Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon (12 page)

“I can’t believe we’re still using this ridiculous system to get between planets,” Crusher grumbled.

“If we were a government or military flight we wouldn’t be,” Morakar corrected. “We’d have access to one of the new grav-drive shuttles and just make a direct flight. But with the limited amount of traffic that isn’t accommodated on scheduled ferries there hasn’t been much of a demand that the government upgrade the system or loosen the restrictions on privately operated grav-drives.”

“I wasn’t aware of that,” Jason said with concern. “Will we be searched when we land at Cessell? If flights like this are so rare, a bored official may send out a customs team when we touch down.”

“This is a scheduled flight,” Mazer said. “We simply swapped transponders with the shuttle that normally runs the route and cosmetically altered this one to match.”

“What’s the other shuttle running?” Jason asked.

“Diplomatic mail,” Morakar answered. “There are still items that need a witnessed signature or are too sensitive to transmit over the nexus, so controlled copies are flown between the two planets. It’s an antiquated method, but the bureaucrats on both sides seem to enjoy the perk of a private service.”

“All things considered, I would say it is fortunate they do,” Lucky said from the back of the cargo hold. Even though the shuttle was shielded against lifeform scans, Lucky’s unique physiology had concerned Jason. Twingo mounted a crash seat against the rear bulkhead, near the engines, and assured him that any chance of the battlesynth being detected would be negated by the propulsion system’s interference.

The conversation tapered off as each began to review their own role in the upcoming mission, running the details of the briefing through their heads over and over. There were only six people in the spacious shuttle: Crusher, Morakar, Mazer, Lucky, Kage, and Jason. Of those six, only the members of Omega Force had ever seen any actual combat. Even though this wasn’t a combat op, exactly, it was still the first true operational experience the pair would have seen. Jason was also concerned about the fact none of them had ever even so much as performed a dry-run with the pair of warrior brothers and had no idea how they reacted to stress or the inevitable moment when the plan fell apart and had to be improvised.
I guess we’ll burn that bridge down when we get to it.

“That’s Galvetor,” Mazer said after an extended silence. The drone of the engines in the cabin had lulled everyone except Lucky into a drowsy half-sleep as the shuttle hummed merrily along the orbital plane.

“Where?” Jason asked, rubbing his eyes and sitting up.

“There,” Mazer said, pointing at a bright prick of light moving much faster than the other stars visible through the canopy. “It won’t be long before we’re picked up by their orbital traffic control system.”

“Are we likely to be contacted for a verbal confirmation of cargo or destination?” Jason asked.

“No,” Mazer said. “The system is completely automated. There is only a minimal crew in the operations center in case of catastrophic failure, but the system requires no controller interaction.”

“A smuggler’s dream,” Kage murmured

“Hardly,” Morakar laughed. “The punishments far outweigh the risks. We’re a fairly isolationist society and only deal with a few approved brokers for our imported goods and services. There are no illicit shipments or sales to Galvetor.” Jason and Kage looked at each other a moment before both broke out in a hearty laugh.

“Whatever you say,” Kage said, still laughing.

“What do you mean?” Morakar said darkly.

“He simply means that criminals are the most enterprising people you’ll ever meet, especially when it comes to a closed market like a planet that restricts free travel,” Jason said. “We smuggled ourselves to Restaria, we’re now smuggling you to Galvetor, and we’ll then be smuggling Fordix off of that planet. I can say with certainty that there is an underworld of Galvetor that is serviced by someone willing to take the risk for the pay.”

“You’re talking about narcotics,” Morakar said. “You’re operating under the assumption geltens are prone to such vices.”

“It may not be widespread due to your strict control, but it’s there. It always is,” Jason said.

“As a people, we’re not prone to such weaknesses,” Crusher declared, drawing incredulous looks from his three crewmates.

“Really?” Kage asked. “So how is it I’ve had to go and steal a cargo load lifter on no less than three occasions to get your drunken carcass back to the ship?”

Crusher glared at the Veran, but made no effort to answer him either.

