Omega Force: Savage Homecoming (26 page)

“We’re clear, Doc. Closer her up and get out of here,” Jason called over the com as he landed on the pavement with a heavy thud, his armor easily absorbing the impact. He didn’t look up as he heard his ship power up and climb away from Alcatraz Island. The three of them scanned in every direction, waiting for an attack that didn’t come.

“Do you know your way around this place?” Crusher asked Jason.

“Um … not really.
I took a tour when I was ten and I’ve seen a couple of movies about it,” Jason admitted.

“We’re screwed,” Crusher grunted as he hefted his plasma rifle. Soon an eerie silence descended over the island as the
Phoenix
flew out of hearing distance. Jason could just make out the dull rumble of jet engines from what he assumed would be U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft.

“Let’s head towards the boat dock and see if we can pick up his trail from there,” Jason suggested, pointing off towards his right at the column of smoke still rising from the shoreline. The trio began a cautious walk towards the dock, Jason on point while Crusher and Lucky flanked him and covered to the left and right. Lucky’s sensors would let them know if something was sneaking up on them.

“Holy shit,” Jason said when they were halfway across the parade grounds. “What the hell is that smell?” Crusher was already drawing in deep breaths of air through his nose and huffing them out through his mouth. He seemed to be fixated on something to their left. Jason halted and waited while his friend tensed up, still staring hard to where there was a rubble pile of a long gone building.

Before long, a scrabbling sound could be heard on the rocks coming from the shoreline to the left.
A moment after that a green head appeared, then another. Crusher sucked in a deep breath and let out a bellowing roar that made Jason nearly jump out of his armor. He’d never heard anything like it before, and suddenly he felt like a spectator as the Galvetic warrior stomped towards the newcomers.

The pair quickly emerged. Jason could see they were quite large and looked reptilian. The Korkaran mercenaries had finally made an appearance. Their skin looked like a crocodiles, but smoother and with a glossy sheen. Heavily muscled and agile, the pair of biped crocs approached Crusher, tails swishing. Still thoroughly confused as to why his friend didn’t just shoot them, Jason followed behind with his railgun raised halfway while Lucky scanned in all directions behind them. The mercs also had weapons, but carried them in a manner that indicated they had no intention of using them.

Once the two groups were within ten yards of each other, Crusher and the Korkarans stopped. One of the mercs said something to Crusher in a language Jason’s implant couldn’t translate, and then they both bowed low. When they straightened, Crusher simply nodded once. Lucky managed to look surprised (no mean feat) and Jason was only more confused, but he got the distinct impression the two new arrivals knew Crusher personally. Or at least knew of him.

“Captain,” Crusher said, “you and Lucky go find Deetz. I will deal with this.”

“You can’t be—”

“I was not asking!” he roared back. Jason rocked back on his heals a bit at that.

“Okay,” he said without further argument. “Let’s go, Lucky.” The battlesynth didn’t argue, further confirming in Jason’s mind that something significant had just happened on the parade ground that he wasn’t privy to.
I’ll deal with it later. Assuming Crusher survives.

*****

“We had thought you dead, Great One,” the lead Korkaran said in his sibilant language. “It will be an honor to do combat with you.”

“You may not think so when I’m done,” Crusher rumbled, staring at the pair with unadulterated hatred.

“It will be an honor no matter the outcome,” the Korkaran insisted. “May we pay homage to the old ways?”

“If you insist,” Crusher said. “It will only prolong the inevitable.” Without another word, both Korkarans tossed their larger weapons aside and then pulled out two sidearms apiece and tossed those as well. Crusher watched coldly as he also flung his plasma rifle away, along with the large projectile pistol he had in a thigh holster.

As soon as his pistol hit the pavement, both mercenaries split and tried to surround him, crouching down into a fighting stance as they did. Crusher looked at them with contempt and didn’t budge. Once the pair thought him surrounded to the point that he couldn’t track them both, the Galvetic warrior lunged to his right with frightening speed. With a powerful overhand blow, Crusher managed to surprise the merc for just the fraction of a second he needed to rake his claws down the other’s face, then followed up with a left-handed uppercut that sent the Korkaran flying backwards. Only his tail kept him from rolling all the way over, and when he came back up he was down to one good eye, the other hanging uselessly out of the socket.

The other Korkaran hadn’t stood idle during the attack, however, and before Crusher could turn to face him he felt talons rip down across the back of his armor and into his left shoulder.

*****

Jason paused as he heard another roar echo across the island, audible even over the sound of the waves breaking against the rock. “I hope he knows what he’s doing,” he muttered.

“Crusher knows exactly what he is doing. Do not worry, Captain,” Lucky reassured him as they scanned the area around what remained of the boat dock. Jason only grunted, not wanting to get distracted by a conversation in which he would demand that Lucky divulge what he knew.

“Can you see anything?”

“I am detecting trace amounts of a lubricant that is almost exclusive to synths, or more specifically our gross motor actuators,” Lucky said as he strode confidently away from the shore.

“How are you detecting it?”

“It looks like that,” Lucky said, pointing to a blue gel-like substance that was clearly visible on the pavement. Jason just rolled his eyes and gestured up the walkway.

“After you,” he said, falling in behind the battlesynth as he followed the “blood” trail left by Deetz after he had pried himself out of the wreckage. “We can assume he’s setting up an ambush for us, so let’s head to the main cellblock since that’s one of the more obvious destinations.” Lucky stopped and looked at him.

“After you,” he gestured, mimicking Jason.

“I really need better friends,” Jason grumbled as he walked by to take point on the way up to the cellblock building. While he was making his way towards the dominating structure, he was also glancing down every so often to see if he could see another spatter of actuator lubricant.

