Machine Gods (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 2) (19 page)

“
Now, one platoon
from each company will stay here for evaluation. The rest of you
can return to your barracks. By the end of today, every single
platoon will have been tested, and we will assign your new Sergeant
and Lieutenants.”

A few of the
existing sergeants stepped forward to protest
, but Teresa spotted them and waved them back.

“
As for those of you
currently serving in this capacity, you will also be assessed.
There is no room for anything but the best here. The
17
th will operate based on merit, nothing
more. I will now hand you back to your new Commanding Officer,
Commander Gun.”

With those final
words, Teresa, now Major Morato finished her first speech with the
troublesome members of the 17th Marine Battalion. Gun stepped into
the space where she had been standing and erupted into a loud,
almost violent speech where he extolled the virtues of aggression
and improvisation to the enraptured marines.

Captain Michael
Llewellyn, the commander of 2nd Company saluted as she walked
toward him once more. She stopped in front of him and looked him up
and down as before, still finding it hard to believe the man had
reached the position he was in based on the way he looked. It was
only then that she spotted the framework above his shoe. It was a
fine carbon-fiber structure that continued up his trouser leg. She
lifted her head back to face him and nodded to his foot.

“What happened?” she asked.

Captain Llewellyn
looked down at his foot as if he had no idea what she was referring
to. At the same time, he tugged on the pants above the knee to
reveal more of the carbon-fiber structure.

“
Oh, this old thing?
Yes, I lost the leg to a booby trap on a hostage rescue mission
five years ago. I was a Lieutenant back then, and my platoon ended
up caught in an ambush on our way. I lost two marines that day,” he
explained with a sigh, “...and my leg.”

Teresa understood his pain with regards to combat
losses and traps. She’d seen the after-effects so many times
before.

“What about the mission?”

The Captain smiled back at her.

“
Oh, we got the
seventeen hostages out without a scratch on them. The four Zealots
were taken out too.”

Teresa nodded.

“It’s never easy. Still, I bet those seventeen thank
your platoon every day since.”

The look on the
Captain’s face appeared to agree with her. He then looked to the
marines still lined up in the hall.

“
Sir. Only a handful
of the officers for the 17
th have arrived
through the Prometheus-Orion Rift. We are understrength and only
the 1st Company has a full complement of officers. I’ve lost half
my NCOs though. Some because of this scandal, and the rest, well,
the Corps never sent them. We’ve been given the dregs of the Corps
and left to rot out here.”

Teresa smiled at him.

“
Well, Captain, it
is just as well we’re going to be testing everybody
here.”

“
What about the
replacements from Terra Nova? They were due within the week. The
Battalion isn’t complete without them.”

Teresa shook her head.

“
No, Captain. We
ship out in just a few hours. For the purposes of this expedition,
we will have to rely heavily on our experienced officers and NCOs.
We will recruit new NCOs directly from the marines on these two
ships. I trust you will ensure they are all up to speed. In the
meantime, I need to see to the marines onboard ANS Sentry. Good
luck, Captain.”

She marched out of
the training hall with a feeling of both relief and concern. The
documentation on the Battalion had been far too liberal with the
truth. The command structure was shattered, and she’d never seen
such a green force before. Ideally, they needed to spend another
three months working together, along with new officers. She walked
out into the corridor and wiped her clammy face with the back of
her hand.

Oh well, the best way to get somebody ready is to
get them to do the job!

She
straightened herself and continued down the
corridor toward her quarters. As she passed a small number of
Marine and Navy personnel, they stopped and saluted. It was
something she had not experienced for a long time, and though at
first it seemed tiresome, it quickly started to grow on her. She
almost reached the habitation section of the warship when she
bumped into a single officer. He wore the markings of the
Intelligence Division. He turned and faced her as she approached,
saluting almost in perfect motion.

“
Major,” he
said
first as he indicated to her
doorway, “May I?”

Teresa inhaled and then nodded.

“Of course, come in.”

She opened the door
and walked in, closely followed by the officer. The quarters were
spartan. There were no decorations of any kind, just a bed, small
washroom, and some storage units. There wasn’t even a desk. She
turned around to face the man who had now shut the door behind her.
He withdrew a device from inside his long black coat and placed it
on the bed. It flashed once and sent a blue pulse through the room
before settling down to a low level flash on its top.

“
I am Colonel
Cornwallis, Alliance Intelligence
Liaison
for the Helion Expedition.”

