Soldiers of Fortune

by Joshua Dalzelle

  “Thanks,” Jason said absently as he climbed up the ramp, taking note of how clean the ship and its crew were. One of the guards at the top nodded with his head, indicating that Jason should follow him, As they entered the ship’s interior he could hear the second guard turn and follow him, ensuring he was covered from all sides. These guys are taking no chances, must be a big fish on board.

  When they arrived in a well-appointed room, dominated by a circular table in the center, the guards gestured for Jason to enter and wait. There were two other scruffy looking individuals already there, presumably other captains to be involved in the raid. More out-of-place captains arrived one by one until there were eight total. Shortly after that, Dowarty walked in. “Thank you for being prompt, captains,” he said as he walked to the front of the room and keyed the intercom panel. “We’re all here, sir.”

  “Excellent,” a disembodied voice said. A moment later the forward display flicked on showing a seated being behind a large desk and completely obscured in shadows so that no features were discernible. Jason resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the melodramatic show. If he’s going to hide his face why bother with the screen and the cheesy lighting effects? “As you’ve probably guessed, you’re here because you’ve shown yourselves to be capable and trustworthy. Well… as trustworthy as any pirate or mercenary can be.” A polite chuckle rippled through the room.

  “We have a window of opportunity to strike a fleet coming into the Cluster by way of Eshquaria. The same rules will apply as with the others, any debris or captured passengers are yours to keep, just make sure nobody gets their ship captured or disabled. If anybody can’t make it out, the survivors are to destroy the disabled ship.”

  Over the next ninety minutes the Voice filled them in on the mission details with the help of Dowarty. Their target was a colonist fleet that was coming into the Cluster to settle an open continent on one of the sparsely populated worlds that dotted that region of space. There was no real reason given, and the other men in the room needed none, save for payment. Jason knew this was nothing more than a terrorist attack meant to garner sensational headlines and shock those in power on Eshquaria into a rash action. What he couldn’t figure out was why… what could blowing up a load of poor colonists push the Eshquarian government into that would be of benefit to anyone? The more he tried to puzzle it out, the more confusing it all became, so he compartmentalized the problem and concentrated on his little corner of it: find those responsible for conducting these raids. It seemed like he was close.

  He was tempted to call in the Diligent and tag the ship he was on so it could be tracked, but he knew that would be a premature action. Impressive as the vessel was, there was no way such a wide array of organized attacks were being launched from that ship alone. The logistics involved made Jason think they had a major base somewhere that had yet to be found. For the time being, he would continue to play his part and see where it led him. His most immediate concern, however, was how to play along while at the same time thwarting the attack on a fleet full of innocent civilians.

  After they had been given their individual assignments and escorted back off of the ship, the gleaming vessel powered up its drives and lifted off almost immediately. Jason also wasted no time, breaking into a quick jog all the way back to the Phoenix. When he arrived Lucky and Crusher were standing watch over the open ramp, both armed and alert. “Expecting trouble?”

  “Hopefully not, Captain,” Crusher said. “But if you found some, we were ready.”

  “That’s why I love you guys,” he said as he hustled past them. “Button her back up and meet me in the galley. We’ve got some decisions that need to be made, and quickly. After that we’ll be launching as soon as possible.”

  Two minutes later all the members of Omega Force were back in the galley and waiting for their captain to fill them in. “This is the group we’ve been looking for,” Jason told them without preamble. “We’ve just been hired to hit a colonist fleet, and hard… we were told the more carnage the better.” He paused to let that sink in. Flying all over the Cluster to help out a major power’s government, the kind of government that had used up and spit out most of them, had not been sitting well to begin with. But now, they were the only thing standing between a huge group of innocents and a grisly death at the hands of a terrorist group and their hired guns. This was exactly the reason they were all out there. “While we still need to try and push in a little deeper and find their base of operations, there’s no way in hell we’re letting these colonists die.”

  “Damn right,” Twingo said to the nods of agreement by the others.

  “I think we’re going to have to bring the Diligent in on this, Captain,” Doc said. “We can’t take on seven other ships without exposing ourselves, if we can even take them out at all.”

  “I agree,” Jason said. “We’re all supposed to be converging from different vectors to mask our slip-drive signatures as well as eliminate the possibility a ConFed or Eshquarian patrol ship getting lucky and taking us all out. So, how do we get a message to Captain Colleren and not blow our hard-earned cover?”

  “One of the twins,” Twingo volunteered. “We tell it to fly directly away from the spaceport and climb up and out to send the message: we’ll pick it up on our way out of the system.”

  “The twins don’t have slip-transmitters,” Kage disagreed. “Can you fit one of them with one of our spare com packages?”

  “Sure.”

  “You have forty-five minutes,” Jason said forcefully. “We need to be lifting off in an hour. Who do you need?”

  “Kage and Lucky,” Twingo said.

  “Go. Now. Doc, I want you to compose the message. It needs to be short and concise, the smaller the packet the better. Crusher, you’re with me. We’re going to go over the intel brief I got and start forming contingency plans if this one goes belly up on us.” Jason ended the meeting by standing up and striding off towards the bridge with Crusher in tow.

