“Who are you?”
“Spartan. Why?”
She looked back at the rest of them, two were pulling open the box and scattering the items across the floor.
“You seem to be the only one who doesn’t seem afraid.”
“You’re wrong there. Only a fool wouldn’t be afraid in this place,” He looked back to the floor. The young woman moved closer and bent down to examine the floor with him. She ran her hands along the cracks and pits in the stone, noticing the residual warmth coming up from the planet’s molten rivers that boiled beneath the surface.
“What is it?”
“This place, it’s an arena.” He started to stand up, as he moved she followed until they both stood facing each other.
“Arena? Like a sports field?”
“No, like a pit fighting arena.”
“What did you say?” shouted a tall, dark skinned man. Spartan ignored the man and turned back to the woman.
“Look, they are going to make us fight something and the only way we’re staying alive is if we win. What’s your name?”
“Misaki SatM.”
Spartan nodded and then turned to the rest. Some of them had already taken items from the box and it was a bizarre collection of artefacts. There was a selection of hand tools, axes and metal fittings. One man stood with an axe resting on his shoulder as another two argued over a serrated knife.
“I used to be a pit fighter, I’ve seen this before. How many of you have combat training?”
Some ignored him but most turned to answer. It seemed they had a modicum of training, or at least that is what their raised hands told him. Misaki lifted her hand too.
“You have combat training?” asked Spartan with a raised eyebrow.
“Why? Can’t a woman know how to fight?” she said with a wicked smile before scuttling over to the box to look for a weapon.
As she rummaged about she picked out what looked like a piston from the innards of an internal combustion engine. She grasped it by the small part to create an improvised mace. With a little more digging she started to tug at something in the base of the box. Before she was able to remove the object though a great rumble echoed throughout the chamber. At the same time a grinding sound like that of a heavy rock being dragged came from one side of the open area. Misaki fell back from the box, in her hands she grasped what looked like a metre long iron pipe. She steadied herself and called over to Spartan.
“Hey, Spartan...catch!”
She tossed the metal pipe and for just a second it looked like it might collide with his head. His reaction was fast enough and he easily caught it, swinging it around for a few test strikes before resting it on his shoulder.
“Yeah, I thought it might be more your style!” she laughed as she flashed a smile in his direction.
“I wouldn’t get too excited. If I’m right we’re about to get into something bad, really bad.”
As if to emphasise his point the grinding stopped to be replaced by the pound of feet as something large and dark approached. Most of the fourteen of them were now carrying objects from the box. Two rushed back to the entrance they had arrived from as the rest stood in silence, each watching for whatever was about to appear before them.
“Stick together and stay in the light!” shouted Spartan as he moved into the centre.
Misaki moved ahead and joined him, standing just a metre away to his right.
“What is it?” she asked.
From the darkness the shape took form as the thing moved towards them. One of the men, a tall man about the same size and build of Spartan rushed forward with a bar in his hand. He disappeared into the shadows so that the approaching thing and the man merged into a moving shadow. There was just a single crunching sound and the man stumbled back into the light and fell back to the floor.
Misaki ran to him and rolled the man over. A trickle of blood ran down his face and a dark pool of blood started to form around him. She leaned down and listened for signs of breathing. She shook her head in shock as she looked back to Spartan.
“He’s dead!” she shouted.
* * *
Kowalski sat at his display, idly moving data about and occasionally playing one of the video games he’d secretly brought to the vessel and installed on the system. It was hardly a modern game in fact by any standards it was ancient. The game was based on a security system whereby the player had to rewrite code on the fly to circumvent the computer which was doing the same. It was a test of speed, programming and mental dexterity. Though the language it used was obsolete it did keep his mind active and the basic algorithms were sound.
“Come on, come on!” he shouted as streams of data rushed down the screen.
The computer player had managed to breach his final firewall and data was pouring from his servers. His fingers darted about on the touch based screens as he moved blocks of code into place and ran a series of subroutines that damaged the scrambled outgoing data as he attempted to repair the breach. A box popped up in the middle of the display and the game paused, the race against time now stopped until he was ready to resume.
“No way!” he muttered as he read the subject of the message before turning to the intercom.
“Commander, we’ve got a Fleet transmission, looks like they’ve found something.”
There was a short pause before the groggy and tired voice of Commander Anderson returned on the speaker system.
“Understood, be there in sixty seconds. Get the rest of the crew in, we all need to see this.”
“Affirmative.” Kowalski hit a button to change the transmission to ship wide. “Kowalski here. We have a Fleet transmission regarding our mission. Please meet in the control centre immediately. This looks important, out.”
As he replaced the handset he looked at the heading of the message and tried to imagine what they might have found. He was tempted to view the message but it required an access code that although he had, it would immediately let the Commander know he had read it first. He sat, staring into the screen as the Commander arrived.
