Omega Force 7: Redemption (5 page)

With a snort of disgust he pushed away from the table and headed towards his quarters to get cleaned up. He wasn't at all looking forward to the deception he was about to play a part in. His feelings for Kellea were complicated, to say the least. They rarely saw each other in person, they weren't even from the same species, and there were times he felt she was embarrassed about being seen with a hired gun no matter how laudable his missions might be. Be that as it may, he still felt grubby at the thought of drugging her so he could steal confidential information that she wasn't willing to give to him freely. But he knew Crusher would do no less for him if the roles were reversed, so he squared his shoulders (figuratively) and pushed all doubts out of his mind. Whatever happened would happen, but he would always know he did everything in his power to save his friend.

****

"You seem a bit distant tonight," Kellea said as Jason twirled his drink glass in his hand. As soon as the words left her mouth he could see the regret etched on her features. "I'm so sorry," she said. "It was completely selfish of me to ask you here when Crusher is still down on the surface in that prison. I apologize, but we get to see each other so rarely that perhaps my judgment was clouded."

"It's fine," Jason assured her without much enthusiasm or sincerity. "Unfortunately, there's nothing else I could be doing right now without knowing what happened to him. The person we were hired to smuggle out of De'Moltia was killed and dumped as a statement ... but I'm not sure what that means for my guy on the inside."

"I wish I could do something," she said, putting her hand over his. "But Crisstof hasn't felt it necessary to tell me what is going on down on Faulli. He's sequestered himself in his own suite and seems to only come out and go directly to the hangar bay where his shuttle is on alert around the clock."

"Seems very mysterious," Jason said. "Did he even give you a hint how much longer you'd be here?"

"Not directly," she said. "He intimated that with our contact now murdered the
Defiant
should be ready to break orbit at any time."

"I see," Jason said. "I guess we'll need to come up with a realistic plan of attack soon then."

"I wish there was something I could do," Kellea said for the second time in just as many minutes.

"I don't suppose you'd allow me to access the Faullian network through your downlink?" Jason asked, holding his breath. It was a risk exposing his intentions in such a way, but he felt she deserved a chance to help him on her own terms before he took drastic and underhanded measures to get what he needed.

"You know about the connection we have to the capital on the surface?" she asked with a frown. "That was protected information." Jason sighed inwardly. If she had any intention of allowing him access to the link she would have said so. Instead, she was more worried about internal security leaks on her end.

"I'm not sure where I heard it," Jason said with a shrug. "I want to say it was part of the initial brief we had before we inserted Crusher into De'Moltia."

She looked at him suspiciously before continuing. "The downlink is being carefully monitored on both ends," she finally said. "There's no way I could allow you access to it without analysts on this ship alerting Crisstof and the Faullian government detecting it on their side."

"It was just a thought," Jason said. "It would have simplified things, but we have other means available to us."

"I'll get you another drink," Kellea said, snatching the glass from his hand and walking to the small bar. Steeling his resolve, Jason pulled a small tab, not even the size of a pinhead, from under his left thumbnail and, while never taking his eyes off her, dropped it into her tea mug with a seemingly negligent toss. The tab instantly dissolved as it hit the hot liquid, not leaving so much as a bubble in its passing.

"There is every possibility that Crusher has gone to ground if he witnessed our contact being killed," she said, handing Jason another strong whiskey-type drink. "It could just be a matter of time before he makes contact and you can figure out a new plan to extract him."

"That is a possibility, but I'm still going to need some type of confirmation that he's still here on Faulli or still alive before I decide if we're going to stay or not," Jason said. He rose from his seat and walked over to the plush sofa that lined the wall facing the tall window, wanting to get Kellea away from the table and in a comfortable seated position as quickly as possible.

As he'd hoped, she grabbed her steaming mug and walked over to join him on the couch. They sat in comfortable silence, each lost in their own thoughts. By the second sip of tea Jason could tell the drug was beginning to take effect. By the third sip her head began to loll back and forth and he was able to deftly catch the mug just as it slipped from her grip.

He placed the tea on the small table in front of them and gently positioned Kellea so that her body was in a natural, relaxed position and her neck wasn't bent at an odd angle that would make her breathing labored as it slowed. He quickly went to the door to her quarters and keyed it open. After he signaled with his com unit Kage could be seen coming quickly up the corridor a few minutes later.

"You don't have long," Jason said as the Veran walked into Kellea's quarters.

