Omega Force 09: Revolution

by Joshua Dalzelle

  They watched from the door as the vehicle veered wildly over the lawn before tracking right for the lead aircraft. Shots from plasma rifles began to sporadically pepper the ground and the oncoming car as more shouts of alarm could be heard. The black vehicle slammed into the first aircraft just as it began to lift off the ground which, in turn, pushed it directly into the second that was still sitting on its landing gear. Jason lost track of individual machines as an enormous fireball erupted from the crash courtesy of the chemicals they'd loaded into the rear seats and trunk.

  Once the smoke cleared he could see both aircraft were too damaged to fly and only two of the assault team appeared to be moving. Unfortunately, the conflagration had been too close to the house and it too was now burning.

  "I'LL TAKE care of our friends, you go get Teludal," Jason said and took off at a sprint. Lucky, in a rare display of what he was fully capable of, fired his repulsors and arced off across the property like a missile, smashing through a window on the second floor.

  "I always forget he can do that."

  The first live pru Jason encountered was badly burned and in no shape to put up much of a fight. He pulled the weapon off the injured soldier, gagging a bit as some of the burnt skin came with it, and smacked the base of the handle into its head with enough force to knock it completely out. The weapons didn't have a butt stock or a trigger for his forefinger, just a handle at the end with a thumb stud to press. He'd seen the configuration before; press it up for single shot, down for sustained burst. Simple, but awkward and uncomfortable.

  "Who are you with?" Jason shoved the muzzle into the face of the second survivor and spoke in Jenovian Standard.

  "I'd like to know the same from you," the wounded pru said, dark red blood streaming from its nose and mouth. "Who sent you to help Teludal?"

  "I asked first," Jason said, stepping on the broken leg and eliciting a harsh hiss. "Last chance."

  "You'll never make it off Khepri so it doesn't matter what that old fool told you," the soldier said. Jason frowned at the odd reaction from someone that was essentially a foot soldier, was mortally wounded, and only had a few minutes to live. He used the muzzle of the weapon to turn the head left, and then right. There it was. He reached down and plucked the earpiece out and held it up to his own ear just in time to hear someone speaking in Pru'gal, their native language. The voice was instructing the soldier to try and keep Jason talking and maneuver so that he could be seen in the optical pickup he was wearing on his uniform.

  "Tricky," Jason said. He looked down and saw the telltale red reflection of a multispectral imager no more than five millimeters in diameter. He aimed and fired, the pru coughing out one last explosive breath at the impact before he died. Jason crushed the com link earpiece in his hand and tossed the remains into the fire.

  "I have moved the Master to another outbuilding and alerted the authorities," Lucky said. Jason hadn't even heard him approach. "He is gravely injured, but he will likely survive long enough to receive emergency care. How long he will live past that I do not know. I suspect his condition is not the result of a natural illness, but he will not say."

  "It'd probably be a good idea to not be here when the first responders arrive," Jason said. "Too bad we destroyed both aircraft." He looked around and sighed dramatically. "Sometimes I forget just how good we are at this."

  "I would have to disagree with your assessment of this mission, all things considered."

  "Let's take that third ground car and get the hell out of here," Jason said. "Hopefully whoever sent the goon squad here will feel a bit of pressure when the authorities begin trying to trace where they came from."

  "THAT'S IT," Kage said. "We can't hold them off any longer. They're forcing us to a departure orbit so you either have to go along or tip our hand and fly the ship back down to the surface."

  "We don't even know where they are," Doc said. "We'll have to trust that they can figure out a way off the planet or a way to contact us with their location. Go ahead and accept the course change."

  "Since you're technically the acting captain I'll let you tell Crusher we're leaving without them," Kage said.

  Doc glared at the flighty code slicer even as the Phoenix's main drive throttled up and they began to climb away from Khepri. As Kage had warned, before the gunship had even settled into her new orbit they were given a vector to clear the area. If they tried to circle back around and slide into orbit, the automated system would almost certainly flag them.

  "There's a moon orbiting the fifth planet that we can park over for now," Kage said after checking the local navigation data. "It's owned by a private asteroid mining operation and they allow unrestricted access to the moon's orbital lanes, but we can't land. Wouldn't want to anyway, the atmosphere is mostly ammonia gas. It's also still well within range of any local com station they might get a hold of to try and contact us."

  "Good work," Doc said. "Plug it in and let's get out from under the ground control station as soon as we can."

  Within half an hour the Phoenix angled sharply away from Khepri and accelerated hard for the small moon orbiting a Class II gas giant. They would be within an hour's flight if they got word from the ground team and had to execute an emergency extraction, but if it was actually an emergency an hour might be far too long.

  "WE WILL NEED to abandon this vehicle soon," Lucky said.

  "Agreed," Jason said. "We're getting a lot of looks right now. Where did the other one go by the way?"

  "I programmed it on a circuitous route that will take it back to the Master's estate within the next three hours," Lucky said. "It is still technically his property so I did not want to needlessly waste it."

  "Slick move with the limo hitting those aircraft," Jason said, leaning back and closing his eyes for a moment. "I didn't think it would let you do that."

