Omega Force 3: The Enemy Within (5 page)

“O’rethal Platform Docking Control, this is the Ph—
Lark
,” Jason caught himself quickly. “We’re ready for you to release the clamps.” The station insisted on the antiquated tradition of verbal communication between pilot and controller to direct traffic to and from the docking complex. While the others found it annoyingly quaint, Jason found it refreshing.

“
Copy, Lark. We are releasing the clamps. Please reverse thrust to a velocity of five meters per second. Once you clear two hundred meters, contact Departure Control to coordinate your exit vector. Thank you for staying at O’rethal Platform, we hope to see you again soon. Docking Control out.”

“
Clamps are off,” Kage reported from the copilot’s seat. “We’re free navigating.”

“
Copy that, I have the ship,” Jason answered and flicked his thumb over the hat switch that controlled the small docking thrusters. Puffs of compressed gas erupted from the nose as the
Phoenix
began to ease away from the station. He kept toggling the thrusters until they were at the prescribed velocity and then held steady as the gunship backed away from the complex at a relative crawl. “Go ahead and contact Departure Control and get us a vector out of here. Twingo, get the slip-drive prepped.”

“
Already doing it,” Twingo answered from the engineering station to his right. Jason leaned back as Kage negotiated with Departure Control and began feeding the navigational data over to the pilot’s station. The Veran had also taken the extra step of entering their optimum mesh-out point along that vector so all Jason would have to do was accelerate away and engage the slip-drive.
The nice thing about a good crew is that they make me look like I know what the hell I’m doing. Most of the time ...

“
Departure Control says we’re clear,” Kage said.

“
You’re clear to bring up the main drive, Captain,” Twingo chimed in as Jason kicked the left pedal to bring the nose around. The
Phoenix
was inertially decoupled so she spun like a top on the Y-axis until her nose was pointed the opposite way and their course still was taking them away from the station. Once the nav panel let him know they were coming up on their exit vector intersect point, he reached over and engaged the main drive. The main drive was a gravimetric-type drive that was smooth and quiet, unlike the four big main engines—the thrust-type motors that were tucked up in two nacelles under each wing-root that could shake a person’s teeth out at full power.

Once
they were free to accelerate out of the system, Jason smoothly advanced the throttle and the gunship surged along the new heading. “I want eighty percent slip velocity,” he said as they closed on the mesh-out point. “We’ll make a decision on increasing velocity once Twingo says it’s OK.” They flew along in silence for another few moments before the nav panel alerted him again.

“
Here we go,” Kage said. “You’re clear to engage the slip-drive. Next stop, Camderan-2 and likely an ass-load of trouble.”

“
Can’t argue your logic,” Jason said as he smacked the control to engage the skip-drive. With a whine and a shudder the
Phoenix
meshed out and disappeared from real-space.

*****

After ten hours of steady slip-space flight Twingo cleared the engines to throttle up to ninety-five percent, the hardest they pushed them unless it was a dire emergency. This put them a mere two and a half days from the Camderan system, practically next door by interstellar standards.

“
So what are we flying into, Doc,” Jason said as they combined their evening meal with a preliminary intel brief.

“
Camderan-2 … Tier-3 world petitioning for membership into the Confederation. It looks like they may have had the votes in their legislature to ratify the request,” Doc said as he read off his data pad. “Now this is interesting. They don’t have a centralized government; there are a handful of outlying nations and one highly industrialized superpower that seems to be calling the shots.

“
This is a bit unorthodox. Normally the ConFed won’t consider membership until the world has a demonstrable ability to exist under a single, unified government. They’re not specific on what type of government that has to be, they just don’t want civil unrest interrupting whatever it is they find useful about that planet.”

“
Why is this important?” Crusher asked impatiently.

“
It may not be. But we have nearly two days before we arrive and a little bit of context helps if we’re going to operate on this world to get Captain Colleren and Commander Bostco out. Even though it’s a Tier-3 planet, there is a level of sophistication that could prove problematic for us,” Doc said. He was used to speaking to an unwilling audience during these initial briefs and had learned not to take offense to the yawns, rude comments, or simply being ignored. Actually, just being ignored was preferable.

“
Anyway … According to what Kage was able to glean from local news reports, Crisstof is accused of helping these outlying players plan a series of attacks on populated areas and providing them with the military-grade hardware they used during same. It was a pretty bad attack, over four thousand civilians dead and a lot of damage to key infrastructure.”

“
Not to mention the psychological impact on the populace,” Jason said as he pushed his tray away. “I’m assuming this attack was in response to the ConFed petition?”

“
That’s the general consensus, but there hasn’t been any confirmation of that,” Doc said.

“
Which leads us to another interesting question,” Twingo said. “What was the
Diligent
doing there in the first place?”

“
I suppose that will be one of the first things we ask Kellea,” Jason said.

“
Do you think she’ll tell us the truth?” Kage asked.

“
I couldn’t say either way,” Jason admitted with a shrug. “Her first loyalty will be to Crisstof. I’d hope that since she’s dragging us into this, she would also have the decency to let us know everything that she knows.”

“
Are you so certain the message was from Captain Colleren?” Lucky spoke up for the first time since they’d started.

“
There was some specific information in the message that leads me to believe that it was her,” Jason said.

