OMEGA Conscript, Page 7

  Go squatted, then stood. "I think I'll go for a short flight. Be right back."

  In an instant, our young engineer vanished. We watched intently on our holo-displays as Go circled around and through the building. Gone was any discomfort with twisting or turning inside the suit.

  With a wide, ever-accelerating turn, Go gained altitude and then shot off across the plains surrounding the city. "Five hundred kilometers per hour in seconds. I believe I could hit five thousand in under a minute!"

  I voiced my concern. "Why don't you dial it down a bit and come back here. We need to practice moves we think can be done within the portal structure. Once we leave here in the Jess we won't be able to practice anymore. We probably only have one shot at this, so we need to plan it out best we can."

  Go replied as he arced back in our direction: "Tell me if I'm wrong, but won't I need to get through that portal when it's open as well? I can't stay on this side. What would I do and where would I go?"

  Garrett agreed. "Yeah, he might be able to press that button, but we can't just leave him there. He needs to come with us."

  Go slowed to a stop, settling back into the room before deactivating. "If I recall, that portal opens beside the structure and then sweeps backwards, sending through anything that is arranged in a column before it. I would have to press that button and immediately fly out of there to even have a chance at making it through. If I missed, I don't think I could make it to the opening before the portal closed."

  I replied, "Whatever plan we put in place will include you making it through the portal with us."

  I took Go by the forearm and turned him slightly to have a look at the suit. "It looks different now. Much more form-fitting and sleek."

  Go sat in a chair beside us. "At first it was really strange, like I had been dipped in something. But honestly, I don't even realize it's there now. The gel is at body temperature. Oh, and I found another feature. The suit has micro-stimulators built into it so you don't lose muscle mass when in low or zero gravity. I have it turned on now. With time, it will supposedly increase my strength, as it's designed to work almost every muscle in your body."

  I swiped a page of the tutorials. "The term for this suit is BGS, a Bio-Gel Sustenance suit. We should start calling it that. Also, activation and deactivation of the sodium skin is called blinking-out and blinking-in. When activated, you blink out to everyone else. When deactivated, you blink back in."

  Go smiled as he stood. "Well then, I'll be blinking out and putting in more flying time."

  In an instant he was gone. A new fist-sized hole opened in the far wall of the room.

  Garrett laughed. "We might have trouble ever getting him out of that thing. Of course, if I was able to fly through walls, I might be just as excited as he is. You know, if you think about it, that BGS would be just as bad as the portals if made available to the general populace. You could fly into a repository and steal all the credits you wanted, or assassinate someone, or whatever else you wanted to do, because there would be virtually no barriers anymore. You want to make someone disappear? Go occupy their space and blink in. It would be too open for abuse."

  I said, "I believe Humans to be easily corruptible, as are so many other species. You can take someone who would never commit an offense in their lifetime, put them in a situation where the ease of performing some offense is a temptation, and many will act upon it. Most won't, but many will. This is a fault we Gruntas recognize in ourselves, and is one of the reasons we have tried to stay separate from other species where strong influence can corrupt a weak mind. We all have our moments of weakness. With Gruntas, we try to police ourselves."

  Garrett nodded. "You know, I guess I never really thought about it. I don't think I've ever heard of a Grunta riot or even a Grunta murder. You all seem so laid back, which is why I was shocked to see you move and act the way you do in difficult situations. It's almost like you were trained for it."

  I sighed. "Truth is, Harden Salton was right. My people have been preparing for war ever since the New Alliance came into power. Every child and every adult is trained for combat. During the AMP, we had a strong subculture of always being prepared. Sometimes those who practiced it fully were looked down upon as being psychotic. When the AMP fell, those 'psychotics' became our leaders."

  Garrett chuckled. "Well, your people are definitely planners, I'll give you that. I pity the Moddle if your people make it to the battlefront. They have no idea what's coming their way."

  "Which is another reason we need to stop them. The moment the Greens know of our existence, our struggle to survive truly begins. They will see us as an immediate threat and will attack without mercy. Even if the Greens believed we could conquer a dozen star systems before turning on them, they would instead kill us immediately. They will see no value in even a single Grunta being alive."

  Garrett crossed his arms. "All the more reason we need to get back in the Jess and head for the gate."

  I leaned back. "Why is it you are continuing this fight? Joni is back safe with her family. You have no obligation to continue. I think we both know that Harden Salton won't pardon you. I can see you wanting to leave because you are a fugitive in this galaxy, but you could easily disappear if you wanted to."

  Garrett shook his head. "They have my DNA. The first time a med scan was performed on me I would be thrown in jail, tried and executed. Believe me, I've thought about this a lot. The things that keep going through my mind are 'Where would I go?' and 'What would I do?' At least I have purpose with what we are doing here. Besides, I kind of like the adventure. And I don't think I could sit still on some quiet world knowing what's going on. I don't know if that makes me a freak or a fool."

  Go popped into existence, stretched out on a table with his fist and elbow supporting his head. "It doesn't make you a freak or a fool. It makes you a sidekick!"

  Garrett pointed his finger. "First, I'm not a sidekick, and second, how did you get there? The video feed shows you flying around."