Teresa looked him
over. He was tall, probably just over two meters and had pale skin
and dark hair to contrast with his jet-black uniform. He sported a
mustache, an affliction that was becoming increasingly rare in the
Alliance military.

“
Major, I’ve just
been sent a priority flash direct
from
Intelligence Director Johnson.”

He leaned in close to her face.

“
It is about your
family...on Carthago.”

Teresa’s heart
skipped a beat. Her three children were all in the military
now
, with just her grandparents and a few
distant relatives left on Carthago. The planet was a troublesome
place, full of angry citizens, and a great deal of poverty. She
shuddered to think what had happened.

“What is it? Why not just send a message?” asked
Teresa, trying her best to stay calm.

“
Twelve hours ago a
military vessel smashed through the atmosphere and crashed into the
third city, the home of your grandparents. The casualties are
catastrophic. It will go public within the hour.”

Teresa was shocked,
yet the former executive officer for a major private security firm
felt something wasn’t right. After trying to calm down, she shook
her head and tried to analyze the information carefully.

“
It’s an accident,
so why send you?”

The man grimaced at her words.

“
Very true. Your
relatives are confirmed among the missing, but that isn’t why I am
here. The problem is that no vessel hit the city. There are
radiation traces for kilometers in every direction. We suspect it
was the work of...”

Teresa cut him off.

“
Terrorists?” she
asked.

The man nodded slowly.

“
Yes, it looks like
atomics were involved. The worst affected area is actually the
military barracks and spaceport. Two entire Marine battalions were
in the blast zone. The Director told me you should
know.”

Teresa looked at him
and found herself struggling to decide which piece of news was more
painful. The fact that her grandparents were dead
, or that Carthago might be ready to explode into
revolution once more. Teresa shook her head angrily.

Not again!

Slavery would never rear its head in the Alliance,
and for many, its past ill effects would never be encountered. The
machine smashing festivals of Kerberos were often the only reminder
of the days where corporations had attempted to subvert workers
with the use of intelligent machinery. It was the military,
however, that managed to circumvent the laws concerning slavery.
Where did synthetic warriors fit into the system? Local and
regional commanders made varying use of manufactured warriors with
varying degrees of success. With the meeting of cultures in the
Orion Nebula came new ideas and new approaches to the exploitation
of others.

History of Slave Labor

It was on the sixth
day that something finally changed in the fleet.
They’d been forced to maintain position with the fleet as
the large command ships created temporary Rifts every few hours.
Each time the vast Armada traveled through them, and with each
trip, Spartan could feel they were moving further from home. Even
worse was the fact that the Rifts were opened and closed by the
ships themselves. Either they stayed with the fleet or they waited
in space, with no chance of getting back. Spartan had wasted hours
watching the hundreds, possibly thousands of ships in the great
fleet. They hadn’t dared moved from their precarious position, and
instead had been left to wait, hoping against hope that at some
point they might move from the holding position and onto somewhere
else. It had been Tuke that recognized the place they had arrived
at. To Spartan it looked like any other system, no different to the
more than forty they had now traveled through. This one was known
to him, and according to Tuke, it was one of the ancient Nexus that
his people had used long ago. Spartan recalled their conversation
and his promises that he could navigate at least part of the
Network from here.

I hope
you’re right, Tuke,
because
if you screw us, we’ll die out here,
he
thought nervously.

It had finally
happened,
and the bulk of the fleet was
now moving through the massive Rift created by the command ships.
Tuke had explained that the fleet traveled through the worlds of
what he called the Slaves; a term he suspected coined by the enemy
for those he warred against. They implanted technology, agents, and
supplies while attacking military installations, seemingly at
random. Spartan had a few ideas as to why they were doing this but
had so far only discussed it with Khan.

“
Nearly done,”
s
aid Tuke.

Spartan, his
comrades
, and the T’Kari watched
nervously as one by one, each of the ships moved through the
Spacebridges until just they remained.

“
You are sure we
cannot return to New Charon?” he asked for at least the tenth time
in the last few days. He knew how far they had come, and also what
the answer would be; yet still he asked. Tuke shook his head in a
frustrated fashion.

“
No. Since we left,
the Rift had been destabilized. That can mean only one thing; our
comrades found it and shut it down. It doesn’t matter anyway. We
have no way of traveling back to the Rift, only their ships have
the ability to create short distance Rifts. We have to find another
way home.”

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

Tuke nodded and
replied quie
tly, 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,”
r
eplied Spartan who then looked back to
Tuke and pointed at the screen.

Lovett and Khan were
both carrying their weapon across their bodie
s 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,” h
e 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.