  "It required that I erase all of its navigational data and simply enter point to point coordinates and velocity changes," Lucky said self-deprecatingly. "Not an especially difficult task on such an old control system."

  "There!" Jason said, pointing to a large building just before a cluster of high-speed access tube entry points. "Drop me off here and then circle back to that side road and wait. I'll grab us a new ride and then come back to pick you up."

  Lucky commanded the vehicle to the side of the road and let Jason out. After being careful with the door to make sure nobody got a clear view of a battlesynth sitting in the vehicle, he walked back to mingle near a public information center. He waited fifteen minutes after the eye-catching vintage vehicle had left before walking up to the large building that was advertising fairly priced basic transportation.

  Since he and Lucky weren't fugitives from any official law enforcement agencies he walked in with confidence, looking around inside the building as a few pru milled around, looking over different models of ground cars. He almost laughed aloud at how the scene was different, yet the same. It could just as easily have been an Earth car dealership.

  "How may I help you, friend?" a well-dressed pru asked in flawless, unaccented Jenovian Standard.

  "I wish to purchase a mid-level vehicle," Jason said. "Five-passenger capacity and access to local information and communication networks."

  In the end, he negotiated for a six-passenger model that was a little more luxurious than he would have liked given that he was paying cash out of one of his personal accounts. He handed over a loaded chit that had more than enough ConFed credits on it to pay for the car and waited while the transaction was finalized. He intentionally stayed away from the cheap, stripped-down, two-passenger basic models because anybody looking for them would likely come asking if anyone had purchased such a vehicle. At least, his hope was that they were that sloppy. Paying with ConFed credits as an alien on Khepri wouldn't make him especially memorable in the minds of the sales staff. His only worry was that they weren't all that far from Teludal's estate and it wasn't a very busy town.

  Within two hours a beaming salesperson indicat
ed that his vehicle was on its way. Unlike on Earth, there were no vehicles kept in inventory. After Jason selected his options and paid, a regional automated factory went to work. It pulled the appropriate chassis, drive, body, and interior options and assembled the car within the span of minutes. It was then loaded into a cargo shuttle and whisked to the particular office that placed the order. It was all very quick and efficient. Soon Jason waved one last time and directed the car to head back the way he'd come.

  As expected, Lucky had carefully stashed their borrowed vehicle in the undergrowth and stepped out just enough so Jason could see him. He quickly climbed into the new vehicle and the two set off towards a high-speed tube that would take them in the opposite direction of Cenk Vale.

  "I think we need to assume the Phoenix was forced to depart Khepri altogether," Jason said. "We need to try and avoid using the intrasystem public networks and see if there's a slip-com node so we can get in touch with them."

  "I concur," Lucky said as he tore up the floor covering to get at the access panel in order to disable the dozens of transponders and beacons that allowed the vehicle to be easily tracked. He disabled them by smashing them with the palm of his hand.

  "Hey! I just bought this damn thing! You couldn't find a less destructive way to take care of that?"

  "The additional challenge we face is that it might be unwise for me to appear in public given the circumstances," Lucky said, ignoring him. "If you were pru, and in a military uniform, it might go unnoticed, but a battlesynth with an alien civilian will not."

  "Even once we're away from the capital?" Jason drummed his fingers on the armrests as he thought. "This could pose an issue. It's entirely possible that we'll have to try and book commercial passage somewhere to meet the Phoenix. But, first things first … let's get to a com node and let them at least know that we've evaded capture or death. So far."

  "WE'VE JUST HAD a ping from one of our slip-com nodes back on S'Tora," Kage told Doc as he walked onto the bridge. "It's the captain and Lucky. I sent you the entire message … top left icon on your MFD. They're still on Khepri, but they haven't been identified to their knowledge and are moving down towards a place called Amasis. It's an industrial city south of Cenk Vale with a small population and regular flights outbound from the planet."

  "How are we supposed to get in touch with them?" Doc asked, opening the message on his multi-function display.

  "He said they'd check the message buffer on the com node again in two days’ local time when they reached Amasis," Kage said. "They bought a ground car and are making the entire trip using a combination of tubes and roadways to keep from being easily identified."

  "This might work," Doc said and tapped the screen where the message was displayed. "I'll need you to pull up all the freight carriers coming from Amasis that service any of the mining platforms out here."

  "Freighter flights?"

  "Inconspicuous is the name of the game, as Jason would say," Doc said. "We need to eliminate all of our more obvious options. The time delay of an overland trip will actually work to our advantage too."

  "If you say so," Kage shrugged.

  9

  "Please be careful with that!" Jason shouted at the two pru handlers that were roughly shoving his cargo onto a motorized cart.

  "It doesn't say that it's fragile on the bill," one said belligerently.

  "Just load the damn crate," Jason said.

  Once it was tied down to the cart he pulled the remote from the handle and hit the “FOLLOW” button before pocketing it and walking off. He turned once to make sure the cart was following after the remote and made his way down out of the receiving docks to an information screen.

  The board of incoming and outbound traffic was immense and confusing, but he finally saw that there was a ship named Kellea's Mistake in one of the lower-level hangars. He gritted his teeth from the joke at his expense and walked off to try and find a cargo lift that would take him down the hangar decks.

