The shuttle lifted smoothly from its concealed landing site and swung north away from the heavy population centers of Ker. As they flew over the outskirts, Jason could see that troop transports were still rolling into the city. Some warriors looked up as the combat shuttle flew over and a few even shook a fist in the air in salute. A few of the convoys stretched on for miles into the distance. Just the logistics of feeding and housing so many warriors was daunting, and Jason had to wonder why they were being relocated in the first place.
“Your first course corrections are on your navigation display,” Lucky said. “Kage would like us to hold there until he is certain the rescue ship will be committing to landfall on that entry vector.”
“Copy that,” Jason said as the fly-to indicators lit up to direct him. “This is where the fun begins.”
Kage had them come to a full stop in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere over an equatorial rainforest. Jason lowered them down until the landing skids were only a couple of meters above the treetops and waited, setting the ship to hold the hover automatically. He let go of the controls and stretched out in the seat.
“Let him know we’re here,” he told Lucky.
“We have a telemetry link open to him,” Lucky said. “He has been monitoring our flight the entire time we have been airborne.”
“How much longer?”
“It will be another hour before the ship begins atmospheric entry,” Lucky reported.
The larger ship had already filed a plan that would have them entering the atmosphere near the equator and landing at a field in the northern hemisphere on the other side of the planet. The rough idea of a plan began to form in Jason’s head as he looked over the topography data stored in the ship’s computer. Just as the ship would be descending through forty thousand feet, they would be over what looked like Restaria’s version of the Great Plains. The computer highlighted some points of interest, but from what Jason could tell it looked to be mostly untamed wilderness and some enormous corporate farms owned by companies on Galvetor. Those farms were almost entirely automated so the entire region had a population of less than six thousand people. If he wanted to force the ship down before it reached its base, this would be the area to do it. He went ahead and authorized the computer to arm the weapon systems. He was dismayed to see that the expendable munitions racks were empty. Whoever had ordered the ship had had it delivered without any missiles. Thankfully the energy weapons were installed and should be more than enough to force an antique ship hauler out of the air.
“We have confirmation,” Lucky said after fifty-two minutes. “The ship is following the predicted track and will pass overhead in four minutes. I am sending speed and heading data to your display that will allow us to intercept the ship just as it overflies the plains region you indicated.”
“I’ve got it,” Jason confirmed as a new set of waypoint indicators popped up on his display with the corresponding velocity changes. He advanced the power and sent the shuttle skimming along the treetops, gaining little altitude as they flew along their target’s intended flight path.
The incoming ship was traveling at nearly twelve times the speed of sound as it screamed through the thin upper atmosphere and would soon pass overhead of the much slower-moving shuttle. Jason was able to watch the intersecting tracks on his tactical display as he slowly brought up the power on the shuttle’s drive.
“The ship has overtaken us,” Lucky reported. “You are clear to intercept.”
“Power coming up,” Jason said in response and brought the drive to full atmospheric power, sending them streaking along the ground after the incoming ship. Mazer had confirmed that the sensor gear on the target ship was as antiquated as everything else on it so there was little risk of detection if they could get up in the drive wake while the ship was still blinded by atmospheric entry.
Jason brought the nose up and allowed the ship to climb sharply toward their intercept point. He watched as the spidery shockwaves appeared along the leading edges of the nose as they transitioned from transonic to supersonic flight. Once past the speed of sound in Restaria’s atmosphere, the engine noise decreased dramatically as they were now outrunning the sound of the bellowing exhaust, and the slipstream could be heard against the large, raked canopy.
Soon they were passing thirty thousand feet and quickly closing the distance to the decelerating ship. Jason checked his position one more time before concentrating on the view outside the canopy, trying to get a visual on his target. His neural implant recognized the speck against the sky before his brain could register what he was seeing and boxed it in a flashing red reticle for him. They were running passive sensors to avoid detection, so the next maneuver was critical as they made the final approach to where they would trail the larger vessel until the next part of their plan.
His implants calculated that the ship was four degrees off course and four thousand feet lower than it should have been, so he made his own corrections and continued his approach. There were two timers counting down on his tactical display, one in red that showed when the target was projected to regain use of its sensors after entry, and one in green that told him how long until they were safely tucked up under the drive section given their current speed and heading. Since the green number was lower than the red number, he kept his control inputs steady and concentrated on not overflying his intersect target.
“Mazer,” he said as the ship began to loom large in front of them, “what do you think the crew complement will be on that thing?”
“It’s hard to say given the unusual nature of its recent actions,” Mazer said. “I remember that it takes a minimum of eight crewman to fly it, so at least eight.”
“Thanks,” Jason said drily. “If you would, take a peek inside that weapons locker on the starboard side of the forward bulkhead in the cargo area and see what sort of toys we’re packing along.” Without a word the warrior unstrapped himself and went down the stairs. Jason could hear him sorting through the arms locker after a moment of messing with the latch.
“If it is only eight, and we maintain the element of surprise, I should be able to easily neutralize the crew, Captain,” Lucky said.
