Omega Rising (20 page)

The two aliens on the bridge were the same species as Bondrass, and looked utterly shocked by their sudden appearance. Twingo shot the captain, who had been lounging in the command chair, as Jason took out the second crewman a split second later when he turned from a computer terminal along the back wall.

              “Clear,” Jason said out of habit. “Go back and get the others.” As the engineer rushed back off the bridge Jason scanned all the instruments to ensure they hadn’t tripped an alarm with the weapons fire. From what he could tell, and what his implants were telling him, they were still operating under the radar. He honestly couldn’t believe how lucky they’d been so far.

It was a couple minutes later when he heard the rest of his team running onto the bridge. Kage went directly to the command console and began inputting commands at blinding speed with all four of his nimble hands. The pilot also wasted no time sitting in at the helm and beginning his pre-flight sequences. “We’re in luck,” he said. "They were prepped for a fast launch, we’re only a couple seconds from being flight capable.”

              “Same here,” Kage said. “By the time you get off the ship I’ll be able release the docking clamps from here. When you’re ready just pull the guard’s key card from the slot and the blast doors will close. I can read that from here and will take that as a signal to launch.”

              "Are you two going to be able to handle this ship?" Jason asked, concerned about their plan with the loss of one of their pilots.

              "No problem," Kage said confidently. "I can handle the other half of flight ops, but it might be helpful if Twingo stayed behind to monitor the main systems."

              “Very good. Twingo, you’re staying here. Doc, you’re with me. Good luck, everyone. I’ll see you guys at the rally point as soon as we can get there. We’ll give you as much of a distraction as we can,” Jason said brusquely before turning and walking off the bridge with Doc in tow. It took another five minutes to transit back to the entry of the storage ship and, mercifully, things were just as they had left them. Jason and Doc wasted no time getting the hover carts stowed in the ship, not bothering to secure the now-empty stasis pods. They then went about the gruesome job of arranging the bodies of the guards and Bondrass’ men into what Jason hoped look like the aftermath of a savage firefight. He placed his own expended hold-out weapon in the hand of one the security thugs he recognized from the flight to The Vault from Pinnacle Station and put Twingo’s near the hand of another. He then returned the headless guard’s weapon to its rightful owner before looking over at Doc. “Seem believable?”

              “Seems like it,” Doc said, looking around.

              “Get ready to run then,” Jason said as he reached up and yanked the key card out of the slot. The doors immediately began to close, much quicker than they had opened. Jason tossed the card through the opening before the doors closed completely and began to jog up the corridor towards the security archway. The pair hadn’t made it very far when red strobes started flashing and an alarm started blaring. They felt a heavy jolt through the floor and felt the air pressure change slightly; the cargo ship had just blasted away from The Vault. Jason looked over to Doc in alarm and broke into a full sprint.

They broke out of the corridor and ran directly into pure chaos. The alarms had triggered a stampede out of the packed promenade as aliens tried to trample each other through the main security entrance to get to the secured hanger bay. They were not aware of what the alarms were for, but they were also not wanting to wait around to find out. Security personnel at the main entrance opened fire on the crowd, but were quickly overwhelmed. The hanger entrance was also overran as they tried to stem the tide, something Jason intended to take full advantage of. He and Doc ran full bore into the throng of aliens trying to escape and surged through the archway and into the open bay.

The mass of aliens that flooded into the
secure hanger now had to contend with the security systems of the ships that were parked there as well. Powerful bolts of energy lanced out from the ships’ guns causing massive casualties where they hit, seemingly indiscriminate. The air tingled with static electricity and the smell of ozone overpowered the odor of the alien throng. Just when he thought they were free and clear he heard someone shout, “YOU! STOP!” Jason turned in time to see the guard Doc had talked to earlier taking aim at them with an ugly looking weapon. He turned and bore down on the DL7 as fast as his legs would carry him. Doc, running directly in front of him, was keeping pace. Although waiting for it, he was still somewhat unprepared when it felt like someone hit him in the back with a sledgehammer, sending him sailing though the air and landing face down on the hanger deck.

