Omega Force: Savage Homecoming by Joshua Dalzelle

day and I tailored my response so as not to have to destroy another synth. Had I been less of an idealist, I would have told you to destroy him while he was restrained.”
    “We were all idealists back then, bud,” Jason said, slapping him on the shoulder. “That’s not the point. The question is: what do we do now?”
    “Kill him,” Crusher said simply.
    “Kill him,” Lucky agreed. “He’s proven too dangerous to be left alive.”
    “Ok ay,” Jason nodded. “Now for the easy part; how the hell do we find him? Despite being a conniving, evil bastard, he is still frighteningly intelligent and resourceful.”
    “I suppose we should wait to see if Crisstof dug anything up on the attackers,” Kage said as he picked at the remains of his meal. “That should hopefully give us a starting point.”
    *****
    “What we have is very thin,” Crisstof Dalton began, standing at the head of the long table in one of the Diligent’s conference rooms. “We downloaded the sensor logs from the Phoenix and we concur with Twingo; these ships appear to be at least four or five hundred years old. They also seem to employ some other method of FTL travel than the slip-drive; there were no slip radiation trails leading out of this system when we arrived, save for the small ship that escaped your initial counter-attack.”
    “This much we know already,” Jason said. “Were you able to cross -reference the ships to any particular builder?”
    “None of the known yards in th is part of the galaxy built those ships,” Crisstof continued. “But, we may have found something. There were markings along the hull that we weren’t able to identify as any known language within travelling distance, so we expanded the search parameters to include stylized symbols, links to splinter societies, and anything else it could find. The results were a massive data dump but one hit looks promising, though I’m hesitant to bring it up.”
    “Why?” Doc asked.
    “Because, frankly, it’s absurd; the writing is a close match to the written language of a species we know as the A’arcooni. The problem is that the species was cataloged centuries ago and was in a post-industrial revolution stage, much like your own species. There was no indication they were working on ships of that level of sophistication then, and given the age of the ships they would had to have been building them during the survey missions.” Crisstof splayed his hands wide. “While interesting, I don’t see how it helps.”
    “So the A’arcoon i government isn’t a member of the ConFed? Let’s suspend disbelief for the moment and assume that somehow they built these ships without being noticed,” Jason said, mostly thinking out loud. “Why wouldn’t they have modern ships if they were already building this type way back then? And why would Deetz be associated with these people? There have to be any number of mercenary outfits that would agree to attack Earth if only for a chance at a hold full of precious metals.”
    “ You might be surprised,” Kellea spoke up for the first time. “While the ConFed may be corrupt on many levels, they do not tolerate attacks upon primitive species, no offense intended. Any outfit with enough muscle to move in on an entire planet wouldn’t likely be foolish enough to risk bringing the ConFed fleet down on its own head.”
    “Not only that, I doubt Deetz has that sort of money right now,” Doc said. “This has the feel of a desperate move.”
    “Which brings us back to the A’arcoon,” Jason said. “Send the coordinates for their world to the Phoenix and we’ll check that out first, at least as a starting point.”
    “It’s a long flight, but I can think of no other logical starting point,” Crisstof conceded. “When do you leave?”
    “As soon as our bird is fueled and Twingo has a chance to make sure we didn’t strain anything when I slammed her into the atmosphere.”
    “What about me? Us?” Taryn asked from one of