Legions of Orion (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 1) (12 page)

As he considered
that question, he was reminded of two things. First there was the
issue of casualties from the attack on the ship and second, there
was the unusual transmission they had come across when they first
arrived. With the bridge in action, they finally had a secure
route, and these new potential problems seemed by comparison to be
mere procedure.

“
Sir, there’s a
message from the rescue team. We have a total of seven dead and
twelve wounded,” called out the communications officer.

Captain Raikes lowered his chin into
his hands as he thought of the losses.

The
W
ar is over, so what the hell
is going on?

“
There
’s something else, Sir.
They’ve found a few body parts from the saboteurs, but one of them
is missing.”

“What?” he demanded as he grabbed the
intercom himself and connected directly to the Lieutenant in charge
of the rescue party.

“Lieutenant, what’s going on down
there?”

There was a short pause before the
slightly dulled sound of the marine’s voice replied.

“
Captain,
t
he lifeboat was blown out, but the
computer system is fragged. No way to tell if it was the force of
the blast or somebody released it. We have some part of the bomber,
a male. Not a lot left, but I’ve sent the remains for analysis.
Sir, one of the marine survivors says there was a woman. There’s no
sign of here in the danger zone. Either she escaped in the
lifeboat, or she’s still on board.”

“
Understood,
Lieutenant, I’m sending two more teams to assist you. If she’s on
board, I want her, and fast!”

* * *

Commodore Lewis relaxed a little in his
cabin as he recalled the sight of ANS Beagle finally securing
access to the Spacebridge. In less than a minute, the anomaly had
settled down and a stable route had been established back home. It
was a major feat for the Alliance in terms of both logistics and
engineering, but at a surprising cost in lives. As he lay back and
rested, he worried about the troubling news of the saboteurs. With
the defeat of the religious fanatics and their allies back during
the Uprising, there had been nothing of this level of violence on
board Navy vessels for years. In the vicious fighting with the
Zealots, it had been common knowledge that they had infiltrated
both military and civilian high command. New vetting procedures
were in place to ensure the stability, reliability and honesty of
all recruits in the military.

All
that
effort and still
somebody slipped through.

Even more troubling
was the rumour that it was
a loyal
faction trying to spare them from taking foolhardy steps into the
unknown. He reached over for his secpad and brought up the latest
scans from the moons around the nearest gas giant. He’d turned his
attention away from the Spacebridge, now that more engineering
teams and patrol vessels had arrived to secure the area of space
around ANS Beagle. This meant his small taskforce was free to
explore the immediate system, planets and moons for anything of
note. Thinking of ANS Beagle, reminded him of his own losses in the
suicide attack. As always, military requirements trumped social
niceties. He’d already arranged for the dead and wounded to be
shipped back to Prometheus where they were receiving expert medical
attention, and he fully intended to return for their internment
ceremonies and subsequent investigation. It concerned him that he
had been unable to return with them, but he was also well aware of
the importance of this operation. The secpad started flashing,
gently at first and then increasing in intensity. It was a video
call from his XO.

Great,
what is it now?
He wondered before
hitting the receive button. In his experience, he was only
contacted when there was bad news, and so far he’d had quite enough
of deaths, attacks and equipment failure.

“
Sir, sorry to
interrupt you.
He

We’ve just regained contact with the
reconnaissance drone. It is in position and starting its scan of
the surface. We are approximately four hours from making
orbit.”

“Very good. Keep me informed of its
progress.”

“Sir.”

The image of his
executive officer faded away, and the details of the moon returned.
He was due to return to the CIC in the next two hours, and this was
likely to be the only chance for a short break for at least a day.
He had no doubt that if they found anything of note on or near the
moon, he and his forces would have their work cut out for them. He
closed his eyes, but the image of the moon kept appearing to him,
and instead, he sat back up and pulled the secpad to his face. The
long distance scans were speculative, and according to his
engineers, there was a high margin of error. What intrigued him was
that of the large number of planets and moons in this system,
surprising numbers showed viable atmospheres. The star system was
based around a red subgiant with a size of almost three times that
of the Sun back in Earth’s Solar System. The planet they were
approaching appeared to contain at least thirty small moons and
eight large moons, one of which was still transmitting some kind of
signal. He tapped the image of the moon in question and stared at
its glowing outline.

What are the odds we find a moon with a
potentially stable atmosphere?

Of
course
, there was nothing random about
their arrival, but few outside of the Alliance High Command knew
where the data on the Orion expedition had originated. Thoughts of
the bridge reminded him of his new mission. With the Spacebridge
secure, the maintenance and security of the site had been handed
over to Admiral Anderson, and that had now freed up his own force
for other missions. His own orders had changed to reconnaissance
and consolidation of the Star System, provisionally known as Orion
Major. It was imperative that he set up a wide perimeter so that a
long-term presence could be established in this sector. His
briefing with High Command via video link to Terra Nova had been
clear. The Alliance intended on creating a permanent link to the
system and would build a supply and research outpost within three
months. Parts were already being sent through, to what many back
home considered to be the future for humanity. As he looked at his
secpad, he doubted their faith in something they knew so little
about. He tapped the image of the fourth plant, and it enlarged to
fill the screen with long distance imaging and statistics, low
gravity, small iron and silicate structure,
and a thin corrosive atmosphere.

