“He cannot be removed from his position while he is still alive,” Connimon answered. “Felex’s death would need to be confirmed before the process of elevating a new Archon could begin. As an exile, he was far more useful; so long as he was thought to be alive no other could claim his place and cause them similar problems.”
“I’d imagine there was also the added benefit that the legions, a militarily organized group, had a bit of a power vacuum with their Archon suddenly gone,” Jason said, thinking aloud. “This would allow the council to step into that leadership role and strengthen the opposition’s grip on the warrior caste just that much more.”
“Very good, young captain,” Connimon said with some surprise. “You seem to have some grasp of the psyche of our warrior brothers.”
“I know militaries,” Jason corrected. “And I’ve found that the similarities run deep, even across different species. Was I correct in hearing that there are no female warriors? I suppose there’s something obvious I’m missing … but how do you keep the race alive?”
“Despite the physical differences, there is actually very little genetic difference between geltens and the warrior sub-race,” Doc said, speaking up for the first time since they’d reconvened. “A warrior child is always male, but can be born to what we would refer to as ‘normal’ geltens. Although the gene that determines this is carried by the female, a mating couple with a warrior male greatly increases the chances.”
“Yes,” Connimon said. “Since warrior offspring are rare, one out of every few hundred, it is a great honor for the family when it happens.”
“We’re getting a bit far afield here,” Crusher said, exerting control over the wandering conversation. “What exactly do you need of me?”
“We didn’t seek you out to antagonize you,” Connimon said. “As I’ve said repeatedly, Galvetor is on the brink of war and the legions look as if they are ready to pick a side. Then there is the fact that senior leadership within the ranks have been rounded up and imprisoned.”
“On what charges?” Crusher demanded.
“Anything they can make stick. Sedition, conspiracy to overthrow the government, misappropriation of funds.” Connimon shrugged. “The list has been varied and predictably ridiculous, but thanks to the justice system the legions operate under, the conviction rate has been nearly one hundred percent.”
“Where are they being held?”
“They’ve been taken to Galvetor itself,” Connimon said. “They were deemed too dangerous to leave on Restaria.”
“Restaria?” Jason asked.
“It’s the second habitable world in our star system,” Connimon said. “Generations ago, the warrior caste agreed to live there after the last civil conflict on Galvetor. There’s something else, Felex … they took Fordix. His arrest and imprisonment was what made us leave and seek you out.”
“We also felt it was only a matter of time before the Caretaker was also falsely accused and locked up in a cage,” Morakar said quietly from his end of the table. Crusher’s shoulders were bunched up and his fists were clenched. Jason knew his friend well enough to know that he was barely in control of his temper.
“Caretaker,” Crusher began in a calm voice. “If you would, please give me some time to discuss all of this with my crew.”
“Of course,” she said with a bow and led the other two warriors from the galley and back to port berthing where they’d already spent some time.
“This is a lot to take in,” Jason remarked dryly. “So who is Fordix?”
“The short answer is that he was my mentor,” Crusher said. “It goes much deeper than that, however. He was more like a father to me.”
“So what do you want to do?”
There was a pregnant pause while Crusher contemplated Jason’s question.
“I don’t have much of a choice,” Crusher said quietly. “I’ll need to travel to Restaria at the very least to determine what is really going on. Even though I know her well, I don’t discount the possibility that Connimon has her own agenda.”
“OK,” Jason said simply. “I’m putting the Phoenix at your disposal for as long as you need her. You’ll be both tactics and operations on this trip, so we’ll be taking our lead from you.”
“I won’t insult you by trying to talk you out of this,” Crusher said, “so I’ll simply say: Thank you.”
“If you are in exile, how will we safely travel to your homeworld?” Lucky asked, getting down to business.
“We won’t be going to Galvetor,” Crusher said. “We wouldn’t be able to land the Phoenix there anyway. Instead, we’ll fly directly to Restaria and begin operations from there. While I’m technically not supposed to be on either world, the reality is they expected me to simply slink away into the wilderness of our world. The legions don’t use up a lot of space and the bulk of Restaria belongs to nature.”
