Omega force the human fa.., p.14
Omega Force: The Human Factor (OF8), page 14
“What should we do with him, ma’am?” one of the guards asked.
Margaret pretended to mull it over. “I suppose we should put him in the holding facility,” she said finally. “Make sure your people know that despite looking like an accountant this man is a highly trained CIA operative and to secure him accordingly.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She turned back to her computer, well aware that she had just crossed a threshold that made it impossible to turn back what she had set in motion just a few short years before. The problem was that the shortsighted bastards on Earth, specifically in Washington DC, Moscow, and London simply refused to see the inevitable: they were an emerging power in a galactic community and they needed to prepare for the eventuality that they’d be challenged.
All the individual governments of Earth continued to bicker and speculate, all the while wasting precious time and wearing thin the patience of their benefactors, the ull. They had something the aliens wanted, the aliens had something Earth needed … what the hell was the holdup? Finalize the deal, strike a treaty, and get on with propping up Earth’s first space military to begin projecting force in their locality.
It was a genuine fear that chilled her to the core that someone else would show up before they were ready to defend themselves. If that sack of crap Jason Burke had turned over that ship he had somehow gained procession of, there was no telling how far along they’d be. Earth’s best and brightest bashed their heads against a wall for years trying to glean anything useful out of that damn heap he’d left in the Potomac. After all that time and money wasted, about the only thing they’d gotten was a better thrust motor, some interesting new designs for batteries, and a mountain of paperwork as all they wanted to do was pure research and not bother with practical application.
In the end the project had been suspended and the wreckage cleaned up and squirreled away to parts unknown. That was just before Margaret was brought in and told that they’d been contacted by yet another alien species, the ull. The powers that be wanted to keep it as hush-hush as possible, but the understanding was that Earth was negotiating from a place of power and the ull were willing to honor that and help give them a leg up in developing their spaceflight capabilities. It galled her to no end that after all the alien ships that had rained down on their planet they had to bend the knee and wait with their hands out while the ull technology and support flowed at a glacial pace. It was during this time, early in her duties as the Terranovus project administrator, that her hatred for Sergeant Jason Burke, USAF, had burned brightly. Sending the strike team when she did was likely premature, but once the Coronado had been ready and Marcus’ men had been brought up to speed and given their immunizations she just couldn’t wait to pull the trigger. Now all she’d accomplished was to give that asshole fair warning that humans had achieved spaceflight in spite of him and were now after him.
“Shit,” she spat, standing up so abruptly her chair slid back and crashed into the filing cabinet. “Hopefully he just finds another hole to crawl into and stays there. I’ll deal with him once I get another tac team spun up.”
“Ma’am?” her orderly said, putting his head in the door.
“Shut up,” she growled. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Chapter 15
“We’re up to eighty-five percent of maximum slip velocity,” Twingo said loudly as he walked onto the bridge. “Kage is making our guest comfortable in starboard berthing. You need anything else before I hit the rack?”
“Nope, I’m good, bud,” Jason said from where he was slouching in the pilot’s seat. “I’ll tell the computer to keep an eye on our new friend and then I guess it’s a boring, long slip-space flight back to Terranovus.”
“Not quite,” Twingo said. “We have to stop off and reprovision. The rations Kage brought with him are already almost gone and the processor may have just gasped its last breath. It was leaking some sort of sludge out the back and the smell is pretty bad when you get close to it. I wouldn’t suggest eating anything that comes out of it.”
“How the hell are we out of rations already?”
“I think Crusher may have been eating two or three at a time,” Twingo said uncomfortably. “Or four.”
“That fat sack of crap,” Jason griped, sitting up straight and punching up a menu on his navigation panel. “Fine. I’ll pick us a waypoint. Go ahead and get some rack time, but your first priority on your next watch is to pull that processor and get it down to the cargo bay. We’re tossing it out the back when we’re over a planet.”
“We could just disassemble it and feed it into the recycler,” Twingo said.
“That damn thing has been the bane of my existence ever since we reformed this outfit,” Jason shook his head. “I want it and its bad juju off my ship.”
“You’re the boss,” Twingo shrugged. “Whatever the hell juju is will soon be a fiery streak through some poor bastard’s atmosphere soon enough.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Sleep well.” Jason was scrolling through a list of known ports of call and calculating the time and distance it would take to divert the Phoenix there, grab supplies, and be on their way again. “For a big man you are very, very quiet,” he said after a moment. “Some would even say sneaky.”
“You mind if I come up here?” Russ Johnson asked from the bridge hatchway.
“Knock yourself out,” Jason said. Russ turned a few times on the bridge before settling for a sensor station along the port side that was inactive, spinning the seat around so he could look out at the simulated starfield and see Jason at the same time.
“I feel like I’m part of a prisoner exchange program.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” Jason shrugged. “Carolyn wanted to stay aboard the Coronado for some reason, and your commander wanted someone to come with us. I don’t necessarily trust her any more than any of you, so to me it’s just one more extra person onboard.”
