"I'd say you're both right," Jason said. In truth, he was happy neither had brought up the fact he had almost crashed the ship again during atmospheric entry. "But I think ultimately Lucky is the most correct, we need to stop getting so locked into one plan or idea that we fail to see a better way when it presents itself. We'll go through a full debrief later. Once we're in slip-space we're going to have a few days to go over the missteps. Kage, you've got the bridge, I'm going to go stow my gear and grab a quick bite. I'll come back up in a few to relieve you so you can do the same."
"Thanks, Captain," Kage answered. "I'll be here." Jason turned to walk off the bridge, patting Lucky fondly on the shoulder on his way out.
As he suspected, Crusher was in the armory with an empty tray from the galley when he entered. The big warrior was sitting on one of the benches fiddling with a small plasma sidearm. "Nice job out there tonight," Jason said as he walked in through the door.
"Thank you, Captain. It wasn't all that difficult," he said modestly.
"Not for you, maybe. I don't have your training or background," Jason said as he made his weapons safe and began putting them away on their appropriate racks.
"You sell yourself short. You were a good soldier when I met you, and you've gotten quite a bit better over the last year. Your body is almost strong enough that we can begin some serious hand-to-hand combat training, if you're interested," Crusher said. In truth, the prospect made Jason more than a little nervous. He was nowhere near a match for the warrior's strength and ability despite his recent upgrades.
"I appreciate the offer," he said neutrally. "I may take you up on that during the longer slip-space flights." He stood up and headed towards the door, "You about done in here?"
"I don't think the Senator's family is comfortable around me. I'll probably stay here for a while longer."
"Suit yourself. But this is your home; you're free to go where you want and any passengers we take on will need to adjust to that. Or not. That's their business, but don't feel that you have to skulk around the ship on their account." Jason walked out of the armory without another word. He almost stopped to talk to Twingo in the engineering bay, but the steady stream of profanity coming from the general vicinity of the slip-reactor dissuaded him. Instead, he made his way to the galley to grab a sandwich to go and relieve Kage so the code slicer could get something to eat and unwind a bit.
He was lounging in the pilot's seat when Senator Vongaard entered the bridge, pausing slightly as Lucky turned to him. While the gesture looked harmless, Jason knew the synth was scanning the Senator for weapons. Both he and Crusher took internal security very seriously, and when they were carrying passengers they were doubly cautious. "Captain Burke, now that the...excitement... is somewhat concluded, I would like to again offer you my thanks. I must confess, I'm shocked that my own people would send a hit squad to eliminate me and my family," Vongaard said sadly as he sat slowly in one of the sensor station seats.
"Don't mention it, Senator. After all, we're being well paid for this," Jason said.
"Forgive me, but you don't strike me as your average, run of the mill mercenaries."
"Oh?"
"No. For one, our mutual friend wouldn't have hired you. For another, you spared every CIS agent you encountered during the rescue when it would have been in your best interests to simply kill them," Vongaard concluded. "Your team operates more like a military unit than a random group of guns for hire." Jason took the statement as the compliment it was intended.
"No, Senator," he said, "we don't kill indiscriminately. The agents were misguided, but not evil. However, if we had arrived a bit later and they had already been attempting to carry out their orders... things would have gone differently. Orders or no, every man is responsible for his own actions and the consequences or rewards they may bring."
"Quite right," Vongaard conceded. "So... the make-up of Omega Force seems to be quite unique. You look like a Corranian, but I know that you're not. Not only that, you have a Galvetic warrior, which is extremely rare, and a real battlesynth, an even more rare species. How is it such an eclectic group formed and travels together like you do?"
"Lucky, care to explain it to the Senator?" Jason asked his friend.
"It is not all that difficult, Senator Vongaard. We did not so much 'form' as we rescued each other, each from their own form of captivity. Captain Burke pulled us out of lives that held torture and certain death, and now we wish to continue that work for all who need it," Lucky said softly. The synth was rarely so introspective, but Jason couldn't fault his logic. Before Vongaard could answer, the rest of his family entered the bridge, led by Doc.
"Ah! Come here my dears, let me introduce you properly to the Captain," Vongaard said expansively. His little brood huddled around him and looked at Jason while keeping a wary eye on Lucky. "Captain, may I introduce my beautiful wife, Saffreena. My eldest daughter, Calleeá. And lastly my youngest angel, Seleste." The women of the Vongaard family smiled shyly at Jason, seeming to have dropped some of their early indignation for being rushed from their home in the middle of the night.
"Ladies," Jason said with a nod of his head, "welcome aboard the Phoenix. She's not the most luxurious thing in the sky, but she'll keep you safe until we reach our destination. We’re currently drifting unpowered towards your inner asteroid belt to avoid detection from the blockade ships in orbit over your planet. So far, it's working. As soon as the slip-drive is fully online, we'll mesh out of the Corran System and be on our way. Doc will see to your comfort. I'm sure you all must be tired after your ordeal." Doc looked up and gave Jason an unfriendly look as he was volunteered for chaperone duty again.
