Omega Force 3: The Enemy Within

by Joshua Dalzelle

  “So what now?” Doc asked.

  “I’m guessing Captain Colleren would like to get cleaned up and changed. Then we can debrief her and figure out what the hell is going on,” Jason said, leaning back wearily into the pilot’s seat.

  “So does this mean you’re offering more than just an escape?” Kellea asked.

  “Do you really need to ask?” Crusher said as he walked by her.

  Chapter 8

  “We’d been moving between worlds in a seemingly random pattern,” Kellea said as she pushed the tray away. She’d just polished off her third helping from the galley. “Crisstof was extremely secretive about what we were doing, but that was nothing new. He’s often boarded the Diligent and had us fly him to some secret meeting or negotiation. He did seem somewhat out of sorts, but again ... that was nothing new.

  “Camderan-2 was the fifth planet we were visiting, and at each one Crisstof would have a pilot fly him to multiple locations on the surface. He had reboarded, but hadn’t given us our next destination yet. As we waited in orbit an entire ConFed task force dropped into real-space and made straight for the planet. We still didn’t think anything of it until they began to bear down on my ship in an attack formation. I ordered the Diligent to break for high-orbit and try to put the planet between them and us, but it was too late. The heavy cruisers opened fire before we could get the shields up or take evasive maneuvers ... not that it would have helped at such a low altitude.” She paused to take a sip of water and steady her nerves.

  “Most of the shots took us on the aft, port quadrant and opened three decks, including some engineering bays, to space. Two more shots and the core shut itself down to prevent a meltdown and the ship began to fall towards the planet. It took four ConFed ships with mooring beams to haul the Diligent back up to a stable orbit. During that time, Crisstof grabbed me and Bostco and shoved us into two escape pods and launched us first. He then fired the rest of the pods without waiting for the crew to get into them to hide us as we headed towards the surface.

  “I watched the media feeds as Crisstof was led away in restraints and the rest of the crew was put into detention cells. Bostco and I were separated, so I reached out to you guys. Since you’re not a part of the organization it was just a knee-jerk reaction. The thought was that they wouldn’t be tracking communications to your ship. I never meant to put you in so much danger.”

  “That’s OK,” Twingo assured her. “As many times as you’ve saved us, we owed you a few.” She smiled slightly at him and then stared back into her water glass.

  “So, there’s no truth to the allegations against Crisstof?” Jason asked.

  “No,” she said adamantly. “While I don’t know exactly what he had been doing down on the surface of those planets, I refuse to believe he’d abandon his core principles and cause so much bloodshed.”

  “We can agree there,” Jason said. “Whatever is going on, I get the feeling he’s taking the fall to either cover someone’s ass or this is a distraction. The amount of ConFed firepower used to take the Diligent out tells us that someone on the Council is involved.”

  “So what did cause the outbreak of violence on Camderan-2?” Doc asked.

  “I have no idea,” Kellea said. “The planet was practically on lockdown when we made orbit. Huge demonstrations then turned incredibly violent in the blink of an eye. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Camderan-2 had been stable with its current government for centuries and then, in the span of days, the ruling party of their largest nation lost complete control. Thousands of civilians and military were dead within the first week, hundreds more afterwards until the ConFed Fleet began providing support to quell the unrest.”

  “None of this is making a lot of sense right now,” Twingo said. “Especially the convenient appearance of a ConFed task force just in time to save the day and arrest Crisstof. Most of the time those idiots can’t find their asses with both hands.”

  “What does that even mean?” Kellea said, her nose wrinkled up in distaste.

  “You know ... I never really figured that out. It’s something the captain says to Kage all the time,” Twingo admitted. “Given the context, I’m assuming it’s an expression of incompetence.”

  “More or less,” Jason answered with a shrug.

  “That’s disgusting,” Kellea said.

  “Anyway,” Jason continued, “It looks like we have our work cut out for us. Kage, start back-tracking the Diligent’s past ports of call and see if there was any unusual civil unrest at any of those locations. While you’re at it, compile a list of other inexplicably violent demonstrations and then we can start trimming that down to something usable.”

  “We have a problem,” Kage said, all four of his arms crossed. “I’m almost sure the Lark now has multiple warrants out for its capture or destruction. That was our last clean set of transponder codes.”

  “Do we have a good source for more?” Jason asked Twingo.

  “Not a reliable one,” the engineer said with his hands spread. “We can try some of our old contacts, but we’ve been relying on Crisstof to handle things like that for a while.”

  “Do we have any codes we can fly that won’t get us shot down as soon as we enter a ConFed system?”

  “There are two that only have local infractions against them,” Kage said. “It should be fine for the time being.”

  “Good enough,” Jason said. “Let’s get to work.”

  *****

  The Phoenix was loafing along at just ten percent of her capable speed. Anything less than that and the slip-space fields became unstable and the universe would spit them back out into real-space. Jason was using the ether of that dimensional oddity to hide in since they really didn’t have a firm plan of action. Now that the crew had dispersed to go about their individual tasks, he walked down to Berthing to check on their new passenger.