"I don't need long," Kage replied.

"The terminal is in there," Jason gestured to the small attached office as he closed and locked the door. Kage wasted no time setting up and directly accessing the secure terminal by patching directly in via his neutral implant.

"I'm in," Kage said with a distant look on his face. "That was a lot easier than I thought it would be."

"I doubt there's much security on this end," Jason said. "Just hurry up."

"I just uploaded my query bomb. They won't know where all the requests came from or what we were actually after. It will be just a second and I'll download the responses we need," Kage said. "I'll analyze it on the
Phoenix
."

"I'm aware of the plan," Jason said in exasperation. "Just get on with it and get out. If anyone spots you up here it won't take them long to figure out what we've done."

"I'm so underappreciated," Kage muttered. "I've got it. I'm backing out now and removing all the evidence from the local terminal. It'll take their analysts a while to figure out the traffic spike on the downlink originated from the
Defiant
... if they ever figure it out."

"That's great," Jason said. "Now get down to the ship and start breaking that down. I'll wake up Kellea and then we'll launch as soon as possible without arousing too much suspicion."

"I'm on it," Kage said, rushing for the door. "Hopefully I'll have something by the time you get back."

Once he was gone, Jason gave the office another onceover, wiping off Kage's carelessly placed handprints on the desk before walking out to check on Kellea.

She was as he'd left her, on the couch and still sound asleep. He grabbed his own drink and dumped it down the drain before taking special care to scrub her mug out thoroughly. Unfortunately, she had her own blown glass tea mug that she reused so he had to clean it rather than just toss it down the chute to be sent to the recyclers. The fact he'd cleaned it might cause some suspicion, but it was far less of a risk than leaving the laced tea inside of it.

Once he'd cleaned it all up in what he hoped appeared to be a natural-looking scene, he pulled another tab out from under his right thumbnail and gingerly pulled Kellea's lower lip down and placed it inside. He then quickly sat down and put his arm around her, assuming a pensive look as he stared out on Faulli circling below them.

"Did I fall asleep?" she asked suddenly, almost startling Jason. The speed at which Doc's concoctions worked was impressive.

"Just for a little bit," Jason said, his stomach twisting into knots as he lied to her. "You seemed tired so I just let you sleep."

"That's a bit disturbing I can just pass out like that with everything going on," she said, sitting up and looking around. "Thanks for staying with me."

"Of course," he said, forcing a smile. "But I should probably get going. I'd like to have a meeting with the guys and then we're going to have to decide what we're going to do. Since Mazer and his people report to you, I'm going to dump off the unpleasant task of telling them about Crusher on you."

"How noble of you," she said sarcastically.

"Burdens of command, Captain," he said with a laugh as he stood up. "I'll try to keep you in the loop as to what we're doing."

"I appreciate that," she said, moving in closer to him. "We never seem to get any time for ourselves when we meet up anymore."

"Maybe that can change soon," he said, mouthing the empty platitude as he knew the chances of him ever seeing Kellea again were quite slim. He didn't know how, but he was sure she would eventually learn about what he'd done and it would mean the end of whatever they had.

****

"Tell me some good news," Jason said as he walked up onto the bridge of his ship.

"I know where Crusher is," Kage said, looking like he was pronouncing a death sentence.

"Judging by your expression I'm going to guess it isn't someplace close or easy to break into," Jason prompted as he took in all the grim faces around him.

"It's Duat," Doc said quietly.

"Fuck me," Jason muttered quietly, feeling the blood drain from his face. Duat was a notorious prison that made De'Moltia seem like an all-inclusive vacation resort. It was on an average-sized planet that had an exceptionally long orbit around a main sequence red dwarf star. As a result, the planet was dark and very, very cold. The prison itself was deep within the crust where it took advantage of the small amount of geothermal energy and heat available. Not only did Duat have a reputation for brutality and short life expectancy for its guests, it also wasn't a place that was easily accessed. For obvious reasons a frontal assault wouldn't work, and gaining access through back channels was usually just as hard.

"He was included in another prisoner transfer and sold to the Watchers for six million credits," Kage said. "He wasn't mentioned by name, but the description leaves no doubt it was him."

"This might be completely unrelated to our package being dead," Jason said, rubbing his chin. "Those animals that run Duat don't give a shit about politics on any level. In fact, someone may have recognized Crusher, or just recognized what he is, and he was the reason the contact was killed, not the other way around."