“So why didn’t you?” Jason asked. “Just go camping, that is.”
“Pride,” Crusher said. “While I willingly accepted my sentence, I wasn’t happy about it. I asked to be dropped off on a frontier world, convinced I would thrive among the weaker species. I wasn’t prepared for the cunning of the galaxy’s criminal element. After a year or so of bouncing around, I was drugged and chained and presented to Bondrass as a gift to settle a debt. You know how that turned out.”
“Is there any place we can safely land? Other than a spaceport?” Jason asked.
“There is,” Crusher confirmed. “Here’s what I had in mind …”
Chapter 8
The Phoenix had changed course and increased speed and was streaking though the ether of slip-space towards the Galvetor System. Jason sat in the pilot’s seat, trying to absorb as much information as he could on Crusher’s homeworlds in the short amount of time he had. Information on Galvetor was slim on any public nexus, but Connimon had uploaded some files to the Phoenix’s main computer that filled in a lot of the gaps.
The split culture of the geltens was fascinating. Jason had yet to encounter a people with such a divided personality. The warrior caste had been developed over centuries and centuries of careful selective breeding until the unique traits of Crusher’s kind began to emerge. The blunted snout, the vestigial crest on the forehead, the exaggerated sensory organs around the head, and even the sheer size and strength were all traits missing from Connimon. To Jason, she simply looked like any other bipedal alien with dark, almost black skin.
They’d inadvertently developed the most powerful warriors in the known galaxy, if one were to discount Lucky’s creators giving life to the battlesynths, and when those warriors reached the zenith of what was possible as a species, their world no longer needed or wanted them. They were an army without a war. The general consensus was that the warrior class was too dangerous to live among the normal citizenry and a concerted effort to remove them from Galvetor began in earnest. Predictably, the warrior class, whose only crime was to be born different, pushed back against them. Hard. Bloody conflicts forced the government’s hand and a solution needed to be found, and quickly.
Oddly enough, the star system had a second perfectly good, habitable planet that had no prime species. Given the geltens’ isolationist, almost xenophobic, nature, the planet had never been colonized. After a short negotiation, the legions agreed that they would inhabit the second world, Restaria. It was also agreed that any warrior child born on Galvetor would be sent to Restaria to begin his education and training after his first year of life.
Jason leaned back, absorbing the condensed history lesson he’d just read through. There were some parallels that could be found between the Galvetic warriors and some of Earth’s ancient warrior cultures, but the geltens had taken the idea to extremes. The most obvious of these would be the Spartan army in the fifth century B.C., soldiers trained from infancy to stand head and shoulders above their contemporary peers.
“Now this is interesting,” Jason murmured to himself, scrolling up through a different file.
“Wh
at’s interesting?” Kage asked as he walked onto the bridge, chewing loudly on what looked like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Jason had programmed the childhood staple into the Phoenix’s food processing unit, and the rest of the crew quickly became borderline addicts.
“What have I told you about eating on the flight deck?” Jason asked pointedly, ignoring his friend’s question. Kage stuffed the entire remaining half of the sandwich into his mouth and began slowly chewing it, his cheeks puffed out and synthesized grape jelly dribbling out of one corner. He wiped all four hands on his shirt and held them up for inspection. Jason shuddered, mildly disgusted. “That’s a technicality,” he said. “Just sit down and wipe your mouth off.”
“So what was interesting?” Kage said after he’d managed to choke the sticky sandwich down. Having nothing to rinse it down with, however, he was struggling to work his mouth to get the words out.
“I was wondering how the Galvetic Legions were such an effective fighting force given that they remain isolated with almost no real-world experience,” Jason said, doing his best to ignore the sounds coming from the copilot’s seat. “You can’t train in a bubble, no matter how capable your soldiers are. It looks like they knew this as well. I’m reading a whole dissertation on tactical experts and elite military units that have been invited to Restaria, sometimes under the pretense of training exercises, other times to participate in games. But in all these cases, the Galvetic warriors were able to use what they learned and adapt their tactics. This is incredible … without fighting a single major engagement, they’ve somehow made themselves into the preeminent infantry unit in the galaxy.”
