Machine Gods (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 2)

by Michael G. Thomas

  “I see. In that case, I would be happy to come with you to see the Admiral.”

  The young Sergeant seemed to relax and moved to the door before realizing that Ms. Morato still hadn’t moved. She looked at the older woman’s body and couldn’t fail to be impressed at her fitness and muscular build. Teresa spotted her looking at her and was forced to hide a grin.

  “When I’m changed, of course. I’m getting enough attention dressed like this as it is.”

  She then turned and walked back to her room. The Sergeant watched her go with a deflated look on her face. Gun grinned at her discomfort before his face tightened up. For a second, Sergeant Belgard feared he might attack her. Instead, he spoke in a low, gravelly voice.

  “Teresa Morato is a hero of the Marine Corps. We’ve spent the last three days getting back from an operation against T’Kari Raiders. You should show respect.”

  He then also turned to disappear off into one of the three rooms, presumably to get changed into something more suitable. The Sergeant wished, for the first time since she was transferred from Terra Nova, that she were somewhere else.

  * * *

  The crippled Alliance light cruiser ANS Imperator drifted slowly through the debris field. Her engines had been out of commission for more than a full day while fires continued to burn in her forward sections. Coolant sprayed from the ruptures along her port flank and into space, along with quantities of escaping fluid and gas from the other impacts. This damage had combined over the hours to produce enough lateral thrust to start moving the ship in a lazy circle towards the rest of the debris in the asteroid field. A hint of noise caught Spartan’s attention, and he turned his head to see his old friend, Khan grinning at him.

  “What?” he asked, always suspicious of that expression.

  Khan chuckled to himself at the view from the assault shuttle. Unlike the other humans on board, Khan was one of the Jötnar; a people prized for their great strength, power, and ability to inflict damage. His people had been artificially created and indoctrinated by the enemy back in the Great Uprising over two decades ago and had almost turned the tide of the War. He was twice the size of any man in the shuttle with his massive three-meter tall frame, thick muscles, and armored suit that gave him the look of some ogre or monster of old.

  “Well?” continued Spartan, “What’s so damned funny?”

  Khan nodded to the crippled ship that drifted slowly and silently through space. Contrary to what most people expected, there was no sound in space and even the blasts that had occurred when they’d originally damaged the ship had not even registered inside their shuttle.

  “Only you would destroy your ship to catch your enemy.”

  Spartan looked as his friend smirked. Two of the other APS operatives sitting nearby were forced to hide their faces from their commander. Spartan wasn’t just in charge of the team, he was their boss, and also one of the most highly respected former marines in the Alliance military. His exploits and his somewhat direct approach toward people had become almost legendary. The operatives had been stuck inside their shutdown and deactivated shuttle for seven hours now and anything, no matter how banal, was more interesting than watching and waiting.

  “Hey, that was the plan, remember? For this kind of prey we need the right kind of bait.”

  Khan raised an eyebrow at the explanation. Spartan exhaled in an annoyed fashion.

  “Look, I’ve been working on this one with Alliance Intelligence and the T’Kari for seven months now. We have to catch them before they move on to the next system.”

  Khan simply raised his eyebrow again and settled back down to watch the ship.

  “Catching T’Kari Raiders, is that all we’re needed for now?”

  Spartan tried to relax, but it was difficult. In the last two years a lot had changed, both for him and his wife Teresa, as well as their company. APS Corporation had been their baby, something they’d invested themselves in fully, both in terms of time and money. Yet since the Alliance had made contact with the T’Kari in the New Charon Star System, things had turned for the worse for people like Spartan. The exploitation of New Charon had begun in earnest with new colonies appearing, like the old gold rush towns on Earth, in a matter of months. At the same time, the amount of competition from new, aggressive corporations had grown massively, as had the number of lavish contracts. It didn’t take long for somebody to make a mistake though, and the entire industry had imploded. While the Alliance funding had almost completely dried up, more and more money was being fed directly to the Navy, and Spartan had been forced to seek contracts with whoever could afford APS’ fees. He tried to shake the thoughts of his crippled company behind him and instead looked back at the ship.

  ANS Imperator was anything but an Alliance warship. She was a hulk, salvaged from the fighting decades earlier when the Uprising had begun back at the Titan Naval Station. Imperator had been one of the first casualties and had been used ever since as a storage hulk for ammunition, and unstable or dangerous supplies. Burn marks on her outer hull were not from any kind of recent incident. As far as Spartan was aware, every piece of damage on the ship had occurred many years before he’d even laid his eyes on her rotting hulk. He looked back at the small group of specialists inside the shuttle. The cramped interior was barely big enough to contain the eight of them and their equipment and weapons. Just weeks from his fiftieth birthday, he was already starting to feel aches in his joints. Luckily, he was stronger, healthier, and fitter than most men in their twenties. Advances in biotech, food, and bioengineering meant a man could serve as a marine grunt for decades longer than had been possible in the past. Lovett noticed the look on Spartan’s face and knew his friend was hurting. He tried to lighten the mood.

