Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon (32 page)

“You’re asking me?” Jason said in mock surprise. “You’re the Guardian Archon here.”

“This is no time for pettiness, Captain,” Crusher said. “We need to do this the way we always do: as a unit. We’re vastly outnumbered on Galvetor.”

Jason bit down his sarcastic retort. It seemed like Crusher was quite humbled from this latest betrayal and he didn’t need Jason taking cheap shots at him.

“I assume you would like me to put you in a room with Fordix?” Jason asked.

“You know me so well,” Crusher said with a huge genuine smile that would have terrified any human child.

“Oddly enough, we may have the element of surprise,” Jason continued. “Even with ten thousand warriors they’re going to be stretched fairly thin. What do they have for close air support?”

“Nine of those Eshquarian combat shuttles,” Kage replied. “They had ten but you guys stole one.”

“They’re no match for the
Phoenix
even with experienced flight crews,” Jason said. “So I’m thinking the good ol’ frontal assault may be our best bet. Even in your weakened state we have more firepower than we’re used to … assuming the Reddix brothers would care to join the party.”

“I’m in,” Mazer said.

“Me too,” Morakar said.

“I would like to participate as well, Captain Burke,” Meluuk said.

“I appreciate that, I truly do, but I have something more important for you to do,” Jason said, looking at Doc. “Twingo can’t make this trip. We’re going to secure the medical facility that’s on the second floor of this building and you’re going to wait here with him.”

“Captain—”

“Please, Doc … we can’t leave Twingo here by himself. The medical facility should be able to keep him stable until the
Defiant
makes orbit,” Jason said. “Meluuk, I’m going to outfit you from our armory and I need you to make sure they stay safe until we return or my associate comes to pick them up. This isn’t just someplace to tuck you out of the way, I’m trusting you to protect my family.”

“I will not let you down, Captain,” Meluuk said with a deep nod of his head.

“Now that we have a loose plan, are we ready?” Jason asked. “Okay then, let’s get Twingo loaded up on a med platform and make sure he’s safe and then we can get in the air.”

“One thing,” Crusher said, holding up a hand. He pointed directly at Mazer before continuing. “Is that my armor?”

The peace and quiet of the beautiful Restaria day was shattered as the
Phoenix’s
drive throttled up and she lifted smoothly from the surface and thundered off towards the sunset. They’d managed to move Twingo without incident and had Doc set up in a private corner of the well-equipped medical facility to monitor his progress. Meluuk was given an arsenal of powerful weaponry and posted near the only entrance. Jason silently urged the
Defiant
to hurry up and make it into the system. He was anxious to get Twingo’s more exotic treatments started such as the cloning of the parts his torturers had chopped off.

He sent the
Phoenix
on a sharp climb up out of Restaria’s gravity well and began the chase of Galvetor around the system’s primary star. He wasn’t pushing the ship too hard since the damage was already done on the gelten homeworld. Instead, he was letting the ship loaf along to give Doc’s treatments more time to get Crusher ready. His friend was moving around the bridge, swinging his arms and bending at the waist to keep loose before they made landfall.

“Kage, I’m going to clear out as much of their air support as I can before we deploy, but you’ll be left alone in the ship once we hit the ground,” Jason said. “The shields should be more than enough to protect the ship from those shuttles, but I don’t want any collateral damage to the surrounding city. After we’re off, clear the area if you feel like it’s getting too hot.”

“Count on that,” Kage said. “Air to air combat isn’t my strong suit.”

“Neither are smooth landings, simple level flight, and not hitting obstacles on takeoff,” Crusher said as he continued marching around the bridge.

“At least I can make it all the way through a mission without getting stabbed with my own knife,” Kage retorted.

“Mission isn’t over yet, little man,” Crusher said. The back and forth was like thousands of identical interactions Jason had been witness to, or participant in, since he’d joined the group. At the moment it was oddly comforting.

“Take over, Lucky,” Jason said, hopping out of the pilot’s seat. “I’m going to go get dressed for the party.”

“I’ll go with you,” Crusher said. “I need to get my gear together, too.”

