Omega Rising (2 page)

He descended the slope rapidly using the trees for both cover and support to keep his speed in check. While he was still concerned about stealth, he knew the still-running engines from the craft should mask the sound of the loose dirt and scrub he was kicking up as he slid/hopped down the hill. He paused at the edge of the clearing and dropped to a knee, holding perfectly still he strained his ears and eyes to detect any trace of movement that indicated he had been detected. He was still obeying that extra sense that told him the utmost caution was required. He took off towards the craft at a crouched, loping gait that covered the gap quickly but didn't leave him breathless when he reached it.
What in the hell am I doing here?
The first twinges of real fear entered his mind as he approached to within 20 meters of the thing and realized just how large and
alien
it really was.

He was standing under the left engine nacelle and looking around at the underbelly of the huge aircraft. The landing gear was the traditional tricycle type he was accustomed to, each strut ending in an axel beam that was supported by four wheels per. Or at least they looked like wheels of a sort. They were spherical and obviously attached to the landing gear assemblies, but there were no visible fasteners or axels that he could see. He peered around, unsure what his next course of action should be. He had rushed under the craft mostly on impulse, now he wasn't sure what, exactly, he had hoped to accomplish. Just then, the aft section of the underbelly dropped a foot or so and then rapidly lowered to the ground accompanied by an unmistakable whine of a hydraulic pump. After Jason had recovered from the sudden shock, he saw that the section of the skin between the engine nacelles had actually pivoted downward rather than lowered. It was a ramp.

Without thinking Jason rushed towards the lowered end and came around the edge, raising his rifle halfway up as he did without even realizing it. Nobody was there. The ramp led up into a well lit bay that he couldn't see into from his position at the bottom of the ramp. Shrugging slightly to himself, he walked up the ramp. Hell, he had committed this far to an idiotic course of action, he may as well see it through to the end. Once at the top of the ramp he found himself standing in the mouth of a large cargo bay. It was both familiar and somehow not at the same time. On one hand it looked very much like the interior of a C-17 cargo jet, even the spars lining the walls that curved upwards into an arch very much looked like countless other aircraft he had been in. But on the other hand there were some unsettling differences. The spars and the floor, for example, looked to be far too heavily built to be for any conventional aircraft. That and the area was too sterile, it was completely void of the wire harnesses and machinery that littered the interior of any cargo plane he had ever been on.

His inspection was cut short when two louvered vents on the forward bulkhead opened and the interior of the cargo bay was suddenly transformed into a wind tunnel. Jason dropped to one knee and grabbed a tie-down point with his left hand while his right maintained control of his weapon. He closed his eyes and grimaced in agony from the overpressure as the air velocity continued to increase and an acrid smell began to fill the area. He opened his eyes and saw the vents were now belching out a thick noxious, smoke. His throat and eyes were on fire as he turned and tried to safely exit the cargo bay. Mercifully, the violent rush of air/smoke died down as suddenly as it started. Coughing and streaming mucus, he only wanted to get down the ramp and into the fresh mountain air he knew was just outside.

He turned back around just in time to see the ramp raise and lock and a set of interior doors slide around into place. He felt his ears pop from the pressure change and knew he was sealed in. Unfortunately, so was a good amount of the fumes from the vents. He was quickly losing consciousness, so he couldn't tell if the floor was actually moving or not.
Climbing into this thing may have been a tad impulsive.
Even through his tunneled vision and detached perception he was still surprised when the floor heaved and threw him into the rear doors.              

              The blackness started to become grey.

              Jason swam towards the light as his concussed brain struggled to restart all his cognitive functions. The gray tunnel he was looking though wavered, and then coalesced into the deck plates of a C-17's cargo bay. But something was wrong about the metal surface his face was planted into. He lifted his head as his brain began to get feedback from the rest of his body; it hurt, everywhere. His training overrode his panic and he lay still and began to systematically flex muscle groups to find out if, or where, he was injured. To his relief the only true injury was his little finger on the left hand, it was severely dislocated. It hurt like hell, but he was still mobile.

He smoothly rolled to his side and got to his knees, every part of his body screamed in pain, but he ignored it. He blinked his eyes and shook his head side to side to chase away the grogginess.
Ah, yes... the "aircraft". Rushing in was probably not a great idea.
Other than his finger, that was sticking out at an unnatural angle, he appeared to be only slightly bruised and battered from his impact with the rear doors of the cargo bay. The lights in the hold were now dimmed considerably from when he first made entry, but he could still see well enough to move about. The next thing he noticed after his injuries, was a conspicuous lack of weight in his hands.
Where the hell did my rifle go?
While he would normally be humiliated for losing control of his weapon, right then he was so confused as to what he had gotten himself into that he was not especially concerned with the normal operator bravado, doubly so since there was nobody there to see him anyway.

Climbing to his feet, he saw the AR-15, sans magazine, against the starboard wall of the cargo hold. Even as he was moving to retrieve the rifle he was scanning the room for the magazine that must have ejected on impact. It took him a few more minutes to find the black polymer magazine, and when he saw it he feared the worse; if it had broken he would be down to a single round in the chamber, and he was now half convinced he had gotten himself into a situation that he may have to shoot his way out of. Happily, the magazine appeared to have suffered no ill effects from the abuse save for some superficial scratches.
Damn, Magpul makes some good shit.
He slapped the mag back into the rifle and again felt ready to make some moves, even though his finger really fuckin' hurt.

