Omega Force: Savage Homecoming (3 page)

Jason awoke in a full flop sweat panic as he had no idea how long he’d been asleep. It was an unusual sensation for him, since his implants kept him aware of the time down to the second. After a moment he remembered he had disabled some of the functions so he could rest. His quarters were dark and he could still feel the slip-drive thrumming at high-output, so they were still in transit to Earth. It’s not like he thought his crew would actually let him sleep through the upcoming festivities, but those first few moments after waking up were quite disorienting. After going through the process to reinitialize most of his implants’ functionality he felt much better.

He slipped his legs over the edge of the bed and grabbed his boots, bloused his grey cargo pants into the tops out of habit, and walked out to see where they were. According to ship’s time he’d been asleep a little over ten hours and
, though he hated to admit it, he did feel more focused and ready to face whatever was hovering over his planet. He jogged up the stairs to the command deck and heard voices coming from the conference room, including one from someone who wasn’t actually on the ship.

“Hello, Crisstof,” he said by way of greeting as he entered the room, nodding
to the members of his crew that were already there and seated.

“
Captain Burke, you have my most sincere sympathies at this moment,” the always urbane Crisstof said. “In fact, we were just discussing how I might be able to help. Doc sent us your news footage and I must admit, we’re a little stumped as to who is attacking your planet.”

“You didn’t recognize the ships?” Jason asked.

“Nope,” Twingo volunteered before Crisstof could answer. “They don’t match up to any known manufacturer that is common in this region. Not only that, but they look like antiques. The visible drive signatures on the video are consistent with a type of plasma drive that hasn’t been used for a few centuries.”

“That still puts
them centuries ahead of anything Earth has,” Jason said sourly. “Could Deetz have found them somewhere and automated them? Is he just sitting in one of them and controlling the other two remotely?”

“It’s possible,” Twingo conceded, stressing the second word. “But improbable. Those ships are just too old
, and the older a ship the less automation it will have. If he was going to go through that sort of trouble, and he knew he was attacking Earth, why not just get a couple of modern freighters with some light armament?”

“Captain,” Crisstof interjected, “you know how this Deetz thinks, why do you think he’s coming after you now after all this time?”

“I wish I could tell you,” Jason said. “To say I know how he thinks is giving me too much credit. He had me fooled up until it was almost too late the first go-round. I do know he’s entirely self-serving and a coward. I still have trouble believing this is really just about me.”

“We’ll keep trying to identify who
m the ships belong to,” Crisstof said. “In the meantime, I’d like to position the
Diligent
closer to your location. Could you send Captain Colleren the location for the Solar System? We’ll head towards you in case we’re needed.” Jason’s hesitation didn’t go unnoticed.

“Jason,” Twingo whispered, “the secret of Earth’s location is out. We may need them before this is all over.” Jason nodded before addressing Crisstof again.

“That sounds good. I’ll have Kage forward the coordinates to you,” he said. “It’s pretty far out of the way, further down the spiral arm than even Breaker’s World.” Crisstof looked surprised at this.

“We’d better get under
way then,” he said. “We’ll move the instant we have the coordinates.” He nodded to them once more before signing off. Jason looked at Doc and Twingo after the screen went blank.

“I hope I didn’t
just make a mistake,” he said. “If these ships are really so antiquated, the
Phoenix
should be able to make short work of them.”

“I said they
looked
like antiques,” Twingo corrected. “That doesn’t guarantee what we’ll face when we get there. Look at the
Phoenix
… the Eshquarians have rebuilt her far past the specs of the original Jepsen build. We’ll need an active scan before we can be certain.”

“So Earth has no weapons that they could use to defend themselves?” Doc asked.

“Just one,” Jason said, “and I hope they haven’t used it. Otherwise the aliens won’t need to fire a shot to kill a ton of humans. All we have that could possible bust through an energy shield are nuclear fusion missiles that aren’t made to target something as small as a ship. The collateral damage would be unimaginable.”

*****

The
Phoenix
was less than an hour from meshing into Earth’s Solar System. They were approaching from above the ecliptic to try and avoid most of the navigational hazards and pop into real-space as close as possible to minimize their detection time. The mood on the bridge was tense as everyone was preparing for an inevitable confrontation. Jason was in full armor, but not the off-the-shelf unit he had worn during the fight on Shorret-3. This unit was custom fitted, tied directly into his neural implant, and shockingly expensive.

Crusher was also dressed for the occasion
, and Lucky was his usual impassive self as he watched the action on the bridge. The others were still wearing their standard shipboard garb as they wouldn’t be disembarking for any reason on this trip. While Jason watched the timer, he thought back to the four emails that were in his inbox from Taryn. One was simply an inquiry into how he was doing and if he would be coming to Earth anytime soon. She hadn’t fully believed him when he’d explained what had happened to him, but she played along anyway. He assumed she thought he was making a joke out of having to deploy overseas again.

The last three, however, were full of terror and pleading as the three ships arrived over America. She had seen his picture broadcast
everywhere, but more importantly she knew that there would certainly be someone who would recognize him and an equally likely chance they would know he had been connected to her. The knot of fear in his stomach as he thought of someone using her to get to him felt like a burning coal. He forced himself to stay calm as the clock counted down the last few minutes.

“O
K, boys … Get me a scan first thing, full active, and put us in full tactical mode,” Jason said as the crew began buckling into their seats. “Twingo, give me as much forward bias on the shields as you can until we make our first pass. Kage, when I tell you, have the computer do a search for this cell phone number.”