“Let’s settle the chatter,” Jason said. “We’re beginning our braking maneuver. Shouldn’t be long before we hit Galvetor’s upper atmosphere.”

He got his first good view of Crusher’s homeworld as the shuttle closed quickly on the planet, allowing itself to be captured by its gravity and slung into a high holding orbit. The traffic control system automatically began firing the thrusters to slow their velocity and allow them to descend to a lower transfer orbit before holding them for their turn to enter the atmosphere.

It was another full hour before the braking thruster fired once again to deorbit the shuttle. As the ship began to rock and bounce in the increasingly dense atmosphere, the interior began to heat up noticeably. Jason was surprised at this and hoped that this was just a design flaw and that the techs hadn’t stripped away too much of the shuttle’s original shielding to make room for the enhanced armor. They had been flying through space fairly close to Galvetor Prime; if the thermal shielding was compromised or lacking, he had to assume the radiation shielding wasn’t much better. He put the thought out of his head and watched the altitude continue to decrease as the orbital control system brought them in across the largest continent on the planet.

He got a beeping alert from the navigation panel letting him know the automated system was about to relinquish control of the ship. After he spun around and locked his seat in position, he acknowledged that he was ready and waited for the indicators to green up. It was another fifteen minutes before he got the final trilling alert and the manual controls for the ship were activated. He kept it along the designated flightpath towards Cessell City and allowed the atmospheric friction to scrub off the excess speed as they streaked over Galvetor.

The planet was stunningly beautiful, much like its sister, Restaria. The major population centers seemed to be well-planned and spaced in a manner that was harmonious with the natural lay of the land instead of at odds with it, something you often saw on developed planets where the prime species tried to bend nature to its will. The geltens seemed to embrace their home and lived upon it as unobtrusively as possible. He mentioned this to Crusher.

“Some of that is our nature, some just practicality,” Crusher answered. “Our ancient ancestors revered the planet and believed it had a soul and a consciousness. Some still do hold this view, actually. Our civilization was built around that belief and, thanks largely to a small population, we had no need to change this. By the time we began to industrialize, we were already well aware of our impact on our environment and what the consequences would be to disrespect that.”

“Why the small population?” Jason asked. “That seems unusual for such an advanced species.”

“A natural checks and balances that’s a holdover from when we roamed the planet as wild nomads,” Crusher said. “Just one of our evolutionary ancestors required a large amount of range, and those ranges didn’t overlap between males. So gelten pregnancies, while more than sufficient to propagate our species, are far more rare than in others.”

“Must be nice,” Kage said. “I was one of twenty-eight siblings. Being hungry was a near constant on my world.”

“Twenty-eight?” Mazer asked in disbelief.

“Our evolutionary history is quite different than yours,” Kage said with a smile. “My ancestors were hunted for food. We didn’t have the luxury of single births if we were to survive. Now there are so many that Ver is more or less a slum and we’re desperately trying to colonize surrounding space.” Jason filed away that little insight into Kage’s previous life and motivations for being what he was. Hunger is a powerful motivator when it comes to deciding between slaving away on an overpopulated world for next to nothing or striking out and taking a chance at a life of crime.

Jason let them blather on. He was not immune to the pre-op jitters and the meaningless conversation was an easy distraction. Besides, he was the only person doing anything as he flew the designated glidepath that would put him at an altitude of fifty meters just outside the spaceport limits where he would be required to wait for final clearance to land from a live controller at the port itself.

It was forty-five minutes later when he had Mazer negotiate their landing with the port controller as the others continued to argue in the background about the next inane subject in their near constant bickering since they made orbit. He looked back in annoyance, but held his tongue as the landing pad and clearance code appeared on his nav display. He settled the shuttle down to an altitude of ten meters and began a slow crawl across the tarmac, the ship sluggish and unresponsive as the maneuvering thrusters fired at a near-constant rate to keep them moving. When he was finally over his designated pad, he deployed the landing skids and set the shuttle down with a slight bump and grinding of metal against tarmac.

“Slick landing, Captain,” Kage called up from his seat. “When’s the last time you flew something this small?”

