Free Omega Force: Savage Homecoming by Joshua Dalzelle Page B

onboard. This could end up biting me in the ass later.
    *****
    “Five seconds until we mesh-in,” Kage reported from the left seat. Everyone except Lucky and Crusher were on the bridge. Those two were fully armed up and strapped down in the cargo bay as a contingency.
    “Everybody stay sharp,” Jason said unnecessarily, as he always did before they dropped into a potential hot zone. He saw the weapons and defensive systems were primed to go active as soon as the ship dropped back into real-space.
    3 … 2 … 1 …
    The Phoenix shuddered slightly as the slip fields collapsed and the universe spit her back into real-space. Jason scanned his displays, but the threat board was empty. “Call them out,” he said.
    “Clear,” Kage said.
    “Clear,” Doc repeated.
    “All systems are full op, Captain,” Twingo reported. “We’re running hot and clean.”
    “So there’s nothing here? At all?” Jason asked with a frown. There should have at least been a civilian presence in the system. They had jumped in just inside the debris field that was made up of the leftover material after the formation of the star system; this was called the Kuiper Belt in the Solar System.
    “Nothing on passives, Captain,” Kage confirmed.
    “Go active,” Jason ordered. “Short bursts.” The active tachyon-burst scanners were able to detect objects at a long range, in great detail, and in real-time despite the distances. It also let everyone who used tachyon-based technology know you were in the area.
    “I’ve got some artificial constructs orbiting the first, fourth, and sixth planet s of this system,” Kage said as the computer compiled the returns almost instantaneously. “Nothing with any significant power signature however, certainly not the other two ships we’re after.”
    “Shit,” Jason said softly. Despite Taryn being on board , his first engagement with the ship in Earth’s atmosphere had left him confident he could take out the other two without much trouble. “Which planet is A’arcoon?”
    “First.”
    “Plot me an intrasystem jump; I’m not plodding across this entire system if there’s nothing here,” Jason said. A moment later, the plot data scrolled across his display and let him know he was ready to engage the slip-drive. The trip took less than five minutes with a low-power jump.
    They had meshed in on the dark side of the planet, and Jason got a sinking feeling as soon as he saw it: completely dark. No industrialized planet looked this dark from space. The sensors began resolving the objects in orbit around the planet and he could see that they were powerless hulks, derelicts that were in a stable enough orbit to not simply fall back to the planet.
    “This doesn’t make any sense,” Twingo said as he looked out the canopy.
    “It does if we’re in the wrong place,” Jason said sourly. “There was never any guarantee that this was the planet of origin of those ships. But … we’re here, so let’s try to be smart about this. I’m moving us into a low geocentric orbit; I want full scans of the entire surface. We’ll get fifteen or twenty passes so have the computer compile the data as it’s collected.”
    It was some hours later when a clearer picture of the surface began to emerge. There were great cities and signs of high-technology on the planet, but it was completely abandoned and falling into ruin. There weren’t even any signs of primitive settlements which would have suggested some sort of cataclysmic event that destroyed modern society and then a subsequent rebuilding period. It was as if every A’arcooni had been teleported off the planet and nature was reclaiming it. Not only that, but it looked like this may have happened hundreds of years ago.
    “Stand down from the tactical alert. Let’s all go sit down and talk about this. We need some answers and I don’t think that’s going to happen while we’re in orbit,” Jason said as he engaged the autopilot and climbed out of his