“So … we’re cool, man?” Russ asked, the hesitation evident in his voice. “I mean, you’re not going to toss me out of an airlock or anything, are you?”
“No,” Jason chuckled in spite of himself. “I understand following orders and I’m willing to take you at your word that you’re as interested in learning the truth about what’s going on as I am. I’m not looking for any sort of misguided revenge. I will give you a word of advice though: Don’t let Crusher talk you into any ‘training’ sessions. He won’t kill you, but he’ll beat you badly enough that Doc will have to work on you again.”
Russ just swallowed hard and nodded. “Is he as badass as he looks?” he asked after a moment.
“More so,” Jason said. “He’s from a race of warriors who are trained to fight from early childhood, and he even stands out among them. His real name is Felex Tezakar and he’s their Guardian Archon, which is a sort of title of nobility.”
“And the robot?”
“Just as another friendly warning: Don’t call him a robot,” Jason shook his head. “His kind takes it as a pretty serious insult. Lucky is a fully sentient, artificial being. I guess ‘android’ would be the closest thing we have in English to describe it. He’s also the combat variety of his race; even Crusher can’t beat him, although he’ll lie and say they’re evenly matched.
“The being that attacked Earth back when I showed up the last time was another of their kind. His name was Deetz … he was the one who originally took me off the planet when he made an emergency landing with this ship near my cabin in Colorado.”
Once he started talking, Jason discovered a deep-seated need to communicate with another of his own species. It was a desire that surprised him in its intensity.
“So our handler told us you served during in Iraq and Afghanistan, but you look younger than all of us,” Russ said. “Was she lying about that too?”
“No, I don’t age the same anymore thanks to Doc tinkering with my genetic code,” Jason said. “I was in Iraq in ’04 and then Afghanistan in ’06 and into ’07.”
“Second Battle for Fallujah?”
“I was further north at the time,” Jason shook his head. “Up past Mosul. Iraq wasn’t a bad deployment given what was going on then. Afghanistan was a bitch.”
“You don’t have to say if you don’t feel like it, but how the hell did you end up out here?” Russ asked. “I understand being taken, but now you’re a running gun, riding with a warrior prince and an android soldier?”
“Eh, we’ve got some time to kill,” Jason said, checking over his instruments one more time before leaning back and giving a brief account of his time in space. He rationalized it by telling himself that at least one person would have the real story back home, since it seemed like everyone else viewed him as public enemy number one.
****
“We’re ready back here, Captain,” Twingo said over the intercom. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“I can’t think of a more deserving place,” Jason replied. “You may eject when ready.”
“Ejecting,” Twingo said. On the monitor Jason watched as the food processing unit, which was much bigger than he’d originally thought, was shoved out the back of the cargo bay just as the Phoenix kissed the threshold of the thermosphere. As per his programming, the aft optical sensors tracked it as it began to glow and then grew a fiery tail as it screamed through the atmosphere.
“Are there any other insults you’d like to heap upon the citizens of this planet while we’re back here?”
“Once we’re overflying the city you can dump the waste containment tanks if you’d like,” Jason said, prompting a snort of laughter from Kage.
“Copy that,” Twingo said. Jason had been mostly joking about the tank purge, but he saw no need to stop Twingo if he was actually going to do it.
“You got some kind of hard-on for this place?” Russ asked.
“It’s not one of my favorites,” Jason admitted. “It’s officially named Prreta Prime, but everyone just calls it ‘End of the Line.’ It has an indigenous population and its own industry, but it’s about one of the dirtiest, most unfriendly places I’ve ever been.”
“Then why stop here?” Russ asked.
“Because it’s the last planet along the way that will have what we need,” Jason said. “The nickname comes from the fact that this is as far as anyone normally travels down the Orion Arm. After this it’s Breaker’s World, Ull and the worlds they hold, and then the Solar System. I have no idea what’s beyond that. It’s uncharted and I’m sure as hell not poking around in deep space in a ship this small.”
“Breaker’s World would have attracted less attention,” Crusher remarked.
“But we can’t be sure we can even get provisions there,” Kage said. “We also don’t know if the ull have decided to release the fact it was humans that took the Saabror regent. It’s probably better to just avoid that planet for the time being.”
Crusher just grunted.
“Avoiding that place is always good advice,” Jason said as the Phoenix broke into the lower atmosphere. “I’d like to land someplace that respects anonymity without having to engage in a running gunfight as the ship is being fueled.”
The rest of the flight to the sprawling, disorganized spaceport was uneventful as a bored-sounding controller gave them clearance to land near the commercial port. It had actually taken Kage a few tries to get someone on the com from the landing authority to make sure they wouldn’t be met by armed troops when they dropped the ramp.
Jason had only been to Prreta twice before, but there seemed to be a feeling of decline and a general malaise that made him think the world was destined to be just as much a slum as Breaker’s World, maybe more so given the sheer number of people who called Prreta home and really had nowhere else to go. The Phoenix had overflown entire cities that appeared abandoned and obviously disused industrial complexes on the way in, all of which at one time had been thriving. It was depressing to see how quickly things could change for the worse.