"If they paid that much for him we can assume it wasn't just because they wanted a Galvetic corpse," Twingo said. "This means his chances of being alive still just increased exponentially."

"But not for long," Jason said as he slid into the pilot's seat and began bringing the individual systems online. "I've heard some rumors about what they do for fun in that hellhole. Even as good as he is, Crusher is still in serious, serious trouble. Get the ship ready to fly. Kage, get our departure clearance taken care of. We're out of here as soon as possible."

"Good," Kage said. "I can't guarantee how long it will take them to untangle the mess I left behind on the Faullian networks."

As it turned out, not long at all. The
Phoenix
had no sooner cleared the upper orbits of Faulli when the com panel lit up with requests that they either return to the planet or return to the
Defiant
. Jason ordered his crew to ignore all of them and continued to push out towards the edge of the system as if everything were normal and he simply hadn't received the incoming messages.

"The
Defiant
is breaking orbit," Doc said after a few more strident messages hit their com node. "She's coming about and looks to be pursuing."

"So much for being long gone by the time they found out," Jason said.

"Don't blame me," Kage said. "I can only do so much. There wasn't enough traffic on that downlink to hide in. They were always going to find out I'd been there."

"I wasn't blaming you," Jason said. "Instead of whining about it, why don't you get our slip-space vector ready and I'll get the drive online."

Jason could see on his display that the
Defiant
was making a good show of trying to catch him, but Kellea knew her ship didn't have a chance of running the
Phoenix
down. Given the headstart they had on the battlecruiser he assumed they were just trying to make it look like they'd done everything in their power to catch the fleeing gunship.

"Course is ready and locked in," Kage said.

"Let's go get our boy," Jason said and slapped the control pad near his right thigh. With a slight shudder the
Phoenix
jumped into slip-space and far away from the trouble they'd caused in the Faulli System.

Jason walked back into the com room and shut the door, dreading what was coming next. He'd seen from the pilot's seat that there were two messages waiting in his queue, each from a familiar com node address. He selected the least distasteful message first.

"Captain Burke," Crisstof greeted him cordially though his face showed a barely contained fury. "I'm not going to pretend I don't sympathize with your situation nor am I particularly surprised by the extreme nature of the action you've taken ... but I hope you fully understood the ramifications of those actions before you took it upon yourself to violate the trust of myself and my ship's captain.

"You have destroyed our negotiations with the Faullian government. I won't bother going into what that means since you quite obviously do not care about the larger scope of things around you. As of now I am cutting all ties with your organization. Your operational accounts are suspended, all our resources will be made unavailable, and all my carefully cultivated contacts across the quadrant will be notified that you no longer represent me or my interests." Crisstof paused, looking away from the camera as if collecting his thoughts.

"As I said ... I am not unsympathetic. I just don't have the luxury of indulging in my every impulse without a moment of thought. I hope you find Crusher alive and well. Goodbye, Jason."

"That man loves the sound of his own voice," Jason muttered as he flipped over to the message he was dreading. He wasn't sure what emotional state Kellea would be in, but he could see right away from her face that it was a good thing that he was a few lightyears away at that moment.

"You bottom-feeding asshole," she said without preamble. Jason winced. So it was going to be
that
kind of message.

"I cannot imagine what was going through your head to think that drugging me was somehow a good plan. You have put my career, my entire life at risk. I now have to prove to Crisstof that I am not a security risk, but thanks to your selfishness that's going to be exceedingly difficult. Did it ever occur to you to just ask for my help so we could work on the problem together? At the first bit of difficulty your first solution was to betray me and run away like a coward. Do not bother replying to this message, and in case you're so dense you can't figure it out, whatever was going on between us is finished." She closed the channel with a vicious stab of her finger and the display went dark.

Jason leaned back in his seat, trying to sort his feelings out about both messages. He couldn't care less about pissing off Crisstof, though losing the resources he provided was a major blow to their operation. The end of his relationship with Kellea, however, was something he had mixed feelings about. He wasn't happy it was over, of course, but he also firmly believed that he'd done the only thing he could to guarantee they got the information they needed to find Crusher.

"I thought the bottom-feeding asshole part was a bit harsh," Kage's voice came over the intercom just as one of the monitor's lit up, showing the Veran's face.

"Are you kidding me?" Jason snapped. "Is there nothing sacred to you?"