Jason’s vision was blurred and the pain in his jaw was excruciating where he had impacted the hanger floor. He tried to clear his head but couldn’t focus or get his legs up under him as he began to get trampled by the panicked mob. He saw Doc run up the ramp of the gunship and realized he wasn’t going to make it off the asteroid along with everyone else. He rolled over to face the guard, prepared to give an accounting of himself, but as he sat up he saw the guard, and the two behind him, dropped in their tracks by three well placed plasma bolts. He was abruptly lifted off the floor like a sack of flour and vaguely aware that he was being carried across the floor towards his ship at a fast run. From the way he seemed to be floating over the rest of the crowd he knew it had to be Crusher; he had taken out the guards and now he was carrying him back to the ship.

By the time Crusher had reached the cargo bay Jason's head had started to clear enough that he could somewhat function. When he was put back on the ground he hit the controls to seal up the cargo bay and raise the ramp before shakily heading for the bridge as quick as he could manage. He could hear Crusher's heavy footfalls right behind him as he raced through the ship. "Pilot! Turn the ship around, put our nose to the blast doors," Jason yelled as he jumped into his customary copilot seat. The pilot grunted and twisted the controls, rotating the ship around on its landing gear so they were facing the heavy, and still closed, hanger doors. This was the last wrinkle in the plan Jason simply hadn't been able to plan for; he had no idea how they were going to get the gunship out of The Vault. He supposed they all could have left in the cargo ship, but the thought of leaving the DL7 behind was unconscionable to him.

"Looks like some people are getting impatient," the pilot said, pointing to a ship starting to lift off the floor on thrusters. The downwash from the ship sent aliens near that parking spot flying across the deck. Jason turned to say something to the pilot and noticed that his face was busted up pretty bad and he was leaning in the seat oddly. Before he could ask him what the hell happened, Crusher spoke up:

              "Commander, perhaps it would be prudent to arm the ship's weaponry. If we get an opportunity to run we should be ready for anything," the enormous alien rumbled quietly. Jason answered him without taking his eyes off the pilot's injuries.

              "Not a bad idea." He had a pretty good idea of what, or who, had happened to the pilot, and he was glad he had listened to his instincts. From his station he went about bringing the weapons online. He could feel the reactor start to automatically build power as the demand increased. While he was monitoring the offensive systems the pilot spoke up again.

              "Oh, no!"

              Jason snapped his head up again and watched the ship that had tried to launch earlier hover unsteadily past them, moving towards the exit. It swung about to face the hanger doors and let loose with two heavy particle beams. Since the station designers had never thought anyone would be trying to blast their way
out
of the hanger, the energy shields were only on the outside of the doors. Both beams impacted the metal with dramatic effect and began tracing a path around the perimeter of the portal, but the amount of slag and debris that was being blown back into the hanger threatened to damage the ship before it could cut its way through. Jason was thankful another small freighter was between the gunship and the doors as he could hear the smaller pieces pinging off their hull.

After five
more seconds of continuous fire, which felt like five hours, the doors let go with a tortured shriek of distressed metal and blew out against the landing apron on the other side. The explosion from inside took out the energy shields, but the electrostatic barrier was miraculously still functioning and kept the atmosphere in. The aliens that weren’t killed already during the escape attempt were now sprinting towards either other ships, begging to be let aboard, or back through the archway out of the hanger. "Get us out of here!" Jason snapped. He felt the ship bounce and rock, but they weren't moving.

              "We're stuck! They've activated mag-locks on the deck and an interdiction field. I can't form a gravity well to lift off!" The pilot looked to be near panic. Truthfully, Jason wasn't far behind. Something Deetz had said a while ago kept bouncing around in his head though, something about the gravity drive.