  Kellea Colleren was an accomplished officer and an exceptional ship’s captain, but the gritty and unpredictable world of small-unit ground operations had left her shaken and unsure of herself. When he knocked on the door he found her cleaned and changed, but with an all-too-familiar thousand-yard stare in her eyes. Now that the immediate danger had passed, she was crashing from a week-long adrenaline high.

  “Not exactly what you expected it to be, is it?” he asked as he sat on a bunk across from the one she had claimed.

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” she said, looking up.

  “The unpredictability of being on the other side of legal,” he said with a half-smile.

  “Ah,” she said noncommittally. She fell quiet for a moment before continuing. “How do you deal with it? I could barely breathe during our escape from Kachamar City. Is this really what your life is like? Just one big string of incidents like that?”

  “Some are quite a bit worse,” Jason answered, his hand unconsciously touching his face where his injuries at the hands of Corenntal were still healing. “You become accustomed to it, but never comfortable or complacent.”

  “I’ve been in combat before, but always on the bridge of a starship. That seems so sterile now after being in the middle of smuggling a fugitive out from under the ConFed’s nose ... especially when the fugitive was me. I’m starting to regret all the times we’ve asked you guys to go into situations like that because we couldn’t. Or wouldn’t,” she said.

  “Eh,” Jason scoffed. “We were already doing this when Crisstof found us. The six of us aren’t really suited for much else. Well, maybe Twingo could find honest work.”

  “I remember when I first saw you and the crew,” Kellea smiled a genuine smile and even laughed a bit. “I was so smug thinking we didn’t need mercenary trash getting in our way, and I would find out what was happening in the Concordian Cluster without your help.” Jason laughed too.

  “Yeah ... we weren’t too fond of the stuck-up starship captain who looked at us like she wanted to scrape us off the bottom of her boot,” he said with a wink. There was a long pause in the conversation that b
egan to become uncomfortable. “Well ... I’ll let you get some rest. We’re going to stay in slip-space for the next twenty hours or so before we pick a destination.” He stood up to leave and she reached out and put a hand on his arm.

  “Thank you,” she said. “The fact that you came for me means a lot.” Jason patted her hand.

  “I can’t believe you ever thought we wouldn’t,” he said before walking out of the port berthing bay. He went back to his own quarters to get some rest. I have a feeling this is going to a rough mission ...

  Chapter 9

  The members of Omega Force all stood on the bridge, some more patiently than others, as Kellea scrolled through the list of planets the Diligent had visited over the course of the last few months. Kage had also cross-referenced those with any unusual domestic disturbances that coincided with their visit either before or after.

  “None of these stick out as unusual,” she said with frustration. “We went to all of these places and each stop was as uneventful as the last.” She was about to push herself away from the station when she stopped and stared at one of the names scrolling up the display. “Solamea?” she asked in confusion. “There was a violent civil uprising on Solamea?”

  “Yeah,” Kage said from the copilot’s seat. “Why? There were demonstrations in a lot of places ... why is that one special?”

  “That would be the first time there has ever been any organized violence on that planet,” she answered, now skimming the associated file. “The indigenous species is completely pacifist. They have no concept of using violence to secure political objectives.”

  “I’d say that makes them stand out as unique,” Jason said. He was anxious to get underway and start doing something useful instead of burning fuel hiding in slip-space. “How far away is it?”

  “A little over six days’ flight,” Kage answered.

  “Plot it. Let’s get moving,” Jason said as he swung up into the pilot’s seat. “What is the indigenous species called?”

  “They’re called kelpens,” Kellea provided. “There are some peculiarities that you’ll need to be made aware of.”

  “Such as?” Crusher asked.

  “I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise,” she said with a half-smile.

  *****

  The anti-collision alarm was sounding loudly as Jason cursed and pushed the nose of the Phoenix over to dive under a fast transport that had flown in front of them with no warning. The increased angle of attack to their entry vector caused the shields to flare brighter as the gunship pushed her way down into Solamea’s atmosphere.

  “What the hell!? I’ve landed on smuggler’s moons more organized than this,” Jason nearly shouted as he had to again adjust course to avoid a ship that was blindly climbing up from the surface on chemical rocket boosters.

  “I told you,” Kellea said tensely, “there are no traffic control systems for orbit or approach. It’s a free-for-all and you just hope you get lucky on the way down. Good job missing that rocket booster, that was a kelpen ship; they’d have flown right into us.

  “This is insane,” Jason muttered as he yanked the Phoenix hard to starboard and throttled up to send them streaking out of the high traffic area and into the less-populated airspace of the northern hemisphere. “So no spaceports either?”

  “Nope,” Kage answered as he looked at his display. “The only launch facilities are equatorial sites for those kelpen rocket stacks like the one you just dodged. To be honest, it looks like we’ll be landing in a clear patch of dirt if we can find one.”

  “Do you have our coordinates?”

  “Coming up,” Kage answered. “There’s no centralized network so it took me a minute. I’m sending you the nav data now. This is the actual site of the reported incident, it’ll be up to you to find a place to put her down.” Jason just shook his head again and settled in for the two hour flight to their destination.

