Omega Force: Savage Homecoming (6 page)

“Not only that, I doubt Deetz has that sort of money right now,” Doc said. “This has the feel of a desperate move.”

“Which brings us back to the A’arcoon,” Jason said. “Send the coordinates for their world to the
Phoenix
and we’ll check that out first, at least as a starting point.”

“It’s a long flight, but I can think of no other logical starting point,” Crisstof conceded. “When do you leave?”

“As soon as our bird is fueled and Twingo has a chance to make sure we didn’t strain anything when I slammed her into the atmosphere.”

“What about me?
Us?” Taryn asked from one of the seats lining the wall. During the course of the meeting she, and her parents, had sat in wide-eyed wonder at the conversation as the breadth of their galactic neighborhood became clear.

“You will be staying here on the
Diligent
,” Jason said.

“Not likely!” Taryn retorted hotly. “I’m going with you guys.”

“This is non-negotiable,” Jason said firmly. “We have no idea what we’ll be running into along the way on this mission, and I am not putting you at that kind of risk.” She sucked in a breath, making it clear she was going to argue the point, and he cut her off. “My ship, my rules, my choice,” he said sharply. “Under no circumstances will I allow you to be onboard when we’re likely to see ship-to-ship fighting and God knows what else.” She glared at him a moment and then stood, turned, and walked out of the conference room. Nobody made any attempt to stop her; the entire port side of the deck they were on was a hospitality area so there was little she could do other than go sulk and stare out a window.

“That could have gone better,” Jason said, regretting his tone.

“Not really,” Ed spoke up with a lopsided grin. “You know her as well as anybody. She wouldn’t have let it drop.”

“
Since there appears to be nothing else,” Kellea said as she stood. “If the Browns will follow me, I’ll take you to the steward who will be assigned to you during your stay, I’m sure the Omega Force crew has a lot of work to accomplish in a short time before they depart.”

In reality, only three members of the crew had anything
useful to do. As per Omega Force’s standard operating procedure for ship’s maintenance and repair, Twingo and Lucky did most of the work, with the assistance of Kage. Jason hovered around and annoyed them with his lack of understanding of the
Phoenix’s
systems and the principles under which they operated, while Crusher snuggled in between the wheels of the main landing gear, using them as a sort of hammock, and was soon snoring loud enough to be heard over the noise of the hangar deck.

After Twingo’s inspection
, he cleared the
Phoenix
for flight and supervised the fueling crew as they topped her off. The rest of Omega Force began shuffling things around, including a few crates of fresh commissary items they had liberated from the
Diligent’s
mess deck, and strapping everything in place. Three hours after their meeting with Crisstof and they were ready to launch. Jason stood at the bottom of the ramp, looking at the hangar deck exit contemplatively.

“Are you going to go say goodbye?” Doc asked.

“I think it may be best if we just launch and be on our way,” Jason said. “I suck at goodbyes, and she has a talent for getting what she wants out of me no matter how bad an idea I think it is.”

“Seems females are the same the galaxy over,” Doc chuckled. “We’re ready when you are.” He turned and left Jason at the bottom of the ramp as he walked back up into the ship. After a moment longer Jason turned and followed him up, stopping to close and lock the ship.

“We’re already cleared, Captain,” Kage said as he walked onto the bridge. “You can taxi at your leisure, we’re launching off the forward platform.” Jason gave his displays a once-over as he hopped into the pilot’s seat and then flipped on his external indicator lights, a sign to the ground crews in the hangar that the ship was preparing to move. After a moment, while observing the rear video feed, he slowly backed the
Phoenix
out of her parking berth using the jog control down on his left. The gunship backed out at slower than a walking pace before taxiing ahead to the forward elevator to be lifted up to the launch deck.

Once the elevator stopped and locked
, the
Diligent’s
com officer sent them their launch clearance. “
Gunship-class vessel Phoenix; you are clear to start primary flight systems and launch at your discretion. Please bear to starboard after you lift off. Happy hunting. Diligent out.”

“Bring the main drive online and align the navigation system,” Jason ordered unnecessarily.

“Main drive is online and available, Captain,” Twingo reported. “You’re clear to lift.”