“Drop the gear,” he told Kage. “Crusher, Lucky … and Russ … meet me in the armory once we land.”
“Expecting trouble?” Kage asked as the landing gear extended with the usual complaints of pops and bangs reverberating through the hull.
“I’m not not expecting trouble,” Jason shrugged. “It just seems to happen. Go ahead and get a fuel team out here and while we’re at it call for a general service. The water could probably be exchanged and let’s top off the atmospheric consumables.”
“Got it.” Kage’s head bobbed forward as Jason executed one of his least graceful landings in a while, the nose gear slamming into the tarmac. “Nice landing.”
“Damnit!” Jason grunted. “See if you can get me a line on a supplier for rations too. Look up my medical file and grab one of Doc’s initial evaluations to make sure we take Russ’s dietary needs into account. My system has adapted quite a bit over the years and I’d hate to accidentally kill him because he ate the wrong thing.”
“I know this is hard to believe, but I’m actually fairly intelligent,” Kage said belligerently. “I can handle buying food without screwing it up.”
Jason opened his mouth to reply, but instead just climbed out of his seat and walked off the bridge. He also made a mental note to have Doc check on the incoming supplies. Russ would be dead on the floor and Kage would argue for hours how it wasn’t his fault.
When Jason walked into the armory Lucky was doing his usual stand-in-the-corner-and-watch routine, but Crusher was in rare form. With a new, captive audience he was explaining his love of edge weapons in great detail and brandishing a number of wicked-looking blades in a careless fashion that seemed to be greatly distressing Russ, who watched in wide-eyed silence.
“Now this one … this is one of my favorites,” Crusher said, pulling a curved short sword off the wall rack. “I killed three Korkarans and one of them was carrying this. I’m not sure where he got it from, but it’s a damn good blade”—he swung it casually, the blade whistling through the air near Russ’s face—“and holds an edge well. You see the reversed spikes along the top? When you jam it into someone they latch on and really do some damage on the way out. Makes a mess, but it takes the fight out of them quickly.”
“We’re going to go out light,” Jason said. “This place is fairly lax about people being openly armed, but let’s not draw any unwanted attention by carrying an arsenal.”
“Now this one …” Crusher continued, ignoring Jason. “What the hell? Where is it?”
“Where is what?” Jason asked, trying to keep his voice neutral.
“The Krostak,” Crusher growled. “It’s usually hanging right here. What did you do with it?!”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about!” Jason snapped, meeting force with force. At least that part is true. I actually have no idea what he’s talking about.
“It’s the ceremonial blade that normally hangs right here!” Crusher jabbed a clawed finger at the open spot on the wall. “It was given to me at the ceremony that marked my ascension into the ranks of the Legion. Every warrior receives one and it is very important. I want to know where it is!”
“Did you leave it on Galvetor?” Lucky asked reasonably.
“I would leave it nowhere!” Crusher thundered. “It’s a highly personalized item, no two are alike.”
Oh shit…
“I’m sure it has to be either back in the hangar armory or in your home,” Jason said. “It’s not like it can just up and leave on its own.”
“I will get to the truth of this!” Crusher declared dramatically before stomping out of the armory through the open hatch to the cargo bay. Russ turned and gave Jason a puzzled, wild-eyed look. Jason just smiled and shrugged before going back to prepping his gear.
“I may have made a mistake coming along,” Russ said finally.
“We get that a lot,” Jason said, not looking up.
Chapter 16
“Madam President, Director Stiles is here to see you.”
“Send him in.” President Abigail Hightower leaned back in her chair. The CIA director rarely came to her in person, and when he did it was never because he had good news.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short—”
“Yes, yes, Richard,” Abigail waved him to a seat in front of the Resolute Desk with impatience. “To what do I owe the dubious pleasure of your company?”
“We have lost contact with … Site B,” Stiles said, waving his hand to indicate he knew the recording devices in the Oval Office were still active.
“I just read the latest transcripts from Site B via the NSO brief,” Abigail frowned. “It was in the transmission that came in last night.”
“Yes, Madam President, I read those too,” Stiles nodded. “As you know, I had a back-channel source of information installed at Site B in order to keep tabs on the project manager—”
“Margaret Jansen, the woman you vouched for.”
“—and the asset has missed the last few routine updates. There are protocols built in so that in the event there isn’t satellite availability we don’t panic, but we’ve crossed one of our trigger thresholds that leads me to believe that Site B might be compromised.”
“Explain,” Abigail said, now no longer impatiently waiting for Stiles to get to the point. Now she was dreading what the man would say next. Ever since being sworn in and briefed, she’d never been comfortable with the level of involvement their first off-planet colony had with an alien species, especially considering most of that contact was without direct oversight by any Earth government.
“The updates from Site B’s management team indicate that everything is going along in a routine manner and that the construction schedule milestones are being hit almost exactly,” Stiles said. “That by itself is a level-one indicator that something is amiss … no project holds so exactly to a projected schedule for so long. The next was when my asset, someone who has worked on this project since the Potomac Incident, is now no longer reporting.”
