Legions of Orion (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 1)

by Michael G. Thomas

  “Ahem, Jack? Can you hear me?”

  Jack looked at her jade coloured eyes and tried to speak, but his mouth had turned dry. He coughed to clear his throat and answered as quickly as he could.

  “Better...Yes, feeling good now...Thank you.”

  He almost kicked himself for sounding so simple.

  You idiot, you sound like a Jötnar juvenile!

  She pulled herself down closer and lifted the sheets a little to examine the tubes running into his arm. It was a critical mixture that would provide him with nutrients, as well as the extremely expensive repair agents developed for use in the Alliance military. At least that was what his father had told him. As she bent down, he couldn’t avoid but glanced at her cleavage. He could smell her hair and skin at this distance, and it almost overloaded his senses; that was until he heard the sound of breathing that announced the arrival of a second person.

  “Jack, I see you’ve found something soft to look at,” came the booming voice.

  “Wictred?” he said in surprise and lifted up slightly in the bed, bumping the young nurse’s head with his own. She tipped backwards and drifted away before Wictred grabbed her and held her steady. Jack lifted his hand to his head.

  “Oh...What the hell? I’m so sorry!” he said as sensitively as he could but also trying to hide the look of amusement on his face. The nurse shook her head and stepped away from Wictred and back to Jack.

  “It’s okay.” She turned and glared at Wictred. “I’ve had worse.” And then returned to Jack’s side to check the seals on the tubes. Wictred raised his shoulder, surprised at her comments, and Jack did his best not to laugh.

  “Nurse, uh?” he asked.

  “Anne,” she answered quickly, lifting a finger to her lips to quieten him.

  “The other nurses told me about you yesterday, so don’t try any of your moves on me, okay? I’ve had quite enough of you people hitting on me.”

  Wictred erupted into a roar of laughter that boomed through the ward. One of the sleeping engineers in the most distant bed lifted moved, waking instantly from a deep sleep and looked about as if he expected to be assaulted at any moment.

  “Please, will you keep your voices down,” said the nurse, and then she turned and walked away, shaking her head.

  Jack looked back to his friend and grimaced slightly in pain as he pulled on one of the deeper wounds. Wictred moved closer to him, pulling himself alongside his friend. With no gravity in the ship, he looked strange as he floated there with nothing but his hand to pin him into place in the ward. The Jötnar, like all of his people, looked completely out of place in a sterile area such as this. He still carried a blade on his side, but even Wictred had been forced to leave his armour behind before he could enter. It seemed like over a year since Jack had seen him like this. He was heavily muscled in some places in a most grotesque fashion. Like all the Biomechs, they had been created as strong and resilient warriors to be used as food soldiers on the frontline. Jack took a sip of fluid from the pipe that hung nearby and turned his head to Wictred.

  “So, you managed to get some time away from Hades, then?”

  Wictred nodded.

  “Khan and the others are helping with security. He sent me back to the Beagle to arrange for more weapons to come through.”

  “Weapons?”

  Wictred grinned.

  “Yeah, Spartan arranged for them to come through as APS equipment. Your father is proving to be quite helpful. I can see why my father treats him like one of us.”

  Jack looked to the window at the mention of his father. It wasn’t that he hated his father. It was just that he’d spent so much time with others that he’d started to view him as more of a distant relative. His military and commercial reputation didn’t help either, as everybody knew who he was. Jack wanted to do his own thing, and that meant trying to keep his head down and avoid being connected with one of the most famous Marine Corps Officers since the Great War.

  “Look,” said Wictred with one hand pointing out of the window. Jack followed the line of his arm and towards the pale, almost colourless Rift in space. He could see nothing of note until he realised it was much larger than it should be.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Wictred then looked off to the right and nodded. Jack followed his line of sight until he could see the Rift back to Prometheus, and it was now a tiny dot in the distance.

  Another rift!

  “What the hell is going on?”

  They both watched in surprise as the Rift shuddered, and a dark shape almost the size of the Rift itself appeared. Much like when the Alliance ships appeared in a flash, this new ship did exactly the same. Jack watched completely speechless, as the massive vessel seemed to halt just a short distance in front of the tear in space. The lights inside the ward dimmed, and the metal shutters slid down with alarming speed.

  “This is the Captain, all crew are to secure wards. We are setting an escape course to the first planet. This is not a drill. We will engage main thrusters in sixty seconds for emergency burn. To your stations!”

  The nurse reappeared along with another. They pulled themselves inside and proceeded to pull down the magnetic seals around the beds that would lock the patients into position, prior to igniting the engines. Jack saw her approaching and leaned back and into the correct position. He reached up and struck the lock button. A semi-circle seal came down, and he felt as if he was being strapped to the bed. She checked the seal.

  “I knew you wanted to strap me down,” he said, followed by a wink. The nurse smiled and moved on to the next patient.

  “Nice moves!” laughed Wictred, who then moved to one of six transit points to pull a series of thick belts and seals around his great torso. The second nurse pulled herself down to him so that she could assist.

