Omega Force: Savage Homecoming Read online

  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.”

  “I’m still not thrilled about leaving it down there, but there’s little we can do at this point,” Jason said. “Keep running scans and see what you can find out. Could we track the exit vectors the other ships used?”

  “No, that’s the strange thing,” the engineer explained. “I can detect a fading slip-drive signature that matched up with the smaller ship Deetz probably flew out on, but I can’t find a trace of the other two ships. It’s like they just disappeared.”

  “Unlikely. Keep looking.”

  “Jason,” Taryn said timidly from her seat, still in the restraints. “What about us?”

  “Oh, damnit,” Jason said, abashed. “Let’s take care of this language barrier while we appear to have some down time.” He walked over and released their seat restraints and motioned for them to follow him. “Doc,” he said as he walked by. Doc also stood and walked off the bridge.

  “OK, this is going to be painless. I promise,” Jason said with a smile once they were all in the infirmary. “Doc here is going to fit a device into one of your ears– whichever you would prefer–and code it so that you’ll be able to understand the rest of the crew. They can already understand you since their implants can decipher English from their time with me.”

  [Just try to relax, this won’t feel like anything,] Doc said in his melodic dialect and tenor voice. Jason had gotten so used to understanding what he was saying he’d forgotten how soothing his native language was. Doc pulled three devices that looked like miniature hearing aids from a cabinet. He walked up to Ed first and pointed to one of his ears, then the other, questioningly.

  “Oh,” Ed said as he understood. “This one.” He indicated his left ear and sat still, cringing slightly as Doc gently inserted the device and let it fit itself to the human’s ear. He repeated the process with the two women and then stood back, punching some commands into a tablet computer.

  “Can you understand me?” he asked them.

  “Oh … my … God …” Taryn was staring at him with her mouth hanging open. “That is so strange.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Doc chuckled. “Now for the unpleasant part, unfortunately; I’m going to need to scan each of you and synthesize an inoculation. The human immune system is fairly robust, but there are microbes on this ship that you simply have no defense against.”

  “Alien germs?” Jess said in alarm.

  “Essentially, yes. But don’t worry, this room is sterilized continuously,” Doc assured her. “This will go quickly since I have so much data on human reactions, thanks to the Captain.” At the title ‘Captain’ the Brown family turned to him and stared.

  “I’ll leave you here in Doc’s capable hands for the moment,” Jason told them. “I’m going to go shuck myself out of this suit and then we can sit down and figure out what our next move is.” He ducked out of the infirmary before any of them could protest, and made his way to the armory to get out of his combat gear.

  Twenty minutes later, he returned to the infirmary to see the Brown family in various stages of distress as Doc’s cocktail of antibodies and nanobots churned through their systems. “You’ll feel like crap for a few days,” he said sympathetically. “But it beats the alternative.”

  “I’ll take your word on that,” Taryn said with a weak smile. “I feel like such an ass! You’d even told me about all this and I stood there screaming like a ten-year-old when I first got sucked up in that … thing.”

  “You should have seen Jason when he first met Crusher,” Doc laughed as he checked their readouts. �
��It was all he could do to not wet himself, and that was even with Crusher chained up inside a box.”

  “Oh yeah … and where were you?” Jason shot back. “As I recall, you and Twingo wouldn’t go within ten feet of him.”

  “This is all so much to take in,” Ed admitted as he leaned against the examination table. “I can’t believe this is the life you’ve carved out for yourself, Jason. I don’t suppose you’d care to talk about it?”

  “Soon, Ed,” Jason assured him. “I’ll sit down with you all and explain everything.” He had begun to gravitate towards Taryn, but he stopped himself short of reaching out for her. It had been a few years since he had seen her last, and it had been a couple more years before that time. He wasn’t sure what, if anything, she felt for him past friendship, if even that anymore. “Are they ready?” he asked Doc.

  “Looks like it,” Doc said with a nod. “They adapted quite rapidly thanks to all the trial and error with you.”

