“It is time, marines. Sound the alarm. I want them to feel pain before they even hit the ground.”
More marines entered through the airlock. At the same time, the emergency sirens started up across the base. They started off as a low drone but quickly increased in volume until reaching a continually rising and falling tone.
“To your posts, marines. You have the plan; it is a simple one. We fight and defend our territories until relieved.”
The dozen officers now in the command center moved to their posts where they could best manage the battle itself. Gun waited at the tactical display and watched, saying nothing for a moment. It showed every single unit down to individual fireteams. He could tap into any of them, access their details, and issue combat orders directly to their officers. He tapped his fingers on the metal frame and then looked to Lieutenant Elvidge and his unit. Jack knew it was coming now. He just didn’t know what it would be. In some ways, he hoped they would have orders, but the idea of marching out into the open to die in the avalanche of Biomech gunfire was an ending Jack preferred to avoid.
“There is always a chance, even a tiny one, that these machines could do something out of the ordinary. Something so deadly that this base could fall.”
Jack and the others looked positively offended at the suggestion. The Fort may be new, but the Alliance Engineers had worked wonders. Jack shook his head in surprise.
“Are you kidding? We have strong walls, towers, air defenses, and reinforced numbers and trench works throughout this base.”
“Jack’s not wrong,” Lieutenant Elvidge continued.
“The base follows the standard practice of four defensible quarters with a compound in the center. They’ll have to work through every layer of defense to succeed.”
Jack nodded at this and walked to the schematic of the base on the wall.
“This is a standard template. That’s why they built it so fast. It would take thousands of troops to even consider attacking this place. I doubt even three of four Marine battalions could do it on their own.”
Jack continued speaking, but Gun lifted his hand to stop them all.
“I know, and you are all correct…but as Colonel and commander of this sector, it comes down to me to prepare for any situation. I want all of you to stay close, just in case. If anything unexpected happens, I will need people I’m familiar with.”
He looked at Jack in particular.
“What about your personal guard, Colonel?” asked Riku.
Gun smiled at this.
“Yes, I do have a unit of Jötnar and Vanguards waiting outside behind the defenses. Even so, Jack and I have been in a few scrapes before. I would like you to stay.”
A red indicator flashed on the tactical display, and three of the monitors changed to show a view of the sky above them.
“Colonel, they are here.”
They all looked at the screen, each wanted to see the shapes coming to the surface. It seemed like an age, but finally one dark shape came through, sheathed in flame and trailing smoke.
“Look at that thing. How big is it?” asked one officer.
Somebody answered, but Jack, Gun, and his comrades had already changed their look from the screen to the tactical display. The single red shape had multiplied it three, then five, and then after a few more seconds, hundreds flickered in a bright pattern over the map. Jack looked to his friend who gave him a contorted frown.
“Yes, I think the numbers might be on their side this time.”
Jack shook his head and looked back at the video stream. The burning objects were now in their hundreds and heading for the surface at substantial speed.
When were they not?
Jack could now see the shapes of the craft and was surprised that they looked similar to a skate or stingray fish. They were quite flat and trailed by a long tail that gave them a smaller, more agile look compared to their larger brethren still in space.
How many warriors can they carry? Jack wondered with trepidation.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The return of Spartan to Sol was an event few considered a great importance. They would soon come to understand that the anger and wrath of this fearsome warrior was a sight to behold. His body was battered; many of his bones fractured or broken, his lower arm torn apart, and his mind savaged by the interrogation and torture of the Biomech machines. Was it surprising that when he was presented with a chance for vengeance, that he would take it, no matter the cost in lives on either side?
The Rise of Spartan
Spartan wiped his brow but said nothing. The man across the table looked almost as uncomfortable as he felt, not that Spartan would let the other man know this, even for an instant. He lifted himself to his feet and walked several meters away from Spartan and to a painting of a medieval city. It was an odd thing to have in such a room, and Spartan wondered if it were there to make the place seem less like a cell or interrogation room. He guessed he’d been there for about three hours now, and that was after he had been given a thorough medical examination and cleared before entry to the rest of the station. He’d been given access to several parts of it, but nothing that would allow him to come into contact with people or information. He sensed there was something serious going on, but they weren’t giving up anything, not yet.
“Well?” asked the man once more.
Spartan looked at the man with the cool, harsh, and emotionless attitude he’d shown his torturers on the Biomech command ship. The room was more pleasant than expected, though as usual there were no windows and the walls were bare, other than for the four paintings showing different places on Earth.
“Spartan, as a former senior officer in the Marine Corps, I would expect a little common courtesy from a fellow Alliance operative.”
This made Spartan smile slightly. He wore no bindings or shackles, yet he had not been given free access to this facility. He had been given a basic set of fatigues baring the symbol of the Earthsec. They were nothing fancy but were at least clean, and a refreshing change following his shower and haircut that had made him look almost human again.
