“So we’ve figured out Dalton’s son is working with you, and we know about the clones you’ve been turning loose on a bunch of underdeveloped worlds,” Jason said, ignoring his words. “But why do you need the Diligent’s captain? She can’t be of much use to you at this point.” When the agent simply stared at him Jason marched over and stuck his arm through the electrostatic shield, holding him out in the dangerously frigid air. He thrashed about wildly as dark, purplish blood flowed from his ears and nostrils. “Think he’ll crack?”
“Doubt it,” Crusher said. He was proven wrong when, unable to bear the agony of decompression and the temperature, the agent began hammering on Jason’s arm and nodding his head. Taking that to mean he was more willing to cooperate, Jason hauled him back through the shield. “You may have overdone it.”
“Ready to give me something useful?” Jason asked him, ignoring Crusher. The Phoenix was flying at around twenty-two thousand feet, so while the decompression sickness would be excruciating, it was probably not fatal.
“All I know is that she has information Dalton needs to hold up his end of the agreement,” the agent said. “I wasn’t told what that was, only to retrieve her alive.”
“Do you know where they will take her? Back to the Diligent? Or maybe that enormous ship parked near RU933?”
“I’m just a low-level foot soldier,” the agent said plaintively. “Why would they tell me more than I need to know? I don’t have any information on the Diligent’s location or know anything about factory ships.”
“I never said it was a factory ship,” Jason said, hauling him in close so they were face-to-face, “but thanks for the confirmation on that. One more question ... do you know anything about the shutdown code for the clones you’ve been unleashing?”
“No,” the agent said, eyeing the open cargo bay, “I’m telling the truth about that, I swear.”
“So you don’t have the slightest idea?”
“No!”
“Then what good are you?” With that Jason drew back his arm and hurled the agent through the open cargo bay hatch. He didn’t even make contact with the ramp as he went over the edge and began the descent back to the surface. Jason went over and keyed the control to close the ramp and pressure doors before calling the bridge. “We’re closed back up. Get us into orbit and set course for RU933, maximum safe speed.”
“Copy, Captain.”
“That was a little out of character,” Crusher noted, gesturing to the now closed cargo bay entrance.
“You disagree?” Jason asked.
“Not especially,” Crusher said. “It was merely an observation.”
“It may have been unnecessary,” Jason admitted, “but thanks to his bosses we’re chasing Kellea across the quadrant, Crisstof is in prison, and thousands of civilians are dead while they play their games in this latest little power grab.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Crusher said, holding his hands up. “I was wanting to kill him the first time we ran into him.”
“Report,” Jason said as he thudded up to the bridge, still in his armor.
“We’re in slip-space,” Kage offered. Jason looked at the blacked-out canopy, and then back to the Veran, who simply stared back.
“No shit, Kage,” he said slowly. “Maybe you could give me just a bit more detail.”
“We’re heading for RU933,” Kage continued, nonplussed at Jason’s demeanor. “Engines are currently at eighty-five percent, Twingo is down in Engineering and will let me know when I’m clear to run them up past ninety. Our ETA is five and a half days.”
“Do we know what Dalton arrived in?” Jason asked. “It sure as shit wasn’t that little shuttle.”
“It was big. Probably a carrier-class vessel from Crisstof’s fleet,” Doc said, looking at his display. “They meshed-out forty-five minutes ahead of us, but the ship’s assumed top speed puts them at least three days behind us if we’re heading for the same destination.”
“I’m almost certain we are,” Jason said. “I didn’t get anything definitive from that agent, but it makes sense any way I look at it.”
“I agree,” Doc said, “that ship has to be completely central to their plans.”
“Let’s just hope we didn’t spook it with our diversion tactic when we were retrieving the Diligent’s safe contents,” Kage said.
“There is always that,” Jason agree sourly. “But there’s nothing for it at this point and we’re out of cards to play.”
*****
The Phoenix meshed-in to the RU933 system well ahead of their own projected schedule thanks to Twingo ensuring the engines were able to maintain ninety-eight percent averaged output during the entire flight. They arrived above the ecliptic so they could look down on the gas giant and allow the optical sensors time to reconnoiter the area and confirm that the enormous factory ship was still there.
It was.
Not only was the ship still lumbering along in its original high orbit, the passive detection grid had yet to be repaired from their previous missile attack. The formation that had contained the ship they’d destroyed for their diversion was now completely broken up, each ship slowly drifting away, each pushed away to varying degrees by the kinetic force of the smaller ship exploding in their midst.
“Why do you think they haven’t bothered to fix the grid?” Kage wondered aloud.
“The grid was originally part of the impound; being a typical government operation, I would assume that nobody has bothered to come around and figure out what happened,” Jason surmised.
“Nice to see that their incompetence even extends to their secret plot for galactic domination,” Twingo said with a laugh. “So now what?”
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say we’re not carrying anything that could take down that factory ship, are we?” Jason asked.
“Not even close,” Twingo snorted. “Even if they had no defenses, which I’m sure they do, it’s simply too big. Oh, we could do some damage with the plasma cannons and take out a few systems with our remaining missile complement, but most of the critical components are buried at least a kilometer deep in that beast.”
