Legions of Orion (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 1)

by Michael G. Thomas

  They pushed on forward, but this time there was no spare room for either Jack or Wictred to do any more than follow the rear of the squad. Wictred didn’t really seem to care, but Jack was becoming more and more annoyed by the second. He pushed passed the last marine to speak, but Sergeant Ajax stopped and lifted his right hand in a fist. The entire squad dropped to their knees. With there now space to move, Jack pushed ahead and reached the Sergeant who waited a short distance ahead of the others. Jack made to step past him when the Sergeant grabbed him.

  “Watch your step, boy!” he snarled.

  Jack ignored him and quickly felt a sickening sensation as his right foot moved out into the blackness and touched nothing but empty air. The Sergeant yanked him back, and he fell backwards and to the ground ungracefully. Wictred pulled himself forward, but upon reaching them both, he stopped and looked in the same direction as the Sergeant. Jack sat upright and shook his head, anger now starting to well up from inside. Wictred grabbed his arm and pulled him up, pointing ahead. Jack could see little at first until the infrared imaging part of his armoured suit adapted to the lighting conditions.

  “Wow!” was all he could manage at the spectacle of the place. Gone was the small corridor, and instead, they were greeted by a vast open space like an ancient arena. The low level was a dust basin, and a number of galleries were cut into the walls, just like the one they were presently stood upon. Large metal shapes and craggy spikes littered the ground, but it was the shapes at the far end that intrigued Jack.

  “What is it?” asked the Sergeant, seeing the look of recognition on his face.

  “My father described a place like this, an assembly point for Biomech warriors and machines. He said it was buried deep inside Hyperion, but nobody ever found it.”

  Wictred nodded slowly and pointed to the shape in the distance.

  “That is the same shape as the Orb on Hyperion.”

  They all looked at the large stone structure that had been blasted by something powerful. The stone around it had fused as if it had been superheated by some kind of terrible weapon. Marks along the ceiling and wall expanding outwards, and substantial damage had been caused. Wictred leaned over the edge and looked down.

  “How far do you think?” asked Jack.

  Wictred shrugged and dropped off the edge. Sergeant Ajax rushed to grab him, but instead watched the Jötnar drop at half the rate he’d expected.

  Low gravity, he thought, hoping no one had realised his obvious error.

  Wictred hit the ground with a gently bump and crouched down to absorb the impact. He looked up to Jack.

  “It isn’t far, you should be able to make it.”

  Jack looked to Sergeant Ajax who looked unimpressed at the idea. Rather than discuss it, he ran and leapt from the edge. The gravity was much lower than Earth standard, but it was still enough to make him feel more than a little nervous. He built up speed and covered nearly fifteen metres horizontally from the ledge before crashing ungracefully to the ground. The impact was hard, and his gut instinct said something had broken. Even so, when he stood up, there was little trouble other than a few more scratches and dents in his armour. Wictred stood his ground, simply throwing him a look that told him to follow him up to the devastated orb. Instead, he stopped next to a pile of twisted and smashed metal. It was covered in dust, but unlike the structure itself, it looked as if it had no more than a decade or two’s worth of dust on it. He brushed the side of it with his hand to reveal dull and pitted metal.

  “Uh, does that look like...” he started, but a thumping sound made him spin around. He lifted his carbine up to face the danger, but it was the Sergeant and the other marines who had dropped down to join them. All landed safely, other than the youngest corporal who managed to hit a rock and fall over onto his back. He quickly lifted himself up and did his best to hide the embarrassment of such a messy landing.

  “My sensors are picking up a decaying power source around that thing,” said Sergeant Ajax. He lifted his left arm and activated the main sensors on his suit.

  “Yeah, part of it is still active.”

  Wictred pulled at a slab of masonry, and with his final tug, it lifted and broke in two. As it dropped, it struck another piece that fell down and smashed. With a low rumble that seemed to shake the ground, many more pieces broke apart like a great domino effect. It went on for almost thirty seconds before calm returned and the dust started to settle.

  “Maybe next time, you don’t touch anything,” said Jack sarcastically to his old friend.

  Wictred was about to respond when the dust finally cleared enough to reveal a number of badly smashed and damaged machines. Their shapes were hard to determine as they were covered with what appeared to be broken limbs.

  “They must have been covered by the masonry,” said Sergeant Ajax.

  He looked up and lit the ceiling with his suit-mounted lamp.

  “Yeah, look. Half the ceiling must have come down at some point and buried them down here.”

  Wictred, ever curious when finding new and unusual things, took a step nearer the closest of the damaged machines. He reached out and lifted one of the appendages, to the bemused expressions of the others. It was joined in multiple places and as thick as a man’s leg. At the end nearest Wictred was a flat, hardened piece of metal, shaped much like a blade, but it was badly scored and chipped in places.

  “Uh, is it me or does that thing look like a weapon?” asked the Corporal.

  Sergeant Ajax tapped his comms button immediately.

  “General, we have something down here. I suggest you check our feeds.”

  He then signalled for the rest of his squad to step back. Jack and Wictred did the same without question.

