Omega Rising (25 page)

Although badly battered, the facility still had some teeth; three heavy particle beams lanced out from rooftop emplacements and impacted the ship's shields with spectacular results. Sparks exploded around the outside of the ship and alarms sounded as the shields fought to dissipate the energy from the beams. Jason aborted their run and yanked the ship into a vertical climb and went to full power. Even as the ship thundered into the sky Kage was already targeting the beam emitters for their next run.

Jason kicked the ship into a left-handed hammerhead turn and put their nose back on the target. "Targets acquired and locked," Kage said. Jason accelerated savagely into a descending bank that would allow him to put their guns on target before coming into range of the particle cannons. Kage let loose with a full salvo from all the forward-facing weapons, resulting in an explosion that ripped the remaining buildings off their foundations and sent a massive plume of flame and debris right into their flight path.

              "Shit!" Jason exclaimed, knowing it was too late to avoid it even as the DL7 plunged through the raining debris. some of the impacts felt quite heavy as it shot out the other side and into the clear.

              "We've got a ground car that escaped!" Kage shouted. "Two occupants, heading southwest away from the city."

              "That'll be her! We need to stop that car, Commander," Doc said, speaking for the first time since the attack commenced. Jason fought the controls as he yanked the nose up and tried to bring the ship back around to track the ground vehicle. He actually had to switch flight modes and put the ship into a hover in order to pursue the comparatively slow ground vehicle.

              "Take the road out in front of the car," Jason told Kage. A split second later the ship spat out an energy bolt that took out three lanes of roadway the car was traveling on. It instantly angled right onto a side street and accelerated away. Jason clumsily turned to pursue, the gunship wallowing in the low-speed maneuvering at the hands of a novice pilot. He swore to himself as the car took another turn and headed for a more populated area. "Disengage weapons, they're entering a populated area."

              "We may need to risk it, Commander," Doc said from his station.

              "You know I won't do that. Ground assault team, get ready." Jason goosed the ship ahead of the speeding car and swung back around to face it head-on, no small feat considering the size of the ship and the proximity of the buildings. He continued to descend, intent on forcing the car into stopping or risk running headlong into the mouth of the beast, so to speak.

His gamble paid off as the car swerved at the last minute and ran up onto a pedestrian walkway, jumping the curb and crashing though a large ground-level window. Jason was thankful that this particular ground car utilized wheels instead of hovering on repulsors; it was completely out of commission. "Crusher, you guys are up," Jason said as Kage opened the belly hatch that allowed Crusher and Lucky to fall in a controlled descent to the ground within a containment field. He watched on his display in awe as the pair sprinted into the building at incredible speed, both armed to the teeth. He climbed up and away from the street and swung over the building to avoid the risk of damaging the ship with a careless impact.

              "It looks like they've escaped, Commander," Crusher reported. "The vehicle is empty and there's no sign of them." Doc slammed a fist onto his console and swore at that. "We're going to head to the roof of this building and see if we can run into them on the way up."

              "Copy that, ground team. We'll move to..." Jason was cut off as the ship dipped and yawed to port.

              "We're taking fire!" Kage said. "Looks like two law enforcement aircraft approaching to intercept us. Energy weapons only, shields holding."

              "Damnit! Ground team, we're going to move away and try to elude our new friends. Try to make your way to the southern edge of this city block and wait for my call." Jason swung the ship around to the north and accelerated aggressively on a course that would force the intercepting aircraft to radically change direction to try and keep up.

              "Acknowledged, Commander," Crusher said calmly as the gunship screamed over the city, terrifying the residents. Jason swung around wide over the city as he pushed the ship to supersonic speeds to shake off his pursuers, his course taking him out of the population center and over rolling agricultural fields. He dropped down closer to the ground to mask their sensor signature and banked into a large, sweeping turn that covered miles of ground until he was pointing back to the southern edge of the city.

The two pursuing ships were not fooled by the move. They were soon joined by two more aircraft and moving to cut them off. Jason calculated the odds and decided to take the risk, pushing their velocity up as high as he dared as he raced back to his two crewmates he had left behind. "Get ready to open the hatch and grab them," he said to Kage.

              "Already on it. It's going to be close though," was the tense reply.

              "I know. Can't be helped."

              "We're in position, Commander," Crusher said over the open channel. We're on the roof of the tallest building on the southern edge of the city block we inserted at."
How the hell did they do that so fast?
Kage quickly used their com signal to pinpoint their location and send a waypoint to Jason's display, allowing him to fly directly to them.

              "Heads up, guys, we'll be coming in hot," Jason warned them. He came in as close as he dared before pulling the nose up and flaring, bleeding off speed and bringing the ship to a rough hover over the roof. Kage activated the containment field to pull them off the rooftop and into the ship as soon as Jason edged over into position.

              "We've got them, securing hatch and bringing the ventral shields back up," Kage said. Jason hammered down on the controls and the ship surged forward just as the first shots from their pursuers began bouncing off the aft shields. The ship streaked through the sky and overflew the original target, now a smoking crater, one last time.

              "Take a sensor sweep of the target, we'll analyze it later," he said as he climbed up and out of the city. As soon as they overflew the site Jason didn't try to be creative in their escape; he pointed the nose of the gunship straight up and slammed the grav-drive to full power. It was only as they transitioned from the thermosphere into the exosphere that Jason began to unclench his muscles. There was no sign of pursuit from the surface and they hadn't detected any space-based defensive capability on the way in. For the moment it appeared they were safe.

