Machine Gods (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 2)

by Michael G. Thomas

  “But you do know the route to the enemy’s homeworld if we can access your old Network?” asked Spartan.

  Tuke nodded and replied quietly, somehow forgetting that his suit used a fixed volume for the translators.

  “Yes. If we can reach this place, we will be able to enter the Network again. I cannot promise how much is still intact though. Large parts were held open artificially, only some of the Rifts are natural. To return to New Charon will take many weeks, and we may have to pass through the Enemy’s domains unless we can find safe routes through. It is a very long time since we dared use the Network like this. Who knows what we might find, or if we will even make it out alive.”

  Tuke looked to his T’Kari comrades, and one by one they looked at Spartan. He wondered what they were thinking but knew from experience that they gave nothing away unless pressed. Lovett and Khan arrived; the rest of the team was resting in the room opposite the bridge where they had set up temporary sleeping quarters.

  “We’re ready,” Khan said firmly.

  “Good,” replied Spartan who then looked back to Tuke and pointed at the screen.

  Lovett and Khan were both carrying their weapon across their bodies as if expecting trouble. In reality, it was simply because they wanted to be ready for trouble, even though there was little, if anything, they could actually do. Khan gave Spartan the nod.

  “Okay, Spartan, let’s do this.”

  Spartan in turn looked to Tuke.

  “Power up the engines and take us away from this place. If we can’t go home, we’ll do the next best thing. Find where they live and bring back intelligence. Anything is better than just floating out here with the rest of their fleet.”

  Khan grumbled.

  “Or bring back their bodies,” he muttered.

  Spartan grinned and watched in awe as the fast and advanced T’Kari vessel accelerated toward the nearby Spacebridge. If they hadn’t explained it to him, he would have assumed it led back to where they started. According to Tuke, this particular Rift would bring them to a dead Nexus where dozens more Rifts awaited them. The T’Kari had an odd look to him as he explained their destination, and Spartan suspected there was more to the place than Tuke was letting on. As they entered the tear in space and time, the vessel shook and the colors around them changed to a dull blue. It took a few seconds for Spartan’s eyes to adjust before he could make out the triple stars in front of him and the derelict remains of a vast space station.

  “Now that is impressive!” said Lovett, more to himself than anybody else.

  The structure was shaped much like the station orbiting Prometheus, but this one was infinitely larger. Around it floated a number of smaller stations, each showing the same levels of destruction and devastation. Spartan looked to Tuke.

  “What happened here?” he asked.

  Tuke took in a long breath.

  “This was one of our trading systems, the first sector ever colonized by the T’Kari. It was destroyed over two hundred of your years ago.”

  Lovett looked at the objects, concentrating on what appeared to be vast derelict ships.

  “Who did this?”

  “We did,” announced Tuke, to the surprise of Spartan, Lovett, and Khan.

  “What?” Khan snapped back.

  “It is true,” Tuke explained. “Rebel factions tried to split away two centuries ago. There was a great war, and our weapons devastated this entire sector. Now nobody lives here.”

  Spartan was the only one still watching the main window display and the vast station. As he looked at it, he noticed shapes moving amongst the crippled sections.

  “Are you sure about that?” he asked.

  Tuke followed the direction he was watching and then tapped several buttons. The image magnified, showing the particular section, as well as several small ships that could have been just a hundred meters from the structure. Red symbols on their hulls marked them out as belong to something, but what Spartan couldn’t tell.

  “Your people?” he asked.

  Tuke shrugged, mimicking the gesture used by Spartan.

  “No. I do not know them.”

  “Very interesting,” Spartan said, scratching his chin. He turned to Khan and Lovett.

  “Get the team ready. I want to check this out.”

  * * *

  Teresa waited at the observation level that looked down into the training hall. It was technically in the early hours as the ship was running on Terra Nova time, as was normal throughout the Navy, and most of the ship was quiet. Unknown to any but those immediately below her, this was a well-planned training mission that had required modifications to the internal layout of the ship. Over the last week, she’d drilled the marines, and knowing there were only two more weeks left before they reached the Helios Gateway made her nervous. Captain Llewellyn waited alongside her, as well as the gruff drill instructor for the ship, Gunnery Sergeant Hacket. There was a great deal riding on this operation, not least to see how the marines were progressing.

  “No Commander Gun?” asked Captain Llewellyn with surprise.

  Teresa shook her head.

  “No, he’s working with the marines on ANS Sentry. You’ve seen what some of them are like and Gun has, well, a rather unique way of instilling discipline.”

  Gunnery Sergeant Hacket heard the last part and laughed to himself. Any other marine would have stayed silent, but this old warhorse of a warrior felt comfortable around Major Morato, and in the time she’d been aboard, he had found more and more to like about her and her methods.

  “Something to say, Gunnery Sergeant?” asked Teresa.

  The man looked up at her and simply grinned at her.

