Omega Force 3: The Enemy Within (17 page)

“Confirmed.”

“Say that again, Captain,” Twingo said.

“I said, what if something manages to come through?” Kellea’s voice came over the intercom speakers in the room.

“That is a risk at the speed you’ll be travelling,” Twingo admitted. “I won’t lie to you, it could cause serious injury. However, the suit has the ability to reseal itself nearly instantaneously if breached. So while you’ll lose some mobility, you won’t die.”

“I suppose I should take some comfort from that,” she answered.

“Unfortunately we won’t be able to use shielding or an electrostatic field to deflect anything,” Jason said. “We’d be spotted instantly.”

“I understand the risks, Jason,” she said calmly. “I’m still going.”

“I wasn’t trying to dissuade you,” Jason said. “If you’re ready to start moving around in that thing, meet me in the cargo bay and we’ll start drilling on our exit procedure.”

“Can’t wait,” she said in a strained voice as she shuffled towards the door.

Once Jason had donned his combat armor he, Lucky, and Kellea rehearsed their departure in the cargo bay until Jason was satisfied that they could do it blindfolded and asleep. On the surface, it seemed fairly simple: open the ramp and step out. But the physics of stepping out of a ship travelling tens of thousands of kilometers an hour with the intent of hitting a target hundreds of thousands of kilometers away presented its own set of challenges.

Since Lucky had a sophisticated navigation system that didn’t rely on external com or other transmitted signals, he would take point. He would keep his arms straight out and the other two would grab on and let him guide their flight. When the time came to begin decelerating, Lucky would reverse positions and the others would then brace against his arms as he used the repulsors in his feet to begin braking. The looks everyone gave each other let Jason know what they thought about his chances of success. But, as he’d told Crusher, he trusted Lucky completely. If he said he could do it, that was good enough for Jason to take the chance.

“OK,” he said after the twenty-second run through. “That’s as good as we’re going to get. I want everyone rested and ready when we arrive in-system tomorrow.”

Twingo assisted Kellea out of her modified suit as Jason popped the seals on his armor and stepped out of it. Once it was back in its rack, he began fully charging the power system and making sure his life-support expendables were topped off. He was not at all looking forward to spending so much time in the thing. Seventeen hours just to get to the start of the operation. It would be mentally and physically exhausting and he began to worry that Kellea wasn’t up to the task. She was an outstanding commanding officer, but this would be far outside her comfort zone and skill set. But the decision had been made, and there wasn’t any walking her back from it at this point. Without a word to anyone, he made his way back to his quarters to clean up and get as much sleep as he could.

“Position confirmed,” Doc reported. “We’re outside the heliopause of the RU933 star system.”

“Full passive countermeasures,” Jason ordered, and he switched the engines to low-output mode. They’d still be able to accelerate into the system and maneuver, but wouldn’t have the explosive acceleration they normally would. But, with the engine emitter output reduced so dramatically, it was also nearly impossible to detect the
gunship unless you knew exactly where to look. “We have twelve hours until we need to get suited up,” he said to the assault team. Once he had throttled up to move them into the system, he engaged the first auto-pilot program that would guide the ship precisely along the required flight path for them to exit in the correct location and at the correct speed.

“Doc, take over,” Jason said, hopping out of his seat. “I’ll be down in the armory going over everything one more time.”

“I’ll go with you,” Crusher said, also getting out of his seat.

“Kage, begin gathering as much
intel with the passive sensors as you can,” Jason said. “Keep updating me on the status as we get closer.”

Jason spent the better part of the twelve hours laying out all their equipment and going over it with a fine-toothed comb, trying to detect the slightest defect that could derail the operation, but mostly he was just trying to stay busy. The hours leading up to a complex, dangerous mission were the worst. Too much time to reflect on what could go wrong and let the anxiety build up.

Once he was satisfied that the equipment would perform as expected, he began to carefully pack it all up. Some of the gear would be stored in an armored case that would be strapped to his back. The rest of it, mostly his personal weaponry, would be affixed to hard points on his armor. Lastly, he ran the armor itself through one last diagnostic check before disconnecting the umbilical cables.

“
Captain, we’re two hours from the jump point
,” Doc finally reported over the intercom.

“Thanks, Doc,” he answered back. “Execute the course changes as
programmed, we’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

“
Copy, we’ll be spinning the Phoenix in one hour and opening the cargo bay up shortly after
,” Doc said. Kellea and Lucky walked into the armory moments after the intercom clicked off.

“Time to suit up?” she asked in a strained voice, the reality of what she was about to do finally sinking in.