They made it up past the residential apartments, or what was left of them after the thermobaric missile detonation, and walked slowly up the path towards the main cellblock. The old prison was forbidding as they stopped near the base and scanned left and right.

“Let’s work our way around to the left and see if we can find anyplace obvious he may have gotten in,” Jason said. Lucky just nodded and switched his operational mode to
combat
. His eyes took on a muted red glow, and a barely perceptible whine could be heard as all his weapons began charging.

The pair crept around the base of the building until they came to a ragged hole in the side. The jagged edges and discoloration around the area indicated that this was a new addition to the cellblock. Jason made a move to step closer and try to clear the area when Lucky reached out and stopped him. When he looked over, the battlesynth just shook his head and pointed further down with his free hand. Jason nodded once and followed Lucky as they continued on. That was obviously Deetz’s point of entry, but the synth was no fool. He would know the ragged hole would be noticed and had likely booby trapped the opening with whatever he was able to grab when he left his ship.

They moved quickly around to the side of the cellblock that faced the lighthouse and paused by the locked main entrance. Jason wished he had paid more attention during his tour of the island nearly twenty years before, at least enough to know what was on each floor of the building they were now facing. As quietly as he could manage, he grabbed the double doors and pulled until he could hear metal snapping and the doors popped loose out of the frame. He laid them on the ground and nodded to Lucky as he hefted his railgun and disengaged the safety.

Lucky raised his arms to point the now-exposed plasma cannons outward and rolled into the main entrance, covering the right side. A millisecond after he had cleared the doorway, Jason entered and raised his weapon, covering the left and Lucky’s back. Once they cleared the large, open area, Jason adjusted the spectrum input from his armor’s sensors. He picked his favorite for gloomy, low light situations: mid-wave infrared. The computer would do its best to determine coloration of objects and overlay that onto the image that Jason was “seeing.”

“Let’s move straight ahead through that security checkpoint,” Jason said, pointing to the sally port directly ahead of them. Once through the sally port and main gate they would be standing in front of B-Block, the middle of the three main cell blocks.

Since the prison was now a tourist attraction, they were able to make it through the security gates with ease. Once through and standing on the main floor of the building, they silently made their way to the right and began moving towards where Deetz had breached the wall to come in.

Jason switched back to simple light amplification since the midday sunlight was still streaming through the large windows of the structure and providing quite a bit of natural light to see by. They made it to Michigan Avenue, the corridor that ran between A-Block and B-Block, and peered up along the walkways, looking for some evidence the synth had been through there. Lucky took a step forward and froze as something seemed to move at the far end of the wide corridor. A second later there was a bright flash and Jason grunted as something impacted his hip. He spun and fell on his back, craning his head to see where the shots were coming from.

As soon as Jason was hit Lucky advanced, firing his arm-mounted plasma cannons towards the source of the incoming fire to keep Deetz’s head down while he closed the distance. He didn’t make it far. When he was about one-third of the way down the aisle, an explosive device detonated on his right with enough force to throw him clear through the bars of the cell to his left. Jason had managed to roll over on his stomach, but couldn’t get to his feet yet. He switched to long-wave infrared so he could see through the smoke and saw Deetz approaching at a slow walk, almost a swagger. He thought he could just make out the smug expression on the metallic face. Not wanting to give away his position by using the active sensors, he sighted manually through the optics of his railgun and squeezed the trigger. A hypersonic round screamed down Michigan Avenue, creating a vortex through the smoke and dust as it passed.

Although not as accurate as he would have liked, he still smiled with satisfaction as Deetz was flipped over backwards by the impact of the round and flung down the aisle. When the synth stood back up, he was missing his right arm from just above the elbow. Not looking nearly so smug, Deetz scrambled back down the corridor in an uncoordinated, jerky run and ran around the corner to the right with the stump of his ruined right appendage sparking the whole way. Jason sent six more railgun rounds after him but didn’t see any other impacts save for the large holes torn through the rear wall of the cellblock.

A couple of seconds after Deetz had fled, Jason heard a soft beep in his helmet indicating that his armor had reset and repaired the hip-joint. He slowly climbed to his
feet, making sure to cover behind him in case Deetz was trying to do an end-around, and gingerly put weight on his left leg. While the armor may have been able to repair itself, he could tell his squishy flesh that was underneath hadn’t fared so well. His hip and upper thigh were incredibly sore, but he could tell he had no broken bones and there were no sharp pains, so he ignored it.

Just as he was about to go and see if Lucky was OK, he saw his friend come around the corner at the far end of Michigan Avenue, near where Deetz had been waiting for them. “How did you get up there?” Jason asked as he approached.

“I was blown through the back wall of that cell so I removed the bars and came back around to try and catch Deetz by surprise,” Lucky said as he pointed in the direction of C-Block, which was off to their left. “I heard your railgun go off. I assume since I only saw an arm that we are still on the hunt for the rest of him.”

“You assume correctly,” Jason said. “He ran around over that way,” he indicated to his right, “so let’s keep moving around like we were originally. He may be expecting us to follow him.”

*****

Crusher was panting hard as he rolled to his left and flipped back up onto his feet. The two Korkarans were pressing him and he was feeling the strain. Not only
that, but months and months of being cramped up in the
Phoenix
had done little for his conditioning and training. He was rusty and winded and the two mercenaries were starting to catch on to that.

They had given up on frontal assaults on the more powerful Galvetic and were now lunging in and out with alternating feints and attacks, forcing Crusher to expend energy to either defend or press the attack himself. The Korkarans weren’t able to do this with impunity, however. In addition to having lost his eye in the first moments of the brutal fight, one of the mercenaries was bleeding out of several deep gashes, a couple down to the bone in places, courtesy of Crusher’s steel-hard claws. His right arm also dangled uselessly, having been broken in three places when he tried to lunge in and catch the Galvetic warrior by surprise.