“Mazer and Morakar, you guys can go down once we’re back and grab whichever weaponry tickles your fancy,” Jason said. “There are some generic sets of body armor down there that should fit you. We don’t have enough time to fabricate anything custom. Sorry.”

“I’m sure we will be fine with whatever is already in on hand, Captain,” Morakar said. Jason looked at him a moment before nodding and walking off the bridge. He seemed to be taking the duplicity of Fordix and the Order a lot harder than his brother was.

“I didn’t get a chance to say it before, but good job getting Twingo and Doc back, Captain,” Crusher said as Jason pulled his armor out from its alcove and began running a quick diagnostic on it. “Glad the ship was in one piece too.”

“Yeah, our timing was more luck than skill,” Jason said. “We were almost too late for Twingo. This entire op has been a cluster fuck. While we were chasing the ship halfway around the sector, a hit squad almost took out Kage and then you got skewered by your closest advisor.”

“I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere,” Crusher said after a few tense moments.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“How would I know? I’m just the dumb soldier who got stabbed with his own sword,” Crusher said. “I’ll see you back up there.” He grabbed his gear and stomped out of the armory, leaving a slightly confused Jason alone to try and climb into his powered armor without assistance.

After some undignified contortions, he was able to climb up into the unit and power it up. A moment later, it closed around him and he stepped down off the rack. He grabbed his railgun, two plasma sidearms, and a few grenades before walking out of the armory. This was the first time he’d worn the unit since the modifications that Doc had done on him. The results were unexpected and a pleasant surprise. Before, there was always a barely perceptible mismatch between his movements and the armor’s, but the enhanced capabilities were worth that slight inconvenience. Now the powerful suit felt as natural as wearing a well-worn glove. In fact, he barely noticed it was there by the time he was climbing the steps to walk onto the bridge.

Lucky made to get out of the pilot’s seat but Jason waved for him to stay. “You may as well get as much seat time as you can,” he said. “I’ll take over right before we hit Galvetor’s atmosphere.”

“Of course, Captain,” Lucky said and settled back into the pilot’s seat. Mazer and Morakar walked off the bridge as Crusher stepped back in, carrying two large sandwiches with him.

“How come he gets to eat up here?” Kage demanded.

“He’s too big to say no to, he’s armed, and he doesn’t leave sticky fingerprints all over my consoles,” Jason answered without looking up. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, there are three capital ships that just came out of slip-space at the edge of the system,” Kage said.

“Seriously?” Jason asked incredulously. “Put them on the main display.” The sensor tracks for the three ships was imposed over a diagram of the system and displayed on the main canopy. “Can we ID them yet?”

“No,” Kage said. “The range is too great and they’re running silent, no transponders. They’re not all that big, however. Smaller than destroyers, possibly frigates.”

“ConFed ships?” Crusher asked.

“Not likely,” Jason said. “ConFed Fleet wouldn’t deploy three frigates alone like this, and they don’t sneak into systems without their transponders blaring their affiliation loud and proud. Are they going to be a problem?”

“Not at their current speed and heading,” Kage said. “We’ll make landfall in another hour; they won’t even make orbit for another twelve.”

“It’ll be all over by then, one way or another,” Jason said. “Flag them, have the computer track them, but this doesn’t change our plan.”

“Lord Felex, we have a request to make of you,” Morakar said as he and Mazer walked back onto the bridge.

“Yes?” Crusher asked.

“We would like to claim the Praetores when you challenge Fordix,” Morakar continued. “We would like to clear our name of this treason.”

Crusher pretended to consider it carefully, turning his back on the brothers and giving a Jason a half-smile and a wink before turning back.

“Granted,” he said, “with conditions. While this act will clear your names, I may need you further when this is all over. I expect you to be available and enthusiastic for whatever task I put in front of you.”

“You can count on us, my lord,” Morakar said with a bow, speaking for them both.

“We’re getting pinged by the automated orbital control system. Seems like the standard automated message,” Kage said, sounding disappointed. “What sort of hostile invasion is this? They don’t even change the outbound message to warn everyone of the regime change? Or at least declare victory?”

