The Great Betrayal

by Michael G. Thomas

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ThE GREAT BETRAYAL

  STAR CRUSADES NEXUS, BOOK 4

  By Michael G. Thomas

  First Edition

  Copyright © 2013 Michael G. Thomas

  Published by Swordworks Books

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The four racial groups of the Helions purported to represent all of their culture. The ANS Conqueror Incident of 360CC, however, revealed a massive underclass known as the Zathee who had been exploited for centuries. These people had fought as cannon fodder in the wars with the Biomechs and now lived as little more than servants. The Zathee Insurrection, as it soon became known, spread through the entire planet of Helios before igniting slave revolts on other Helion worlds. Within three months, the flames of revolution had spread as far as the empires of the Anicinàbe, Byotai, and even the Khreenk.

  History of Slave Labor

  The dull blue star sent a shimmering glint of light over the thousands of ruined and smashed ships. The ancient graveyard circled the system’s single sterile planet like a cloud of pestilence that betrayed some apocalyptical battle hundreds of years earlier. One capital ship waited while a small group of robotic fighters hurtled through the debris in search of their quarry. A larger shape moved ahead of them, a spacecraft bearing the markings of the old Centauri confederacy.

  “Here they come. Let’s do this!” shouted Khan.

  Spartan nodded and activated the controls that sent a surge of power to the maneuvering thrusters. The obsolete Broadsword class heavy bomber spun about on its axis so that it was facing in the opposite direction. Due to the peculiarities of space travel, the bomber continued on its original trajectory but now faced directly at the group of pursuing Biomech fighters. All of them were forced to travel slower than they were capable of as they moved through the thick debris field. The front of the delta shape spacecraft exposed a plethora of weapons, each one easily capable of tearing apart a fighter.

  “Now!” shouted Spartan as he depressed the trigger.

  He expected to feel the shudder through the structure as the array of weapons opened fire, but instead there was only a deathly silence and three red indicator lights on his gunnery control panel. He pressed it again and again but was met by nothing more than the click of the trigger.

  “Good work, Khan, still no guns!”

  He shook his head and hit the thruster controls to bring the vessel back around. A rocket rushed past them on the left of the craft and exploded when it struck one of the many pieces of debris floating about in the polluted zone of space.

  “I can get the turrets working, just give me another minute!” called out his friend.

  “Yeah, if you say so,” Spartan muttered under his breath.

  He redirected a burst of emergency power to the dorsal thrusters just in time to move past a large piece of capital ship wreckage.

  Bloody hell!

  His heart pounded as he half expected the top of the craft to tear open from the impact. As they moved past, he watched the top with his right eye. Luckily, nothing untoward happened, and he was able reset their course without further damage to the aging bomber. He reached out instinctively with his left arm to try and speed things up before remembering the hideous wound caused by the Biomechs. His left arm was now no more than a stump. The thought of what had happened merely increased his zeal. A flashing light above his head caught his eye.

  What now?

  Glancing at the light, he spotted the fuel-warning marker next to it. For a moment Spartan thought that was it. They were out of fuel; and would soon be dead and adrift in space. The light flickered though and then burst. With no indicator, he was forced to check the management screen on his left. There were three tanks and all showed as being well stocked with fuel.

  Must have been a faulty light, he hoped.

  The computer system monitored the debris thousands of times a second and brought up potential vectors for them to follow. Unfortunately, the safest routes made them the easiest targets for the fighters. They had also been forced to alter course, and this bought them a few more seconds. Spartan glanced out through the tiny windows on the sides and at the space junk flashing by. Most of it was unrecognizable, but some parts were visibly ship related.

  There must have been one hell of a battle here.

  He tried to imagine how many ships would have been crippled and torn apart in such a small part of space, but the sight of the robotic fighters brought his attention back.

  Concentrate you fool. You have to escape!

  The battered and exhausted looking Jötnar shook his head. He’d been pulling on cables and panels for the last five minutes to no avail. The interior of the bomber was hardly conducive to a warrior of his oversized stature, and he continually struck his head or became stuck as he moved about. Since their escape, he’d managed to bring a number of key systems online, including the prized countermeasures. The weapon system had unfortunately so far eluded him.

  “We won’t make it to the Rift at this rate!” Spartan shouted.

  Khan turned from his work and threw an angry stare at him.

  “Not helping. Spartan not helping at all. Just keep flying.”

