Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon Read Online Free PDF Page A

combat pilot on the crew," Lucky said. "While Doc, Kage, and to a lesser extent, Twingo all have the ability to fly the ship, none are able to do so in a tactical situation."
    "Is that the only reason?" Jason prodded.
    "I find it to be a satisfying experience."
    "You can say it, Lucky," Jason laughed. "You thought it looked fun so you decided to give it a try ... and it was fun."
    "That is as good a term as any," Lucky admitted. "And yes, piloting the ship during the race was as fun as I had hoped it would be after all my simulation time."
    "Well then, hop into the copilot seat and we can take turns running though these sims," Jason said. "This first one is mostly intra-atmospheric and the terrain randomizes after each run. We can do this for a bit and then start adding targets."
    After an hour, Jason was impressed with how naturally Lucky adapted to the ever-changing simulations. Two hours after that and he was hard-pressed to keep ahead of him.
     
     

Chapter 5
     
    "Oh, holy shit, that smells bad," Jason choked out as the ramp descended. The air from Colton Hub wafting into the cargo bay was enough to make his stomach do a back flip. "Okay ... we all remember the rules, right? No unnecessary fighting, stealing, or cheating. Actually, don't do any of those things at all."
    "Don't worry about me, Captain," Kage said in a muffled voice as he covered his nose and mouth with his smaller pair of hands while the other two waved at the air in front of him. "I'm not going out there. I'll be here enjoying the filtered and recirculated air aboard the ship if you need me." As he turned and left, Doc also followed him back into the ship without a word.
    "This has got to be brutal for you," Twingo said to Crusher. "It smells like raw sewage in here, and your sense of smell is so incredibly delicate." When Crusher just turned to stare at him, he pressed on. "Does it bother you that in order to smell something, tiny particles of it actually need to go into your nose and embed into the receptor? Just think, that means when you smell—"
    "Twingo," Jason snapped. "Leave him alone." In truth, Jason also would rather not think about what may be pulled into his body with each breath he took. He considered going back for a rebreather for a moment, shrugged it off, and descended the ramp with the remaining three of his crew in tow.
    The Phoenix was parked in a hangar that had three other similarly sized ships fanned out across the deck, each parking berth sharing the one hangar door. Jason was always uneasy leaving his ship hooked up to an external docking arm if he was leaving for any length of time under the best of circumstances, but the looks of the docking complex branching away from Colton Hub had convinced him to pony up the credits for a hangar berth.
    The station was a huge, sprawling facility that, like most platforms over a century old, looked like a hodgepodge of ill-conceived and hastily completed construction efforts. What made it unique was that it wasn't anchored in a star system, it sat motionless in interstellar space. It had started as a refueling depot a few hundred years prior when the larger ships didn't have the legs to make it across the Colton Expanse, a region of empty space that sat between the core worlds and the fringe settlements, without exhausting their fuel supply.
    Once the big ships had slip-drives that were as efficient as the smaller, faster ships, the station fell into disuse and, inevitably, the criminal element moved in. A lack of any governmental oversight in deep space helped that immensely. The most distinguishing physical feature of the station was the "crown" of mangled, jagged alloy at the top. That was all that remained of the section that once housed the actual refueling arms. As legend had it, a frigate-class ship escaped a firefight by jumping into slip-space, unaware that their real-space flight systems were damaged. When the ship exited slip-space, it was on a collision course for the station