Escape: Omega Book 1 (Omega: Earth's Hero) (12 page)

“Radio the jets, lieutenant. Instruct them to abort. We don’t need them anymore.” The general looked pleased and finally pulled the cigar from his mouth.

“Don’t you mean you don’t want any more witnesses?”

“I’m getting real tired of you, doctor.” The general walked around the front of the control room. He had almost a spring to his step now that Omega’s run had concluded. Now, Sally thought, all that was left for him to do was collect the specimen, lock it away, and find a new lead scientist for the project.

There were approximately fifteen men and women staffing the panels and controls of the room. Sally recognized no one. While she may have seen their faces in passing, it was not frequent enough to remember. It struck her for some reason how compartmentalized everything at Adaven was.
Hendricks’ Kingdom,
she thought.

“Jets returning to Nellis, general,” the lieutenant offered.

“Excellent.” Hendricks wiped the barest trace of perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Lieutenant, radio that team and tell them to take aim. I want a disposal team dispatched ASAP.”

“Understood, general.”

“Scratch that. Tell them… tell them to take aim. As soon as he moves to open fire.” There was no
if
. There left little room for misunderstanding.

“S-Sir?” the lieutenant stammered.

“You heard me, lieutenant.” Hendricks, an imposing figure in such a situation, flew over to the seated communications officer.

Sally really couldn’t believe her ears. She had no doubt “Anvil” was capable of many things. But this constituted nothing but cold-blooded murder. Omega was down. Who knew how badly injured. There was nowhere to go. There never had been. Nothing past his present position except the Pecos, and it was at least a several thousand feet straight down over the rise.

“Give me that damn headset!” Hendricks demanded of the com officer. “Give it to me now!” Realizing that his single gold bar was no match for the triple stars, the young man that suddenly looked very pale and uncomfortable, snatched the boom mic and earpiece from his head, and handed it to Hendricks in the same movement as he scooted from his chair.

Sally stood up. It was time to make her stand, if there was ever going to be one made. “General, I implore you to consider this. That is a living, breathing human being out there. He did nothing to deserve a firing squad. For crying out loud. Less than twenty-four hours ago he saved the life of the First Lady.”

“He may be living and breathing, doctor. But there is very little human about him. Even a machine can follow orders. He’s an experiment gone wrong, and he’ll be handled as such. Now sit down and get out of my face!”

“I will not, you sorry son of a bitch!” The peal of Sally’s palm across the general’s cheek rang out a Fourth of July firecracker. There were oohs and ahh’s all around, but no one stepped forward to do anything about it. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. Before Sally could enjoy it, Hendricks had a victory of his own.

The corner of her mouth caught the majority of the impact. Her long dark hair slapped the air like a bullwhip as her head snapped to the side. Despite his age, “Anvil” still had plenty of power, as evidenced by the backhand he delivered. Blood trickled out of the newly-opened lesion and Sally tasted pennies in her mouth, the coppery taste of blood covering her tongue, filling her nostrils.

“Now sit the hell down!” Weak, ashamed. She did just that.

“Ground team. This is General Hendricks.” He’d already pulled the headset on and was communicating with the team.

“We copy you loud and clear, sir.”

“I want you to take aim on that deserter. When he decides to move a muscle, blow him away.”

“General, don’t think I copy that. Repeat.”

“Damn it, you Keystone cop! You heard me. Is this a mutiny? Cannot one single person follow orders? Ready your weapons. All fire on my command.”

There was the briefest hesitation, then, “Affirmative, sir. Weapons at the ready.”

Sitting there, watching the atrocity unfold, Sally was both sick to her stomach and ashamed she didn’t have the courage to do something, to do anything. However, her brilliant mind looked at every possible angle and approach. There was simply nothing that could be done. The play had been called. The coach had spoken. All that waited was the snap.

Chapter 14

Looking into a deep blue, sun-filled sky, Omega knew he was dying. He felt unconsciousness tugging at him. Gentle tugs at first, but increasing as each second came and went. His body was broken. Bullet holes and cuts and scrapes and pulls. His breath came in labored draws.

He heard the vehicles come to crunching halts. Bodies disembarked. The soldiers were shouting. There came the squawk of radios. They were all here because of him. They were all here
for
him. Either to kill him, or worse: to take him back to the base and lock him away once more.

Beyond the cacophony, he heard something else: the soft lashing of water in the distance. A peaceful, hopefully pleasing delight to his ears. It was a sound that despite--or, more likely, in spite of its beauty--left him feeling hollow and saddened.

Omega was not ready to die, yet he had not been asked by Fate how the day would progress.

He heard the chomp of combat boots on sand, on rock. They were getting closer. His arm and leg, now numb, wouldn’t respond to his commands to mobilize. The last thing he wanted was to give up, to yield to the inevitable. Doing so went against everything he’d ever learned, everything he’d ever been.

He thought of Sally North. Her almond skin, her flowing black hair so dark it shone blue in the light. He thought of the smile she favored him with on the rarest of occasions. If there had ever been anyone that he could share his life with, it had most definitely been her. Now, no change lingered for what had never been more than a foolish adolescent daydream, a fantasy borne of loneliness.

The picture of Sally North faded from his mind’s eye, and he was sorry to see it go.

Gone completely, replaced with something else. Something else entirely.

Unlike last night, the vision was not of strange letters or outlandish characters. It was nothing at all like that. Like an out of body experience, he was suspended in space. Beyond Earth, immersed in a star field. Sudden velocity threw him forward at an impossible rate. The stars, just moments before specks of tiny white light, now elongated into shafts of color. To his left, the mighty rings of Saturn. A comet arcing its icy way toward the sun. Into a wormhole exploding with colors. The feeling of up and down, twisting and careening. And then out past a nebula larger than a solar system. 