“
Was it something that could have been coerced out of her?” the battlesynth pressed. Of them all, Lucky was the most pragmatic and least likely to trust that a situation was as it appeared on the surface.

“
I guess it could have been, but that makes no sense,” Jason answered. “If they tortured a bit of trivial information out of her to put in that message, that means not only do they already have her, but they’ve set up an elaborate ruse to specifically capture us. There are easier, and cheaper, ways to accomplish that.”

“
Yeah … just wait us out,” Kage interjected. “We’re bound to get ourselves killed or captured with no help needed from the ConFed.” This earned him a slap on the back of the head from Crusher. “Ow!”

“
OK, Lucky,” Jason said. “Spit it out, there’s something you’re holding back.”

“
I only hesitate to say this, because I know the unluckiness of it being true,” the battlesynth started. “What if this is an elaborate ruse, as you put it? Do you remember what Deetz said before he died? Something about what this ship was carrying?”

“
I wouldn’t put too much stock into what that piece of shit said at
any
time,” Jason said, “much less when he was begging for his life. He’d have said anything to keep you away from him. We’ve had no indication there is anything unique about the
Phoenix
compared to any other DL7, and we’ve had her torn down to the frame. Hell, half the major components are new. No, my gut tells me this is what it appears, at least on the surface. Whether or not Crisstof’s hands are clean in the recent uprisings … I’m not willing to speculate on that. So for right now our priority is getting to Kellea and Bostco and getting them off Camderan-2.”

The rest of the flight was uneventful as they meshed into the Camderan system and began the long subluminal flight towards the second planet from the primary star: Camderan-2.
Since they were still flying as the
Lark,
they were forced to make the normal approach any other micro-freighter would, and spend an additional twenty-two hours flying though the system.

Jason had engaged the autopilot and was restlessly pacing in front of the steeply raked canopy. At this distance the star, Camderan Prime, was just a brighter speck in the sky and the scenery was nothing but empty space. He stopped his pacing and stood staring out into space with his hands on his hips. The patience required for covert operations wasn
’t something that came naturally to him; he’d much prefer a blazing flight across the system followed by a smash and grab topped off with a harrowing escape. But the sneaking in method proved to be much more reliable nine times out of ten.

“
You’re wearing a hole in the deck plating,” Twingo said from his station. Jason bit down his sarcastic reply and actually gave his friend a lopsided smile as he walked back to the pilot’s seat.

“
I guess I’m just getting the pre-op jitters early,” he said.

“
We’ll get her out of there,” Twingo assured him. “When do you want to send a message to that account?”

“
We’ll wait until we’re ten hours out,” Jason said after consulting his display a moment. “That’s just under a half-day for Camdaren-2, and by the time we’re cleared to make landfall the odds are good she’ll have received it.”

*****

Sorry to hear you won’t be able to make it home. I’ve been able to save some money this year, maybe I will book passage and come visit you. What is the weather like there?

“
Seriously?” Kage asked as he read the outbound message. “Sorry, Captain, but that’s not all that sneaky. Any intel hack worth his pitiful salary will know this isn’t a letter between relatives just at a glance.”

“
I’m not trying to fool an intel analyst,” Jason said as he sent the message. “I’m trying to keep their computers from flagging it to give to an analyst. I’m sure they’re monitoring all com traffic right now and sifting through for key words.”

“
Maybe,” Kage said doubtfully. “But the computers aren’t that stupid either.”

“
It only needs to fool them for a little bit, or at least confuse them.”

The pair walked out of the com room and headed back to the bridge. The
Phoenix
was on its twelfth lap of the planet as Landing Control ran their credentials through multiple databases. They were alarmed at first that their cover had been blown, but a quick chat with the other pilots on the open com channel let them know that every ship trying to land was going through the same rigmarole and none were happy about it. One light-freighter captain was openly hostile towards the ConFed while aggressively claiming his cargo was perishable and demanding to be allowed to make landfall immediately. Instead, he was boarded by a ConFed combat shuttle and had his ship ripped apart by an intel team.

“
OK,” Jason said as the offending ship was ordered out of orbit by a ConFed light cruiser. “Let’s just stay off the com for now.”

“
Did the scan find anything?” he asked Doc after a moment.

“
Negative. There is no trace of the
Diligent
anywhere in the system. They must have moved her pretty quickly after the initial attack.”

“
Not necessarily,” Lucky responded from his normal post behind and to the left of the pilot’s seat. “From the damage shown on the media feeds it is more likely they made field repairs and flew the ship to another location. More importantly, this also means Crisstof and the rest of the surviving crew are also not in this system.”

“
We had no chance of rescuing him anyway,” Crusher said as he lounged in a seat at a forward station. “The ConFed brought in an insane amount of firepower for tracking down just one misplaced captain. Don’t you think?”

“
Meaning?” Jason prompted.

“
Meaning the seven warships in the system may be the least of our concerns,” the warrior continued. “They’ll also have a significant presence on the surface. That means intel spooks as well as operators.”

“
That’s an unwelcome prospect,” Jason said. Omega Force had had run ins with the Confederation’s Special Operations Section before. They were tough, disciplined, and ruthless. If they were deployed in significant numbers they could be a real handful.

“
Incoming message on our dummy account,” Kage announced. “Saving it off the buffer … closing the connection … resetting the transponder. That should buy us some time if they’re looking for where that message came from or its destination. I’m sending it to your station now.”