Omega Force 7: Redemption (4 page)

"Shut up," Jason snapped. "Lucky, check the other one. I don't want a faker shooting me in the back while I question this one. So you're claiming you're just an innocent delivery pilot?"

"I
am
just an innocent delivery pilot!" the alien claimed shrilly.

"So the loosely wrapped corpse you tossed out earlier is normal for your company?" Jason asked casually. "And the unorthodox high-speed escape you performed afterward?" The alien flinched, dropping his hands slightly.

"This one is indeed dead, Captain," Lucky reported.

"This one is about to be," Jason said, stuffing the muzzle of his sidearm up under the alien's chin. "Talk. We don't have much time before we have to run, so you'll either be here telling this to the authorities later or they'll be scraping your plasma-cooked brains off your canopy."

"I don't know who the contractor was," the pilot said, seeming to deflate and resign himself to his fate. "It was a cash transaction and we were simply told where to be and when."

"Was there any other cargo?" Jason pressed. "Specifically a Galvetic warrior? Or another tarp that was four times as large as the one you tossed out?"

"No. I'd have remembered something like that," the pilot said. "One of the trio that loaded our shuttle was talking on a com unit about 'moving the other one' before we were given our destination coordinates. I'm not sure what that meant. Listen ... I'm in bad shape here. You're going to kill me anyway, could you make it quick?"

"That's the spirit," Jason nodded. "I like realists, even pessimistic ones. But sorry, champ ... you get to sit here and suffer until someone bothers to come see what happened out here. I owe you that much. Let's go, Lucky."

"The pilot will almost certainly die of his injuries before the authorities can arrive," Lucky said as they climbed back up the ramp.

"Not my problem," Jason said. "What
is
my problem is that I've got a missing crewmate and no leads."

****

"While I sympathize with your situation, Captain Burke, there's not much I can do," Crisstof said, his hands spread wide.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Jason demanded. "Of course there is. Talk to your contact in De'Moltia, the one who arranged for the prison break."

"Unfortunately that contact is no longer viable," Crisstof said. "With the unsuccessful conclusion of your mission she has ceased responding to messages."

"Don't put this back on us!" Jason said hotly, almost in a manic state. "This was a setup from the beginning. That body was dumped as a message to either you or her. Crusher was convinced to go into that hellhole to extract the package and he never came out. I
need
to know if he's still there or if they moved him as the delivery pilot seemed to think."

"I still don't understand what you would have me do," Crisstof said.

"Go through official channels," Jason said. "You must have contacts on this world. Talk to them."

"And admit that I hired mercenaries to break a prisoner out of their maximum security detention facility?" Crisstof asked incredulously. "Do you really think they'd be inclined to cooperate after that?"

"You and I both know there are ways you could probe around without asking directly," Jason said, struggling to control his temper. It had been six hours since the
Phoenix
had landed back aboard the
Defiant
and he was no closer to locating Crusher than he had been when he downed the fleeing shuttle.

"Jason, De'Moltia isn't exclusively owned by the government of Faulli," Crisstof said, referring to the planet they were orbiting. "Not only that, we're right in the middle of a delicate negotiation. While that might not mean much to you—"

"Try nothing."

"—certain considerations have to be taken so as not to destroy years of work, both mine and many others. I'm not at all making light of the fact that Crusher is missing, but you can't expect me to upend the whole project over it." Jason's look plainly said he did, in fact, expect just that.

"I hope you don't expect me not to try and get the information myself," Jason said, crossing his arms. It was mostly an idle threat since he had no idea where to even begin.

"I most certainly do," Crisstof said, raising his voice. "Captain Burke, I hire you as a subcontractor because of your ability, and willingness, to assume risks that my organization cannot. I expect you to honor that arrangement." Jason just stared at the older man for a moment before standing up and walking to the door of the conference room. "We all have responsibilities and obligations," Crisstof said to his back.

"I only have one responsibility right now," Jason said before walking out. He heard footsteps behind him and knew who it was.

"I hope you can understand the position he's in, Jason," Kellea Colleren said, standing just behind him. "It's not that he doesn't care about the fact that Crusher is missing."

"That's the difference between him and me," Jason said with a forced indifference. "To him, everybody is expendable to accomplish his goals."

"If I could I would have Mazer take his Marines and storm the gates of De'Moltia," she said. "But—"

"I know," Jason said bitterly. "We all have responsibilities. We'll talk about it later. I know you have to get back to the bridge and I have to talk to my crew and figure out what we're going to do."

"Please don't do anything rash, Jason," she begged. "We don't know if he's still down there or if he's even still alive."

"We won't make any moves until I've had a chance to talk to you again," Jason promised. "But we can't just sit in your hangar bay forever no matter what we decide."

"I'll see you this evening?"

"This evening," Jason said with a nod before continuing on his way. The
Phoenix
was once again out of sync with the
Defiant
since Jason ran his ship on a twenty-five hour day and Kellea operated with a thirty-two hour day, so her "evening" would be early morning for him. Years of being in space had conditioned him to adjust quickly to sudden time changes since they couldn't always predict when they'd reach whatever planet or space station they were going to.

He'd been both surprised and disappointed that Kellea hadn't spoken up on his behalf in their initial debrief with Crisstof. It was expected that the old man would put whatever business he had with Faulli over the lives of a bunch of grubby mercenaries no matter how much he professed to care about them personally. Jason had walked into the debrief thinking he held two aces: Crusher's status on his homeworld as near-royalty, and Kellea's habit of siding with him to convince Crisstof to agree to his demands. He walked out worse off than when he went in since now he'd been expressly forbidden to take direct action. If they did it anyway (which they would) he would not be able to innocently claim he wasn't aware he'd caused any problems.