              "Bring the mains online! Thrust us off this pad and fire the repulsors to get us off of this rock!" Jason was relying heavily on his implants to help him if he needed to actually fire the ship's weapons, thankfully his connection to the ship's computer had been reestablished. He began to feel a low-frequency rumble that was steadily building in pitch and volume until he felt the ship start to shake and hunker down onto its nose landing gear.

              "Main engines at fifteen percent power, we're starting to move," the pilot said, much more calmly. The ship bucked and strained against the magnetic locks trying to hold the landing gear in place. Ever so slowly, the DL7 began to creep forward, its main engines howling within the confines of the hanger and violently buffeting the other ships nearby. The mag-locks finally lost their grip with a last little jerk and the ship rolled freely, and quite quickly, onto the main taxiway. The pilot yanked the power back to idle and was barely able to steer them to starboard to point them out towards space. The ship smoothly lifted off the deck as the ventral repulsors fired and the main engines nudged them through the shield and into the tunnel that led towards freedom. The pilot cycled the landing gear up and focused on flying them out.

Wisely, he resisted the urge to throttle up too much and risk bouncing down the tunnel walls. As it was, they would still have a nasty surprise waiting for them when they emerged; at the last instant before the ship would break into open space a missile strike hit the mouth of the tunnel and kicked up some heavy debris from around the edge, most of this struck the gunship hard on the nose and the starboard side leading edge causing the ship to yaw sharply towards the tunnel wall. The ship bucked and a slew of alarms began scrolling down Jason's displays.
Shit.
"Shields!" Crusher shouted. Jason hunted around for, and couldn't find, the controls for the anti-collision or the combat shields. He gave up quickly.

              "Computer, engage all external shielding," he said aloud. He got a confirmation through his implants that the shields had been engaged, but there were gaps in the coverage due to the damage to the starboard emitters from the debris impacts. "Be aware we have limited coverage on our starboard side, that slip-space emitter is only covered by the anti-collision shield right now."

              "Got it," the pilot said as he commanded the engines to full power. The instant the ship emerged from the access tunnel they were set upon by four small attack craft, all firing their plasma cannons. They weren't a huge threat, but with four of them engaging at once they had a better chance of landing a shot on the gunship's damaged side. Jason scanned the area with the sensors and could find no trace of the cargo ship, he hoped that was a good sign.

              "Computer," Jason called out again, giving up completely on trying to decipher the manual controls, "activate point defense systems, engage all targets currently firing on us."

              "Acknowledged." The words had no sooner been uttered over the bridge PA when the big gunship opened up with its formidable arsenal. Plasma bolts shot out from turrets that had deployed all around the ship at Jason's command. Two of the small attack craft were destroyed instantly and a third was completely vaporized as it made the fatal mistake of crossing in front of the fleeing DL7; the main guns on the leading edges of the wings spat two brilliant red streaks into space and turned it into a cloud of ionized particles. They were quickly outrunning the last attacker, it wouldn’t be able to get turned around and back into range before they made their first jump.

              "Engaging slip-drive now," the pilot said smugly a moment before the ship winked out of existence in the space outside The Vault. Once they were safely in slip-space Crusher walked calmly over to the pilot, grabbed a handful of his coveralls, and picked him up out of the chair with one hand, holding him out at arms length. The pilot struggled mightily until Crusher flung him across the bridge with an overhand throw that would have carried the smaller being a good twenty meters had he not impacted the canopy first. Jason stood and stared in shock at the crumpled pilot and the bloody smudge on the canopy.

              "Care to explain?" Jason asked, hoping this wasn't a precursor to Crusher killing them all with his bare hands and absconding with the ship.

              "That vermin had tried to steal the ship as soon as you were out sight," Crusher said calmly. "He first tried to enlist those of us you left behind and when that failed he tried to seal himself on the bridge. I stopped him and told him I would deal with him after our escape, and so I did. Your instincts were very good, Commander." Crusher’s quiet, dignified demeanor after such an act of pure violence unnerved Jason.