“But how useful is that in modern warfare?” Kage asked, pulling up the same documents at his own station. “I mean, even a thousand Crushers isn’t a whole lot of good when you’re getting bombarded from orbit by starships.”
“Sheer firepower doesn’t always win wars,” Jason said. “From my own experience, I can tell you that there’s never a substitute for well-trained, disciplined, and motivated soldiers.”
“So you’re saying that a ConFed battle wagon makes orbit, turns the surface of a planet into molten slag, and somehow a group of ground pounders will make a difference?” Kage asked scornfully.
“You’re talking about something else,” Jason argued. “The point of war is to achieve a political objective or capture territory. You’re talking about annihilating an entire planet.”
“For some species that is war,” Kage said.
“Not in this area of space,” Jason retorted. “At least not that I’ve seen.”
“Whatever,” Kage said, losing interest. “Let’s just agree to disagree.”
*****
“Here are the pass codes for the first watch station,” Connimon said, passing a data pad to Kage. He accepted and began configuring one of the Phoenix’s com transponders to transmit the provided codes.
They’d popped back into real-space outside of Galvetor Prime’s heliopause. Since their ultimate target was Restaria, Connimon said their best bet would be to sneak into the system and not bother with any attempted subterfuge that would be required if they were to enter the normal traffic of the system. To that end, she had promised to provide the bypass codes that would allow them to fly right by the defense monitoring stations without triggering an alarm.
Jason plotted his course and speed to match Connimon’s instructions as Doc worked at the port sensor station to manage the ship’s countermeasures suite. With any luck, they’d make it all the way to Restaria’s atmosphere without being detected. After that, it would be up to Jason to hide the ship in the ground clutter of the undeveloped world from anyone who may observe their entry.
“Codes are entered,” Kage said. “Will I get any confirmation from the station?”
“No,” Connimon said. “But you will know if the codes weren’t properly entered or received. The station will send out an automated hail that needs to be answered properly within thirty seconds or a general alert will be issued to the fleet.”
“What sort of fleet presence are we talking about?” Jason asked, feeling more than a little foolish he hadn’t asked before now.
“Two corvettes and three squadrons of fighters,” Connimon said with a half-smile. “Calling it a ‘fleet’ may be a bit of a conceit.” Jason breathed a sigh of relief. The small force fielded by the geltens wouldn’t be much of a threat to the Phoenix as she could easily outrun any, or all, of them. “However,” Connimon continued, “we often have ConFed cruisers or expeditionary ships that come through the system and even enter orbit over Galvetor itself.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Jason said with a frown. “And you permit this?”
“It is the primary reason we have such a light space force of our own,” she said. “We have neither the will nor the inclination to fly a large combat-ready fleet. The ConFed wants us as a member planet in order to gain some level of access to the legions. It’s a game we both play that is mutually beneficial.”
“What happens when one day the ConFed Council decides you’re no longer worth protecting?” Kage asked.
“Then we will do what we must,” she said. “We will enter into alliances and ensure our people are protected. There are others who have made overtures to such alliances, including the mighty Eshquarian Empire.”
Something clicked in Jason’s brain at the mention of the Eshquarians. The one little detail that had been nagging at him was how the Caretaker knew that this crew, this ship, was where Crusher had ended up. They had performed a service for the Eshquarian Empire—and were paid handsomely in the form of a rebuilt Phoenix—a few years ago. The mission had almost cost them all their lives, and in the aftermath the prime minister had gotten to know his crew quite well. He decided to throw it against the wall and see if anything stuck.
