Legions of Orion (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 1)

by Michael G. Thomas

  Sounds like hell, he thought half-heartedly. If the people back home could see it, I don’t think they’d be quite so excited.

  The other planets were less interesting, most of them rocky or ice planets with no usable atmosphere. Two asteroid belts split the planets up into three main groups with the single gas giant being closer to the central star. He placed the secpad back down on his bedside unit and looked over to the clock.

  I’ll take an hour’s break, and then its nose to the grindstone time.

  * * *

  Spartan paced about his briefing room with the look of a man that was losing patience. He’d only been in the room for a few minutes, but his list of virtues had never included patience. The room itself was simply decorated with a number of paintings hanging on the wall, depicting various periods of history. From imagery of the Ancient Greeks in their battles with Persian hordes, up through to more recent battles in the Uprising. Most people tended to avoid discussing events of the last decades, but as CEO of the company, Spartan had wanted his people to confront issues straight on. A long oval table filled the middle of the room, and a model of the Alliance was projected directly above it. The door finally opened, and in walked his wife Teresa and his son.

  “About time!” he said before instantly regretting his outburst. Teresa moved quickly towards him and threw her arms around his upper body, while Jack moved towards the wall, saying nothing.

  “You’ve been gone a long time, Spartan. I thought you’d gone on one of your adventures with Gun again!” she said with relief.

  Teresa was now in her late forties, yet her constant physical training and slight build gave her the youth and looks of a woman in her early thirties. Her black hair ran down even longer than when they had been in the Marine Corps together. Behind them appeared Intelligence Director Johnson, but the absence of his assistant, Agent Hammacher, was unexpected.

  “Spartan...Jack, we need to talk,” he said, motioning for them to sit around the table. They complied, but Teresa remained on her feet and blocked his path.

  “Johnson, what the hell is going on here? This is my family we’re talking about!”

  For a second, it looked as though she would strike him, but his body language remained relaxed, and he move back a few inches to give ground.

  “Teresa, I know that none of your family would be involved in anything of detriment to the Alliance. That isn’t why I am here. For official purposes, I am looking into some of your son’s more interesting adventures. But in reality, there is something much more worrying going on.”

  He turned from Teresa and to the table.

  “Isn’t there, Jack?”

  The young man looked at Johnson and then to his father. The two had a troubled history, with Jack frequently getting into trouble, and Spartan doing his utmost to get him to calm down. Jack, on this occasion, seemed much calmer than normal and simply nodded at Spartan before looking back to Johnson.

  “Yes, Wictred and I have been tracking one of the sources Gun put out for the hunters.”

  “Hunters?” retorted Spartan. “They are angry juveniles looking to bag their first kill. I thought you’d stopped running with them?”

  Jack shook his head and continued, doing his best to ignore his father.

  “There have been rumours about this new isolationist movement. We were following a group that have been trying to obtain technical specification for specifically, the control mechanisms.”

  “What?” Spartan snapped.

  Teresa reached out and touched his arm.

  “Spartan, let him explain...please.”

  He sighed but said no more, for now.

  “The group here was just one of three that we have intel on. We thought they were going to try and send something through a rift and then bring the entire system down from the inside. Looks like we were wrong, but we found this instead.”

  Jack pulled out a battered looking datapad, a model that hadn’t been manufactured for well over ten years and slid it across to Johnson. With a quick tap, he activated the device and ran through the images.

  “You found this here, in the colony?”

  Jack nodded.

  Johnson examined them for a few more seconds before passing it to Spartan and Teresa. Spartan wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at, but Teresa recognised the gate structure almost instantly.

  “These are schematics for the rift generator that was destroyed on Hyperion, aren’t they?”

  “What?” Spartan barked. “I thought all information on Hyperion was either destroyed or taken over by Alliance Intelligence?”

  Johnson laced both of his hands on the table and sighed.

  “Yes, this is what we suspected. We’ve had more than a good decade in the Alliance, and a lot of it down to people like you and Teresa. The War is over, and the enemy are beaten, but there are still people out there who disagree with our plans. The Network is the greatest achievement in the last five hundred years, and it is forcing our colonies together, not apart. But there are some, even in military circles, who have long-term concerns about the technology.”

  Spartan shook his head.

  “I don’t understand. The Network has been proven safe...I should know, I’ve used it enough. We can travel between colonies in an instant, and it means trade and communications from here to Prometheus, and even back to Earth, are now possible in hours and days. Why would anybody not want that?”

  Jack looked away from Spartan in irritation, but it wasn’t exactly clear why.

  “What?” Spartan demanded.

  Jack looked around the room until fixing on Johnson who nodded at him.

  “There are three groups that have big issues with the Network. First are those in the less official markets, traders, black marketers, pirates and smugglers. With all trade using the Network, it has become much more difficult to run illegal operations. Second, the military.”

