Omega Force 3: The Enemy Within

by Joshua Dalzelle

  “Please, try and calm yourself,” Kellea said, shooting Doc an annoyed glare as she did. “As far as we know it isn’t going to happen again on Solamea. But we don’t want it to happen on anybody else’s planet either. So can you help us?” The alien calmed somewhat and then assumed a speculative expression, rubbing the top of his head while he did so.

  “Well, I do have some recollection of that day. But it’s getting late and I need to get this seed into the germinators so I can plant in the coming days,” he said. “If I had some strong help I could probably free up some time to discuss it with you.” He was looking pointedly at Crusher as he finished. The little bastard’s a regular mercenary.

  “We can help with that,” Doc assured him. They all piled onto top of the open-air vehicle and bounced along down the gravel-strewn roadway until it gave way to a heavily-rutted dirt lane.

  Chapter 10

  It was some hours of manual labor later when they gathered in a low-ceilinged room within the kelpen’s home. They’d learned his name was i’iteren, and he had lost his family during the recent uprising. While he seemed to have a simple turn of mind, Jason was forced to constantly revisit his opinion of the short alien as the conversation progressed. Towards the end Jason concluded that it wasn’t a lack of intelligence that made i’iteren seem simple, but his utter lack of curiosity about anything and everything going on around him outside of his immediate concerns. From what Kellea had told him this was a trait shared by his entire species.

  “So you didn’t know any of the kelpens that were involved in the attack?” Kellea asked.

  “I didn’t,” i’iteren answered.

  “Did they seem like they could have been from a different part of Solamea?” she pressed. Another peculiarity of the kelpens was that they didn’t volunteer any more information than was required to answer the question. They weren’t being intentionally evasive, but it was infuriating when trying to get information out of them. So much so that Crusher had stomped out of the house almost immediately and took to ranging out and exploring the property. Jason soon wished he had followed him.

  “Since they weren’t from here, I’d have to say that is a possibility,” the kelpen answered with a straight face. If he had been a member of the crew, Jason would have long ago strangled him.

  “Do you know where they came from?” Jason asked. “Or at least from which direction they traveled?”

  “They came from everywhere,” i’iteren said. “They just kept coming and coming from out of the forest. When my mate and child went to ask who they were, they turned violent and beat them to death before moving on. I was so scared I didn’t come out of the house until they’d left. They moved down through town and on to the larger city to the south.” Jason sat up a little straighter as this was the only bit of information that came freely from their host.

  “And they never made any demands? Never made a declaration of intent?”

  “None,” i’iteren said quietly. “They were silent until they reached town and then went crazy ransacking the place. Finally a ConFed ship heard about what was going on and opened fire on the city from orbit. Nearly everyone in the immediate area was killed.” Jason and Kellea exchanged a meaningful look as Twingo inhaled sharply.

  “They just opened fire on a civilian target indiscriminately? I’m sure that’s not in any ConFed procedural manual,” he said in disgust.

  “i’iteren,” Jason said, “we’d like to explore out beyond your farm in the forest where these kelpens came from. It’s getting dark so we’ll start in the morning. Would it be okay with you if we parked our ship in one of your fields? We’ll be gone by tomorrow afternoon.”

  “It’s not one of the big thrust ships like the ones they use down south is it?” i’iteren asked suspiciously. “One of those would destroy my field.”

  “It is not,” Jason said with a smile. “She’s a gravity-drive-type ship. You won’t even be able to tell she was there once we leave.”

  “I suppose there’s no issue then,” the kelpen said, suddenly disinterested. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be going to sleep now so I can get an early start tomorrow.” He stood and moved to go down into the basement of the dwelling without so much as a second glance at the four aliens he had left in his living room.

  “Odd little guy,” Twingo murmured.

  “Indeed,” Kellea agreed. “Why are you repositioning the Phoenix?”

  “I’m not sleeping on the floor here,” Jason explained, ticking off reasons on his fingers as he did. “I don’t feel like walking all the way back into town, and I’d rather have her close by since we have no idea what we’re dealing with here on the surface and, apparently, in orbit.”

