Omega Force 3: The Enemy Within

by Joshua Dalzelle

  “We’re releasing you in five seconds,” Doc said. “We’ll be observing com silence after this. We’ll be listening in case there’s an emergency call. Good luck, assault team. Phoenix out.”

  A few seconds later Jason felt his stomach flip as if he were in freefall when Doc killed the artificial gravity on the ramp. They were now free-flying separate from the Phoenix, which was also racing along with them backwards at twenty-six thousand and eight hundred kilometers per hour. Just as suddenly, the ramp shot out from underneath them as the Phoenix throttled up and began to slow her flight. The three members of the assault team were now hurtling through space with no lifeline if something went wrong.

  To stave off the vertigo he was feeling, Jason concentrated on Lucky as the battlesynth began to maneuver himself into position. He was pleased to see Kellea seemed completely at ease, making slow, deliberate movements as she guided herself on tiny ionic jets to grab Lucky’s outstretched left arm. Jason fired his own maneuvering jets and took his position on his friend’s right arm. Once he was locked on, he sent a command through the neural uplink to lock his gauntlets in position.

  After the excitement of departing the Phoenix had subsided, he was faced with the reality of a near-seventeen hour flight through the void without even being able to talk to his companions. Their emissions-security protocol meant zero com transmissions, not even short range. So instead he focused on the planet. The massive gas ball appeared as a crescent since they were angling in from the dark side. It was fairly uninteresting as far as gas giants went, the atmosphere appearing as a solid, murky orange color with no discernible weather to speak of. Every once in a while he’d see a moon, or something, cross in front of it to break up the monotony.

  He was simply bored by the third hour, had an itch he couldn’t scratch all through the fourth, and by the fifth he was berating himself for not having the foresight to rig up some sort of hardwired com loop between the three of them. He fell asleep for a bit sometime around hour nine and was jarred awake by Lucky shifting positions at hour fourteen. He quickly unlocked his gauntlets and waited as the battlesynth spun himself around so that his feet were facing towards their target. At least Jason hoped so, since he couldn’t see anything yet. He’d messed around with the optical sensors in his helmet and still couldn’t see the ship formation they were headed for.

  *****

  “They’re away,” Doc said as he watched the aft video feed. He’d just observed the assault team practically disappear off the ramp as the Phoenix slowed under minimal drive output. “Let’s get to our part. Start giving me the first set of coordinates, Kage.”

  “They’re coming up on your nav panel now,” Kage said.

  “Remember,” Twingo spoke up from the engineering station. “Try to keep throttle corrections to a minimum. The less we use the drive for maneuvering, the less chance we’ll be detected out here.”

  “I’ll remember,” Doc promised. His nerves were a bit frayed as he throttled up the gunship and turned onto the course Kage had provided. It was easy to be critical of Jason’s decision-making from the sensor station, but now he was in command during a very delicate operation where one misstep could cause it to end in disaster.

  “We’re clear of the outer edge of the detection grid,” Kage said. “Go ahead and kick her in the ass and let’s get to our first drop point.” Doc throttled up the drive even further as they flew along the perimeter of what they believed to be the edge of the detection net. Under the constant acceleration it didn’t take long to get to their first waypoint.

  “I’m programming the missiles now,” Kage said. “They’ll wait for the final targeting data once we initiate the firing sequence. OK, we’re ready to deploy.” After a few moments of silence the Veran turned to him in annoyance. “Doc, we’re ready to deploy.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Doc said and squeezed the trigger on the stick to give command authorization for weapons release.

  “Snap out of it,” Kage admonished him. “You’ve been really loopy the last few days.”

  “Yeah, I guess I have been a bit scattered,” Doc agreed vaguely. They deployed bundles of six missiles at each of their three stops. This completely depleted the Phoenix’s forward weapons bay, but if it worked it would be a small price to pay. At a designated time Kage would bring up the active sensor array and flood the system with tachyons. They would then have a real-time picture of everything in the system and would relay that data to the missiles. The eighteen weapons would ignite their engines and knock out eighteen of the listening posts surrounding the planet.

