The ride to where they were going was only a few hours and kept them on the congested main roads, where their rented vehicle blended in easily. Jason breathed a sigh of relief when the tiny spaceport came into view and the groundcar automatically exited the main road and turned control back over to him so he could pilot them the rest of the way. The spaceport only had four large hangars, two of which were crammed full of smaller craft awaiting repair. One housed a private luxury courier ship when Jason had checked, and the last, the one he'd paid handsomely to have to himself, housed a highly modified Jepsen Aero DL7 heavy gunship. He and the ship had been together since he'd been mistakenly abducted from Earth years ago, and the pair had fought and bled together through impossible odds. While not an overly sentimental man, Jason felt a tangible, familial connection to the machine.
"Looks like we actually weren't tracked," Crusher grunted as Jason rolled through a side door into the hangar. "Those guards will be awake by now and looking for their principle."
"This twerp can't afford the type of security that would have been able to handle an abduction like that," Jason said. "We'll be off-planet and the hell away from here before they ever get around to tracking this vehicle."
Jason parked the groundcar near north wall and hopped out, helping Crusher with the now-wriggling alien they'd bagged and tagged a few hours earlier. Crusher slammed him into the chair they already had prepped under the Phoenix's left wing, secured the straps to hold him in place, and then ripped the bag off his head.
"Who are you?! I'll pay double if—" He never finished as Jason slapped him sharply across the face, enough to get him to stop blubbering but not enough to hurt him.
"Shut up and listen," he said. "The abduction was actually for your benefit, believe it or not, and if you cooperate, this will be the worst thing that happens to you. Understand?"
"How is this a benefit to me?"
"Because, Master Noryant, if the smuggling cartels think you just handed over what we wanted without putting up any fight, they'll be sure to kill you in a slow, excruciating manner," Crusher said, leaning in and menacing the cowering alien.
"Cartels?" Noryant's strategy was apparently going to be to play dumb.
"We don't have a lot of time for games," Jason said. "We can pretend to torture you and let you loose, or we can actually torture you. Either way, I will get what I want. About four months ago, you authorized the sale of over four hundred and fifty thousand units of refined, reactor-grade hydrogen. The sale wasn't approved by the usual authorities, and you were the one who signed off on the exception. I want to know who picked up the fuel load."
"I have no idea what you're talking about! My job is to—"
"Captain! Just picked up some chatter that we have inbound aircraft converging on our position. They're not military or local law enforcement," Kage shouted from the open ramp of the gunship. "Did you check the target for a tracker like I showed you?" Jason and Crusher just looked at each other. They'd patted Noryant down and put his two com units in a shielded case, but they had forgotten to do the body scan like Kage had suggested.
"Looks like you get to go for a little ride, Noryant," Jason said. "We'll drop you off somewhere you can catch a ride back from. Unless you have something to give me?"
"You can't take me with you! They'll kill me on sight!"
"Who? Who will kill you?" Crusher said. Jason looked over to Kage, and the Veran was making the hurry up signal with his two smaller arms.
"We don't have time, just grab him," Jason said. Crusher picked up Noryant, still strapped the chair, and ran across the hangar floor even as the dull throb of the Phoenix's engines going into pre-start made the walls rattle.
"Please! Please don't do this!"
"Shut up!" Jason barked. "I gave you a fair chance, now you'll have to deal with your customers. Crusher, strap him down here in the cargo bay and get to the bridge. We have to get out of here, now!"
Noryant was in a complete panic, both his hearts hammering away as he tried to make sense of what was happening to him. The terrifying monster that had grabbed him slammed the chair down on the deck of the ship's cargo bay and secured the straps to the tie-downs. He leaned down and smiled evilly, growling softly.
"I promise that, if we're about to be boarded, we'll jettison you into space before we let them take you alive," the monster said before shoving the hood back down over his head. As the monster clomped away, Noryant realized he had forgotten to turn on the active sensory dampeners, and he could hear what was happening around him.
He heard and felt the engines of the ship run up and felt the deck rumble as it rolled out of the hangar. There was a sharp jolt as it took off, and then he could feel nothing but the vibrations of the ship in flight, unable to see what was happening outside.
This went on for what felt like half a cycle at least but, in his agitated state, was probably only a handful of millicycles. He was just beginning to calm down when there was a horrific banging on the hull, some faint screaming from the crew from somewhere in the ship, and the smell of burning electrics filling the air. After a few more bangs, there was the familiar disorienting feeling of the ship meshing-out into slip-space.
Noryant had no idea if the people chasing the ship were his own security contractors, incompetent as they were, or if the people he'd been selling starship fuel to off the books were trying to silence him. Either way, now that he'd left the Nabia System, he doubted his customers or the cartels he normally dealt with would believe he wasn't cooperating with the strange crew that had just abducted him. If he survived, he'd have to disappear and start all over again someplace else.
"Pull the hood off," Jason said. He sounded weary, and his face was streaked with grime.
