Omega Force 09: Revolution

by Joshua Dalzelle

  707 broke the surface until his eyes were just above the water, watching as eight of his battlesynths raced across the short, sandy beach and began climbing the sheer rock face. They found hand and footholds or they used their strength to jab a flattened hand into the stone to anchor themselves. They were up and over in less than a minute.

  "First unit, report," he said over the open channel.

  "Clear. There are no enemy forces within sight and I detect no active scanners operating in the area," 760 reported.

  "Proceed, second unit," 707 said and surged up and out of the water. He ran right up to the base of the cliff and fired his repulsors at full power, sending him rocketing up the rock face and over the lip in a second. He could hear the roar of repulsors as the rest of his unit did the same.

  A full-burn ascent was noisy enough he wanted to send up part of his force to clear the area before the risk of giving away their position. Lot 700 regrouped, redeployed into four smaller squads, and then took off at a dead sprint towards the base that lay ahead of them.

  There were two lines of scrubby trees that covered their approach, but they had no doubt the automated systems would pick up their signature eventually. The question would be whether the pru operators would perceive them as a threat before it was too late.

  "Initial target package in sight."

  "Turrets appear dormant … no active scans detected."

  "All teams clear for initial incursion," 707 said calmly as all thirty-one battlesynths in the unit broke from cover and converged on their individual targets at lightning speed, all of them in full combat mode and ready to rumble.

  They fired simultaneously, brilliant red bolts of energy blasting out of arm-mounted cannons and tearing into the six turrets that faced the sea. There were shouts from inside the compound, but before any of the defensive weapons could be brought to bear the battlesynths had rendered them inoperable, two of them tumbling from their articulated mounts with a crash.

  "Phase two," 707 said.

  Ten of them huddled near the gate and began cutting through the locks. As soon as they were through, the remaining twenty-one leapt to the top of the barrier wall. The defenders inside were looking at aggressors coming at them from the main gate, as they would expect, but also from all around their perimeter wall and it caused them to hesitate for just a split-second too long.

  Working methodically the battlesynths began stunning any armed pru they saw and destroying any vehicle that made its way towards them. As planned, they swung east and began working their way through the base, splitting up and remaining elusive as the defenders of the installation, many of them regular synths, tried to organize and push back.

  "Alpha Strike to Omega One, phase one complete, phase two underway," 707 said over the com as two of his battlesynths tore the power cables from a ground tracking sensor station. All around him the confusion increased as more defenders rushed out and those in charge began to shake off the lethargy and order their people into a coordinated counterstrike.

  It wouldn't be long before they would have to fully commit to killing the defense force or withdraw. He hoped it was enough time for Captain Burke to do what he claimed he could.

  "THIRTY SECONDS!" Twingo's voice came over the intercom while Jason, Crusher, Lucky, and five other battlesynths held onto anything they could in the cargo hold as the Phoenix bounced around in the air.

  "Are you sure you want to carry the device, Captain?" Lucky asked for the tenth time.

  "Yes, damnit! You just make sure I can get close enough to use it," Jason said. "It's not that heavy and I'm wearing powered armor."

  Before Lucky could make another clumsy attempt at relieving Jason of the powerful bomb attached to his back, the engine pitch changed dramatically and they felt the ship drop. With eight people deploying out of the Phoenix they'd bumped up the speed of the transit beam so that they would hit the ground with a hard jolt rather than float to a soft landing.

  "Go! Go! Go!" Jason shouted once the floor hatch had irised fully open and the lighting along the rim went from red to green. Lucky and two of his lot-mates went first, then Jason and Crusher, followed by the remaining three battlesynths.

  Once he was out of the distortion of the wavering blue transit beam, Jason paused for just a heartbeat to take in the scene. This was not some soft target that was sitting fat, dumb, and happy. He could hear the fight being put up by 707's team a kilometer away and he was aware they were already taking fire, as was the Phoenix as she tried to pull away. Two powerful anti-aircraft cannons blasted the belly of his ship, causing her to list and dip before Doc could get the power up to get out of range.