“I was afraid of that,” Jason said. “So, does anyone have any ideas? We could just sit around and wait for Steader Dalton to show up, but I’d like to arrange a surprise reception for him if possible.”
“I think I just got an idea,” Twingo said with a truly sadistic smile spreading across his normally cheerful face.
Chapter 21
Steader Dalton walked down the corridor of his First Father’s —his— carrier on the way to see his prisoner. It rankled him that Kellea Colleren was being so stubborn about giving him the information he needed. He knew that Crisstof had confided in her almost exclusively, but other than what he already knew she hadn’t provided him with anything useful.
In truth he had hoped she would accept a position on his staff. She was strong, resourceful, and quite attractive. When he’d approached her, however, with the offer of promoting her and allowing her to oversee all fleet operations within his new empire she had laughed in his face. He thought about killing her right then and there; nobody laughed at him. If the meddlesome agent hadn’t stepped in, he likely would have. Maybe it was just as well ... even if he couldn’t get any useful information out of her there were other ways she could serve him.
“Hello, Kellea,” he said as the door to the detention cell whisked open. “Ah ... I’m glad to see the doctor has been to see you since our last talk.” Kellea slowly lifted her head and looked at him with naked hostility. She was chained to the wide bench on the far wall that doubled as her bed in the tiny cell they’d crammed her into. While it could have been a lot worse, Steader’s sadistic side had gotten the better of him during her questioning and she’d needed treatment for several contusions and open cuts.
“You can’t possibly think I’m going to give you any more information than you already have, do you?”
“I don’t expect you
will,” he said disinterestedly, examining his carefully groomed facial hair in the polished alloy of the cell’s tiny mirror. “In fact, I don’t think you have much information to give. But I do think you may know who my First Father would have put his trust in besides you. Who else would know what he did?”
“Why are you worried?” she asked. “He had no idea you were involved in this ... so what do you care?”
“I don’t,” Steader said with a sigh as he sat in the composite chair he had brought in from the corridor outside. “So how did you end up on Forret’al? And how did you mask your communications through a deep-space freighter before that? Impressive though you may be, there’s no way you’ve been moving freely through ConFed space on your own. You’ve had help.”
“Was that a question?”
Steader reached over and slapped her hard across the face, sending her reeling back against her restraints.
“I have no time for your foolishness,” he said in a deliberately bored voice. The side of her face was an angry red as she turned to regard him coldly. “There were reports I would get from my informants within Crisstof’s organization. Random, sometimes unbelievable accounts of a mercenary crew my First Father would call upon when something was considered to be impossible or ... less than legal. You wouldn’t have reached out to them when you were on Camderan-2, would you?”
“You know your First Father as well as I do,” she said. “Do you really think he’d stoop to hiring mercenaries?”
“And yet you don’t answer the question,” he said, folding one leg over the other. “Interesting. So who were the two on the roof when I picked you up? Why was the escort we’d brought with us shot down over such a docile world? Tell me about them.”
“I know you’ll come to regret the fact you left them alive,” Kellea said with a laugh. Steader calmly stood up and raised a balled fist over his head, intending to erase the smug expression from her face once and for all.
“ENOUGH!!”
The barked command left Steader paused in mid-air, still seeming to consider continuing with his action.
“I said enough, Steader, and I meant it.”
“This is my ship. You do not tell me what to do,” Steader said, turning enough so that Kellea could see a plain-dressed being in the doorway.
“I will tell you what to do even if that means saving you from yourself at times,” the man said, walking inside the already cramped cell. “You are not an independent operator here. You have been given an incredible opportunity, but you are certainly not indispensable. I would urge you not to encourage me to find a replacement for you.”
“Was that a threat?” Steader said incredulously.
“It’s whatever you want it to be, dear boy. Now leave. You’ll not be torturing any more prisoners on this trip.” The two squared off across from each other for a moment before, with a disgusted snort, Steader turned to leave.
“She’s useless at this point,” he said. “Waste your time with her if you must.”
“I apologize for that, although since you know him you must be accustomed to that,” the man said. He produced a small device from his pocket and, at the press of a button, released Kellea’s restraints. She slowly brought her hands in front of her and began massaging her bruised and swollen wrists.
“I’ve actually only met him a handful of times,” she admitted, eyeing the newcomer with distrust. “He’d kept his predilections a secret, even from his First Father, apparently.”
“You mean the fact that he’s a sadist? Yes, not many people know about that,” the man admitted. “It’s made him easier to control, however. Certain recorded images and holographs in our possession would be things he’d rather not have come to light.”
“So who are you? The good guy in the equation? Come in and comfort me, sound reasonable, and try and extract the information out of me using a different angle?” she asked.
“No ... I’m the other bad guy,” he confirmed. “You can call me Agent Alux. As I’m sure you guessed, I’m with ConFed Intelligence, on loan to the Special Operations Section. No, Kellea, I could care less about who knows about Crisstof Dalton’s suspicions. Steader seemed obsessed with it, however, and insisted on the detour to pick you up.”
“Why are you here then?”