“It is,” Jason said. “Let me give you a hand.” It took nearly forty-five minutes to get her into the modified suit. Once it was all sealed up and had passed the pressure checks, he allowed her to walk around the armory and try to settle it into place. The fit wasn’t perfect, but Twingo had managed to give her a suit that would be decently comfortable once she was in the micro-gravity of space while still protecting her from the countless hazards such as radiation and debris.

He walked over to his own armor and popped it open. It split apart so he could get himself into the lower section and reach his arms back into the unit. “Close,” he said, and the armor slowly moved up and around his upper body before closing in, sealing itself. The nanotech metal of the joints flowed around the gaps and seamlessly filled all the openings. He sucked in a deep breath and held it as the suit squeezed back against
him, trying to establish a proper fit. Once the pressure normalized in the suit he felt the slight disorientation that went along with his neural implant making a hard connection to the armor’s processors. Once that passed he was able to control all suit functions without consciously thinking about it. Whatever he wanted to do, his implant told the armor what and how to accomplish it. Crusher was right about it being expensive, but in his mind it was worth the price, and much more, to have not only the protection, but the enhanced combat capability.

Once he stepped out of the rack and made a few exaggerated moves to make sure he had full range of motion, he nodded to Lucky. He deployed the helmet as the battlesynth grabbed the armored case of gear and strapped it tightly to Jason’s back. After that was done, Jason moved to the bench and grabbed his weapons, securing each to its designated place.

“
Drive is shut down
,” Doc called over the intercom. “
The ship is coming about now. I’ll be opening the cargo bay in twenty minutes
.”

“Copy that,” Jason said. “We’re heading out now.” He walked to the large blast doors that separated the armory from the cargo bay and hit the controls to open them. They milled about in the hold until Doc called down again that they were about to open the ramp. The lights dimmed steadily until the cargo bay was plunged into complete darkness. A moment later the red strobes at either side of the pressure doors blinked twice and then darkness fell once again.

Jason switched over to low-light mode in his helmet and was able to see that the pressure doors were sliding open and the ramp was already lowered, exposing the pitch black of open space beyond. The trio marched forward and shuffled down to the edge of the ramp and held fast until Doc gave them the word to take that last step.

“
We’re releasing you in five seconds
,” Doc said. “
We’ll be observing com silence after this. We’ll be listening in case there’s an emergency call. Good luck, assault team. Phoenix out
.”

A few seconds later Jason felt his stomach flip as if he were in freefall when Doc killed the artificial gravity on the ramp. They were now free-flying separate from the
Phoenix
, which was also racing along with them backwards at twenty-six thousand and eight hundred kilometers per hour. Just as suddenly, the ramp shot out from underneath them as the
Phoenix
throttled up and began to slow her flight. The three members of the assault team were now hurtling through space with no lifeline if something went wrong.

To stave off the vertigo he was feeling, Jason concentrated on Lucky as the battlesynth began to maneuver
himself into position. He was pleased to see Kellea seemed completely at ease, making slow, deliberate movements as she guided herself on tiny ionic jets to grab Lucky’s outstretched left arm. Jason fired his own maneuvering jets and took his position on his friend’s right arm. Once he was locked on, he sent a command through the neural uplink to lock his gauntlets in position.

After the excitement of departing the
Phoenix
had subsided, he was faced with the reality of a near-seventeen hour flight through the void without even being able to talk to his companions. Their emissions-security protocol meant zero com transmissions, not even short range. So instead he focused on the planet. The massive gas ball appeared as a crescent since they were angling in from the dark side. It was fairly uninteresting as far as gas giants went, the atmosphere appearing as a solid, murky orange color with no discernible weather to speak of. Every once in a while he’d see a moon, or something, cross in front of it to break up the monotony.

He was simply bored by the third hour, had an itch he couldn’t scratch all through the fourth, and by the fifth he was berating himself for not having the foresight to rig up some sort of hardwired com loop between the three of them. He fell asleep for a bit sometime around hour nine and was jarred awake by Lucky shifting positions at hour fourteen. He quickly unlocked his gauntlets and waited as the battlesynth spun
himself around so that his feet were facing towards their target. At least Jason hoped so, since he couldn’t see anything yet. He’d messed around with the optical sensors in his helmet and still couldn’t see the ship formation they were headed for.

*****

“They’re away,” Doc said as he watched the aft video feed. He’d just observed the assault team practically disappear off the ramp as the
Phoenix
slowed under minimal drive output. “Let’s get to our part. Start giving me the first set of coordinates, Kage.”