  “Don’t remind me. If you guys will follow me we’ll get you something to eat and drink, and you can meet the others now that you can understand them.”

  “You have beer?” Ed asked hopefully.

  “We do indeed,” Jason assured him before activating the intercom. “If the situation is still green we’re having a family meeting in the galley.” He walked out of the infirmary and into the common area in time to see the crew congregating around one of the high top tables in the galley area. He led the Browns out and stood near the head of the table.

  “Gentlemen–and you too, Twingo–this is the Brown family. They’re personal friends of mine; this is Taryn, her father Ed, and her mother Jess,” he said, introducing them each in turn. Then he gestured to the crew, “This is my crew. The blue one is Twingo, the ship’s engineer; the lighter blue one is Doc, ship’s medic; the four-armed one is Kage, our resident hacker—”

  “—slicer—”

  “Whatever. The big guy with the waving dreadlocks and the huge biceps is Crusher, and the metallic one is Lucky. They’re our ground assault team,” Jason rounded out the introductions. The crew all waved back politely as their name was called. Taryn had been turning a brighter shade of red as they were introduced.

  “I’m so embarrassed!” she said as she put her hands to her face. “I’m so sorry I reacted as badly as I did.”

  “Think nothing of it, my dear,” Twingo said, hopping out of his seat to approach her. He took her hands in his and led her around to an open seat. “Grab a seat, all of you. What would you like to eat?” At that the family turned again to Jason.

  “I’ll grab it,” he said, making his way to the food processor. Remembering how he had felt after he had been inoculated, he picked a light fare for his guests and set the trays before each of them. Once everyone had grabbed their own food, the conversation tapered off as they ate. Sitting next to Taryn, Jason couldn’t help but reflect on the bizarre twist his life had taken the last few days.

  Chapter 4

  “The Diligent is slipping into orbit over Saturn,” Kage reported. “They said to meet them whenever we complete our intel gathering here.” Jason snorted at that.

  “What intel?” he asked rhetorically as he watched the International Space Station go streaking by below them at over seventeen thousand miles per hour. The Phoenix was using her grav drive to park in a low, stationary orbit over the eastern coast of the United States, something the primitive station couldn’t do. “Tell them we’ll be there shortly.”

  They had stayed in orbit for the last two days (ship’s time) and tried to glean as much as they could from the wreckage below. Despite their best efforts, they were no closer to ascertaining who it was that had attacked Earth than they were when they first saw the news broadcasts. The fact that Deetz appeared to be leading them only heightened the mystery.

  While monitoring the media coming from the surface, Jason had begun to fear the environment was too hostile for the Browns to go back home. He convinced them to stay on board, and he planned to deposit them on the Diligent as Omega Force hunted down Deetz and these unknown ships. They had reluctantly agreed, and Jason left it alone at that. What he didn’t tell them was that they might never be able to return to Earth. The public in general was a panicky, fickle beast that would care nothing for the nuances of the situation. All they knew was that Taryn was somehow tied to the alien attack, and that was as far as their reasoning would go.

  The damage on the surface had been shockingly light. Deetz had blasted a few tracts of land with particle beam fire, and there had been some casualties, but there were fewer deaths than one would expect from a severe hurricane. Only one oddity stood out from the whole incident, and it was one they almost missed: all of Earth’s nuclear reactors had been rendered inert. Powerplants, ships, weapons … all shut down somehow. The only reason they caught it was because of the massive brownouts in some regions due to reactors being shut down. Besides being impressed at how Deetz had accomplished this from orbit, Jason was certain this was an important clue, he just didn’t know why.

  “All hands, prepare the Phoenix to break orbit,” Jason said over the intercom as he started to change the gunship’s configuration from silent reconnaissance to intra-system flight. He thought for a moment before keying the intercom again, and doing his best airline pilot impression, said, “If all new passengers would like to come to the flight deck, we will begin our tour of the inner planets on our way to the crown jewel of the Solar System: Saturn.”