  The crew area was placed a quarter the way along the twenty-two meter long body of the spacecraft and filled almost half of the interior. The design was very different to those in the commonly used Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter or the much more modern Hammerhead. It was considerably larger and unable to carry an assault team or dogfight in atmospheric flight, but its great strength lay in its range and capacity to sustain damage. Like most vehicles of its time a generation earlier, the heavy bomber was a spacecraft designed for a specific role rather than the universal design now being used. It could travel for weeks, even months at a time to support warship squadrons of the Confederate Navy in battle. At least that was how it might have been used twenty or thirty years earlier.

  “Tell me something, Khan; I don’t care what, just something!”

  Khan shouted at the engineer panel inside the filled the cramped interior, as once more he tried to bring more of the systems back on. Each time he tried to divert power from one place to another, he lost access to an existing system, and it was starting to annoy him. He looked at the last active system with surplus power, the emergency life-support package and moved his hand to alter the power. It dropped enough for him to divert a small portion to the secondary capacitor and instantly rewarded him with a series of status indicators flashing green.

  “Railgun is charging up. We have a gun.”

  He scanned the figures on the screen before al
lowing himself to smile.

  “Even better, we have power reserves building in the primary and secondary capacitors.”

  Spartan looked back from his pilot’s seat almost eight meters further along the craft. He was jammed into the front of the bomber, and a dozen screens around him fed information from the many complex systems aboard the craft. They bathed him in a mixture of pale blue and red light.

  “Which gun?”

  Khan nodded with a smile that seemed excessive even for him.

  “Just the one, the one down there.”

  He point at the floor of the craft.

  Spartan smiled for the first time in what seemed like months.

  “Now that’s more like it. Shame about the others.”

  “Hey, it’s a damned big gun; just make sure you hit something with it.”

  Spartan struck the emergency reverse-thrust button, and the directional cowls on the engines altered shape to direct most of the thrust ahead. Spartan pushed forward in his seat and would have crashed into the controls, if it weren’t for the heavily worn, yet extremely sturdy straps. Khan was also strapped in, but the rapid deceleration caught him by surprise. He coughed out as the air was forced from his lungs. A structural warning alarm sounded near Spartan, but he ignored it and instead watched the enemy fighters on the rear display.

  Here they come.

  With the bomber already slowing, the pursuing craft flew past him and into a position half a kilometer ahead. They were quick to realize what was happening and slowed down before spinning about to face him while continuing on the same vector. Spartan activated the main weapon coils and depressed the primary trigger. As the button clicked, he held his breath, waiting for the inevitable failure.

  “This had better work!”

  The hull of the spacecraft shuddered as the massive weapon accelerated a dense projectile the size of a man’s fist toward the fighters. The railgun was a simple weapon that had been shrunk down to a manageable size in the craft. Even so, it used up vast reserves of power and would not be able to fire for another ten seconds. Spartan watched with glee as the ultra-high velocity round slammed into the nearest Biomech fighter, smashing a hole through its center. Sections ripped off, and it drifted on its original path, now lifeless and useless.

  “One down, three more to go!” he laughed.

  Khan would love to have joined in, but he was back to the main computer system and checking their route. He looked at the scanners once more before crosschecking with the data on the bomber's navigation computer.

  “Spartan, none of this makes sense. The computer has no idea where we are.”

  The gun was ready again, and Spartan released another shot; but this time the Biomechs were ready and altered their velocities just enough for the dense charge to flash by them.

  “Who cares? The scanner still shows the open Anomaly, right?”

  Khan checked it for what felt like the fiftieth time.

  “Yes, it’s open. There’s one cruiser blocking access.”

  “Good. Then we’re going for it. How much further?”

  Khan looked at the shape of the three Biomech fighters before answering.

  “About ten more hours, assuming we can get past those three.”

  Again the main gun fired, but there was little chance of them striking the smaller Biomech fighters. They were half the size of an Alliance Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter and reacted with great speed. The shapes were anything but streamlined and looked something more akin to a small, crewless resupply shuttle but bristling with weapons. Large retro thrusters were fitted to each corner, and a single powerful engine was planted firmly in the center of the rear. Khan watched one fire a blast at them, and a single round penetrated the starboard armor and opened multiple breaches. Alarms activated, and small clouds of sealant rushed to the small tears, sealing the craft to stop it ripping itself to pieces. He turned back to the computer system and tried once more to redirect power from one of the communication arrays to the turret controls.

  “Work…you useless piece of…” he shouted before spotting an override lever.

  He turned away from his system and pulled at the fallen storage box near the side of the computer. He hadn’t seen it before because a crate of spare parts had covered it. The chase must have shaken them free, revealing an entire engineer’s panel. As well as a computer display, it was fitted out with mechanical overrides to a number of systems. Without thinking, he pulled on the lever. A low hum spread through the inside, followed by the whine of motorized turrets.

