Free Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon by Joshua Dalzelle Page B

“That is not a bad trait when men’s lives depend on the decisions you make.”
    “How long until we make orbit?” Crusher demanded loudly as he clomped onto the bridge. Morakar and Mazer were right behind him, both moving slowly and the latter of the two limping noticeably.
    “Training?” Jason asked.
    “In a way,” Crusher confirmed. “These two wouldn’t spar with me for some reason. They were, however, wildly curious about the hand-to-hand capability of battlesynths.”
    “And?” Connimon asked eagerly.
    “Let’s just say your warriors learned a valuable lesson in humility and overconfidence,” Crusher laughed. “Lucky was mostly toying with them so there aren’t any serious injuries.”
    “They both fought the mechanical soldier?” Connimon pressed, looking at her two companions with a frown of disapproval.
    “Yes,” Crusher replied. “And at the same time.”
    “It was not possible how fast it moved, Caretaker,” Mazer said softly. “It was astonishing. The speed, the strength … it threw me across the entire width of the cargo hold while simultaneously engaging Morakar.” Jason frowned at that.
    “Lucky switched to combat mode inside the ship?” he asked Crusher.
    “Nope,” the warrior said with a huge grin. “He was operating at standard speed and strength. Like I said, he was just playing around. By the way, Mazer, it is he. While it may not make sense to you, Lucky identifies gender specifically to male. I wouldn’t make the mistake of insulting him by calling him it.”
    “No, Lord Felex,” Mazer agreed quickly. Jason had noticed that over the course of the flight to Restaria, Crusher had become more and more comfortable with his old name and title. He had even begun to command the other two warriors around. While this may have just been his friend sliding into old and comfortable habits, Jason was getting a sinking feeling in his stomach about what this mission could mean for the future of Omega Force.
    “It’s almost party time, Captain,” Kage reported. “We just cleared the last listening post and we have a clear sky all the way into Restaria. I’ll give you vectors on the navigational hazards we have in orbit and then you can fly your own approach.”
    “Sounds good,” Jason said, settling into the pilot’s seat and syncing his navigation display with Kage’s. “Everybody, if you would please find an unoccupied seat and strap in we’ll begin what is hopefully a boring landfall on Restaria. Crusher, did you give Kage the planetary coordinates for our primary and secondary landing sites?”
    “He should already have them,” Crusher confirmed. He then motioned to the other two warriors who were lounging in the seats next to him. “I’d actually strap in as he says. Our landings are sometimes … vigorous.” Jason ignored the pointed insult and began configuring the Phoenix for atmospheric entry.
    Restaria was a lush, green world that shared an overlapping orbit with Galvetor. While the two planets were always on opposite sides of Galvetor Prime, the system’s star, they did have almost identical climates. This wasn’t unheard of, but it was unusual. What made the pair truly unique, however, was that life had developed simultaneously and nearly parallel on the two worlds. So while the plant and animal species weren’t necessarily the same, the building blocks they were made from were. This meant geltens could easily inhabit one planet or the other. It was an unheard of luxury for developing species to have a pair of inhabitable worlds, but it was one the geltens had never fully taken advantage of.
    There was an advantage to the fact that Restaria had only recently been colonized. Nobody had polluted the upper orbits with junk and there weren’t any crowded entry lanes. Jason swung the Phoenix smoothly onto a vector that would bring them in right over the equator and allow him to swing north to his primary landing site from there, using the mountain ranges as