"Oh please," Kage said. "You think you're the first one to get dumped by a woman because you drugged her and stole something?"

"I don't even want to entertain this conversation," Jason said. Just as he reached over to switch the feed off, he heard a muted snort. "Who else is there enjoying the show?"

"Hey, Captain," Twingo said, his face coming into the frame. "We were just checking to make sure you were okay."

"I'm fine," Jason said, rolling his eyes. "You two can stop eavesdropping and start finding us a way into Duat." This time he did kill the video feed. Despite how he felt, he had to chuckle. He'd begun to understand that a lot of Kage's behavior wasn't simply to annoy him, but often to distract him when things turned sour in his life. He was like the sibling who acted up to deflect blame and anger towards himself. As annoying as he could be, Jason had come to appreciate the effort once he understood that it was simply a misguided attempt to keep the peace in a "family" that had a lot of strong personalities.

With a final snort of disgust, Jason pushed himself away from the console and left the com room. Finding where they took Crusher was only the first step in what promised to be a very unpleasant and dangerous mission. Despite everything that had just happened he had to stay focused and concentrate on not only getting one of his friends back, but not losing any others in the process.

****

The
Phoenix
burst into the Corzit'el System with a flash, one of many ships to enter the system over the span of a few hours. It had taken them nearly seven weeks and had practically emptied the ship's treasury, but they finally had found a way into Duat, the infamous prison that was below the surface of the fourth planet in the system.

Through their various connections in the quadrant's underworld they discovered that the wardens of the prison, called Watchers, organized a biannual tournament that featured fights to the death of their most violent prisoners. While that sort of spectacle happened much more often than civilized people would care to admit, the scope of the Duat tournament seemed to draw an especially large—and dangerous—crowd from all over the sector.

While the tournament generated a lot of money for the Watchers, the real reason behind it was to thin out the population. Duat had some of the most dangerous beings in known space and a fairly large population, many more prisoners than there were Watchers. It was in their best interest to make sure the most violent among them didn't stick around long enough to cause any trouble. After they'd learned all of this Jason had no doubt that the next round of fights would feature his friend. It had taken them weeks, and almost all of their money, to discover when it was taking place and secure themselves an invitation under assumed aliases. He wasn't sure if Crusher's abduction was simply an opportunity too great to pass up for the guards at De'Moltia or if the Galvetic warrior was recognized specifically. Either way, it was smarter to enter the prison as someone else.

"We're getting our landing instructions," Kage said. "They're bringing in everyone staggered and not letting more than three land at any one time."

"Makes sense," Jason said. "Their landing field isn't big enough for everyone to just make a mad dash for it."

"We're in the third group, landing pad eight-alpha," Kage said. "They're sending a ground shuttle out to the pad since the surface temperature is negative two hundred and fifty-six degrees Kelvin."

"That's a bit brisk for a walk," Jason agreed. "Any word yet on the security procedures?"

"Nothing other than they state everyone entering will be scanned," Kage shrugged. "They don't even specifically say no weapons."

"Our contact told us that this used to be a favorite spot for crime bosses to assassinate each other," Doc said. "There used to be a strict no-weapons policy in place, but after the third death in the spectators’ area they became a bit more lenient. Private security is allowed, but no heavy weaponry and they're checking to make sure nobody is sneaking in a bomb to take out everyone at once."

"That plays well for us," Jason said. "I'll play the part of the up and coming gangster and Lucky will be my hired muscle."

"That's not much of a stretch for you two," Twingo said. "What will we be doing?"

"Keeping the ship hot and ready to fly," Jason said. "I have a feeling we'll be leaving in a hurry."

After making orbit they were finally given clearance to begin their approach after three hours of cooling their heels. Jason waited until the expensive luxury transport ahead of them had called their final approach before dipping the
Phoenix's
nose into the atmosphere and pushing the throttles up.

When he saw the ships that were lined up on the landing pad he felt singularly conspicuous. The gunship was something that these types hired, not rode around in themselves. Despite the sleek shape the
Phoenix
was unmistakably a tactical vessel and stuck out among the glistening personal ships of the wealthy beings around them. Jason touched down softly on their designated landing pad and spun the ship around on her landing gear so that the nose was pointed out and away from the incoming traffic.

The red dwarf barely lit the surface of the planet, even at midday, and a gloomy pall seemed to hang over the tiny starport.