  "Break contact!" Crusher roared, firing his heavy plasma rifle into a cluster of pru soldiers and normal synths that were huddled behind a concrete caisson that was barely big enough to provide cover. The battlesynths all moved to provide Jason cover as he sprinted for the recessed entrance of the hardened bunker that was their objective.

  Once he slid to a stop behind the supporting buttress, he detached the device and put it gingerly in the corner before stepping back around to offer his friends cover. He brought his railgun around and selected the highest velocity setting, sending three hypersonic rounds into the caisson. The structure exploded under the onslaught and pru soldiers were sent flying. A momentary stunned silence ensued after the sound and destructive fury of Jason's preferred weapon, but it didn't last. More soldiers began moving up, leap-frogging each other to cover and advancing on where Jason's team was crammed into the doorway.

  "These aren't a bunch of lackeys sitting around some forgotten base!" Crusher shouted. "These are seasoned troops and they were ready for us!"

  "Too late to worry about it now!" Jason shouted back as a plasma bolt exploded off one of the battlesynth's shoulders. The pru soldiers were mostly ceremonial on a planet that didn't really believe in employing violence to solve problems, and as such they weren't the most skilled fighters Jason had ever come up against … but there were a lot of them. Far more than there should have been.

  "No damage," the battlesynth said. "Glancing shot."

  "Get the door open!"

  "Proceeding."

  The others put down withering cover fire while one of Lucky's brothers began cutting into the locks. With 722 dead and Kage out of commission they made no attempt to break into the building via the locking control panel. As it was, it would be a race to get the door open before the base defenders moved up a technical and blew them completely out of the alcove.

  "We're in!" Crusher grabbed Jason and pulled him towards the door. Before he could turn and grab the device, Jason saw Lucky scoop it up and move towards the door himself. Once they were all in and the doors were shut, the volume of fire increased, the alloy heating up but holding.

  "Weld it," Jason said as he covered the area directly behind the door. It was eerily quiet inside the antechamber they found themselves in. The lights had come up automatically when the first battlesynth had entered, and it looked like a security checkpoint complete with an armored window by a heavy alloy hatch at the end.

  "This place is too heavily built for only housing some communications gear," Crusher said.

  "It is mostly disused now, but when the base was fully active this building served as the master cryptography station," one of the battlesynths said. Jason had no way to differentiate between them even if he actually knew all their call numbers. "All military encrypted slip-com channels were routed and monitored here."

  "Let's hope there's more than one way out of here," Jason said. "Lucky, if you would?" With obvious reluctance the battlesynth returned the device to the back of Jason's armor with a magnetic clank.

  "Get the door and we'll get this party started."

  Crusher stepped up and slapped two breaching charges over the massive hinges, activated them, and took a step back. Unlike the old explosive charges they used to carry, the new and improved breachers that Twingo had designed fired a controlled plasma stream directly into
whatever it was placed on. They were so effective that Jason and Crusher had twice used them to get through a door without anyone inside even knowing they were there until it was too late. The older explosive type, in addition to being equally dangerous to the people outside the door, gave the occupants plenty of time to aim a weapon in their direction.

  While substantial, the door and its hinges were made of an older, softer alloy that gave way quickly before the onslaught of cutting plasma. Within minutes, the door popped and sagged now that it was no longer supported by the hinges. Two battlesynths rushed to pull it free before the metal cooled and hardened, while the others kept their weapons at the ready.

  Someone on the other side must have gotten nervous and a single blaster bolt hit the door just as it was being moved. Jason nodded to Crusher who pulled a grenade off his harness and walked up to the right of the doorframe.

  "Pull it a little bit," he said. Once there was a small gap he tossed the grenade in. "Close it!"