  “Sergeant, good work. Stay where you are. I’ll send a team down to...”

  “General?” he called out, but the communication outside the cavern had been completely blocked out. He beckoned Jack to come to his side.

  “Something’s blocking our signal! We need to get out of here, and fast!”

  He turned around and took a step forward but stopped as if he’d hit a wall. Jack looked down to see a large metal spike jammed through his armoured chest and sticking out of his back. From the ground, the smashed machine started to move, each of its appendages shaking and grinding from the dust and damage. Wictred, Jack and the three remaining marines took a number of steps away from the machine that had so brutally killed Sergeant Ajax. Across the floor at least half a dozen of the machines were starting to move. It was a fraction of what littered the cavernous space, but it was enough to change their mission from discovery to combat.

  “Okay, stay calm and get ready,” said Jack in a slow, firm voice.

  Though he wasn’t military, none of the marines argued. They each lifted their rifles and aimed at the moving shapes.

  “Looks like we’re in trouble again!” chortled Wictred to himself.

  Then the first of the machines pulled its blade from the still corpse of Sergeant Ajax and lifted itself up onto its creaking legs. Although smashed and damaged, it still managed to reach nearly two metres in height before moving menacingly towards them. Jack pointed his weapon at its centre.

  “Kill them all!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In the shifting political upheaval of the creation of the Alliance, some colonies prospered while other withered in importance. Proxima Prime was one of the few that managed to maintain its position. Though the disparate colonies on its surface still harboured grudges from the violence of the Uprising, they prospered through the new trade opportunities offered via the Interstellar Network. Both Prime and Terra Nova became the most populous and significant planets in the Alliance...until the acquisition of New Charon in the Orion Nebula.

  Proxima Prime

  The surface of the moon showed numerous sighs of impact damage, much like the early photographs of Earth’s only moon had shown hundreds of years before; craters from the size of a man’s hand through to those as large as a st
arship covered the surface. But unlike the lunar surface, both a viable atmosphere and the magnetosphere of the planet it orbited protected this moon. By all accounts, this should have reduced the vulnerability to orbital damage. General Rivers looked at one of the holes in the rocks nearby and wondered if there was a possibility the damage was man-made. He was in no doubt that he was seeing damage, but he still had no idea what had caused it.

  Those engineers had better get a move on!

  A series of flashing indicators lit up on his tactical display. It was a simple, but instant indication, that he had just lost both communication and IFF contact with Sergeant Ajax’s unit underground.

  “Sergeant, respond!” he repeated for the fifth time, but there was no change.

  One of the lieutenants had already redirected their last drone to the area, and it was bringing back surface shots of the location where the squad had entered. It showed nothing of use, unfortunately.

  “Wait, the drone is picking up vibrations through the rock walls. Yeah, it’s weapons fire.”

  General Rivers rested his chin in his left hand; this wasn’t the news he wanted. Indecision was a killer, however, and he knew from experience that action needed to be taken and fast. He tapped the squad leaders from half of the teams still out searching, as well as Spartan’s APS team.

  “This is a Code Red priority order. I’ve lost contact with 4thSquad, and we’re detecting underground weapons fire. These are the exact positions. Get there fast, and get them out of there!”

  A stream of acknowledgements came in, and he could see the icons for the squads already making their way to the last known position of Jack and his people. As expected, the fastest of the squads was that of Spartan’s. In less than a minute, they’d already covered double the ground of the marine squads.

  “General, what did they find?” asked Spartan over the comms channel.

  General Rivers tapped a button and sent the last video feeds from Sergeant Ajax directly to Spartan’s suit.

  “See for yourself. It looks like they found an underground cavern full of something. Possibly ruins, but there were signs of metal.”

  “Metal...wait...I’ve seen this place.”

  “What do you mean?” asked the General.

  His next words were slightly muffled as the squad bounced and jumped their way closer to the target.

  “Yeah, it looks just like the Biomech assembly area I saw seventeen years ago.”

  General Rivers looked back at his tactical display in confusion.

  “I don’t understand, Spartan, that was on Hyperion. I thought we’d already established that the site had been destroyed.”

  “Well, it sure looks like it. Don’t forget it was on the other side of the planetary rift. Maybe this is where it’s connected to?”

  This last comment made the General nearly take a step back.

  A ground based rift between galaxies? Is that even possible? He wondered.

  “Just get down there, Spartan. Find the squad and get them out of there. Leave the science to the specialists. They’ll be here within the hour, and we need this area made safe.”

  “Understood. Out.”

  Three marines moved passed carrying a metal object between them. He recognised the shape as one of the new autonomous supply mules. They placed it on the ground and activated the device. Four legs shook, and it then stood up, waiting patiently. The legs faced inwards like people holding a stretcher, and the middle section looked like an open basket with gaps and spaces for ammunition and gear. He’d seen them many times before but never this small or light. One of the marines turned to him.

  “General, we’ve programmed her for search and rescue.”

  “Good, get her down to the site and underground. I want our people out!”

  The marine saluted and turned back to the machine. As he fiddled with the control system, the General connected directly to the orbiting ships with the communications relay. The face of the Commodore appeared.