  “What?” exclaimed Johnson in surprise.

  Spartan lifted his hand.

  “You started this.” He then looked to his son. “Go on Jack, explain.”

  “The use of the Network has reduced the importance of the long-distance ships and the transports and troops that go with them. No world is more than a few hours from a Network rift, so why have so many ships and facilities? You could have just one large Naval base with a dozen ships to protect the entire Alliance.”

  “Really?” asked Spartan in feigned surprise. “And what is the third?”

  “Combat veterans. There are some that think the use of this technology is hubris. By using this technology, something that we found rather than created, we are creating reliance upon it, and also dabbling into things that could bring back the rumours of Hyperion.”

  A tap at the door stopped their discussion for a moment. Teresa stood up and walked to the door. She stepped outside for a moment and was gone for almost a minute before returning and closing it behind her. Rather than speaking, she walked over to the computer system on the wall. She tapped it and brought up a projection of the Prometheus-Orion Spacebridge. It was an unfamiliar sight to Spartan who had spent most of the last eighteen months organising the security systems of a dozen ships and four different colonies; the Network was closely guarded by Alliance personnel only, and he was quite happy it stayed that way.

  “This is the experimental Spacebridge that Admiral Anderson is working on. Very few people outside of this room and the staff working on it know that the data used to construct it and the coordinates for its exit point were discovered at the Hyperion dig site. The bridge has been created, and ANS Beagle has gone through and established a stable path back to Prometheus. It will be going public shortly, but not until an issue is resolved.”

  Jack looked at the others in surprise but noticed they seemed unfazed.

  “What the hell is this? Why didn’t I...”

  Spartan grinned at him.

  “Because you never needed to know.”

  He then looked to Teresa and the image.


  “What is it?”

  A device on Director Johnson’s wrist started to beep, and he lifted his hand to be excused for a moment. He looked down, and in just a few seconds, his face turned ashen from whatever news he had just heard. He looked up to Teresa.

  “I must commend your intelligence network Ms Morato. It appears you beat my own department.”

  He stood up and walked to the model.

  “May I?” he asked.

  Teresa nodded and stepped to the side. Johnson zoomed in on the image of ANS Beagle that was now far away in the Orion Nebula.

  “A short time ago, a terrorist unit set off a device aboard the main vessel, killing a number of people. Information coming in says it was Lieutenant Jenson, an officer that had previously served on your old ship, the Santa Maria. I’ve been recalled to Prometheus to head up the investigation, and to assist the Admiral with the security of this new territory.”

  He paused for a few seconds as he considered his next move.

  “Look, I know this is a little unorthodox, but I have doubts about almost everybody. Hell, that’s my job, right now. We have an entirely new region of space with planets, moons and stations to consolidate. I could do with an independent eye on this one. Help with establishing security procedures, personnel and patrols, but more importantly, I need somebody outside of the system to help with this investigation. Who knows how far it could go? Your company is already providing security for Alliance facilities, is it not?”

  The room fell silent at this last point. Johnson could sense they weren’t quite sure how to respond to his request.

  “I also have a request from the Admiral. He wants you and your company here to assist. It looks like our presence in Orion is going to be long-term.”

  “Isn’t that what Alliance military forces are designed for?” asked a suspicious Jack.

  Johnson smiled.

  “Of course, and who was instrumental in helping create the Alliance Marine Corps? There are times where private security is preferable to the installation of permanent military garrisons. If nothing else, something tells me that Orion is going to become the new frontier, and one that is ripe for exploitation. If you don’t go, I can assure you there are others, like Terra Corps that will jump at the chance. Not interested?”

  Spartan looked to Teresa who smiled right back at him.

  “If it’s a chance to get away from Epsilon Eridani, then you can count me in. I’ve already had enough of this place.”

  Director Johnson smiled at her response.

  “Good. Get a small team together, and meet me at the spaceport.”

  With that last message, he was gone.

  Spartan looked at his young son and his wife, both who seemed excited and a little confused at what had just happened.

  “Well, you’d better pack your bags because we have work to do, and it looks like it might take us to a new star system.”

  Jack stood up and headed for the door. Spartan reached out to grab him.

  “Keep this between us now, okay?” he said seriously.

  “What about Wictred? He’s been helping me with this. He could help.”

  Spartan nodded.

  “I have no doubt about that. Let me speak with Gun first. We have things to discuss. Until then not a word to anybody, and that includes Wictred. Understood?”

  Jack agreed, but it wasn’t without protest. Once he’d left the room, it was just Spartan and Teresa left. She walked up to the door and hit the internal electronic lock mechanism. It clicked shut with a dull thud, locking them both in the room. She turned back to face him with a look on his face that he knew all too well.