  “Hey, it could be a lot worse. At least the T’Kari know the value of military assets, even if our own citizens don’t. If this mission works, we might get security contracts for the T’Kari fleet.”

  Spartan nodded but said nothing. Lovett was correct, of course. The T’Kari, though very much like humans, had a number of differences that still astounded him. Their complete lack or even belief in physical violence had left them vulnerable, and he was not surprised the enemy that had so very nearly destroyed humanity had so successfully torn T’Kari society apart. Luckily, the violence exhibited by Spartan and his corporation, directly in front of them, had proven his worth and gained them a prized contract to provide specialist security work for the alien race. Though the Alliance patrolled the system, they refused to operate under any kind of T’Kari command. APS Corporation was different, and it was for that reason alone that Spartan suspected his company even still existed. The other six operatives were all men and women he trusted implicitly, though James Lovett was the only one of them, other than Khan, that he’d served with back in the Marine Corps.

  “Spartan, I’ve got a question,” said Isamu Takeda from Kerberos, the newest member of his team. His tightly sculpted face and jet-black hair made him stand out from the rest of those still working for APS Corporation. Spartan nodded.

  “Who the hell are these guys? I heard that when you, Khan, Gun, and the others first met the T’Kari on Hades, the enemy attacked you. Didn’t they also have T’Kari warriors fighting with them?”

  Spartan nodded again, looking to Lovett who was doing his best to try not to laugh. The politics of the New Charon Star System were complicated, and most of the operatives now working at APS had been employed for their technical or military skills. Only the more senior members had much of an idea what was actually happening in the System.

  “Isamu, what happened out here seems pretty clear to me. Hundreds of years ago, the enemy that we’ve been fighting started a civil war with the citizens of the T’Kari. It went on a lot longer than our Uprising, and this is the result. Their worlds are devastated, and their population reduced to almost nothing. Ayndir, their leader, explained to me that whenever the T’Kari reached a stage where they might recover, the machines would return.”


  Isamu looked a little confused at the response, and Spartan was already wishing he had some of his old crew back. With the shortage in resources, he’d been forced to recruit whoever he could find.

  “Like Pontus and Typhon then, back home?”

  Spartan breathed out with some satisfaction.

  “Yes, the enemy, whoever they are, seem adept at several things. They are masters of biomechanical engineering, space travel, Rift construction and most of all, at sending or indoctrinating agents to start wars in their name. Based on the advanced technology of the T’Kari, I would suggest they hit races once they reach a certain level. We’ve only just spread out from our own worlds, and that might be just the signal they needed to start their operations in Alpha Centauri.”

  Lovett listened with interest as Spartan tried to explain what was happening as best he could. He often had difficulty trying to get his head around what had happened, and meeting the T’Kari had made it even more complicated to him. He leaned forward and interrupted the conversation.

  “What I want to know is, who the hell this enemy is? Where are they, and how are they getting technology and these agents through to people like us and the T’Kari?”

  “Yeah,” Khan added.

  He had been keeping quiet while the others talked. His race of synthetic creatures had the unfortunate background of having been bred and trained to fight against humanity in the Uprising. Though their programming had been removed, there were still many that distrusted, or even hated those that were left, still referring to them as Biomechs.

  “I’ll tell you something else. When we find where they live, you won’t be able to hold the Jötnar back. We have a score to settle.”

  Spartan placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He knew it wasn’t just the fact that Khan and his people had been built and abused by the enemy that had used the mythology and iconography of the beast Echidna. It was the losses and the continuous discrimination and abuse his people suffered every day. No matter how many battles they fought in, or how many died on behalf of the Alliance, there were still thousands, perhaps millions of citizens that considered them as no more than barbarous dogs that needed to be put down.

  “Khan, we all have scores to settle with them.”

  A light blinked inside the craft, and it instantly drew his attention.

  They are here!

  Spartan directed his gaze back to the crippled ship and quickly identified a dark shape moving slowly toward the hulk. It was shaped much like the other T’Kari ships they had come across over the last month, but this one was equipped with large metal ribs along its flanks. Spartan pulled his electronic secpad from the pouch on his armor and brought up the known schematic for T’Kari Raider ships.

  “Okay, it’s the one. Wait for my signal, and then we go in. Ready?”

  Each of those waiting patiently in the shuttle nodded in agreement. Even though they’d been waiting for hours, now that the mission was about to go ahead, they moved as though rushed. Khan watched the ship and nodded to Spartan while pointing to its flank.

  “Look, they are sending in a salvage team.”

  Spartan watched as the ribs opened up, and like fleas on a dog, the suited T’Kari exited the ship and used their EVA thrusters to move around the damaged vessel. Spartan checked his L52 Mark II Assault Carbine one last time. It wasn’t necessary; it was more a ritual, and one he always carried out at the start of a dangerous operation like this one.

  “You think their commander is on the ship?” asked Khan with some suspicion.

  Spartan shrugged.

