"Guys… you have incoming," Carolyn's voice came over the com. "Three unidentified craft are converging on your location fast… none of them appear to be your ride out of there. I'd advise you go back down into the subbasement."
"Why bother?" Kage asked on the open channel. "They know we're here."
In less than a minute Kage and Twingo, still standing on either side of the improvised coffin, were bathed in a harsh light as three shuttles settled into a hover and arrayed themselves in front of the shop's main doors. Twingo just sighed, certain that it was the authorities and that they'd been tracked the whole time.
Kage's jaw jutted out defiantly and he glared up at the hovering ships, making rude gestures with his two smaller arms. Twingo almost laughed aloud at the little Veran, but something began to tickle at his ears, something familiar. The sound grew into a dull rumble that Kage now noticed as well; he frowned and looked at Twingo. Before they could confer, the lead shuttle exploded in a magnificent fireball, the concussion knocking them flat on their backs.
When Twingo sat up, shaking his head to clear it, he saw something shoot overhead. Another shuttle exploded and the ground shook from four massive plasma thrust engines… the Phoenix had arrived. His eyes welled up and his chest was tight with conflicting emotions as he saw the ship—his ship—wheel about and come hard at the remaining shuttle, the punishing roar of her engines making breathing damn near impossible.
The third shuttle turned and zipped away to the north in the opposite direction of the big gunship, but Jason wasn't having it. The Phoenix bellowed like an enraged animal as she tore off into the night after it, the sound of the engines still hammering at them even after she was well out of sight.
"Splash three," Carolyn said calmly. "I believe you can handle things from here."
"Oh yeah… I'm gonna handle the shit out of this," Jason's voice broke in on the channel. He didn't sound all that happy.
"We're out then," the Viper said. "You owe me."
Still lying on his back, Twingo looked up as the Phoenix rumbled over the building, dropping her landing gear and settling onto the tarmac with a slight bounce. Twingo could see that she was in pretty rough shape, but when he saw the angry set to Jason's jaw as he came stomping down the ramp, he decided now wasn't the time to make an issue of the ship's mistreatment.
"What the hell is going on here?!" Jason shouted at them when he was within earshot. "I don't hear from you for months, and then I get a call from Whitney, of all people, saying you're in deep shit? And you're working with Mok on something?"
"No time!" Kage shouted, grabbing the cart with the coffin on it. "We need to get the hell out of here while the getting is good." Jason narrowed his eyes and looked as if he wanted to argue the point further, but instead he jerked his head in the direction of the open cargo bay and let the pair struggle past with their load without further comment… or offer to help.
By the time the local first responders made it to the scene, the Phoenix was long gone, flying south below the sensor grids over the large stretches of uninhabited swampland before nosing up over the equator and pushing to orbit. The forged credentials and clean transponder codes they were flying made it fairly easy to get off the sleepy planet, the orbital control authorities apparently having little to no contact with the people on the ground.
Jason sat silently in the pilot's seat, still seething. Twingo knew his human friend could be touchy, and his temper was somewhat unpredictable, but the radiating waves of anger coming off the man surprised and scared him. Jason and Crusher had decided on their own to fly off and indulge themselves by giving in to their baser instincts and violent tendencies, so why should he be this angry because he and Kage had also found something to occupy their time?
If he was pissed because they'd been cavorting about with Saditava Mok, then he was going to go ballistic when he found out what was sitting in the cargo hold… and why.
"Is… is that what I think it is?" Crusher asked. Jason stood there staring down into the makeshift shipping container, his face an unreadable mask.
"If you think it's a prototype second-generation battlesynth body then yes… it is what you think it is," Kage answered.
"It's just a body? It hasn't been integrated with a processing matrix?" Jason asked.
"Nope. Just a body."
"So why do you have it?" Jason pressed. "Putting aside the fact that its very existence is highly, highly illegal, why are you two dipshits working with gangsters and assassins to steal a body you have no use for?"
