Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11), стр. 27

"Fendra, do Imperial ships carry live animals for the galleys?"

"That's an incredibly stupid question, but I'm curious enough to wonder why you're asking it."

"Because it looks like you have enough pens in one of the main cargo holds to handle a decent amount of livestock," Jason said, moving aside and pointing at the monitor.

"Well, that's certainly not standard fleet issue," she muttered. "What is all that?"

On the display, they could see that someone had erected a series of holding cells, so many that they took up most of the deck and were stacked three-high. There was a single figure in body armor walking around, but from what they could see, the cells were empty. The cell construction looked modular, the sides all made of perforated sheets of composite with alloy doors set into the front.

"If you put two in each cell, there are enough cells to house the entire crew compliment of a Luex-class battleship," Lucky said.

"But the crew isn't here," Jason said. "And if they brought that many people here, the backup power wouldn't be able to handle the load to run the life support systems. They'd need to fire at least one of the main reactors back up."

"Captain, I feel it is imperative that we find out what is on the other Luex," Lucky said. "It is almost certain we will find the answers to our questions there rather than here." Jason tried to adjust his argument on the fly given the new information they had, but he could see no rational reason for Lucky not to explore the other ship given how much they'd already risked while looking through this one. It seemed logical to assume that whatever they were planning on doing here, they'd already done on the other ship and that was why main power was back up.

"Fine, damnit!" he snarled, ungracious in loss as ever. "You are authorized a sneak and peek. I don't want you taking any unnecessary risks. Recon only, and then get your metal ass back here. What's your problem?" His last question was directed Fendra, who stared into space with an odd look. Jason was quite familiar with Eshquarians, and he could see that she was either genuinely concerned or hiding something.

"It's nothing." She turned away from him and went back to punching in commands on the terminal. Jason thought about pressing the issue, but he didn't know her well enough to say for certain she was being evasive. Maybe it was just his natural instinct to distrust any intelligence operative no matter what.

Lucky, much to Jason's consternation, was able to interface with his armor, blow past the security protocols, and upload the data he'd collected without so much as setting off an alert. He wasn't sure if Lucky's new network intrusion toys were that good, or if he owed yet another angry message to the Disa Corporation for another underperforming system. They all left the auxiliary control room and worked their way aft so that Lucky could exit the ship the same way they came in. This type of discreet insertion was what battlesynths were designed for and though he didn't like it, Jason had to admit that he would only be a liability if he went along, as well.

The group split up amidships on deck seventeen, Lucky moving aft while Jason and Fendra decided to check out the control center for the ship's extensive communications suite. Before they parted ways, Jason told Lucky to make sure he went to their infiltration sled and took the portable slip-com node with him. It was a low-bandwidth, burst transmission system that only linked to its paired receiver in a safe house Kage had set up. From there the data could be routed through a normal slip-com node to anywhere else. The portable slip-com radio was bleeding edge tech that Jason had acquired from his friends in Earth's new spaceborne Navy.

"You feel that?" Fendra asked. They'd been slowly working their way down to the com center when a steady hum began building and a vibration could be felt through the deck.

"Yeah," Jason said. "I wonder if they're moving something down—" he trailed off as all the corridor lights came up and the hiss of air handlers started, sounding like a gale force wind after the oppressive silence. "Oh, shit."

"They're bringing main power back up," she said. "We should get to the sled."

"It's too late," Jason said. "That bit of vertigo you're feeling? That's the main engines going through pre-start. The force fields around the bays will already be active."

“So, we're trapped?"

"Not necessarily, but we sure as shit aren't leaving the way we came in."

"It's a good thing Lucky is probably long gone already."

"Yep," Jason said, checking his mission clock. "He'll be accelerating away at full burn by now."

Lucky reveled in the power of his new body. Trying to relearn so many basic skills was frustrating and, at times, painful, but there were also times when everything was working right…and it was glorious. He streaked away from the ship like a missile, his foot-mounted repulsors pushing him along at a steady one hundred and fifty g's of acceleration towards the target. His infiltration subsystems came alive with a thought, and active sensor-spoofing transceivers working to nullify any active scans they detected. A battlesynth was much, much smaller than the average ship buster missile so an anomaly that small was easily overlooked by even the more advanced threat detection AIs.

His old body had been a blunt instrument. Powerful, but also large and cumbersome. The Mk.2 shell his matrix now resided in was light, nimble, but just as strong. He was beginning to get the hang of commanding his new subsystems into action and letting the dedicated processors there do the heavy lifting. Much of the trouble he was having was because he still tried to consciously think about each individual action, and it was confusing the processors