Jason accepted the first waypoint from Kage's station and engaged the slip-drive while they were still in-system. Once the canopy darkened and the weapons were powered down Jason could feel the tension in his neck and shoulders and the sweat that caused his shirt to cling to him. He looked around at his bridge crew, "Well, that didn't go exactly as planned."

              "No, it didn't," Doc agreed, obviously frustrated as the rest of the crew made their way onto the bridge, including Twingo. "I'd feel better knowing we got her, but taking that facility out is a huge blow to their operation."

              "And also painted a huge target on our backs," Twingo said.

              "I'd say that was a given after The Vault..." Jason began, but was interrupted by an alert on his com panel. A slip-space communication was coming through, and it was specifically coming through to the ship's transponder code, whoever it was knew exactly what ship they were contacting. With a feeling of dread, Jason activated the link and sent it to the main canopy display. He instantly regretted it as Bondrass' face appeared, larger than life, on the enormous display. The crime boss was enraged beyond description as his skin kept shifting colors and his eyes threatened to bulge from his head.

              "YOU! Did you think you could steal from me and hide?!" Bondrass was screaming with barely contained fury. "You've sealed your fate! Where is Deetz?!" Jason looked at the others in confusion, apparently Bondrass was behind on his intel.

              "He's currently unavailable," Jason said blandly. "Would you like me to give him a message?" Bondrass screamed in wordless fury and lashed out at the display with his claws. While he was still spouting gibberish and baring his teeth someone slipped him a tablet display with something written on it. The boss read it and paled instantly to a light green and looked up at the camera with a look of shock and horror written on his face.

              "What have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" Bondrass screamed. He pointed at Doc, "Do you understand what you've done?!"

              "Completely," Doc said unflappably, walking into the video frame.

              "I'm going to make you regret this," Bondrass hissed, focusing on him. "I'll keep you alive for decades so I can torture you slowly. I'll..." Lines of video interference ran through the feed as Bondrass and his aide seemed to sway on their feet. "What was that?"

              "Sir, we're under attack!" The shout came from someone off screen as Bondrass' ship seemed to take several more heavy hits. The crime boss looked utterly confused.

              "Why are they attacking me? Get me in touch with the other syndicate members, NOW!"

              "Maybe you didn't pay your membership dues?" Jason suggested in a helpful tone. Bondrass snapped his head back to the display, seeming to have forgot he had been talking to them.

              "Did you have something to do with this!?"

              "Well," Jason said as he scratched his head thoughtfully. "There may be some slight confusion as to who actually stole the cargo ship from The Vault. We
might
have sort of made it look like your security personnel shot the guards and made off with all that loot. Look, you seem really busy. Maybe you can call back when you're not so pressed for time?" Before Bondrass could reply sparks and smoke began filling the bridge of his ship and the link suddenly terminated. 

              "Well," Twingo said with a broad smile, lacing his hands behind his head as he sprawled in one of the bridge seats, "that takes care of that."

              "Hopefully," Jason said.

Jason and Twingo stood watching the last cargo hauler roll away from the hanger and back towards the flight line. It had taken them a few weeks to fence all the stolen cargo they had liberated from The Vault in a way that kept it low profile enough that the other crime bosses wouldn't hear about it. The precious metal had been easy enough, and a lot of the weaponry they decided not to keep wasn't easily traced, but the piles of printed currency had been problematic. Laundering a mountain of bills that had ID chips embedded in them hadn't been easy, but they eventually found a money launderer who was willing to take on the risk.

Looking back at the empty hanger they had used to stage all of their ill-gotten goods left Jason with a sense of finality. In a way, he was sorry to see this adventure come to an end. He had been beaten, threatened, terrified, sold... but somewhere along the line he had rediscovered that spark within himself, that love of life he had lost. The thought of returning to his little cabin in the mountains to simply mark time alone was now incredibly unappealing. He looked up at the sky of Breaker's World and saw they were about to get rained on. "We'd better hustle unless we want to swim back," he said, slapping Twingo on the shoulder and walking back towards the far end of the space port.

The pair walked in silence, both lost in thought as they pondered what would happen to them now that they were finished with what they had set out to do. When they finally reached the far end of the complex Jason broke into a smile as he caught sight of the sleek gunship. Like any man who had been through an incredible adventure with a particular machine, Jason felt an almost emotional bond with the Jepsen Aero DL7. It had kept them safe during their bungling rescue mission attempt and then provided the means with which to exact some measure of revenge on Bondrass. (Or complete revenge, depending on if one believed the crime boss was actually dead, Jason wasn't so sure.) He didn't know where he would be going from there, but he knew he didn't want to leave it behind.

The other four crewmembers were standing under the ship's tail section as Jason and Twingo approached, and just in time for the sky to open up with fat, painful raindrops. They all retreated up the ramp and stood at the mouth of the cargo bay as the rain soaked the ground and began to run off the ship in rivulets. They stood in silence for a few moments until Kage, the most high strung among them, couldn't take it anymore. "So, what's next?"

              "I've wondered the same thing myself," Crusher said quietly. They lapsed back into an uncomfortable silence.

              "Why don't we do this?" Twingo said, looking around at them.

              "This what?" Jason asked.

              "
This.
There are a lot of folks out there who have slipped through the cracks or have nobody to turn to, so many that live in fear and are ignored by uncaring or corrupt governments. We have a modest fortune, a unique skill set, and one badass warship," the engineer said, impassioned. "We could make it our job to make sure someone stands up for these people." When he finished, they all looked around at each other, hints of smiles tugging at the corners of mouths. They turned back to Jason, and he looked at each of them in turn, already knowing what his own choice was going to be.