  Twingo theorized that it was the overlapping coverage of the sensor stations that provided the high degree of accuracy, and if enough were knocked out it would create enormous gaps that they could exploit. With the passive array down, the Phoenix would be clear to engage her active countermeasures and wreak havoc in the formations on their way to pick up the assault team. The confusion would hopefully stun the minimal Fleet presence into inaction. Jason said a cushy, boring babysitting mission like this bred complacency in crews and commanders alike. Doc hoped he was right. While he was what could graciously be called a proficient pilot, he was no combat flyer. Any resistance that the gunship’s point defense couldn’t handle would be a major problem.

  “We’re all clear,” Kage said. “I don’t see any evidence we’ve been detected. No active scans on the hull, no engine flares near the planet. Let’s get above the ecliptic and wait it out there. I’d like to use the optical sensors and gather a bit more intel.”

  “Alright,” Doc agreed. “We’ll park one million kilometers above the pole with the optics trained on the planet.”

  “That should do it,” Kage agreed. Doc followed the indicators on the nav panel and flew the Phoenix up and over the planet far out of detection range. Nothing left now but the long wait.

  *****

  Jason could just make out the shape of ... something ... directly in front of him as Lucky continued to brake. He continually looked over to make sure Kellea was doing okay during the maneuvers. While his armor absorbed a lot of the strain on his arms, her rig did so considerably less effectively. It looked like her lighter weight helped as her body position didn’t indicate she was in duress.

  Now that they were inside the detection grid, Lucky was really giving it hell as he tried to bring their velocity down to something manageable. Jason could now clearly see the outline of the damaged frigate and, despite this being the plan, was simply amazed that they were anywhere close. He was also a bit alarmed at their rate of closure. He knew from his jump training that if his brain could discern an object rushing at him it was quite close indeed.

  Suddenly they were upon the Diligent and moving far too fast towards the aft section. Lucky shook Jason off his arm and turned to grab Kellea with both hands and cradle her to his chest while he fired his repulsors at full power, leaving Jason to fend for himself. Managing to get his body turned around, Jason magnetized his feet and fired his own jets at maximum thrust. Although powerful enough to lift him off the ground on a standard gravity planet, they were woefully inadequate to shed off the speed he was carrying.

  He slammed into the hull of the Diligent far faster than he would have preferred, but not fast enough to damage his armor. His internal organs seemed to be an entirely different story, however. He bounced back off before he could get his feet anchored under him and had a monetary bout of panic while he flailed about in space. Forcing himself to be calm, he used his maneuvering jets to correct his body position and descended slowly and smoothly to the side of the hull again, this time feeling the satisfying clunk of his feet locking onto the ship. In the micro-gravity of the planet, his vestibular system had no idea what was going on, his eyes told him the hull was the “ground,” and his brain let his eyes know that the “ground” was the side of the ship.

  Shaking off the disorientation, he slowly made his way towards where Lucky and Kellea were anchored down. He waved his right hand in the air and was relieve
d to see her wave back; she’d managed to survive the violent descent unscathed thanks to Lucky’s quick and decisive action. She waved for them to follow her and set off towards the aft of the ship, moving along the hull as if she were born in a vacuum. Jason was mildly annoyed at her proficiency; despite his top-rate equipment, he still struggled at the finer points of EVA.

  They moved quickly across the rear section of the ship and came around to where the nozzles of the main engines could be seen rising up from the hull (at least from their perspective). The mammoth engines could fit the Phoenix inside one of them, but Jason could now see that the hull didn’t actually meet up against the body of the motor. As they closed in on the outermost engine he could clearly see a gap big enough for them to easily fit into. As he suspected, Kellea paused long enough to get her feet anchored on the inside of the gap before disappearing from view. Lucky waved him forward and he also slid into the gap.

