Machine Gods (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 2) (20 page)

“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,”
a
nnounced 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 m
ain 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,
i
t 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 wit
h a hint of
melancholy about it. Teresa suspected he was about to reveal
something, quite possibly serious.

“
My ex-wife lives
there,” h
e 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, but 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
thoug
h,” 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
m
arine 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
rumo
rs 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?”
s
he 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,” s
aid the Gunnery
Sergeant.

Teresa
l
ooked 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,”
s
aid 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,”
c
omplained 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.