Jason just rolled his eyes. “Just keep tracking those shuttles,” he said. “How many have you picked up?”

“Six out of nine,” Kage said. “The other three may be on the ground.”

“Feed all the airborne targets to my tactical display,” Jason said. “Let’s tighten it up, full combat mode.” He and Kage quickly went about bringing the ship to full power and energizing all the tactical systems.

“Weapons up, shields up, tactical sensors up,” Kage read off his status board. “We’re ready to kick some ass.”

“Strap in everybody,” Jason said. “We’re going to be hitting the upper atmosphere at speed and making a combat descent.”

“What does that entail?” Mazer asked with trepidation as he strapped into the seat.

“I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise,” Crusher said humorlessly, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

The normal procedure when approaching a planet would be to allow the ship to be captured by the gravity and perform a series of deceleration orbits in order to enter the atmosphere at a safe speed. With a ship as capable as the
Phoenix
, there were a few more interesting options available. Jason angled the nose up a bit and let the ship’s shields slam into Galvetor’s mesosphere at a velocity that would tear most other ships apart.

As the
Phoenix
skipped off the upper atmosphere, she created a series of enormous shock waves that could be heard on the ground like thunder. Jason angled the nose back down and throttled up, pushing the gunship into a violent dive that slammed everyone on the bridge against their restraints. The coronal discharge of superheated gases cascaded around the shields as the ship bucked and fought her way down into the lower atmosphere.

“Here comes the rough part,” Jason said.

“How is that possible?” Mazer shouted.

Jason snap-rolled the
Phoenix
over onto her back and pulled hard. Vapor poured off the flight control surfaces as the air compressed against them. The ship continued to pull around until the nose was aimed straight at the bright lights of the capital which was practically right below them. He throttled up again and put the ship into a powered dive, passing through high-supersonic speeds as they closed on the ground at a terrifying rate.

“Kage, lock up the six flyers with low-yield high-explosive warheads,” Jason ordered.

“Only have a line on four of them,” Kage said tensely.

“Give me those then,” Jason said and began to pull up out of the dive. When they were at fifteen-thousand-feet altitude, he yanked back on the stick and pulled the throttle all the way back, forcing the grav-drive to compensate. It reversed its fields and yanked the ship to a near standstill in less than a few seconds, but thanks to the drive working in conjunction with the active deck plates, the occupants barely felt a tug instead of being splattered against the canopy.

Leveling the nose out, Jason put them into a much slower spiraling dive around the outskirts of the capital. When the four icons in his field of view indicating the airborne shuttles turned green, he squeezed off four missiles to chase after them. Even if they missed, which was unlikely, it would give them something to think about other than taking pot shots at the
Phoenix
as she unloaded the ground assault team. As the missiles streaked away, he pulled the nose around to tighten their turn and put them in line with the enormous structure that was the Senate Hall.

“Two more airborne threats on the board,” Kage said. “They just lifted off from our primary target and are on an intercept course.”

“Accommodating of them to fly within range for us,” Jason grunted and pushed the throttle up to meet the charge. The first few shots of the engagement came from the shuttles as their ineffective fire splashed harmlessly against the
Phoenix’s
shields. Jason lined the first target up and let loose with a salvo from the main plasma cannons, destroying it instantly. The rate of closure was too fast to bring the nose around on the second target, so he eased in as close as he could and let the point-defense blasters rake the side of the other ship. Jason glanced down at the sensor feed to see the ship billowing smoke and spiraling down to make a hard crash landing on the street below.

“We’ll have to time this carefully, Kage,” Jason said as he swung the
Phoenix
around to hover just over the roof of the building. The sensors were unable to give a complete picture of the inside and where the occupants were, but they were fairly certain their entry point would be over an empty space. He targeted their chosen spot with the reticle and squeezed off an extended salvo with the ventral plasma cannons, disintegrating the roof in an explosion of fire and smoke. Jason quickly slid the ship around over the opening, opened the hatch in the belly of the ship, and then activated the transit beam that would carry them to the surface.