  “Nothing much, Sir, only that the Commander is just the kind of guy we need. I’ve been saying for years that we should be using the Biomechs to improve the quality of our marines. Instead, we get safety nuts from logistics telling us what we can and cannot do. Don’t do this; it could hurt them. Don’t do this; it could harm them psychologically. We both know about combat, Sir. If you don’t work like a bastard, you’ll be buried, and fast. Now this Gun, he ain’t no tactical genius, but he’s tough, has seen action, and won’t take shit from anybody. This is a new unit, and we need people like him to get these slackers into line.”

  Both Teresa and the Captain were taken aback by the vulgarity from Hacket. He noticed them both but refused to apologize. It was something that only a well-decorated gunnery sergeant could even consider to try. Not that it mattered though, Teresa was only interested in getting the unit ready for whatever uncertainty awaited them through the Helios Gateway. She’d been through enough unknown scenarios in the past to know that preparation was key. She didn’t care what the jarheads themselves thought of her.

  What were those names? Teresa thought, remembering what she’d heard from the other men in the unit. Yes, Iron Bitch was one. Ball Breaker was another. There were others she suspected but that was fine, just as long as they didn’t try using them around her. She looked back at the training hall from their position on the observation level. Captain Llewellyn moved closer to her.

  “Have you seen the latest bulletins from Carthago with the protests?”

  Teresa nodded slowly, surprised at the change of subject. She was always suspicious when anybody mentioned Carthago.

  “Yes I have, it looks like order has been restored though.”

  The Captain looked down to the hall for a moment longer before continuing. His voice was softer than normal with a hint of melancholy about it. Teresa suspected he was about to reveal something, quite possibly serious.

  “My ex-wife lives there,” he said calmly.

  Teresa didn’t know quite what to say. She’d received confirmation that her grandparents were dead, yet she couldn’t bring herself to share such private and personal information with somebody like the Captain. It was something she would have to deal with in her own time, ideally when she was reunited with Spartan. She’d already sent secure messages to her three children, bu
t with them all now in the military, it was impossible to easily speak with them. She looked to the Captain and noticed him still looking at her. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, no; it was more that Teresa was now second-in-command and needed to maintain a distance from her officers. Familiarity was fine in the lower ranks, but right now, she needed respect and discipline if she was to turn the 17th around. Luckily, the Captain looked back to her with a sly grin.

  “They couldn’t have hit a nicer a person,” he added sarcastically.

  Try as she might, Teresa couldn’t quite keep herself from laughing. Gunnery Sergeant Hacket seemed less than impressed. Like most of the men in his position, he thrived on discipline, and by all account, was one of the best in the entire Marine Corps. Teresa regained her composure and checked her watch.

  Three more minutes.

  “I kind of understand why they are protesting on Carthago though,” explained Captain Llewellyn, with a tentative hint of a question in his voice.

  “Of all the colonies and planets in the Alliance, Carthago is the one that has never recovered. I was looking at the images from the press. The cities still look the same as they did in the Uprising and even going back to the Great War.”

  Teresa knew all of this only too well. She’d been born there, after all. Carthago was one of the roughest and most troublesome parts of the Alliance. There were people there that hated the Alliance just as much as the Zealots and the Echidna Union before it. She’d experienced racism, intolerance, and poverty while living there and had little interest in spending any more time there than was necessary. Even so, she saw no reason to share this kind of information with him. In fact, it was proving useful to learn as much as she could from all around her.

  “Gunnery Sergeant, what do you think?” she asked.

  The experienced marine looked to her, his expression frozen like ice.

  “Sir, I leave politics to civilians. The citizens of Carthago are a tough, nasty bunch. They are well motivated and make damned good marines,” he said firmly, looking back to the training hall, “but they don’t make good citizens,” he finished.

  Teresa warmed to him at those words. As a citizen herself, she found his simple summary to be surprisingly accurate. There were few that would argue that Teresa was a good citizen. She was fiery and had little time for politics either. But as a marine, her service had been exemplary. Captain Llewellyn watched her for a moment before speaking again.

  “I heard rumors that the crash site on Carthago was contaminated. Some are saying it was the work of planet-based terrorists, not hijackers of a spacecraft. I’m not surprised. There have been bombings, kidnappings, and hijacks in that area since I was a kid.”

  “Who knows?” she replied, doing her best to change the topic.

  At the same time, she was trying to avoid thinking of the conversation she’d had with Intelligence Director Johnson. The two were firm friends, and he’d been trying to gauge the mood in the Corps with regards to the growing violence on Carthago. The words that stuck in her mind were his description of the planet itself. He’d said the citizens were losing hope. Starvation in the outlying towns was becoming prevalent, and few traders from the other Alliance colonies were stopping there anymore. Anger and resentment of Alliance authority was increasing. He had told her that a large number of state departments had been attacked, and discontentment was continuing to spread.

  Focus, she told herself, there’s no point worrying about things you can’t change.

  “Major, ten seconds,” said the Gunnery Sergeant.