  “Good points,” she said. “Now that I think about it, I’m not too crazy about staying the night here either.”

  “Kage,” Jason was already saying into his com as he exited the home, “you and Lucky get the ship into the air and home in on my beacon. Land in the field to the north of the house you’ll see on your approach.”

  “Copy, Captain.”

  “Can he fly the ship?” Kellea asked as she walked up behind him, hugging her arms to her side to ward off the evening chill.

  “Eh,” Jason said noncommittally. “He can fly it well enough to move it a few kilometers and land it in a wide open space.”

  *****

  The next morning, Jason, Crusher, Lucky, and Doc were standing at the bottom of the Phoenix’s ramp, their breath fogging in the cool morning air as they began to formulate a plan of attack.

  “We’ll head up the south face of that hill,” Jason was pointing to a rise in the distance, “and see if there’s any sign of a group as large as i’iteren claims moved through there. Given the density of the underbrush I would think it’d be fairly obvious.”

  “While that’s true,” Crusher said, “it also means it will hide things just as well. We could walk right by their trail and not even see it.”

  “I realize that, but I’d rather take the high ground and move down from there than try a grid search with a handful of people,” Jason said, wanting to head off the impending argument with Crusher. “Besides, we do have a bit of help.” With that, he keyed his com unit. “Kage, launch the Twins.”

  “Launching. I told them the first search sequence ... hopefully they don’t get confused as to who has which quadrants.” There was a whirring sound from the top of the Phoenix and then two bangs as both of the Twins were launched out of their docking cradles. The pair of semi-intelligent, autonomous drones circled around the ship once, both putting “eyes” on the ground team before veering off and zipping in different directions to begin their multi-spectral scan of the surrounding land. Crusher rolled his eyes.

  “Those two idiots are going to be more of a hindrance than a help,” he grumbled.

  “I’ve tried to explain to you that they aren’t sentient,” Jason retorted. “You can’t just give them some vague instructions and wave your hand and expect them to understand what you mean. Garbage in, garbage out.”

  “What the hell does that even mean?”

  “It’s a programming term,” Jason said, refusing to explain further. In truth, he didn’t have any more luck giving instruction to the pair than Crusher did. Kage and, unsurprisingly, Lucky were the only two who could manage them without the aid of the Phoenix’s main computer. “Anyway ... let’s get to it.” The lightly-armed group set off at a brisk walk towards the treeline that was sixty meters off the nose of the ship.

  It didn’t take long before they had to kick and hack their way through the dense forest. Jason fervently hoped there was nothing poisonous that slithered, scampered, or crawled lurking in the foliage. He’d had Doc do an extensive search of the local databases on indigenous wildlife, but the fragmented nature of Solamea’s public network didn’t leave him filled with confidence. Every once in a while they would hear one of the Twins zip by overhead as it repositioned to the next part of its search grid.

  It was near
ly an hour later when Jason’s com beeped twice indicating an incoming message. He pulled it out and keyed on the display.

  POSSIBLE BIOLOGICAL ENTITY. UNKNOWN SPECIES. 3.521 KILOMETERS FROM CURRENT POSITION. BEARING 38° FROM CURRENT HEADING. PROBABILITY OF OBJECTIVE: UNKNOWN. STATUS OF ENTITY: UNKNOWN.

  “Number One may have found something,” he said, raising a hand to indicate a halt.

  “What did it find?” Crusher asked.

  “How should I know?”

  “Ask it to send an image, Captain,” Lucky said. The tireless battlesynth was in front of Jason and acting as a trailbreaker. Jason made a face as he keyed his com. What are the chances it will actually give me what I want?

  “Number One,” he said. “Provide a high-res image of the objective, visible wavelength only.” There was a double-chirp from the com and then nothing.

  “Ha!” Crusher let out a sharp, barking laugh as he took a long pull on his water bottle. Just as Jason was about to put his com unit back in his pocket it chirped again and the screen lit up with an aerial photo of a clearing up ahead of them. On the ground was what looked like a bipedal being with its limbs splayed out at unnatural angles.

