Soldiers of Fortune (4 page)

              "Why didn't they call this in?" Caalum snapped irritably. A fake CIS vehicle? This was starting to reek of a professional job, which usually came with professional soldiers. He would have to proceed much more cautiously.

              "They said the vehicle's com repeater was knocked out and the hand-held units didn't have the range to reach dispatch."

              Agent Caalum signaled his driver forward, leaving the second vehicle behind. The tracks from their quarry had faded away, so they were just proceeding along in the hopes they could intercept the vehicle. There were no side streets off of this stretch of road, but Caalum didn't want his vehicle to end up like that of Team Alpha's, so he ordered it slow and steady so they didn't rush headlong into a trap.

             
It was another couple of kilometers when he ordered a stop again. Something had caught his eye, but he couldn't readily identify it. The team sat in silence for a few more seconds before he ordered everyone out of the vehicle, "Spread out and search both sides of the road. Something doesn't look right, keep an eye out for anything that may have been discarded or anything else that looks out of the ordinary."

             
After a few minutes of searching, Caalum found what he was looking for: tracks that clearly led off of the road and into the woods. The overgrown path had been trampled down recently by something large passing through and led steeply down into a low-lying set of fields that were completely obscured by fog. He knew this must have been where they went, but he hesitated.

              "Are we continuing pursuit, sir?" Caalum looked over to the young agent that had asked the question. He didn't want to appear to be a coward in front of his subordinates, but he really didn't want to walk down that path into whatever may be lying in wait either. At least not with only a four man fire-team. Before he could open his mouth to speak, the quiet of the night was shattered by a deep, violent rumbling that he could feel in his chest and seemed to shake the very ground.

              "Look!"

              He directed his gaze to where one of his men was pointing and froze; rising slowly out of the fog was a ship, a warship by the looks of it. The mist slid off its hull, clinging to the wings and fuselage as it rose up on its repulsors. It must have been sitting in the valley, hidden in the fog. Senior Agent Caalum was convinced this was the end for him, there was no way he and his men could withstand an assault from such a craft. But he'd be damned if he went out without a fight. "Listen up! Form up in a skirmish line, single file! Fire at will!" To their credit, his men let out an enthusiastic war cry and engaged the hovering ship with their small infantry-style weapons.

*
              *              *              *              *

             
"We're being engaged by small arms fire, Captain," Kage said as Jason was getting his bearings and setting up his nav waypoints.

              "What the fuck?" he asked, looking up as energy bolts splashed harmlessly against the ablative coating of the hull. He had to admire their courage, however misguided. "Put the shields up and jam their com transmissions. We're out of here," he said as he grabbed the throttle. He had absolutely no intention of firing on a group of law enforcement officers who only thought they were doing their jobs. However, he wasn't above scaring the living hell out of them. Smiling, he slammed the throttle forward, eliciting an explosive roar from the main engines. The
Phoenix
eagerly lunged ahead towards the street and the still-firing CIS agents. Jason dipped the nose towards them and brought the gunship roaring over their heads before climbing away into the night. Fortunately, the mains were still in low-output mode with the exhaust nozzles choked down, so the ringing in their ears would fade in a few hours. Instead of never.

             
The
Phoenix
ghosted over the trees, her captain intent on making it back to the river and out to the Western Sea. The original plan was to try and sneak up and under the next scheduled freighter that would be trying to make orbit and ride out with it, but that plan had been dependent on them not being detected. Now things were in a state of flux.
Eh... I didn't think that plan would actually work anyway.

              "Recall the twins, they can't do anymore out there and I don't want to leave them behind if we have to shoot our way out of here," he said quietly to Kage. He was trying to exude confidence for the sake of his passengers, but inside he had grave misgivings about their chances on making it out of the system. The picket ships were powerful, plentiful, and itching for a chance like this.
We may have bitten off more than we can chew on this one...

              "The twins are inbound," Kage said. "Slip-reactor is prepped and the emitters are ready for emergency charge. Our range might be limited depending on how quickly you try to engage the slip-drive."

              "Understood." Jason weighed his options carefully, trying to push ahead with their original exfiltration plan would require them to fly dangerously close to Corran City and its extensive sensor network. It would also mean flying in blind since their own sensors would pinpoint their location instantly. Trying to simply fly up out of the atmosphere on a random vector also would end badly; the planet was still heavily contested and low orbit positively seethed with powerful military vessels. Jason believed one of the tenants of being a good leader was knowing when he didn't have the answer, so he asked, "I don't like our planned exfil. Options?"

              "I've been working on that, Captain," Doc spoke up from one of the sensor stations. He had been monitoring the passive sensors and intercepting com traffic. "Corran's EM field is particularly strong and, like most planets, destabilizes near the poles. We could fly up through the charged particle influx and it may mask us long enough to get clear and mesh out of the system." Jason looked at him skeptically, he was certain there would be a picket ship sitting in polar orbit just waiting for them.

              "I concur, Captain," Twingo's voice came over the intercom. As per Omega Force's standard operating procedure during a mission, everyone was on an open com channel. "It's not perfect, but it's better than trying to hang around Corran City until a ship heads back up to orbit. For all we know the spaceport is on lockdown after we were reported."

