OMEGA Allegiance by Stephen Arseneault Page A

think his family may be there after being conscripted from Barrington Station."
    Garrett replied, "What's at Doomlight? Is that the training facility we thought they would be heading to?"
    I shook my head. "No, Doomlight is the war. It's a ground war for the most part. According to Jack, both sides keep reinforcing their ground forces, but they have to get by the other side's fleet first. He says as many as a third of the transports don't make it to the surface each time."
    Garrett frowned. "And if they do? Make it to the surface?"
    I hesitated before my response. "If they make it down, they are sent right into the fight."
    Jack Carson leaned forward in his chair. "Garrett, Jack Carson. Once they get into hostilities it's a long fight of blasters versus laser weapons. Defenses on both sides are good against those weapons. They each just keep blasting away until they exhaust their ammunition supplies and then it turns into hand-to-hand combat until only one side is left standing. The surface war has been raging for three years now with neither side making much headway. From what I've heard, the battle line that stretches between them hasn't moved more than fifty kilometers either way, during that time.
    "You would think one side or the other would come up with a new move that was a game changer, but the other side has adapted every time. War in space isn't much different. I'm one of two of the longest serving captain's in our fleet. Giles Martensen has been out here exactly one month longer than I have ... if he is still alive. We've served under fourteen different admirals during that time."
    Garrett thought for a moment. "So, you're saying that the war on Doomlight has been going on for three years? We were told the enemy was pushing us back on all fronts, that we were desperate to stop them."
    Jack shook his head. "I've been out here for five years, and unless the war is being fought on multiple fronts, there have only been a handful of planets involved. Maybe that's all a campaign of misinformation they are using to motivate people. I don't think any but a few really know what's going on."
    Garrett leaned back in his chair. "I don't think we'll be changing any of that, so, the question is, how do we get Joni Salton off that transport?"
    I switched the comm to a wide view of the bridge. "Do you know where on the transport she is? Is there any way on or off that ship?"
    Garrett replied, "I have a breach collar I could attach. I can cut my way through. Only problem is, it's a slow and noisy action, and I'm certain every guard on that ship would be waiting for me with a blaster on the other side. I thought about using the trick of entering through the refuse port, but I haven't been able to acquire the code for the inner door. The transport she is on is a new ship design and I don't have it in the Jess 's database. I have the codes for most, if not all of the ships up until I went dark."
    Garrett laughed. "I suppose we could always just ask them to hand her over."
    Jack said. "If we try to make contact, they will immediately take it as hostile. I've done this run repeatedly and we were always on high alert for an ambush. It's happened at least a half dozen times. The first time we were far from ready for it. We lost over half our ships in that raid."
    I gestured towards an image of the transport fleet on the large holo-display. "Is there any way we could separate the ships? Garrett, How much access do you have into their systems? Could you take control of the nav system?"
    Garrett shook his head. "Again, I don't have the codes to do anything more than to get their current heading and a few other settings. I can read the systems, I just can't write to them without knowing the codes."
    I again gestured towards the fleet image. "Do you have the codes for any of those ships? If so, maybe we could use them for a diversion of some sort."
    Garrett looked over his local display after swiping at it several times. "I do have the codes