  Taryn, who was adapting to the situation surprisingly well, came bounding up on the bridge a moment later. She was dressed in the standard gray utilitarian uniform they all wore while shipboard. She fills it out a lot better than Twingo. Or Crusher. Her parents were close behind, along with the rest of the crew. Everyone took their seats except for Taryn, who leaned against the pilot’s seat and put her arm over the headrest, sending Jason’s pulse up. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “I want to watch you fly the ship,” she said with an impish grin, tugging on his right ear as she leaned in closer. He looked up and saw his crew watching him with a disturbing degree of interest. Twingo elbowed Doc and even Crusher was nodding his approval. Sighing and deliberately ignoring them for the time being, he turned the Phoenix to point away from Earth.

  “Are we clear?” he asked Kage.

  “Hang on, Captain,” the Veran answered. “There’s an unbelievable amount of debris in orbit I’m trying to track. So your species does realize that your little dumping ground is going to be problematic if you ever decide to explore beyond your planet, right?”

  “Eh … we’re a little shortsighted at times,” Jason admitted. “Just tell me when we can push out of here; I’m sure Crisstof is getting impatient.” While running in a low-observability mode they couldn’t use the navigational or combat shields, so the fast-moving debris in their low orbit could potentially damage the ship.

  “There’s a carcass of a chemical booster engine coming by in two seconds that’s got a bunch of small stuff trailing after it, and then you’re clear.”

  Once the debris cleared, Jason throttled up and the Phoenix smoothly climbed up out of Earth’s gravity well. He had already programmed in his nav points so he hammered down for a quick flyby of Mars before heading to Saturn to rendezvous with the Diligent. The nostalgia of the situation wasn’t lost on him; it had been his first time in the gunship, with Deetz in command, that he first saw the other planets in his own star system.

  He indulged his passengers with not only a flyby of Mars, but a quick burn through the thin atmosphere and a nerve-tingling flight at low level up Olympus Mons before pushing back out into space and towards the outer planets. Ed and Jess gritted their teeth and endured the flight, but Taryn was simply wide-eyed and thrilled at the close encounter.

  “That was incredible!” she cried in delight.

  “Wait until you see what’s next,” Jason told her with a grin. He felt a certain amount of guilt at enjoying himself so much after the Earth had just been
attacked and the implications of that, but being around humans again, around her again, was intoxicating.

  “Navigational shields up,” Kage reported. “Saturn is putting off some nasty radiation. Orbital insertion in five minutes, we’ll catch the Diligent in … eight minutes.”

  As they approached the gas giant, a few people on the bridge sucked in their breath at the sight, not all of them human. Saturn was stunning as her roiling atmosphere became visible to the naked eye.

  “Phoenix, we have you on sensors. Fly the approach as directed and prepare to board the hangar deck via platform alpha. Welcome back, Omega Force,” the call from the Diligent’s com officer came over the intercom as Jason swung around and chased the much larger frigate, dipping low along the rings as he did.

  “Who’s Omega Force?” Taryn asked.

  “We are,” Crusher answered with pride from where he stood near the canopy.

  “I’ll explain later,” Jason said quietly.

  “You keep saying that,” she whispered back. “It seems you have a lot of explaining to do.”

  The Phoenix touched down gently on the Diligent’s aft landing pad and was lowered into the hangar bay. After parking the ship and shutting down the primary flight systems, Jason led his crew and passengers out through the cargo bay and down the main ramp onto the frigate’s hangar deck.

  “Captain Burke,” Kellea Colleren started as soon as he stepped off the ramp. “I’m sorry to hear about the attack on your—Oh! And who is this?” Captain Colleren was clearly not referring to Ed or Jess; she was looking right at Taryn, who had walked up to stand close enough to him to be touching.

  “Uh … Kellea, I mean … Captain Colleren,” Jason stammered. “This is my … this is Taryn. She’s from Earth.”

  “I figured that part out. Thank you, Captain,” Kellea said with a little frost in her voice before she turned to face the rest of the crew. “Welcome back everyone. You know your way around, so let’s just say we’ll meet up in the port-side conference room in two hours.” With that she turned and marched away from the group.