Omega force the human fa.., p.19
Omega Force: The Human Factor (OF8), page 19
“Good … that’s a believable mesh-in velocity and should at least provide the distraction we need,” Jason said. “I want full active countermeasures. Let’s sneak in as quietly as we can; we’ll get underway once they’re fifty thousand kilometers out.”
“Might want to make that seventy-five to a hundred, Captain,” Doc said. “The ull ship will likely focus their active sensors on the Coronado when they seem to appear out of nowhere. If we’re at fifty there’s a chance of burn-through.”
“One hundred it is,” Jason said, making the adjustments on his nav panel. “That ship is so damn slow we could make it five hundred and this would still work.”
After what seemed like an absurd amount of time for a ship as small as the Coronado to cover a hundred thousand kilometers, Jason gently throttled up the main drive and turned over helm control to the computer. It was far better at maintaining the precise positioning their plan required than he would be when flying in the vast nothing of space. Without external reference points his human brain just wasn’t up to the task of making the hundreds of tiny corrections per minute that would be needed.
Once they were on the way and committed to the plan, Jason began rotating people off the bridge to prepare for any eventuality. He wanted Doc ready to administer any emergency aid and wanted Crusher armed and ready for either ship-to-ship or surface combat. Twingo took the opportunity to continue making minor repairs to the main drive, and Jason went down and pulled out his new heavy armor, checking the power supplies and pulling his own personal armament. Kage had wanted to do his part and offered to begin an active intrusion into Terranovus’ data networks that were tied to their slip-com node, but Jason decided to hold him in check and not risk being discovered.
“Aahhh!!!” Kage’s screech as Jason walked onto the bridge caused him to clench up, which in turn caused his armor to switch over to combat mode. Shielding blossomed around all of the vulnerable joints and two small shoulder-mounted cannons popped up from their storage place on the back of the suit and began tracking for targets.
“What the hell!?” Jason yelled, forcing the armor back into a normal mode of operation. Apparently the processors aboard the suit were still trying to learn reactions from the feedback they received from his neural implant.
“Don’t yell at me!” Kage cried indignantly. “Why is your helmet shaped like that?!”
“Cool, isn’t it?” Jason smiled as he commanded the stylized skull-like helmet to open and retract. “I wanted to have something that was a little more intimidating than the utilitarian armor I’ve always had. Seems to work.”
“Screw you!” Kage yelled, still breathing hard.
“What’s going on?” Crusher bellowed as he ran onto the bridge, startling Jason and triggering the armor into a protective mode that snapped the helmet back into place. When he turned to answer, Crusher took one look at the smiling skull and kicked Jason in the chest hard enough to send him flying.
“Have you lost your mind?!” Jason roared, his voice amplified by the helmet.
“Captain?” Crusher asked, his weapon half-drawn.
“Who the hell else would it be?” Jason snapped, climbing to his feet.
“Huh,” Crusher grunted. “Nice helmet.”
“Damn idiot,” Jason griped as he retracted the helmet again and commanded it to locked open. “If we’re all done being stupid, what’s our status?”
“About thirty minutes until the party starts,” Kage said. “So far there’s no indication that we’ve been spotted. The ull frigate is still in its original orbit and hasn’t even changed orientation to meet us.”
“That’s all good news.” Jason slipped into the pilot’s seat and waited while it tried to come to terms with the size and bulk of the armor. He kicked himself mentally for not having already tried to fly the ship while wearing the new suit. “Tell Twingo to stand by … when it happens it’ll happen all at once. We need to be ready to come to full power in a very short amount of time.”
“I’ll let him know,” Kage said as Lucky walked silently onto the bridge and took up his usual spot by the hatchway.
They were all in position twenty-six minutes later when the canopy automatically dimmed from the brilliant burst of slip-space energy release far ahead of them from the Coronado’s drive forming and collapsing a slip-space field behind it within the span of a few microseconds. Even before the light from the event had fully faded they began hearing a mayday squawking over multiple frequencies on the UHF band. The message was on a loop and repeated continuously while the Coronado fired her main engines again and began making way for Terranovus. Jason had made sure they’d been flying an indirect course before the drive flare so that no sharp-eyed sensor operator aboard the frigate would get suspicious that a missing ship just happened to mesh-in from slip-space on a direct course for the planet.
“We’re getting a reaction,” Doc reported a tense forty minutes later. Jason did the math and figured that was about how long it would have taken for the light of the slip-drive flash and the radio waves to reach Terranovus plus a few minutes for them to digest it. It was an important fact because it told Jason the frigate wasn’t even running active FTL sensors and thus was likely not expecting any sort of trouble. Hell, they might even be too damaged to accompany the rest of the flotilla.
“The ull frigate is transmitting a challenge on the open-channel,” Doc continued. “It’s on the local band slip-com node; the Coronado is ignoring it and pressing ahead with their radio broadcast.”
“Now we’ll see just how overconfident these guys are,” Jason said, flexing his fingers in the gauntlets to loosen them up. “Ideally they’ll come out to intercept before bothering to fire up a long-haul com node to report the incident.” The beauty of slip-com nodes was that they were difficult to detect and impossible to jam. The bitch about slip-com nodes was the same. As talented as Kage was, he could do nothing to prevent the ull ship from transmitting a warning, and if they did the Phoenix didn’t have the specialized equipment to be able to detect it.