“Is this the legendary hospitality we can all expect from the armpit of the Alliance?”
That seemed to offend the man far more than he expected. It was a cheap, hollow victory, but Spartan was getting angry.
“I’ve traveled to more worlds than you have hairs on your head, boy. I’ve killed machines and Biomechs by their hundreds, but even they had the decency to fight me up front, and with weapons raised.”
He slammed his right fist onto the table.
“So why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on here? Contact Admiral Anderson for verification of who I am. Or just contact my company. Actually, do anything but sit there like a sad bitch with nothing better to do!”
The man lowered his gaze and said something Spartan couldn’t quite hear. It just made him even angrier.
“Are you in charge of this piss poor operation, or what?”
Spartan leaned back in his chair and laughed.
“No wonder we left Sol when we had the chance. This place always had the reputation as a backwater pit full of bureaucrats and dead worlds.”
Again the man didn’t respond so Spartan extended his battered left arm.
“What about this?” he growled.
The man looked surprised, but Spartan wasn’t sure which particular bit had shocked him the most. He looked over his shoulder at one of the walls before turning back to Spartan. He may have been trying to be discreet, but Spartan knew a two-way mirror when he saw one.
There must be officials out there.
“We have sent requests to Terra Nova. Luckily, due to your long military service, you have your biological details on file. I suspect the engineering teams will be able to fabricate you something…eventually.”
“Hmm,” murmured Spartan in irritation.
“We will know more when we can restore access to the Spacebridge back to Prime.”
Spartan remembered
to his family, especially Teresa whom he hadn’t seen for so long now. He thought of her face, and her long black hair before his thoughts rushed back to the present situation.
“Perhaps we can approach this from a different direction,” asked the man.
Spartan nodded slowly, a half smile showing on his lip.
“Yeah, you do that.”
He had questions, but he’d be damned if he was going to give up whatever this obnoxious man wanted without getting something in return. Clearly he wanted information, yet there were no signs of drugs or inducement, so it couldn’t be too serious. At least he hoped that were true. He was becoming a little bored with the torture routine.
“Let’s take it in turns. I ask a question, you ask a question?” he suggested.
The man seemed positively enthralled at the idea and moved back to his chair and sat down.
“Very well, ask me.”
Spartan knew he had him, though he took little pleasure in it.
“Where am I?”
“You are in the Alliance Holding Center, on board the primary transit station.”
“For Earth?”
The man nodded in agreement.
“My turn,” he started, “How did you and Khan get here?”
We escaped from a Biomech ship, stole a Confederate bomber from before the War, and then came through a temporary Rift…to here.”
He gave the man the slyest of smiles that must have annoyed him terribly. The man seemed completely unfazed however.
“Why am I being held here?”
The man slid over his odd-looking datapad. The model had long been replaced by the secpad in most Alliance departments, and he could only assume that out here, on the outer edges of the Alliance, things were a little slower.
“What do you know about the Doomsday Comet?”
Spartan looked at the image and laughed.
“Is this the one the Helion prophecy is about?”
The man nodded.
“I know what everybody else does. It’s some bullcrap story about the return of the Biomechs.”
“Perhaps,” said the man, “Even so, this comet appeared unexpectedly and arrived in Helios, and has already resulted in casualties.”
He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head forward to gaze more closely at Spartan.
“Ever since it was spotted, a number of unusual events have occurred, including your arrival, as well as the wreckage that followed you.”
Spartan rubbed his chin as he listened.
“First the Rift here opened, then you arrived. Shortly after that, reports of individual unidentified ships were flagged across the Alliance.”
He smiled in a way that Spartan knew to be far from pleasant.
“Now, we may be the backwater of the Alliance, what do you expect after being abandoned by you Centauri centuries ago? Even so, we survived and run things out here as we want. This might technically be Alliance territory, but you will find no military units here. Sol maintains its own forces and command structure. So show a little respect, please.”
Spartan sensed there was more, but the man was holding back. He stared at him and spotted the shifting of his eyes. It was as though the man was trying to look important, perhaps even just delaying him while something else happened.
He’s afraid, of what, me?
“You think I am behind this?”
He lifted his left stump.
“A man with one arm and a broken body?”
He may be battered and broken in many ways, but he was still more muscular and better built than most. His broad chest was strong, and his arm and leg muscles bulged with potential. Even though the Biomechs had held him and Khan for a long time, neither had given up on their physical strength or fitness; on the off chance that one day they might be able to fight back. The man said nothing and asked another question.
“How were you captured by the Biomechs?”
Spartan’s blood started to rush, and he immediately recognized the old rage rising in him. He wanted to grab the man, bash his head down onto the table, and wring the information out of him. He had to restrain himself. He closed his eyes and breathed in, reminding himself that this was human air, not the filth he’d been forced to endure on that ship.
