Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon (24 page)

“Aww,” Kage said. “Somebody’s sad. I better record this.” As he began recording the feed from multiple angles, Crusher looked around again before slumping forward and eventually putting his face into his hands.

“Holy shit!” Kage exclaimed with glee. “Is he crying?” He leapt forward and zoomed two cameras in on Crusher’s face as close as he could. “Come on,” he coaxed, “just a couple tears. Just let ‘em fall, big guy.”

The alert tone from the slip-space com node interrupted him. He fully intended to ignore it until he saw whom the incoming channel request was from. With some regret, he pulled away and answered it.

“Hello, Kage,” Kellea Colleren said. “How are things going?”

“I’m watching Crusher cry in a park. He’s wearing a cape.”

“Is Jason there?” Kellea asked after staring at Kage for a long moment.

“Nope. He and Lucky went with Mazer to get the
Phoenix
back,” Kage said, still trying to look at the other screen. “Oh yeah, I was supposed to send you a message and tell you I found out what happened to her. Anyway, they think they have the location nailed down so they went to rescue Twingo and Doc and bring the ship back.”

“Can anything just be normal with you guys?” she asked almost desperately. “If I give you a message, can you get it to him? Kage!”

“I’m listening!” Kage insisted, tearing his eyes away from the other monitor to look her in the eye. “Give the captain a message. Got it.”

“Would you like to know what the message is?” Kellea said, rubbing her temples.

“Sure.”

“Tell him I was able to break free. I’ll be relocating the
Defiant
to Galvetor. I’ll be there in four days,” she said with slow, exaggerated speech. “Have you got all that?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell him,” he said. She reached over and forcefully stabbed at the control panel, killing the channel without saying goodbye. “What the hell was her problem?”

*****

“This is the last of the rations we pulled off of your ship, Kade,” Mazer said as he brought three pre-made meals up to the flight deck.

“We are nearly there,” Kade said. He’d been quiet during the entire flight. As it turned out, the rescue ship didn’t have a functional slip-space drive. After pulling the
Phoenix
off the surface of Restaria, they had docked inside of a large cargo hauler that took them out of the system. The crew was not permitted to leave the ship, but Kade was smart enough to take a star-fix when they’d exited the craft to deposit the
Phoenix
on the surface. The planet was only a two day slip-space flight for the modern combat shuttle.

Lucky had passed the time by recounting stories of Omega Force’s operations, slightly embellishing Crusher’s role, to the rapt audience of Kade and Mazer. Jason noticed that his friend was very much at ease in the company of fellow soldiers, even those he just met. He also thought there may have been a certain kinship with the gelten warriors who had been shunned by their own kind and sent to inhabit an unwanted planet away from “normal” society. The downside of Lucky’s new pastime was that it caused Kade to become more withdrawn from the shame of what he felt was an egregious affront to the Guardian Archon.

Jason completely understood following orders and not fully comprehending what the ramifications may be. From what he could tell, Kade had no way to see that something was abnormal about the orders coming down to him, and certainly nothing immoral. He made a mental note to talk to him in private. While Kade would only truly feel absolved when Crusher talked to him, there was no need to tiptoe around them in the cramped shuttle like an unwanted pariah.

“The ship says another thirteen hours of flight,” Jason said, confirming what Kade had told them. “When we make orbit we’ll need to confirm the drop-off location and then we’ll wait for nightfall to make our incursion.”

“Will you be able to make contact with the
Phoenix
from orbit?” Lucky asked.

“Not from this ship,” Jason said. “Once the
Phoenix
goes into defensive mode she also locks out coms. But, if she’s not under too much shielding and there’s still power onboard, I should be able to ping her with my neural implant, even from orbit.”

“What will we do with this shuttle once we have your vessel back?” Kade asked.

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Jason said. “This is a nice little ship
and
brand new. It’d be a shame to just leave it on the surface.”

“I would be willing to ferry it back to Restaria,” Kade said, “if that would be permissible, of course.”

“I don’t see why not,” Jason shrugged. “You’re welcome to it if the
Phoenix
can still fly and we manage to escape. What are you going to do with it?”