  “Thirty seconds till burn!” came another slightly muffled message over the speakers. This time the Captain’s voice seemed less confident. Jack could feel a vibration coming through the metal of the ship and then as though he was becoming heavier.

  “We’re under fire, engines activating now!”

  The two nurses flew from the middle of the ward to the ceiling with a sickening crack. The nurse from before, Anne, managed to lift her hands in time, but the second slammed headfirst into the metal surface. Jack was certain the impact had broken her neck. After twenty seconds, the engines were still burning, and the ship continued to accelerate.

  Whatever is going on out there, it means trouble!

  Then the lights cut, and a series of sparks rippled through the ward. They were mainly from the destruction of electronic components, but he also noticed a strange vibration working up through the structure of the ship. He felt weightless again but not a single piece of equipment seemed to work. For a second, he worried that he had been blasted out into the void of space. That couldn’t be true because he could breathe, and the temperature of the ward was exactly the same as before. There was a hissing noise, followed by a clump sound. At the same time, the emergency lights partially activated. He reached out to find Wictred’s arm pulling him from his bed. His face appeared massive in the low light, and only his crooked teeth showed up.

  “Power’s gone. We need to find a lifeboat. This is an attack!”

  Jack looked at his in shock.

  “An attack, by whom?”

  Wictred turned, pulling himself along the wall with Jack right behind him.

  “Who cares? We need to get off this ship, fast!”

  The tube in his arm ripped out, and blobs of fluid drifted aimlessly inside the gravity-free confines of the ward. Jack could see the shapes of the other patients struggling as they floated about near their beds. The young nurse was trying to help one of them. Jack grabbed a handrail and stopped his movement for just a second.

  “Hey, Anne. We need to get out of here.”

  She turned around, trying to find the source of the sound, and then she saw the two of them.”

  “No, my duty is t
o all of our patients.”

  She then looked back at the man she was helping and continued to work on his torn bandages that must have come free during the burst of acceleration. The main lights flashed as if they were about to come back online. One managed to say active, but the others flickered and stayed off. Jack pulled himself towards her and instantly felt a surge of pain like a knife being stabbed into his ribs. He groaned, but with all the noise, it wasn’t noticed. Wictred stopped and look back.

  “Leave her, Jack. We have to go!” he snapped at him.

  “No, I’m not leaving her!”

  “Anne, there isn’t...”

  He was cut short as part of the ward started to glow red. They could instantly feel the increase in temperature. Jack grabbed Anne and yanked her from the patient and towards the door. She spun out of control, shouting wildly at him until Wictred caught her foot and pulled her out of the main doorway. Jack followed close behind and made it through the doorway in time to see parts of the interior furnishings begin to melt. Wictred grabbed the metal rod that was the emergency door override, a standard design fitted to all compartments in the ship. He didn’t even hesitate and forced it down, even as a patient tried to make it to the frame. Anne pulled at him, trying to keep the door open.

  “Bastards!” she screamed. “Open it, now!”

  The tiny porthole in the door flashed blue, and a flood of energy washed about inside the compartment, instantly vaporising anything other than the bulkheads and heavy equipment. The patients caught fire before being sucked out of the gaping hole in the side of the ship. Jack pulled her close so that her bruised face was only inches from his.

  “Anne...Anne!” he repeated, trying to calm her down. “We had no choice. They are attacking us. If you stayed, you’d be dead as well.”

  Wictred reached out to her.

  “If you want to live, follow us.”

  Wictred pulled himself through the main shaft and Jack followed. They travelled almost ten metres before he looked back to see what the nurse was doing. To his surprise, the young woman was directly behind him, pulling herself along with surprising speed and efficiency. The speakers crackled, and a high-pitched whine screamed down the system.

  “Large formation...abandon ship, boarding on the...” then it continued as nothing but noise. Wictred reached the first junction and checked his friend was still there.

  “We’re under attack. If they board us, we’re finished. We need to get off this frigate and join the fight!” he said sternly. Jack looked to Anne, expecting her to argue yet again. Instead, he saw nothing but resolve on her face.

  “Don’t wait for me, come on!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The religious artefacts that appeared after the Hyperion Incident quickly turned from the mythical and into the biomechanical. Just seven months after the end of the fighting, a suicide cell was captured and interrogated. Amongst their weapons and explosives were a dozen small metal objects, each one the epitome of the half woman and half snake Echidna. This time, however, the snake was fully mechanical and the resulting creature was some foul mixture of the two. Over time, the last Zealot cells disappeared with most returning to their families and societies as before. With the link to Hyperion gone, so went their strategy and support. It should have been obvious; with hindsight, it couldn’t have been more straightforward.

  Holy Icons

  Spartan drove as quickly as he could from their encampment without tipping the Bulldog armoured transporter over. It was a large six-wheeled vehicle with four exit doors and a single top-mounted turret position. Although it was mainly designed for the military market, this version of the Bulldog was the civilian issued version, and therefore not equipped with weapons or countermeasures. At least, that was how it had been before the APS Corporation had got their hand on a dozen of them in the military surplus market. Now the vehicle was fitted with what looked like a cage around its hull to trigger explosive charges before they penetrated the hull, as well as a modified ‘v’ shaped hull and reactive armour. They struck a ridge, and the vehicle left the ground for a short time before crashing back down.

