Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11), стр. 49
"If Kabuki theater means what I assume it means, we at least agree on that point," Mok said. "We'll be in touch."
Lucky escorted Mok and Similan back down to the cargo bay where they could disembark while Jason thought over the latest wrinkle in his plan. Given how sensitive the datalink transceiver was, he doubted that one was just lying around somewhere that easy to grab.
"You serious about all that bullshit you tried to feed Mok?" Crusher asked.
"Whatever do you mean?"
"You might have fooled him, but I know for a fact that you're not going to waste all this effort just to blow a few missiles up harmlessly in space. What's your real plan?"
"I'll let you know once I'm sure I can pull it off," Jason said. "But you're right…I'm not willing to put as at so much risk for so little gain. If we do this, the Machine needs to suffer a setback more tangible than an embarrassing misfire. You're okay with that?"
"I'm on this ride to the end," Crusher said, extending his fist. Jason crashed his own fist against it.
"To the end."
16
"Admiral, Sensor Operations just sent word that a ship you've deemed to be of interest has just appeared. It took off from the planet a few hours ago and is now breaking orbit and on course for a mesh-out point."
"Which ship is it?" Kellea Colleran asked, distracted by the report she was reading.
"It goes by a lot of different names and registrations, but the physical configuration matches the ship in our database called the Phoenix," the aide said. "It is a heavy gunship-class vessel that appears to have been extensively—illegally—modified. Operations said it began its life as a Jepsen Aero DL7."
"Show me," Kellea said, holding out a hand for the tablet the aide carried. She looked at the sensor imagery along with the point-by-point comparison notes to confirm it actually was the Phoenix. From the looks of her, Jason had done another extensive round of upgrades. The wings looked different and there were a few unidentified bits added in places. Her Sensor Operations people had to guess about the purpose of those, their annotations marked with arrows pointing to them.
She took it all in with a dispassionate eye. Any feelings she may have still harbored for Jason Burke seemed to have been eroded away by time. While inter-species relationships were fairly common on most tier-one worlds, it was still somewhat taboo on her home world. Perhaps it was the illicit nature of their romance coupled with the fact he was completely unique that had first sparked her interest. Now, with humans expanding out of the Orion Arm and Jason himself having made a mess of his own life multiple times, she sometimes had trouble remembering what it was about him that drew her interest in the first place.
What did interest her, however, was what Omega Force was doing out in the occupied zone at the same time Saditava Mok of the Blazing Sun Syndicate was there in his personal yacht. She was almost temped to abort her rendezvous course and try to apprehend Mok to see what he was up to out here, but the Cooperative had issued specific orders to its field commanders: Mok was off limits. Kellea was an absolutist when it came to the application of law. She knew that the reason Mok was exempted for the time being was because he had assisted Earth with multiple trade agreements that benefited the Cooperative on the whole, but she didn't agree with it. If the humans wanted to take their chances trusting a ruthless gangster to run as an intermediary for them that was their business, but the Cooperative shouldn't be allowing immunity for someone who was running known smuggling operations into their space.
"Have Coms reach out to the Phoenix and request a report on why they're in this area," she said, handing the tablet back. "Tell Captain Essel to maintain our current course and to let me know when we're within shuttle range of the ConFed patrol ship."
"At once, Admiral."
It could just be a coincidence. Omega Force turned up in odd places all over the quadrant. She had heard that Jason had a personal rapport with Saditava Mok himself, but it seemed so out of character that he'd be actively helping in one of the gangster's operations. He may have flexible morals, but he'd always stood firm on not letting his crew get involved with the bigger organized crime outfits that traded in the misery of helpless people. It was actually one of the foundations that kept his little band of misfits and criminals together.
As the aide scurried away, Kellea could feel the doubts begin to creep back in. She still wasn't sure what Seeladas was up to or why the Defiant was patrolling in a ConFed held, conquered area of space when she should have been flying above the planets of the Cooperative, reassuring their member worlds that everything was under control. If the Phoenix was out here sniffing around, what might be happening that she was unaware of?
Looking back, the last time she had positioned herself opposite of Jason had been when he'd exposed Crisstof Dalton's involvement in trying to overthrow the government of the Avarian Empire, the vast superpower that sat across the region of space known as the Delphine Expanse or the Great Emptiness. The natural buffer had kept the Avarians on their side of the Expanse, but after Dalton's escapades, they were even more distrustful of outsiders. Now that she really thought back on that time, Crisstof had been in league with the ConFed on that operation. Perhaps she shouldn't be so trusting of Seeladas's intentions after all.
"Maybe I'm the one that changed," she said to