“I will turn it over to my commander,” the warrior answered softly. “He will not be happy my ship was destroyed.” Jason almost told him not to worry about losing the rescue ship and that he’d have Crusher intercede. But that would not only be unhelpful, but insulting to a proud warrior who had lost a ship under his command, no matter what the circumstances were.

“Sounds good,” he answered instead. “I’m sure your commander would be happy to have something so capable.” They all ate in silence for a while longer before a chirping at the console attracted Lucky’s attention.

“Incoming message from Kage,” he said. “A lot of this does not make any sense, but I think the only relevant part is that Captain Colleren is on her way to Galvetor with the
Defiant
. He is also quite angry about being left behind and is making some implausible threats I am not sure he is capable of carrying out.” Jason just rolled his eyes.

“So reinforcements are on the way? Excellent. Message back and tell him I expect him to stay out of trouble,” he said. “I wish we had some way to get in touch with Crusher, but it’s too risky with us not knowing what is really happening in that inner circle that’s orbiting around him now.”

“I will relay the message,” Lucky said and turned back to the console. Jason closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat.

Hang on guys … we’re almost there.

“Is this planet even habitable?” Jason asked, looking at the data the shuttle was collecting on the dun-colored lump of rock they were orbiting.

“Only in the most technical sense of the word,” Kade said. “Due to its proximity to the primary star in this system, the surface is so hot on the day side that it’s unsurvivable, and the days are fairly short thanks to a fast rotation.”

“I can see that,” Jason said, still staring at his display. “Three hundred and forty-two degrees Kelvin at high noon … I can’t survive in that without my armor and I’m pretty sure neither you nor Mazer can either. Lucky would be the only one of us still mission capable.”

“The heat is only one of our concerns,” Mazer said, also looking at the data readout. “The radiation levels are dangerous for extended stays on the surface.”

“That means a night assault,” Jason said. “While that’s normally my preferred method anyway, I have to assume whoever is down there will be expecting that since they’ll know as well as we that a daylight assault is too dangerous.”

“From what intelligence I could gather, I don’t believe they are expecting any kind of assault,” Kade said. “They did not believe that we would know where we were due to our isolation within the cargo ship, and they appeared unconcerned about any of your crew that may have been left on Restaria.”

“That’s good and bad,” Jason said with a frown.

“How is that bad?” Mazer asked.

“If they weren’t worried about leaving four highly trained mercenaries behind, it means we were likely going to be taken out shortly after the ship was pinched,” Jason explained. “This isn’t good. Kage and Crusher could now be in serious danger.”

“Lord Felex is under constant guard,” Mazer protested.

“Yeah, and how many of those guards have been personally vetted?” Jason shot back. Mazer fell silent at that. “I’m not worried about Crusher anyway … God help the poor bastard that gets a hold of him first. There won’t be enough left to mail home to his family. No, it’s Kage that I’m worried about.”

“He will be safe if he remains hidden,” Lucky said. Jason just gave him a flat stare. “Ah,” Lucky said finally understanding, “we will need to hurry.”

“I’m missing something,” Mazer said.

“The odds of Kage sitting still the entire time we are away from Restaria are not as good as your odds of surviving a walk on this planet in the daylight,” Lucky explained.

They all milled around the flight deck of the cramped shuttle until the terminator could be seen on the horizon and nightfall was draped across their target LZ. Kade had pinpointed exactly where they had deposited the
Phoenix
and had spotted tracks from multiple wheeled vehicles leading off from the site and into the mouth of an enormous artificial cave carved into the side of a mountain.

While Kade hadn’t been able to actually see into the cave, it stood to reason they would not have the ship brought somewhere that would require it to be moved long distances, and a cave would be someplace that could be protected from the heat and radiation with some simple, cheap technologies.

“I’m going to bring us in slowly and straight down,” Jason said. “We’ll be using a lot of fuel since the grav-drive will be working a lot harder, but we won’t be spotted by any visual scanners by coming in too fast.”

“We’re ready,” Mazer said.

“Alright then,” Jason said, looking around. “Let’s get this job done.”

