Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11)

by Joshua Dalzelle

  “So, the full crew isn't here?" Lucky asked.

  "No, just the people that fly and fight her, and not even all of them," the Eshquarian officer said. "All of the admin and civilian science staff we normally carry weren't brought back. I did overhear someone talking about one more stop to pick up more prisoners, but I couldn't hear everything they were saying. You going to let us out?" Lucky looked at him a moment, running the probabilities through his head.

  "I can't," he said. "You are one of forty-two ships in this formation. Even if I released you, it would be unlikely you could overpower the security contractors and take back the ship and you would only alert the others that their plans have been compromised. There is still much I must learn before I can worry about rescuing your crew."

  "What?!"

  "The lives of many may be at stake," Lucky said. "Releasing you prematurely could jeopardize my chances of stopping that."

  "Hey! What are you doing down here?"

  "Discussing something with this prisoner," Lucky said calmly as one of the security supervisors stormed across the deck towards him.

  "That's prohibited! You know that! I'll have your contract nullified for this."

  "If you must," Lucky said. The supervisor almost got within range to grab him when Lucky lashed out with the flat of his hand so quickly that the two biological beings couldn't track it. The hit crushed the throat of the supervisor, dropping him to his knees as his eyes bulged, and he clawed at his neck. He died gurgling at Lucky's feet as the battlesynth never took his eyes off the officer he was questioning.

  "My gods!"

  "Take this," Lucky said, passing an ident card through one of the holes. "That card is also coded to open these cages. I'm trusting you to know when the time is right to use it and not before."

  "What about him?"

  "I will take him with me and dispose of him," Lucky said, lifting the supervisor's limp corpse like it was nothing. "Remember…not before it is time."

  "Not before it's time. Got it."

  Lucky rushed from the cargo hold, intent on stashing the third body with one of the others when he felt the shift in artificial gravity that told him the ship had dropped out of slip-space. Instead of moving back up to the administrative areas, he reversed his course and dropped down two decks into the bowels of the engineering spaces. He was crossing a catwalk that was suspended far above the machinery that made the ship move when he shut down his disguise, no longer wanting to expend the energy it took to keep it solid. He gauged the distance to the deck below and then flung his cargo over the railing. The security supervisor bounced off a fresh water pipe and then landed on the deck with a sickening crunch.

  Having learned all he could aboard the ship, it was time to make a discreet exit. He checked his own equipment to make sure it was still functional and then made his way towards one of the maintenance airlocks that allowed access to the outer hull. The codes to all the secure hatches were still disabled so it was a simple matter of cycling the lock, walking out onto the hull, and then blasting away on his repulsor jets after engaging his stealth mode. He recorded everything in local space with his passive sensors as he streaked away, shutting off his jets and allowing his body to drift. From what he could see, there were five civilian transports that had rendezvoused with the fleet, each of them maneuvering for docking which indicated they were going to transfer more cargo than a shuttle could handle.

  Lucky waited until every ship had meshed-out of the area, leaving him alone and adrift in interstellar space. He looked around and took a star fix, his instruments quickly determining his exact location. Once he'd repeated the procedure four more times to account for his relative speed and direction, he pulled the portable slip-com radio off his hip and activated the field. After punching in his coordinates, the direction and velocity he was flying, and his status, he shut the device down. He also shut down most of his non-essential systems and set his mind to analyzing the new data he'd collected on his mission. Now that he was back in normal operating mode, he was able to think more clearly. The covert operation modes were so immersive that he felt like he was losing sight of the bigger picture, wholly focused on the mission of gathering intel to the point of obsession. Normally, he wouldn't have been so casual about killing targets of convenience, slimy mercenaries or not. He made a note to address his concerns with Tauless when he saw the pru again, and then put the matter from his mind. The new information he'd gathered seemed to confuse the issue more than it cleared it up.

  "Welcome back. Don't ever do that shit again."

  "My mission was somewhat successful," Lucky said, ignoring the comment. "I was able to gather what I think is critical intel, but I have no contextual framework within which it fits to make sense."

  "We can help with that…hopefully," Jason said. "Fendra ended up being a double agent and tried to shoot me in the back, literally. We got some useful stuff out of her that might be even more useful depending on what you pulled off that ship."

  "I will download the data to the Phoenix's main computer so Kage and I can begin the analysis," Lucky said and walked up the steps to the mezzanine that led to the main deck.

  "You took that amazingly well," Crusher said. "You drunk?"

  "A little," Jason admitted. "But I also realize that if he's going to be a full member of this crew again, I have to give him the freedom to do his job. This is a dangerous job, there's no guarantee I can keep you all safe…although to be fair, in Kage's case, I’m not sure I'd even want to."

  It was some hours later and the Phoenix was back in slip-space, streaking towards the Concordian Cluster. Mok was operating out of that area for the next few weeks, checking in on various parts of his own business, and Jason figured it was as good a place as any to begin the next phase of the operations, whatever that might be. While Kage and Lucky pored over the downloads and began matching up data points with what Fendra has supplied them, the others grabbed some much-needed sleep.

