Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon (33 page)

“Let’s go!” he yelled, grabbing his railgun and affixing it to the back of his armor at the anchor points. He slid his sidearms into their respective holsters as he ran down the steps and through the common area, three Galvetic warriors and one battlesynth hot on his trail. Kage was already in the pilot’s seat by the time they reached the crew entry hatch leading to the cargo bay.

Crusher insisted on being the first through the hatch, followed by Jason, then Lucky, then the brothers. Once they were all in, the transit beam retracted back through the roof and they heard the
Phoenix
throttle up and fly off. They were in a darkened chamber that looked like it could have been used for legal proceedings.

“Company,” Crusher said as the sounds of running boots could be heard approaching the huge double doors. Lucky switched to combat mode and Jason detached his primary weapon and brought it around. With the railgun slaved to his armor’s targeting computer, there was no need to raise it to his shoulder, so he let it rest at his hip and waited. “Shoot to kill,” Crusher said grimly. “They’ll do no less.”

A moment later, five heavily armed warriors blew into the room and deployed into a loose skirmish line, scanning for targets. Jason took the first one from the left, center mass with a high-velocity shot from his railgun. The warrior’s light armor may as well have been tissue paper. Lucky mowed down two with his arm-mounted cannons and the brothers took out the last targets.

“Let’s move,” Crusher said. “Quickly, they’ll be concentrated in the main audience chamber.”

They let Crusher take point again and moved out in a single file line. The halls of the building were shockingly empty and they didn’t encounter any further resistance until they reached the large ornamental doors of the main audience chamber, and even then there was only three additional troops posted. They killed two and disabled the third, moving silently to the door to listen beyond.

They could just make out the muted babble of the senators, now hostages, and could hear Fordix’s booming voice still making proclamations in grand, theatrical tones. Jason just shook his head.
That man loves the sound of his own voice.
He detached a high-explosive grenade and held it up to Crusher. The warrior considered it for a second and then nodded. Jason slaved the detonator to his armor and then balanced the grenade between the decorative door handles.

“In three … two … one,” Jason said before triggering the grenade and blowing the doors inward, stunning everyone in the large chamber with the over-pressure. Crusher was up and through the door before the debris had even hit the floor. Lucky was right behind him followed closely by Jason. The Reddix brothers, lacking any protective headgear, were shaking off the cobwebs before bringing up the rear.

“All Legionnaires STAND DOWN!!” Crusher bellowed from the ruined doorway.

There was a lot of confusion, but nobody was raising their weapons, so that was a promising start.

“NOW!”

At this, individual soldiers began lowering their weapons and looking at each other, shrugging.

“Crusher, up by the dais,” Jason said. He could see Fordix and the Praetores of the Order moving slowly towards the rear exit.

“Block the exits!” Crusher shouted. “The three Praetores, and Fordix, are not to leave this room.”

Six troops immediately moved to block off their retreat. Seeing he would not be leaving, Fordix drew himself up and turned to face Crusher.

“Felex,” he said. “I see you are far tougher than I gave you credit for.”

“Not especially,” Crusher said calmly. “You’re just an incompetent warrior, much as I remember from my youth. You missed my heart by nearly ten centimeters.”

This set the entire room to buzzing. The other warriors in the room were now training their weapons on Fordix and the Praetores, indicating where their loyalties still lay.

“So what now, Felex? You just kill us and everyone goes back to the way things were?”

“Of course not,” Crusher said, dropping his weapons and flexing his arms. “You’ve ruined centuries of peaceful coexistence with your stupidity. After I kill you, we will have to find a new path.”

“You would face me in single combat?” Fordix said, his voice actually hopeful. “Even with such a grave injury?”

“You are in for an unpleasant surprise,” Crusher said, continuing to close in on his old mentor. Fordix dropped his own weapons and began stretching and walking down off the dais. Jason looked at the older warrior’s confident, even indulgent smile.
He thinks he actually has a chance.