****

"How'd it go?" Kage asked as Jason walked up onto the main deck of the
Phoenix
and closed the hatch behind him.

"Not well," he admitted. "Crisstof is stonewalling me, I'm certain of it, but the main thrust of it was he won't help and he doesn't want us taking action on our own."

"I find that somewhat surprising given the fact the Guardian Archon of Galvetor has just gone missing on a mission he had convinced him to take part in," Doc said with a frown. "There could be some serious ramifications from that."

"Maybe a lot more immediate than if Galvetor finds out," Twingo said. "Could you imagine what the company of Marines aboard this ship would do if they found out Crisstof left Crusher out to dry?"

"We could—" Kage began.

"Absolutely not," Jason said firmly. "I will tell Mazer when the time is right, if ever, but I don't need them tearing the
Defiant
apart and getting a bunch of people killed. It wouldn't help anyway. We need information more than anything else."

"Given what I have to work with I'm stuck," Kage said. "De'Moltia is on an isolated network and I'm not able to gain access from here."

"What do you need?" Jason asked.

"A hard line into the prison's administrative mainframe would be fantastic," Kage said. "But barring that I could use the access codes to the Faullian governmental network. From there I could bore into the reports coming out of De'Moltia."

"Who has those codes?" Twingo asked.

"Captain Colleren does," Kage said. "The
Defiant
has had a constant, high-bandwidth connection to the surface since she made orbit. The codes were provided to her by the Faullian representative that's onboard. Normally I would just slice into the
Defiant's
systems and ride their connection down, but that would leave too much evidence that I was there."

"She won't give them to me," Jason said.

"She won't?" Twingo asked, clearly surprised.

"Well ... I didn't actually ask," Jason admitted, "but in the debrief she made it pretty clear she was siding with Crisstof on this. Here's the problem: if I ask and she says no, we'll have tipped our hand that we're about to try something. Why is this network so hard for you to get in and out of without being seen?"

"It's not the network," Kage said. "It's the connection from the network to the prison. There isn't much traffic on it so they have the luxury of sniffing every data packet that comes and goes without choking throughput. If I have legitimate access codes, however, I can be in and out and they won't know until the logs are audited. By then we'll be long gone and I can create enough havoc they won't know what I was actually looking for."

"Would it be possible to steal the codes from Captain Colleren?" Doc asked. "No offense intended, Captain, but we're racing the clock right now. If Crusher's still alive we don't have long to find out where he is and try to extract him."

"No offense taken," Jason said. "I happen to agree with you. My relationship with Kellea is secondary to getting our crewmate back, so anything short of actually harming her is on the table."

"She has a terminal in her quarters that is connected to the
Defiant's
central core, right?" Kage asked.

"I believe so," Jason said. "I've never seen her do anything but check her messages with it, but I would assume she has the capability to check on the ship's systems from her quarters. I know I would want that if I was in charge of this tub."

"I can gain access to the
Defiant's
network from that terminal and then extract the codes from there," Kage said confidently.

"That's all well and good, but how are you going to get in there?" Jason asked. "She locks her quarters when she leaves and it would be a bit odd for me to show up with you in tow later this evening."

"There's another possibility," Doc said, looking uncomfortable. "I could give you something to dose her drink with. It'd knock her out for a few hours, Kage gets in and gets the codes, and she wakes up none the wiser."

Jason almost bristled with indignation at the thought of drugging Kellea, but as he considered it he had to admit the plan had a certain elegance to it.

"Could you develop a counter agent I would be able to administer once numbnuts—"

"Hey!"

"—has the codes and is out?"

"I don't see why not," Doc said. "I have her bio scans on file so it's just a matter of synthesizing the compounds. Why not just let her sleep it off?"

"For one it would arouse suspicion," Jason said. "She doesn't drink, so passing out for the night with no memory of what happened would cause her to get a full workup in her med bay. That would likely expose the traces of whatever you want me to give her still in her system. For another it's too dangerous to leave the captain of the
Defiant
incapacitated. I need to be able to bring her out of it quickly." As he spoke, Jason couldn't believe he was even considering the plan, but he needed something to work with and he needed it fast. Crusher's life was likely hanging by a thread, if he was even still alive, and he owed it to his friend to exploit any advantage he had. He knew in the back of his head that this was going to have profound ramifications down the road, but he shoved the thought aside and concentrated on the present.

"I'll get to work on it now," Doc said, hopping up from the galley table and rushing towards the infirmary.

"And I'll get my stuff ready," Kage said.

"I can't believe we have to resort to this," Twingo said once they'd left. "Why won't Crisstof help on this? I'd say he owes us at least that much."

"I don't know what's going on with this project he's involved in, but he seemed distracted at the debrief," Jason said. "Once he'd learned the package we'd been hired to get out of De'Moltia was killed he became completely disinterested in anything else I had to say, including the fact Crusher is now MIA."

"Always nice to know where you stand with people, I guess," Twingo said. "I'll start getting the ship prepped for launch. I have a feeling we'll be leaving in a hurry."

"I will assist you," Lucky said and followed Twingo out of the galley. Once they'd gone, Jason began rubbing his temples with the palms of his hands, trying to alleviate the stress headache he could feel coming on. Crisstof had been distant, almost cold towards him and his crew for some time now, but Jason was still mildly shocked at the man's seeming indifference to the fact that Crusher hadn't come back from an extremely dangerous mission that had been at his request.