              "Plot me a course that avoids major population centers," Jason said, not dithering between options while the clock was ticking down. "We're going to have to climb up out of the ground clutter; we can't fly terrain-following all the way to the pole. Keep monitoring com traffic and let me know if we've been detected."

              "Of course," Kage said, his four nimble hands flying over his controls. Jason pulled the nose up and began to swing around onto a northerly course. He was in a gentle climb that would take them up to the beginnings of Corran's stratosphere, allowing them to push up to supersonic speeds without leaving such a large sonic footprint as they crossed over the continent. Thankfully, the northern regions were sparsely populated; Corran's axis tilt ensured the winters there were especially brutal. "The twins are on final approach, lowering the shields to let them in," Kage told Jason without looking up from his console. The two intelligent probes zipped in close to the
Phoenix
and then eased down onto their respective landing hooks. Once they were pulled back inside and the hatches were closed Kage reactivated the dorsal shielding. Like the engines, the shield emitters were operating in a low-power mode to keep the chances of detection to a minimum without leaving them completely vulnerable.

              "We're climbing up through flight level zero-three-zero, everyone stay sharp," Jason said. Zero-three-zero represented their altitude, in this case thirty-thousand feet. As an American expatriate, Jason frequently shifted between metric and English units of measure naturally, but for his crew (especially Twingo), who were relying on their translations being accurate, this idiosyncrasy drove them almost insane. Kage looked over at him in annoyance, but said nothing. The ship was now flying at the altitude most commercial flights would be found at, but due to her size and configuration, Jason didn't hold out much hope of the
Phoenix
fooling even the most inattentive sensor operator. They were still quite a distance from the pole when their luck ran out.

              "Contact! Two destroyer class ships transferring to a lower orbit and moving to shadow us. We can assume they'll be launching fighters when they're within range." Doc's voice was calm and measured, but the Vongaard family looked fearfully between him and Jason.

              "So much for sneaking out of here," Jason said tightly, flipping the engine mode to full output. "Let's hit it!" As soon as his engine indicators greened up he slammed the throttle against the stops. The
Phoenix
roared as her main engines came to full power and millions of pounds of thrust blasted them through the Corranian atmosphere. He intended to see just how good the picket ships really were. The DL7 was designed especially for this scenario: outrun much larger and more powerful ships within a planet’s atmosphere or low orbit. He glanced down at his indicators to make sure there were no issues with cooling to the engines or hull temperature on the leading edges, all were well within norms, so he kept the hammer down and let the
Phoenix
race to hypersonic velocities as she tore a hole through the clear northern sky. Despite the imminent danger, the chance to let his powerful ship off her leash sent an electric thrill up Jason's spine.

              "Weapons and shields coming up," Kage said without being prompted.

              "Reactor output is coming up to one-hundred percent, grav-emitters are in emergency charge mode; we'll have limited slip-drive in two minutes," Twingo said over the intercom.

              "Very good," Jason said. "Senator Vongaard, would you and your family please activate your seat restraints, the ride might not stay so smooth." He watched the civilians scramble to get the seat harnesses activated and took some small pleasure in the abject terror on the face of the oldest daughter.
Not quite so sullen now, are you?

              "The heat signatures on the destroyers are spiking. They're pushing their engines hard to try and keep up," Doc said from the sensor station. "We also have a cruiser descending into the upper atmosphere over the pole. I think they realize what we're trying to do."

              "Can we slip between them and stay out of weapons range of both formations? There's no point in trying to sneak up the polar axis at this point," Jason said as he pulled the power back on the engines to maintain their current speed.

              "If we can get to orbit within the next forty-five seconds we'll clear both groups before they can maneuver back up out of their current orbits. There are ships still patrolling in high-synchronous orbit, though, and they're moving to cover us as well."

              "Shit. Hold on!" Jason pulled the stick smoothly back and stood the
Phoenix
on her tail. The ship clawed up out of the atmosphere in a vertical climb that would put them right in the middle of the waiting hornets' nest above in mere seconds. "Kage, plot a jump directly away from Corran, seven light seconds."

              "Plotting... It's going to be close, Captain. We've just barely got enough charge in the emitters to pull it off. If they use an interdiction field we're screwed," Kage said as he set up their short slip-space hop.

              "I'll chance it," Jason said as the sky blackened around them. He saw a green pop-up indicator on his main display letting him know that the jump was programmed and ready, all he had to do was engage the drive. He waited a few more seconds as the
Phoenix
shot up between the two groups of ships that had descended to pin them down and aimed for the smaller gap in the ships that were waiting above them. The instant they were at the extreme outer range for most interdiction field generators, Jason smacked the "engage" button that was blinking on his right. There was a high-pitched whine, the canopy darkened, and then a split second later they were sitting in open space. "Report!"

              "Jump successful," Kage said. "We're seven light seconds away from Corran."

              "Go dark," Jason said. "Shut down all potential emission sources. Plot me a course into the interior asteroid belt, five second burn on the main engines. Twingo: after the engine burn I'm killing the mains, I need the slip-drive to full power as fast as you can manage it."