“So, in your talks with the Eshquarians … I wouldn’t imagine we came up, did we?” he asked casually. “I mean, if you were trying to keep tabs on someone as important as your Archon, it would be natural to ask a favor of a government with an extensive intelligence network. It would also be an easy favor for them to give since they knew exactly which ship a large Galvetic warrior may be serving on.” Doc and Jason were both watching Connimon and caught the narrowing of the eyes and pinching of her nose. To her credit, she met Jason’s challenge head on.
“Yes, Captain,” she said evenly. “We were made aware of your role in thwarting what would have been a devastating terrorist attack. And yes … we asked them to poke around and see if they could find any leads on Felex’s whereabouts. Imagine my surprise when we were provided high-resolution images of your adventures there, including one demolished hospitality suite.” Kage giggled at that as Jason simply nodded and went back to flying the ship.
“Thank you for the honesty, Connimon,” Jason said. “How you knew which ship to track down to find Crusher has been a point of concern for me since you came aboard.”
“Distrustful,” she replied with no trace of being offended. “That is not a bad trait when men’s lives depend on the decisions you make.”
“How long until we make orbit?” Crusher demanded loudly as he clomped onto the bridge. Morakar and Mazer were right behind him, both moving slowly and the latter of the two limping noticeably.
“Training?” Jason asked.
“In a way,” Crusher confirmed. “These two wouldn’t spar with me for some reason. They were, however, wildly curious about the hand-to-hand capability of battlesynths.”
“And?” Connimon asked eagerly.
“Let’s just say your warriors learned a valuable lesson in humility and overconfidence,” Crusher laughed. “Lucky was mostly toying with them so there aren’t any serious injuries.”
“They both fought the mechanical soldier?” Connimon pressed, looking at her two companions with a frown of disapproval.
“Yes,” Crusher replied. “And at the same time.”
“It was not possible how fast it moved, Caretaker,” Mazer said so
ftly. “It was astonishing. The speed, the strength … it threw me across the entire width of the cargo hold while simultaneously engaging Morakar.” Jason frowned at that.
“Lucky switched to combat mode inside the ship?” he asked Crusher.
“Nope,” the warrior said with a huge grin. “He was operating at standard speed and strength. Like I said, he was just playing around. By the way, Mazer, it is he. While it may not make sense to you, Lucky identifies gender specifically to male. I wouldn’t make the mistake of insulting him by calling him it.”
“No, Lord Felex,” Mazer agreed quickly. Jason had noticed that over the course of the flight to Restaria, Crusher had become more and more comfortable with his old name and title. He had even begun to command the other two warriors around. While this may have just been his friend sliding into old and comfortable habits, Jason was getting a sinking feeling in his stomach about what this mission could mean for the future of Omega Force.
“It’s almost party time, Captain,” Kage reported. “We just cleared the last listening post and we have a clear sky all the way into Restaria. I’ll give you vectors on the navigational hazards we have in orbit and then you can fly your own approach.”
“Sounds good,” Jason said, settling into the pilot’s seat and syncing his navigation display with Kage’s. “Everybody, if you would please find an unoccupied seat and strap in we’ll begin what is hopefully a boring landfall on Restaria. Crusher, did you give Kage the planetary coordinates for our primary and secondary landing sites?”
“He should already have them,” Crusher confirmed. He then motioned to the other two warriors who were lounging in the seats next to him. “I’d actually strap in as he says. Our landings are sometimes … vigorous.” Jason ignored the pointed insult and began configuring the Phoenix for atmospheric entry.
Restaria was a lush, green world that shared an overlapping orbit with Galvetor. While the two planets were always on opposite sides of Galvetor Prime, the system’s star, they did have almost identical climates. This wasn’t unheard of, but it was unusual. What made the pair truly unique, however, was that life had developed simultaneously and nearly parallel on the two worlds. So while the plant and animal species weren’t necessarily the same, the building blocks they were made from were. This meant geltens could easily inhabit one planet or the other. It was an unheard of luxury for developing species to have a pair of inhabitable worlds, but it was one the geltens had never fully taken advantage of.
Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon Page 6
