OMEGA Conscript Read Free Page A

from there? I was stuck in a hostile car, on a hostile planet, in a galaxy run by thugs.
    I looked over at the guard. "Do you have children?"
    The guard smirked. "Two."
    I continued. "Would you fight to the death in another galaxy to protect your children here?"
    The guard didn't like my new line of questions. "I think it would be best if you just kept your mouth shut."
    As the guard waved his blaster pistol, a dark shadow fell over the limo. The driver stomped the brakes, causing the small gravity drive aboard to bring the limo to a quick halt.
    One of the guards yelled out to the driver: "What's going on? Why have we stopped?"
    The driver pointed quietly at the nose of the Jess and its large ion blaster tip aimed at his windshield.
    I jumped across the seats, snatching the ion blasters from the Humans. I reached back with my right foot, kicking the blaster of the guard beside me, breaking his arm in the process. As the other adjacent guard attempted to react, I came back to my seat, striking him hard in the forehead with my elbow. I then lunged once again across the small open space, striking each of the other two guards in the gut as they pulled their hands up toward their faces.
    With an outstretched hand I reached for the door handle and was soon rolling out of the limo. The ramp of the Jess had been lowered. I ran forward, swinging myself around and onto the ramp as it began to close. Before I could react, Raptor ran past, jumped down from the ramp, and sprinted back toward the building we had come from.
    I walked forward into the cabin. "Raptor ran out!"
    Garrett frowned as he looked at Go. "I thought you had him secure?"
    Go shook his head as he frowned. "He jerked out of my hand and was gone before I could grab him."
    Garrett looked out of the view-screen at the running dog as we lifted away. "He'll be OK. Harden likes him. He'll be returned to Joni."
    Go turned to face me. "Welcome back!"
    Garrett smirked as we continued skyward. "Welcome home, Mr. Cream!"
    I replied, "How did you know where I was?"
    Garrett pointed. "You still have my tracking device up under your arm. I listened to that whole conversation between Joni and her father before Harden came in. What an ass."
    I looked toward the floor. "You should have let them take me. At least I'd have been returned to my people. They need to know of the Greens."
    Garrett shook his head. "You really think they would send you through? I don't. I think that was just a ploy to get you out of the room peacefully. As soon as those guards had you off that compound it would have been all over for you."
    I powered up the control console in front of my chair. "Weren't you worried about ground defenses before coming down here?"
    Garrett smiled. "That's the beauty of the Alliance right now. There aren't any ground defenses anywhere. But I bet there will be after this. Besides, who needs ground defenses when you have a dozen destroyers sitting up in orbit and another half dozen on the ground. None of which are ready for any action. I actually feel a little bad about what's going to happen to their captains for the lack of preparation. I'm sure they will be heading through with the next portal opening."
    "How did you know I would get out of that limo?" I said.
    Garrett replied, "That was the one thing I wasn't certain of. If you had gotten into a brawl back there and I had to go in and get you, we would have been dodging ion bolts right about now. As I expected, you got out of there in a hurry."
    I leaned back in my chair. "Slow Humans. The distraction of your ship gave me ample time to act."
    I opened a comm channel to SS241. "We need to contact everyone in Omega. Harden knows about them and what we've been doing."
    Garrett replied, "I heard."
    Layda answered. "Knog? How did it go? Did they listen to what you had to say?"
    I shook my head. "No, and they know about you and the Omega sector. Have an engineer go and shut down the portal gate coming into SS241 immediately. You'll have