"Well… there is one other thing," Twingo said, now treading very carefully and choosing his next words precisely.
"Well?" Jason demanded. His posture had shifted and Twingo knew he was on dangerous ground. As per usual, Kage decided this would be a good time to be “helpful.”
"Part of Lucky was found during the post-battle assessment Mok's people did on Khepri. Tauless thinks his primary matrix is still intact, so we've been hunting around for this rumored lab to steal a body and try to reintegrate—" That was as far as he got because Jason palmed the little Veran's head and slammed it down onto the crate, holding it there.
"Use your words," Kage managed to squeeze out from where Jason had his face squished into the metal.
"What the hell did you just say? You're telling me Lucky has been alive this whole time and I'm just now finding out about it!!" Jason's face was a dangerous shade of purple and a vein was throbbing in his forehead. Twingo knew that thanks to Doc's irresponsible tinkering with the genetic code of a species he was barely familiar with, Jason's adrenal response was unpredictable and dangerous when he became enraged. Apparently he wasn't the only one who felt that way.
"Let him go," Crusher said firmly, his body quartered away from Jason and his right hand on the grip of his sidearm. "Now, Jason." The human eyed the Galvetic warrior for a long moment and Twingo could almost see rationality warring with the anger in his friend before he opened his hand and let Kage slip to the floor, rubbing his face.
"Someone had better start talking… and now." Jason stepped back from the container and crossed his arms over his chest.
Over the next two hours, Twingo and Kage filled them in on the hunt for a replacement body and the odds that Lucky was still alive somewhere inside the charred and twisted remains that had been found on Khepri. Crusher seemed completely immersed in the story, but Jason still stood there like a statue. Every once in a while he'd look down at the body, but that was it. No questions, no comments, and nothing to indicate he wasn't going to fly off the handle again once they'd wrapped up.
"So Mok has Lucky's remains right now?" Jason asked.
"Yes."
"If you contact him to bring them, and Tauless, back to S'Tora, would he do it?"
"I don't see why not," Kage said. "I'm not sure why you're so hung up on his involvement. He's been nothing but helpful."
"Mok is the kingpin of one of the largest criminal organizations in the quadrant," Jason said. "You'd do well to remember that. There's nothing for free when dealing with these types, and I'm afraid to find out what he'll ask for in return after you've run up such a high tab."
"Where has Doc been this whole time?" Crusher asked.
"Back home," Kage answered. "You know him… probably sitting around reading and working on some pet project. He's aware of what we're doing, but he decided at the last minute he'd rather not be involved."
Jason just grunted at that and rolled his eyes. "Make the call to Mok," he said. "I'm changing course and we're heading home. I almost can't overstate how dangerous it is having this aboard. Did you bother to think about what might happen if you're even successful at this?"
"What do you mean?" Twingo asked.
"Lucky was a recognized sentient species," Jason said. "Despite some of the finer details that caused problems, he was more or less free to go where he wanted. Just stuffing his brain into this body doesn't make its existence any less problematic. Hell, for all we know this will get us into even more trouble sin
ce we've taken an inert prototype and integrated it with a battle-hardened matrix."
"Ah," Twingo said, turning a bit pale. "I see your point. So do you want me to tell Mok we've had a change of plans?"
"No," Jason said after a moment. "But you may have created bigger problems than we can easily deal with this time. You have no idea who the other group of hitters was that got to the lab before you?"
"None… all we know is they stole another of the prototypes and then rigged the place to blow. They didn't seem too concerned with leaving us alive when they made their escape since they ran right by Kage's team without so much as a second look."
"I wouldn't worry about who they are, Captain. We'll find out soon enough," Crusher said. "The Viper was right… they've been tracking these idiots the whole time. I don't think we'll have to wait long before they make another appearance."
"Good times," Jason sighed, turning to leave the cargo hold. "Twingo, if you want to make it back to S'Tora anytime soon—or at all—I'd suggest you get your blue ass into Engineering and get the slip-drive realigned."
