Soldiers of Fortune (30 page)

              "That's a safe bet," Twingo said. "And I'm sure that ConFed ship is no coincidence either. So are they really just going to let us fly off, Captain?"

              "It seems so," Jason said with a shrug. "Between the theft and the rescue, it seems Dowarty has taken a bit of a shine to us. He also seems to be a lot higher up than we originally thought, Kross mentioned him by name when we passed him."

              "Ah, the intrigue of politics," Kage said, suddenly leaning forward in his seat. "Captain, quite a large sum of money has been transmitted to our onboard treasury. Should I accept it?"

              "What the hell kind of question is that?!" Crusher exclaimed. "Yes accept it." Kage wisely took that as confirmation as he keyed in their access code to accept the payment from Dowarty.

             
After another two hours passed, the crew began to get anxious, wondering when their clearance would be granted so they could leave. Jason didn't think they were in any direct danger. Whoever was running the operations center seemed to have more pressing issues than a single, banged-up gunship and its six outlaw occupants. That and it made no sense to torture them with an extended wait just to forcibly board and kill them later when they already had half the crew in their hands.

              "Ping their controller," Jason told Kage, who typed a message to transmit to the station's docking controller and leaned back to await the reply. When his console chimed he read it aloud;

              "
Unidentified vessel, remain docked until clearance is granted to power your drives and detach. Fleet movements take precedence
."

              "What fleet movements?" Jason wondered. Within the next few minutes he had his answer.

              "Captain, the docked raider ships are beginning to power their drives," Twingo said. "It looks like they're all getting ready to leave together."

              "Shit. I feel like we're running up on the end of something big here and we're stuck to this dock." Jason worried at his scalp with his right hand and glared at the sensor display that showed ships detaching and drifting up into a loose formation above their relative position in space. The members of Omega Force sat on the bridge of the
Phoenix
, transfixed at the sensor feed of the "pirate fleet" assembling over their heads. For the next sixty minutes different ships within the formation jockeyed for position and the amassed fleet began to separate into three distinct groups and started moving away from the station and towards the edge of the gas pocket they were in.

              "There they go," Kage said softly. Sure enough, the indicators on the sensor display started winking out as the raider ships meshed out of the system.

              "Fuck!" Jason raged as he smashed his fist into his right-hand console, nearly startling Kage out of his seat. "Where the hell could that many ships be going at one time?"

              "Captain, look," Doc said, his eyes also glued to his sensor display. Jason's head snapped around and he saw the recently-arrived fleet of warships also begin accelerating out of the area, obviously preparing to depart the system.

              "Get someone on the com and get us out of here. Tell them to ask Dowarty directly if you have to," Jason said to Kage. The Veran began trying to raise anyone in the station's control center that could get them clearance to detach and leave. "Twingo, get us ready to move. I don't care if they know we're powering up the drives or not."

              "On it, Captain," Twingo said, sliding into the engineering station on the bridge and sending the necessary commands to bring the
Phoenix's
powerplant and main drive up to flight-ready status.

              "I'm getting stone-walled, Captain," Kage said in disgust. "They say we're not cleared to leave and that Dowarty isn't available." Jason fumed for a moment before coming to a realization.

              "He isn't there," he said quietly. "He told them to hold us and then he left with one of those fleets, probably the newcomers in the shiny warships."

              "While that's probably true," Doc said, "where does that leave us?"

              "Can we raise the
Diligent
?"

              "Nope," Twingo said before Kage could answer. "Slip-space radios won't operate worth a damn this far into the nebula. Too many funky gravitational anomalies."

              "Bullshit," Jason insisted. "Slip-drive still works, it's the same principle."

              "Captain," Twingo replied in a pained voice. "The energy required to transmit a signal in slip-space is miniscule compared to the massive amount of power the drives need to output in order to transition a whole ship. The signal would just gets lost in the background noise."

              "No boosting the signal?" Jason asked, not willing to give up.

              "Oh, of course... why didn't
I
think of that?" Twingo's acerbic tone convinced Jason to abandon the idea.

              "A simple 'No' would have been fine." Jason said flatly. "Looks like we're back to doing things the way we usually do them," he said in a resigned tone. Crusher perked up at that.

              "Hell yeah! Let's break some shit!" Jason couldn't help but smile at his enthusiasm.

              "We can assume they're getting com traffic in and out of the nebula using the relay system we used on the way in," he said, thinking aloud. "Would that be a specialized type of com node that could reach just outside of this mess?"

              "Possibly," Twingo said, looking up to the ceiling to ponder the issue.

              "I can tell what you're thinking, Captain. It won't work," Kage spoke up. "If we destroy the com node they'll just send a ship from their hanger to make contact. If you really want to leave in secret we'd have to blow the whole station, and we're not carrying the firepower for that."

