Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11), стр. 50

herself, looking out over the hull of her mighty battlecruiser from the opulence of the office attached to her living quarters. When she'd been just a captain, commanding a small frigate and being the eyes and ears of a wealthy industrialist there had been a certain idealism about everything she did. Now that she was an admiral, commanding fleets of ships, she wondered if maybe somewhere along the way she'd lost perspective and that it was Jason who had remained grounded in his beliefs.

She'd tracked his movements as best she could and admitted that she did feel some pain at how far he'd fallen at times, sunk into despair when Omega Force had dissolved and then again when Lucky had been killed in action. For a long time, she'd clung to the fact that Jason had betrayed her first, but maybe that wasn't actually true.

"Admiral Colleran, please report to the bridge. We'll be within shuttle range of the ConFed cruiser, Agon, within ten minutes."

"On my way," she said, shaking off any thoughts of Jason Burke or misplaced loyalties. She had a job to do, and she was going to see it done.

"The Defiant has made us," Kage said. "Incoming channel request, text only. They're asking for a report on our actions and intentions. They called the ship out by name."

"Tell them to suck on a—"

"Oh! And we have a passenger signal coming in," Kage cut Jason off. "That's why they're transmitting data only. They have a secondary stream that's trying to worm its way in past the firewall. From what I'm seeing, it's actually a fairly advanced bit of tech."

"Any risk to us?"

"Nah. All the new com equipment we got from the Kheprians is far more advanced," Kage scoffed. "Want me to backtrack the signal and see If we can dig into their systems?"

"Go for it," Jason said. "Just look around, don't turn anything off or screw something up."

"Just a little sneak and peek," Kage said. "I want to see how good the gear they gave us is." For their services rendered in heading off what could have been a brutal, bloody conflict on the planet Khepri, the pru had gifted them a military-grade data security suite under the table that was loaded with their newest and best semi-AI processors that could crack most encryption algorithms like they were nothing. The pru were the species who created the synth race and were still widely regarded as the absolute masters of adaptive AI computing.

"You think your ex-mate told them to try and break into our computers?" Crusher asked.

"I wish you'd pick a less creepy term than mate, but I have no idea what Kellea is thinking these days. She obviously suspects we're out here for reasons other than war tourism, but I'm more interested in what a Cooperative battlecruiser is doing out here. Actually…Kage, send this instead: 'Greetings, Defiant. What is a Cridal warship doing in occupied space cuddling up to a ConFed cruiser? Do the Saabror know about this? I bet they would be very interested in our sensor data. What do you think?'"

"That should make some heads explode," Kage laughed. "I'm holding off on sending while our own intrusion software tries to— Ah! That was quick. Sending message and leaving the channel open to see what our little spy sends back."

It was a very short time later when another, more aggressive message came back demanding that the Phoenix cut power and standby to be boarded whenever the Defiant decided to come around and collect them. Jason and Crusher laughed so hard they had tears streaming from their eyes as Kage took it upon himself to send back a quoted passage from the Cridal Cooperative charter regarding the rights of vessels to navigate freely.

"We've received six compressed packets from the intrusion software," Kage said. "I think we've pushed our luck enough on that. I'm sending the command for it to delete itself, and then closing the channel."

"Send that entire exchange to Mok's ship and warn them the Defiant tried to break into our systems," Jason said. "You have us a course yet?"

"Yeah…you're not going to like this," Kage said. "We need to go to the Eshquarian System."

"You're right…I don't like it. Why the hell would we want to go there?"

"I found one of the datalink boxes we need. It's in what's likely the most unsecure location I can come up with on short notice unless you want to fight with the scavengers picking over the bones of the ships the ConFed fleet blew apart," Kage said. "Finding one that's brand new or even recently in service is a fool's errand. We'll never meet our schedule in time. What I've found is a semi-secure site far south on the Continent Superior of Eshquaria that specializes in storing decommissioned military hardware until it can be properly dismantled and recycled for scrap."

"And they just happen to have the specific box we need?" Crusher asked.

"They have seven of them," Kage corrected. "They're the boxes that were pulled from a generation of fast-attack frigates the Empire recently decommissioned. Even though they're an older design, they work on the same principles and will get us what we need."

"Can we even land on Eshquaria right now?" Jason asked. "It was just recently ground zero of a major battle. Is the ConFed just letting people free-navigate the system already?"

"Sure." Kage shrugged. "They only have a small peace keeping force in the capital system now that's just supposed to keep any opportunists away. Eshquaria is—was—an incredibly wealthy planet and all those cultural and material treasures are still on the surface."

"Since they already knew where the lost fleet really was, the ConFed didn't have to waste the resources protecting against them coming back and trying to retake the system," Jason said. "Smart. So, we just fly in under the cover of one of our clean codes, and then try to pull off a quick smash and grab on a storage site used for obsolete equipment? I actually like