Omega Force 6: Secret of the Phoenix (8 page)

“Good thinking, Twingo,” Jason said approvingly.

“I made one for you too, Captain,” the engineer said as he handed an enthusiastic Crusher his helmet. “It would probably be more comfortable than that thing.” Jason considered it, but he was already suited up and, truth be told, since his recent upgrades he actually liked wearing it.

“I’m okay,” he said. “I’ll have the full gamut of sensors and weapons on me since Lucky will be staying onboard.”

“Suit yourself,” Twingo shrugged as he began climbing into his own protective outfit.

It took another hour and a half to get everyone ready and prep the cargo bay. Jason had insisted on some sort of hard barrier in addition to the atmospheric forcefields to keep as much of the sand out of the ship as possible. They ended up rigging a flexible curtain up and only allowing the interior pressure doors to open one and half meters. This was enough to get Naleem’s equipment through and allowed Twingo to get in and out of the cargo bay as needed in order to get the site’s main generator started again.

Before he could start the generator, however, he needed to uncover it. To that end, he would drag out a power cable from the
Phoenix
and dig by hand in the spot indicated by Naleem in order to power up a very specialized piece of equipment. The machine, roughly a meter cubed in size, had two large diameter hoses coming out of it. One had handles and had the words “INLET” written on it. The other disappeared into the sand, running somewhere Jason couldn’t see.

“This thing should accept power from the ship without any problem,” Twingo was saying as he popped open an access hatch and began splicing in the cable he’d been dragging. “The generator is fairly new and outputs the standard frequency and amplitude.”

“Will knowing this help me get out of this desert any faster?” Crusher asked.

“Probably not,” Twingo admitted.

“Then shut up and get back to work,” Crusher growled. “Less talking, more tinkering.”

“Tinkering?” Twingo said in mock indignation. Jason knew that annoying Crusher was one of Twingo’s favorite hobbies, and he was good at it, but the big warrior did not look to be in a joking mood. Twingo wisely let it drop and kept at what he was doing inside the machine. Jason was impressed at how sure his movements were and the level of dexterity he seemed to maintain inside the hastily-built environmental suit. “That should do it,” he said finally. “Kage, energize the feed.”

Kage didn’t respond, but the machine gave a lurch as power from the ship flowed into it. There were a few discouraging thumps and shudders before a huge gout of sand blew out of the seal between the lines and it settled into a steady rumble. Naleem ran and grabbed the inlet line and flicked a switch on the handle. Sand began funneling into the line and away from the site.

“So it’s a sand vacuum?” Jason asked.

“Of a sorts,” Twingo said. “It actually creates a gravitational distortion within the line Naleem is holding and it accelerates the sand through the machine and out the discharge line.”

“And where is that at?” Crusher asked, looking around.

“The discharge outlet is two kilometers away,” Naleem said as she began sweeping the inlet over her machinery. Jason remained silent, but a two kilometer line, along with all the other equipment he was beginning to see, meant that she’d had access to a ship much larger than the
Phoenix
when she originally set the site up. She was nothing if not well-funded for her little scavenger hunt.

It was nearly five hours of continuous work, with each of them taking turns at the sand sucker, before the site was cleared down to the rock shelf Naleem had originally been working on. Jason began inspecting the smooth cuts into the rock as Twingo began working to get the main generator running again. The cuts looked very uniform and were still ultra-crisp. Since it seemed the sand blew almost constantly on DC915, Jason was a little suspicious that this was actually an archeological site. He captured multi-spectral, high resolution scans with his armor’s instruments and sent them to Doc to begin analysis.

He continued to explore around the site as Naleem continued her sand removal, now concentrating on getting into all the nooks and crannies, while Twingo worked and Crusher moved his way back to the ship to stand in the shade of the tail. It wasn’t long before the dull hum of the generator starting up cut through the sound of the blowing sand and the engineer’s cursing. Twingo let the machine get up to operating temperature and stabilize before energizing the main load contactor. When he did the entire site burst to life as lights came up and a host of other machines resumed their tasks. It was then that Jason saw there was actually a tunnel carved down into the bedrock away from the landing site. He moved to the edge, peering down until the lights wrapped around into a shallow turn and disappeared from view.

Chapter 8

“So what are you looking for down here?” Jason asked after retracting his helmet. The air down in the chamber was stale, but cool and clear. Naleem’s original team had rigged a door at the end of the long, curving tunnel that had kept out almost all of the invasive grit. He noticed the heavy scoring along the wall and on the door that could only be weapons fire, but he let that slide for now.

“To be honest, Captain, I’m not sure what it looks like and I have no idea what it’s actually called,” she answered distractedly.

“That’s helpful,” Twingo said. “I assume you have some way to find it then?”

“Yes,” she said, holding up a handheld device that looked a few centuries out of date. “This will put out a sympathetic frequency and should induce a response from the artifact we’re after.” Jason looked around at the chamber he found himself in. It had high ceilings and was probably twenty meters deep and across, but what he couldn’t see was how someone had even built it. The chamber was obviously much, much older than the newly cut tunnel that they’d taken to get to it, but there appeared to be no other exits. He confirmed his suspicion with his armor’s sensors; it was as if the chamber had just appeared underneath thousands of tons of solid bedrock.

