Omega Force: Savage Homecoming (17 page)

“Twingo, Doc … go through the data package that was included and see if there’s anything useful in there.”

Another full day passed and both ships were still in orbit over the planet, both crews poring over the data that had been on the A’arcooni device. While Crisstof was delighted with the cultural treasure trove, there was little of any real use to Jason and the problem he now faced.
How do I find Deetz before he leads me into another of his traps?

“Com request coming in from the
Diligent
, Captain,” Kage said, not looking up from his console.

“Got it,” Jason replied as he punched the control to accept the channel request. Kellea’s face appeared on his main display.

“Hello, Captain,” she said somewhat stiffly. “The
Diligent
will be breaking orbit and leaving this system within the hour. We have other engagements we’ve ignored for as long as we can. We will respond to any emergency requests you make, however.” It was clear from her demeanor that she was still upset with Jason and assumed he would raise hell about her ship leaving the hunt.

“I understand, Kellea,” he said, surprising her. “You’ve done all you can, and we don’t even have a firm plan of action right now. We’ll let you know if we come up with anything.” She opened her mouth to say something, but instead simply reached over and closed the channel.

“You’ve got some serious damage control to do with that one, Captain,” Kage said, not even the least bit embarrassed he’d obviously been eavesdropping.

“How would you know anything about that?” Jason asked innocently.

“I …” Kage floundered and realized he’d screwed up. There was no way he should know exactly how far his relationship with Captain Colleren might have gone.

“Stop hacking into my com channels or I’m going to shut down the wireless network on the ship,” Jason said in as calm a voice as he could manage.

“Yes, sir.” Kage’s unique wetware kept his Veran brain in constant contact with the ship’s main computer. Jason sometimes used cutting him off from it as punishment. It was petty, but there was little else he could threaten the little alien with that he would even notice.

“Listen up,” Jason said over the intercom, still glaring at Kage.
“Family meeting in the galley in twenty minutes.” He climbed out of his seat and walked off the bridge.

He quickly made his way to his quarters with the intent of getting cleaned up and changing his uniform out for one that wasn’t quite so fragrant. The six members of Omega Force were all of different species, and each came with their own unique funk. While in close quarters aboard the
Phoenix
, all of them had entered into a gentleman’s agreement to make sure laundry and cleaning regimens were strictly adhered to.

Quickly stripping off his uniform, he climbed into his private shower and activated the jets. As often happened, the steam jets were almost hypnotic, and he found himself dozing off while standing in the stall. In just such a state, he was completely unprepared when a set of small arms wrapped around his waist and squeezed. He yelped and lunged away into the far wall of the shower, eliciting peals of delighted laughter from behind him.

“Who did you think it was?” Taryn asked. Jason turned and raised an eyebrow at the sight that greeted him. She was leaning against the edge of the shower, wearing nothing but a small grin.

“Well … I was praying to God it wasn’t Crusher,” he said as he pulled her into the shower stall. She squealed as the jets hit her,
then leaned into him. He kissed her gently for a moment before things become quite a bit more serious.
Whoever designed this ship with a private shower in the captain’s quarters was a genius.

*****

“You said twenty minutes,” Twingo complained loudly when he walked into the galley. “We’ve been sitting here for almost an hour.”

“Stop whining,” Jason told him. “It’s not like you had anything else going on. Besides, I see the wait didn’t stop you from stuffing your face again.”

“Where is Taryn?” Crusher asked, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

“I don’t know,” Jason said unconvincingly. “I don’t keep track of every person on this ship.”

“She is currently in the shower in your quarters, Captain,” Lucky offered. “According to internal sensors she has been in there for fifty minutes.”

“Thank you, Lucky.”

“You are welcome, Captain.”

“OK,” Jason said, facing a group of now-unfriendly faces. “Do we think we know anything that can be actionable?”

“No,” Doc said simply. “We’ve gone through the data with a fine sifter and nothing is standing out. It doesn’t look like Deetz has left any obvious clues this time. That may not be a good sign.”