"Of course, Captain," Vongaard said smoothly. "We'll leave you to your task." With a half bow he led his family off the bridge, trailed by Doc. The youngest daughter, Seleste, smiled shyly at Lucky and offered a little wave. The big synth winked one of his eyes at her, eliciting a delighted giggle before she was through the hatchway. Jason smiled to himself and shook his head.
As Kage was walking back onto the bridge, Twingo's voice broke over the intercom, "Jason, the slip-drive is now fully active. Emitter coils are charged and the reactor is capable of sustained output. I'll be in the galley if you need me."
"Thanks, bud. I appreciate it," Jason said.
"My ass is on this tub too..." Twingo's voice trailed off as he continued to mumble out of range of the audio pick-up in engineering. Jason rolled his eyes before turning to Kage.
"So the million credit question is: do we continue to try and drift through the asteroid belt or do we just mesh out of here and be done with it?" he asked. Kage took a moment to weigh both options before speaking.
"Waiting to get into the belt would shield our slip signature somewhat, but if we just jump now we may still be undetected. And we can always do a series of dummy jumps to throw anyone off like we usually do."
"We're flying completely blind out here with the active sensors shut down, there could be a cruiser bearing down on us and we'd never know it until it was too late," Jason said. "We're out of here. Plot out first jump and then get me three dummy jumps before we come onto our final course." A "dummy jump" was a short slip-space jump followed by another, and usually another, in order to throw any potential pursuers off their trail. The energy released in initiating a slip-space field saturated surrounding space to the point that a tracking ship's sensors would be hard pressed to ferret them out. On the last dummy jump Jason liked to send out the damage control bots to inspect the exterior of the ship for any active trackers that may have been placed on the hull.
Thirty minutes later, the Phoenix was tearing through slip-space towards their destination (and payment) to drop off the Vongaard family. It would be a four-day flight at the speed Jason had chosen, quick enough that their passengers wouldn't become restless but not so fast that they burned an excessive amount of fuel and ate away at their profit for the job. He sat on the bridge in his seat for another hour to monitor the ship's sy
stems during the beginning of the long flight and to unwind a bit in the relative quiet the command deck offered. Kage, as was usual, seemed completely absorbed by his own displays. In truth, he was hooked into the computer via his own unique neural implants and was probably only vaguely aware of his surroundings. As a Veran, Kage had the ability to partition off sections of his over-sized brain and dedicate those to parallel functions. The "sectioning" of his brain made him an especially effective code slicer.
Jason leaned back further into his seat and watched the indicated velocity on his display creep up towards their final cruising speed. It was all abstract to him; they were moving at nearly a thousand times the speed of light in relation to objects in normal space, but within the cocoon of slip-space energy, the ship was motionless. He was getting a firmer grasp on the principles involved, but much of the technology on his ship may as well have been magic to him. He figured he had as long as he needed to get himself up to speed; he had no plans on settling down anytime soon.
Standing and stretching, he nodded to Kage (who either didn't see him or chose to ignore him) and walked off the bridge. As he expected, Lucky turned and followed him out. "I'm heading to bed, Lucky," he told the synth. "Keep an eye on everything and wake me up if anything goes sideways on us."
"Of course, Captain," Lucky replied as he posted up against one of the forward bulkheads. The vantage point would allow him to monitor the only entrance to the bridge as well as the only passageway that led to his Captain's quarters. Never requiring rest, he would remain at his post for as long as necessary and control access to either of these areas. Although the Senator and his family seemed harmless and the job had seemed legit, past experience told them things weren't always what they "seemed" to be.
Jason stripped off the CIS uniform and tossed it carelessly into the corner of his room. The cleaning bot that handled his quarters would find it and feed it back into the fabricators. He walked into the attached restroom, or "head,” and turned on the shower. A set of misting water jets that did a remarkable job of cleaning him off. He stepped over to the sink and stared at himself in the mirror. Sometimes, when the light was just right, he could see the glint of the nanotech implants in his eyes; a series of auxiliary retinas he could access to see in an expanded spectrum. He knew that these interfaced with his neural implants, basically a series of powerful computers that were tied directly into his nervous system that allowed him to access information over data networks, send instructions to the ship, and understand all of the alien languages being spoken around him.
As his eyes moved down to his torso, he couldn't help but reflect on the other changes he'd made to himself. He had paid to have his skeleton modified to increase its strength by having the large bones clad in a type of bio-compatible carbon fiber that had been threaded in over the course of days. He had also let Doc, a geneticist by trade, tweak his genetic make-up to work in conjunction with the available nanotech to increase his physical strength by an order of magnitude. If the isolation hadn't caused him to begin to lose touch with his humanity, each new tweak and twist to his body certainly did. "Bah," he said aloud and turned away from the mirror, entering the shower stall.
He wasn't sure why he was feeling so moody about being separated from his own world. Perhaps it was because the Corranians looked so very human, perhaps it was something else. During his last visit home, during which he had given all his worldly possessions to an old love, he had also left a discreet payload in orbit that he had not bothered trying to access as of yet. It was a small, stealthy com drone that was capable of intercepting all Earthly broadcasts, and even access the internet, and send them via slip-space transceiver directly to the ship. So, as he dried himself off, he ordered the computer to activate the com array and download the contents the small probe had stored up so far, mostly television and radio broadcasts.
