Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11)

by Joshua Dalzelle

  "Just get to it!" Crusher yelled, making everyone at the table jump.

  "We can't override the missiles' programming with just the encryption routines and command syntax," Kage said, unruffled by Crusher's outburst. "Our com suite isn't capable of transmitting or receiving in the range the missiles use. We'll need something from an Eshquarian warship they call Weapons DataLink Transceiver."

  "We can't rig our com system to emulate this box?" Jason asked.

  "Possibly, if we had the complete specs. Which we don't," Kage said. "Twingo was looking it over earlier and said that it seems to be using a slip-com field variance that's incompatible with even the military systems our ship carries."

  "That's likely partially for security, partially to avoid any interference from all the slip-com traffic and the powerful engine field distortions you'd find on a capital ship," Mok said. "It's a system that wouldn't have been available for outside sale, so if you need one of those, it'll have to come off an Imperial ship."

  "That's going to be a little bit of a challenge," Jason said. "Kage, your new top priority is to find me one of these datalink boxes. If we have to buy one on the black market, I'm fine with that…whatever option is fastest."

  "I'll get started right away," Kage slipped from his seat. "Twingo was down in the aft service bay when we walked up. He said the ship will be ready for flight within the hour."

  "We will attend to our tasks as well, Captain," Mok said. "I'm hoping this operation can be pulled off with some discretion, but I'm aware that's not exactly how you operate."

  "If we can interrupt this little bit of Kabuki theater and hurt the Machine's position, I'll be happy," Jason said. "If we can pull it off by saving the lives of the thousands of Eshquarian spacers trapped in cells right now on their own ships, I'll be even happier."

  "If Kabuki theater means what I assume it means, we at least agree on that point," Mok said. "We'll be in touch."

  Lucky escorted Mok and Similan back down to the cargo bay where they could disembark while Jason thought over the latest wrinkle in his plan. Given how sensitive the datalink transceiver was, he doubted that one was just lying around somewhere that easy to grab.

  "You serious about all that bullshit you tried to feed Mok?" Crusher asked.

  "Whatever do you mean?"

  "You might have fooled him, but I know for a fact that you're not going to waste all this effort just to blow a few missiles up harmlessly in space. What's your real plan?"

  "I'll let you know once I'm sure I can pull it off," Jason said. "But you're right…I'm not willing to put as at so much risk for so little gain. If we do this, the Machine needs to suffer a setback more tangible than an embarrassing misfire. You're okay with that?"

  "I'm on this ride to the end," Crusher said, extending his fist. Jason crashed his own fist against it.

  "To the end."

  16

  "Admiral, Sensor Operations just sent word that a ship you've deemed to be of interest has just appeared. It took off from the planet a few hours ago and is now breaking orbit and on course for a mesh-out point."

  "Which ship is it?" Kellea Colleran asked, distracted by the report she was reading.

  "It goes by a lot of different names and registrations, but the physical configuration matches the ship in our database called the Phoenix," the aide said. "It is a heavy gunship-class vessel that appears to have been extensively—illegally—modified. Operations said it began its life as a Jepsen Aero DL7."

  "Show me," Kellea said, holding out a hand for the tablet the aide carried. She looked at the sensor imagery along with the point-by-point comparison notes to confirm it actually was the Phoenix. From the looks of her, Jason had done another extensive round of upgrades. The wings looked different and there were a few unidentified bits added in places. Her Sensor Operations people had to guess about the purpose of those, their annotations marked with arrows pointing to them.

  She took it all in with a dispassionate eye. Any feelings she may have still harbored for Jason Burke seemed to have been eroded away by time. While inter-species relationships were fairly common on most tier-one worlds, it was still somewhat taboo on her home world. Perhaps it was the illicit nature of their romance coupled with the fact he was completely unique that had first sparked her interest. Now, with humans expanding out of the Orion Arm and Jason himself having made a mess of his own life multiple times, she sometimes had trouble remembering what it was about him that drew her interest in the first place.