  The next thirty minutes of frenzied activity by the crew resulted in one of the twins being fitted with a slip-transmitter from their spare parts locker and an auxiliary power pack so it could actually use it. The message had been uploaded and the drone had instructions to fly out towards the open plains beyond the spaceport perimeter before making its ascent. It would then transmit its message four times, which was addressed specifically to the Diligent, and then shut the transmitter down and continue on course away from the planet. They would grab it on the way out once they launched. The risk was that by transmitting blind, without waiting for a confirmation from the Diligent, there was no guarantee the short message would be received or understood. It was a risk they had to take, though, as any lengthy contact with the other ship would greatly increase the chances of them being discovered.

  “Talk to me,” Jason said as he climbed up into his seat on the bridge.

  “Primary flight systems are online. Our messenger has delivered his package and is flying away from the planet and everyone else is reporting that they’re ready to go,” Kage said.

  “Very good. Go ahead and let ground control know we’re leaving,” Jason replied even as he fed power to the drives and lifted the Phoenix off the landing pad. He swung them around on a course that would take them directly away from the spaceport and throttled up into a lazy climb up out of the atmosphere. As the sky blackened around them, he saw that Kage had given him an indicator on his display to let him know where his wayward drone was. He steered towards it and continued accelerating, closing in fast on the small, underpowered craft. He continued to fly towards the indicator until the proximity alarm chimed and forced him to decelerate to match speed. Finally, he saw the drone with its little engines still lit up bright pushing hard away from the planet like it had been told to do. “Chirp the transponder once and tell it to come aboard,” Jason told Kage. Once the drone knew they were there, it cut its engines off and let Jason maneuver up under it as they continued to drift away from Oorch Prime. Once they we
re underneath the drone it fired its exoatmospheric jets and grabbed onto the docking cradle, allowing itself to be pulled inside.

  “Drone is aboard,” Kage reported. “You’re clear to maneuver and the slip vector is programmed. Ready when you are.” Jason didn’t waste any time flying further up the gravity well before meshing out of the system. Under the circumstances, the fuel savings seemed trivial. They now had a nine hour flight to wait and hope the Diligent received their message and was in position to do something about it.

  “We’ve got a pretty long flight, everyone,” Jason said over the intercom. “Try to stay loose, get something to eat, and rest up. Once operations start, I don’t know when we’ll get any downtime again and I don’t want anyone falling out on me.” He stood up and stretched his lower back out. “That goes for you too,” he said to Kage.

  “Of course,” was the insincere reply. Of everyone on the crew, even Twingo, Kage was the one who seemed utterly incapable of keeping calm before an operation. Jason had thought he would eventually acclimate, but every time the little Veran sat there buzzing, like he was hooked directly to the slip reactor. But, he had never once failed to perform during a mission so Jason let him be. Instead, he made his way down to the galley for a quick, light meal before doing his rounds to check on the rest of the crew individually.

  He found Lucky in the armory cleaning weapons while Crusher laid across one of the benches snoring like thunderstorm. “Cleaning weapons you don’t even use?” Jason asked with a laugh in his voice.

  “I am just trying to make sure I pull my weight, as you like to say, Captain,” Lucky replied quietly.

  “You do that and then some, my friend.” Jason watched him for a moment more. The polar opposite of Kage, Lucky was calm and serene just before a mission, even though he was often the pointy end of the spear on dangerous ground operations. He knew the synth had a full range of emotions he was beginning to explore, but he seemed to be able to keep his anxiety from ever showing. The only time Jason had seen him show any stress was when he was in a large crowd and people were staring at him. “So... any regrets about signing on with this outfit?” Lucky stopped cleaning the plasma rifle he had broken down and turned to his captain.

  “No offense intended, but is this not an odd time for a discussion like this?

  “Maybe. But we’ve got nothing to do for another seven hours at least, so I may just be trying to distract myself,” Jason said as he fidgeted with tools on the bench.

  “Distract yourself from what?” Lucky asked, now focusing all his attention on Jason.

  “What could happen if we fail,” he admitted. “Before, it was just an abstract fact that ships were getting attacked. Now, we’re in the thick of it, and a misstep on my part means a lot of people will die for no other reason than some sick bastard wants to prove a point.”

  “But we cannot let the fear of failure stop us from trying. We have made our plans as best we could under the circumstances, and we will try our best when we arrive. Fear and guilt will not save a single life, Captain. Having the courage to try, and even fail, is what makes a difference,” Lucky turned to look at Crusher’s sleeping form before continuing. “Since I have been a member of Omega Force I have saved untold lives, helped those who had given up all hope, and made friends like I never dared to hope for in my previous life. So, yes, I am still happy I am here in the place you have made for us.”

  “I didn’t make anything, Lucky,” Jason told the synth. “We were all broken in some way or another when we were forced together.” The pair fell silent as they each thought about what the other had said. “Well, that’s enough introspection. I’m going to go fuck with Twingo.”