  In his low-light optical mode he could see the engine was actually suspended by six pylons inside the ship and not anchored to the outer hull itself. He followed Kellea down a maintenance catwalk towards a large, curved hatch near where the plasma conduits connected to the injector housings on the engine. She grabbed a large T-handle on the bulkhead next to the hatch and tried to give it a turn. When it didn’t budge after two attempts, she motioned Jason forward and indicated which way he should turn it. Grabbing a hold and twisting slowly clockwise, he could feel it begin to spin as he commanded the armor to provide incremental assistance until it spun one hundred and eighty degrees and stopped with a solid thunk.

  The hatch had recessed and slid aside slightly, allowing Kellea to get her shoulder in and shove the hatch back all the way. The two members of Omega Force followed her in and Lucky slid the door closed behind them.

  “We’re now clear to use short range com,” Jason said. “Hull integrity should be good through this section so no chance of anybody overhearing.”

  “Thank you for grabbing me, Lucky,” Kellea said. “I would not have survived otherwise.”

  “My pleasure, Captain Colleren,” Lucky said. “I apologize for setting you adrift, Captain,” he said to Jason. “I did not have much time to act.”

  “As usual, you did the right thing, Lucky,” Jason assured him. “She’s the more important of the pair of us and I can survive a bit more of a bump than she can, and good job getting us here. I really didn’t expect this to work.”

  “You did not?” Lucky sounded surprised and even a little hurt.

  “Well, fifty-fifty,” Jason replied, waving his hand in the air to indicate his indecision. “So, where to?”

  “Crisstof’s private quarters,” Kellea said. “We’ll have to—” She stumbled to a stop as the door leading out of the maintenance airlock whisked open on its own. She just stared at it, dumbfounded.

  “Is emergency power still active?” Jason asked.

  “No,” Kellea said. “If it were, the lights would be on and the airlock would have opened with almost no effort.”

  “Speaking of that,” Jason said, “you’ve got a rather glaring security issue on this ship. What’s to stop a boarding party from marching down that same walkway?”

  “When main power is on there is a powerful force field that covers the outer opening; it even keeps the engine bay pressurized with atmosphere,” she said. “The engines need to be isolated from the hull so the vibrations don’t tear the ship apart. Not only that, but if you were to walk in there while the engine was actually running you’d be dead before you made it to the hatch, fried to a crisp in your fancy armor.”

  “Thanks for that visual,” Jason said, unslinging a big plasma rifle. “Let’s stay alert. If the door sub-system has power they may have anti-intrusion systems also active.”

  “Thank you for reminding me to stay alert during a combat operation, Captain,” Lucky said as he moved off to follow Kellea. Jason could see her shoulders shaking as she at least had the decency not to transmit her laughter. He’s like a giant, metal Twingo. He bit down his response and followed after the pair, not completely certain he was enjoying Lucky’s recently emergent sense of humor.

  The team moved quickly through the ship, discovering along the way that the power had only been restored to certain doors and not all. Jason was certain that if they went down to Engineering they would see a powerpack spliced into relay junctions so the ConFed intel guys could move freely through the sections of the ship they thought were pertinent to the investigation. Whoever had designed the Diligent, however, was thoughtful enough to provide a mechanical disconnect for each door in an access panel in the bulkhead. Simply open the panel, yank the handle, and then slide the door back into the bulkhead. This was far preferable to having Lucky tear it apart or blast it with a plasma rifle. Though she had to be aware that she would never command the ship again, running through the corridors wantonly damaging everything seemed disrespectful given that Kellea was standing right next to them.

  It took a little over forty minutes to reach Crisstof’s quarters since there were no operating lifts and they had to force open most doors. Dalton’s quarters were wrecked. The intel division had tossed the place looking for anything they could use to incriminate him, and had left it looking like a thermobaric warhead had been detonated inside.

  “Oh,” Kellea said sadly as she looked around. She stepped carefully around overturned furniture and smashed display cases. “Some of these were priceless pieces.”

