Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon (30 page)

“I can operate our weapons and sensors from here, Captain,” he said.

“Excellent,” Jason said, “I’ll need the help.” He let his friend take over getting their defensive and offensive systems ready and concentrated on avoiding all the obstacles strewn about the cavern floor while at the same time trying not to overfly anything that the repulsors would turn into a missile. They were entering the area where it choked down to the entry tunnel, and if something were hurled at the rock wall with enough force it could come back and damage the ship.

His tactical display lit up with a warning and the rear sensor feed showed that the workers who weren’t injured or killed during their initial ascent were now pursuing them and firing small arms into the tail of the ship. The light anti-personnel weapons could do nothing but leave faint scorch marks on the hull. Jason just hoped they weren’t bringing up something more substantial in the meantime.

Once they entered the tunnel, the buffeting from the repulsors really picked up within such a confined space and Jason began to become quite concerned about the jostling on Twingo. He commanded the internal gravity system on and that seemed to help somewhat, but it was still an extremely rough ride. He would have liked to pick up the pace but he was concerned not only about the resonance damaging the
Phoenix
but possibly collapsing the tunnel as well.

“It looks like we’ll emerge just at daybreak,” Jason yelled. “It’ll be hot as hell, but survivable. Do you still want that shuttle, Kade?”

“Yes, Captain Burke,” Kade answered.

“Then get down to the cargo bay if you can,” Jason said loudly. “I’ll stop near the shuttle and activate our transit beam for ten seconds. After that you’re on your own.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Kade said as he handed his plasma rifle to Mazer.

“Good luck,” Jason called as the older warrior hurried by and off the bridge.

“Captain, we are now within range of the airlock barrier,” Lucky said.

“You’re clear to engage with the plasma cannons at your discretion,” Jason said, squeezing the trigger on the stick twice to give the computer command authorization to allow Lucky to fire the weapons. A second later, the tunnel ahead was brilliantly lit up as the plasma cannons in the leading edge opened up, bathing the entire bridge in red.

The barrier appeared to be made of a flexible material that was stretched tight across the opening. When the first plasma bolt slammed into it and burned a section away, the entire surface snapped and retracted into the walls of the tunnel. The remaining bolts continued through and took out the outer barrier in the same manner.

“Well that was easier than I thought it was going to be,” Jason admitted as he increased his forward speed and flew them out of the mountain and into open air. He breathed a huge sigh of relief as the ship had a big open sky above it again. The tension of weaving it through such tight confines without the fine control of the grav-drive had been nerve-wracking. He keyed open an intercom channel to the cargo bay. “You’re up, Kade. I’ll be opening the troop hatch in a few seconds.” He closed the channel without waiting for a response, eased the ship over to near where they had left the combat shuttle, and climbed to a safe altitude to allow the warrior off the ship while the repulsors were still providing primary lift. “Lucky, open the belly hatch and deploy the transit beam,” he said.

“Copy,” Lucky answered as his hands danced across the controls to allow Kade off the ship. Jason counted off thirteen seconds in his head, more than enough time for Kade to be out of the ship and clear.

“Close her up,” Jason ordered, reaching over and switching the main engines to “active.” There was a short whine followed by the always comforting
boom
of the mains igniting. He grabbed the throttle and advanced it, sending them climbing up into the brightening sky of morning. “Lucky, begin taking sensor sweeps of the surrounding area and arm two thermobaric missiles, maximum yield,” he ordered.

“Scans of surrounding space show no threats,” Lucky reported. “Missiles are armed. What is our target?”

“We’re going to give our friends back there a little parting gift for all the hospitality they showed our crew,” Jason said as he accelerated along the ridge line and swing them around into a tight turn to face back the way they’d come.

“Missiles set to traverse the tunnel and detonate in the center of the cavern, staggered trigger,” Lucky reported. Jason looked and saw the two weapons pop up on his tactical panel as available. He selected them both and opened the forward weapons bay doors as they flew back towards the mouth of the tunnel entrance.