  “Is that a kelpen?” Doc asked as Jason zoomed the image in.

  “I don’t think so,” he answered. “It’s blue and bipedal, but the shade is too dark. It looks darker than even Twingo.”

  “That could be what happens to them when they die,” Doc said. “Even you turned a little blue when Crusher was playing the breathing game with you.”

  “You mean when he was strangling me while you all sat and laughed? Oddly enough, I don’t remember much of that,” Jason shot back. “Either way, it’s close. Let’s go take a look. Lucky, bear left thirty-eight degrees and let’s pick up the pace while we still have favorable light.”

  Forty-five minutes later the group was standing around the object the drone had found. “Well,” Jason said, “it sort of looks like a kelpen.”

  “Yeah,” Crusher snorted, “if that kelpen was made of soft plastic and then put in a thermal chamber.” The body in question did indeed look like a member of Solamea’s dominant species. But not only was the hue of the skin wrong, it also seemed malformed. The limbs had a blocky appearance to them and the appendages terminated in digitless hands and feet. “What do you think, Doc? A deformity?”

  “Doc?” Jason pressed when the doctor didn’t answer. In fact, he seemed oblivious to the others’ presence as he stared hard at the body in front of him. “Doc!” Jason repeated.

  “What? Oh, yes,” Doc said, straightening up and smoothing his clothes with the palms of his hands. Jason knew this was a nervous tick. What the hell has him so spooked? “I can’t say with any certainty yet what it is we’re looking at,” Doc said, avoiding eye contact. “We should get it to the ship where I can run a proper series of tests on it.”

  “I am not carrying that thing back,” Crusher said and crossed his arms.

  “Nobody is going to carry it all that way,” Jason said, cutting off Lucky from volunteering for yet another disgusting detail that no one else wanted. Instead, he pulled out his com unit and keyed open the appropriate channel. “Number One, relocate to my position and hover ten meters overhead.” After a double-chirp he thumbed off his com unit and waited.

  “There is it,” Crusher said as he pointed down in the valley below them. Sure enough, one of the Twins was zipping along at treetop level on its way to their position. As it approached, its two engines rotated downward on their pylons and the drone slipped into a smooth, nearly silent hover directly overhead. Jason waved both his hands over his head to get its attention. Once he was sure he had been spotted and recognized, he pointed his index finger straight down and made a slow, clockwise circle to let it know he wanted it to descend slowly towards him.

  To his surprise, the machine began to throttle back even more and sink towards him until it was six feet off the ground. “Stop!” Jason ordered now that it was close enough to hear his voice. “Deploy docking hook.” After a second a door opened up on the drone’s belly, and the hook it used to capture the docking cradle on the Phoenix lowered and locked.

  “OK,” he said to Lucky. “Lift up the ... body ... so I can secure it to the hook.” Once Lucky lifted it into position Jason removed his belt, which was impregnated with smart-metal, and lashed the small body to the landing hook. The belt automatically cinched tight and held. Viewing the body up close, he could see that there was no sign of decomposition or scavenger feeding he would normally associate with a corpse lying in the forest. He walked around to the nose of the drone so it would pick him up on its optical sensors.

  “Return to the ship at a speed no greater than ten kilometers per hour,” he instructed. “Lower to a hover of two meters altitude twenty meters behind the tail of the Phoenix and await further instruction. Execute.” At his last command the drone emitted another cheerful double-chirp and lifted in a smooth, controlled climb before heading back the way they had come.

  “Do you seriously think that is going to work?” Crusher asked as they all watched the drone fly off.

  “Sure,” Jason said confidently. “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “So the thing that holds your pants up is going to secure a full grown ... whatever that is ... to a sharp hook attached to a machine of questionable intelligence during a eleven kilometer flight?” Crusher asked.

  “Well ... when you say it like that—”

  “We should get going too,” Doc spoke up suddenly. Without waiting for a response, he walked back down the hill to the path they’d forged through the underbrush on their way up.

