Omega Force: Savage Homecoming (23 page)

“We’ll deal with that later,” he said. “Commander, is your ship stable? The damage looked pretty bad.”

“We’re fine for now, Captain,” Ta’Arlek Ka said. “The hull over the hangar bay wasn’t a structural piece. We will alert you if that changes.”

Once they had disconnected with the commander, Jason turned to his crew and the two non-Omega Force beings on the bridge.

“We’re back to square one,” Jason said with disgust. “Any idea where he’ll run?”

*****

After some back and forth with De’Elefor Ka and Ta’Arlek Ka, they were able to begin piecing together the locations Deetz had been operating out of. One particular planet kept coming up as a supply hub that all three of the A’arcooni ships had visited at least once.

“Breaker’s World, huh?”
Twingo grunted. “This will be like old times.”

“Are we even allowed back there?” Doc asked. “That last time—”

“I’m sure that’s all been smoothed over or forgotten,” Jason ran over the top of him as Taryn arched one eyebrow questioningly. “It makes sense in a loopy sort of way. He could come and go as he pleased on that planet and nobody would ask too many questions as long as he paid the right people.”

“I take it this Breaker’s World is less than reputable?” Taryn asked.

“You could say that,” Crusher laughed.

“Isn’t that the first planet besides Earth you went to, Jason?” Taryn asked as she remembered the name from one of his letters.

“Technically, no … I walked around on Mars for a little bit while Deetz was repairing the
Phoenix
, only she didn’t even have a name back then,” Jason said distractedly, missing her gaping at him. Even while she was in the middle of it, living the adventure, she still had a hard time coming to terms with the direction his life had taken.

“So set course for Breaker’s World?” Kage asked as he lounged in the right seat.

“Screw it. Let’s get flying, we’re accomplishing nothing sitting here,” Jason said after letting out an explosive sigh of disgust. “Contact Ta’Arlek Ka and alert him we’ll be departing before the medical ship gets here. You’d better tell Crisstof too.”

“I’m on it,” Kage said as all four of his hands flew over the control panels.

“We’re getting ready to leave,” Jason said to De’Elefor Ka. “Do you want to transfer to your other ship or stay here?”

“If I could be allowed to stay I would be very grateful, Captain,” the A’arcooni said with another of those subservient bows. “I would see this through to the end.”

“Very well. Strap in,” Jason turned to Twingo. “Is the ship ready?”

“You have no confidence in me, do you?”

“No. And you didn’t answer the question.”

“Drives and tactical systems are at one hundred percent,
Captain,
” Twingo spat. “I don’t know why I put up with this,” he muttered.

“Oh come on, you love it,” Jason teased as he brought the main drive fully online.
Damn, I think I actually got to him with that one.

“Your course is laid in. Engage at will,” Kage reported. “Crisstof and the A’arcooni vessel have been advised that we are departing the area.”

Sleep was elusive for Jason, and he stared at the ceiling in his quarters trying to will himself to relax enough so he could get some rest. The A’arcooni threat was neutralized, but he wasn’t sure how relieved he was about that. At least that was a known threat; with them out of the picture, Deetz was an unpredictable quantity in the equation and he didn’t like that one bit.

In an effort to occupy his mind, he began to go through all the interactions he’d had with the synth, going all the way back to when he’d first stormed the bridge of the gunship when it had made an emergency landing on Earth. There was little consistency in Deetz’s actions, unless taken in context of the synth only acting in his own self-interest. He had been willing to do anything to anybody to get what he wanted. Not only had he been utterly self-serving, but his actions since attacking Earth showed that he had a wide cruel streak and wouldn’t think twice about using horrific levels of violence just to prove a point.