"What's happening?" Noryant asked, blinking against the flickering lights of the cargo bay.
"We eluded the people tracking you somehow," Jason said. "They looked like cartel enforcers. We're on our way to a safe system. This can still be salvaged. If you help us out, we can put you in contact with someone who can help you disappear and reemerge as someone else."
"Are you with a rival cartel?"
"Doesn't matter who we are. I just need to know about the large fuel load you helped move through the distribution center"
"Why?"
"This will go quicker if you don't keep asking pointless questions," Jason said. "I want to know the ship that picked up the load and who your contact was. If we knew how they paid, that would also be helpful. I'll be honest, we were just supposed to ask you this in your home. You surprised us with the hired goons, and then again with cartel enforcers coming after you. You're already far more trouble than you're worth, and my first inclination is to drop out of slip-space and toss you out the back of the ship."
"The records are in my com unit, the larger one," Noryant said, seeming to deflate. "The data is useless without the decryption key and, even then, I'll have to explain my record keeping system for it to make any sense."
"And you're willing to do this?"
"You're still willing to let me live and set me up with a new identity?"
In reply, Jason just pulled the com unit out of his pocket and nodded for Crusher to untie Noryant's arms. After he had the device, the alien quickly logged in and brought up the information they were after. He turned the display so Jason could read it, the human storing a snapshot of the information in his neural implant.
This looks legit. Tanker registry shows it belongs to a shell corporation that operates on contract for a mining concern, but it's definitely Eshquarian in origin. Your pet Veran can run down the names of the contacts Noryant gave you.
Jason wasn't sure how Cas knew about the tanker's origins unless the data was knocking around in his implant without him being aware of it. As far as he knew, the hitchhiker in his head wasn't able to reach out and connect to external networks.
"This isn't even a cartel order," Noryant said. "I-I don't understand."
"That's okay," Jason reached out and r
uffled his sensory ridges on top of his head. "All right, guys, show's over."
The vibration of the deck immediately ceased, and the lights stopped flickering. A second later, the rear pressure doors slid apart, and the ramp dropped to show that the ship was still sitting in the same hangar on Nabia-2 they'd brought him into in the first place.
"Don't worry," Jason said. "You're not the first person to fall for this."
"I still can't believe this dumbass plan works as much as it does," Crusher grumbled.
"What happens—"
"To you? Nothing," Jason cut Noryant off. "We're leaving, you're free to take that groundcar back to your house, and we can act like none of this ever happened. Just between me and you, I'd definitely hire a new security company."
"I can't believe you're just letting me leave."
"Why not?" Jason asked. "You can't exactly report us without risking your own little off-the-books operation here. We don't care about you selling fuel to smugglers and pirates, so you don't even have to quit that. Even if you reached out to this contact and told them we're looking for them, you have no idea who we are. So, no hard feelings?"
2
"Omega Force has made some progress in tracking down the hidden Eshquarian units."
"Oh?" Saditava Mok asked, not looking up from the holographic display in front of him. "And?"
"They tracked down a fuel tanker that took a full load from the Nabia System distribution yards, all off the books," Similan said. "Burke thinks it's likely a support ship supplying hidden combat units and is going to keep following that thread."
"It will do him little good if he finds them," Mok sighed. "The Eshquarian fleet will not jump to our side. They haven't even launched a retaliatory strike against the enemy occupying their own space. Burke thinks he can convince them to strike back at a ConFed target, but they're more likely to blast the Phoenix out of the sky before it gets close enough for him to even talk."
"Would you like me to suggest to them that they leave this alone, sir?"
"Not in those words. Tell them that I'm…asking…if they would be so kind as to grace me with their presence. I want to make sure Burke isn't about to go rogue and do something so radical that the ConFed feels compelled to hit back. Given the lack of a big enough target, they'd likely take it out on any worlds they suspect have given us aid."
"Understood, sir," Similan bowed and left.
Mok continued to stare at the hologram but was no longer paying attention to what it displayed. From their last conversation over slip-com, Mok knew Burke was anxious to take the fight to the enemy, but he'd been in the business of toppling regimes and fighting insurrections for a long, long time, while Burke had a relatively short career as a mercenary, working small along the edges of civilized society. The human likely didn't understand the full consequences of any direct action taken against an enemy like the ConFed and just wanted to take a wild swing at them. What he didn't see was that all a rash action like that would accomplish is getting a lot of innocent people killed.
"Humans," he sighed again. "What have I done to deserve being saddled with these vicious little creatures?"
"He's still not talking?"
"Not a word," Twingo said. Jason and his engineer were in the galley, watching as Lucky walked through on his way to the bridge.
The battlesynth had good days and bad days. The integration into the new body was an ongoing process, and there were times when Lucky would freeze up and stay that way for a day or two before his matrix could process through the problems and get him moving again. His speech was also something that came and went. Jason tried not to let his frustration show, but the longer the issues went on, the less confident he was that his friend would actually make a full recovery.
