Omega Force: Savage Homecoming (4 page)

“Where are you? Are you safe?”

“Look!” Kage yelled, pointing out the canopy as a small craft shot out of the wreckage of the downed ship; this one was quite modern and pushing hard for orbit. It was already out of range and Jason had no doubt who was on it. He grabbed the controls to pursue when he was yanked up short.

“Jason,
some of the people in town have figured out we’re here! A neighbor just called and said a group of armed men are coming!”

“Where are you?”
he asked again.

“Your old cabin!
They can’t be far away by now.”
She choked out a sob, and he could hear her parents in the background. He was unconsciously pushing and pulling slightly on the stick, causing the nose to dip and rise while the engines whined and surged.

“Captain
, that ship is nearly out of range,” Doc said softly. “We’d be able to catch it, but just.” Jason growled in frustration as he yanked the stick over and kicked the left pedal, causing the nose to snap over sharply to the west. He crammed the throttle down and sent them streaking out of the area towards the Rocky Mountains.

“Give me a plot to that signal,” he said in a deceptively calm voice. “I’ve never tried to navigate to my house from the air.” Kage complied quickly even as he began to look more and more agitated. “What?” Jason snapped.

“Uh, Captain,” Twingo said, answering for them all, “this is a populated area.”

“Shit,” Jason swore again as he brought the nose up and put them into a climb. He had been skimming the terrain while pushing into high-supersonic speeds.
God knows how much damage I just did back there.
He set the ship onto a parabolic arc that would allow them to gain some speed and put them at his old cabin in just a few minutes.

“There’s nowhere to land by the cabin itself,” Jason explained to his team. “Doc, you’ll take the controls when I put us in a hover above the main street. Lucky and I will drop down through the belly hatch and go collect the three people in the cabin. I want you to take the ship and go distract the group of people coming up the road, make all the noise you want, scare the shit out of them
… but do NOT fire on them.”

“I’m not a fool, Captain,” Doc said indignantly.

“Captain—” Crusher began.

“I need you up here in the cargo bay,” he explained to the big warrior. “Grab one of your big guns and stand
by.”

“Very well,” C
rusher said, clearly not happy with the assignment.

Jason pulled the ship
down and around into a low hover just above the main road that was the last bit of pavement before the dirt/gravel lane that led up to his old cabin. He hopped out of the seat, motioning for Lucky to follow him as he grabbed his trusty railgun out of the rack near the entrance to the bridge. He was already on the steps leading to the main deck by the time Doc had climbed into the pilot’s seat.

The pair quickly traversed the ship and stopped as they entered the cargo bay. “Go ahead and open us up and activate the transit beam,” Jason called over the intercom before activating the helmet to his armor. The segmented pieces all aligned themselves to form the helm
, while active nanobots sealed the edges into one continuous piece.

A
circular section of floor in the cargo bay dropped away and quickly irised open to let in the cool afternoon air. Seconds later, a bluish haze covered the opening and extended in a column all the way to the ground. Jason stepped out over the opening and was gently deposited on the street, where he stepped from the haze and waited for Lucky. He absolutely hated the transit beam, but it was a quick way in and out of the ship during ground ops when landing wasn’t an option. If he wasn’t wearing armor it reminded him of thousands of fingers tickling him as they moved him up or down. For some reason it always made him feel like he was being digested.

As soon as Lucky emerged from the beam
, the ship closed back up and accelerated down the road. The mob was probably less than a few miles away, so Jason turned and led the way quickly up the lane. His cabin was much as he remembered it, save for the shotgun barrel pointed at him through the upstairs window. “That’s close enough … whatever you are!”

Jason recognized the voice as Taryn’s father, Ed
. The fact that he was still there and attempting to protect his family sent a wave of relief washing over him.

“Ed! It’s me, Jason! I’m going to take my helmet off
… don’t shoot,” he called out.

“Captain
, I do not think it is wise—” Jason waved Lucky silent as he commanded his helmet to retract. No sooner had the helmet segmented itself and pulled away than a blond woman shot out of the house and came towards him at a full sprint. She flung herself onto him and began crying against his neck.

“Jason
, I’m so scared!” Taryn sobbed. “What is happening?”

“It’s a long story,” Jason said
softly, resisting the urge to stroke her hair while he was still wearing a powered gauntlet. As he put her down gently, both Ed and her mother, Jess, walked out of the cabin and up to him. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get you out of here for a while. Earth won’t be safe for you right now, if ever.”

“You aren’t with
… them? Are you?” Jess looked like she was holding up a bit better than her daughter, but the fear was evident in her voice.

“No,” Jason assured her, “I’m with someone else. But thanks to them the people
around here won’t leave you be.” As if to accentuate his point a thunderous roar shook the mountain.

“Those were the main engines of the
Phoenix
engaging,” Lucky said to Jason in perfect English for the benefit of the other humans. “Doc is getting desperate to ward off the potential attackers.” Taryn looked at Lucky in horror as he spoke.

“Guys
, this is Lucky, he’s a friend of mine,” Jason said. “I’ll explain all this later, but we need to get down to the street so we can be picked up and on our way.”

“
Captain, I couldn’t turn them. I think they figured out I wouldn’t fire on them and they kept pushing. They’re at the turn off to your home now
,” Doc said over the com. “
We’re going to create an opening forty meters in front of the cabin and deploy the transit beam. Stand by.
”

“We all need to get into the house for a moment,” Jason said, reaching out to urge them up the steps even as the ground began to shake as the
Phoenix
settled in over them, obscured by the trees. They had just gotten inside the door when three brilliant flashes of plasma fire from one of the gunship’s belly turrets vaporized three trees with the sound of a thunderclap. Shortly after, the haze of the transit beam descended into the still-smoking crater. “Let’s go. Quickly,” Jason urged the now catatonic family towards the beam.