Twingo grumbled at the comment, but he was glad to escape the tension in the cargo hold and get back to the familiar confines of the gunship's engineering bays. He could tell just from the feel through the deck that the ship was not running well, which meant that Jason and Crusher had been abusing the hell out of her without making sure proper maintenance was being done. He couldn't make them understand that the Phoenix, while smaller, had most of the problems the larger starships had when it came to keeping her flying safely. The amount of work he was facing due to their incompetence rankled him, but it still felt good to be home.
Chapter 6
"If we leave the Phoenix parked out on the landing pad, we can use the hangar floor as a workspace and have plenty of room," Jason said, his voice echoing off the walls of the cavernous hangar and base of operations they'd dug back into a mountain on the planet S'Tora. "The only issue I see is that we don't have the ability to generate the sort of power you're talking about."
"Sure we do," Kage said. "We can tap directly into the Phoenix's power MUX. She's got an anti-matter reactor that's really too big for a ship that size and will easily be able to generate the surge we'll need to activate the battlesynth's internal cells."
"Twingo?" Jason asked.
"It shouldn't be an issue," the engineer said. "The ship can produce the needed power and just buying the heavy cables to run in here won't arouse the sort of suspicion a portable fusion generator would. Mok should be here tomorrow with everything we'll need aboard his ship, including Lucky and Tauless."
"Is he coming here personally?" Jason asked.
"That's the impression I got," Twingo said.
Jason said nothing, but his friends could tell that he wasn't pleased about this. Everything Mok did was calculated for his own benefit, but not knowing exactly why the gangster seemed to have such an interest in their small outfit bothered Jason. It defied logic given that Mok could afford to field a professional military. A small band of mercenaries working jobs along the periphery should have been something well below his notice. This new wrinkle where Mok had taken such a direct role in trying to help Kage and Twingo resurrect Lucky just made him more suspicious. What concessions would he try to wring from Jason once it was all over?
As it turned out, Mok was wasting no time in getting to them and his ship hit orbit over S'Tora in the middle of the night, local time. Jason was roused out of bed and asked to come in and get the Phoenix out of the way so Mok could land his large cargo shuttles on the pad to unload all the equipment he'd brought. Grumbling about the time and the fact that damn near everyone else on the crew was at least capable enough to fly the ship in circles for a few hours, Jason arrived at the hangar disheveled and in a foul mood.
Being mindful of the locals, he slowly eased the Phoenix off the pad and drifted lazily up and away over the sea where he commanded the autopilot to orbit in a loose figure-eight while he watched the camera feeds from the hangar. Almost as soon as he'd cleared the area, the first of five medium-duty cargo shuttles touched down, disgorged its payload, and took off again to make room for the next. He leaned forward with interest as Saditava Mok walked from the last shuttle and warmly greeted both Twingo and Kage. Tauless came out next; he was followed by a crewmember pushing something Jason recognized from their last mission together: a battlesynth long-term stasis pod. That must be what they were keeping Lucky's processor matrix in.
Mok looked around the pad as the shuttle lifted off, pointed and made a comment about Jason's 1967 Camaro convertible that was parked under a storage overhang, and then looked right up into the camera, tossing it a mocking salute.
"Sometimes I really hate that smug son of a bitch," Jason ground out. The camera that Jason was using to watch the parade of equipment from Mok's ship was carefully hidden within the rock face above the hangar doors. The fact the crime boss had so casually pointed it out and correctly assumed he was monitoring it chaffed at his already raw nerves. It was clear that Mok had set his people on gathering intel on Omega Force's base of operations and he had no issue with letting Jason know it. Maybe Carolyn was right… maybe putting down roots and making a permanent dirtside home had been a mistake.
"We're all clear, Jason… bring her back in whenever you're ready," Twingo's voice broke in over the com.
