Free Omega Force 7: Redemption by Joshua Dalzelle Page B

flopped off the sled, a mixture of blood and saliva foaming out of his mouth.
    "No more playing Lucky!" Jason shouted. "He's dying! We have to move!"
    Lucky responded immediately and changed tactics from disabling to annihilating. Both blades whistled through the air, decapitating one guard and biting deep between the neck and shoulder of another. He bodily lifted the latter in an effort to dislodge the blade, the body crashing into the boss who had been trying to sneak along the wall and escape. Jason began pulling the sled quickly towards the fray, stopping long enough to lean down to the now-blubbering losing bidder.
    "What the hell was so important you'd kill all these people to get him?" Jason snarled.
    "He was to be a gift for my father," the alien blubbered. "I was to have him preserved and hung." When it sunk in that he meant to have Crusher stuffed and mounted like a big game animal, Jason reared back and kicked the alien in the throat, the toe of his boot caving in the soft tissue and tearing one of the major blood vessels.
     
    Jason looked up in time to see that Lucky was down to the last three. He reversed his grip on both knives and plunged both blades into the chest of one, using the knives as handles to pick up the hefty guard and fling him out of the way where he lay and gaped like a fish out of water as his lungs filled with blood. The remaining two seemed undecided whether to flee or try and take on the battlesynth together. Their hesitation was their final act in life as Lucky leapt across the gap and killed both with two armored fists.
    "We are clear," he said, turning to Jason.
    "Great," Jason said, pulling the sled along. "Now make me a path through the bodies and don't forget to grab Crusher's blades."
    The rest of the way was clear although the security gate sentries looked startled as a battlesynth holding two enormous knives and soaked in three types of blood walked around the corner and politely asked that they open the gate. As soon as the shielded doors parted Jason heard his com unit beep as it reestablished a connection with the Phoenix .
    "Twingo!" he practically shouted into the device. "We're at an entrance approximately two hundred meters west of the main security gate. Taxi the Phoenix over as close as you can get her and make sure Doc is waiting for us in the cargo bay."
    " We're on our way! " Twingo said.
    It wasn't even a minute later when the ground began to tremble and the Phoenix rolled into view. Jason watched as Twingo skillfully swung the nose over and rotated the ship even as the ramp was dropping so that they would have a minimal distance to expose Crusher to the dangerously cold conditions. As soon as the ramp slammed into the tarmac, Jason and Lucky both moved him as fast as they could, the stronger battlesynth pulling the sled and the human sprinting alongside stabilizing his friend.
    "Move aside!" Doc barked as the sled rolled to a stop in the cargo bay. Jason smacked the controls to raise the ramp and close the pressure doors while Lucky gently picked Crusher up and placed him on the bed of the makeshift trauma center they'd rigged up in the cargo bay. The thought was that should they have to blast their way out of Duat it would be better if Crusher could be immediately stabilized and treated instead of having to be carried up to the main deck and all the way to the infirmary.
    "Twingo, we're in!" Jason said over the intercom. "Get us the hell out of here as fast as she'll fly." Even before he'd released the intercom button the deck began to vibrate as the engines built power and he felt the ship lift herself off the ground.
    "How's he going to be?" Jason asked, approaching Doc and Lucky, almost afraid to look down on the bed.
    "I don't know how, but he's still alive," Doc said. "The level of trauma is severe; some of it occurred well before today. He has a long way to go, but I'm tentatively saying that if he makes it through the next twenty-five hours he has a much better