"Not much of a vacation spot on the surface," Kage remarked as Jason climbed out of his seat.

"I don't think it gets much better under the surface," he said.

"You guys be careful in there," Doc said seriously. "Not only are the Watchers dangerous in their own right, you've got an entire room full of ruthless criminals to contend with."

"We've been through worse," Jason said flippantly.

"I'm serious," Doc pressed. "If it looks impossible to get him out, think about walking away and we'll take another run at it a different way."

"I appreciate the sentiment, Doc," Jason said. "But it's all or nothing this time. There won't be a second chance."

"We'll be ready to do our part," Twingo assured him. "Just make sure this isn't all for nothing."

"We will get Crusher out of here," Lucky declared confidently as he walked off the bridge. The battlesynth was always a bit on the quiet side, but since Crusher had disappeared he'd hardly spoken a word.

"You heard him," Jason shrugged as he slipped his jacket on. He was dressed in one of the expensive suits he still had as a perk from a mission during which he'd had to pose as a wealthy playboy moonlighting as an arms dealer. "We'll be fine. I'm more worried about the shape Crusher is in now or if we'll even be able to get to him without blowing our cover."

The ground shuttle the Watchers had sent to pick them up was sparse, but warm. Lucky strode from the ramp of the
Phoenix
to the vehicle without issue, but Jason could feel the cold bite deep into his bones as he tried to hurry across the frozen surface. As the shuttle pulled away he realized the dangerously cold conditions on the surface were another factor he hadn't considered. If Crusher were injured or otherwise unhealthy it could be problematic to move him across the ramp to the ship. Lucky could easily carry him, but then they'd have no weapons. Jason could lift the big warrior, but he wasn't sure how fast he'd be able to move in these condition himself, much less shouldering over three hundred pounds while avoiding incoming fire.

"We cannot control all factors," Lucky said quietly beside him.

"We're spending too much time together if you can read my mind like that," Jason muttered back. They fell silent as the shuttle made four more stops and a total of ten more aliens climbed aboard: four dressed to kill, four who were obviously security simply looking to kill, and two of what Jason assumed to be escorts. They all eyed each other with distrust as the shuttle rolled its way across the frozen tarmac to the first security door.

Once they'd entered the facility they were ushered out of the shuttle, past the processing area stained a multi-colored pattern from the blood of dozens of species, and to a series of lifts that would take them down into the bowels of Duat. As the doors closed Jason fought down a momentary bout of panic as the reality of where he was willingly going sunk in. He then thought of his friend being trapped in there for weeks and his resolve hardened and the feelings of panic and fear evaporated.

"Welcome to the seventeenth occurrence of the Duat Invitational Tournament," a ridiculously dressed being said as the lift doors opened and they walked out into an enormous chamber that had been carved out of the planet's bedrock. Jason wasn't sure what it was normally used for, but currently the area was decorated in an incredibly gaudy fashion and a hemispherical cage was erected in the center. The graduated seating all around the cage left little doubt what its purpose would be.

"A drink, sir?" someone said from Jason's elbow. He looked over, and then down, at an alien with mottled orange skin.

"Why not?" Jason said with a forced cheerfulness. He was struggling to get himself into character and he knew if he didn't get it together soon others might begin to take notice that he didn't belong. All the other guests to the event were exuberant and well on their way to intoxicated; a brooding and sullen person standing apart and eyeballing all the security measures was definitely going to draw the wrong kind of attention.

"What will you have?"

"I'll just take one of whatever that group is drinking," Jason said, gesturing to one especially loud cluster that had just had another round delivered.

"Very good, sir," the server said with a low bow. "I shall return promptly."

"They can't hide what this place really is, no matter how much scrubbing they do," another voice said from Jason's right.

"No, they can't," he agreed quickly, looking the newcomer over. "But I suppose it's nothing we're not used to in a lot of ways."

"Indeed," the alien said. Jason couldn't think of the name of the species off the top of his head, but he was sure he'd had interactions with them at some point. "My name is Saditava Mok, imports and exports. And you are?"

"George Washington," Jason said with a nod. "Much the same business, I'm sure."

"I'm sure," Saditava said in a tone of voice that indicated he was skeptical. He turned to his bodyguard as the server handed Jason his drink," Leave us for a moment. I'm sure George Washington's security can cover the two of us for a short time." The well-dressed Korkaran simply bowed his head and walked apart from them, watching both Jason and the crowd around them.