*****

“Now who are you guys?” Kage asked, still talking aloud to himself in a futile attempt to stave off madness while he sat alone in the cramped safe house. He was watching as a group of six beings, obviously not Geltens, approached the building he was in. All six were swathed in concealing clothing including loose, billowing outer garments and full facemasks.

They paused outside the main entrance and, trying to be discreet, began unpacking some serious firepower. That was all Kage needed to see and he began running through the egress plan he had developed while hanging around with nothing better to do. The monitors on all the stations began to flash and wash out into static as he ran a localized EMP emitter he’d rigged up over all the processing units. Next, he yanked the bulk storage drives, tossed them in the basin that was in the food prep area, and poured a powerful corrosive agent over them. The reaction was immediate as the drives began to dissolve and noxious gasses began flowing out of the basin and down along the floor.

Step two was to pop off an air duct grate and slip in, traverse the five feet of thin-walled ducting he had already cleaned out, and enter the empty unit next door through another grate he had removed previously. Once he was in the next unit, he reached out with his neural implants and activated all the anti-intrusion devices he’d rigged up, including some fairly powerful explosives.

He grabbed a bag near the door of the unit he was in that contained not only a change of clothes, but a veritable disguise, and casually walked out through the unlocked main entrance. He was nearly to the ground floor when the muffled
whump
of an explosion that shook the building and dimmed the lights in the passageway. Shrugging, with a slight smile on his wide mouth, he ducked out into the rear side street and pulled the large hood of his cloak up and over his head.

Kage may not have had the brute strength and fighting ability of the one-half of his crew, but he was what Jason described as “slippery,” and he wasn’t saying it as a pejorative. His small stature meant people tended to overlook him, and his sharp intellect and cybernetic implants meant he missed very little and was able to run three or four probability chains in his mind simultaneously when deciding what to do. Before Omega Force, he’d been a career criminal and a thief, things he wasn’t proud of with his newfound career and sense of purpose, but they had given him a unique skill set. Above all else, Kage was a survivor.

Had this been his old life and an operation had gone belly up, he’d have escaped much as he just had and then disappeared. But there were people relying on him and now that a strike team had just tried to take him out, he had confirmation that the
Phoenix
disappearing was not some bizarre, unrelated event. Someone was out to eliminate them and there was one member of the team who might not yet be fully aware of that. As Kage walked down the street, trying to remain nearly invisible to all the armed and agitated warriors roaming around, he looked up at the Legion Center towers and began to formulate a plan on how to get in. He had to get to Crusher and warn him that he wasn’t safe.

*****

“You asked to see me, my lord?” Morakar asked respectfully from the entrance to Crusher’s study.

“Yes,” Crusher said. “Come in and close the door behind you.”

“I’m afraid I still have no idea where my brother may have disappeared to,” Morakar said, trying to hide his irritation. “But there have been some interesting happenings on Restaria I’m almost certain he was a part of.”

“Oh?”

“One of our three remaining salvage carriers was shot down over the eastern grasslands three days ago,” Morakar reported. “The rescued crew said that a modern combat craft crewed by a strangely mixed group, including a battlesynth, were the perpetrators. After that, I went to verify that the shuttle we flew from Galvetor was still where it was supposed to be. It was not.”

“So,” Crusher said thoughtfully, “the captain shot down one of our ships and then disappeared with Lucky and Mazer.”

“And the captain of the salvage vessel,” Morakar added.

“Tell me, as I was never very knowledgeable about those antiques, would one of them be able to pick up a DL7 heavy gunship?” Crusher asked. Morakar blinked twice without answering as the implications of what Crusher was asking sunk in.

“It could,” he confirmed. “But that would mean whoever stole your ship would be someone within the Legions.”

“Or have help from within the Legions,” Crusher corrected. “Not necessarily the same thing. All I know is that despite his sometimes rash behavior, Jason isn’t prone to acts of senseless violence and destruction unless he’s sure he’s standing on firm moral ground. He is a little shaky when it comes to standing on firm
legal
ground, however, but if he has information that the ship was used to take the
Phoenix
and possibly our missing friends, he would not have hesitated to act. What sort of insight can you provide of your brother’s actions?”