Jason sat upright in bed with the sudden, sickening realization of what Deetz’s next move would be. He rolled out of his bunk and practically ran out of his quarters. When he ran onto the bridge, dressed in only a t-shirt and pair of basketball shorts, Lucky could only stare at him. The ship was in the middle of “night hours” and the battlesynth was the only one on the bridge standing watch. The canopy was dark, as they were in slip-space and the lights were dimmed. Jason knew he must have looked like a lunatic running onto the bridge half-dressed and wild-eyed.

“I know where Deetz is going,” he said to Lucky as he climbed into the pilot’s seat. “We need to change course.”

“Have you received new intelligence?” Lucky asked as he moved over to see what Jason was doing.

“Call it a hunch,” Jason answered as he began scrolling through saved destinations on his navigation panel
..

“A hunch?
Is it wise to alter our course based on something so undefined?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Jason said with a confidence he didn’t fully feel.

“Where do you think he is going?” Lucky was tactfully trying to extract information out of his captain without coming right out and saying he thought the human was insane.

“Earth.
He’s going back to Earth and it won’t be to just posture or threaten,” Jason said quietly as he pulled up the navigational data for the Solar System.

“How can you be so sure?”

“We’ve pulled the rug out from under him. He was leading us around and making us dance to his tune, but I don’t think he expected us to be able to take away his A’arcooni fleet the way we did. He’s going for straight, good ‘ol revenge this time,” Jason answered as he slowly increased the slip-drive output to maximum. The ship began to vibrate and groan as she came up to her maximum slip velocity. Jason waited for a moment for what he knew was coming next.

“What the hell is going on up here?!”
A disheveled Twingo ran onto the bridge and looked around. “Who commanded a speed increase?”

“I did,” Jason said with his hands up in a placating gesture. “Calm down, we think we know where Deetz is heading and we need to make up some time.”

“We?” Lucky asked.

“You need to at least ask me before you just flip the switch like that,” Twingo grumbled as he hunched over the engineering station and checked his readings. “So where are we going?”

“Back to Earth,” Jason said. “If we can get there just after him, that would be preferable.”

“Fine, let me go grab some chroot and then I’ll be in Engineering making sure we can keep this speed up. No promises on such a long flight though.” Twingo walked off the bridge to get
himself cleaned up and awake enough to get to work.

“I guess I’ll do the same,” Jason said to Lucky. “I doubt I’d be able to go back to sleep now anyway.” He walked off the bridge, leaving a bemused battlesynth staring after him.

“It feels like we’re in a hurry,” Crusher said from the galley table where he was reading from a tablet computer.

“What are you doing up?” Jason asked as he moved over to the food processor panel.

“Keeping watch over our guest while Lucky has bridge duty,” the warrior said without looking up. “I don’t think he’s inclined to do anything, but I’d rather not find out the hard way.”

“Too true,” Jason agreed. “That whole group is a big mess of crazy right now. So what are you reading?”

“That data package we pulled off the A’arcooni recording device had a complete collection of their literature and media. Kage ran a few through a translation routine and I’ve been browsing the news reports from when the Travelers first arrived at A’arcoon.”

“Huh,” Jason only grunted. The duality of Crusher still caught him off guard at times. He was also a little embarrassed that as the commander of the unit he hadn’t bothered to do the same thing himself.
“Anything interesting?” He knew how stupid the question sounded even as it left his mouth. Crusher just stared at him blankly, but decided to answer anyway.

“As you’d imagine, quite a bit is interesting,” he rumbled, still looking at the display on his computer. “It does follow a certain pattern. This cult was ignored and ridiculed as fringe until they had enough members and influence to begin causing real trouble. There were a few high-profile terrorist attacks that led to some arrests, but thanks to the cult having members entrenched in the government itself they were never able to fully break them. By the time they realized just how dangerous they’d become, it was too late.”

“Sounds familiar,” Jason said scornfully. Many of the jobs his crew had taken happened to be putting out the fires from just such scenarios. They’d put down violent insurrections, hunted down terrorists and rogue military units, and tracked escaped criminals across dozens of star systems. It never ceased to amaze him how inept some governments were at handling the most basic of functions of keeping their citizenry safe.