  “You saw the reports. The small groups of enslaved T’Kari have been hunting down their brothers for generations. This ship has raided throughout New Charon with impunity for seven months now. If the commander isn’t here, then where will he be?”

  Khan looked as though he agreed, but he declined to comment. Spartan released his grav-lock, moving closer to his old friend as he made his way to the airlock seal.

  “Anyway, we get paid by the T’Kari whether he’s there or not. Now we find if the price they paid for the information was worth it.”

  “They’re inside,” Lovett added in his calm voice.

  Spartan took a deep breath and prepared himself for what was to come.

  “Good. All units converge on the target.”

  He pulled the triple levers that released both stages of the airlock. There was no mass ejection of air as the craft had already vented its surplus atmosphere in the last hour. As the hatches opened, the eight elite operatives of the APS Corporation left the shuttle. They each latched themselves onto a ZeroDrone and then moved away with slow, gently acceleration. The extra-vehicular movement drones were a recent development of the gear used by shipyard workers to move equipment and tooling about in zero-g environments. Spartan and Khan took the first and were pulled through space and toward the waiting ship. As they moved, Spartan watched another three teams, each using the same gear and equipment as they moved from their own hiding places in the debris field.

  Twenty-four operatives for one corsair. It had better be enough, Spartan thought.

  He was now starting to wonder if perhaps he had been just a little bit too optimistic during the planning stages. They continued forward like a swarm of flies toward their target. All four teams targeted different access areas of the ship, with Spartan’s team taking the main loading bay. The briefing with the T’Kari had implied that the loading bay on this class of ship would give them the quickest route through to the bridge of the vessel.

  “Take it easy and keep movement to a minimum. We need to get to the door before they know we’re there.”

  Spartan and Khan approached the bay and watched its ribbed hull with interest. It was heavily scored and marked, unlike anything either had seen before on ships. There were markings though none were fully intact, but they did betray the origins of the craft as one of the T’Kari fleet. They made it to the underside of the ship and clamped the ZeroDrone to the hull. Both ensured their magboots were firmly in place on the ship and proceeded to walk the short distance around the overhang and onto the actual landing bay. Technically, they were upside down, but those distinctions were somewhat irrelevant in space. The exterior of the bay was a large open space, with a number of magnetically shielded sliding doors fitted on one side to allow spacecraft or people to exit the ship.

  “Get in position and wait for the signal,” he said calmly.

  They all moved down onto the landing platform and toward the sliding doors. All wore the modified PDS armored suits that were usually worn by Alliance Marines. Even Khan wore a custom suit, one of many that were being manufactured back on the fiery world of Prometheus. His was cruder in comparison but still fully sealed and included many of the features originally used in the massive Marine Corp Vanguard assault suits. He took up position to the right of Spartan and lifted his right arm to point it at the doors. Unlike the others, his carbine was actually built into his armor. It meant the ammunition feed could be fed from ammunition boxes on belts.

  “Red Team is in position,” announced their leader.

  The other three teams were in position and were now waiting at their pre-determined zones. Spartan acknowledged the message and double-checked on the others. They needed just a few more seconds, and he would have twenty-four well-trained operatives, all armored, and heavily armed for the mission.

  Isamu finished placing the series of six small modules on the metal plating in a wide circle. Each was connected to the next with a small wire, and as he placed them, the rest of the team watched nervously. It was a standard issue breaching charge, based upon a shaped charge unit. Spartan watched him carefully; aware that any mistake here would leave them all trapped outside. Isamu knew his trade, and in a matter of seconds, the unit was installed. The rest of the team backed off to the required safe distance of four meters. Finally, the signal came from the other teams; they were all ready.

  Here we go again.

  “Now!” barked Spa
rtan.

  The charges flashed, and the metal plating disintegrated, blasting into the vessel. The air pressure inside must have been the same as the outside, or else Spartan would have expected the debris to blast out into space. Either way, he didn’t have the time to consider it; he had a job to do.

  “Everybody inside, secure the vessel, and locate the commander.”

  Spartan was in first, with one hand on the metal structure so he could pull himself along in the zero-g environment. His right hand, however, grasped his L52 carbine. He’d already set it to the lower power mode. It gave him a high rate of fire, without the excessive armor penetration issues that could prove problematic in an environment such as this. Once through the breached door, he was inside the landing bay itself. There was no light, and he was forced to activate the shoulder-mounted lamps on his PDS suit. The room was large and contained two small craft, presumably shuttles or light transports of some kind. The configuration wasn’t too different to the small cobra craft used in the Alliance. He lowered his lamps and checked to see how they were secured. Much like their own ships, the craft was held down with a form of magnetic clamp.

  So, they have power. Where is everybody?

  He kept moving, the other seven close behind. The computer systems were all off in this part of the ship, but as he approached the main access door into the rest of the vessel, his suit picked up readings.

  “You getting this?” he asked.

  “Yeah, there are heat blooms on the other side of this door. I’d say our friends are preparing a welcoming committee for us.”

  Khan pulled himself closer and pointed his weapon at the doorway.

  “I say we breach and introduce ourselves.”