              "When you're right, you're right," Jason conceded. "Ideas?"

              "We sould just leave," Lucky said. "Nobody knows that we are reporting to the Eshquarians, or we would be dead already. It is imperative we leave to warn somebody about the fleets that have departed here. We should just blow the airlock seal and mesh out."

              "Twingo," Jason said loudly, smiling at Lucky while he did. "Arm us up... tactical condition Alpha."

              "Yes, sir!"

              The ship's interior lighting dimmed and took on a red tinge. It was to reduce the degradation of their low-light vision, but Jason always felt like his ship was also tensing up for war, becoming angry when the switch was flipped. A steady, building, sonic thrum was felt on the bridge as the reactor poured power into the offensive and defensive systems while simultaneously bringing the drives online.

              "
Unidentified ship, you WILL power down your drives and weapon systems and remain docked as instructed."
The irate voice of one of the controllers broke in over the emergency broadcast channel, causing everyone to look to Jason.

              "It's about to get real, boys," he said quietly. "Target the gangway with the port plasma cannon."

              "Target acquired and locked. Let 'er rip, Captain," Kage said with a misplaced feral grin on his wide mouth. Jason mirrored the expression and squeezed the trigger on his stick. The massive plasma bolt blew the gangway in half and still had enough energy left to continue on and strike another docked ship on a different junction, destroying it.

              "Oops," Jason said as he advanced the throttle and yanked back on the stick. The
Phoenix
turned her nose up and pulled away from the station on a wave of gravitational distortion before the controllers could even think about raising an interdiction field to stop them. "Shields!"

              "We're pulling part of the gangway with us, Captain," Twingo said. "Shields have a coverage gap on the forward, port quadrant."

              "Blow it!" The outer airlock couplings were equipped with explosive squibs that could blow a coupled seal off the hull. He sheepishly realized that he should have ordered that course of action before firing one of his main guns through the gangway.

             
The squibs blew the remnants of the airlock coupling away from the hull, sending it drifting slowly away from them as it maintained its forward velocity relative to the ship. Once it cleared away enough, Jason steered towards open space and slammed down the throttle, sending the gunship streaking away before a response force from the station had a chance to launch.

              "Clear to jump," Kage reported, having already programmed in a short escape hop.

              "Jumping now," Jason said, pulling the throttle back to idle and smacking the oversized control on his right to mesh the
Phoenix
away from The Complex.

Chapter 12

              "Still can't raise the
Diligent
?" Jason asked. They'd been in slip-space for twenty minutes and had been unable to reach Crisstof or Captain Colleren.

              "No. I can't tell if they're not listening or if their node is offline," Kage said. A soft beep from his console distracted him and he promptly ignored his captain. Jason glared at him and climbed out of his seat to walk around the bridge and stretch his legs a bit. They were flying at maximum slip-velocity towards Oorch Prime to try and catch the trail of the raider fleet. They had no idea as to the origins, or the destination, of the other fleet of warships, so they had been trying to inform the
Diligent
as to the position of The Complex as well as keep a tail on the mass of pirate ships that had moved out. They had failed miserably on both counts. The tension on the bridge was palpable, they knew that something major was afoot, but they had no idea as to what that may be, much less how to stop it.

              "Doc," Jason said, still glaring at the inattentive Kage, "put a message on a loop to the
Diligent
..."

              "Captain!!" Kage's strident call was of utter distress. He looked up at Jason in abject horror, but didn't speak.

              "What?" Jason asked, perplexed.

              "I know where that fleet of warships is heading, and it isn't good."

              "How not good?"

              "Millions of lives are at risk. Right now," Kage said in a tone that made Jason's stomach drop.
Millions? What are you into, Kross?

              "Better start from the top, bud," Jason said gently as the other members of the crew moved to hear Kage better.

              "I finally cracked the download from Dowarty's computer," Kage started. "The reason there were so many sophisticated safeguards in place is because it was loaded with operational data for all the shit that's been going on in the Cluster. We're even in there for the theft of those crystal birds and transporting Dowarty to the Solic System.

             
"The raider fleet is scattering into six attack groups as we speak, they'll do hit and runs up and down the outer edge of the colonies to try and coax the Eshquarian fleet out, nothing too major, but enough that it can't be ignored. They want the bulk of the fleet away from their home port."

              "Are they actually going to attack Eshquaria Prime? With all its orbital defenses?" Crusher asked, dubious. Kage simply shook his head slowly.

              "They're going after Shorret-3, one of the main raw material producers that feeds the Eshquarian industrial complex with refined metals," he said.