“So you really think Deetz is heading for your homeworld? Is he the type to go out in one last blaze of glory for revenge?” Crusher turned off his computer and looked at Jason squarely.
How could he have heard that from all the way down here?

“It feels right. I can’t point to anything specific, but at this point in the game he knows his moves are limited. Just running back to Breaker’s World to lick his wounds isn’t his style.”

“You spent far more time around him than I did,” Crusher admitted. “I was locked in a stasis pod for most of that trip.”

“Damn, that was a wild ride,” Jason laughed as he recalled their first mission together, a bumbling, desperate escape from an asteroid base called The Vault. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”

“I was surprised myself,” Crusher chuckled slightly. “I’d say that plan would fail nine times out of ten when tried. Luckily we got that one chance on the first try.”

“Yeah, all’s well that ends well I guess,” Jason said as he went back to the food processor.

“You’re still hungry?”

“No. I’m grabbing something for Twingo to try to mend some fences,” Jason said as he gathered the things for his best friend’s favorite breakfast. “He was less than thrilled with my course change and speed increase. He’s down monitoring the core and engines on only a few hours of sleep.”

*****

The flight to Earth was a long one. The blue planet was well out of the shadow of the ConFed’s influence and didn’t attract a lot of attention. Nobody would burn so much fuel to get to such an underdeveloped planet without good reason. Jason knew his ship was faster than the small runabout Deetz was traveling in, but he didn’t know if they’d changed courses in time to catch up. The militaries of Earth would be no match for even an underpowered ship such as that one.

Twingo convinced him to throttle the drive back to ninety-five percent to ensure they even made it there. Running at full power for days at a time was a risk that Jason wasn’t willing to take, after the engineer had given him the odds on whether or not the engines would take the abuse. He could do nothing while they were in transit, and the feeling of helplessness made him pace around the ship like a caged animal.

“If you don’t get some rest you’re going to be useless when we get there,” Taryn finally said on the third day of the flight.

“I’m not sure I can,” Jason admitted as he made his fourth lap from the armory up onto the bridge where she and Doc sat.

“Well, would you mind pacing in the cargo bay or something? You’re putting everyone else on edge,” Doc said from the terminal he’d been working at. Jason just glared at him and walked back off the bridge without another word.

The rest of the crew seemed equally on edge as he walked around and checked in on everybody. Their prisoner/guest seemed to be having second thoughts about coming along, as Twingo and Kage filled him in on some of their previous missions. Crusher seemed especially agitated the closer they got to Earth. After he snapped at Kage for practically nothing one evening, Jason remembered what he’d wanted to talk to the big warrior about.

“So … what are Korkarans?”

“I already told you,” Crusher practically growled at him.

“You told me as much as you wanted me to know. Now I’m asking you for the rest of it,” Jason insisted. Crusher glowered at him for a moment before relenting.

“The Korkarans have a long history with the warrior caste of my people,” he said. “It isn’t a pleasant history. They’ve attacked our world multiple times for nothing more than a challenge. When that didn’t work, they attacked our neighbors and allies to draw warriors off Galvetor to challenge them in combat.”

“So it’s an honor thing?” Jason asked.

“They seem to think so. But they’ve killed many innocent civilians in the course of issuing their
challenges
. In recent times they’ve hired themselves out as mercenaries. They’re utterly ruthless. Believe me when I tell you that even two of these things on your planet are going to cause serious carnage.” Jason swallowed hard at that. Anything that Crusher thought was a danger was probably more akin to a natural disaster.

“Are they beatable?”

“Oh, yeah. They just don’t go down easy, but they’re still as mortal as any of us,” Crusher said. That didn’t make Jason feel any better, as he left his friend to try to get a few hours of sleep. They were closing in to within a day of the Solar System and he wanted to be ready for anything.