“I’m counting on that since the concealed blaster I’m carrying may not take down a pissed off Galvetic warrior,” Jason said. “But we don’t know for sure it’s only eight and we have no idea if they’re armed or armored … or both. I’d rather not leave anything to chance at this point.”
“We do have the shuttle weapons still,” Lucky pointed out.
“True,” Jason said, “but if we vaporize the crew, getting answers out of them will be that much more difficult.” Lucky simply turned and gave him a hard look at the sarcastic comment, but remained silent.
“Four blaster carbines and six sidearms,” Mazer said, sitting back in his seat behind the copilot station. “No heavy weapons, unfortunately.”
“Lucky has the heavy weapons taken care of,” Jason said with a smile. “We just need to cover him and keep them from concentrating any defense they may be able to raise at him.”
“Sounds like we have it all figured out,” Mazer said glumly, staring at the flaring engines of the carrier ship that was now clearly visible now that they’d closed to within less than a kilometer.
“Try not to sound too happy about it,” Jason said, looking over his shoulder.
“Sorry, Captain,” Mazer said. “But it just occurred to me that those are Galvetic warriors on that ship.”
“Is fighting your brethren such an unappealing prospect?” Lucky asked curiously.
“Not at all, my friend,” Mazer said. “But the fact that we need to fight them because of what they’ve done is upsetting. Legionnaires don’t just blindly follow orders like common foot soldiers. For them to confiscate your ship and abduct your crewmen means that the situation was explained to them and they agreed.”
“I can understand that,” Jason said, not mentioning that his crew may not have been abducted, but rather di
sposed of. “But the reasons they were given may not have been the truth. We are looking at the leading edge of what appears to be a significant power play here on Restaria unless I’m way off the mark, and I don’t think I am.”
“Perhaps,” Mazer said, sounding unconvinced. Everyone fell silent after that, listening to the drone of the engines and each thinking about their part in the upcoming action.
“We are nearly to the demarcation area,” Lucky said, referring to the zone Kage had marked on the map where the foothills of the mountains flowed into the seemingly endless grasslands of the plains. “We will be clear to engage momentarily.”
“Just let me know when,” Jason said, straightening in the seat and making the final adjustments on the targeting script he’d set up for the weapons. He began his final approach to the target and closed to within one hundred meters, causing the shuttle to bounce and rock in the wake vortex of the much larger ship. Now that he was so close, he could see what an antique it really was. The huge outriggers appeared to be flight stabilizers that were equipped with what looked like nozzles for a liquid-fueled rocket assist. The other propulsion components looked to have been upgraded at some time during the ship’s history since the repulsors and main engines were of different vintages.
“Weapons are locked on and we’re in range,” he said to Lucky. The battlesynth didn’t answer; he just continued to monitor the ship’s instruments for a while longer as the shuttle descended with the larger ship and the grasslands rolled along underneath them. It was another ten minutes of descending and decelerating before they crossed the thirty thousand foot mark.
“Jamming transmissions from the target,” Lucky said. “Weapons free.”
“Firing,” Jason answered and activated his weapons script. There was a whine audible on the flight deck as the power surged into the forward plasma cannons. A split second later, three brilliant red blasts lanced out and impacted the starboard engine of the rescue ship. While the damaged engine began to belch out smoke and fire, the shuttle dipped down and lined up along the starboard, ventral surface and strafed the repulsors along that side, leaving only three of the ten operational.
The effect was predictable and immediate as the rescue ship lost almost all propulsion on its starboard side. It began to yaw to the right as the port engine flared to full power and rolled as the three remaining repulsors on that side could no longer maintain level flight. It began to spiral down slowly towards the rolling plains below.
Jason looked at his tactical display and saw the crew of the ship was desperately trying to signal an emergency, but the shuttle’s capable countermeasures system was suppressing every transmission.
“They’re not losing altitude quickly enough,” Jason said, switching back over to manual control for helm and weapons. He slowed down to allow the ships to separate a bit more before diving underneath the stricken vessel and destroying four more repulsors along the port side, this time at the forward half of the ship. The destruction must have overloaded the system because one more of the repulsor emitters exploded outward as the shuttle zipped out from underneath and pulled a hard, climbing turn to the left to get back above and behind the now-doomed rescue ship.
“They’re falling too fast,” Mazer said in alarm. “A hull full of corpses doesn’t do us any good.”
“They can still arrest their descent,” Jason said calmly. “But now they’ll be forced to do it here instead of trying to limp back within range of their base.” Sure enough, just as the ship looked like it would lose all its forward momentum and tumble from the sky, the rocket nozzles at the end of each outrigger began to stream fuel vapor before they ignited and blew out gouts of bright orange flame.
As the liquid rocket motors came up to temperature and the fuel mixture was optimized, the exhaust went from hazy orange to a bright blue and then focused into a white-hot stream of superheated gas as the outriggers themselves moved within their limited articulation range to bring the thrust to bear where it would do the most good. Even through the crew must now know that it was inevitable that they would be crashing, they seemed determined to make it survivable.
“Looks like they’re going to just clear that next rise and then dig her into the field just beyond,” Jason remarked as he flew a lazy circle around the plummeting ship at a safe altitude of fifteen thousand feet. He was reasonably confident the ship would make it down in one piece, but if it impacted too hard he’d rather not get collected in the resulting explosion. Doubly so since it appeared it was carrying a full fuel load for the liquid rocket thrusters.