  The battlesynths slammed the door back into place just before the grenade detonated. With a mighty whump the door kicked back free of the frame and sent them both tumbling.

  "What the hell yield was that?!" Jason shouted.

  "Whatever it goes up to," Crusher shrugged with a smile.

  "All enemy troops are dead," one of the battlesynths said.

  "No shit," Jason muttered. "Let's try to be a little more careful here. These aren't necessarily the enemy, they're just—" He was cut off by a powerful plasma blast coming from deeper down the corridor and taking him full in the chest.

  Two things happened at once. Four of the battlesynths that had been covering the doorway rushed in and opened up with a blistering salvo, setting off secondary explosions deeper in the facility. Also, the explosive device that had been secured to his back suddenly wasn't. He tried to move his arms to grab it, but something was holding them back. He slammed into the ground and looked over to his right just as Lucky dove and caught the device, cradling it to him as he rolled to a stop.

  "You were saying?" Crusher asked, looking down at him. Jason tried to get up and his movements were again hampered by something. Before he could query the armor as to whether it was him or it that was injured, the helmet display shut off and he could feel the neural link disengage abruptly.

  "Son of a bitch!" he shouted, the sound now echoing inside the helmet without the active noise cancelling. He reached his tongue out as far as he could and pressed a recessed button three times, activating the ejection sequence and hoping that everyone was clear when the big parts started coming off.

  With a symphony of compressed gas charges and mechanical latches disengaging, the armor fell away from him in pieces. He was relieved that he was uninjured, but he was also extremely vulnerable now that he was only wearing the skin-tight, moisture-wicking base layer.

  "This is going well." He climbed to his feet with a groan and grabbed his railgun. Having learned his lesson before from similar experiences of having to ditch his armor, he pulled an actual utility belt free from the pile of parts that held his holstered sidearm, grenades, and extra railgun mags. When he slid it around his waist and mated the two ends, the belt automatically resized and secured itself.

  "I'm glad I didn't let them talk me into the model that you have to be naked to get into."

  "We're all glad for that," Crusher said.

  "If I survive this, remind me to pen a very strongly worded letter to the Disa Company regarding their product’s ability to shrug off a single plasma shot," Jason said, kicking the helmet across the room. "Over-priced piece of shit!"

  "The outer door will not last much longer," Lucky said, still holding the device. Jason eyed it and realized that his friend would now get his wish as there was no way even his enhanced musculature would allow him to carry it and keep up for any real distance.

  "Everyone through and then put the door back in place behind us," Jason said. "Try to weld it into the frame if you can. Thankfully they seem hesitant to fire anything larger than small arms at their own building."

  The small team quickly filed through the damaged doorway while two battlesynths wrestled the door back into place and allowed a third to begin welding it wherever metal butted up against metal. It was ugly and certainly not as strong as it had been, but it would slow their pursuers down just a bit more when they finally made it through the outer door.

  Jason switched his ocular implants over to low-light and mid-wave thermal since Crusher's grenade had taken out all the lights. The damage was impressive … and disgusting. At least eight pru worth of gore was slung around the corridor, clinging to the walls and dripping from the ceiling where it didn't stick.

  "You and those damn grenades," Jason muttered.

  "When I find something I like, I stick with it," Crusher said defensively.

  Deeper within the facility they heard klaxon alarms blaring, doors slamming shut, and enough thudding footsteps that Jason knew this wasn't going to be an easy job. They had to get in deep enough to allow the device they'd brought to work, but not so deep that they couldn't escape. Despite its age, it was still a structure built in a time when enemies could strike from orbit. If they were premature in deploying the weapon, all they would accomplish was killing a lot of pru and burying the thing they needed to destroy beneath hundreds of tons of rubble.

  Jason shivered as the thin garment he wore dried off. This was not going to be easy or pleasant, but they were committed now.