Whenever he was ready. Jason thought that over for a moment and actually had to fight the impulse to point her nose to the night sky and just leave again. Maybe he'd go to Restaria and see what the Reddix brothers were up to, or he could sneak back to Terranovus and visit Russ Johnson at Earth's new space military training centers. Anything to avoid going back and facing the reality that awaited him in that hangar. While he hadn't really dealt with Lucky's death in a healthy way, he had put it behind him. Now Twingo and Kage had come along and offered him the cruelest gift of all: hope.
"Hello, Jason… you're looking well."
"Mok." Jason nodded politely and surprised everyone—Mok most of all—by offering his hand in greeting.
"I'll return to my ship and allow everyone to get back to sleep," Mok said after an uncomfortable pause. "I'll come back in the morning with my technical team and we can begin setting up and then we'll leave you to your task."
"Thanks, Mok," Twingo said. "We'll just wait for them to begin unpacking the crates. Then the real hard work begins."
"I can imagine," Mok said smoothly and, with a final bow, walked back out the yawning hangar doors just as a small orbital jumper dropped to a low hover near the edge of the landing pad and lowered a ramp. Once Mok and his security team were aboard, it zipped off into the night.
"What did you mean by 'real hard work?'" Jason asked.
"This isn't as simple as slapping some connectors together and flipping a switch," Twingo said. "Kage downloaded as much of the technical package as he could, but he's still decrypting it. If he wasn't able to get all the specs and procedures that Tauless will need, this will have likely turned out to be a lot of risk for no reward."
"I see. Well, standing around worrying about it won't do anything tonight. I'm going to sleep aboard the Phoenix… see you in the morning." Jason turned and walked back up the ramp of his ship, closing the pressure doors and, on a whim, raised the ramp and locked her up tight. The last thing he saw before the ramp fully closed was the main hangar doors rolling ponderously on their tracks.
He walked up to the bridge and activated the ship's external security systems and prepped her for a quick start. It wasn't that he actually expected any trouble or duplicity from Mok at this point, but he was still nervous about having an illegal prototype bit of military hardware sitting on the floor inside the hangar. S'Tora was a sleepy, backwater world and the coastal towns were even more laid back. It tended to lull one into a false sense of security and that's when slipups happened. In his line of work, a slipup could very well prove fatal.
With one last look around the ship, he made sure his armamen
t was nearby and then slipped into his rack with his clothes still on. If he was lucky, it would be many hours from now before the ship woke him up and then only to tell him that breakfast was ready.
Jason wasn't lucky.
The insistent tug at the back of his mind that was the ship interfacing with his neural implant to wake him up let him know immediately that something was wrong. He tried to activate the external sensor feeds and found that all the imagers were just transmitting nausea-inducing patterns of swirling colors.
"What the hell?"
He rolled off his rack and slipped on his tactical harness, his sidearms still in their holsters, and plucked the heavy plasma rifle up from where it rested against the bulkhead. While not his weapon of choice, he'd learned the hard way that the collateral damage from his beloved railgun made it not ideal for all situations.
Instead of running down into the cargo bay and lowering the ramp, Jason made his way into the starboard engineering bay and commanded one of the dorsal access hatches open after cutting the interior lights. He quickly climbed the ladder and low-crawled out onto the top of the Phoenix, where he crouched and listened. The night was dead quiet, but he knew someone was out there and had successfully defeated the gunship's external cameras. Craning his head up to the top of the port vertical stabilizer where one of the cameras was housed he saw that something foreign was attached to the transparent bubble.
Apparently whoever was infiltrating their base knew enough about the ship to deploy multi-spectral noise generators over the imagers, but not enough to be able to climb up on her and internally disable the system. That made Jason feel marginally better, but it did show that whoever was sneaking about was a pro. He walked across the upper hull as quietly as he could, stopping near the port wing root and crouching down, switching his ocular implants to mid-wave infrared. As soon as he did, two hotspots showed up near the hangar doors that hadn't been there in the visible spectrum, or at least hadn't been visible in the low light.
Omega Force: Legends Never Die (OF10) Page 5
