Legions of Orion (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 1) (2 page)

“
This
wa
y!” called out a familiar voice. It was
that of Captain Garcia who had established a small supply dump
about fifty metres inside the structure. They moved closer until
moving through a low opening into a damaged room. A dump containing
fuel, power cells and tracking equipment lay to one side, along
with three marines.

“
Yes, are you
ready?” she answered it
in a short and
irritated tone.

A dark shape turned
to face her. I
t was a Jötnar, and one of
the nearly three-metre tall creatures that inhabited Hyperion. He
was build like an ogre of legend and thickly muscled. He wore an
odd uniform that bore some similarity to that of the old
Confederate Marine Corps, but with newly fashioned armour plates
around the chest and shoulders.

“
We’re ready.
A
re you sure you want to reach the lower
levels?” he asked.

Dr Morgonz looked up to him and shook
her head.

“
I am no fool, Mr
Khan, and I am equally capable of taking care of myself. Now, we
are running on a tight schedule, and my superiors require this
information quickly. Let’s go.”

She moved to the
dark opening at the end of the room and disappeared through it.
Only the light on her head provided any illumination as she moved
along the perimeter of a deep chasm. Jose followed close behind
her, and the three marines that had been waiting joined in as
well.

Kh
an shook his head as she left them.

“
It isn’t Mr, it’s
Captain,” h
e said with amusement to
himself.

Captain Garcia leaned in closely
towards him.

“
Is it just me, or
are you tempted to stay here and leave her to get lost down
there?”

Khan started to
shake and laughed with a low rumble. They both paused for a moment,
but in the end they had a job to do, and much as they might want to
stay, they couldn’t. Khan moved first, and the young Captain
followed close behind. Another group of three researchers and two
archaeologists arrived and moved behind them. Once through the gap,
they could all see the great pit that according to their scans
descended nearly three hundred metres straight down. Dr Morgonz
pointed at one of the thick sets of power cabling, each one as
thick as a man’s arm, that ran like a snake around the
structure.

“
You see the
pattern. I
t’s the same as in the other
mountain. The others were destroyed in the blast, but this one is
still giving off trace interference.”

She pointed over the edge and into the
blackness.

“
Something down
there is still running. If it is anything to do with the control
system for this site, then this could be most significant
breakthrough in science for the last decade.”

The rest of the
group mumbled in partial agreement
, but
it was clear most had no interest in being in such a place. The
reputation of the last stronghold of the Zealots and their hordes
of machines and creatures left a taste that could be eliminated
only by leaving the underground site.

“
Come on, we are
running on a tight schedule here. If we don’t strike gold by the
end of today, we will have to give up on this part of the site and
try the next hole.”

They pushed on, and
Khan watched her move ahead with amusement. He looked to Captain
Garcia.

“
What is she looking
for exactly? I thought the research was going well.”

The Alliance Captain shrugged.

“
Not what I heard.
The rumour I heard was that the last orb entry point just
disintegrated whatever went inside. Without a system at the other
end, there is no way to get through. Why do you think it’s been
taking so long to expand the network? She must be after technical
information from the control system.”

Khan nodded at that part.

“Makes sense. This was one of the main
command sections of the base.”

They moved on for
almost an hour, each inching their way down the slippery surface
until finally reaching a series of arches of which only three were
still in one piece. The Doctor moved into the first and lit up the
darkened space to reveal more of the cables that ran inside. The
light revealed that the space was in fact a large open cavern full
of damaged machines and cables.

“Look!” she said almost excitedly.

She stepped forward,
but Khan called out.

“Stop!”

He pushed ahead and to a position about
ten metres in front and further inside the room. He stopped and
sniffed the air.

“
What is it?” asked
Captain Garcia, who moved passed the civilians to join
him.

Khan sniffed the air
again but said nothing at first. He glanced about suspiciously,
scratching his chin as he considered their situation.

“
Well?” asked
Captain Garcia, but this time with an impatient tone.

“I thought I heard something in
there.”

Dr Morgonz
walked up to him and looked inside the chamber
herself.

“
What’s the
probl
em? Come on, we have work to do,”
she snapped, moving past him to enter the chamber. Khan shook his
head angrily, but the woman ignored him and entered the open space.
The rest of her team followed, only the marines waited. Khan looked
at them and grinned before looking back to Captain
Garcia.

“
I see your men have
the intelligence to be suspicious. Look at them,” he said, pointing
at the civilians that were already inside, completely unaware if
there might be something dangerous lurking inside.

The
A
lliance Captain looked up to where they
had entered, but it was too far away to be seen now and was no more
than a glimmer of light hundreds of metres away from them. He
tapped the radio unit built into his armoured suit of marine
armour, known as a PDS suit.

“
Garcia here,
w
e’ve reached the main control level and
are moving inside. Contact the Commander, and give him our
updates.”

He then turned to
Khan.
“What do you think?”

Khan shrugged.

“
We’re underground
with five guns between us. Could be interesting.”

Captain Garcia
shuddered slightly at his cavalier mention of the danger and the
odds. He’d only been on a few missions with his kind in the past
and had never quite gotten used to their attitude. They were an odd
dichotomy where they seemed to love battle and action, yet were
openly more cautious and sensible in battle than his battle-trained
marines.

“
Let’s go,”
h
e said finally.