  Go spun around throwing his legs over the edge of the table. "Hey, that's what makes me a superhero and you a sidekick. With that helmet, I was able to record a minute’s worth of video and then substitute that for the live feed. If you had been watching, you would have noticed that my image circled the building five times. Oh, look, there's number six!

  "With the comm open between the three of us, I was listening to your conversation. While it's true that Joni is safely back with her family, I think you, Garrett, just like me, recognize that we have to do something about the current war. We have to do something because we can do something. We aren't the types to just sit back and watch. We have to be involved."

  Garrett waved his hand and frowned as he looked off at a far wall. "No, I'm not the hero type. I do want things right, though. And in reality, there is no war in this galaxy. We are exporting that war elsewhere. So I could live out my entire life right here without being involved in a war. You two can go off and try to be heroes. It might be time for me to quit."

  Go smiled. "And yet you are still here with us."

  Garrett shook his head. "That's because I'm a bad liar and a poor actor. I thrive on this crap and you know it. I will say this though, all this waiting around just puts me on edge. I say we take one of the Talisan destroyers, put the Jess in her hold, and head out to the portal. That destroyer will give nimrod here more than enough walls to practice flying through. When we get near the gate we take the Jess out and send the destroyer home."

  Go turned to face me. "Why didn't we think of that before?"

  I replied as I stood. "Besides practice, we needed the bio-gel and the sodium. Go, keep the BGS on and keep it active. We'll meet you back at the Jess. The ship should be stocked, so we should be ready to head out."

  I opened a comm to the Talisan military commander. "Bring a destroyer into orbit above the city. Make sure it's fully stocked. We will only be in need of a crew and not a complement of soldiers. How soon can you be ready for departure?"

/>   The commander replied, "We are fully prepared now. Give me fifteen minutes to shuttle the soldiers to the ground and we will be ready to depart, my Emperor."

  The commander pounded his chest once in a salute as the comm channel closed. After a short ride on our helocycles, I joined Garrett on the Jess as Go hovered invisibly behind us.

  As we lifted off, Go laughed over the comm. "Hey, wait up! You guys took off and I'm still in the same spot!"

  I replied, "I guess we didn't quite think that through. You'll have to set your activation level off or at least to a minimum that will allow the ship's gravity to pull you along. Otherwise you'll be thrown outside every time we make a turn or change speeds."

  Go nodded. "Just stop where you are, I'll come to you."

  We soon landed in the docking bay of the orbiting destroyer. The bottom five levels of the ship were made off limits to the crew. Cameras and internal comm devices were turned off as well. During our Journey out to the portal gate, Go would be free to practice.

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  After a week in space, we had just completed a full day of practice. Go joined us in the cafeteria. I pushed a bowl of soup in his direction.

  Go pushed it back. "Nope, not hungry. It's funny, I have the mental urge to eat but not the physical one. I was looking over my stats on this BGS. My blood pressure and heart rate are both down significantly, and physically I feel great. The tutorials said that I should be able to function with less than half of the sleep I did before. And I discovered something very cool today."

  Garrett glanced up from his borak steak. "What's that?"

  Go smiled. "We are traveling at full speed. If I physically go outside the ship, I will drift along at the same speed. Using the BHD glove I can accelerate, decelerate, and turn. I circled the ship three times, ran out ahead and then dropped behind before drifting back aboard. With the glove, I can go faster than this ship if needed. It gives a constant pull, and the longer it's on, the faster I go."

  I set down my fork. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

  Go replied, "What? No, why? The BGS functions perfectly out there."

  I nodded. "We still don't know half of what that suit is capable of. However, one thing that we do know: at the speed we are traveling, it only takes a tiny piece of space debris to overwhelm the active skin of that suit. This ship has a gravity wave riding in front of it that diverts potentially damaging particles, but that suit doesn't. Even though it seems to function normally out there, it won't if you take a hit. The tutorial says the sodium skin can be overwhelmed by a sufficient force. It can only handle whatever the power cell can support."

  Go shrugged. "Sorry, I hadn't read that yet. I did notice a couple energy spikes of 10 percent or so. I just thought it was something on the suit switching on or off."

  Garrett took in a large bite and began to chew. "I think you should let us know beforehand if you will be trying anything different or unusual. Between the three of us, we can decide whether it's a good idea or not. The fact that you can travel faster than this ship is interesting. That says you could do a ship-to-ship transfer while at speed without having to worry about falling back. Might come in useful someday."

  The rest of the thirty-eight day trip to the portal gate went by quickly. After pulling up short of Contonal, the Jess exited the docking bay and the Talisan destroyer was turned back toward Omega.

  The Contonal colony was again busy with a newly-conscripted species. Three million unruly citizens from the Fargreen Colony in the Delta sector were the newest forced enlistees. A trade dispute with the Motlin corporation and the subsequent rioting that followed had sealed their fate. Fargreen was 98 percent Igari, adding further pressure to the growing rebel movement in the Alpha sector.

  Our ride to the portal gate was quiet. No ships of any kind showed on the deep scans we continuously ran.

