Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11), стр. 2

life study to make sure it wasn't already inhabited by an intelligent species and, after some light terraforming and some prefab cities, they opened it up to colonists. It was several hundred years after the first inhabitants arrived that someone discovered much of the outer asteroid belt was made up of enormous chunks of water ice.

Water isn't necessarily that rare in the galaxy, but having that much of it that didn't have to be brought up from a planet's surface was an exploitable resource. Soon, the Nabia System became a major logistics hub, and massive platforms were built in the outer system where the water could be converted into its base components, and the hydrogen used to refuel starships. Before long, replenishing freighter convoys and shuffling cargo was the only thing Nabia was known for. Most of the people on the planet worked to support that in some capacity.

“So, what's the problem now?"

"What do you mean now?!" Crusher demanded.

"You've done nothing but complain for the last two weeks straight," Jason said. "The only break we got was when I accidentally closed off your airways with my little…prank."

"Ah yes, anaphylactic shock is always a classic prank," Crusher snarled. "I'm just glad Lucky didn't stand there gaping at me stupidly like the rest of you."

"For the love of everything that's holy, get to the damn point!"

"My point is that, even though we all jumped into this operation without thinking it through clearly, what are we even doing out here?" Crusher asked. "I'm being serious right now. You're a bit of an idealist and like to jump without looking, but so far, all we've done is turn away good paying missions to run errands for Mok and that slimy ConFed councilmember."

"We're being paid plenty through Mok's organization," Jason reminded him. "We've been through this before…we're taking this job because it's partially our fault the Machine even made it back here in the first place. We should have been more careful. We weren't, and now people are suffering for it."

"I get all that," Crusher said, "but we're a small unit with specialized skills. If you screw up and really piss off the ConFed, they have the resources to find and eliminate us."

"You're all free to leave at any time," Jason said, weary of rehashing the same old argument again. "But I'm staying."

The real problem was that, for the last six months, all they'd been doing was recon work and, for someone like Crusher, that was boring to the point of almost driving him insane. They hadn't even been shot at in that entire time, and the big warrior was getting anxious for some action. Recently his new tactic had been to try and pull Omega Force off the mission and go back to running as a traditional mercenary crew out along the border systems. Since the Machine had taken out the Eshquarian Empire in one savage thrust, the border regions had seen an uptick in action as all the smugglers, arms dealers, and other petty criminals fled the warzone during the regime change.

Jason knew that this snap of boredom was just the calm before the storm and, soon, they'd look back and long for the days of just sitting around observing a target. So far, their fledgling insurrection was still in the process of solidifying allies, locating resources, and prioritizing targets. While Mok tried to navigate the tricky waters of maintaining his criminal empire and shifting resources away to support the coming fight without the ConFed or his own people finding out, Jason had been flying from one end of the quadrant to the other, trying to pinpoint vulnerabilities in the ConFed military. There weren't many.

One thing he did know, however, was that the swift victory over the Eshquarians had been entirely due to the element of surprise. When the capital fell, there was a vacuum in military leadership, and individual unit commanders had to make tough calls. What ended up happening was that, rather than mount an ineffective counterattack after being caught so flat-footed, the mighty Imperial Navy ran away. Whole squadrons disappeared overnight and had yet to reappear anywhere. Jason assumed they had secret bases deep within the Concordian Cluster, or maybe even near their border with the Saabror Protectorate, but they weren't showing their hand quite yet. Since they couldn't confirm the location or status of the Eshquarian units, the ConFed had been forced to leave three full battlegroups in place to hold the capital system and another four to run saturation patrols throughout imperial space.

So far, all that had accomplished was tying up over half of the ConFed's total space power and burning a lot of fuel for nothing. Wherever the Eshquarian ships were hiding, the ConFed had been unable to root them out. This left more than a few major strategic targets in ConFed space relatively unprotected. Now, Jason was trying to figure out a way to exploit that. As capable as his ship was, she was still just a single, tiny gunship. If he were to pull off the plan coming together in his head, he'd need the might of true capital warships. Unfortunately, most people who had capital ships weren't very keen on loaning them out to attack a superpower that had already invaded its neighbor unprovoked.

"Is this him?" Crusher asked, shaking Jason from his thoughts. He focused on the slim alien Crusher pointed to and let his ocular implants zoom in so he could see his face. His neural implant quickly performed a feature recognition check and confirmed it was indeed the target they'd been trying to track down for the last four days.

Don't forget about his bodyguards. Two trailing behind and the one by the security gate, who’s looking up the walkway.

Jason looked at the individuals Cas had helpfully highlighted with a green halo, which floated over them in his field of vision. Now that he knew what he was looking at, it was fairly obvious they were hired muscle. He resisted the urge to