experience with the drain in the generator shack, however, Jason wasn’t entirely confident a mechanism that hadn’t been used in over a century was still going to work. But they had no contingency plan on this one. Fordix had to be extracted in a manner that didn’t expose the fact that Crusher was back on Galvetor. It was the main reason why Jason had insisted that only he and Crusher go into the prison. They’d done this sort of thing countless times before and he didn’t fully trust the other members of the cult-like order they were now helping.

  It took them the better part of an hour to find the section of the pipe they were looking for. Using a handheld sonar device, courtesy of Kage and Twingo, they found a section of the wall that was only two feet away from another, smaller auxiliary drain that would lead up into the tunnels.

  “Let’s pick up the pace,” Crusher said worriedly, looking at the mission computer on his wrist that showed local time as well as mission-elapsed time.

  “We’re fine,” Jason said patiently. “If we start rushing we’ll make mistakes. If we’re caught this will be all for nothing. Worst case scenario is we spend an extra night down here. We’ve already provisioned for that.” He switched the sonar to high resolution mode and outlined where would be the best place to cut an access hole with the least amount of material removed. The tunnels were centuries old and while they looked strong enough, he didn’t want to chance a cave-in.

  Once he had his area outlined with a luminescent marker, he went into his pack and pulled out a much more powerful laser cutter, essentially a stripped-down version of the one he used to breach starship hulls. He placed the device firmly against the smooth wall of the pipe and let it determine the power needed based on the depth of the material. When it beeped twice at him that it was ready, he activated the beam and slowly worked it along the line he’d drawn. The smoke and noise were significant, but they were now well away from any external drains and deep under the structure of the prison itself.

  Once he completed the perimeter cut, he made two more cuts, sectioning the piece to be removed into quarters, and then shut the beam down. He looked and nodded in satisfaction that there was still a seventy-percent charge on it.

  “I beveled the cut outward as best I could,” Jason said. “We should be able to push the sections into the next pipe over.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Crusher said and reared back to kick one of the quadrants. He put all his weight into the kick and so was unprepared when the piece flew out of the hole with almost no resistance. There was so much velocity on his kick that his leg also followed the section and he found himself off balance and with one leg now stuck in the wall. “What the hell did you do?”

  “There must be high silica content in the soil here,” Jason remarked, running a hand along the smooth, polished surface of the inside of the hole. “The laser turned the inside of the cut almost to glass.”

  “How fascinating,” Crusher grunted before kicking the remaining three sections clear. “After you,” he said with a flourish. Jason grabbed the cutting tool and sonar device and crept through the hole on his stomach, emerging in another, smaller sewer pipe. This one was bone dry and the air smelled positively stale. He gazed at the floor with his ocular implants amplifying the light and saw no footprints in the heavy layer of dust and sediment. All good signs.

  Once Crusher climbed through, they continued their journey towards the main cell block, the smaller pipe veering to the right away from the main storm sewer they had been traveling in. A bit over one hundred meters later and they came to another drain grate, this one much more substantial than any of the others and inset vertically into the pipe.

  “This has got to be it,” Jason said with a low whistle. “It would take Lucky two days to get through this.”

  “It was made to hold back the worst of the worst,” Crusher said, running his hand over the bars. “Twenty enraged warriors can cause a lot of damage.” Jason shuddered inwardly at the thought. He was intimately aware of what just a single enraged warrior could do. “This drain looks big enough to just cut the bars and not risk getting burned by the stubs. This one looks like it’s held in by more than just four dinky bolts, so I don’t think your angle cut trick will work.”

  “It wouldn’t anyway,” Jason said. “I can’t get this cutter flush against the corner, the flange is too wide. So those are the tunnels beyond there?”

  “Should be,” Crusher said. “This grate is so large because the pumps used to evacuate the knockout gas were at the other end of this pipe. There isn’t really that much water runoff down here.”

  “Well,” Jason said, hefting the cutting tool, “here goes nothing.” The alloy the grate was made out of was incredibly dense and the progress was slow. Each bar took at least ninety seconds to get though, and he had to pause often to let the laser cool down.

  “Can’t you focus the beam more?” Crusher asked while Jason was taking his second break.

  “I could, but we can’t bend the grate out of the way as I go along, and if I narrow the beam down too much the metal will weld itself back together before I can cut the last one off. I need at least five millimeters of space so we can pop this out,” Jason said.

  As it turned out, the cutting tool ran out of power when he was halfway through the second to last bar. Nonplussed, Jason pulled out the micro-cutter Crusher had given him and expended the rest of its power getting through the rest of the job. When the last cut was made, Crusher grabbed the grate and, with a surprised grunt, muscled it out of the way. “Heavier than it looked,” he said. They peered into the gloom of the tunnel beyond. It had a definite “dungeon” feel to it, Jason decided, as he stepped through the drain, careful not to touch any of the still glowing stubs of bars sticking out.