When he was within two hundred meters, he braked to a halt and allowed the ship to settle into a hover. He could see a group of workers desperately trying to repair the barrier as the sun continued its inexorable march into the sky. They looked up at the hovering gunship, seemingly undecided if they should retreat, continue working on the barrier, or open fire with their pitifully inadequate weaponry.

He watched the combat shuttle lift and clear the area and decided to make their choice for them. He squeezed the trigger and held it as two missiles were ejected off the racks and streaked away from the ship, going supersonic as they entered the tunnel.

The results were more energetic than Jason had predicted. First, a blast of debris, including the barrier repair crew, was ejected from the tunnel at tremendous speed. Then the mountain itself began to sag along the southern face and, ever so slowly, the peak began to sink as the entire mountain seemed to collapse in on itself. With a look of grim satisfaction, Jason swung the nose of the
Phoenix
away and began to climb up out of the atmosphere, her main engines roaring over a now truly deserted planet.

They made orbit quickly and were joined in formation by the Eshquarian combat shuttle piloted by Kade. He said he would be happy to stay until the
Phoenix
was capable of slip-space flight, so Jason had Lucky and Mazer prepare a sealed transit box of provisions to send over to the shuttle since he knew they’d eaten everything on board during the trip out. Once they were gone, he told the computer to maintain a high level of alertness and inform him if the sensors picked up anything entering the system. The stealth ship near Colton Hub was still firmly in his mind as he walked off the bridge and towards the infirmary.

“I see you’ve been busy,” Jason remarked as he walked in. “How do you feel?”

“Since my injuries were fairly light compared to his, I’m doing quite well,” Doc said. His arm was still in the sling, but Jason could see that the bone had already been knitted by the medical nanobots and the swelling in the limb was reducing significantly.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Jason said. “And Twingo?”

“I’m not going to lie; he’s still in a lot of danger,” Doc said. “But I believe he’s out of the most critical stage. He couldn’t have handled the shock of a full nanotech treatment despite the computer trying to inject them behind my back every ten minutes. I’ve been doing targeted treatments over the last couple of hours using nanobots with strict programming. I’ve been able to repair the worst of the damage to his circulatory system and have been supplementing his oxygen supply to make sure his brain isn’t in danger.”

“I’m going to have to try and get the slip-drive powered up and active without him,” Jason remarked, “so we won’t be pushing it on the way back to Restaria. I’ll try to keep the flight as smooth as possible so you can keep at it.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Doc said. “But what I could really use is a more completely equipped facility. Unfortunately there isn’t one to be found on Galvetor or Restaria that doesn’t cater mostly to geltens.”

“Then you’ll like this next bit of news,” Jason said. “The
Defiant
will likely reach the Galvetor System about the same time we do.”

“That
is
good news,” Doc agreed. “Their sick bay rivals some planetside hospitals I’ve been at.”

Jason nodded and turned to leave. “Good work saving his life,” he said. “Keep me updated and I’ll leave you alone to your work.”

“Thanks for coming after us, Captain,” Doc said seriously before Jason reached the door.

“It’s good to have you guys back,” Jason said quickly before leaving, not wanting to become overly emotional in front of Doc. He went down to Engineering and checked on all the systems before pulling up another terminal. Thankfully, Twingo had insisted on training up others on the crew about certain aspects of the ship in case they were ever in a situation exactly like the one they found themselves in.

He began by performing a full diagnostic of the hardware and then powered up all the control and safety systems. Twingo had also written a few scripts that could be executed to perform batch commands and bring up certain parts of the system in the correct order without him having to remember each little step. Once everything looked good and the computer agreed that the system was fully prepped, he initiated the charging sequence for the emitter coils. After a flurry of activity, during which there were bangs, whines, hisses, along with chatter from the control panel, he could feel the slight tug of the gravity shifting in the aft part of the ship as the emitters charged and began to form small gravitational eddies. It would all normalize once the drive was fully charged and stabilized, so he left Engineering and made his way back to the bridge to wait.