“Lifting off,” Jason said. “Retract the landing gear and let’s get this hunt started!”
His last statement was met with cheers from the bridge as he gently accelerated the gunship to drift ahead and to starboard in relation to the
Diligent
before throttling up and accelerating towards their mesh-out point. The longer they served together the more these small rituals seemed to manifest as they went about the day-to-day task of their chosen profession. Being a military man, Jason knew it served to stave off complacency and instill a sense of purpose and cohesiveness. For him, they were a comforting and familiar way to either start or end a mission.

“Course plotted and entered, Captain,” Kage reported. “You’re clear to engage the slip-drive.” Jason looked down at the large blinking green button to his right. The old, boring control had been replaced with an animated switch face that enthusiastically said “Burn Baby Burn!” in dancing characters. He slapped it
; instantly the canopy darkened and there was a whine and shudder as the ship transitioned into slip-space. Now came the hardest part of the job; even travelling at well over a thousand times the speed of light, the distances were just unfathomably huge, so the crew was used to flight times lasting often more than a week. This one would be ten days. Sighing inwardly at the inevitable, Jason decided he could use some sleep and headed off to his quarters after waving to the crew.

Sitting on his bed as he pulled his boots off, Jason contemplated on whether or not he had just made another fatal mistake with Taryn by not going and saying goodbye
before he left. He knew she would try to convince him to take her along, but he wasn’t sure that was because she wanted to be close to him, wanted to be there when they got revenge on Deetz, or simply didn’t want to sit on an alien spaceship with her parents. As he lay on his bed he thought back to all of the mistakes he had made, all the time he had wasted, and how things had been going along just fine for him out here before she was thrust back into his life. With troubled thoughts flitting around in his head, he finally drifted off to sleep.

“Anything to report?” Jason asked as he walked onto the bridge to begin his watch shift. Kage was sitting in the pilot’s seat but had the main display scrolling a data stream at a dizzying rate. Since the new computer core had been installed in the ship, the Veran code slicer spent a lot of his free time running simulated scenarios in which he would have to defeat the computer’s security measures.

“Nope, all quiet here,” he said distractedly. “Twingo and Crusher are sleeping and Doc is messing around in the com room. Oh
… there were some message fragments from the
Diligent
, but we’re running so hard right now that the slip-transceiver is having trouble compiling the data.”

“That’s a thing?” Jason asked, surprised.

“Only when we’ve got her really cranked up,” Kage answered as he hopped down from the seat. To Jason’s annoyance he didn’t bother to return the displays to their previous settings. “It’s the interference from the fields when the engines are nearing maximum output. When we slow down for our first maintenance check they should come through … if the
Diligent
keeps transmitting them.”

“Should we slow down now? It could be important.”

“The message header had it marked as normal priority,” Kage said. “I decided to leave it up to you rather than command a velocity change without asking first.”

“
Okay. Go ahead and get out of here, I’ll call you if I need you,” Jason said as he climbed into the seat to reconfigure his displays. Once Kage had left, he turned to the other member of the crew that had been silently standing on the bridge. “What do you think, Lucky? Slow down and have the
Diligent
resend the message, or press on?”

“Since the message was not sent with high priority, I would say the risk is equal either way,” Lucky said from his station by the door.

“True,” Jason mused. “We’re not scheduled for our first throttle back for another twenty-seven hours. I don’t want to lose any more time on this trip than necessary; we’ll wait until then and have Captain Colleren resend the message.” When travelling long distances at such a high speed, Jason regularly called for a reduction in velocity so Twingo could inspect the engines and the reactor to make sure they weren’t about to break something and leave them stranded. He assumed the
Diligent
had some more intel to feed them so he didn’t risk slowing down for it. They would still get it well before they reached their destination.

*****

Crusher shuffled across the deck towards the galley at a careful pace. He had strained something while working out in the cargo bay and he was taking it easy for the moment, letting it heal up before they arrived over the A’arcooni homeworld. The long-burn flights were excruciating for the big warrior, someone who wasn’t a huge fan of space travel to begin with. He stepped up to the food processor and began punching in commands to get a post-workout meal so he could head to his rack.