“There’s a certain symmetry to—” Fordix’s pontificating was cut short by Crusher’s deafening roar right before he launched himself across the short distance separating them and crashed his closed fist into his former mentor’s skull. Fordix’s head snapped back and he flew back a few steps, collapsing to the floor. He struggled to rise, his motor functions slightly off from the devastating blow. When he looked at Crusher approaching, his condescending smirk was replaced with shock and fear.

Fordix came in with two wide-armed, telegraphed strikes that caused Crusher to tuck his arms in and easily block. He then lashed out with an open palm strike that caught Fordix in the side of the head and knocked him to the floor again. Crusher pressed his attack and lunged in with another closed fist strike that crushed bone and drove his opponent’s head into the polished stone floor with tremendous force.

“It’s over,” Fordix wheezed as he raised his hands in defeat, blood running from his nose and ears. Crusher slid a long, curved blade from the sheath on his back.

“It was over before it started,” he said and plunged the blade into Fordix’s chest. He leaned in and whispered into the older warrior’s ear, “That’s where the heart is, by the way.”

As soon as Crusher stood up, Mazer and Morakar raised their weapons and quickly dispatched the Praetores of the Archon’s Fist in a blaze of plasma fire from the modern firearms they’d taken from the
Phoenix’s
armory. Fostel, Zetarix, and Mutabor hit the ground, their bodies smoking.

“Who is in command here?” Crusher demanded.

“You are, my lord,” a warrior said from the perimeter of the room.

“I mean who has tactical authority,” Crusher clarified. “Who is running the ground campaign?”

“I am,” the same warrior said.

“This operation is over,” Crusher said calmly. “It was never actually authorized. All troops are to stand down and muster in the square near the Senate Hall. They are to stay isolated and are not to provoke local law enforcement until we get this mess straightened out.”

“Lord Felex Tezakar,” an elderly gelten said, approaching the group. “It was my understanding that you accepted banishment from Galvetor and Restaria both, yet here you are.”

“Your understanding is correct, Senator,” Crusher said in a neutral tone.

“I will assume you returned to try and head off exactly the kind of violence between our kinds that we’ve seen here today,” the senator continued. “Such an action would be viewed by the Senate as an acceptable breech of the conditions of your exile.”

“Correct again, although I hadn’t expected anything of this magnitude,” Crusher admitted. “Otherwise you’d have never known I was back. I would have handled things on Restaria without the meddling of the oversight committee or the intervention of Internal Security.”

“What are we to do now?” another senator demanded. “We can’t go back to the way things were. Our citizens will demand action.”

“No,” Crusher said slowly, “we can’t go back to the way it was. We’ll need to find another way to live with each other, but that will be largely up to this body.”

“I think it will need to be up to all of us this time. No class can feel they were cheated when it is done,” the first senator said. “Will you help us?”

“As always, I will do whatever is in my power to help my people,” Crusher said. Jason’s heart sank at those words. Before he could ask his friend to clarify, Kage broke in on the com channel.

“
Captain, those ships have increased speed
,” he said. “
They’ll be here within the hour
.”

“Understood,” Jason said. “Come pick me up.”

*****

“Do we have any better resolution on who these guys are?” Jason asked as the
Phoenix
shot up out of Galvetor’s atmosphere.

“No,” Kage said. “They’re still running silent, but we’ve gotten better scans on their configuration and power output. They appear to be on the small side for a frigate class vessel and have normal power readings we would expect to see from a ship of that size.”

“I guess we can rule out coincidence that they’ve just happened to show up during an attempted coup and then just happened to accelerate once that was put into doubt,” Jason groused.

“True,” Kage said. “So did Crusher really just beat down Fordix in three hits?”

“Well, he stabbed him through the chest too,” Jason said. “To be honest, it was a bit anticlimactic. Fordix was fairly well organized up to the point the Galvetic Senate capitulated without a fight, but after that he didn’t really seem to have much of a plan.”

“I wish he could have refrained from the death by combat stuff,” Kage complained. “Fordix likely had much more information available about who took the
Phoenix
and who these guys are coming at us.”