  “I guess we’re leaving,” Jason said with a shrug and trudged off after the doctor.

  *****

  Crusher’s near-hysterical laughter was not helping Jason’s mood. Number One was sitting patiently in a hover as he’d ordered, but instead of a dark blue body, the only thing on the landing hook was a section of his belt. The smart-metal had obediently wrapped the section of webbing around the hook securely. He walked over and unwrapped the material and stuffed it into his pocket, still ignoring his friend.

  “RTB,” he said to the done. At the “Return To Base” command, Number One lifted quickly up and over the gunship. There was a loud clang as the hook snagged the cradle, then the whirring of the actuators pulling it back into the ship and closing the hatch. He pulled out his com unit and sent the same command to Number Two, which was still buzzing around in its predetermined search pattern.

  “So now what?” he asked nobody in particular. While Crusher had been laughing himself to near incapacitation, Lucky had been scanning the area around the ship.

  “Captain,” he said, pointing to the north. “In the tree, fifteen meters up.” Sure enough, wedged in the crook of a tree far above the ground was a familiar dark blue shape. This only reignited Crusher’s mirth.

  “This gets better and better!” he exclaimed as he walked up the ramp into the ship. “Hey, Twingo!” he shouted. “Come here! You have to see this!”

  “Let’s go get that thing,” Jason said to Lucky. “As in right now.” He was already at a dead run towards the tree with the battlesynth in tow before Twingo could come out to see what the commotion was about.

  “Do you think you can get up there with your repulsors and—”

  Jason was interrupted by a sharp crack and he looked up in time to see the body come bouncing down out of the tree, hitting more than a few large branches before landing in a heap in front of them.

  “Never mind.”

  “Captain,” Crusher said as he walked up with the rest of the crew, “tell Twingo how you engineered the carry method for our objective.”

  “This is the body of a sentient being, Crusher,” Kellea said hotly. “I think a little respect is in order.”

  “With all respect, Captain,” Crusher said to her, “but whatever that thing is ... it isn’t a body.”

  “What do you mean?” Jason asked. Crusher tapped the side of
his nose with a clawed forefinger.

  “That thing has been sitting for weeks in the woods and there’s not a speck of decomposition, no bloating from out-gassing, no signs of scavengers feeding—not even insects—and it’s still flexible,” he said. “I can smell that it’s certainly organic, but I don’t think this thing was ever alive.”

  “What do you think, Doc?” Jason asked.

  “I won’t know until I get it into the med bay,” Doc said distractedly and grabbed at one of the ankles, intent on dragging it back to the ship himself.

  “Allow me, Doc,” Lucky said and scooped the thing up effortlessly. He turned and made his way back to the Phoenix with the rest in tow. Kellea put a hand on Jason’s arm to hold him back. Once the others were out of earshot she turned to him.

  “I think it’s time I called Steader Dalton,” she said.

  “The son? Er, First Son,” Jason said. She nodded.

  “He’s in charge of Crisstof’s operations while he’s incarcerated. He’ll need to know about what we’ve found, and be kept up on what we’re doing,” she said.

  “We’ll talk to Kage about the best way to go about it,” Jason said as he continued on to the ship. “I don’t feel comfortable contacting him directly from the Phoenix.”

  “Of course.”

  Chapter 11

  Jason decided to fly up towards the northern pole of Solamea before breaking for orbit to avoid the insane traffic around the equator. The flight over the planet was quite relaxing. Since the kelpens didn’t fully embrace technology or industry, the planet was unmarred by mining operations, factories, or the general malaise that seemed to hang in the air over most advanced worlds.

  “I know they don’t develop their own tech, but why are the kelpens still using those old chemical rockets to get to orbit?” Jason asked Twingo. “They’re only slightly more advanced than the stuff we were using on Earth.”

  “If you’re asking why nobody has given them interstellar travel capability, there are two answers,” Kellea said. “Of course you know that they have no interest in exploration or scientific discovery, but there’s also the fact that slip-space drives them insane.”