A small shuffle caught his attention behind him
and he spun quickly, expecting to see one of his crew trying to sneak up on him, but saw nothing. He tested the air with his nose and caught a faint hint of something that didn’t belong. He stepped away from the processor, breathing in long breaths through his nose, testing the air and blowing it out the side of his blunted muzzle. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

He heard it again
, something soft scraping along the deck, and it seemed to be coming from the hatch the service bots were stored in. “Rodents?” he asked himself softly, leaning down to peer into the dark tunnel that was behind the galley counter. When his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw a pair of brown eyes that were too large for any normal shipboard pest. So what was it?

“Hey,” it said.

*****

“Did you hear that?” Jason asked Lucky. Both were on the bridge. “It sounded like someone just kicked a dog or something.”

“I did in fact hear—
”

“CAPTAIN, COME DOWN HERE!” Crusher’s bellow echoed up from the main deck without the need for the ship’s intercom. Jason leapt from his seat and raced off the bridge after Lucky. They ran down the stairs and saw a flustered Crusher standing over an equally flustered person
who simply couldn’t, shouldn’t be there.

Taryn.

“You’ve got to be kidding me …” Jason’s sentence trailed off as Taryn gave him a slightly guilty smile and tried a half-hearted wave. She was disheveled and smudged with dirt, a testament to the locations of some of her hiding spots.

“Hi, Jason,” she said. “I know you’re probably mad at—
”

“KAGE!”
Jason shouted, cutting her off. The Veran came stumbling out of his quarters at the bellowing of his name. Before he could even take in the scene, or ask any questions, Jason pointed to the command deck. “Get up there and bring the ship back to forty percent slip and contact the
Diligent
. NOW!” To Kage’s credit, he raced out of the common area and up to the bridge as fast as his legs would carry him. A moment later the pitch and volume of the engines changed and the muted vibrations through the deck faded.

“Now,”
Jason continued calmly, “what are you doing on board, Taryn?”

“I knew no matter how many times I asked, you’d still say no to me coming along,” she started. “So I simplified things and made sure you didn’t leave without me.”

“What … why … how …” Jason pinched the bridge of his nose, collected his thoughts, and tried again. “There’s a very good reason you shouldn’t be here. Why is it that you think being on a warship that is flying to an unknown, possibly hostile planet is a good idea?”

“Look, Earth is my home too, probably more so than it is for you at this point
.” Taryn came out swinging. Her experience told her that a full frontal assault would work best against Jason, so she’d take the initiative before he had the chance to build a logical argument. “Why don’t I have the right to be here?”

Jason spluttered indignantly for a moment, trying to articulate multiple points simultaneously.

“This is MY ship! For starters, you’re trespassing.” He knew he was on weak footing, but she had knocked him off balance by just being there in the first place. “I don’t have to explain my reasoning to you.”

“
You’re
the one who pulled me off my home,” Taryn countered. “Doesn’t that make you responsible for my well-being? How is dumping me off with a bunch of aliens–no offense, guys–not shirking out of your duty to keep me safe?”

Jason opened his mouth three times, but no words came out as the angry red in his neck
began to streak up into his face. The rest of the crew, who had gathered at the commotion, was staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed, their heads moving back and forth between the participants like spectators at a tennis match. Thankfully, Jason was saved from having to answer.

“
The Diligent is on the coms, Captain
,” Kage said over the intercom.

“Follow me,” Jason said to Taryn simply as he turned and stomped angrily up the steps to the command deck. Taryn cringed, but followed at a short distance. The rest of the crew bunched up and followed her at an even shorter distance.

“Ah, I see you’ve had our missing human this whole time, Captain,” Kellea said in a clipped voice. Jason recognized the tone and winced inwardly.

“If you mean my stowaway here, then yes,” he answered. “I take it there has been some concern aboard the
Diligent
?”

“If by concern you mean the near dismantling of my ship over the course of the last four days to try and track down Taryn Brown
, then yes, there was a level of concern,” she answered.

“I’m sorry about this, Captain. We just found her
, actually, and contacted you right afterwards. Could you inform her parents she’s fine?”

“Of course,” she said. “But how is it your internal sensors didn’t warn you there was an unauthorized passenger before you departed?”

Twingo, who had thus far been thoroughly enjoying the show, was now aware of a number of angry stares aimed his way.