“They’re coming up on your nav panel now,” Kage said.

“Remember,” Twingo spoke up from the engineering station. “Try to keep throttle corrections to a minimum. The less we use the drive for maneuvering, the less chance we’ll be detected out here.”

“I’ll remember,” Doc promised. His nerves were a bit frayed as he throttled up the gunship and turned onto the course Kage had provided. It was easy to be critical of Jason’s decision-making from the sensor station, but now he was in command during a very delicate operation where one misstep could cause it to end in disaster.

“We’re clear of the outer edge of the detection grid,” Kage said. “Go ahead and kick her in the ass and let’s get to our first drop point.” Doc throttled up the drive even further as they flew along the perimeter of what they believed to be the edge of the detection net. Under the constant acceleration it didn’t take long to get to their first waypoint.

“I’m programming the missiles now,” Kage said. “They’ll wait for the final targeting data once we initiate the firing sequence. OK, we’re ready to deploy.” After a few moments of silence the Veran turned to him in annoyance. “Doc, we’re ready to deploy.”

“Oh, sorry,” Doc said and squeezed the trigger on the stick to give command authorization for weapons release.

“Snap out of it,” Kage admonished him. “You’ve been really loopy the last few days.”

“Yeah, I guess I have been a bit scattered,” Doc agreed vaguely. They deployed bundles of six missiles at each of their three stops. This completely depleted the
Phoenix’s
forward weapons bay, but if it worked it would be a small price to pay. At a designated time Kage would bring up the active sensor array and flood the system with tachyons. They would then have a real-time picture of everything in the system and would relay that data to the missiles. The eighteen weapons would ignite their engines and knock out eighteen of the listening posts surrounding the planet.

Twingo theorized that it was the overlapping coverage of the sensor stations that provided the high degree of accuracy, and if enough were knocked out it would create enormous gaps that they could exploit. With the passive array down, the
Phoenix
would be clear to engage her active countermeasures and wreak havoc in the formations on their way to pick up the assault team. The confusion would hopefully stun the minimal Fleet presence into inaction. Jason said a cushy, boring babysitting mission like this bred complacency in crews and commanders alike. Doc hoped he was right. While he was what could graciously be called a proficient pilot, he was no combat flyer. Any resistance that the gunship’s point defense couldn’t handle would be a major problem.

“We’re all clear,” Kage said. “I don’t see any evidence we’ve been detected. No active scans on the hull, no engine flares near the planet. Let’s get above the ecliptic and wait it out there. I’d like to use the optical sensors and gather a bit more
intel.”

“Alright,” Doc agreed. “We’ll park one million kilometers above the pole with the optics trained on the planet.”

“That should do it,” Kage agreed. Doc followed the indicators on the nav panel and flew the
Phoenix
up and over the planet far out of detection range. Nothing left now but the long wait.

*****

Jason could just make out the shape of ... something ... directly in front of him as Lucky continued to brake. He continually looked over to make sure Kellea was doing okay during the maneuvers. While his armor absorbed a lot of the strain on his arms, her rig did so considerably less effectively. It looked like her lighter weight helped as her body position didn’t indicate she was in duress.

Now that they were inside the detection grid, Lucky was really giving it hell as he tried to bring their velocity down to something manageable. Jason could now clearly see the outline of the damaged frigate and, despite this being the plan, was simply amazed that they were anywhere close. He was also a bit alarmed at their rate of closure. He knew from his jump training that if his brain could discern an object rushing at him it was quite close indeed.

Suddenly they were upon the
Diligent
and moving far too fast towards the aft section. Lucky shook Jason off his arm and turned to grab Kellea with both hands and cradle her to his chest while he fired his repulsors at full power, leaving Jason to fend for himself. Managing to get his body turned around, Jason magnetized his feet and fired his own jets at maximum thrust. Although powerful enough to lift him off the ground on a standard gravity planet, they were woefully inadequate to shed off the speed he was carrying.

He slammed into the hull of the
Diligent
far faster than he would have preferred, but not fast enough to damage his armor. His internal organs seemed to be an entirely different story, however. He bounced back off before he could get his feet anchored under him and had a monetary bout of panic while he flailed about in space. Forcing himself to be calm, he used his maneuvering jets to correct his body position and descended slowly and smoothly to the side of the hull again, this time feeling the satisfying
clunk
of his feet locking onto the ship. In the micro-gravity of the planet, his vestibular system had no idea what was going on, his eyes told him the hull was the “ground,” and his brain let his eyes know that the “ground” was the side of the ship.