After donning a pair of loose basketball shorts and a t-shirt, he grabbed a beer and flopped onto the bed. A quick look through the data package contents from the probe brought a smile to his face. "Computer, dim lights and play Top Gear, UK version. Newest episode first," he said.
"Acknowledged." As the first notes of "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers announced the beginning of his favorite show, Jason leaned back and suddenly didn't feel so far from home anymore.
Chapter 3
The remainder of the flight proved to be uneventful; the Senator's family were perfect passengers, neither making a fuss nor getting in the way of the crew as they went about the daily operations of flying the ship through slip-space. Not surprisingly, Doc and Senator Vongaard had become quite friendly and were often seen in conversation together in the common area. Saffreena, Hallis Vongaard's wife, spend much of the time reading off a tablet computer (Kage took it upon himself to hack into it to make sure there was nothing on there that shouldn't be) and didn't interact with the others very often except for mealtimes. The oldest daughter, Calleeá, was quiet and sullen, often emerging from their quarters in crew berthing with red, puffy eyes. During the long, boring flight it had begun to sink in for the young woman that she would never be able to return to her life or her friends. For a teenage girl of any species, this was devastating.
Seleste, the youngest daughter, surprised them all by instantly bonding, and wanting to spend time constantly with, the two most fearsome members of Omega Force: Crusher and Lucky. For their part, the pair of soldiers were exquisitely gentle and kind with the young girl, answering her questions and even submitting to playing games with her at the galley table. It was a startling visual at first, but Jason and Kage soon got used to it. At the threatening look from Crusher, both wisely chose to forgo the obvious jokes that came to mind.
"It is quite the visual contrast, is it not?" Senator Vongaard asked Jason when they were on the bridge one evening. "I think the night we had to escape Corran frightened her more than she’s letting on, and those two represent a sense of security. Who could possibly hurt you with them standing watch?" He shook his head with a smile, obviously amused.
"For Crusher, the fact that she's not terrified of his appearance is a bit unique. I think he’s enjoying being around someone so innocent and who doesn’t run the other way screaming when he walks into a room,” Jason said, equally amused.
Some days after their dramatic escape from Corran, the crew all sat on the bridge, as did Senator Vongaard, as they neared within hours of their destination. As was their usual procedure, the ship was cleaned up, weapons were inspected, and everyone was at their station and alert while they waited for the slip-drive to disengage and pop them back into real space.
“Eshquaria System transition in ten minutes,” the computer announced. Everyone on the bridge involuntarily sat up straighter in their seat and looked forward despite the canopy still being blacked out for slip-space flight. Jason tensed up in the pilot seat as the seconds ticked down, even though they were hired to do this job by someone from Eshquaria, and Doc swore it checked out, this would be the first time they would meet their employer, or even set foot on the planet.
The system was controlled by a sovereign government, a type of representative democracy, but it still maintained official commerce relations with the ConFed government without submitting to the overarching authority of the ConFed Council. The Confederated Systems were more a wide-ranging alliance than a true governmental body, each system still handled internal affairs as they saw fit in order to simplify the logistics involved due to interstellar distances. It reminded Jason of the United Nations from Earth, but with more teeth. Maybe NATO would be more accurate, but the ConFed was heavily involved in regulating commerce and social issues as well as defense. It seemed to work okay for what it was, but he was so new to the subtleties of galactic politics that he usually only understood the broad strokes from the newscasts, and even then Doc had to paraphrase them for his benefit. From his perspective, it looked like the ConFed skimmed an enormous amount of wealth off the top and used it to build an incredibly powerful fleet that answered
only to them. Ostensibly this was to provide for the common defense, but Jason had his doubts.
The Phoenix shuddered slightly as the slip-drive disengaged and the universe, who abhors things not being in their natural order, popped them out into real space with a flash of dissipating slip energy. A quick glance at the status display confirmed that they had meshed in-system precisely on target and were drifting down the primary star’s gravity well towards Eshquaria, the main planet in a system made up of three habitable worlds, five habitable moons, and a handful of large industrial and commercial orbiting platforms.
Jason engaged the ship’s autopilot once he confirmed their position, leaving the manual flight controls in their stowed positions. Eshquaria’s traffic controllers were notoriously insistent on accurate approaches to their planet since the space traffic was normally quite heavy. He didn’t feel they’d appreciate him practicing on the new flight control system in their clogged shipping lanes, so he sat back and simply monitored their progress instead. “Twingo,” he called out, “are we running with clean codes?”
“Of course we are. I’ve got us covered, Captain,” Twingo said casually from one of the bridge stations. They’d spent an incredible amount of money to refit the Phoenix with a set of switchable transponders, complete with all new registry codes from various worlds around the galaxy. After some of their more memorable missions, they had been pursued heavily by law enforcement agencies from half a dozen different planets. They’d had to adopt the old smugglers’ trick of rotating transponders in order to stay a step ahead. There was one transponder which they kept “clean” that identified the Phoenix as a light courier freighter.
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