“How the hell was I supposed to know someone would sneak on board?”
he protested loudly. “I deactivate the system when we’re on the
Diligent
to keep the annoying false alarms down.” Jason looked like he wanted to smack his friend, but instead turned back to the display on the canopy where Captain Colleren was standing with her arms crossed. Commander Bostco, her first officer, was standing behind her and waving with a big smile. Jason almost laughed but knew he’d just get his orange-haired friend in trouble.

“So now that we’ve solved the mystery, what are we going to do about it?”
he asked.

“We meshed out shortly after you did, but not on your vector. We’ve actually been moving further away this whole time,” Captain Colleren said. “Your ship is quite a bit faster than mine
, so I have no way to reach you to collect your stowaway.”

Taryn wisely kept silent while her fate was discussed. Jason rubbed at his hair and growled in frustration.

“We can’t backtrack, we’re almost at the halfway point and I can’t afford to waste this much time.”

“If it’s any consolation, you’re not likely to find much there,” Bostco spoke up for the first time. “The ships that attacked your planet wouldn’t have
made it back there by now, if that’s even their point of origin.”

“We don’t know that,” Jason
said. “From what we can tell they don’t utilize slip-drive technology, but I agree; the power signatures we scanned mean we probably won’t find them in orbit when we arrive.” He looked over and gave Taryn a hard look before continuing. “We’ll keep her on the
Phoenix
for now. I don’t like it, but we don’t have a lot of choice in the matter at this point.”

“Agreed,” Colleren
said, her expression unreadable. “I’ll inform her parents. Let us know what you find and we’ll formulate a plan from there.,
Diligent
out.” Once the display had disappeared and only the opaque canopy remained Jason spun on his crew.

“You,” he said, jabbing a finger towards Twingo. “Get your ass down to your dungeon and check the engines, I want to be back at maximum slip within an hour. And turn the damn anti-intrusion sensors on
after
you’ve added Taryn to the manifest as a passenger.” Twingo looked around for allies, found none, and backed off the bridge slowly before heading down to engineering.

“Doc,” Jason continued, “please set Taryn up in starboard berthing so she can get cleaned up
, and then see that she grabs something to eat. I’ll be down a bit later. Kage, you go help Twingo. I don’t want to loaf along any longer than I have to.” Kage tuned and left immediately, while Doc took Taryn by the elbow and guided her off the bridge. She tried to hide the hurt look on her face as Jason barked orders at his crew and talked about her as if she wasn’t there. Once they were gone, Jason flopped heavily into the pilot’s seat with a loud groan, squeezing his hands to his temples and rubbing.
She’s been around for less than a week and everything has already gone completely sideways. Unbelievable.

“We heard your squeal of fear all the way
up here on the bridge,” Lucky said to Crusher matter-of-factly. “Did the young woman really frighten you so?”

“What?!
Squeal of fear?” Crusher nearly snarled at his friend. “That was a war cry that is meant to startle and disorient one’s opponent.”

“I see,” Lucky said with aplomb. “In that case
, I am certain the young, small human female was suitably terrified.”

“Shut up.”

*****

In order to avoid any unpleasant confrontations after his mini-meltdown at discovering Taryn had smuggled herself aboard his ship, Jason
stayed on the bridge until the computer let him know she had returned to berthing and was going to sleep. He stretched and climbed out of his seat. “You good with overwatch for a while?”

“You always ask me that and I always tell you, I am fine with watching the bridge while you sleep,” Lucky said. “I will alert you if something happens that requires your attention.”

“Just being polite,” Jason said as he walked towards the exit. “Everyone deserves a little common courtesy. Well, everyone but Twingo. See you in a while.”

“Sleep well, Captain.

Jason had no sooner laid down to try and get a few hours of sleep when there was a soft knock at his door. “Open,” he said conversationally to the computer, a command which caused the door to whisk into the bulkhead. Squinting against the light in the passageway, he could just make out a silhouette that definitely didn’t belong to anyone on his crew.

“Can I come in?” Taryn asked, almost shyly.

“Of course,” Jason answered, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and keying the lights up one notch to just a dim glow. Taryn stepped into the room and stood with her arms crossed, seeming uncomfortable.

“Please, sit.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and he leaned on the desk across from her.