“Agreed,” Lucky said. “Estimated twenty seconds until impact. The speed and rate of decent are within acceptable limits.”
“It’s still gonna hurt like a mother though,” Jason said. Mazer’s brow scrunched up as he tried to figure out the meaning of Jason’s truncated obscenity. Even from their lofty vantage point it wasn’t difficult to pinpoint the moment of impact. The grass began to smoke and burn in the ship’s passage as the rocket motors scorched everything in their path, but even the three extra thrusters weren’t enough to keep the ship level and the starboard outriggers dug into the soft ground first, causing the ship to spin wildly. Once it lost its forward stability, it fell the rest of the way to the ground, slamming its underbelly into the turf before bouncing up and digging its nose in next. Still carrying a lot of velocity, this caused the ship to actually flip up and over and land hard on its dorsal surface, literally breaking its back. The aft section of the antique vessel sheared away and the forward section continued to slide on its top across the field.
“Holy shit,” Jason muttered, a pang of guilt going through him. Despite the Galvetic honor code, he had his doubts that the crew in the ship was anything other than a group of soldiers following what must have seemed like a mundane order: go grab a ship suspected of criminal activity along with its crew. Despite the fact they may be shortly having a shootout with them, he was hoping they all survived the fall from Restaria’s sky.
He nosed the shuttle over into a sharp descent towards where the forward section had finally ground to a halt. The repulsor emitters were all dark, the rocket motors were now extinguished, and only heavy jets of steam were still billowing up out of the nozzles.
“Tell Kage part one went off without a hitch,” Jason said to Lucky. “We’ll be out of the shuttle for this next part so he’ll need to keep an eye on when they figure out the ship isn’t coming back to base.”
“If they didn’t detect it dropping we’ll still only have a few minutes,” Mazer warned. “But the response time after they report it missing may be anywhere from twenty minutes to a few hours. These ships are part of Logistics Command, and with what’s happening in Ker it could take some arguing before anyone is dispatched to look in on it.”
“I don’t think we’ll be that fortunate,” Jason said as Lucky talked to Kage over the com. “Even as basic as they are, your satellites will be able to see the smoke and wreckage from orbit.”
“I just inquired about that,” Lucky said. “Kage said there is no satellite capable of surface imaging due overhead within the next hour, give or take a few minutes.”
“I retract my earlier statement,” Jason said as he eased the shuttle down into the grass. “If they have a bird due overhead in under sixty minutes they’re unlikely to dispatch an aircraft to check on a ship that is late to arrive. The obvious answer would be they made an emergency landing or had a mishap.” Once he felt the ship bounce and settle onto its landing skids, Jason switched the main drive to “standby” and locked out the command inputs. On the off chance they were overwhelmed by the crew of the rescue ship, he didn’t want to make it easy for them to simply fly off in the shuttle.
“Grab your gear,” he said, climbing out of the pilot’s seat. “Let’s try to get this done with a minimal loss of life … especially ours.”
Jason and Mazer both grabbed a rifle and a sidearm each. Lucky simply switched over to combat mode, the red glow of his eyes and whine
of charging weapons filling the cargo bay of the shuttle. Checking his crew over one more time, Jason popped the rear hatch and waited as it lowered to the ground.
They exited the shuttle single file, Lucky leading since Jason and Mazer had no body armor or personal shielding. They moved around the shuttle in time to see what looked like an emergency access hatch pop off the side of the hull, likely via explosive bolts, and hit the soft ground with a thud. The soot-streaked face of a Galvetic warrior emerged and looked right at them with a look of utter confusion. He then looked over at the parked combat shuttle; his eyes widened in understanding and he disappeared back through the hatchway. They could hear him shouting all the way from where they were standing.
“Damnit!” Jason snarled. “I should have landed behind the damaged section. They didn’t even know they’d been shot down.”
“We may still be able to salvage this,” Mazer said. He moved over to where one of the remaining outriggers was dug into the ground and leapt upon it. Running quickly up the appendage, he made his way to another hatch on the exposed belly of the ship and began manipulating the manual release controls. Jason and Lucky also ran up the outrigger to back him up. “When I open this Lucky should be the first to drop in.”
“Should I try and apprehend them first?” Lucky asked.
“I trust your judgment,” Jason said. “But NO unnecessary risks, they won’t be trying to stun you and you know firsthand how hard these guys can be to take down.”
“Lord Felex is a special case, even among us,” Mazer said. “But yes … do not engage them to incapacitate if there are more than two in the area. Even ship jockeys like these guys will be able to quickly adapt a strategy against you.”
“Understood,” Lucky said.
“Are you ready?” Mazer asked. When Lucky nodded, he reached into the recess he was crouched over and cranked the handle within until there were three loud pops and the hatch swung inward, banging against something inside the ship before swinging wildly from its hinge. Lucky tucked his arms in close and jumped in through the hatchway. An instant later there was a deafening POP and a blinding flash of light from within the ship.
Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon Page 17