  "I'll just start off by saying there is no conclusive data that shows what they have planned for the Eshquarian fleet," Kage said. "I don't want any insults or bullshit about getting to the point from anyone."

  "That's no way to start a briefing," Crusher said. "It's rude."

  "Let's just get started," Jason said, walking in with two large carafes of coffee. They were in the cramped conference room on the main deck, which was still a conference room because nobody could agree on what else to do with it, and the close proximity tended to escalate tensions quickly.

  "I'll start off with the weird part first," Kage said, keying up a series of graphics onto the wall monitors. "Oh, damn…hang on. I promised Mok we'd tie him into this through a slip-com channel."

  "Great," Jason said, rolling his eyes while Kage made the connection. He refilled his mug and waited while Similan routed the channel request to Mok's opulent office aboard his yacht.

  "Thank you for granting my request, gentlemen," he said. "Please proceed and pretend I'm not even here."

  "If only," Jason muttered. He was starting to see that Mok did have some admirable qualities, but he was also an insufferable windbag at times. He loved the sound of his own voice almost as much as he loved using it to prove other people wrong. "Go ahead, Kage."

  "What was I talking about? Oh, yeah…the weird part first," Kage said. "Mok you getting these graphics through the link?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  "One of the odd things Lucky discovered during his mission was that tech crews aboard the battleship were uploading software patches into all the ship-to-ship missiles. He was able to download the patches themselves and bring them back so I could look at them. In addition to replacing all the encryption routines, the new software added a whole new command syntax to accompany a series of inhibitor commands. These commands shut down parts of the targeting prioritization system, the data link to other missiles, command and control links to the ship, and the counter-countermeasure suite.

  "This didn't make a lot of sense at first�
�why add all these layers of complication when you could just replace the entire weapon operating system if you were trying to dumb the missile down?"

  "What's your theory on this, Kage?" Mok asked. Jason just ground his teeth and took another sip of coffee.

  "There's a reason Eshquarian weapons are the standard in this part of the galaxy," Kage said. "Just replacing the operating system with a software upload is impossible. Instead, they had to work within the framework already there to get them to act how they wanted. Essentially, they force the missile into a test mode so that it'll accept the new commands, and then keep it there while another patch allows it to be armed and fired. It's a really clunky way of doing this, but I think they were under the gun on time and had limited resources. Fendra told us that this was an off-the-books mission by a faction with ConFed Intelligence. I'm guessing they didn't have access to the engineers necessary to make the proper modifications."

  "Okay, so why are they doing this?" Jason asked.

  "Unclear," Kage said. "The best guess I have is that they're going to fire these missiles at a target they would normally reject. They're quite sophisticated, and these idiots have gone through a lot of trouble to bypass all the built-in safeties."

  "This makes no sense," Crusher said. "The only reason to do this is to set someone up to take the fall for an attack they didn't commit. But the Eshquarians are already defeated. Even if all those missiles were used in terrorist attacks, they can't point back to a government that no longer exists. At best they could claim they were rogue fleet elements."

  "Which could explain why they're taking the ships too," Jason said. "But using them to attack targets within the Protectorate, for example, only works if the orders are coming from Eshquaria. Yeah…I don't get it either."

  Stop thinking like a military man. The Machine doesn't. It needs to solidify its own power before too many people begin questioning who actually authorized an attack on a neighboring sovereign power.

  Cas's voice in his head was disconcerting among the other conversations. He withdrew from the debate and tried to put the pieces together as Mok, true to his nature, asserted control over the briefing and began ordering Kage to put up different graphics for them to argue over.

  Instead of participating, Jason pulled one of the tablets off the table and accessed the Phoenix's database on known active ships and did a search based on location. Kage had built a system that wormed into over three hundred orbital traffic control systems and reported all the ships arriving and departing back to a slip-com node on S'Tora. That system then updated the Phoenix's main computer and, despite the limited number of systems they'd managed to infiltrate so far, gave them a surprisingly good image of where most of the major players were moving their ships to.

  He looked up the traffic patterns over the ConFed capital world, the Pillar World from which all power emanated: Miressa Prime. There were the expected things there that never left like the Cardalir Shipyards and T'Acren Base, the massive orbital facility that was home of the ConFed's mighty starfleet. There was also the Miressa Home Defense Force, a fleet of ships that were state of the art…a hundred years ago.

  The Miressa System was the seat of power for the ConFed. It was widely considered impregnable for any nation foolish enough to try, and it was the center of the quadrant's political universe for the last half a millennia or so. The HDF was mostly ceremonial. It was there to provide honor guards for incoming dignitaries and consular ships as it was strictly forbidden for any member worlds or visitors to mesh-in to the capital system with ships of war. The rules were always respected because the reprisals from the main battlefleet for such a faux pas would be swift and brutal. The ConFed's main fleet was vast, but it also had to cover a lot of space, and now they'd tied up one of their battlegroups as an occupational force in the Eshquaria System.