  As we closed on the gate's location, Go said, "It should be showing on the display any second now. So, just to make sure, we attempt to shadow the first ship coming this way. When at the gate, I'll drift out and then I'll power my way into the structure. Once inside, I'll set the activation level to a minimum amount that will allow me to walk the halls of the station without being seen. I'll locate the portal launch button and then signal you that I'm ready."

  I nodded. "Right. From there we determine how we get you through the portal before pressing the button. If it takes us a week to figure that out, then so be it. The suit will sustain you for that period of time without issue. All we have to do here on the Jess is not be seen. Once we figure out how to get you out of there and back on here, we open the portal and go through."

  Garrett gestured toward the display. "Shouldn't we be seeing the gate by now?"

  Go looked over the data. "Yeah, it should be up. We passed maximum range about thirty seconds ago."

  I began to nervously scratch my chin. "They moved it."

  Garrett replied, "What? No!"

  I frowned. "This is not good news. If the gate has been moved, it could be anywhere. And chances are good that it may no longer be opening in the other galaxy at the point it was before."

  Go sat back in his chair. "We have to find it!"

  I nodded. "Indeed we do. Our problem now is that a galaxy is a big place. It could be anywhere in Theta, or perhaps it has been moved to Alpha."

  Garrett replied, "I know someone who knows. Harden Salton. I say we pay him a visit. Go can drift in, catch Harden on the john, and threaten to end it all if he doesn't tell us where it is."

  Go grinned. "I could do that!"

  I looked over my shoulder at the two of them. "So he gives you the information. What happens next? Do you think the gate will still be there when we get there? And if he tells you, and you make him disappear with that BGS, what happens if he lied?"

  Garrett sat back in his chair, crossing his arms. "Sounds like we need to grab him and bring him with us then. We'll take him through the portal and space him on the other side."

  Go nodded. "I like that idea even better!"

  I sighed. "If we did that, chances are that whoever the successor is would just shut down the operation. The portal would never be opened again, travel home would be impossible. I think we just need to send Go down to the Salton compound to do some eavesdropping. They have to have discussions about this every day. Garrett, maybe you could tap into the outgoing comm channels from there and pick up the info that way."

  Garrett shook his head. "Not gonna happen, Chief. Those comms will all be heavily encrypted. I think Go listening in on their conversations is our best bet."

  I punched in the coordinates for Alpha Prime. "Let's hope we can get that info quickly. Go, I can give you data recordings from my arm pad from when I was there. They failed to take it away from me before Garrett sprung me, so the data is both intact and somewhat current. You should be able to pilot yourself around that complex without much trouble."

  Garrett said, "And don't be burning holes in the walls. They would find that suspicious."

  Go smiled. "They won't even know I'm there."

  During the ride to Alpha Prime, I stepped into Garrett's cabin for a chat with the Green. "I find it interesting that you have not made an attempt to escape. That isn't what I would have expected from a Grotus."

  Balt Mergus replied, "Our history was very clear about your kind. You would stop at nothing to kill us. You were bent on domination, and you were ruthless in your attempts. To most, you were only legend, as your kind disappeared from our history books more than three thousand years ago. From what I learned, we were glad to be rid of the scourge of the galaxy."

  I was shocked by Balt Mergus' statement. Was that what his people were taught? That we were the aggressors? That we were the brutal thugs who were bent on total domination? His version of history was exactly the opposite of my own.

  I sat in a chair across from him. "I believe you have been given a false accounting of what actually happened. It was you Grotus who were the aggr
essors. You outnumbered the Grunta, and we were the only thing standing in between you and domination of our planet. Our two peoples had been fighting one another for thousands of years and had only just achieved peace when you turned on us in an unprovoked attack."

  The Green scowled. "You destroyed our home world of Horus! You killed every man woman and child on the planet! Yours was the unprovoked attack! We have historical texts, images and video footage going all the way back to that time. Newsreels display the results of the atrocities your people conducted upon ours that started the war. How do you explain that? How can you explain away the evidence that our archives hold?"

  I cleared my throat. "I cannot. We have none other than an oral history of that time, passed down from generation to generation."

  Balt Mergus made an angry face. "Before that one heinous event, our records spoke of a time of peace and free trade between our peoples. I was taught that a political dispute over a newly colonized planet led to the Night of a Billion Sorrows. Only our small colony off-world survived.

  "What you did not plan on was our resilience, our willingness to survive. We returned and found our world empty. Your people were gone and your fleets adrift. What sits before me here is no more than a legend of cowardice and shame. Given the opportunity, I would crush your skull with my fist and grind your splattered brains into the floor with the heel of my boot!"

  I shook my head. "It seems even our histories are at war. The history I learned was that the Grotus were aggressive expansionists, ruthless in their tactics and immoral in their treatment of my people. You brought war upon us. I think we can see those same traits in the Grumar."

  Balt offered a sly smile. "The Grumar chose to worship us as gods. They are a species of weak intellect, easily awed by our strength and courage. I suppose our existence gives them purpose. It gives them reason to do more than just wallow in their own ignorance. Neither you nor I is a god. We are born and we die just like everyone else."