“You got it, Captain,” Twingo said as he prepared to reconfigure the ship after it emerged from slip-space.

“Cell phone number? What the hell is that?” Kage asked, bewildered, as the digits appeared on his display.

“It’ll make sense when the computer begins to access Earth’s communication grid. Just get me a location on it as soon as you can.” Kage just shrugged and moved the number to an out-of-the-way location on his touch
panel.

“Ten seconds, everybody!” Kage called out a minute later as his hands flew over his control panels. Ten seconds later the ship shuddered as it popped into real-space and began to coast in-system towards Earth. Within a few
more seconds the main drive was online and the shields and weapons were up as well, as the tactical displays began populating detected threats.

The three alien ships were still there, and from the scans it appeared that the damage to the surrounding areas was minimal. Jason jammed the throttle down hard an
d pointed the ship at his home. Soon the computer began squawking alerts about his speed and entry vector as they neared the planet.

“Captain!”
Twingo cautioned. “Captain! DAMNIT JASON!!” Jason ignored him as the ship traversed the thermosphere and slammed into the mesosphere while still under full power, the coronal discharge of plasma breaking around the shields almost blinding them. The
Phoenix
shrieked and bucked in protest, but Jason didn’t let up as the gunship fought its way toward the surface. The heat and buffeting let up as the shields did their job, and the ship tore through the stratosphere at hypersonic speed.

“Ah
… Jason, there you are,”
Deetz’s voice came over the emergency channel on the short-range coms.
“I had feared maybe you had lost your nerve, but as it turns out you never even came back, did you? So what do you plan to do with that single tiny ship—”
His voice was cut off as Kage killed the internal com feed.

“Thanks,” Jason said simply. They had made entry over the Pacific Ocean, but Jason knew that Deetz was most likely
on the ship that was currently over Washington, D.C. and he intended to hit that one before it could try and break for orbit. “Tactical analysis of the ship we just overflew,” he demanded.

“I’m getting low power readings and no indication of any advanced weaponry, Jason,” Doc said from one of the sensor stations. “It appears Twingo’s assessment may have been correct; they look to be
seriously outdated.”

“Stay sharp anyway,” Jason said. “We’ll be coming up on the D.C. target in a second.” At the speed they we
re streaking over North America, they would be within targeting range of the other ship in less than a minute. Jason angled the nose down further and dropped them into the lower atmosphere. The sonic boom of the hypersonic ship was exacerbating the problem of an already terrified citizenry as they descended through thirty thousand feet, but it was an unavoidable consequence.

Flying over his home planet should have been a joyous occasion for Jason, but he was entirely focused on the targeting reticle that had just appeared in his field of view indicat
ing where the enemy ship was. He angled the nose down further and reduced their power a bit. He wanted his first pass to be at high speed, but not so high that he couldn’t bring his weapons to bear while within the atmosphere.

“We’re being pinged by the target,” Kage reported. “Some sort of laser ranging device.”

When the indicator in his ocular implant told him he was ten kilometers away from the target, Jason slammed the throttle back against the stop and flipped the thumb switch up for the field-reverse control. The
Phoenix’s
gravimetric drive reversed its fields to slow the ship dramatically, so much so that if the deck plating and inertial compensators had failed they’d have been splattered against the canopy.

“Visual range in three seconds,” Jason said as he angled around to approach the
enemy ship head-on. They crested a small rise and he got his first look at the ship that had invaded Earth. It had certainly seen better days, and had a bulbous, almost organic quality to it. At over three hundred and fifty meters in length, it dwarfed the gunship that was bearing down on it.

“Their shielding is minimal
, no sign of—,” Kage started. “They’re firing! Particle beams tracking along our forward edges … no damage.”

“My turn,” Jason whispered as the
Phoenix
thundered into range over the city. The ship was floating over the river, so he spared nothing. When he squeezed the trigger the powerful plasma cannons that were housed in the leading edges of the wings blasted out a torrent of high-energy death. The first bolt punched clean through the shield and impacted the nose, causing a chain reaction of secondary explosions within the hull. Those were partially contained by the ship’s own limited combat shields. The remainder of the bolts blasted down the length of the hull, creating a devastating amount of damage as the
Phoenix
shot by and was soon out over the Atlantic. “Report!”

“All shots were hit
s and caused significant damage,” Doc said. “She’s listing badly and losing altitude. Sensors are showing the reactor is failing and there are secondary explosions throughout.”

“Is the city in any danger?” Jason asked as he wrapped the
Phoenix
into a tight, knife-edge turn to attempt a second pass.

“No, they appear to have a limited amount of
fissionable material stored outside of the—”

“Captain
, I have a fix on that … cell phone number? ... the computer is tracking the location now,” Kage interrupted.

“Call it,” Jason ordered. “Put it through here on the bridge.” He angled them back around and saw that the target was burning brightly and slowly sinking towards the water. He brought them to a hover over the
Annandale area of D.C. and watched the ship crash into the river as Kage tried to make his very first phone call. “What are the other ships doing?”

“It looks like they’re breaking for orbit,” Doc said in confusion. “All tracks are leading away from us as well, it looks like there’s been a general withdrawal ordered.”

“Shit! Track both of them and we’ll try to—”

“Jason
?! Is that you?”

“Taryn?”
Jason breathed a sigh of relief while simultaneously glaring at Kage. The Veran shrugged helplessly.

“Jason what is going on?
That … alien … was putting your picture up on the television and saying we had to hand you over. It even had a picture of me, but it didn’t know my name.”
Taryn sounded to be near panic. Jason could hardly blame her.