“Yeah,” Twingo agreed. “If he’s not leading us around anymore, that may mean he doesn’t need us. He could give us the slip at this point and we’d never find him.”

They batted around ideas for the better part of an hour and at the end they still had nothing to act on. The frustration was palpable. They couldn’t just orbit a dead planet waiting for something to happen lightyears away, but rushing off in the wrong direction would be just as unproductive.

“Hi, guys,” Taryn said brightly as she joined the group. “Did I miss anything? I was just working out in the cargo bay.”

“Oh, shut up,” Crusher snapped. The fact that Jason had a female of his own species aboard, while initially a source of amusement to the others, was now only highlighting the fact that they didn’t.

“What is your problem—” Taryn’s wide-eyed response to Crusher was interrupted by a strident alarm sounding throughout the ship. The crew didn’t waste even a split second by staring at each other or asking questions. In a rush, they ran up the stairs to the command deck. Doc dove into the seat at his station and began manipulating the controls.

“We have an enemy ship pushing up out of the atmosphere!”

“What?!
Where?” Jason was shocked by the news. He’d thought the planet was clear from the scans they’d taken when they arrived.

“Coming up over the northern pole,” Doc reported. “No indication that they’ve seen us or that they’re moving to intercept.”

“Full countermeasures, NOW! Get a track plot on the main display and overlay the ranging data of their weapon that we got from the
Diligent
.” Jason’s orders caused a flurry of activity for a moment as Kage activated the
Phoenix’s
extensive countermeasures suite, effectively hiding the ship from sensors if they kept enough distance. He watched the sensor plot of the other ship on his display. It was lumbering out of the atmosphere at a relative crawl. “Why is it climbing out so slowly?”

“It looks like their propulsion is laughably outdated,” Twingo said, also studying the incoming data. “They’re not using a gravimetric drive, at least not in the way we do. It looks like they’re using something that produces the same effect as our grav platting, but with a much higher output. That, coupled with thrusters, is it.
Highly inefficient, really.” They all sat transfixed as the ship finally pushed up into lower orbit and began to increase velocity. It looked like it was accelerating in order to transfer to a high geosynchronous orbit, which was where the
Phoenix
currently was.

“Let’s stay on passive sensors,” Jason said. “I want to gather as much data as we can. Kage, plot me a course that will keep us above and behind them. Keep us at least twenty thousand kilometers away.”

“Plotting,” Kage answered. “You’re clear to engage on your new course. Thrusters only. We don’t know if they can detect grav-drive emissions.”

The
Phoenix
fired her maneuvering thrusters to accelerate them to a higher orbit and bring them in behind where the computer projected the enemy ship would be. It was an arduous process if one was accustomed to having a powerful grav-drive to reposition the ship, but it was an almost guaranteed way to ensure they wouldn’t be detected.

The computer had predicted the enemy ship’s course nearly perfectly as they came around the planet and fired the braking thrusters to ease them in behind and above it. The ship then simply flew around the planet for three full orbits with seemingly no intention of doing anything else.

“Do you think they’re waiting on the other ship? Or Deetz?” Jason asked.

“I think it’s likely they’re making repairs,” Twingo said from where he looked over Doc’s shoulder at the sensor station. “We’re reading some pretty nasty radiation spikes coming from their aft drive section. That ship has been through a lot; the optical sensors are showing a lot of hull damage and older haphazard repairs.”

“So … are we going to attack them?” Kage asked. The high-strung alien didn’t fare well in tense situations like the one they were in.

“That seems like a wasted opportunity to learn more about both them and this weapon,” Jason explained. “It would take them a bit to charge it up even if they spotted us, so it looks like we’re safe for now. If they move to break orbit, we’ll take action.”