  They moved quickly along the tunnel, ignoring the collection of Galvetic bones and mummified remains as they went. They had a map of the system and were heading straight to the cell Fordix was last known to occupy. Jason knew there were similar places on Earth, but he was still revolted at what he saw and couldn’t imagine being sentenced to such a place, crawling around in pitch black and not knowing if the next person you ran into was going to try and help you or kill you.

  “This should be it,” Crusher said doubtfully, looking up the curved chute at what should be the floor of Fordix’s cell. Jason switched over from low-light amplification to mid-wave infrared on his ocular implants and inspected the hatch.

  “Those should be the drains for the latch mechanism up ne
ar the front,” Jason said, pointing at three small holes evenly spaced along the edge of the corner.

  “Are you going to just cut partially through them and then make us shear off another chunk of alloy with brute force?” Crusher asked.

  “We could do that,” Jason said, refusing to take the bait. “Or I could just inject the nanobots Twingo prepared for me through the drain and let them chew away the metal.” He reached into one of the pockets of his tactical vest and pulled out a long, metal tube. The light on the tube was still green indicating there were at least eighty percent of the specialized little machines still alive.

  Unlike the medical nanobots that Doc used on them regularly, or even the ones they always had in their blood stream, creating and producing a specialized variety was difficult and expensive. Twingo had gone through four batches before getting the variety that now rested in stasis within the tube. Jason twisted one end of the tube and a short, stout, needle-like apparatus shot out of the other end and the indicator started blinking green and yellow. When it just blinked a staccato green pattern it meant the nanobots were initialized and ready for use.

  He climbed up the smooth walls of the chute, standing on Crusher’s shoulders, and waited until the light began flashing only green. When it did, he pushed the needle end of the device as far into the drain as he could get it and pressed the button on the base of the tube twice with his thumb, deploying the nanobots. When the light turned red, he removed the tube and nodded for Crusher to lower him back to the floor.

  “Shouldn’t be long now,” he whispered.

  “How will we know if it’s working?” Crusher asked. Before Jason could answer, a fine stream of silver steel dust began to dribble out of the drain holes. It was just a trickle at first, but soon the filings began pouring freely from the holes as the nanobots chewed through the heavy latches. “I guess that answers that,” Crusher muttered.

  They had to wait a full five minutes before the stream began to abate and taper off to nothing. Jason had to give Twingo credit; the solution had been silent and effective. As long as the floor had actually been freed to move, they would likely completely avoid detection while breaking into Fordix’s cell.

  “As far as prison breaks go, this was pretty damn easy,” Jason remarked, getting ready to move up and try the floor.

  “I can’t believe you would actually say something like that while we’re still inside the prison,” Crusher answered in a pained voice. He reached an arm out to stop Jason. “I’ll go up first. We need to keep him from yelling out in alarm. An alien poking his head up out of the floor may startle him; he’s not a young warrior anymore.”

  “I …” Jason trailed off as he couldn’t think of any reason to refute Crusher’s logic. The simple truth was he didn’t want to be the anchor man and push the three hundred and twenty pound warrior up the chute. “Fine,” he said finally. “Let me get in position and then climb up on my shoulders.” He lay down on his back in the chute and then bent his legs until he was basically crouching on the ground. Crusher climbed up part way and also laid on his back while standing on Jason’s shoulders.

  “Now,” Crusher whispered. Jason began to straighten his legs, straining to not only push Crusher’s bulk up the incline but overcome the added traction of all the fine steel dust the nanobots had littered the chute’s surface with. “Damnit, hold on. Stay how you are,” Crusher said, lowering himself back down until he was crouching on Jason’s shoulders. “You’re carrying the bio sign spoofer.” Jason dug around in his vest until he found the little device and handed it up. “I can’t reach it,” Crusher said.

  “I can’t get my arms any higher with your giant feet on my shoulders,” Jason said, beginning to sweat under the exertion. He felt Crusher try and lower himself more until something forced him to bend his neck forward. He tried not to think about what was resting on the back of his head, separated by only a few layers of clothing.

  “Got it!” Crusher whispered triumphantly.

  “Good,” Jason grunted. “Now get your ass off my head and get the hatch open.”

  Crusher straightened back up and braced his hands against the hatch. With little effort, the hatch slid back into its recess smoothly and with surprisingly little sound.

  “Fordix?” Crusher whispered.

  “Who is there?” Jason heard another guttural, Galvetic voice.

  “It’s me, Felex,” Crusher said. “No … down here on the floor.”

  “Ah!” Fordix said. “What are you doing here? Are you insane? You come back to Galvetor and then walk yourself into Casguard?”

  “Long story,” Crusher said. “You remember the Caretaker?”

