The Great Betrayal (25 page)

“The bastards, they’ve betrayed us!” growled Khan.

Without magboots, their mobility was limited. Even so, Spartan moved out from cover and took direct aim at the machine.

If I can kill one of their masters, maybe they’ll go a little lighter on us?
he thought optimistically.

Before he was able to shoot, the group of T’Kari turned on the machine, and three opened fire with their rifles. The others attacked it with whatever tools or weapons they could find. An arm was torn off, and a T’Kari spun out into the passageway with blood spurting from a deep gash to the neck.

“Nice!” roared Khan, and with a kick he floated off toward the machine.

Spartan took aim, but in the bloody melee there was no opportunity to open fire. He was forced to close the distance like Khan, but by the time they had arrived, another T’Kari lay dead and the machine was smashed to ruin. Spartan stopped in front of the female who had once more opened her helm to reveal her face. She looked at him and then to her people. Her words streamed out, but Spartan very quickly recognized his name.

“Uh, Spartan, how does she know who you are?”

He shrugged in reply.

“How the hell would I know?”

Khan tapped his shoulder, and he looked back to see the group of ten T’Kari plus the two they had already found. The female nodded to him, and then in a shocking move, all twelve lowered themselves to a single knee, as if he was some kind of savior.

“I think they like you,” laughed Khan suspiciously.

“Yeah, weird, right?”

He sensed they might be able to help though, if properly motivated. More sounds from behind them in the next passageway encouraged him to make a decision, and fast.

“Follow me!”

Spartan pulled himself out of the corridor and into yet another wide passageway. By his count, this was the seventh storage area inside the station. It seemed like Spartan and Khan had been on the station for days, yet he suspected it was an hour, probably a great deal less. The more he thought about it, the more he suspected it was closer to thirty minutes. They reached the end and came to a crossroads. The female T’Kari pointed to the right-hand entrance for them all to go through.

“Where do you think it goes?” asked Khan.

Spartan raised an eyebrow.

“Really? Come on, let’s see what she has to show us.”

They went down the much smaller passageway, a hexagonal shaft with observation windows on two sides. As they moved along, it gave them a wide view of different parts of the space platform they were inside. From the shape of the structures, the Rift generator plants, and number of moored vessels, it was clearly something much more than just a control station. They had already spotted at least a dozen massive hangars. As they pushed on, Spartan wondered what else might be aboard this place, other than storage rooms filled with tubes that contained creatures and machines of many configurations. The female T’Kari beckoned to one of the larger doors. As he approached, it automatically opened. He pulled himself inside, and Khan watched him go in before moving to follow. There was something about this particular section that stopped Spartan in his tracks.

“Just look at this place,” he said quietly.

Khan moved in right behind him and moved his head slowly, taking in the detail. He counted hundreds of cylinders, and that was just in the one room, each of them stacked five high. He counted at least five more rows of the same. Spartan stayed with the two T’Kari, but his curiosity forced him to move closer. It took only a few seconds to reach the nearest of the pod type devices. Tubes ran above and below the unit, and different colored fluids ran continually.

Khan leaned forward until his face touched the dull transparent plastic. His reflection appeared far worse than he would ever have imagined. The face looking back at him was pale and tired. He was surprised at his transformation during his captivity.

“Man, do I look bad!” He stared at the pod.

 
“What is it?”

Khan looked back to Spartan and shook his head bitterly.

“It’s Biomechs again, just like me.”

Spartan wasn’t as shocked as Khan. He had seen this technology on several occasions before. Leaving the two T’Kari, he pushed off from the ground and drifted toward the first pod. Khan grabbed him and pulled him close to the misted transparent front. The face inside was definitely a synthetic and close, if not identical, to those created in the middle of the Uprising. The female T’Kari pointed at the pod and then to Khan. He shook his head, but it wasn’t at all clear if they understood what he was trying to communicate.

“No, I am free. These are Biomechs warriors.”

The female spoke with her comrade and then moved back to her group, her boots making that odd sucking sound. Khan turned his attention to Spartan who was turning his head to get the scope of the place.

“This place is a storage site, like a forward base of operations.”

Khan nodded in agreement.

“For where though?”

Spartan raised an eyebrow at his question.

“Remember the Rift this place is right next to? My guess is they are waiting here to send these troops into battle against a station or colony. ”

“Ours?”

Spartan moved his head from side to side.

“Maybe. Remember how many Biomechs were unleashed in the Uprising. We wondered how the Zealots managed to get so many, so fast. What if the Biomechs had given them a force to start with, and then the tech to create more?”

“Why though? If they have the troops, they could manage on their own.”

Spartan wasn’t quite sure what the answer was to that particular question. All he knew was that no matter where he traveled, he seemed to come across machines and Biomechanical creatures that had been built for one purpose, the total destruction of an area. Then it dawned on him. He pulled Khan closer to his face.

“They aren’t looking to conquer. How much territory did the Biomechs themselves ever take in the War? The creatures were just tools, weapons for their war. I have an idea.”