Jason turned in time to see a few locals armed with hunting rifles and shotguns coming up the lane at a run. Wasting no time
, he grabbed Taryn and set her forcefully into the transit beam, not waiting for her to get all the way into the ship before repeating the process with her parents. He activated his helmet in time for the first shots to ring out and kick up a spray by his feet.

“Hey!
YOU!”

“All of you listen,” Jason’s amplified voice boomed out of the armor’s speakers. “Take your
well-intentioned but misguided asses and go back down the hill.”

His words seemed to only
intensify their aggression, and they were soon pointing their guns at him and Lucky. He rolled his eyes in his helmet and turned to tell Lucky to transit up when a shot rang out; he saw the flash of sparks come from the battlesynth’s face. Lucky simply turned and looked at the culprit and wagged his finger in a ‘no-no’ gesture before stepping into the beam. The man who fired the shot looked beyond terrified, so Jason let him be and took his turn riding up the beam. He ascended straight into utter chaos.

The first thing he noticed
was the blood-curdling screams coming from Taryn as Crusher towered over her, attempting to make placating gestures and waving his clawed hands in her face.

[
Please! Calm yourself, I’m just trying to help you out of the cargo bay to safety.
] Crusher’s barking, guttural language, along with his appearance, was terrifying her beyond measure. “Captain,” he appealed to Jason, “what is wrong with her?”

“Crusher
, you’re scaring the shit out of her!” Jason yelled as his helmet retracted. “She can’t understand you.”

Upon
hearing his voice, Taryn quit screaming and moved over towards him, never taking her eyes off Crusher. Ed and Jess were huddled on the floor near the now-closing floor hatch, eyes bulging from their heads. Things had just begun to calm slightly when someone else decided to ‘help.’

[
Ah! So this is your lady friend, Captain! Pleased to meet you, miss!
] Kage’s undulating language floated down from the mezzanine of the cargo bay exit. Taryn looked up to see the Veran smiling his best at her … and waving happily with all four of his hands. She took in a deep breath, held it a second, and let loose with another strident scream, this time in Jason’s ear.

“Everybody!
Shut up!” Jason shouted. He had meant his crew, but it had the desired effect on everybody in the hold. “Kage, get back to your post … what the hell are you doing back here right now anyway? Crusher, stop smiling … or at least stop showing your teeth. Lucky, since you speak English, would you please escort the Brown family up to the bridge and strap them in?”

“How can you understand them?” Taryn asked, calming down to just a slight tremble.

“Long story,” Jason deflected her. “But right now we have to move.”

He led the way up through the ship, trying to keep the gawking at a minimum, and up to the bridge. As they walked
in, Twingo caught sight of Taryn; his ears perked up and he broke out into a huge smile.

“Shut up,” Jason pointed at him, cutting him off from possibly triggering another screaming fit. Twingo scrunched up his face and glared at him, but turned back to his console all the same. He and Lucky helped the
Browns into their seats and showed them how to operate the restraints before Jason relieved Doc in the pilot’s seat.

“Report.”

“Fairly quiet, Captain,” Doc said (there were some widening eyes at yet another alien, but mercifully no screaming). “Your friends down there have fired a total of seventy-six projectiles at the ship. Either they’ve run out of ammunition or gotten bored, but there’s no sign of the other two hostiles or the small ship that escaped.”

“Captain, the computer has flagged some com traffic that is
being transmitted on an RF carrier wave, 121.5 MHz,” Kage reported from his right.

“Huh,” Jason grunted noncommittally. “That’s the Guard Frequency. It’s used for aerial emergencies only. Put it on.”

“—
your intentions. Repeat, unidentified spacecraft, this is the United States Air Force. Please state your intentions
.”

Jason didn’t really think they expected a response. It was probably some procedural bullshit made up back in the fifties that someone
at Air Combat Command had dusted off. He nodded for Kage to open the channel.

“United States Air Force
… this is the gunship-class vessel,
Phoenix
. Our intentions are to leave momentarily. You’ll have no doubt noticed we’ve cleared your skies for you.” He laughed to himself when the channel closed, as he imagined the looks on the faces of the top brass as U.S. dialect English came back over the radio. It was a few minutes before the voice replied.

“Would you be willing to meet with our leadership? We have much to discuss.”

“I’m afraid not. We’re not in a position at this time to offer your leadership any more than we’ve already provided,” Jason answered, rolling his eyes.

“Captain
, we have three fast-moving aircraft inbound to our position,” Doc said.

Jason looked down at his sensor feed and saw the aircraft resolve
as they got closer. F-16’s … most likely from Hill AFB.

“Looks like we
’ve overstayed our welcome. Kage, break off radio contact and employ counter-measures,” Jason said as he nudged the
Phoenix
up out of the trees and throttled up the main drive. Looking at his sensor feed again, he was startled to see just how close the aircraft were and slid the throttle forward smoothly as he pulled the nose up, sending the gunship streaking into the darkening sky and quickly outdistancing his pursuers.

He climbed out of sight
almost instantly and was soon invisible to their radars, so the fighter jets loitered in the area until they were nearly out of fuel and then returned to base. By this time the
Phoenix
was in a stationary orbit over the site of the ship they had attacked in D.C., and were scanning it with their entire sensor suite.

“It looks like your people are crawling all over that ship already, Captain,” Twingo said. “Seems to be little risk of radiation though, it looks like their powerplant wasn’t damaged
too badly and no fissionable material or waste is leaking.”