Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon (22 page)

“Weapons are locked on and we’re in range,” he said to Lucky. The battlesynth didn’t answer; he just continued to monitor the ship’s instruments for a while longer as the shuttle descended with the larger ship and the grasslands rolled along underneath them. It was another ten minutes of descending and decelerating before they crossed the thirty thousand foot mark.

“Jamming transmissions from the target,” Lucky said. “Weapons free.”

“Firing,” Jason answered and activated his weapons script. There was a whine audible on the flight deck as the power surged into the forward plasma cannons. A split second later, three brilliant red blasts lanced out and impacted the starboard engine of the rescue ship. While the damaged engine began to belch out smoke and fire, the shuttle dipped down and lined up along the starboard, ventral surface and strafed the repulsors along that side, leaving only three of the ten operational.

The effect was predictable and immediate as the rescue ship lost almost all propulsion on its starboard side. It began to yaw to the right as the port engine flared to full power and rolled as the three remaining repulsors on that side could no longer maintain level flight. It began to spiral down slowly towards the rolling plains below.

Jason looked at his tactical display and saw the crew of the ship was desperately trying to signal an emergency, but the shuttle’s capable countermeasures system was suppressing every transmission.

“They’re not losing altitude quickly enough,” Jason said, switching back over to manual control for helm and weapons. He slowed down to allow the ships to separate a bit more before diving underneath the stricken vessel and destroying four more repulsors along the port side, this time at the forward half of the ship. The destruction must have overloaded the system because one more of the repulsor emitters exploded outward as the shuttle zipped out from underneath and pulled a hard, climbing turn to the left to get back above and behind the now-doomed rescue ship.

“They’re falling too fast,” Mazer said in alarm. “A hull full of corpses doesn’t do us any good.”

“They can still arrest their descent,” Jason said calmly. “But now they’ll be forced to do it here instead of trying to limp back within range of their base.” Sure enough, just as the ship looked like it would lose all its forward momentum and tumble from the sky, the rocket nozzles at the end of each outrigger began to stream fuel vapor before they ignited and blew out gouts of bright orange flame.

As the liquid rocket motors came up to temperature and the fuel mixture was optimized, the exhaust went from hazy orange to a bright blue and then focused into a white-hot stream of superheated gas as the outriggers themselves moved within their limited articulation range to bring the thrust to bear where it would do the most good. Even through the crew must now know that it was inevitable that they would be crashing, they seemed determined to make it survivable.

“Looks like they’re going to just clear that next rise and then dig her into the field just beyond,” Jason remarked as he flew a lazy circle around the plummeting ship at a safe altitude of fifteen thousand feet. He was reasonably confident the ship would make it down in one piece, but if it impacted too hard he’d rather not get collected in the resulting explosion. Doubly so since it appeared it was carrying a full fuel load for the liquid rocket thrusters.

“Agreed,” Lucky said. “Estimated twenty seconds until impact. The speed and rate of decent are within acceptable limits.”

“It’s still gonna hurt like a mother though,” Jason said. Mazer’s brow scrunched up as he tried to figure out the meaning of Jason’s truncated obscenity. Even from their lofty vantage point it wasn’t difficult to pinpoint the moment of impact. The grass began to smoke and burn in the ship’s passage as the rocket motors scorched everything in their path, but even the three extra thrusters weren’t enough to keep the ship level and the starboard outriggers dug into the soft ground first, causing the ship to spin wildly. Once it lost its forward stability, it fell the rest of the way to the ground, slamming its underbelly into the turf before bouncing up and digging its nose in next. Still carrying a lot of velocity, this caused the ship to actually flip up and over and land hard on its dorsal surface, literally breaking its back. The aft section of the antique vessel sheared away and the forward section continued to slide on its top across the field.

“Holy shit,” Jason muttered, a pang of guilt going through him. Despite the Galvetic honor code, he had his doubts that the crew in the ship was anything other than a group of soldiers following what must have seemed like a mundane order: go grab a ship suspected of criminal activity along with its crew. Despite the fact they may be shortly having a shootout with them, he was hoping they all survived the fall from Restaria’s sky.