“Have you noticed there aren’t any other ways into this place?” Twingo asked softly, his thoughts apparently paralleling Jason’s.

“I was just looking at that,” Jason said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t even want to try and guess,” Twingo said. “There are some obvious answers, I guess, but there are some problems with all of them. My gut instinct is that someone has developed an actual, workable matter transporter and used it to build this place.”

“What’s the problem with that?” Jason asked.

“The initial scans I took of the erosion marks on the walls indicate this place is at least four thousand years old, and the margin of error is a thousand years either way,” Twingo answered. Jason looked up to make sure Naleem was still on the far side of the chamber with her strange device before continuing.

“So how did she know where this place was?” he asked.

“That’s the million credit question, isn’t it?” Twingo said with a shrug. “But I’d say this job just got a lot stranger than most.”

“Get ready,” Naleem called from across the chamber. “This can be somewhat … energetic.” She finished adjusting the settings on the device and began turning up the power, increasing the amplitude of the signal being transmitted. Jason’s armor could detect and classify the frequency, but it wasn’t something that was in the audible range for humans. Twingo’s twitching ears let him know that it was probably just on the edge of what his friend could detect and it was irritating him.

Just when he was about to ask what it was they were waiting for he began to feel a buzzing vibration through the floor. He looked around as bits of loose rock were shaken from the walls; the entire chamber seemed to be humming with energy. The intensity of the vibrations increased until Jason became concerned about the integrity of the room they were in as dust and rocks continued to drop from the ceiling. He grabbed Twingo to get him moving towards the exit tunnel when the wall on the far side split with a deafening
pop
and the rock began to shear away to reveal another chamber beyond.

The moment the wall collapsed, Naleem shut the device down and the vibrations stopped. Falling rocks were the only sound as the three of them looked at each other. “I didn’t think it would be quite that intense,” Naleem admitted. Without another word she ducked into the newly revealed chamber and disappeared. Jason could see her light bobbing along the walls as he and Twingo rushed over to see what was inside.

Whereas the first chamber they’d come to was completely barren, the second was sheathed in a shimmering metal and adorned with exotic-looking writing that the database in Jason’s neural implant couldn’t decipher. He again began recording with his armor’s sensors and casually walked a complete circle around the smaller room, detailing the walls for later analysis by the ship’s computer.

Naleem walked over to the far wall and pressed on a large circle with a glyph etched into it. The circle illuminated a brilliant blue for a moment and then extinguished.

“I hope you know what you’re doing as you randomly press—”Jason was interrupted by the sound of stone grinding against stone and a meter-diameter circle in the center of the room sunk into the floor. It recessed about half a meter before swinging out of the way and a new, different sound replaced the rough grinding. This was the sound of modern machinery. The whine of actuators and the rumble of bearings was a stark contrast to the nerve-grating racket the moving stones had created.

Twingo and Jason stood slack jawed as a polished pedestal rose from the hole in the chamber floor. It was stunningly beautiful and was sculpted in such a way that its facets reflected the light along the walls in a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. Resting within the three-fingered grasp of the two hands that emerged from the top of the pedestal was a metal disc that was so polished it hurt to look at.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say this is what you were after,” Jason said, his armor’s sensors spiking and cutting out from whatever the strange object was emitting. “Is it safe?”

“Completely safe,” Naleem said softly. “Even after all this work, I can’t believe it was really here.”

“So … what is it?” Twingo asked. Naleem suddenly looked worried.

“Now that it’s out of its shielding it will be able to be detected,” she said quickly. “We must get it aboard the ship and leave this system as quickly as we can.”

“I’m not taking that thing onboard until I know what it is and what it does,” Jason said flatly.

“Captain, we don’t have time for a—”

“Those are my terms,” Jason insisted. “I won’t let you put my crew at risk unnecessarily.”

She let out an exasperated sigh, glaring at him. “For lack of a better term, it’s an antenna,” she said. “It’s part of a larger device that will help us find our ultimate goal.”

“Good enough … for now,” Jason said after a moment. “I assume since it can be detected that you’ve been smart enough to take precautions before we lift off?”

“There’s a shielded case in your cargo bay right now,” she confirmed. “It will shield the device unless someone is very, very close.”

“I don’t plan on letting anyone get that close, so grab your golden Frisbee and let’s get the hell out of here,” Jason said, turning to leave.

“What’s a Frisbee?” Naleem asked Twingo.

“I believe it’s a small, flying creature from his homeworld that his kind hunts for food,” Twingo said.

“So he thinks I’m going to eat the antenna?” she asked, completely confused.

“Well … he’s from a strange and primitive planet,” Twingo said, floundering. “Many times if he doesn’t fully understand something he will try to either eat it or mate with it.” As the short engineer walked out of the chamber, Naleem grabbed the metal disk and hugged it protectively to her chest, her face a mask of concern and confusion.

****

“What the hell were you guys doing down there?” Kage demanded. “The whole ship started shaking and we couldn’t figure out what the problem was.”

“You could feel that all the way up here?” Jason asked, surprised.