“It’s been awhile,” Jason admitted. “First time landing something without struts and wheels in a long time too; the fixed skids aren’t very forgiving. So where is our guy?” His last question was directed at Morakar.

“He will be negotiating the entry gate even now,” Morakar said confidently. “He will have been waiting for the shuttle to overfly Cessell.” Jason shrugged and went back to shutting down the flight systems.

“This place really must have sparse traffic if he can pick out a single shuttle overflying the city.” Once he had shut the engines down, and switched the accessory bus over to battery power so they still had lights and ventilation, he left the cockpit and flopped down casually in the seat on the far side of where Crusher sat. But before he did, he cranked the air handler blowers up to full blast, creating a wall of white noise that forced everyone to raise their voices to continue talking. “We’re really exposed here,” he whispered near his friend’s ear. Crusher just nodded in the affirmative, also looking out the canopy with a tense expression. His punishment for even being back on Galvetor would be severe, and likely fatal.

“Here’s our contact,” Mazer called out, pointing at an enclosed airtruck that was lumbering across the tarmac towards them. It had the same markings on it as their disguised spacecraft.

“Not a moment too soon,” Jason said. “Mazer, shut off the marker lights and the rest of the systems. Kage, pull the flight data recorder and hit the boxes with that pulser.”

“On it,” Kage said. Mazer turned and began killing the power to the rest of the ship. They would pull the data recorders to ensure that when the ship was discovered it would be harder to backtrack, and as an added insurance Kage was going to hit all the avionics modules themselves with a device Twingo had fabricated for him: a directional EM gun that shot an intense burst of electromagnetic energy into the device it was aimed at. It would kill any redundant backup memory the unit may have as well as any other clues stored within the box. A competent investigator would probably still be able to track down where the shuttle had come from, but by the time they did the team would be long gone.
Well … hopefully.

There was a bump as the airtruck backed all the way up to the side of the shuttle, its open rear door making direct contact with the cargo hatch. Mazer and Lucky covered the door as the others tensed up. There came a tapping at the door that seemed random at first, but was actually a specific pattern that was repeated four times. After the fourth iteration, Lucky stood down and Mazer popped the release on the hatch, sliding it up out of the way.

“Lord Felex Tezakar, Guardian Archon of Galvetor, I greet you,” the gelten standing in the hatchway said formally, sinking down to his knees.

“Rise,” Crusher said impatiently, “we cannot risk the time for such things. I greet you in turn, soldier of Galvetor.” This seemed to satisfy the gelten who, while not a member of the warrior class, was still bigger than any human Jason had ever seen.

“I am Meluuk,” he said. “If you and your team will get into the vehicle, we will quickly be away.” With that Meluuk climbed back into the cab of the airtruck and waited as the team climbed into the bed and sealed the hatch on the shuttle behind them. Once they were all settled, the airtruck pulled smoothly away and made it through the gate without incident.

The ride through Cessell City was boring. That was mostly because they were stuck in an enclosed cargo bed and were unable to see anything, and partly because the repulsors the airtruck rode on made for a ride without any real sense of movement. This meant Jason couldn’t get a feel for how far they had traveled from the spaceport. He knew the exact distance from the pre-mission brief, but he always preferred independent verification. While his own neural implant was having trouble calculating the distance traveled, he knew Lucky’s internal systems would have no such issue. In fact, he knew that if the battlesynth detected any deviation from the prearranged course, he would alert them immediately. So he quit fretting about the things he couldn’t control and settled back for the remainder of the ride.

When the airtruck finally pulled to a stop and the door opened, Jason found himself inside a large industrial flat, one of the ubiquitous shells that seemed to dot the periphery of any major city. But, in what he came to recognize as the gelten flair for the artistic, the interior of the building wasn’t bare steel girders and corrugated outer walls. Instead, sculpted stone columns rose up to support the roof and the walls looked to be made of enormous, square bricks that were hewn from solid stone. Even the floor, a smooth permacrete, was inlaid with swirling patterns of colored stones. Jason shook his head in wonder that anybody would take the time to design and build what was essentially a warehouse in such a manner.