“The frigate is breaking orbit,” Doc said. “Slowly coming about and heading on an intercept vector for the Coronado. Given their new course, it doesn’t look like they’ll be pushing too hard to meet them nor do they expect the cruiser to do anything but continue towards the planet.”
“Perfect,” Jason smiled. “Executing first course change now.” He pressed the icon on his nav panel and the computer slowly swung the gunship out from behind the Coronado and pushed it away gently at an angle that would take it further away from both ships. All three players in the stellar ballet were cooperating and staying on the ecliptic plane, which made things easier for the Phoenix. She could take advantage of the natural gravitational conditions to assist in keeping the drive signature muted while still getting into position in time. Jason was now extremely confident that the crew of the ull frigate was focused on one thing and it was the loudly shouting human cruiser stumbling blindly into the system.
Once the Phoenix had opened the gap to over a million kilometers, Jason executed another course correction and swung back in towards the two closing ships and began accelerating again. Jason could see on the tactical display that the ull cruiser was still wholly focused on the Coronado and didn’t react to their increased engine output, minimal though it was. Once they reached the velocity the computer had decided would put them exactly where they needed to be when they wanted to be there, it cut the power to the main drive, the throttle sliding back to the idle position on its own.
“Get ready, Twingo,” Jason said over the intercom.
“All set!” Twingo called back.
“Computer, you’re clear to fire at the optimal range,” Jason said. “I’ll authorize weapons release at the stick.”
“You bet!”
“Damnit, Kage!” Jason said.
“Hey! I haven’t had time to dig into it yet,” Kage said, holding his two smaller arms up in a helpless gesture. “I will admit that it’s getting worse, though. I’m not sure where it’s picking up the slang.”
Jason didn’t answer as he selected the main plasma cannons on his armament panel, squeezed once quickly, and then again, holding it for two seconds to authorize the computer to fire the weapons.
There was nothing outside the canopy to indicate they were even close to either ship, but right on cue the power levels of the Phoenix surged and the offensive systems came online, including the active tactical sensors. The frigate was immediately bracketed and targeted as the computer picked it out and began making the final course corrections for their pass. Jason’s fingers twitched with the desire to manually pilot the ship, but the rate of closure was simply too great for his biological reflexes. They’d be past the enemy ship before it even registered in his brain that he should fire.
“Here we go!” Jason said as the Phoenix began to accelerate hard towards the target. “The operation is now live.”
****
“They’re getting very close,” Marcus fretted. “Still no sign of the Phoenix?”
“They’re running silent,” Carolyn said. “You won’t see her until they want you to.” She sat pensively on the bridge of the Coronado, waiting as they all were while the ull frigate began to slow and come about, obviously intending to line up alongside them. The previous meeting with Omega Force had been off-putting for her, as was Burke’s happy-go-lucky routine while he described the upcoming op.
She’d fully expected him to come in with his backup muscle and accuse her in front of the other humans, then just burn her down where she stood. There was no way that he hadn’t figured out by now that the ull had hired her themselves, but when he’d walked aboard the Coronado he had greeted her in a cordial, almost friendly manner and then had proceeded with his briefing. There hadn’t even been any hard looks or passive aggressive behavior when she’d interrupted during the brief. Maybe he’d found out and just didn’t think it important? Or maybe he planned to kill her once she’d outlived her usefulness.
“Here they come!” the je’ekin sensor operator exclaimed, putting the tactical plot from the passive sensors and the optical sensor feed up on two monitors respectively. Carolyn could see that the Phoenix had flared into existence very close and was coming in hard, her active sensors partially washing out their own passives.
It was over before any of them could register that it had begun. There was just a barely perceptible flash of red on the monitor showing the external optical feed and then the ull frigate was consumed in a massive explosion that blasted debris in all directions.
“Direct hit on both main reactors,” the sensor operator reported. “Stand by, we’re flying through some of the lighter debris.” The explosion had been so energetic that most of the larger chunks were thrown clear well before the Coronado passed through the area. There were some bumps and bangs as the cruiser’s shields were hit with some smaller chunks of still-glowing alloy, but soon they were past it and in the clear.
“Master Pilot, you may rig the ship for normal operations,” Carolyn said in Jenovian Standard. “Please set course for Terranovus and put us in a low parking orbit.”
“Of course,” the pilot said with a bow before turning and issuing orders.
“You’re committed now,” Carolyn turned to Marcus. “You’ve just engaged in combat operations against an ally of the legal government of Terranovus. The Coronado is now a rogue ship.”
“Then let’s hope that you and Jason Burke weren’t lying about this entire thing,” he said, leveling an unfriendly look in her direction before walking off the bridge.
“Must not be a fan either,” Carolyn shrugged as the Coronado accelerated onto her new course.
Chapter 20
“Whoa!” Crusher shouted, laughing. “That was better than I thought it would be.”
“Yeah, the main cannons don’t mess around when there aren’t any shields in the way,” Jason said. He’d taken control of the ship again and moved them out away from the engagement, accelerating away from the Coronado.