Then there were some of the more immediate concerns. Lucky seemed to drift in and out of reality, not really sure where he was at times. One particularly harrowing incident, the battlesynth had managed to sneak into Crusher's berth, and when the warrior jumped awake from someone in the room, it had triggered something in Lucky, and he switched to combat mode. Crusher's quarters were close to engineering, and the ship had been in slip-space at the time, so a poorly aimed plasma blast could have killed them all instantly.
"Has our Tauless made any progress on his end?"
"Some," Twingo said carefully. "He'd need to see Lucky for an extended time, however."
"He's about to get his wish," Jason said. "I just spoke to Similan, and Mok is asking that we meet him. He's at his home compound, and Tauless has been there with him, using Mok's lab space to do his work, along with a few other pru who were briefed on the Mk.2 battlesynth body."
"He'll be okay," Twingo said, but Jason could hear that the usual confidence his friend said that mantra with was fraying around the edges. They all missed their comrade, and any one of them would do whatever it took to help him, but this seemed to be something Lucky would either be able to do on his own or it wouldn't happen at all.
"I'm sure he will," Jason said, pushing his tray aside and standing up. He went back up to the command deck and saw that Kage was still in the com room.
"The slip-com node we're using on Nabia-2 isn't as reliable as I'd like, but we're definitely getting somewhere," the code slicer said when he saw Jason standing in the hatchway.
"How's our good buddy, Noryant, doing?" Jason asked, leaning against the bulkhead.
"He fired his security company and hired a new outfit. He's also sent messages requesting a face to face meeting with someone we already know is an intermediary for the Zetasude Clan—they're that smuggling ring that runs in and out of the Concordian Cluster—but nothing that makes me think he's working with someone to get fuel to any hidden Eshquarian warships."
"Try and dig further into the Zetasude outfit. We've dealt with them before, and if they're the ones picking up that much liquid hydrogen, I still think we're on the right track," Jason said. He ignored Kage's exasperated expression and looked at the display to see how many messages went out to the local contact for the smuggling ring.
"Look, Captain, this was an interesting idea you had to try and track down those fleets by concentrating on the logistics needed to operate the ships themselves, but what if we're looking at this wrong?"
"I'm listening."
"What if the reason we haven't seen the Eshquarian fleet come back to liberate their own home system is because there isn't a fleet anymore. Maybe the commanders escaped, realized their support apparatus was gone, and offloaded the crew someplace before scuttling the ships," Kage said. "If not destroying them outright, they might have just stashed them someplace."
"The Imperial Navy had nearly two thousand capital ships, and the ConFed has managed to track down and destroy less than two thirds of them," Jason said. "That's a lot of ship commanders who have to agree to hide their ships, not to mention about a million crewmembers who have to be someplace, too."
"But it's possible, right?" Kage pressed.
"Yeah, if the ships were shut down in an orderly manner and left with just enough power to keep critical components from freezing, they could theoretically be stored indefinitely. You remember that time we fired the Diligent back up and used it as a battering ram? Same principle." Jason forced himself to concede that Kage's theory was just as valid as his own. Sometimes, he became so fixated on a particular target that he lost perspective and missed the bigger picture.
"I'll keep at this since it's the only lead we have," Kage said, uncharacteristically gracious in victory. "By the time we get to Mok's new evil lair, maybe I'll have something a little more solid we can begin to build a mission from."
"Thanks," Jason said and continued on back to the bridge. When he slid into the pilot's seat to check over the ship, he saw that Lucky stood near the canopy, staring at the moving star field, which was projected on it when the ship was in slip-space.
"I am not certain I will ever be full mission capable again, Captain," Lucky said, causing Jason to jump. "Your concerns abou
t me are well-founded."
"I'm concerned for you, not about you," Jason corrected. "I don't care if you never do so much as drive the getaway car on a mission from this day forward, my only worry is that you're living a life you're happy with."
"It is…difficult," Lucky said. "This new body has so much latent power, but my matrix cannot access it. At times, I wish you had been able to find a Mk.1 body, other times—" Lucky trailed off without turning from the canopy.
"Other times, you wish we hadn't tried to bring you back at all," Jason finished quietly.
"It might have been easier for all of us," Lucky said. "But, no, I want to live. I am grateful beyond my ability to express at the risks you all have taken to save me."
"We're heading back to meet up with Mok and figure out our next move," Jason said. "Tauless is there with a few other pru scientists, and he said he has some ideas. They've been studying all the tech data Kage swiped from that black site regarding the Mk.2 bodies."
"Let us hope they have found something that addresses the cascade failures that cause me to freeze up from time to time."
"Let's hope."
3
Kage is coming to wake you up.
The voice inside Jason's head made him bolt upright in his rack like someone had hit him with a high-voltage line.
"I really wish you'd stop fucking doing that when I'm in a deep sleep."
"Captain, it's Kage…you up?"
"I am now," Jason bit out. "What do you want?"
Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11) Page 2