  “General, what’s happening down there?” asked Commodore Lewis.

  “We’ve located man-made structures, bodies and artefacts. It’s exactly as we suspected. Somebody has been here before, and by the look of things, a long time ago. We’ve got trouble, though. One of my squads has lost contact, and I’m detecting gunfire.”

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “I see. What can I do to assist?”

  “I need engineers to establish a permanent landing site. Also, my reserves need to be ready in case of trouble. We may need their help soon.”

  “Understood, General. I appreciate you have your hands full, but you might like to know that the recon drones have picked up abandoned settlements on two other moons. Science teams have already landed on one, and more are coming through.”

  “I see, well make sure they are protected.”

  “Good hunting, General.”

  * * *

  Jack and Wictred took careful aim at the first machine; unleashing short bursts from their firearms. The L52 Mark II Assault Carbine was a triple-barrelled coil weapon that used magnetised projectiles rather than chemicals. They used the high-power mode that expended the capacitor to propel all three projectiles at once. It reduced the rate of fire considerably but did maximum damage. Holes the size of fists appeared in the machine, but it was only when Jack hit it directly in the centre mass, did it drop to the ground.

  “What the hell!” shouted the Corporal as he blasted indiscriminately at the other approaching machines. They looked like large mechanical spiders with raised blades and armoured shells. Their gunfire caused damage but failed to drop a single enemy.

  “Fall back, slowly!” Jack called out.

  Inch by inch, they stepped further from the machines and towards the remains of the arched and heavily damaged structure they had spotted from the ledge above. Seven machines were now moving towards them, but luckily they also appeared badly damaged and took their time to reach them.

  “Something happened down here. They have already seen battle,” said Wictred with interest as he continued shooting at them.

  “Look out!” cried the Corporal, and a dark shape emerged from their flank. It was another of the machines, but this one must have stayed low and in the shadows. It brought down two of its arms, instantly crushing one of the privates and then lurched at the Corporal. In a fluid motion, Wictred removed a crude looking blade from his flank and hacked down at the machine. It was shaped much like a Kopis blade from old Earth. It was slightly crooked and front heavy, making it ideal for hacking. Like the glaives used by his more senior brethren, this was built from the latest alloys and was able to smash and damage the limbs of the machine as it struggled to reach the Corporal.

  “Out of the way!” shouted Jack. He jumped sideways and blasted the machine in the centre with a single high-power shot from his carbine. It destroyed the machine but also sent shards of metal in multiple directions. One piece embedded into the collar of Wictred, and a second struck Jack in the thigh, instantly causing a pressure leak.

  “Alert! Alert!” called the suit’s internal alarm system. “Pressure Malfunction!”

  The interior quickly filled with a haze as the internal repair system attempted to perform a temporary seal. It took just a few seconds to perform before clearing. The surviving four stepped back until their backs were to the smashed arch structure. They all kept shooting, but the machines were now staying low to the ground and using the debris and their broken brethren to stay out of sight as they covered the open ground.

  “Suppression fire, slow them down!” Jack ordered, and with a quick flick changed his weapon to the lower powered mode that fired each chamber in succession. The rate of fire went up considerably so that it made a buzzing sound more like a power saw. Streaks of superheated energy rippled through the space, as the projectiles picked at the targets whenever they could be seen.

  “It’s working,” said the Corporal optimistically.

  “Yeah, for now. It won’t last
forever,” said Wictred, but with less humour this time.

  * * *

  Spartan reached the entrance to the ruined site first, closely followed by Khan and the other Jötnar. He didn’t even hesitate, throwing himself through the damaged entrance, ripped open just minutes before by Wictred. Khan followed, hot on his heels, but with his glaive hung low and ready for trouble. The Jötnar had learnt very early on that in underground combat, it was just as important to carry heavy edged weapons, as it was to carry firearms. It was a lesson they had picked up on during the many hunts in the jungle of Hyperion, and especially when searching the ruins.

  “General, we’re inside. My suit is picking up an increasing power source. I’d say that is the source of the comms blocking. We need to shut it down fast.”

  “Very well. More squads are on the way. Get it done, Spartan. I will meet you down there.”

  Spartan moved on and continued to follow the footprints in the dusty ground that clearly marked the passage of the previous marine party. Intermixed with the prints of the marines were the even larger footprints, indicating the presence of Wictred. He turned to Khan.

  “This is definitely the way they went.”

  As if to answer his comment, a stream of heavy gunfire reverberated through the chamber. Instinctively, each of the APS team ducked down to avoid what could have been devastating gunfire. Nothing came their way, just the sound of bursts of fire that Spartan quickly recognised.

  “That’s coilgun fire. They need help, let’s go!”

  He rushed off, without even checking on the rest of his group and headed deeper inside the tunnel. Every extra metre they travelled, the louder the gunfire became.

  Why only coilguns, though? He wondered.

  The weapons had only entered full service through the Alliance in the last decade, and very few had made it to the black market. The chances of somebody, other than those officially supplied by the Alliance arsenals actually using them, was almost nil.