  “I hope that you are able to come to terms with the consequences of when we fail one day, Captain, as we inevitably must,” Lucky said as Jason stood up. He paused, but didn’t reply as he left the armory and headed for the engineering bay. Every time he engaged Lucky in any sort of meaningful conversation he was forced to again reevaluate how he viewed the synth. At each turn, the artificial man was forcing Jason to come to terms with what his humanity really meant to him out among the stars.

  The last couple of hours before they hit their objective seemed to crawl by at an ever-slowing pace. Everyone was rested, prepped, and at their station as the Phoenix hurtled through the ether of slip-space towards the unsuspecting colonist fleet. They had brought all the weapons and defensive systems online already and were ready for anything when they meshed in. The plan had them breaking into real-space quite close to the target so as to not give them any time to escape. They were to catch them at their last rally point before they would make their final slip-space hop to their ultimate destination. Larger civil fleets tended to make long journeys in a series of jumps so they would know if a ship was having trouble keeping up and to not get too spread out. Jason just hoped their navigators were of the precise sort since they were planning on meshing in relatively close to their intended position.

  “It’s almost show time,” Jason said over the open intra-ship com channel. “Everybody give me one more check-in and then get ready for anything.” One by one his crew checked in with an affirmative status, so then it was down to a tense fifteen minute countdown until they arrived.

  5… 4… 3… 2... 1…

  “…break off and retreat! I repeat, break off the attack, they were waiting for us!” The voice that broke over the secure com channel sounded stressed, but not panicked. Jason watched as the sensors began populating his tactical display and noticed there were seven more ships than they were expecting, one of which was familiar: the Diligent. He knew his own ship would be recognized by Captain Colleren’s crew, but the remaining six looked like Eshquarian light-cruisers who would have no idea the Phoenix was on their side. He also saw that two of the raider ships were drifting dead in space, their momentum taking them away from the battle as they tumbled powerlessly.

  “It looks like everyone’s making a break for it,” Kage said as he watched the sensor feed. “Should we follow?” Jason didn’t answer immediately as he watched the remaining raiders turn and accelerate away from the defending fleet, a few winking off the display as they meshed out of the system. Even though they had jumped in close, he had begun decelerating as soon as he heard the com traffic so they were just now coming into the outer effective range for the cruisers’ weaponry, he was assuming Colleren wouldn’t fire on him with her frigate’s larger main guns.

  “One raider is losing power,” Doc said before Jason could respond to Kage. “They took a nasty shot from one of the cruisers and are no longer accelerating.”

  “I see them,” Jason confirmed as the ship in question rotated around to bring its forward weapons and shields to bear as it shot away along its original heading. “It looks like they’ve lost their engines, but not main power.”

  “That’s the ship the commands were being broadcast from,” Kage said. “Uh, oh… looks like Captain Colleren is going hunting.” On his display Jason could see the Diligent break formation and begin accelerating towards the stricken ship. It looked like they would close into weapons range within minutes. Playing a hunch, Jason swung onto a course that would bring him up behind the Diligent and accelerated away from the colonist fleet. He happily saw that the Eshquarian ships had no intention of pursuing him.

  “Dial the forward plasma cannons back to ten percent power,” he said.

  “Ten percent?” Kage asked. “That will just make a big flash against their shields.”

  “Just do it. I don’t have time to explain,” Jason said while he lined them up directly behind the Diligent and accelerated hard. I really hope she understands what I’m doing. When he was within range, and the larger Diligent was directly between the Phoenix and the stricken raider, he opened fire with the forward plasma cannons. With the power being so low, the bolts hit the frigate’s aft shields and flared in a spectacular coronal discharge, but caused no damage. He continued to accelerate past the Diligent at an incredible velocity an
d bore down on the still-drifting raider. It was a tense few seconds before he got confirmation that Captain Colleren had understood his ploy.

  “The Diligent is breaking off,” Kage reported. “She’s decelerating and turning to rejoin the fleet.”

  “Good,” Jason breathed out, relieved. “Lucky, Crusher, get to the cargo bay and get ready to bring that other crew aboard. This is a rescue, but don’t trust them.”

  “Copy.”

  “Whoever the point man for this operation was is on that ship,” he explained to his somewhat bewildered crew. “We’re more likely to make a large gain by rescuing him than letting the Diligent capture him and turn him over to the Eshquarians.” With the aid of the computer, Jason began the delicate dance of matching speed and orientation to the other ship and slowly closed the gap until Kage could extend the ventral gangway and link up to their airlock. “You know the drill,” he said as he hopped out of his seat. “If that ship makes a suspicious move… blast it.”

  Jason jogged through the ship and arrived in the cargo bay just as the drop-hatch in the floor was irising open. Immediately the acrid smell of burning composites and wire assaulted them through the opening. Lucky reached into the opening and grabbed a coughing and injured man who looked like he had some serious burns on the right side of his body. When Lucky laid him on the cargo bay floor Jason could see who it was, and he was quite honestly shocked: Dowarty. Why is this little weasel out here on an op?