The four marines and
the
Jötnar pushed away from their
position and entered the large chamber. The civilians were already
busy exploring the plethora of interesting items both on the floor
and walls of the cavernous place. Khan moved along the right-hand
wall and rubbed his large hand over the carved
stonework.

“Interesting, they are like the ones we
saw on the surface.”

The one he seemed
most interested in was of a glowing orb surrounded by walking
machines. The design was basic, but it suggested they were bowing
down to the orb, itself containing the shape of
something.”

Captain Garcia
examined the same piece of art
, although
with less interest than that shown by Khan. He looked over to the
Doctor who was walking towards a dark shape in the centre of the
room.

“
Hey, Doctor. Who
did all this
?”

She ignored him, but
one of the archaeologists, a scruffy man with long hair, looked
back to him.

“
It’s not that old
here.
I’d say maybe a hundred...two
hundred years top. The tech is not that dissimilar to ours. We’re
thinking it is most likely one of the early colony ships. Over a
dozen went missing during the first generation of exploration in
this system.”

Captain Garcia looked unimpressed.

“
Colonists,
h
ow could they create the technology for
something like this place?”

The archaeologist
grinned at him, his face contorting slightly beneath his
respirator.

“
How would I know?
I’m not with the technical team. You need to speak to Doctor
Morgonz about that.”

Two of the technicians ran over to
where the Doctor was busy wiping dust away from a number of large
computer units. She actually seemed almost excited at what she had
found hidden beneath layers of debris.

“What is it?” asked Captain Garcia from
his position off to the side of the cavernous room.

With a flicker of
energy, a dust covered display unit flashed and sprung to life. The
whiteness of its display almost blinded them in the pitch-blackness
so far underground. She turned and grinned at them, but no one
could actually see her face for a few seconds as their eyes
adjusted once more.

“
This, gentlemen, is
an antique. We have examples of this kind of equipment in the
Alliance Archives back on Terra Nova.”

“
So it’s one of
ours
, then?” continued the
Captain.

Doctor Morgonz looked back at him
incredulously.

“
Well who were you
expecting? Intelligent alien life?”

Two of the marines
chuckled at her comment
, but a stern look
from the Captain put them back to their usual silent status. Doctor
Morgonz finished working on the equipment and pulled a lever. More
systems activated until at least a quarter of the equipment in the
room was running. She examined the main screen for a little while
longer and then reached out to touch the display. Jose stepped
closer and lifted his hand.

“Hey, don’t you want to check for any
more gear before we start using this stuff?” he asked
nervously.

The Doctor ignored
him
and brought up a schematic of the
site. It was heavily detailed with multiple power sources around a
central shaft near where the dome building had been present. She
spotted something off to the side and enlarged it to fill the
screen.

“Wow!” she exclaimed.

Khan and Captain Garcia moved from
where they had been checking the perimeter and approached her
display. The image had shifted from the technical side and instead
showed a network of nodes, each joined by a series of lines.
Captain Garcia pointed to the shapes on the left-hand side.

“Isn’t this Terra Nova and Earth?”

The Doctor looked
back at him;
an expression of pleasant
surprise on her face.

“
Well done, Captain.
Yes, it is a map of sorts. This section contains three nodes, two
of which are worlds in the Alliance. This third one I do not
recognise.”

Khan looked for just a second before
speaking.

“Uh, that’s this place, isn’t it?”

The Doctor nodded
but said nothing, evidently too embarrassed to have anything to
say. The others gathered round the screen as she tapped a number of
the nodes to reveal further details. The one at Terra Nova showed
an icon that was different to any of the others. She tapped it, and
it brought up technical data and schematics.

“
Fascinating,”
s
he said to herself as she examined the
information carefully.

“What is it?” asked Khan in a barely
interested tone.

Jose looked over his
shoulder at the towering creature and shuddered slightly at the
thought of being so close to one of them. They might be their
allies, but there were still rumours of their violence after the
War.

“
The data here
confirms the sit
ing of the AI hub that
was installed to control the enemy ships and Biomechs throughout
the old Confederacy. It looks like the other nodes are for
planetary based spacebridges.”

He traced the lines
with his hand and came to Earth. It showed just a few lines of data
and several unidentifiable icons. When the Doctor tapped what
appeared to be Hyperion, however, the story changed completely. The
icon representing the jungle world moved off to the side, and
instead a complex web of nodes took its place.

“
What the hell?”
spluttered out Jose in surprise.
“Is that
what I think it is?”

Doctor Morgonz
nodded and pressed an icon that shrunk the nodes as if it was
zooming out. It continued for almost thirty seconds until stopping
and showing a much smaller subset of nodes spread out over a vast
area. She sighed with pleasure and turned to look at the small
group.

“
What you’re seeing
here is a network between worlds. This area here is the Orion
Nebula
, and you’ll note that there are
nearly fifty marked nodes in this area alone. There were only three
of them in our explored space. Interestingly though, there are no
other nodes with AI Hub icons. We must have been the
exception.”

“Or the source?” suggested Captain
Garcia, a comment that surprised the rest of the scientific
team.

“Orion? Isn’t that over a thousand
light years away?” asked a sceptical Jose.

“
Yes, a vast
distance,” s
he replied and then moved
back to the display. As she examined the data further, she
simultaneously pulled out a portable data drive and synced to the
device.”