  He swung them in a wide, sweeping turn around the settlement (it was so small it almost couldn’t be called a town), dipping the left wing down so everyone could get a good view. He almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing as he cycled the landing gear and made for an open patch of ground just off the main drag that looked like it was solid enough to support the Phoenix’s weight.

  He touched down smoothly and began to incrementally pull power back from the grav-drive, watching a video feed from the belly of the ship as he did to see how far the landing gear was going to sink into the ground before she settled. After compressing the soil a mere eleven inches, the ship groaned slightly as her weight fully transferred from the drive field to the landing gear struts. After leveling them out, Jason placed the primary flight systems into standby and stood up to stretch out his back. The harrowing flight to the surface had tensed his shoulder muscles up and left his neck sore.

  “This is your show,” he said to Kellea. “How do you want to do this?”

  “This is a simple trip to look around and ask questions,” she said. “Who do you think is best suited for the ground team?”

  “Crusher, Twingo, and Doc ... you’re coming with us,” Jason said after a second’s thought. “Kage and Lucky, keep in com contact and keep the ship ready to fly.”

  Once they were all kitted up with concealed weaponry and casual, civilian-style clothing, Jason led them through the cargo bay and down the ramp onto the surface of Solamea. As they emerged from the ship a few kelpens looked at them disinterestedly before going back to whatever they were doing. The kelpens were typical bipedal primes with skin that was a beautiful shade of sea foam green and a wide, rugged build that looked suited to the manual labor tasks Jason observed going on around him.

  The town, such as it was, looked like it could have been out of eighteenth century Earth rather than a planet that was home to a space-faring culture. As they walked along the main street he could see little bits of mismatched technology here and there, but mostly he saw kelpens moving busily about doing tasks by hand that were done by machine in every other culture Jason had observed.

  “OK,” Crusher said as they walked, “this is getting strange. Is the whole planet like this?”

  “Yes,” Kellea said with a smile. “There’s something about the kelpen nature that they have an almost aggressive indifference to technological advancement. All these machines you see around you were likely traded to them by people like us, and when it breaks they’ll toss it aside and go back to doing the task the old fashioned way.”

  “So are they less advanced or is it a cultural peculiarity?” Doc asked.

  “Studies have shown them to have an equal aptitude to learning and using technology as most other species, they just have no interest in it. They don’t explore, they don’t research; they are perfectly content to live as they always have. Many mistake these traits for lower intelligence, but they’re shrewd traders and they’ve profited handsomely from their mineral mining rights,” Kellea explained as they walked slowly into what appeared to be the town square.

  “What makes them all the more unique is that they don’t actually shun advancement, they just don’t pursue it.”

  “That’s bizarre,” Twingo said as he looked around at the squat, rustic buildings.

  “Perhaps,” Jason agreed, “but it does make it all the more unusual that these people would have taken up arms. There doesn’t even seem to be a central government to rebel against.”

  They walked in silence for a bit longer before coming to a short, elderly kelpen who was struggling to put bags of seed into an open-air wheeled vehicle. The bags looked like they outweighed the little alien by at least two to one.

  “Let me help you,” Crusher said in stilted Jenovian Standard and walked over to take the bag from him. The kelpen went from startled at the voice to nearly panicked as Crusher bore down on him. He flinched away as the big warrior reached out his clawed hands and easily lifted the bag up and set it into the back of the vehicle.

  When he saw this, the kelpen smiled widely (at least it looked like a sm
ile) and gestured at the other twelve bags laying on the ground. Nodding, Crusher moved over and tossed the seed bags like they weighed nothing until all thirteen were neatly stacked. The elderly kelpen put his right hand over his chest and bowed his head to Crusher in an apparent sign of gratitude before moving to get into the vehicle. Doc reached out and stopped him, pointing at the alien’s ear questioningly.

  After a short game of one-sided charades, a look of understanding crossed the kelpen’s face and he fished around in his pocket for a moment before pulling out a translator earpiece that looked to be at least three generations behind the type they had on the Phoenix. He fiddled with it for another minute or so before slipping it over his ear and looking over at Doc.

  “Can you understand me?” Doc asked in flawless Jenovian Standard. He doubted his native language would be loaded on the older device.

  “Of course,” the kelpen said pleasantly. “Why didn’t you just say you wanted to talk?” Crusher just rolled his eyes.

  “We’re looking into an incident that happened not far from here,” Doc continued. “There was a sudden and inexplicable violent protest and we’re trying to find out what may have sparked it.” As Doc spoke, the kelpen’s expression became steadily more stony until he was looking at the four of them with open hostility.

  “Who are you with?” he demanded. “There’s been all manner of you outsiders coming here since then, and none of it has led to anything but more trouble.”

  “We’re not with any government and we’re not with the ones who may have started the violence, if that’s what you’re asking,” Doc said placatingly. “We were hired by a private party to investigate and to try to prevent a repeat.”

  “There’s going to be more?” The alien now looked alarmed, almost panicked. “Oh, no—”

  Well ... er, I don’t know that there is going to be—”

  “When?!” the kelpen demanded in a desperate voice. “When will they come again?”