  Teresa looked back into the hall and the scenario laid out before them. The hall had been transformed to look like it had been attacked. Boxes were overturned and equipment lay strew everywhere. A number of dummies lay on the floor to represent marine casualties, and a thin layer of smoke hung throughout the hall. To all intents and proposes, the hall was the landing bay of a ship, and it had just seen a firefight. Behind the improvised cover was one of the most experienced platoons from ANS Crusader, the flagship of the Navy and home to the best marines in the Corps. Forty-two marines, dressed in a rough approximation of the clothing and armor worn by the T’Kari Raiders, waited quietly. It wasn’t perfect, far from it actually. But his was the best she’d been able to arrange at such short notice, and in the low light of the open space, it looked real enough. The lights on the walls flashed red and the emergency klaxons started.

  “Now it begins,” said Captain Llewellyn quietly.

  They watched patiently as the first minute ticked by without a thing happening. The T’Kari fidgeted and adjusted their positions as they awaited the marines. One group pushed ahead, placed something on the ground in front of their positions, and ducked back into cover. Then the first squad rushed in. They were hastily dressed and fumbling with their rifles. The squad had clearly staggered out of their bunks, grabbed their weapons, and rushed to the sound of danger. All weapons for the four embarked companies were equipped for training rounds only and could only be checked by examining the settings on the weapons. They actually used live ammunition in the coilguns as the weapons simply emitted metal slugs. The power selector of the weapons themselves determined the velocity and therefore the lethality. For training purposes, they would move at just over a hundred meters a second and with the same force as a baseball. Only when they were within a few days of the Helios Gateway would the weapons’ live fire mode be activated.

  Unless we need it earlier, Teresa thought.

  “Look at them,” complained the Gunnery Sergeant.

  He watched with amusement as the first of the Marine squads was cut to pieces by a single volley of gunfire. The projectiles from the T’Kari coilguns struck with force, and the bruises would definitely be felt for a few days to come. They each walked away from the training hall with defeat showing clearly from their body language. Teresa’s secpad vibrated, and she looked down to see four marines were flagged as KIA already. Not that she needed the update; it was quite clear what was happening down below. She shook her head, disappointed but not entirely surprised at the result. There would be casualties in a scenario such as this; it was a surprise attack, after all.

  “It’s a simulated boarding action, and they are the first on the scene. Let’s see what the next squads do.”

  As if to answer her question, a heavy exchange of gunfire erupted from the multiple entrances to the remodeled training hall. She counted two squads of marines, and they were taking their time. Instead of rushing headlong, they’d secured the one side of the hall and were spreading out to take advantage of any available cover. Their gunfire was relatively ineffective, but they were keeping the T’Kari busy.

  “At this rate, it will take an hour to clear the hall and another fifty casualties,” the Gunnery Sergeant said bitterly.

  Teresa had read his dossier and could understand his irritation. He’d seen a long and active career, only to take a permanent injury in his lungs that had moved him off frontline combat duty. She’d seen him training with the other marines, and he was out of breath in the same time as the newest recruits. Even so, she’d never seen him give up. She looked at him and smiled, but in a way that implied sympathy rather than pleasure.

  “If fifty casualties are what it takes to secure the ship, then fifty is what we will lose. The important thing is for them to block access to the rest of the ship.”

  She pointed at the marines.

  “Look at them. They’ve blocked access completely and are working methodically to contain the threat. They are using marine bodies as armor, instead of leaving it to the ship. It’s costly, but it is doing the job.”

  He looked at her with a measured look of respect. It was hard to find officers that understood what needed to be done, while retaining loyalty and respect of the enlisted marines. The job of an officer was to make these kinds of calls. He knew her reputation, but that meant little to him, what really mattered was what he saw in front of him.

  You’re as hard as the reports said you
were, he thought wistfully, looking back at the training scenario.

  The two Marine squads were making slow progress. But what intrigued Teresa was that a third squad had elected to completely avoid the training hall and was actually heading for the lifeboats on the starboard side of the ship. For a moment, she considered canceling the mission, in case something out of the ordinary occurred that could risk the lives of her marines. She hesitated, but something about the squad caught her attention. Either they were leaving in a hurry, or they had a plan. Once in the lifeboat, they detached from the ship and disappeared from the view of the internal camera feeds.

  “What the hell?” muttered Captain Llewellyn.

  “That’s okay, leave them!” called out Teresa, her right hand lifted to halt him.

  “I want to see where this goes.”

  She lifted her secpad and dragged the camera menu to the center. A simple tap brought up external feeds from the dozens of cameras fitted around the ship. It showed two lifeboats from the same side as they drifted into position above the service hatches and into the ship.

  Interesting.

  The first waited and then rotated to face its starboard door to the metal hull of the Alliance ship. It opened up to reveal the marines, each wearing fully enclosed PDS body armor suits. They must have had no internal pressure inside the lifeboat as they exited calmly, with no pressure blowout. In seconds, the entire squad was in position on the hull like a group of fleas on a dog.

  “What if they blow the hatch and depressurize the section?” asked Captain Llewellyn.

  Sergeant Hacket shook his head.

  “No, the outer section are double-sealed, and there are internal safety seals and shutters installed. The worst that can happen is they manage to open the inner and outer shields simultaneously. The area would immediately seal. It takes less than a single second for the lockdown procedure.”