Sounds
like hell
,
he thought half-heartedly.
If the people back home could see it, I don’t think they’d
be quite so excited.

The other planets
were less interesting, most of them rocky or ice planets with no
usable atmosphere. Two asteroid belts split the planets up into
three main groups with the single gas giant being closer to the
central star. He placed the secpad back down on his bedside unit
and looked over to the clock.

I’ll
take an hour’s break
, and
then its nose to the grindstone time.

* * *

Spartan paced about his briefing room
with the look of a man that was losing patience. He’d only been in
the room for a few minutes, but his list of virtues had never
included patience. The room itself was simply decorated with a
number of paintings hanging on the wall, depicting various periods
of history. From imagery of the Ancient Greeks in their battles
with Persian hordes, up through to more recent battles in the
Uprising. Most people tended to avoid discussing events of the last
decades, but as CEO of the company, Spartan had wanted his people
to confront issues straight on. A long oval table filled the middle
of the room, and a model of the Alliance was projected directly
above it. The door finally opened, and in walked his wife Teresa
and his son.

“
About time!” he
said before instantly regretting his outburst. Teresa moved quickly
towards h
im and threw her arms around his
upper body, while Jack moved towards the wall, saying
nothing.

“
You’ve been gone a
long time, Spartan. I thought you’d gone on one of your adventures
with Gun again!” she said with relief.

Teresa was now in
her late forties, yet her constant physical training and slight
build gave her the youth and looks of a woman in her early
thirties. Her black hair ran down even longer than when they had
been in the Marine Corps together. Behind them appeared
Intelligence Director Johnson, but the absence of his assistant,
Agent Hammacher, was unexpected.

“
Spartan...Jack, we
need to talk,” he said, motioning for them to sit around the table.
They complied, but Teresa remained on her feet and blocked his
path.

“Johnson, what the hell is going on
here? This is my family we’re talking about!”

For a second, it
looked as though she would strike him, but his body language
remained relaxed, and he move back a few inches to give
ground.

“
Teresa, I know that
none of your family would be involved in anything of detriment to
the Alliance. That isn’t why I am here. For official purposes, I am
looking into some of your son’s more interesting adventures. But in
reality, there is something much more worrying going
on.”

He turned from Teresa and to the
table.

“
Isn’t there,
Jack?”

The young man looked
at Johnson and then to his father. The two had a troubled history,
with Jack frequently getting into trouble, and Spartan doing his
utmost to get him to calm down. Jack, on this occasion, seemed much
calmer than normal and simply nodded at Spartan before looking back
to Johnson.

“
Yes,
Wictred and I have been tracking one of the
sources Gun put out for the hunters.”

“
Hunters?” retorted
Spartan.
“They are angry juveniles
looking to bag their first kill. I thought you’d stopped running
with them?”

Jack shook his head and continued,
doing his best to ignore his father.

“
There have been
rumours about this new isolationist movement. We were following a
group that have been trying to obtain technical specification for
specifically, the control mechanisms.”

“
What?” Spartan
snapped.

Teresa reached out and touched his
arm.

“Spartan, let him
explain...please.”

He sighed but said no more, for
now.

“
The group here was
just one of three that we have intel on. We thought they were going
to try and send something through a rift and then bring the entire
system down from the inside. Looks like we were wrong, but we found
this instead.”

Jack pulled out a
battered looking datapad, a model that hadn’t been manufactured for
well over ten years and slid it across to Johnson. With a quick
tap, he activated the device and ran through the images.

“
You found
this
here, in the colony?”

Jack nodded.

Johnson examined
them for a few more seconds before passing it to Spartan and
Teresa. Spartan wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at, but
Teresa recognised the gate structure almost instantly.

“These are schematics for the rift
generator that was destroyed on Hyperion, aren’t they?”

“
What?”
Spartan barked. “I thought all information on
Hyperion was either destroyed or taken over by Alliance
Intelligence?”

Johnson laced both of his hands on the
table and sighed.

“
Yes, this is what
we suspected. We’ve had more than a good decade in the Alliance,
and a lot of it down to people like you and Teresa. The War is
over, and the enemy are beaten, but there are still people out
there who disagree with our plans. The Network is the greatest
achievement in the last five hundred years, and it is forcing our
colonies together, not apart. But there are some, even in military
circles, who have long-term concerns about the
technology.”

Spartan shook his head.

“
I don’t
understand.
The Network has been proven
safe...I should know, I’ve used it enough. We can travel between
colonies in an instant, and it means trade and communications from
here to Prometheus, and even back to Earth, are now possible in
hours and days. Why would anybody not want that?”

Jack looked away
from Spartan in irritation, but it wasn’t exactly clear
why.

“
What?”
Spartan demanded.

Jack looked around the room until
fixing on Johnson who nodded at him.

“
There are three
groups that have big issues with the Network. First are those in
the less official markets, traders, black marketers, pirates and
smugglers. With all trade using the Network, it has become much
more difficult to run illegal operations. Second, the
military.”

“What?” exclaimed Johnson in
surprise.

Spartan lifted his hand.

“
You started this.”
He then looked to his son. “Go on Jack, explain.”

“
The use of the
Network has reduced the importance of the long-distance ships and
the transports and troops that go with them. No world is more than
a few hours from a Network rift, so why have so many ships and
facilities? You could have just one large Naval base with a dozen
ships to protect the entire Alliance.”