  “Hey, nice driving Spartan!” snapped Gun.

  In the back of the vehicle sat the small group of Jötnar, as well as Teresa and two APS operatives. Everybody was armoured, and with just a few minor changes, they could easily have been a Marine Corps unit from twenty years earlier. The vehicle was specifically designed so that it could be driven and operated by personnel in full PDS tactical armour without compromises. Teresa sat directly behind Spartan in his driving position and tapped the side of his helmet. Both of their visors were open, and it was surprisingly quiet inside the armoured hull.

  “How much further?” she asked nervously.

  They hit another bump, and only the gas suspension and magnetic seal for each of the passengers stopped them from coming to harm. The Bulldog settled back down, and Spartan was able to turn back for just a second.

  “Over the next ridge, then we circle down three hundred metres to the excavation site.”

  One of the APS operatives, a middle-aged man called Issac Ocano, sat at the bank of computer displays and controls. He was a senior Team Leader in the Corporation and the controller for some of the most violent APS teams in the Alliance. Today, however, Spartan had given him tactical command. There had been protests, but Spartan needed his skills and experience to control what could become a very messy operation. From inside, he had access to all the remaining data feeds. The most prominent was from the high-level security drone that was monitoring the site from above. There were also two active data streams coming back from the two APS teams near the area who were also moving in to assist. Issac was one of APS Corporation’s most successful commanders, and with a violent reputation. He had already redirected seven reconnaissance assets as well as all available APS units to the area.

  “Spartan, I’ve managed to get a signal out to ANS Dragon. Their real-time streams are being hacked, but it looks like something is going on up there. The data indicates something has entered the system and is blockading the Spacebridge.”

  “Something?” growled Gun.

  He was well known for being short of temper, and one thing he disliked more than anything else was ambiguity. Instead of saying more, he checked the hilt of his weapon. It was an odd device, similar to the glaives of the Jötnar, but with a shorter shaft that could be wielded in one hand. Spartan was busy controlling the vehicle, and it was taking a supreme effort to keep the thing on the roughly cut track. The only times in the last few weeks he’d done this same trip had been at no more than a quarter of his current speed. Even so, none of the passengers complained, other than the occasional sarcastic comment from Gun.

  “Nearly there!” he called out, and with a sliding turn, they finally reached the peak. The vehicle lurched slightly as it changed its orientation and started the winding descent down to the dig site. With the worst of the drive out of the way, he spoke through the Team Network that connected them all, both visually and orally.

  “Whatever is happening in orbit and beyond is out of our control. Our job is to protect our people. We will assess the situation when we get there. Our priority is to keep the workers, engineers and security teams safe.”

  “What about the site?” asked Hunn, the young Jötnar warrior.

  Spartan threw him a quick look and turned back, shaking his head.

  “To hell with the site, the people come first. I warned them to not touch anything. Have we learnt nothing from these places? Didn’t they see what happened when Jack and Wictred activated the machines down there?”

  Gun and Khan both looked at the young Jötnar with amusement. Khan leaned in slightly and thumped him playfully in the chest. To a Jötnar it was nothing, but for anyone else it would have broken bones.

  “Like I told you, Spartan is his own man. There’s only one human who hates the feral Biomechs more than us.”

  Khan nodded towards Spartan.

  “It
’s him. If you want the taste of battle, then listen to Spartan.”

  Gun nodded in agreement.

  “True. Spartan always finds the best fights.”

  Teresa watched and listened to them all, but she was more interested in the aerial video streams than their macho posturing. The low level drones kept being disabled, but the high level drone was still transmitting. It showed a number of fast moving machines that seemed to be hovering about two hundred metres from the surface. The dark shapes surrounding it by a myriad of paths and tracks, easily identified the dig site. Then she spotted movement in the lower left.

  “Look!” she cried.

  Issac Ocano had already seen it and enlarged that segment to show a group of five people sheltering behind what appeared to be rubble, or perhaps a broken wall. They were firing their weapons at something near the artefact. Then a blue pulse tore at the ground around them, knocking them back. Incredibly, all of them returned to their feet and continued to move away from the object. Teresa sat up straight and stared at Issac.

  “Is it me, or does it look like something is trying to get them away from the dig site?”

  * * *

  Jack and Wictred had reached three evacuation points on the stricken frigate, and still there were no available lifeboats. In their journey through the ship’s hull, they’d come across multiple bodies but no survivors.

  “Where is everybody?” asked Anne.

  Wictred ripped open the entrance to another compartment to find it was empty, like most of the others. He snorted and pulled himself further inside. Jack followed close behind and threw just a brief look back to Anne.

  “They’re gone. Looks like the crew just went for the lifeboats and jumped ship.”