  30

  "The ships registered to the Eshquarian Empire are backing off," the Endurance's sensor operator reported. "Saabror Protectorate and ConFed ships are now closing the distance with each other, and missiles are now impacting their shields rather than detonating short."

  "How many of Saditava Mok's ships are still here?" Captain Swank asked.

  "Seven, sir."

  "Maintain position," Swank sighed. "So far we're not being directly threatened and none of the other affiliated ships are fleeing the area … I won't have an Earth ship be the first to turn tail and run because things are tense millions of kilometers away on the other side of that star."

  "Maintaining position, aye."

  Swank almost wished that he was commanding one of the new Spartan-class destroyers that were currently being outfitted at a secret base in orbit over Venus, but that would only make his single ship stand out as a threat. His unassuming, smaller Pathfinder-class was just another light cruiser in a system with hundreds of ships of similar displacement.

  "Sir! One of the Saabror missiles got through!" the sensor operator practically squealed. "One of the ConFed destroyers is listing and dropping out of formation. There are hundreds of missiles now flying from both formations!"

  "Calm yourself!" Swank barked. "Begin tracking and logging. Everyone look alive … XO, elevate the threat level and set readiness condition Charlie. I want the weapons and combat shields ready for quick-charging, but do not send power to the cannons or emitters yet."

  "Aye aye, sir!"

  "Some damn fool just kicked over a hell of a hornet's nest," Swank muttered as he took in the sensor data projected on the all-encompassing curved forward display. Both formations were too close to Khepri Prime, and once ships started coming apart or losing propulsion there was almost no way for them to avoid falling into the planet's gravity well. A lot of innocent people were about to die. He looked down at his tablet and re-read the last message from Saditava Mok before two of his ships had departed the system.

  "Communications!" he said, his decision made. "Please open a channel to the slip-com node address I'm sending you."

  "Yes, sir!"

  "STILL NO RESPONSE from the captain's team," Twingo said. "Last update was that they made entry. 707's team is being hard-pressed by the automated defenses, but he says they're still on mission and aren't ready to withdraw just yet."

  "I can help!" Kage insisted from where he was strapped into a sensor station next to Tauless. The latter had his eyes scrunched shut and wasn't
talking.

  "You shouldn't even be up here," Doc said as he pulled the Phoenix up into a shallow climb to bring her back around for the next run. After dropping off both assault teams, he and Twingo had taken the gunship and destroyed every antenna, junction node, and com station they could find. Within minutes of the attack, they had effectively cut the base off from the rest of the defense network. That bought them some time, but the lack of communication itself would tip off the Kheprian authorities that something was wrong. They didn't have a lot of time before someone came to investigate.

  "Reengage my implants and let me help!"

  "No!" Doc shouted as he lined up the main cannons for a strafing run on the last set of tower emplacements that were firing on 707's group. "Even if I wasn't otherwise busy, I'm not hooking you back in until you're fully recovered."

  "Given how annoying he is I'd have to say he's about there," Twingo said. "You're locked on … just hold the trigger down and let the Phoenix do the fine corrections. We're really close to the other battlesynths and I don't want to explain to Lucky why we fragged a few of his brothers."

  "Incoming slip-com channel from an Earth ship in orbit," Kage said.

  "What?!" Twingo exclaimed just as the forward plasma cannons opened up and ripped a huge trench into the ground where the four gun towers had just been.

  "What part of that did you not understand?"

  "Put it on," Doc said. He was getting his groove back after not having flown the gunship for so long, and the new flight control systems she'd received during the upgrade made things much easier.

  "This is Captain Swank from the USS Endurance," a voice said in English. Fortunately all of Omega Force had the Earth language loaded into the translation matrix of their implants. "I need to speak with Captain Jason Burke."

  "That's the ship we saw hovering around that Fend-class by Pinnacle," Twingo said.

  "The captain is a bit busy right now, Captain Swank," Doc said. "He's actually not aboard the Phoenix at the moment."