  “Khan? What have you done?” asked Spartan in an accusing tone.

  He didn’t need to ask any further. Lines of status lights lit up all around the cockpit.

  “Uh, Khan, we have power,” he said, barely believing what he was saying.

  Khan laughed back at him, and Spartan tapped the icons for each of the enemy fighters. The turrets were fully automated and tracked the craft, each turret taking careful aim with their twin automatic cannons. They were simple affairs, nothing like the railgun, yet perfectly suited for use in the coldness of space. There was no trigger for these weapons. Instead, each turret adjusted its fire pattern based on their current trajectory and velocity as they fired. Two turrets eliminated their targets with minimal ammunition, but the final turret fired once and then exploded. It caused no major damage to the bomber but did tear the weapon from its mount, whereupon it vanished into the darkness. The other two turrets spun around as though in a race and tore the last fighter to pieces with a final burst.

  “Uh, is that it?” Khan asked.

  Spartan checked his scanners and then the damage indicators for the bomber. A sickening feeling ran through his body as he checked the gauges and status bars, each time expecting to come across the one result that would leave them stranded in uncharted space for the rest of their lives. The four-engine heavy bomber was a resilient war machine, but it had already been considered obsolete when captured two decades earlier; and previous battle damage showed along its long fuselage. They had escaped from the Biomech fleet almost a month earlier and had followed the telltale trail of debris and fuel emission through four separate Rifts before coming to this one.

  “Looks clear to me, just that cruiser guarding the entrance.”

  Khan nodded and finally unclipped himself so that he could pull himself through the interior of the craft to the gunnery position just behind Spartan. The space was far too small for him, so he pulled the straps from two seats around him in an improvised but useable fashion.

  “How many does that make it now?”

  Spartan checked the scanner before answering.

  “Eleven fighters so far. I think that one might be more of a problem.”

  Khan shrugged.

  “I don’t care. Anything is better than being a prisoner on that dammed ship.”

  Spartan nodded ruefully. It was true; both of them had experiences aboard the Biomech command ship they didn't want to remember, and neither knew how long they were there. It might have been weeks, but it could as easily have been months or even years. The interrogation, punishment, and torture had taken its toll on the two of them. Their escape had been violent, and it had taken no small degree of skill and ingenuity to slip the fleet and make it this far.

  “Yeah, I’m not arguing with that.”

  He nursed his stump where one of the Biomech machines had torn away his arm. The pain had long gone, although he was convinced he could still feel where his hand had once been. The machines had done that to him, but he was certain it was for nothing more that perverted pleasure. The thought of the blades cutting into his flesh made him queasy, so he shook his head and concentrated on the pulsing shape waiting for them at the end of the debris field. It was one of the largest Spacebridge tunnels he’d seen so far.

  “What do you think is on the other side of that Rift?”

  Khan lifted up the side of his lip, an expression he often gave when confused.

  “It might be a friendly region of s
pace; it might be another region they have passed through. Either way it won’t be here.”

  “What happened here though?”

  He pointed to the debris circling the planet.

  “This was no skirmish. It looks like hundreds of thousands of ships, and a lot of them are as big as very small moons.”

  Khan looked at them. Spartan watched him, wondering if his friend was merely examining their shapes, or if he genuinely had an explanation for what was going on. Neither said anything for almost a minute before Khan turned back to him.

  “I’d say this was an extermination battle. Just look at the numbers. We have capital ships, remains of transports, and smashed space stations…and what about the planet?”

  Spartan looked at them and tried to visualize the scene of what must have been the greatest ever space battle. He had seen enough battles in his time, but even the massive battles in the Uprising had rarely involved more than a score of major ships on each side. Even the accounts of the Great War fifty years before had shown battles with no more than fifty ships as the norm.

  He’s right. This is a graveyard.

  The planet showed no signs of life, its atmosphere was toxic, and there were clear signs of destructive activity showing up on the scanners. Spartan used the long-range targeting cameras to examine the area in more detail before the glowing entrance moved into view. It instantly brought his attention back to their current predicament.

  “Remember the Biomech fleet, Khan, how many ships were there?”

  Khan lifted his shoulders slightly.

  “Who knows…a lot I would think.”

  “Hang on,” said Spartan; shifting slightly in his seat, “that’s not a cruiser, look.”

  He turned the scanning unit toward the ship guarding the entrance to the Rift and activated the passive scanning equipment. They had made that assumption based on the size of the vessel. The shape was different though, and as they watched, it became clear that it was something else.

  “You’re right, look at the configuration. A control station,” said Khan.