He nosed the shuttle over into a sharp descent towards where the forward section had finally ground to a halt. The repulsor emitters were all dark, the rocket motors were now extinguished, and only heavy jets of steam were still billowing up out of the nozzles.

“Tell Kage part one went off without a hitch,” Jason said to Lucky. “We’ll be out of the shuttle for this next part so he’ll need to keep an eye on when they figure out the ship isn’t coming back to base.”

“If they didn’t detect it dropping we’ll still only have a few minutes,” Mazer warned. “But the response time after they report it missing may be anywhere from twenty minutes to a few hours. These ships are part of Logistics Command, and with what’s happening in Ker it could take some arguing before anyone is dispatched to look in on it.”

“I don’t think we’ll be that fortunate,” Jason said as Lucky talked to Kage over the com. “Even as basic as they are, your satellites will be able to see the smoke and wreckage from orbit.”

“I just inquired about that,” Lucky said. “Kage said there is no satellite capable of surface imaging due overhead within the next hour, give or take a few minutes.”

“I retract my earlier statement,” Jason said as he eased the shuttle down into the grass. “If they have a bird due overhead in under sixty minutes they’re unlikely to dispatch an aircraft to check on a ship that is late to arrive. The obvious answer would be they made an emergency landing or had a mishap.” Once he felt the ship bounce and settle onto its landing skids, Jason switched the main drive to “standby” and locked out the command inputs. On the off chance they were overwhelmed by the crew of the rescue ship, he didn’t want to make it easy for them to simply fly off in the shuttle.

“Grab your gear,” he said, climbing out of the pilot’s seat. “Let’s try to get this done with a minimal loss of life … especially ours.”

Jason and Mazer both grabbed a rifle and a sidearm each. Lucky simply switched over to combat mode, the red glow of his eyes and whine of charging weapons filling the cargo bay of the shuttle. Checking his crew over one more time, Jason popped the rear hatch and waited as it lowered to the ground.

They exited the shuttle single file, Lucky leading since Jason and Mazer had no body armor or personal shielding. They moved around the shuttle in time to see what looked like an emergency access hatch pop off the side of the hull, likely via explosive bolts, and hit the soft ground with a thud. The soot-streaked face of a Galvetic warrior emerged and looked right at them with a look of utter confusion. He then looked over at the parked combat shuttle; his eyes widened in understanding and he disappeared back through the hatchway. They could hear him shouting all the way from where they were standing.

“Damnit!” Jason snarled. “I should have landed behind the damaged section. They didn’t even know they’d been shot down.”

“We may still be able to salvage this,” Mazer said. He moved over to where one of the remaining outriggers was dug into the ground and leapt upon it. Running quickly up the appendage, he made his way to another hatch on the exposed belly of the ship and began manipulating the manual release controls. Jason and Lucky also ran up the outrigger to back him up. “When I open this Lucky should be the first to drop in.”

“Should I try and apprehend them first?” Lucky asked.

“I trust your judgment,” Jason said. “But
NO
unnecessary risks, they won’t be trying to stun you and you know firsthand how hard these guys can be to take down.”

“Lord Felex is a special case, even among us,” Mazer said. “But yes … do not engage them to incapacitate if there are more than two in the area. Even ship jockeys like these guys will be able to quickly adapt a strategy against you.”

“Understood,” Lucky said.

“Are you ready?” Mazer asked. When Lucky nodded, he reached into the recess he was crouched over and cranked the handle within until there were three loud pops and the hatch swung inward, banging against something inside the ship before swinging wildly from its hinge. Lucky tucked his arms in close and jumped in through the hatchway. An instant later there was a deafening
POP
and a blinding flash of light from within the ship.

“Lucky!?” Jason shouted, not yet training his weapon on the opening since he didn’t know who was near it, the crew or his friend.