  Jason balled his right fist and punched Crusher in the leg three times as hard as he could manage given the angle he was swinging from. “Oh, right,” Crusher said. “We should probably get you out of here and catch up later. Make your bunk up to look like you’re under the covers and then put this under the pillow.” There was some shuffling around on the floor above him and, finally, Crusher signaled to him that he was coming down.

  Jason straightened up painfully as a pair of legs appeared at the open hatch and Fordix slid down the chute to land easily on his feet. He wasn’t sure what he expected an aging warrior to look like, but Fordix wasn’t it. He could have passed for Crusher’s slightly older uncle, but he looked as formidable as anybody he’d seen on the streets of Restaria. Maybe more so. He had noticed that Crusher was quite a bit bigger than the average warrior and Fordix looked like he was only an inch shorter and giving up less than thirty pounds on his friend.

  “I am Fordix,” the warrior said, approaching and putting his right hand on Jason’s left shoulder in the traditional Galvetic greeting. Jason responded in kind.

  “Jason Burke,” he said. “I’m a friend of Felex’s.”

  “I know of you, Captain Burke,” Fordix said with a smile. “Thank you for the risk you’re taking. The only thing I can tell you right now is that the risk is worth it.”

  “It won’t be if we get caught,” Crusher said. “Captain, hop up here and close the floor back up.” Jason and Crusher reversed roles and he slid the floor panel shut as quietly as he could. When the hatch butted up against the stops, he reached back into his vest and pulled another tube of nanobots out. This batch would do the opposite of the first. When they were done, the hatch would be welded shut and the mechanism fused. It was just one extra little step to give them some time to get away. If the floor was loose and sliding and a guard walked in before scheduled, there would be no doubt as to how their prisoner had escaped.

  “We’re good to go,” Jason said. “Let’s start backtracking.” Crusher pulled out a pair of shoes for Fordix to replace his prison-issue plastic sandals and they were on the move.

  The trip back along the drain system took half the time as the trip up. They paused once to grab the rest of their discarded gear near the generator shack, stuff it in a bag they then handed to Fordix, and continued on down the sewer.

  “There should be another drain up ahead that will come out in the parking area behind vehicle maintenance,” Jason said. “From there it’s a straight shot to the east wall.”

  “I assume we have a plan to make it past the wall?” Fordix asked.

  “Sure do,” Jason said, “but it is the most risky part of the operation.”

  *****

  “We’re coming up on show time,” Kage said into his tactical com unit. “Everything set up?”

  “Everything is ready,” Lucky answered. “I am moving to the secondary location.”

  “Copy,” Kage said. “We’ll see you shortly.”

  “This is the part of the operation that I’m not entirely confident in,” Morakar said from the back seat of the nondescript airtruck they were sitting in. “You say you’ve done this before?”

  “More than a few times,” Kage confirmed. “Relax, Morakar. You’re working with the best right now. Meluuk, if you’d be so kind as to patch me into the local network.”
Meluuk climbed out of the driver’s seat and ran the hard line they’d installed into the junction box they were parked next to into the airtruck. Kage grabbed the cable and ran it into his gear.

  “A hard line?” Mazer asked.

  “While this may be counterintuitive, a hard line is harder for them to trace than if I access one of the public nodes,” Kage said distractedly. He closed his eyes for a moment as his neural implants made connection with his gear. “Tell Lucky I’m ready whenever he is.” Mazer grabbed his com unit and alerted the battlesynth that they were now waiting on his signal.

  *****

  “Go ahead and send Lucky the signal,” Jason said. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

  “Here comes the exciting part,” Crusher said and aimed an ultraviolet laser over the east wall. He sent two blasts, paused a second, and then three more. By a stroke of luck, the drain they were in had a ladder so Crusher was able to climb up and aim the laser through the gaps in the grate without having to expose himself or stand on top of one of his companions.

  “How will we know they got the signal?” Fordix asked. A moment later a horrendous explosion rocked the complex. Alarms started blaring and flood lights turned the night to day.

  “There’s the signal,” Jason said.

  “You think?” Crusher said. “How long until we move?”

  “Another thirty seconds and then we move,” Jason said, watching the timer on his combat computer. “And … now!” Crusher shoved the grate up and over and was up on the surface in less than a second, covering the others with his stun rifle. Fordix went next, followed closely by Jason. As soon as Jason brought his weapon up Crusher replaced the drain grate.

  “Looks like the guards are congregating around the west wall,” Crusher said. “If Kage did his job, we should be clear.”

  “Let’s get moving then,” Jason said and led the pair of warriors in a flat-out sprint across the vast gravel yard that separated the main complex from the outer walls. Just as they stepped from the paving stones of the ancient prison to the gravel, the lights in the east section cut off, their first indication that Kage was on top of his part of the mission. The extended perimeter barrier was meant to give the security forces one last chance to stop a runner before they reached the wall, although it was unlikely even a warrior as strong as Crusher could clear the enormous stone barrier, especially given how weak they would be from lack of exercise and a reduced diet.