  “We should be getting ready to leave,” he said as firmly as he could muster.

  Teresa moved closer and then pushed him back to the table.

  “Not just yet, we have a little time, don’t we?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she leaned over his prone body and placed her lips on his.

  * * *

  The fleet of five ships moved into a high orbit over the largest moon. Two of the frigates had stayed behind to guard the numerous civilian ships and engineer teams coming through the Spacebridge. This left just two Crusader class cruisers and three frigates to continue on to start a preliminary investigation into the gas giant, its moons and the unusual signal that had been detected when ANS Beagle had first arrived. Before leaving the Spacebridge, the two cruisers had been reinforced with more crew to bring their complements up to full strength.

  Inside the CIC of ANS Dragon, and in front of the tactical display, stood Commodore Lewis, two of his science officers and Colonel Daniels, the newly arrived commander of Alliance Marine Corps. A detailed model of the moon lay in front of them, as well as lines that indicated the paths of the scores of other moons and debris circling the great planet. The moons were dwarfed by the great bulk of the planet gas giant of whose diameter exceeded an entire astronomical unit.

  “Explain that to me again?” asked the Commodore.

  The most senior of the science team, Commander Garret Blackford altered the image to show the shapes on the surface of the moon.

  “The surface shows an artificial construction near this region of craters. The reconnaissance drone isolated the source of the radio signal to be coming directly from the centre of this shape.”

  The dark collection of shapes expanded until just one hexagonal looking site filled the screen. It was grainy, and substantial noise had obliterated much of what they were looking at.

  “Well, that’s great. All I’m seeing are shapes on the surface, and you’re telling me that some, if not all, of this site is artificial?”

  “It is more than that, Sir,” explained the second of the two men. “We have faint traces of expelled fuel on a landing trajectory with the body. Somebody has been there and in the last day.”

  Commodore Lewis looked intrigued at this information. Commander Blackford continued his briefing.

  “It isn’t just the surface of the moon. Of this Star System, we’ve established the following information. There are eight planets orbiting this red subgiant and there is a distant companion star, an orange main sequence star approximately three hundred astronomical units away. The nearest planet to the sun is the gas giant we are approaching. The remaining planets are an odd mixture of mainly ice planets, including a heavily volcanic world, and one that seems to have methane oceans. There are also three rock worlds with potentially interesting properties for establishing refining operations. The jewel though is the fourth planet, already named by the AANC (Alliance Astronomical Naming Commission) as Luthien. It has a thin but corrosive atmosphere, point seven Earth gravity, iron silicate structure and...

  “Commander, we appreciate your interested in the rest of this system, but for now we have a specific mission around the first planet...this moon, no matter how insignificant it might appear.” He explained with an almost disappointed tone to his voice. It was perfectly understandable though. There were a number of more interesting targets to visit, but while exploratory drones and science vessels moved into the system to explore, he had been given the role of investigating the signal from a mere satellite, a moon of the gas giant.

  The Commodore examined each of the planets on the display, but apart from mild interest, he appeared less than excited at the information.

  “Is this what we travelled over a thousand light years for?”

  Commander Blackford grinned at his comment. Wait till he hears this, then.

  “That is just window dressing, Sir. Look at this.”

  He pointed to an image of dark shapes in space.

  “We’ve also found traces of debris in orbit around the moon. The recon drone is moving towards the largest of the objects, but our best guess is that they are the remains of something that was built out here. There are low-level traces of radiation from several segments. We need to perform detailed scans, but our first assessment is that they are the remnants of a vessel of some kind.”

&nb
sp; Commodore Lewis leaned back slightly with a sceptical look on his face.

  “You do understand that we have never been here before? This is new territory, ripe for exploration and exploitation. We built this Spacebridge to explore a new, virgin territory, and you’re telling me there are signs of a derelict vessel here?”

  “Well, Sir, we did select these coordinates based on the Hyperion Rift data. Is it that far-fetched that we would discover something, other than this?”

  Commodore Lewis didn’t really want to answer the question. Like many military people, he had wondered at the reasoning behind establishing their very first long-distance Spacebridge into the unknown. There were star systems mere light years away with known planets that would have made better sense in every way. Yet the word from Alliance Central Command was that establishing a connection to Orion was of the highest priority. He tapped the image of the moon and turned to the rest of his crew.

  “Look, the assumption with this transmission is that it is something to do with the arrival of ANS Beagle and possibly her own saboteurs. We are missing one of the pair, and there is a chance, however unlikely, she may have escaped to the moon and is broadcasting a distress signal.”

  Commander Blackford shook his head.

  “No, Sir. My best guess is that this site below is a derelict station or post of some kind. With the distance to the surface, and the relatively thick atmosphere of the moon, it isn’t going to be easy to understand much more.”