  What did interest her, however, was what Omega Force was doing out in the occupied zone at the same time Saditava Mok of the Blazing Sun Syndicate was there in his personal yacht. She was almost temped to abort her rendezvous course and try to apprehend Mok to see what he was up to out here, but the Cooperative had issued specific orders to its field commanders: Mok was off limits. Kellea was an absolutist when it came to the application of law. She knew that the reason Mok was exempted for the time being was because he had assisted Earth with multiple trade agreements that benefited the Cooperative on the whole, but she didn't agree with it. If the humans wanted to take their chances trusting a ruthless gangster to run as an intermediary for them that was their business, but the Cooperative shouldn't be allowing immunity for someone who was running known smuggling operations into their space.

  "Have Coms reach out to the Phoenix and request a report on why they're in this area," she said, handing the tablet back. "Tell Captain Essel to maintain our current course and to let me know when we're within shuttle range of the ConFed patrol ship."

  "At once, Admiral."

  It could just be a coincidence. Omega Force turned up in odd places all over the quadrant. She had heard that Jason had a personal rapport with Saditava Mok himself, but it seemed so out of character that he'd be actively helping in one of the gangster's operations. He may have flexible morals, but he'd always stood firm on not letting his crew get involved with the bigger organized crime outfits that traded in the misery of helpless people. It was actually one of the foundations that kept his little band of misfits and criminals together.

  As the aide scurried away, Kellea could feel the doubts begin to creep back in. She still wasn't sure what Seeladas was up to or why the Defiant was patrolling in a ConFed held, conquered area of space when she should have been flying above the planets of the Cooperative, reassuring their member worlds that everything was under control. If the Phoenix was out here sniffing around, what might be happening that she was unaware of?

  Looking back, the last time she had positioned herself opposite of Jason had been when he'd exposed Crisstof Dalton's involvement in trying to overthrow the government of the Avarian Empire, the vast superpower that sat across the region of space known as the Delphine Expanse or the Great Emptiness. The natural buffer had kept the Avarians on their side of the Expanse, but after Dalton's escapades, they were even more distrustful of outsiders. Now that she really thought back on that time, Crisstof had been in league with the ConFed on that operation. Perhaps she shouldn't be so trusting of Seeladas's intentions after all.

  "Maybe I'm the one that changed," she said to herself, looking out over the hull of her mighty battlecruiser from the opulence of the office attached to her living quarters. When she'd been just a captain, commanding a small frigate and being the eyes and ears of a wealthy industrialist there had been a certain idealism about everything she did. Now that she was an admiral, commanding fleets of ships, she wondered if maybe somewhere along the way she'd lost perspective and that it was Jason who had remained grounded in his beliefs.

  She'd tracked his movements as best she could and admitted that she did feel some pain at how far he'd fallen at times, sunk into despair when Omega Force had dissolved and then again when Lucky had been killed in action. For a long time, she'd clung to the fact that Jason had betrayed her first, but maybe that wasn't actually true.

  "Admiral Colleran, please report to the bridge. We'll be within shuttle range of the ConFed cruiser, Agon, within
ten minutes."

  "On my way," she said, shaking off any thoughts of Jason Burke or misplaced loyalties. She had a job to do, and she was going to see it done.

  "The Defiant has made us," Kage said. "Incoming channel request, text only. They're asking for a report on our actions and intentions. They called the ship out by name."

  "Tell them to suck on a—"

  "Oh! And we have a passenger signal coming in," Kage cut Jason off. "That's why they're transmitting data only. They have a secondary stream that's trying to worm its way in past the firewall. From what I'm seeing, it's actually a fairly advanced bit of tech."

  "Any risk to us?"

  "Nah. All the new com equipment we got from the Kheprians is far more advanced," Kage scoffed. "Want me to backtrack the signal and see If we can dig into their systems?"

