The Great Betrayal

• CHAPTER ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWO
  
• CHAPTER THREE
  
• CHAPTER FOUR
  
• CHAPTER FIVE
  
• CHAPTER SIX
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER NINE
  
• CHAPTER TEN
  
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
  
• CHAPTER TWELVE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
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The four racial groups of the Helions purported to represent all of their culture. The ANS Conqueror Incident of 360CC, however, revealed a massive underclass known as the Zathee who had been exploited for centuries. These people had fought as cannon fodder in the wars with the Biomechs and now lived as little more than servants. The Zathee Insurrection, as it soon became known, spread through the entire planet of Helios before igniting slave revolts on other Helion worlds. Within three months, the flames of revolution had spread as far as the empires of the Anicinàbe, Byotai, and even the Khreenk.

History of Slave Labor

The dull blue star sent a shimmering glint of light over the thousands of ruined and smashed ships. The ancient graveyard circled the system’s single sterile planet like a cloud of pestilence that betrayed some apocalyptical battle hundreds of years earlier. One capital ship waited while a small group of robotic fighters hurtled through the debris in search of their quarry. A larger shape moved ahead of them, a spacecraft bearing the markings of the old Centauri confederacy.

 
“Here they come. Let’s do this!” shouted Khan.

Spartan nodded and activated the controls that sent a surge of power to the maneuvering thrusters. The obsolete Broadsword class heavy bomber spun about on its axis so that it was facing in the opposite direction. Due to the peculiarities of space travel, the bomber continued on its original trajectory but now faced directly at the group of pursuing Biomech fighters. All of them were forced to travel slower than they were capable of as they moved through the thick debris field. The front of the delta shape spacecraft exposed a plethora of weapons, each one easily capable of tearing apart a fighter.

“Now!” shouted Spartan as he depressed the trigger.

He expected to feel the shudder through the structure as the array of weapons opened fire, but instead there was only a deathly silence and three red indicator lights on his gunnery control panel. He pressed it again and again but was met by nothing more than the click of the trigger.

“Good work, Khan, still no guns!”

He shook his head and hit the thruster controls to bring the vessel back around. A rocket rushed past them on the left of the craft and exploded when it struck one of the many pieces of debris floating about in the polluted zone of space.

“I can get the turrets working, just give me another minute!” called out his friend.

“Yeah, if you say so,” Spartan muttered under his breath.

He redirected a burst of emergency power to the dorsal thrusters just in time to move past a large piece of capital ship wreckage.

Bloody hell!

His heart pounded as he half expected the top of the craft to tear open from the impact. As they moved past, he watched the top with his right eye. Luckily, nothing untoward happened, and he was able reset their course without further damage to the aging bomber. He reached out instinctively with his left arm to try and speed things up before remembering the hideous wound caused by the Biomechs. His left arm was now no more than a stump. The thought of what had happened merely increased his zeal. A flashing light above his head caught his eye.

What now?

Glancing at the light, he spotted the fuel-warning marker next to it. For a moment Spartan thought that was it. They were out of fuel; and would soon be dead and adrift in space. The light flickered though and then burst. With no indicator, he was forced to check the management screen on his left. There were three tanks and all showed as being well stocked with fuel.

Must have been a faulty light,
he hoped.

The computer system monitored the debris thousands of times a second and brought up potential vectors for them to follow. Unfortunately, the safest routes made them the easiest targets for the fighters. They had also been forced to alter course, and this bought them a few more seconds. Spartan glanced out through the tiny windows on the sides and at the space junk flashing by. Most of it was unrecognizable, but some parts were visibly ship related.

There must have been one hell of a battle here.

He tried to imagine how many ships would have been crippled and torn apart in such a small part of space, but the sight of the robotic fighters brought his attention back.

Concentrate you fool. You have to escape!

The battered and exhausted looking Jötnar shook his head. He’d been pulling on cables and panels for the last five minutes to no avail. The interior of the bomber was hardly conducive to a warrior of his oversized stature, and he continually struck his head or became stuck as he moved about. Since their escape, he’d managed to bring a number of key systems online, including the prized countermeasures. The weapon system had unfortunately so far eluded him.

“We won’t make it to the Rift at this rate!” Spartan shouted.

Khan turned from his work and threw an angry stare at him.

“Not helping. Spartan not helping at all. Just keep flying.”