  While the others babbled on, he tried to put himself into the mind—so to speak—of an insane AI that was trying to rule an empire without anybody seeing who it was behind the curtain. The Machine needed people to respect and fear the Adjudicators, who were now apparently its puppets, as well as the ConFed's military. A sneak attack on an unsuspecting power wasn't enough. It had to crush not only their legend but the hope of the people who thought that the Empire might rise again, to let the death of Eshquaria needed to serve as an object lesson for those who wouldn't bow to the ConFed.

  "Holy shit…I know where they're going," Jason said, speaking mostly to himself.

  "Would you care to share with the rest of us, Captain?" Mok asked.

  13

  "Miressa Prime?" Crusher laughed. "You still haven't sobered up, huh?"

  "Let's hear him out," Kage said, looking at Jason intently.

  "We're looking at this from a strategic standpoint," Jason said. "To understand what the motivation is here, we need to understand what it is the Machine needs."

  "Holy shit, get to the point!" Crusher moaned.

  "It needs legitimacy, and it needs to solidify the hold it has on the ConFed council. It also needs to make sure the other major players in this quadrant don't get smart and join forces…it needs a display of strength the others won't soon forget," he pushed ahead, flipping Crusher off without looking over.

  "What could be more dramatic than forty Eshquarian warships appearing in the ConFed's capital system, the remnants of a mighty superpower, hell bent on revenge? The Miressa Home Defense Force rushes out to meet them, and the whole battle is recorded and broadcast throughout the quadrant as the last gasp of the Empire blows out."

  "That's…entirely plausible," Kage said. "The Home Defense Force is an ancient, ceremonial fleet that does more flybys than actual combat drills. The Eshquarian fleet shows up, fires hundreds of ship-to-ship missiles at the defenders, and the older ships easily defeat them because of the inhibitor commands will cause them to fly right into the point defense fire."

  "Then the HDF fires its salvo, and the Eshquarian war machine goes down in flames," Mok said. "Everyone knows that the Empire built and fielded the best weapons in the quadrant, so when the ConFed's ceremonial fleet wipes them out easily—"

  "It will take the fight out of a lot of independent systems thinking they can resist," Jason finished. "Oh, damn!"

  "The crews," Mok finished for him, nodding gravely. "They're there to make sure the forensic after-action teams find the appropriate amount of Eshquarian bio-matter and any DNA they find will be able to be traced back to real crewmembers."

  "And it's all being done with expendable contractors that will likely be among the dead when it's all said and done, no witnesses," Crusher said. "You can't help but be impressed. That's a huge, showy display of power that would kill any real dissent happening in the Council."

  "This is just a theory so far, right?" Twingo spoke up. "We have no way of knowing if the captain is right or not."

  "We can hope the sled's tracker checks in again when the fleet drops from slip-space at their last staging point," Jason said. "Other than that, yeah…this is just a best guess."

  "As far as guesses go, it's a damn solid one," Mok said.

  "Yeah," Kage said, narrowing his eyes again. "Nice deductive reasoning, Captain."

  "Nice job not being a sarcastic douche about it." Jason tossed him a mocking salute. "Mok, we're going to transmit everything we have here to you…we're heading back your way so I'd suggest we meet up again and compare notes then."

  "Agreed," Mok said. "For the sake of the lives involved, let's hope you're wrong."

  "Let's hope," Jason said.

  Scleesz was nearly in a full panic as he struggled to maintain a calm exterior, paranoid that he was always under observation by his omniscient boss. The Machine had managed to infiltrate every security system on Miressa Prime and had eyes everywhere, on everyone.

  The Councilman sat in the reception area where visitors would wait until they were received by the Machine's new avatar. It was an obvious holographic projection, meant to look like the person in the office was talking to
someone over a Nexus hyperlink or a high-bandwidth slip-com channel. The species that the Machine had picked to shape his new likeness from didn't actually exist, at least not that Scleesz had been able to determine. But the AI was ancient and came from a part of the galaxy few from this quadrant ever ventured into. Who knew what other species lurked just beyond their borders.

  "You may enter, Councilman," the door guard said. The unassuming entryway belied the fact that the most powerful being in the ConFed resided behind it. The guards, one on each side, were synths that wore a special type of fitted armor and were carrying plasma rifles so large they looked like they could have burned through a starship's hull. Scleesz found it interesting that the Machine seemed to employ a lot of synths as security and couriers, but not a single battlesynth worked for him. He didn't know if it was because they were simply so rare or if the recent unrest on their home world, Khepri, had taken them completely out of rotation.

  "You wished to see me, sir?" Scleesz asked respectfully once he'd entered and the door slammed shut behind him. The holographic image of the avatar sputtered to life and, oddly, it sat behind the desk. The image the Machine was presenting at this point was more confusing than intimidating.

  "I need you to travel to the occupation zone in Eshquaria," the Machine said without preamble or even an acknowledgment.

  "The missing Eshquarian war fleet?" Scleesz guessed. "I don't see how I'd be much help there."

  "You wouldn't," the Machine assured him. "I am already handling the missing fleet. You're to meet with emissaries from the Saabror Protectorate to offer them terms that will head off any further pointless violence. It would be interesting to hear what they have in mind and they won't talk to anyone lower ranking than a councilmember. The only one I can trust to perform this function, currently, is you."