A complete, jarring stop.

It was a bright planet, much like Earth. Green, blue, golden in sunlight. Three moons orbited the large planet. Orbiting machines, metal moons, at least a dozen held orbit as well. Green seas, blue lands, directly opposite of all he knew of earth.

Something tiny shot away from the planet at an absurd speed. Lights chased the tiny object. He realized the lights were, in fact, laser beams, like something out of science fiction. Beams shot from four of the satellites into a point in space and the beams seemed to grow, to morph into an org. The ball of green electricity grew and grew and shot out toward the craft, a huge laser, wide and consuming.

And then it all went black.

Omega closed his eyes…

And opened them right back up.

Omega had no way to know the brown irises of his eyes had transformed to a shimmering bright blue. The whites of his eyes, bloodshot from his ordeal and strain on his body, cleared instantly and turned the color of fresh snow. Small pops sounded all over his body, concentrated on his open wounds. All that was happening on the outside.

On the inside, miraculous changes were taking effect.

Similar enough to be confused with human, his cellular structure in an instant fired off an additional layer, a layer never to be seen, analyzed or studied. A wall that protected him on an atomic level from an invasion, from sickness, from injury, from decay. His whole physiology sizzled anew with foreign constructs. Muscle was both rejuvenated and improved. Oxygen flowed at 1000-percent efficiency and all wounds closed tight, as if they’d never existed.

Even in the bright sun of the Nevada desert, there was a light radiating from his body, lain across the hard ground, that caused the men, even at their distance, to look away or shield their eyes. It was the purest, brightest blue no one had seen since the descent of the spacecraft back in ’47.

Even if he tried, there was no way Omega could articulate the sensation that overtook him. The closest he would ever be able to say was he felt surrounded--no,
enveloped
--by a warm, comfortable cocoon. A fluid of heat, yet cool.

Eyes opened and body repaired, and improved exponentially, he came to his feet.

Lyle Houston’s bladder begged to void. He had never thought too much about the expression “couldn’t believe your eyes.” Now, looking at a man that had just stood up after collapsing from gunshots… and glowing… he understood it perfectly. The blue had been intense. Houston and his men were equipped with either goggles or faceplates that tinted, necessary for desert duty, but still the exposure had blinded him for precious moments. When his eyesight returned, he expected the man to be gone, but he was not.

A voice crackled in his ear. “Shoot, damn it. Shoot! Take that target down!”

Houston didn’t move a muscle. He couldn’t. From the lack of gunfire around him, he realized he wasn’t the only one transfixed by what he’d just seen.

“Shoot now, soldiers!”

Lyle looked the man, Omega, in the eye. He shook his head, pleading for him to stop whatever it was he thought he was doing. If Omega saw him—though Houston couldn’t imagine how he could miss him—he paid no heed.

“Anyone. Right now. Or so help me God, I’ll have every sorry single one of you up for court martial before this day is through.” It was with those words that Lyle Houston--a good, honorable man--did the unthinkable: opened fire on an unarmed man that had not lifted a finger against him. The first round from the muzzle of his rifle broke the spell cast on those around him. From everywhere, a volley of lead poured forth, peppering the man in the tan jumpsuit like BB’s.

The strangeness had not ended. Oh no, not by a longshot. The man turned, hands up behind his head in a form of meager protection, as if evading a swarm of bees. He bounded once, twice, and then commenced running.

Only there was nowhere to go. From where he’d fallen and then subsequently rose, only ten feet of ground remained. After that, a straight drop to the Pecos River below. The fall would mean death, but whom was Houston kidding. Standing meant death.

Only when the strange man disappeared over the ledge did he realize that, while the bullets had made rags of the jumpsuit, there had been no blood spatter.

Houston had presence of mind to count. Three seconds elapsed after the man jumped, or fell, to his death, before the last shot was fired. A waste of ammunition perhaps, but after what had happened, no one was taking chances.

Silence, profound and somehow deafening, permeated the control center of Phantom Base, Adaven, Nevada. The people seated around the monitor were not robots, not cold machines programmed for duty and nothing besides. No. They were flesh and blood, heart and soul, hope and courage, tragedy and triumph. Despite the fact that a scoundrel like Thurmond Hendricks had risen to the top echelon of the United States Army--one of the most powerful, influential, and awe-inspiring organizations on the planet, on the whole and whole, good, decent, even exceptional people graced the numbers of the military. This room of diverse individuals exemplified that truth.

The sorrow, which came instantly, was a palatable thing. 

To his credit, Hendricks kept his trap shut.

Sally knew some were thinking that with the loss of Omega, their jobs here were finished. With no Omega, there was no Omega Project, sad but true. While she found it hard to believe anyone would be disappointed by leaving this place behind, there was always that moment, when faced with an unsure future versus than anxiety and worry close in, that threatened to overtake you. The sensation might be selfish, but she could see it playing in their minds, either through their dropped expressions or their skewing eyes.  

Sally North, herself, might’ve contemplated the same loss, if not for the much larger one she faced.

The man known as Omega was an experiment. There was no disputing the obvious. He had been something else, as well. Could she call him a friend? Relatively, of course, but realistically? She wasn’t quite sure.

There would be time later for such considerations. Now, she fought hard to contain her grief, the scorching break of the heart in her chest, the ultimate and indescribable feeling of loss.