“What?” Doc asked. “You mean you felt it all the way down there, right?”

“No … the vibrations originated in the cavern we were in,” Jason said. “It was induced by some device Naleem had.”

“I don’t believe so,” Doc argued. “It seemed as if it was coming from within the ship.”

“We must not be talking about the same thing,” Jason shrugged. “Have Twingo check it out. I’m going to go change back into my uniform and then we’re out of here as fast as we can manage it. Apparently she’s just activated some sort of homing signal that will let
someone
know that she’s unearthed the artifact. I’d rather be long gone once they show up.”

Jason hurried to extract himself from his armor while his crew finished packing up Naleem’s equipment and prepping the dig site. She was adamant that they destroy the entire thing despite the fact there was still so much that could be learned from the writings on the wall in the second chamber. He began to suspect that was exactly why she wanted the caverns collapsed. Twingo and Crusher were busy rigging the explosives that she conveniently had on hand in a locker onsite, and she told them to take special care to ensure that the walls of the second chamber would be destroyed to the point that they couldn’t be reconstructed.

He walked out of the armory and into the cargo bay in time to see Naleem gingerly placing the disc they’d extracted into a specialized holding case that sat inside of another, larger crate that appeared to have some sort of active lining. It was obvious from the case that she’d known exactly what she was looking for when she began excavating the hidden chamber and what special steps needed to be taken to ensure it couldn’t be detected.

“The antenna will be safe in here,” she said as Jason approached, “and we will be safe from anyone trying to find it.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” he said, causing her to look up sharply. “I saw the blast marks in the tunnel, Naleem. You were chased off this site by someone who not only knows exactly where it is but likely knows what you were looking for. The fact they didn’t trash your equipment means they wanted you to return and finish the job for them. I’m sure they’re a lot closer than you think.”

“What you say may be true,” she admitted. “But the people who attacked us the first time don’t have access to a ship as fast as this. If we can leave this planet soon they will come back to find only a pile of rubble.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” he said, obviously not convinced. “How much longer?”

“Your men should be done within half an hour,” she said. “We can depart after that.” Jason didn’t answer her. Instead, he walked back in through the armory, sealed the heavy blast door, and made his way to the bridge.

“Anything in the area?” he asked Doc as he slid into the pilot’s seat.

“Nothing our sensors can pick up in local space,” Doc answered. “But we’re quite limited by being on the ground. The planet’s shadow has us relatively blind to anything that may be approaching from the far side.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Jason admitted. “Hopefully we’ll be in the air shortly.”

“We could launch the twins to take a peek on the other side and keep watch,” Doc suggested. Jason thought about it for a moment.

“Let’s not bother with that,” he said. “They have limited sensor capability and we’ll be leaving by the time they make it halfway around the planet anyway.”

While Doc kept his eyes on his display to try and catch anyone sneaking around the planet on them, Jason brought up the internal security feeds to keep tabs on what was going on in the cargo bay and outside. He could see that Twingo was wrapping up his demolition prep and Crusher was already making his way up the ramp. Lucky had taken up station in the hold and though Jason couldn’t swear to it, it seemed Naleem was becoming increasingly frustrated at his presence.

When Crusher and Twingo walked in he had a bit of confirmation of this as she slammed the lid shut on a crate she’d been aimlessly rooting around in and walked out, her mannerisms agitated. Jason smiled tightly as he saw that Lucky’s eyes never left her until she was completely out of the cargo bay. Once she was gone, the battlesynth went over to the crate and opened it, apparently intent on finding out what had been so interesting in there.

He killed the feed just as Twingo closed the ramp and pressure doors and began pulling the temporary barrier down that he’d set up earlier. Naleem walked onto the bridge a moment later after having composed herself.

“So where to next?” Jason asked.

“I would say simply away from here for the immediate future,” she said. “I’ll need a bit of time before I can pinpoint our next destination with any certainty.”

“How much time?” Jason asked.

“I’m getting something on sensors that doesn’t look right,” Doc said, cutting off Naleem before she could answer.

“Show me,” Jason said sharply, walking up behind Doc.

“It’s a bit of thermal variance that began popping up from the west a few minutes ago,” Doc said, calling up the thermal graphs. “The computer ignored it at first since the sun is setting along the western horizon, but the second time it showed up it changed direction and intensity. It could be nothing.”

“But it’s probably someone hugging the terrain on an incoming course,” Jason said in alarm. “You’re seeing the exhaust plume when he dives down to follow the ground.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s the same thing we do,” Jason said, sliding into the pilot’s seat and bringing up the primary flight systems and keying the intercom. “Prepare the
Phoenix
for emergency departure and combat operations. Kage, get your ass up here.” A mere second later the littler Veran came sprinting onto the bridge and leapt into the copilot’s seat.

“What have we got?” he asked as he began to reconfigure the ship for flight.

“Possible inbound fast mover,” Jason said. “Too big to be a missile so it’s probably a fighter-class ship. Stand by, I’m taking us up.” He began to feed power to the grav-drive, feeling the ship shudder a bit as she pulled herself out of the sand. “Retract the gear and reconfigure the shields.”