Free Omega Force 3: The Enemy Within by Joshua Dalzelle

the door frame. His head cracked hard against the metal of the frame and he slumped forward with his head rolling to the side. A group of shrill voices then began screeching in multiple languages as some malnourished and barely clothed females began hovering over the unconscious alien.
    “ I suppose now we will never know what he wanted,” Lucky said. Jason chuckled as he keyed open the lift and held the door for his companions to enter. During the ride down in the lurching car, Jason’s nerves began to tingle. This was the most exciting part, but also the most dangerous. Now that Kellea was with them, a wanted fugitive the ConFed was actively hunting, they would be in a world of trouble if they got caught. This was what he lived for.
    They slowly opened the door leading to the lobby of the seedy lodge and looked in. The service bot didn ’t bother to turn around to look at them as that wasn’t in its programming. But other than that, everything looked clear. Lucky led the way out followed by Jason, then Kellea and Crusher bringing up the rear. Kellea pulled her hood a little tighter around her head as they made for the main exit.
    Out on the street things looked the same as they had when they entered, but the feel wasn ’t right. There was a tension in the air that had the three trained fighters on edge. Even Lucky was moving his head around trying to pinpoint his uneasy feeling. Then Jason noticed something that wasn’t the same.
    “ Get back inside!” he hissed as he turned Kellea and pushed her towards the entrance. To their credit the other two members of his crew spun immediately and moved to the doorway as well.
    “ I saw it too,” Crusher said. “Our hyper-vigilant bum is missing.” Jason just nodded as they made their way into the building.
    “ It may be nothing, but it’s probably something,” he said as the brushed by the bot in the middle of its sales pitch and crashed through the security door. They rode the lift back up to the seventh floor and hustled out, bearing right to head towards the room that Jason had rented and in the opposite direction of the chaos they had created earlier. Thankfully the room was on the street side of the building.
    “ Shit!” Jason exclaimed as he looked down onto the street. His instincts proved correct as a team of six armed ConFed troops, plus their missing drifter, converged on the entrance of the Sky View Lodge. “We need to get to Kellea’s room. Now.” They moved at a near run down the hallway towards the opposite end of the building. Apparently Crusher’s random act of violence had cowed the other tenants into keeping their doors shut and their heads down.
    “ What’s going on?” Kellea asked calmly as they entered her room. She hadn’t seen the street view nor was she aware of the too-clean vagrant on the street.
    “ We passed someone on the street that looked like the typical homeless junkie you see in places like this, but he was far too clean, healthy, and alert. He’s also now leading a six-man fire team into the building,” Jason said.
    “ We can’t just hide here,” Crusher said. “The bot will give them our room number, and when we’re not there they’ll go door-to-door until someone tells them we came down here.”
    “ Agreed,” Jason said, looking around the room. “We’re not armed for shit and we’re outmanned. Time for Plan B.”
    “ Run away?” Lucky asked.
    “ Run away,” Jason confirmed. He went to look out the window and saw they were four levels above another roof that looked like it belonged to the service section of the building. An identical tower to the one they were in butted up against that. “The drop to the next roof is only four stories. Can you make that jump?”
    “ Not a chance,” Kellea said with a laugh. “I don’t have all the exotic upgrades that you do. The fall would kill me, or at least render me immobile.”
    “ Lucky?”
    “ I can carry Captain Colleren safely to the level below,” the