“I think we’re safe anyway, Captain,” Twingo said. “It looks like their sensor technology is no more advanced than their propulsion. Seems like it’s radar and lidar only. There’s also a large hull breach on her port flank that makes me think they wouldn’t be able to activate their weapon anyway, at least not according to what we think we know about it.”

“Can we get an idea of crew size?”

“Not with the passive sensors, Captain,” Doc answered. Jason stared at the ship floating in his display for a moment, torn as to what his next action should be.

“Captain,” Lucky began. Jason braced himself as he knew what the battlesynth was about to say, but had no way to stop him. “The most effective method for us to gather information and neutralize that ship is to board it. The
Phoenix
is capable of putting us on the hull.” Jason betrayed his fears by glancing quickly at Taryn as Lucky finished. A look of understanding came over her and she walked up to the pilot’s seat and leaned in.

“Do what you need to do, Jason,” she whispered. “You can’t take the safe way out just because I’m here. Too much is at stake.” He just nodded his head, not trusting himself to speak. As she stepped back, he cleared his throat to give the order.

“Crusher, Lucky … let’s go get prepped for EVA, full kit. Doc, you’re in the hot seat. Kage, plot a course that will close in slowly and put us just forward of where we think Engineering is on the dorsal hull plating.” Lucky turned to leave and Crusher let out a whooping cry, jumping up with his fist in the air, startling half the remaining crew. Jason just shook his head as the warrior swaggered off the bridge to go and arm himself.

“Do you think that he’ll end up killing us all one day?” Kage asked.

“Hmm,” Jason grunted. “Probably.”

Taryn ran up and gave Jason
a firm kiss on the lips before he could get off the bridge himself. Ignoring the laughs and calls from his crew, he made his way down through the ship and to the armory. When he arrived, Lucky had already pulled his armor from its alcove and was running self-test routines on it.

“
Thanks, bud,” he said as he began to strip his uniform off to don the form-fitting
second skin
he wore under the armor.

“My pleasure, Captain,” Lucky said. “I know you are overly fond of your railgun, but might I suggest something a little more appropriate for a boarding party?”

“Afraid I’ll shoot through the hull?” Jason asked with a grin.

“I was more concerned with something like a breach of the reactor shell,” Lucky stated matter-of-factly.

“No worries. We’ll
all
be taking blasters with stun capability,” Jason said, looking pointedly at Crusher, who was hefting a mainline infantry weapon. With a scowl of disgust, he put it back on the rack and grabbed two shorter plasma carbines. “We’re going in full force, but we need at least a couple of prisoners, preferably bridge crew.”

It took another ten minutes for them to fully kit up. Waiting for the still-damaged armory doors to open so they could get into the cargo bay, Jason called up to the bridge over his armor’s com. “Go ahead and bring the
Phoenix
to full tactical alert, Doc. I want you to target engines only if it looks like they’re accelerating to break orbit. We’ll be riding the transit beam down so we don’t damage the gangway when we’re cutting through.”

“Copy, Captain.
Weapons and shields coming online, and reactor at seventy percent power and climbing.”

He could feel the power thrumming though his ship as the tactical systems came online. Walking over to a set of cabinets set against the forward bulkhead, he grabbed an unwieldy, high-powered laser that was built specifically to cut through hardened hull plating. It had started life as a shipyard tool but Twingo had modified it to be used as a breaching tool. It was fairly subtle if they picked their entry location carefully. More than once they had been on a ship for minutes before the crew realized they’d been boarded. Jason was hoping to use that element of surprise in this case. If he let Kage try to slice into an airlock control system they might be detected, and they had no idea what sort of anti-intrusion protocols might be in place.

As he walked back to his friends, he watched with a bemused expression hidden behind his own visor as Lucky tried to help Crusher cram his helmet on. The warrior had about as much protective gear on as he was ever willing to wear: a full pressure layer with a flexible protective outer layer. Attached to that were individual plates of shielding, but not the head-to-toe armor like the type Jason wore. On his back was a simple life support unit with a redundant backup.