Like most of the major systems on the DL7, the slip-drive emitters were new and state of the art, so the charging time would be a fraction of what it had been when they’d been flying the original Jepsen equipment. But the delay still rankled him now that he had his ship back. He wanted to get Twingo to a proper medical facility, grab Kage, figure out what Crusher was doing, and then blast out of the Galvetor System as fast as the
Phoenix
could carry them.

*****

Kage and Morakar were walking slowly along the halls near the Archon’s offices in the now-abandoned Legion Center. They couldn’t figure out why it seemed everyone had left, and had sent Meluuk to the other tower to see if the story was the same over there.

“Even the normal sentries aren’t at their post,” Morakar said quietly. “This is quite strange.” They moved along the halls for a while longer, having not met anyone other than a single cleaning bot and a young female gelten administrative assistant who had forgotten something in her office. She was unaware of anything out of the ordinary, so they let her go on her way.

Morakar was also unable to raise Fordix, the Praetores, or even the Caretaker on their com units. He knew Lord Felex had gone to confront the Praetores about what was happening within the city of Ker, and the fact they could no longer raise any of them was of great concern to him. He and Kage had been steadily working their way up the tower, looking for any signs of life as they went.

“This is just getting plain creepy,” Kage said after they’d cleared another floor and were walking up the outer stairwell to the top floor. Morakar halted so fast that Kage walked into the back of him. “What is it?” The Galvetic warrior was sniffing the air, drawing in deep breaths slowly and blowing them out through the side of his mouth.

“Blood,” he said simply. “gelten blood. Come on.” They raced up the stairs, following Morakar’s sense of smell, and ended up in front of the ornate door of the actual office the Guardian Archon used to execute his duties. Rearing back, Morakar kicked it near the handle and sent it flying inward.

“I don’t think it was locked,” Kage remarked as he squeezed in past the big warrior and looked around inside the office. “Oh shit!” Morakar turned to see what Kage was looking at. Still propped up in the chair was Crusher, his eyes closed and an enormous blade sticking out of his midsection.

Kage moved over to his friend and checked for vitals. “He’s still alive, but it looks like he’s lost a lot of blood.”

“The blade looks like it just missed his heart,” Morakar said. “Beyond that I can’t tell.” Kage reached out for the knife handle, but Morakar grabbed his hand firmly. “Don’t. That may be all that’s keeping him from bleeding out right now. Who could have fought the Lord Archon and won with such a decisive blow?”

“Nobody,” Kage said, turning Crusher’s head to the left to expose the small disc still affixed to his neck. “This is interesting indeed. These are only used by Eshquarian Intelligence as far as I know and aren’t available for general sale.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a neural disruptor,” Kage said, taking a close look at the device. “It can be programmed per species and then can inhibit any signals you want. It looks like someone paralyzed Crusher and then stabbed him through the chest.”

“So we’re looking for someone he would have trusted,” Morakar said.

“Right now I’m looking for a way to disable it,” Kage corrected. “These are almost always rigged to either explode or kill the victim if tampered with. See if you can find the deployment tool … it will look like a long silver baton.” As Morakar searched the room, Kage leaned in and extended his hand. Thin tendrils of nanobots extended from his fingers and began probing around the base of the device. He explored the inner workings of the inhibitor using his neural implants and the connection provided by his specialized nanobots and was able to conclude that the device was indeed set to kill Crusher if anyone tampered with it.

“Is this it?” Morakar asked, walking over with a silver-handled device he’d picked up off of the desk in the center of the room.

“Yep,” Kage confirmed, “bring it here.” He slowly inspected the device before releasing his nanobots once again to infiltrate the device and explore around. While the neural inhibitor was rigged, the remote used to deploy it was not. Kage was able to gain access to the relatively primitive logic inside the wand and command it to disable the inhibitor on Crusher’s neck. As soon as he did, his friend pulled in a long, ragged breath and arched his back, moaning loudly.

“Easy, big guy,” Kage said, placing a hand on Crusher’s chest. “You’ve got about a meter of sword sticking out of you so let’s not make any sudden moves.” Crusher had already lapsed back into unconsciousness and didn’t answer him.