  "Go for it," Jason said. "Just look around, don't turn anything off or screw something up."

  "Just a little sneak and peek," Kage said. "I want to see how good the gear they gave us is." For their services rendered in heading off what could have been a brutal, bloody conflict on the planet Khepri, the pru had gifted them a military-grade data security suite under the table that was loaded with their newest and best semi-AI processors that could crack most encryption algorithms like they were nothing. The pru were the species who created the synth race and were still widely regarded as the absolute masters of adaptive AI computing.

  "You think your ex-mate told them to try and break into our computers?" Crusher asked.

  "I wish you'd pick a less creepy term than mate, but I have no idea what Kellea is thinking these days. She obviously suspects we're out here for reasons other than war tourism, but I'm more interested in what a Cooperative battlecruiser is doing out here. Actually…Kage, send this instead: 'Greetings, Defiant. What is a Cridal warship doing in occupied space cuddling up to a ConFed cruiser? Do the Saabror know about this? I bet they would be very interested in our sensor data. What do you think?'"

  "That should make some heads explode," Kage laughed. "I'm holding off on sending while our own intrusion software tries to— Ah! That was quick. Sending message and leaving the channel open to see what our little spy sends back."

  It was a very short time later when another, more aggressive message came back demanding that the Phoenix cut power and standby to be boarded whenever the Defiant decided to come around and collect them. Jason and Crusher laughed so hard they had tears streaming from their eyes as Kage took it upon himself to send back a quoted passage from the Cridal Cooperative charter regarding the rights of vessels to navigate freely.

  "We've received six compressed packets from the intrusion software," Kage said. "I think we've pushed our luck enough on that. I'm sending the command for it to delete itself, and then closing the channel."

  "Send that entire exchange to Mok's ship and warn them the Defiant tried to break into our systems," Jason said. "You have us a course yet?"

  "Yeah…you're not going to like this," Kage said. "We need to go to the Eshquarian System."

  "You're right…I don't like it. Why the hell would we want to go there?"

  "I found one of the datalink boxes we need. It's in what's likely the most unsecure location I can come up with on short notice unless you want to fight with the scavengers picking over the bones of the ships the ConFed fleet blew apart," Kage said. "Finding one that's brand new or even recently in service is a fool's errand. We'll never meet our schedule in time. What I've found is a semi-secure site far south on the Continent Superior of Eshquaria that specializes in storing decommissioned military hardware until it can be properly dismantled and recycled for scrap."

  "And they just happen to have the specific box we need?" Crusher asked.

  "They have seven of them," Kage corrected. "They're the boxes that were pulled from a generation of fast-attack frigates the Empire recently decommissioned. Even though they're an older design, they work on the same principles and will get us what we need."

  "Can we even land on Eshquaria right now?" Jason asked. "It was just recently ground zero of a major battle. Is the ConFed just letting people free-navigate the system already?"

  "Sure." Kage shrugged. "They only have a small peace keeping force in the capital system now that's just supposed to keep any opportunists away. Eshquaria is—was—an incredibly wealthy planet and all those cultural and material treasures are still on the surface."

  "Since they already knew where the lost fleet really was, the ConFed didn't have to waste the resources protecting against them coming back and trying to retake the system," Jason said. "Smart. So, we just fly in under the cover of one of our clean codes, and then try to pull off a quick smash and grab on a storage site used for obsolete equipment? I actually like this plan more and more."

  "You would," Crusher snorted. "You're forgetting that the Eshquarians will still have planetary security in place, including aircraft that could pack enough punch to cause us trouble."

  "We'll deal with that when we get there." Jason waved off the concern. "Plot me a course out of here with a mesh-out point that hides the fact we're moving deeper into Eshquarian space. I don't need the Defiant tracking our movements and reporting back. Go ahead and get us moving once Twingo clears the slip-drive. I'm going to the com room to see if our friends on Earth have heard anything about the Cooperative making a deal with the ConFed."