“I am fine, Captain,” Lucky called up. “Three of the crew are incapacitated. Two more were stunned, but were able to escape into the forward sections. You and Mazer may come down.” Jason hopped through first and made way for Mazer to follow behind him. He switched through modes on his ocular implants until he found a decent combination that could deal with the smoke and darkness.

“What the hell was that?” he asked.

“I set my plasma cannons for wide angle disbursement and fired into the bulkheads at close range,” Lucky said. “It creates a sonic shockwave accompanied by a flash that most biologicals find disorienting.”

With a somewhat surprised look on his face, Mazer looked at the three warriors that had fallen where they had been setting up an ambush.

“Yeah … you disoriented the shit out of these three,” Jason said.

“Only one of them has—”

“It’s just an expression, Lucky,” Jason said. “Which direction did the other two go?”

“They retreated towards the forward section of the ship,” Lucky said.

“They’ll regroup near the bridge,” Mazer said. “It’s the only place left forward of here with heavy enough bulkheads to make a stand.”

“So much for this being easy,” Jason grumbled. “Let’s go, single file, Lucky on point.”

Walking on the overhead of the passageway was a bit disconcerting as well as slightly hazardous. Jason had to constantly check where he was walking because of the darkened lighting fixtures, conduits, and signs that threatened to trip him up as they moved along. They had gone only twenty-five feet when they realized Lucky had no idea where he was going inside the large ship.

“I really don’t either,” Mazer admitted. “I’ve only been on one of these a couple times and I didn’t really get around all that much.”

“This is absurd,” Jason said, becoming irritated. “We don’t have an indefinite amount of time here, let’s just keep moving forward. This thing isn’t that big.” They pressed on until coming to a ninety-degree bend to the left.

“I know where we are now,” Mazer whispered. “There’s an identical passageway to this one on the other side. This lateral corridor connects those and once we get to the center there will be a wide, short archway that leads up to the command deck.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Jason whispered back. “Let’s move carefully along this passageway and we’ll make a decision on the final assault once we get to where we can sneak a peek at the bridge.”

As they crept along, Jason could see where the passage to the command deck was from the light that was likely coming in through the bridge windows, or at least where they used to be. Since the ship was upside down and the prow had taken the brunt of the impact that flipped it, the light coming through was fairly weak. They were within a few meters of the opening when they could hear movement in the passageway beyond.

Jason moved to the opposite side of the passage to get a better angle on the entryway, training his rifle on the opening. He selected the stun setting on the weapon since he was nearly certain that they wouldn’t be able to rush out in a mass around the corner before Lucky and Mazer would pick them up. He also wasn’t sure how many survivors were left on the bridge and he needed at least one left alive and coherent to question. Not only that, it was poor manners to be invited to a planet and begin killing off the inhabitants.

He detected a slight movement ahead, just a change in the light really. Since there was not much smoke in the forward passageway, he switched his vision to straight infrared and saw the shoulder and head of a warrior moving slowly around the corner leading to the passageway they were standing in. He aimed quickly and fired a stun bolt directly into the side of his head, sending him flopping around on the deck. Since the deck was actually the sloped overhead and not the stairs that normally led to the bridge, the warrior’s gyrations caused his body to slide back the way he came and out of sight.
Shit.

“Nobody else has to die today,” Jason called out loudly. “We just want to ask a few questions.”

“Why have you attacked us?” a strong, deep voice called out. “Who are you and who do you represent?”

“I said
we
were going to ask the questions,” Jason snapped back. “You’ve just come back from hauling a ship off of Restaria. I want to know where it went, where the crew is, and who authorized you to take it.”

“We do not answer to you,” a thinner-sounding voice called out. “You will get nothing from us.” As Jason had been talking, Lucky had moved even closer to the edge of the bridge entry and Mazer had moved to a position between the both of them and was covering the way they came as well as the passageway beyond.

“That’s the wrong answer,” Jason said. “You have ten seconds and then we do this the easy way.”

“Do you fools realize what you’ve done?” Mazer suddenly shouted. “Were you aware that the Lord Archon has returned to Restaria?”

“We had heard,” the deep voice said with less certainty. “It is true then?”