“I was on an Alliance sanctioned operation with my company, APS Corp. We’d boarded a T’Kari Raider when a Rift opened up. The ship escaped with us on board. It gets complicated after that.”
He rubbed his cheek with his left hand before remembering once more that it wasn’t there. He cursed the missing part of his limb, and then the machines that had done the work. Looking back at the man, he wondered quite what they expected to get from him.
“Alliance sanctioned mission on board an alien vessel? We have heard of these T’Kari back here, but none have been seen. Why exactly were you involved with these non-humans?”
Spartan was getting the distinct impression from the man that this entire sector was riddled with racist, possibly xenophobic citizens with an interest in maintaining their own particular brand of society.
“My company was conducting a special ops mission with the support of the T’Kari. I assume you understand they are our friends, allies even?”
The man grinned.
“A lot has changed since you left us, Spartan. The T’Kari are part of this happy Alliance now, just like us. That doesn’t make them the same as me, or perhaps even you.”
He paused and considered his next question.
“Well, that doesn’t quite answer my question though, does it? I want to understand how it was that you vanished from human controlled space and then returned, many months later with Biomechs in tow and entered our space through an unchartered Spacebridge. A bridge, I might add, that conveniently closed up after your arrival.”
Spartan went to scratch his left hand as happened so often. The fact he couldn’t scratch was sometimes more annoying than having lost the hand to start with. Finally, he stood up and glared at the man.
“How long is this crap going to take? I have things to do, and that includes contacting my wife and family.”
The man stayed in his seat and beckoned for Spartan to return to his previous position.
“Please? This won’t take much longer, and then you will be free to go.”
I doubt that very much, but if there’s a way to speed this up, I’ll take it.
He sat down slowly, never taking his eyes from the man’s face.
“The rest is messy, but the important bit is that eventually we were taken by the machines, and they did this, among other things.”
He raised his shattered arm.
“That’s when you were tortured and questioned?”
Spartan nodded.
“Of course.”
He said no more; the memories of his imprisonment were as fresh as the first time the machines had questioned him. As he sat there, he recalled the cell where he and Khan plus the other silent prisoners were kept. He also remembered the machine that had removed his arm, and it filled him with rage.
“And how are you now? Are you managing without it?”
“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth.
“My family, where are they?”
The man tapped the datapad, and it changed to show the faces of Teresa and Jack. Spartan lifted the device closer with his right hand. There was little that could soften him, but the sight of his two closest family members could do just that. Both of the images showed them in uniform, and it took a moment before he noticed the insignia on Teresa’s tunic.
“Uh, are you sure about this? Teresa hasn’t worked in the Corps for some time. Neither have I.”
The man was about to speak when a knock came from outside. He stood up and walked to the door. It opened and in came two men in suits. One looked at Spartan while the other spoke in hushed tones to his interrogator. Finally, they left and the man returned to his seat.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
The man looked a little flushed but
moved back to the previous line of enquiry.
“Your wife, Ms Teresa Morato was reassigned during our last recruitment drive. As you know, all military personnel, whether retired or discharged are eligible for duty.
“She joined up, why?”
“Your company, APS has gone. It was broken up, along with most of the PMC sector just after your disappearance. Your wife and son have, well, they have seen considerable action. Major Morato is now second-in-command of the 17th Marine Battalion, under the command of Colonel Gun, a friend of yours, I believe.”
A hundred thoughts raced about in his head. His wife had reached a level he never had, and his old friend now commanded what must be over a thousand marines. He had so many things to ask, but before he could open his mouth, the man returned to his own line of questioning.
“You came back with a group of T’Kari, as well as this Khan. How do they fit in with your narrative? With contact to Terra Nova and Prime lost, we are temporarily unable to verify any of your claims or the identity of the…non-humans you returned with.”
Those last words shook him, more so when he realized that this man was referring just as much to Khan as he was to the group of T’Kari. With all that had gone on, he hadn’t given the loss of contact any great thought.
“Wait, you have lost contact? Did you manage to reach my wife?”
The man nodded.
“Of course, we sent a full report to High Command within an hour of your vessel’s capture. Once the technical issues with the Rift have been dealt with, you will be able to speak with her.”
Spartan wanted to know more about both his wife and Jack, but the news of the Rift sat heavy with him.
“Tell me about the Rift, what happened?”
The man looked confused.
“I don’t understand. We lost communications access to the Mars transfer station that controls the Rift. An engineering team will be there within the hour to re-establish contact, why?”
Spartan stood up and shook his head angrily.
“Because if you fools understood anything, you would know that all transfer stations have triple layer communications protocols with override protection. The only way to lose contact with the station itself is because they do not want to answer.”
Star Crusades Nexus: Book 05 - Prophecy of Fire Page 11