  After some trial and error, he finally stumbled upon Crusher leaning against one of the station's structural spars. The big warrior saw him from a distance and, without acknowledging him, turned and walked through a large unmarked hatchway. Jason followed with his cart and let out an explosive sigh of relief as the Phoenix came into sight, sitting serenely in the hangar with her ramp down.

  Jason led the cart up into the cargo bay, gently inclined it until the crate was standing upright, and then tossed the remote like a skipping stone from where he stood in the cargo bay. The cart spun about and cheerfully chased it down the ramp and back into the hangar. He smacked the two large push buttons on the pedestal to close the ramp and pressure doors and then keyed the intercom.

  "Let's get the hell out of here, Doc. Let me know when we're clear of the station and moving."

  "Calling for clearance now," Kage's voice came back.

  "Go ahead and come out, Lucky," Jason called loudly. "I don't think anybody is going to try and apprehend us if they haven't by now."

  There were two sharp cracks as Lucky kicked the sealed lid of the crate across the cargo bay and snapped all the tie downs that had been holding him suspended in the crate.

  "That was a most unpleasant reminder of where I was when you found me," he said.

  "I apologize again, buddy," Jason said with genuine sympathy. "I just couldn't think of a better way to get you onto that flight without being seen or taking too great a risk."

  "If I did not agree with your reasoning I would not have willingly climbed into the container," Lucky said. "It was unpleasant nonetheless."

  By the time Jason got to the bridge, they were clearing the electrostatic atmosphere barrier of the hangar and moving slowly away from the platform. He waved for Doc to stay seated and keep flying as his friend tried to stand up and vacate the pilot's seat. The station wasn't nearly as strict about traffic as the planet and there were freighters, tenders, maintenance bots, and a few passenger ships flying about at seemingly random vectors. It certainly wasn't the time to try and swap out pilots while the gunship was moving out into the thick of it.

  Instead, he walked up to the front of the bridge and looked out through the Phoenix's huge, curved canopy. It wasn't often when flying in space that they were ever close enough to anything to see it with the naked eye, so he enjoyed the view of the ships coming and going against the backdrop of the gas giant while he could.

  "Kage, get us out of this system, minimal slip-space speed. We need to have a family meeting about all that's happened and I'd rather be well out of reach of the people who came and attacked Teludal's house."

  "I already figured that's what we'd be doing … or that we'd be running for our lives," Kage said. "Course is locked in and the drive is ready. Doc, you're good to engage whenever the station's traffic control system says we've cleared their space."

  Four hours after leaving the station the Phoenix meshed-out, just another tiny slip-space signature among the hundreds coming and going from the busy core system.

  "SO THAT'S where we are," Jason said after he and Lucky relayed everything that had happened to them once they departed the Phoenix on Khepri. He had intentionally let Lucky tell certain parts of the story to allow his friend to choose how much he wanted divulged about his origins and relationship with Krunt Teludal. "To be honest, it leaves us with more questions than answers. We were likely chasing the wrong tail."

  "Perhaps not, Captain," Doc spoke up. "While we were sitting in orbit Kage mentioned that all the automated traffic control systems were controlled by an uncommonly powerful AI system. At the time it made sense to me, as advanced AIs are a major export of Khepri … they did develop a fully sentient species after all."

  "What the hell is your point?" Crusher demanded loudly. He'd been getting increasingly vocal about his boredom of Jason and Lucky's adventures and was now bordering on hostile. Jason suspected it was because there had been a good amount of destruction and even a fight between synths while he'd been sitting in orbit on the
ship.

  "My point is that it got me thinking about what could possibly be of such importance on Khepri that it would make it a likely target to destabilize the ConFed," Doc continued, unruffled by yet another outburst.

  "As it turns out, Kheprian scientists were commissioned many, many centuries back to provide a single, overarching AI system to manage the complexities of a galactic economy that spans across thousands of worlds, all which have their own currencies, banking systems, and tax codes."

  "That system can't still be in place, can it?" Jason asked. "It'd be woefully obsolete."

  "It's an evolving, adaptive AI that's capable of being upgraded to the point that all of the original components are likely long gone," Doc said. "But here's the part I found with a little digging. Khepri wasn't just responsible for developing that AI … they still manage and control it." He'd made the announcement with the dramatic flair of someone dropping a bombshell, but it just wasn't his crowd. Only one person seemed to grasp the significance.

  "So you're saying the very essence of the entire ConFed banking system is controlled by a single AI on Khepri?" Kage was incredulous. "I was always under the assumption it's was accomplished through distributed processing … it'd be the only way to safeguard from an attack: You can't slice into them all simultaneously so if you get into one the others lock it out and you get nothing."

  "I can't say where your misconception comes from, but the central AI is supposed to be impossible to slice," Doc said. "I found it through an obscure local search of articles on the Khepri Nexus. There was an academic paper making the assertion that the AI system should be replaced with something like you described due to the risks associated with trying to keep an adaptive, learning system from collapsing after a certain level of development was reached."