Legions of Orion (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 1) (29 page)

Spartan sighed but knew it was no good
pushing any further.

“
Understood,
General.”

The signal cut, and
Spartan looked back to see the inquisitive Jötnar staring right
back at him.

“Who is your friend?” he asked.

Gun looked over to
the younger Jötnar and laughed.

“This is Hunn, the Champion of
Hyperion!”

Spartan turned to Teresa who said
nothing.

“Hunn?” he asked.

“
Yes. I have started
a fighting programme like the one you told me about. Any Jötnar can
challenge another. Hunn is the champion of ten fights. He even
matched a First.”

Spartan felt he’d
been separated from the Jötnar for much longer than he realised.
Things were happening on Hyperion that he neither knew about or
even fully understood any more. Khan laughed at his
confusion.

“
The first Jötnar
created in the war are now called the First. The survivors are our
best and most experienced warriors.”

Spartan’s secpad lit
up with an urgent video feed. He tapped it
, and it quickly changed to the face of his Team Leader
operating site security at the dig site. The look on his face sent
a shudder of dread through Spartan’s body.

“What is it?”

“
Sir, the team
accessed some kind of damaged computer system down here. It sent
out a pulse and then burnt out.”

Spartan stood up in a rage.

“
What? The mission
parameters were simple. Excavation only. No interference with the
object until it has been fully examined.”

The man shook his head, desperate to
say something else. Now Spartan became truly concerned.

“There’s more?”

“
Yes, Sir.
Instruments are picking up movement below the ground, approximately
two hundred metres below the surface, but getting nearer. I’ve
ordered a full evacuation back to the base, but
there...”

He stopped and spun
around. The top right corner of his feed showed a forward view from
his helmet as he looked at the scaffolding, ramp and equipment that
lay about the great artefact. Dozens of people in suits were moving
slowly away from the site. That wasn’t what he was looking at,
though. It was the shape of a sleek craft about the size of a Cobra
shuttle, and it had risen from the ridge just a few hundred metres
away.

“
What the hell!” he
shouted.

Spartan tried to
intercede, but a stream of lines flicked around the craft, and
simultaneously two of the groundcars at the site exploded. The
vehicle rushed out of sight, but another two appeared and continued
to strafe the ground around the artefact. Some of the projectiles
hit scientific equipment, and some of the rounds even hit the
ruined object itself. Then the signal cut completely. Spartan
turned to his comrades with a grim expression.

“Teresa, get in touch with the General.
Tell him what has happened and fast.”

“
What are you
doing?” she asked nervously, but she already knew the
answer.

Gun nodded in silent agreement. Spartan
grabbed her about the waist and pulled her close.

“We have to bring them back, all of
them. Let the others know.”

He walked for the
door seal and towards where all the weapons, armour and equipment
were stowed. As he moved inside, he threw her a quick
look.

“We’re not alone after all.”

* * *

Jack looked through
the window of his ward and out into space. The medical
friga
te was unlike most other vessels
he’d been on before and utilised plate-reinforced glass protected
by emergency shutters. It was an old design and one abandoned for
over fifty years. As he lay there, he thought of what kind of life
the ship must have had in its long career. It lacked rotational
sections for artificial gravity, and all but its point defence
turrets had been removed to make space for beds and supplies. It
was almost sad to see a ship of her age relegated to a non-combat
function.

Still, it’s better than being
scrapped
, he thought.

He was positioned so
that his upper body was slightly raised
,
but not too high that he was sitting. The bed was one of eight in
the ward; half occupied by marines and engineers that had suffered
accidents or injury in the last week. He was young, and his
recovery was quicker than some might have expected. The mental
scars were more than evident, however, even to him. As he lay there
gazing through the window, his mind returned to the short but
vicious battle underground on Hades.

Hades,
how
right they were with that
name!

The injuries he’d
sustained on that moon were unlike anything his young body had
experienced so far.
The puncture wounds
had penetrated deeply, but according to the doctors, they had
managed to avoid all the major arteries and organs. He tried to not
think about the blood and wounds; the mere thought of blood sent a
dizzy, almost sickening feeling through him. From the window, he
watched a group of Navy frigates form up into a neat formation. New
Charon appeared even busier than he’d seen Terra Nova or Prime,
with military and civilian ships spreading like locusts through the
system. He could no longer see the distant shape of ANS Beagle even
though the ship had been expanded until it was now almost
unrecognisable. They’d left the Beagle Station half a day earlier
and were on an elliptical course that would take them past a number
of moons but at a leisurely pace. They were in no hurry. Only the
faint colour of the Rift could just be made out in the distance. He
pulled one of the public access secpads from the unit next to his
bed and held it in front of his face. It was far less useful than
his personal device, but it was tied into the public network feeds.
With a few taps, he was able to bring up the headline news stories
for the Alliance.

Let’s see what’s happening out
there.

The most
common
stories were the usual problems;
food shortages on Kerberos, public sector protests on Carthago and
an armour scandal in the Marine Corps. Even the President seemed to
be in some sort of expenses story that seemed to be going nowhere.
But the one story that caught his eye was the one given most of the
coverage, and it simply stated, ‘We are not alone!’

No
shit!
He laughed to himself.

Reading further into
the story, it outlined the most recent developments in New Charon.
Preserved skeletal remains, destroyed technology and signs of
habitation were now appearing on a large number of moons and on the
three planets explored so far. The news story from the Alliance
News Network implied the remains were almost certainly early
colonists from Earth. The next most important story concerned the
usual scapegoats, the Jötnar. Apparently, Commander Gun, leader of
the Jötnar, had infiltrated New Charon and was in the process of
establishing an independent outpost on one of the high gravity
worlds. Jack raised his eyebrows at the story, more in annoyance
than surprise.

Why the
he
ll not? If it were anybody
else, it wouldn’t be a problem.

A shadow appeared at
the end of the room
, and Jack
instinctively went for his side, but he was unarmed. A flicker of
fear rushed through his weakened body before the shape of a young
woman appeared. She was barely over 1.6m tall, and her light blonde
hair was tied back neatly behind her head. Her face was soft,
almost gentle and instantly put him at ease.

“
Jack Morato, how
are you feeling today?” she asked
,
approaching his bed.

It was odd to watch
her move as she pulled herself through the room. The grab handles
were placed at frequent intervals so that she could maintain
control
, without crashing into fragile
equipment. She seemed to float towards his bed, and that was
something Jack was quite enjoying. All thoughts of the Jötnar, New
Charon or even the creatures on Hades vanished as he gazed at the
young woman. Her face was lightly freckled and her skin almost
lilywhite, a common side effect of spending large amounts of time
in space. His eyes moved from her waist and lingered on her chest,
perhaps a little too long before she coughed politely.

“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
fo
und 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,”
s
he 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
r
ift!

“What the hell is going on?”

They
b
oth 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.