“Com-node satellite and its inert backup are targeted,” Kage said. “One Pixie missile apiece, fire when ready.”
“Firing,” Jason said. “While it doesn’t say much about my species’ overall intelligence, I’m glad they didn’t learn their lesson about putting their long-haul com systems on orbiting satellites.” The “Pixie” missiles were something Kage and Twingo had developed for small jobs that weren’t big enough for an expensive ship-buster but still needed to be taken out via a standoff weapon. The tiny missiles were hard to track and delivered just enough of a punch to knock down a target like an unshielded com satellite. They used a variable payload warhead and were small enough that they could pack a couple dozen on two racks in the aft weapons bay.
“Missiles tracking clean,” Kage said. “Doc, you’re clear to begin your high-res scans.”
“Beginning full system scan,” Doc said.
While the Coronado lumbered towards Terranovus, Jason had decided that it would be prudent to conduct a full, high-power active scan of the system. They’d already lit off an anti-matter explosion when they blew up that frigate, so bombarding the system with tachyons from the sensor array wouldn’t be much of a risk. By the time they were done, the Coronado should be slipping into orbit and preparing to launch dropships, and their two homebrewed missiles would have taken out Terranovus’ ability to contact its fleet or Earth.
The scan took less than an hour and required the Phoenix to run hard between the orbits of the two gas giants in the system, one an impressive super-Jupiter, to make sure they had total coverage. Unsurprisingly and to everyone’s relief, the system was empty. Jason wasted no time reacquiring the Coronado, now in orbit over Terranovus, and sliding into orbit just behind them.
“Put me on the open channel between ships,” Jason said.
“You’re on,” Kage replied.
“This is Captain Burke … we’re now behind and below you and ready to begin ground operations,” he said, hesitating before continuing on. “We’ll be attacking the facility at New Panama. The Phoenix will provide cover for your dropships and then commence close air support while you disembark … let’s all be clear about this: We will have to kill humans before this is over. I know this isn’t what you signed up for, but keep the big picture in mind. We take out the garrison here, or we allow the ull to have their way with seven billion people back home. We’ll start the mission clock when the first dropship disengages from the Coronado. Phoenix out.”
“Inspirational, Captain,” Kage said.
“Shut up.”
The first dropship broke free from the Coronado with a lurch and a puff of atmosphere escaping from around the airlock. Jason watched as its retrothrusters fired, slowing its descent through the atmosphere just as their target appeared on the horizon. He waited a few more minutes before pushing the nose of the Phoenix over and throttling up the main drive. They shot forward and under the Coronado, the gunship buffeting as the shields encountered the thicker air of the mesosphere.
Jason felt like he had a ball of ice in his stomach as he leveled the ship out and raced ahead to make sure their superior defensive capability was able to cover the bouncing Clipper dropship. He knew this was utterly necessary, but the idea of turning the weapons of his ship on other humans, especially humans who were likely only doing their jobs and had no means to defend themselves, wasn’t something he was looking forward to. Most of the poor slobs down there probably weren’t all that different from him: ex-military with a set of skills and training that meant jack in the civilian world. He didn’t blame them for taking a contract and, like him, they probably weren’t all that political or even aware of the motivations behind the orders given.
But none of that changed the fact that if they didn’t subdue the presence here and learn what they could, the potential for death and suffering on Earth increased by an order of magnitude. Of that he was certain. The ull were ambitious and hungry. They cared nothing about the jabbering, hairless apes they’d found on some planet deep down in one of the spiral arms, it was only their proximity to something they wanted that made them even tolerate their human charges.
“We’re being hit with two tracking radars,” Kage said, looking over at him. “How would you like to handle it?”
“It was too much to ask that this would be bloodless,” Jason sighed. “Begin targeting all radar installations with Pixies, I’m switching weapons release authority over to you. Let’s get to work.”
****
Marcus leaned back and looked out the small porthole when he sensed the subsonic thrum in the seat of his pants of the Phoenix’s main drive. He just caught a glimpse of the black, sleek ship passing under their dropship at close range. The amount of faith he was putting in the man who not so long ago had been a fugitive his team had been actively hunting was uncomfortable, to say the least. But the hard evidence Burke had presented had made a stronger case than the vague accusations Margaret Jansen had used, and in the end Marcus had been forced to decide where his loyalties truly were: to the arbitrary orders of his superiors or to humanity as a whole.
“Commander, you’ll want to come up to the flightdeck and watch this,” the crew chief yelled into his ear over the rumble of the atmospheric engines. Marcus nodded and unhooked his harness to follow the enlisted man up the short set of steps to a cramped flightdeck. He nodded to the pilots and watched out the forward windshield just in time to see six missiles streak away from the Phoenix and head for different targets. There was a buzzing noise followed by a loud pop as the crew chief grabbed the cord for Marcus’s headset and plugged it into an intercom jack.
“That big bastard is keeping just ahead of us for now,” the pilot was saying. “Their pilot said they’re going to break hard for the north side of the compound outside of New Panama, take out all their automated air defense and come back around to see how everyone on the ground reacts.”