“Agreed,” Jason said with a sigh. “Not to mention where they’re getting all the badass Eshquarian hardware. Too bad the Reddix brothers took out all three Praetores shortly afterwards.”

“I’m beginning to get the sense the gelten species may be a tad overemotional and more than a little short-sighted when it comes to things like this,” Kage said. “But hey! This is fun … just the two of us, flying out to meet the enemy head on.”

Jason gave him an irritated look, but decided not to answer. He’d left Lucky on Galvetor to make sure there was a non-gelten presence to keep order between the thoroughly confused warriors milling about and a population that was getting over the initial shock and replacing it with anger.

“Looks like they’re turning to meet us,” Jason said, looking at his tactical display. They’d flown a course directly away from Galvetor and tangential to the incoming fleet’s projected course to see if they could get a reaction.

“They’re also powering weapons and raising their shields,” Kage said urgently. “Weapons look like standard fare. The shields don’t appear to be all that special either, but there are three of them so we’ll need to keep our distance.”

“Yeah, don’t want to get caught in a crossfire situation with three capital ships, no matter how small,” Jason said. “Looks like it’s stick and move until we can figure out who they are. Bring everything up to full power. No use hiding what we have now. Target all three ships, I’ll prioritize from here.”

He pushed up the throttle and brought his course around for a direct intercept. Being so outmatched in combined firepower, he decided to make the first pass at high subluminal speeds and then use the gunship’s far superior maneuverability to their advantage.

“We’re locked on,” Kage said. “We’ll be in range within two minutes.”

Jason activated the link between the ship and his neural implant, effectively making his entire field of view the tactical display. He didn’t bother with visual spectrum overlays; at the range and speed that space battles happened, there wasn’t much to see. At the last possible moment, Jason shifted their course to starboard by ten degrees and put their nose on the right-most target, opening fire with the main guns when the computer indicated they were within range.

The engagement was over in a split-second as the
Phoenix
shot by the ship they’d hit and was well into its first turn before the enemy could return fire. They felt a few bumps as ineffective point-defense fire impacted harmlessly against their shields.

“The ship we just hit took a fair amount of damage down its port flank,” Kage reported, reading the sensor data from the opening shot of the battle. “It must be worse than it looked, bogey is breaking formation and accelerating for a mesh-out point.”

“I didn’t think it was that bad,” Jason said. “I’m guessing they’re not here for anything other than the intimidation factor, since we only landed two shots and they’re bugging out. I guess their heart just isn’t in it.”

He accelerated along their current course before swinging around hard to line up on the engines of the next target. As he pulled in towards them, they matched his rate of acceleration and began to turn away from Galvetor, heading out of the system. After thirty seconds, Jason broke pursuit and swung back around to take up a defensive position near the planet. With multiple targets, he would play a completely defensive strategy and not engage them too far into the system, thus leaving the planet unguarded for the other ships or those he hadn’t been aware of.

“They’re still pulling away hard,” Kage said in confusion. “That ship we hit has started to slow down; it looks like they weren’t meshing out after all.”

“They’re regrouping near the edge of the system,” Jason said. “I think that was a feeler to see who we were. The next engagement won’t be so easy.”

Jason actually pulled the ship to a full stop relative to Galvetor and kept rotating to keep their nose on the enemy as they paced the planet around the primary star. After fifteen minutes, they found out why the three smaller ships had broken off their attack.

“Three more slip-space signatures near the edge of the system,” Kage said. “Stand by while the sensors resolve them.”

“Looks like they had reinforcements hanging just outside of sensor range,” Jason said.

“You’re not going to like this,” Kage said, his voice pitching up an octave. “Two destroyers and a cruiser just joined the three frigates.”

“We’re sure they’re warships?” Jason asked.

“Yeah, power output confirms it,” Kage said. “I’ve been trying to raise them on the com since the frigates turned and ran, but no response so far.”

Jason almost admonished him for taking such an action without asking first, but he let it slide since it was something he should have ordered himself anyway.