“Kowalski, thought you’d have had it decoded and read by now,” he said smiling.
“Well, it is addressed for your eyes only, Sir.”
The Commander leaned in to read the text of the message before entering in his hex based security code. It took a few seconds for each of the layers to be removed before it was displayed in all its detail. As well as a message from Admiral Jarvis it included several dossier documents with attached images and videos. Bishop and Teresa arrived almost at the same time and pulled themselves into position around the display.
“What have we got?” Bishop asked.
“Any news on Spartan?” added Teresa.
Commander Anderson looked at a few more of the documents before turning back to them.
“It is interesting. From the data we sent them they have matched it to other intel and come up with three possible leads. The main one though is to do with this man, Maximilian Hex. He’s a smuggler and slaver known to work in these waters. The lead points to a shipment of slaves and high value prisoners being sent to Prometheus. There isn’t an exact location but data from patrols in that area show increased numbers of ships around the planet.”
Bishop looked at some of the information, specifically the dossier on Hex.
“I don’t see why they are so sure this guy is the one we need to find. So he deals in slaves, so do hundreds of traders through the System.”
“For a starter look at the numbers of ships recorded moving to Prometheus. There has been a forty per cent increase in the last three weeks. Most of these vessels are unflagged and not on our system.”
“True, Sir, but couldn’t they be refugees from the colonies that have seceded? There must be hundreds of thousands of displaced people?” asked Kowalski.
“There is one more piece of information from an informant on board a transport near Prometheus. He hasn’t seen the prisoners but he did hear a rumour about one of the ships that arrived
from Kerberos in the last week. He said a group of prisoners managed to fight their way out of their cells and killed a large number of security people.”
“Bishop didn’t look convinced but Anderson continued.
“Well, it’s the only recorded time that anyone has managed to escape on board a slave or prison ship. There was one other thing...a number of those killed was in close quarter combat.”
“Close quarter? That sounds like Spartan!” said Teresa with a growing smile.
“Give me the details, I’ll run it through the local net and the Prometheus trading markets and see if I can come up with some leads,” said Kowalski.
He leaned forward and started to move windows of data around the displays. At first he checked public markets and news stories, then law enforcements bulletins and coastguard and customs data. There was so much material whizzing about that the rest of them finally gave up trying to track his progress. Then he stopped, a single window with a blurred photograph and a few lines of text showing.
“There he is!”
“You crazy bastard!” laughed Bishop as he ruffled Kowalski’s hair.
“Look, it says here that he has a public sale of licensed armour and tooling on the Prometheus Seven Trading Post for the next ten days.”
“No way, it takes months to make that trip. You know, the storms. You have to plot a new navigation route every time you head for the place.”
“Yeah, it’s true. Bishop’s right about the storms,” said a miserable Teresa.
“Not true!”
They all looked at Kowalski who simply ignored them, he was far too absorbed in the details of Hex and his business dealings on Prometheus. It must have been fascinating because Commander had already called out his name three times before he responded.
“Uh, yeah?” he asked, looking a little confused.
“Prometheus. What isn’t true?”
“Oh, right, well...the storms and the routes used by civilian and military traffic. You can bypass the lot and cut the trip to about four days.”
Bishop looked at the Commander, who appeared less than convinced, and then back at Kowalski who sat there looking calm and collected.
“Bullshit!”
“It’s true, Bishop. I submitted a paper on it over a year ago. The algorithm I developed will allow a nav system to plot a route through the storm with a ninety-two per cent safety margin. You need a decent system, one that can multitask multiple routes in real time along with updated storm tracking information from the naval buoys.”
“You’re serious?” asked Commander Anderson.
Kowalski looked at him for a few seconds before replying.
“I’m always serious, Sir, when it comes to tech. Trust me, my system works. The chance for loss is there, but it is the fastest and most direct route to Prometheus.”
“Why haven’t I heard about this?”
“First of all the risk is considered too high for manned vessels and the travel speed needs to be reduced according to the mass and rated engine power of the ship. Even a haulage or transport ship will have to drop speed to give a total journey time of about two weeks. Any faster and the computers won’t be available to avoid the storm anomalies. Second, the first demonstration to the brass resulted in a simulated passenger liner being destroyed. I told them to use a smaller ship but they insisted. Something that big at the speed they used had only a fifty per cent chance of making it through.”
“I believe you. Back when I was a captain out on the Rim I sent reports back that were ignored in favour of more reliable sources. It’s the price we pay for being out of the loop. So as I understand it you’re telling me a slaver could have made this trip in about two weeks if they had your algorithms?”
“Sure, no problem. How would they have got them though?”
“The computer data centre on Kerberos was hit during the riots and protests. I think we lost many guys when it was stormed. A lot of data was taken before it was cut off from the main data feed. It’s possible they could have got it there,” suggested Bishop.