“He was correct about one thing,” Agent Alux said. “You couldn’t have made it this far on your own. Unlike Steader, however, my reports are a bit more substantiated. I’ve been getting rumblings for some time about a merc crew that flies an older model Jepsen Aerospace gunship that’s far faster and better armed than it has any right to be. This crew pops in and out of intel reports, always seemingly on the periphery of large events with major implications. You can understand my concern given what is happening here, can’t you?”
“What, specifically, are you asking me, Agent Alux?” she asked.
“Must I come right out and say it?” he asked. “Very well. Kellea, I want you to tell me everything you know about the mercenary unit that calls itself Omega Force.”
*****
“There she is,” Kage said and highlighted the darkened hulk with a pulsing green triangle on Jason’s nav display. Jason keyed in a command and sent the icon directly to his neural implant so he could see it without having to look down at the display.
“It doesn’t look like the attitude has drifted too badly from the last time we were here,” Jason said. The Diligent looked exactly as they’d left it during the information raid, which was a good thing as it indicated the ship hadn’t been visited since they’d departed. “I’ll drop you and Lucky off and then move my way back to the flight deck,” he said to Twingo. “You guys all set?”
“All set, Captain,” Twingo said. “We’ll pop an emergency dorsal hatch and then we can get to work.” The engineer was already decked out in his custom EVA suit with his helmet in hand. When they began drifting back towards the engines of the frigate, he followed Lucky off the bridge and made his way to the cargo bay.
Relying heavily on his neural link, Jason swung the ship around to the cargo bay so they were facing the nozzle of the same engine they’d passed by the first time. Using the docking thrusters, he made fine corrections to his course until the two ships were perfectly lined up for the cargo bay ramp to be lowered and extended to bump up against the faring of the Diligent’s engine nozzle. He activated four mooring beams to hold them fast and then placed the main drive in standby.
He watched with interest as Lucky and Twingo made three trips from the Phoenix to the Diligent, ferrying cargo from the former to the latter. After about an hour the team finally gave him the all-clear. “We’re all set, Captain,” Twingo called over the short-range com. “If you would, move her around level with the flight deck and parallel to starboard by a couple hundred meters. We may need to explosively release the hatch and I don’t want it putting a ding in my hull.”
“Copy that,” Jason confirmed. “Moving off now.” They were risking using the short-range com since the passive detection grid was still in shambles and the factory ship had just crossed the horizon and was on the far side of the planet again. The interference coming off the planet itself should easily mask their emissions unless someone knew exactly which frequency to look for. He deactivated the mooring beams and, keeping the drive in standby and using thrusters only, maneuvered the ship around and up (at least up in relation to the larger ship) and parked them parallel to the frigate almost exactly three hundred meters off its starboard bow.
“Not a bad bit of flying, Captain,” Crusher said from where he lounged at a sensor station. Jason just grunted and continued to monitor the passive sensor array to make sure nobody was coming out to investigate. They sat around for another few hours before a flash off to their port side caught their attention. Jason swung the optical sensors around just in time to see Lucky’s head and shoulders protruding out of a hatch near the very aft end of the flight deck, which was in reality just the upper hull with hangar elevators installed.
“Captain,” Lucky called over on the com, waving his hand as he did. “Twingo thinks it would be possible to detach one of the hangar bay hatches and use the Phoenix to remove it, allowing the ship to enter the hangar. This would make our task much easier.”
“He’s sure this is safe?” Jason asked skeptically.
“He seems quite certain,” Lucky replied.
“Which makes me feel no better,” Jason muttered before re-keying the com. “OK, how do we do this?”
“Land on the aft hangar bay hatch when I tell you,” Lucky said, “then engage the landing gear mag-locks and it should be possible to lift the hatch out of place.”
“Oh, this should be good,” Crusher laughed.
“Just let me know when to begin, Lucky,” Jason said, also a bit leery of the plan. Over the next few hours they watched as Lucky walked around on the outer hull of the Diligent, ripping open access panels, setting off small explosive charges, and digging around inside hatches with a cutting beam. They zoomed the optics, trying to get an idea of what they were doing, when the enormous, unfathomably heavy hatch began to come up out of its recess on its own.
Jason sat, transfixed, as the slab of alloy, easily weighing fifty thousand tons, continued to rise out of the gap until it started to rise up and away from the Diligent’s hull. Lucky moved around and gripped an edge, extended his body out parallel to the flight deck, and fired his repulsors. Ever so slowly the massive hatch began to drift to port and accelerate as Lucky kept up maximum thrust. After a few minutes the thrust of the battlesynth’s repulsors overcame the plate’s orbital inertia and hatch slid effortlessly away from the Diligent. Lucky arrested his own momentum and used his jets to descend smoothly back to the flight deck.
“You’re clear to begin your approach, Captain,” Lucky called over. “The hangar deck below is clear as well.”
“I take it we’re no longer needed to remove the hatch,” Jason asked unnecessarily.
“No, Captain,” Lucky answered. “I was able to remove it safely myself.” As Crusher gave him a look that plainly said what he thought of the intelligence of the question, Jason was eternally grateful that Lucky hadn’t yet ventured into sarcasm as his sense of humor developed.
Omega Force 3: The Enemy Within Page 20