  “If they jacked the place up this badly it’s a good bet they didn’t know where the safe was,” Jason said. “Or that it even exists.”

  “Oh I can guarantee they didn’t find it,” she said as she moved around the end of Crisstof’s desk. “Bring the power pack.” Lucky helped Jason detach the case he’d been carrying on his back and opened it up. There was an explosive release of gas and the lid flew open as the case spit some of its contents across the room. They floated and bounced off of walls as Jason and Lucky scrambled to retrieve them.

  “I didn’t think of that,” Jason admitted. With the Diligent likely having no atmosphere, he should have thought to put a pressure relief on the case. He grabbed the power pack as it careened off a padded chair and tossed it over to Kellea. She extended the lead to the unit and plugged it to a thin connector that simply looked like a gap in the paneling of Crisstof’s office.

  Once she verified that the unit was supplying power, she moved over to the large window that overlooked the flight deck of the frigate and began tapping on its surface in what appeared to be a random pattern. She stepped back, waited, and was soon rewarded with a holographic interface displayed in the transparent alloy. She stepped forward and entered another sequence of commands. When she was finished the display disappeared and the room was once again plunged into darkness.

  Just when Jason was about to comment on the lack of anything happening, an entire section of the bulkhead on the opposite side of the room began to lower into the floor, exposing a tall, shallow safe. He could almost see her smirk though the helmet visor as she walked across the room and began the procedure to open the actual safe itself.

  POP!

  Apparently the safe was sealed as well as their travel case, as documents and data chips went flying out of the safe when the door blew open. Lucky was able to simultaneously track all projectiles so it was a small task to retrieve everything and load up the same case they’d brought the power pack over in.

  “This is an auxiliary flight data recorder,” Kellea said as she disconnected a small cube from a cable within the safe. “This may be useful since it will have a record of all com traffic and ship status leading up to main power failing.”

  “So do we think that whatever he wanted us to find is on one of these data chips?” Jason asked.

  “That’s all that is in here, so it better be,” Kellea said. “I would say it’s a safe bet that it is. He likely knew the risk we were taking in coming here, so it would have to be something important.”

  “Let’s
hope so,” Jason said. “Are we ready to leave? We need to be up on the flight deck within the next hour or so for our pickup.”

  “We’re finished here,” Kellea said as she closed and secured the case. “Let’s get on the move.”

  *****

  “What the hell is that?!” Twingo asked, staring in disbelief at a hulking shape in orbit around the gas giant they were sitting above.

  “The computer says it’s a ship, not a space station,” Doc said. “But it’s one of the biggest ships I’ve ever seen. The fact we can detect it visually from here is incredible.”

  “We haven’t been here long enough to get a good picture of it, but it does seem like a ship,” Kage said. “It’s the wrong configuration for a station.”

  “How so?” Crusher asked.

  “The drive section, although at the center of the ship, is the wrong type for a space station,” Kage explained. “Whatever it is, it’s maneuvering. Orbital platforms have station-keeping propulsion, not massive engines. Luckily we’re not seeing any reaction from it or the defender ships in the area. Either they got in clean or they didn’t make it at all.”

  “Nice,” Twingo said to him disgustedly. “Way to jinx them. While we’re discussing it though, why are there only two corvettes patrolling this system? Where are the cruisers?”

  “Let’s not go asking for trouble,” Crusher rumbled. “It’s almost time for the pickup. Let’s count our blessings. Without the captain here I’d rather avoid any ship-to-ship combat. No offense, Doc.”

  “None taken,” Doc said. “I’m in full agreement with you.”

  “We’re within our timeframe,” Kage said. “We can initiate the launch sequence at any time.” Doc stared at the display a moment longer before moving back to the pilot’s seat.

  “Get back to your stations,” he said. “We’re launching in five minutes. Kage, prep the sensors and let’s see what we’re dealing with.”