  "I should probably check in with home, as well," Crusher said. "Galvetor is a small, independent system, but thanks to the legions, we have a profile large enough that we won't be ignored for long."

  "Captain, when will you want to do the implant upgrade?" Doc asked, walking back in from the infirmary.

  "Not now," Jason said. "The flight to Eshquaria is too short, and I can't afford a long recovery time. It'll have to be put on hold when I have a few days to just lay around while the hardware integrates."

  "It's ready when you are," Doc said, looking like he wanted to argue, and then deciding against it. "What do you need me to do?"

  "Help Kage fly the ship. Once we're out of this system I want the both of you scouring any sources we might have that can tell us more about this parts depot Kage wants to attack."

  "We're flying to Eshquaria…to attack someone?" Doc asked. "That seems a bit reckless."

  "Not any more so than our usual jobs," Jason said. He ran up the steps to the command deck, pausing at the entrance to the com room. "Lucky, do me a favor and make sure that new armor is ready to go. I have a sneaky feeling that Fendra may have tampered with it, and I was just able to get the jump on her first."

  "I will handle it, Captain."

  "What do you need me to do?" Crusher asked.

  "You mean aside from eating everything in sight, sleeping most of the time, and asking stupid questions while people try to work?"

  "Yeah, besides that."

  "Get a decent layout of this facility from Kage and start planning our incursion," Jason said. "We need to be ready to hit it hard and fast and be on the way to the Miressa System without a lot of delays or screw ups from poor planning."

  The meeting with the ConFed representative was not what Kellea had expected. When she'd flown over to the cruiser, after their emissary had refused to come aboard the Defiant, she had been ushered into a secure conference room with two other ConFed officers and a councilman whose eyes widened in surprise when he saw her. She recognized him as the powerful committee chair that had hired Omega Force to do a couple personal favors in return for erasing the files ConFed Intelligence was keeping on them, but she didn't know much about Councilman Scleesz other than that.

  In addition to the people actually there, two others were present via slip-com hyperlink. Seeladas Dalton appeared in the room as a fully fleshed out hologram while another figure in plain clothing appeared as a more flimsy, distorted avatar. Kellea couldn't figure out what its species was, all she knew was that the people actually in the room appeared to be terrified of it, but were trying hard not to show it.

  "W
elcome, Admiral," Scleesz said. "You may be wondering why we asked you here when you can see your premier is also attending. There has been a slight change of plan that was decided upon after you had already arrived in the Formenos System and we felt it would be better if you heard it directly from the top."

  "Very well," Kellea said neutrally. "It's good to see you again, Councilman. And you as well, Premier Dalton."

  "Admiral," Seeladas said with a nod and a smile that stopped before reaching her eyes. Whatever was happening here, it wasn't something she seemed to be too enthused about.

  "Enough," the grainy figure said, the image flickering as it moved. "Time is short and there is much to do. Admiral, you had originally been asked here to provide additional military support to the occupational force holding the Eshquarian territory while our own fleet executed a search for the missing Imperial Fleet units that had fled the area

  "This was to be done as a show of good faith on the part of the Cridal that they could be trusted and perhaps even negotiated with. Your territory is quite far from the Core Worlds, but it still makes the Adjudicators uneasy that such a powerful military is being built without us knowing your intentions."

  "You do, of course, have the right to self-defense and you share borders with two aggressive nations," Scleesz put in smoothly. "But we're still concerned at the level and pace of heavy weapons development we've seen from some of your member worlds."

  "Councilman, I'm a military officer," Kellea said, finding it odd that the being obviously in charge was not even introduced to her. "These are matters of state and well outside of my scope of responsibility. Premier Dalton is the ultimate authority for the Cridal fleet. If she has deemed it necessary for the Defiant and her taskforce to work in cooperation with the ConFed military, it will be done so to the best of my ability."