“Maybe, or somebody could have just sold the software code. It would be worth a lot of money on the black market.”
“Kowalski, are you sure the Tamarisk could do the trip in four days? I know she is bigger than most small transports but she’s been refitted with a more powerful computer, engines and power plant.”
“I’ve already done the calculations, Sir. We can be there in ninety three-hours if we leave right now.”
Commander Anderson looked at the rest of his crew. There were only four of them now but they were becoming almost a family. Bishop an experienced Marine Corps veteran and Kowalski his best friend, one of the top techs in the Corps. Then Teresa, the demure but hot headed Hispanic fighter, who seemed to have limitless energy when it came to getting what she wanted. Anderson himself had been the XO of the Battlecruiser Crusader but this job was something special and needed his skills that he had learned taking on the organised crime syndicates out on the Rim. He just hoped that when this was all done and finished he could get back to being number two on the flagship.
“Good, confirm the course for Prometheus and get going at maximum speed. I’ll contact the Admiral. I suggest you all check the files on our destination. It is not the place to arrive at unprepared.”
“Sir!” came the almost instantaneous reply from his crew.
As the Commander moved away from the computer and along the corridor, Bishop turned to look at the other two. Kowalski looked completely unaffected by the turn of events and moved back to looking at the data, Teresa’s face on the other hand was positively glowing.
“You look like you’ve hit the jackpot.”
Teresa raised one eyebrow as she looked back at him.
“Well, this gets us one step closer to them doesn’t it?”
“Let’s hope so,” he said and then turned back to Kowalski. “Can you get the schematics of the Prometheus Seven Trading Post? What kind of place is it?”
“No problemo, here it is.”
On the display a rotating model of the large station appeared. It wasn’t military, or at least it didn’t have the look of any of the naval stations used throughout the System. As the model rotated it seemed the station was not far off the size of the station on Kronus.
“How big is that place?”
“It’s big, I mean real big. It’s based on the early Bernal sphere design, it’s intended as a long-term home for permanent residents but according to the data here the station has been moved from accommodation to mainly trade and commerce. It used to be called the Prometheus Seven Colony. It is almost two thousand metres in diameter, giving it a circumference of over six kilometres. At this size the station should be able to house anything up to one and two hundred thousand people.”
“Why isn’t it used as a colony anymore?”
Teresa cut in, “Since it was built a number of stations have been built on the moons and there are scores of compounds on the surface that use the planet’s heat to drive thermal generators. Apparently much of the population moved during the last few decades to the surface and the new cities being built there are well shielded. Still, give me a lush green world with air and an actual breathable atmosphere.”
“Screw that, Teresa,” muttered Bishop, “all the images I’ve seen of Prometheus make it look like hell.”
“It is. You get used to it though. When I worked there I spent most of my time on the stations but I did do a bit of manual labour underground. Trust me, you don’t want to work there. Doesn’t matter how much they pay you, it isn’t worth it!”
She looked back at the display and smiled. “Somewhere out there are Spartan, Marcus and the General. And you know what? We’re going to find them!”
* * *
“Help me!” cried Misaki as she tried to massage the expired man on the ground. It was pointless, his heart had stopped, he wasn’t breathing and the pool of blood was increasing. It looked like there was little chance anything could be
done. Even so Misaki refused to back down and continued the heart massage in the grim hope something might change.
“Come on, let’s out of here!” shouted one of the men as he banged on the now closed door.
The rest of them stood still, all waiting for the thing to emerge from the shadows. Spartan moved in front of Misaki and the fallen man and held the metal pipe on his right shoulder like a baseball bat.
“Misaki, he’s dead, come on!”
Misaki ignored him though her frustration was obvious. She carried on pounding at the man’s chest and shouting out.
Spartan looked in the direction of the shape that moved out into the light. Of all the people in the open space only Spartan seemed unperturbed by the great hulk. It was a Biomech, one of the creatures that Spartan had come across several times now. After these encounters he was still in awe of the mass and power of these things. This one looked more like the ones he had seen in the urban combat operations on Prime. It was armoured up with improvised metal plates and carried what looked like a heavy iron maul in each hand. With a roar the Biomech moved directly into the light and planted its feet, glancing around as the people scattered through the open space.
“Misaki!” called out Spartan as he stood his ground.
The young woman picked herself up and moved up to him, her own improvised mace out and ready.
“What is it?” she asked, a trembling tone in her voice.
“It’s one of those Biomech shock troopers the Zealots have been using, keep away from it!”
Pushing in front he swung his metal pipe, drawing the attention of the creature. Three of the other people moved towards Spartan, either for safety or recognising that he seemed to know what he was doing. The creature stood still, as though it was waiting for an order. As the rest waited a shrill whine blasted from hidden speakers.
Star Crusades Uprising: The First Trilogy Page 47