The crew area was placed a quarter the way along the twenty-two meter long body of the spacecraft and filled almost half of the interior. The design was very different to those in the commonly used Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter or the much more modern Hammerhead. It was considerably larger and unable to carry an assault team or dogfight in atmospheric flight, but its great strength lay in its range and capacity to sustain damage. Like most vehicles of its time a generation earlier, the heavy bomber was a spacecraft designed for a specific role rather than the universal design now being used. It could travel for weeks, even months at a time to support warship squadrons of the Confederate Navy in battle. At least that was how it might have been used twenty or thirty years earlier.

“Tell me something, Khan; I don’t care what, just something!”

Khan shouted at the engineer panel inside the filled the cramped interior, as once more he tried to bring more of the systems back on. Each time he tried to divert power from one place to another, he lost access to an existing system, and it was starting to annoy him. He looked at the last active system with surplus power, the emergency life-support package and moved his hand to alter the power. It dropped enough for him to divert a small portion to the secondary capacitor and instantly rewarded him with a series of status indicators flashing green.

“Railgun is charging up. We have a gun.”

He scanned the figures on the screen before allowing himself to smile.

“Even better, we have power reserves building in the primary and secondary capacitors.”

Spartan looked back from his pilot’s seat almost eight meters further along the craft. He was jammed into the front of the bomber, and a dozen screens around him fed information from the many complex systems aboard the craft. They bathed him in a mixture of pale blue and red light.

“Which gun?”

Khan nodded with a smile that seemed excessive even for him.

“Just the one, the one down there.”

He point at the floor of the craft.

Spartan smiled for the first time in what seemed like months.

“Now that’s more like it. Shame about the others.”

“Hey, it’s a damned big gun; just make sure you hit something with it.”

Spartan struck the emergency reverse-thrust button, and the directional cowls on the engines altered shape to direct most of the thrust ahead. Spartan pushed forward in his seat and would have crashed into the controls, if it weren’t for the heavily worn, yet extremely sturdy straps. Khan was also strapped in, but the rapid deceleration caught him by surprise. He coughed out as the air was forced from his lungs. A structural warning alarm sounded near Spartan, but he ignored it and instead watched the enemy fighters on the rear display.

Here they come.

With the bomber already slowing, the pursuing craft flew past him and into a position half a kilometer ahead. They were quick to realize what was happening and slowed down before spinning about to face him while continuing on the same vector. Spartan activated the main weapon coils and depressed the primary trigger. As the button clicked, he held his breath, waiting for the inevitable failure.

“This had better work!”

The hull of the spacecraft shuddered as the massive weapon accelerated a dense projectile the size of a man’s fist toward the fighters. The railgun was a simple weapon that had been shrunk down to a manageable size in the craft. Even so, it used up vast reserves of power and would not be able to fire for another ten seconds. Spartan watched with glee as the ultra-high velocity round slammed into the nearest Biomech fighter, smashing a hole through its center. Sections ripped off, and it drifted on its original path, now lifeless and useless.

“One down, three more to go!” he laughed.

Khan would love to have joined in, but he was back to the main computer system and checking their route. He looked at the scanners once more before crosschecking with the data on the bomber's navigation computer.

“Spartan, none of this makes sense. The computer has no idea where we are.”

The gun was ready again, and Spartan released another shot; but this time the Biomechs were ready and altered their velocities just enough for the dense charge to flash by them.

“Who cares? The scanner still shows the open Anomaly, right?”

Khan checked it for what felt like the fiftieth time.

“Yes, it’s open. There’s one cruiser blocking access.”

“Good. Then we’re going for it. How much further?”

Khan looked at the shape of the three Biomech fighters before answering.

“About ten more hours, assuming we can get past those three.”

Again the main gun fired, but there was little chance of them striking the smaller Biomech fighters. They were half the size of an Alliance Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter and reacted with great speed. The shapes were anything but streamlined and looked something more akin to a small, crewless resupply shuttle but bristling with weapons. Large retro thrusters were fitted to each corner, and a single powerful engine was planted firmly in the center of the rear. Khan watched one fire a blast at them, and a single round penetrated the starboard armor and opened multiple breaches. Alarms activated, and small clouds of sealant rushed to the small tears, sealing the craft to stop it ripping itself to pieces. He turned back to the computer system and tried once more to redirect power from one of the communication arrays to the turret controls.