Jason's only priority at that point was to get out of the craft and make it back out of the area unseen. He has already gotten more than he bargained for during his ill-planned rescue attempt; he would clear the area and try again to alert the authorities. As he approached the rear doors he could tell something was different. When he first had entered there was the normal noises one would associate with that environment; air handlers, machinery humming and the occasional high pitched whine of a hydraulic accumulator charging. All these things were still present, but now there was a low pitched rumble that drowned out all the other sounds, and it wasn't the noise Jason would typically associate with turbine engines. Although a part of his mind was cataloguing all of these anomalies, he didn't let anything distract him from his goal. In this case his goal was the control panel mounted in a pedestal on the right side of the door that looked to be a likely location for the door/ramp controls.

When he reached the pedestal that housed the control panel, that he assumed controlled the rear doors, he was brought up short . If he still had any doubts that this was an American aircraft, they were confirmed by the panel's display. The symbols on the screen were definitely written words, but it was not in any language Jason recognized. That wasn't necessarily saying a lot; he only spoke English. He tentatively touched the display to see what would happen. He was rewarded with the display turning red and a short blast from a klaxon-style horn. Some more odd script scrolled across the screen and then it went dark. Subsequent touches on the panel elicited no reaction.
Awesome. Now what?
He turned back to look at the front bulkhead to see what other options he might have.

There were two doors in the forward bulkhead of the cargo bay. One was level with the deck and was large and very heavily built. The second door looked like the typical interior hatch you would see on a naval surface vessel; ovoid in shape and slightly inset into the bulkhead. It was directly over the first, larger door and accessible by a walkway and a staircase that ran down the port side of the cargo bay. The lower door looked well secured, but the upper door looked like a standard crew access hatch. With the same lack of thinking that had gotten him into the situation in the first place, he moved decisively towards the staircase and the upper access hatch.

He stood before the hatch and couldn't find an obvious handle to open it. He did, however, see a large red, circular button. Doing what humans instinctually do when confronted with a large red button, Jason pressed it. Thankfully, the hatch simply slid aside into the wall recess giving Jason easy access to the interior of the craft. He peered into the doorway, rifle at the ready, but there was nothing to see but a dark passageway.
Of course it has to be dark.
He was beginning to be less and less comfortable about his situation, if that was even possible. Everything seemed... off. Even the act of walking had an odd feel to it.

Remembering he had slipped his SureFire flashlight into his pocket, he grabbed it and lit up the area just beyond the hatch. It was rather anti-climactic; there was nothing but a short passage with a touchscreen control panel on the wall, displaying that same indecipherable language as in the cargo bay, and another entry hatch at the far end. As he crossed the threshold of the hatchway the flashlight slipped out of his hand and hit the deck. He froze instantly. That was
definitely
not right, there was a barely perceptible delay from when he expected the light to hit the floor and when it actually did.

Frowning, he grabbed the charging handle of his rifle and cycled the action with the ejection port facing up. The 5.56x45mm cartridge flipped up and out of the rifle as it should, but seemed to take too long to hit the deck, and it flew further than he would have expected as well.
What the hell is happening?
He hopped lightly on the balls of his feet and he felt different, lighter. He again looked at the bizarre, alien language scrolling on the display to his right. His mind shied away from an obvious, yet absurd conclusion.

He moved toward the second hatch, pausing to retrieve the ejected round and slip it into his pocket, and was relieved/horrified to find that the hatch automatically cycled to allow him further entry.
An airlock?
He gripped his rifle and moved forward with a determined scowl on his face, he desperately wanted off this ship (the word had automatically begun to replace "aircraft" in his mind) and get back to his cabin without being seen, he had the distinct feeling that no matter how noble his intentions were, his intrusion would likely be a punishable offense.

As he traversed further into the ship's interior he noticed the unmistakable smell of burning avionics. He had been first on the scene at enough crashes to have the unique smell of burning wire, circuit boards, and composites permanently etched into his brain. The widening passageway he was in had a definite haze in the air that was visible in the low level lighting that looked to be some type of emergency lighting rather than a primary light source. Sighing at the inevitable, Jason pressed on, wondering when he would run into the first crew member of this ship. He was still clinging desperately to the belief that this was a heretofore unknown craft built in secret by a foreign nation that had happened to crash land in his backyard. But the evidence was mounting that this may not be the case; the technology evident here seemed far beyond anything he had ever heard of, and then there was the written language scattered throughout the interior.
Maybe all that Area 51 bullshit was no joke.

As the corridor ended Jason could see the interior was laid out around a large, open center area that looked to have some common spaces and what appeared to be computer terminals along the left side. The right side was dominated by what had to be the galley judging by the high-top metal table and sterile looking counters. There were additional hatches interspersed along the bulkheads and the center aisle he was standing on continued all the way forward to a wide staircase that led up into another darkened corridor, from which emanated a dim, red glow. After affirming that the large main area he was standing in was empty, Jason strode quickly for the stairs ahead of him. He was operating under the assumption that
whoever
built this thing also put the flight deck at the front. As he passed a lounge area he noted that the furniture looked like standard, Earthling furniture. That was somewhat comforting, but did little to stave off Jason's rising anxiety.

Jason walked up the stairs with purpose, actually shouldering his weapon and making sure he was ready for anything, safety off. While he had no hostile intentions, he also had no desire to walk flat-footed and helpless into a bad situation. The corridor at the top of the stairs wasn't especially long or wide, but at the end he could make out the telltale sign of indicator lights and heard a soft muttering that he couldn't make out, punctuated by what he assumed were beeps from the instruments. He stalked forward on silent feet, ready for anything. He noted three rooms off the corridor, two to the left and one to the right, but they were unoccupied. That was as far as his investigation went, his goal was just in sight and he wouldn't be deterred by poking around in empty rooms.