“Really,” muttered Khan. He had no idea where Spartan was going with this line of thought.

“I think these Biomechs aren’t as powerful as you might think. They want people, races, and empires at war. They want struggle and weakness.”

“But why?”

Spartan had been thinking on this problem long and hard. There were many things to consider when it came to the wars against the Zealots and their masters. The more he discovered, the more complicated the entire thing became.

“You remember the machines on the ship; they were ancient creatures, cocooned inside advanced machine bodies. If you were thousands of years old, wouldn’t you want to stay that way?”

Khan said nothing and returned his gaze to the dead face of the thing inside the pod. It saddened him to see what amounted to as a cousin inside these chambers. His kin might be reproducing naturally now, but they would never forget their roots; one based on blood, deception, and science. Spartan watched him and glanced at the waiting T’Kari before continuing.

“They do not have the numbers, so they use others to keep themselves safe. They send this technology against all of us to keep any of us from turning our attention from our own troubles and back onto them.”

Khan thought about it. It wasn’t something that had really occurred to him, but the more he considered it, the more it made sense.

“Interesting, so they wait behind their Biomech warriors and ships, and send agents throughout worlds to start wars and spread destruction while their own worlds stay fat and safe.”

Khan turned around to face Spartan. His face had changed to bitter anger.

“Remember our interrogation, Khan? I don’t at all, but I do recall part of what they passed on about their world. They are powerful, and they see themselves like gods. But they are ancient, and there are no more of them.”

“The leader, the one who opened up his armor?”

Spartan smiled grimly.

“Yeah, their bodies inside are broken and old. The massive one that tried to arrive on Hyperion was probably one of their commanders. Their robotic bodies get bigger and more powerful I suspect to match their position.”

Khan’s lip curled up again.

“Then I say we get home, build up a fleet, bring fire to their worlds, and end this once and for all, unless we want the cycle to go on forever.”

Spartan nodded slowly in his direction.

“My thoughts exactly, old friend.”

Spartan hadn’t actually considered the cycle idea, but it did make sense. He began to wonder what might have happened if the Confederacy hadn’t won in the Great Uprising. Would something else have then attempted to tear whatever was left apart?

Like sending us out to Orion to find new people to struggle against?

That made him feel a little uneasy. The Biomechs, the Zealots, and their myriad of enslaved supporters created an enemy that was difficult, if not impossible to identify, let alone to fight.

“Typhon and the others, they must have been indoctrinated to operate as intermediaries between the Biomechs and those fighting on the side of Echidna.”

“Yeah, notice how this whole Echidna thing just seems to be a way of getting people to treat a machine creature as something like a god. Why didn’t we see that, Spartan?”

There was a short pause while the two considered that point. In the end, Spartan rubbed his forehead and smiled.

“We will persuade our military and the T’Kari, plus anybody else we can find, to work together. It is time to stop them, permanently.”

Khan heard something at the doorway and leaned over. It was the two aliens moving closer to speak quietly together.

“What about them?”

Spartan considered for a moment.

“Well, so far I’ve only seen the occasional machine on this station. It could be almost entirely automated. There are quite a few T’Kari, so they must be slaves, like the ones we came across on the Raider ships. I say we get them all off this station and back to T’Kari space with us. They might have useful information if we’re going to turn on the Biomechs.”

“Did you see the T’Kari ships docked on the lower coupling?”

Spartan nodded.

“Yeah, you can just about make them out back there, through the side observation ports. Why? What are you thinking?”

Khan’s lip turned up with pleasure.

“I think we should get our friends out to one of them. They understand the tech. If we can get on board, we must be able to steal one.”

Spartan seemed happy at the idea, but he was aware of the potential for disaster with this plan. The Biomechs could have easily disabled the ships or simply placed a few guards to protect them.

Well, it’s not like we have many options, is it?

 
He pointed at the pods around them. They seemed insignificant in size, compared to the hundreds and hundreds of the devices.

“What about all of this?”

Spartan suspected his friend would want to free them, but it wasn’t going to be likely. Each of the Biomechs would have been programmed over a period of months, possibly even years as they were prepared for their missions. The process of integrating Biomechs into the Alliance had proven almost impossible, and the majority continued to fight even once their programming had been purged. It had been different for Khan and the others, as a traitor had altered their coding at an early stage for his own nefarious reasons.

We would need access to this place for months if we wanted to turn them.

Spartan tried to work out how he could break this news to his friend, but Khan already appeared resigned to their fate and had an idea of his own.

“We steal a ship and blow this place.”

For a second, Spartan thought his friend was joking, but there was nothing but determination on his face.

“Yes, it’s about time they felt a little of our wrath. Come on!”

They both headed the T’Kari group but would have stopped if they’d seen their expressions beforehand. The female had already moved out to the doorway and was watching the shape of a vast spacecraft approaching the station through the nearest of the three observation ports. In space, the Biomech warship had seemed large, but at this range seemed positively massive.