Machine Gods (Star Crusades Nexus, Book 2) by Michael G. Thomas

to try and calm the man. After a few more confused
words, his voice started to make some sense.
    “ I woke up on the
bed in there, with the others. The pod opened, and I fell out, and
moved toward the door...and here.”
    He then turned to Spartan and grabbed him, pleading
desperately and pathetically.
    “ Please...you have
to help me. There are things in there, terrible things.”
    The other two
operatives pulled themselves around the pipes and machinery in the
center of the ship. They moved with great skill in the weightless
environment, better in fact than most marines could have managed.
One disappeared behind the large pieces of metal before quickly
reappearing.
    “It’s like the AI hubs they used on our ships.”
    “Hubs? Are you sure?” asked Spartan.
    The man nodded back without even checking.
    “ Yeah, I saw the
vids. T his is definitely the same
tech.”
    Spartan had expected
to find exactly that. He recalled the incidents years ago where the
Zealot s, a religious terrorist
organization, had made use of biomechanical creatures to wage war
on the colonies. These half-machine and half-biological systems had
been miniaturized and sneaked aboard military ships so that they
could be turned on the fleet. He suspected this ship had been
configured to operate in much the same way.
    “ So this warship is
controlled by that thing?” asked Porter, pointing at the pipes.
Spartan heard him and was struck by how little some of the people
of his age actually knew about what had happened in the past. The
stories of the artificial brains controlling ships in the War had
been a great scandal at the time. Now it appeared, it was nothing
much more than old and irrelevant history.
    “ Yeah, ” Khan muttered. “They
install the gear, and the pipes feed the brain.”
    Khan turned his attention back to Pontus.
    “What about him?”
    Spartan looked a little confused. He tapped a button
and the visor of his suit hissed open to reveal his face in clear
detail.
    “ I don’t
know.”
    He looked at
Pontus and recalled the last time he’d
seen the man. It had been in the last days of the War. Hundreds of
Alliance marines had been sent to rescue the survivors of destroyed
warships in the area. In reality, the planet had been the site of
the enemy’s main Spacebridge that led directly into Alliance space.
Pontus and his comrades had been there, as well as machines of war,
Biomechs, and legions of troops. Victory at Hyperion had ended the
War but also given them the information needed to travel far into
space, information that conveniently linked them directly to the
shattered worlds of the T’Kari.
    “Pontus, you and your comrades tried to control our
people through your facility on Terra Nova. Remember?”
    He saw nothing, not
even a basic glimmer of recognition from one of the enemy’s masterminds. Spartan decided to take a
slightly different, and potentially more dangerous,
route.
    “ Your brother,
Typhon, y ou must remember him? I killed
him with my bare hands two decades ago.”
    Again there was
absolutely nothing from the man’s face. The ship started to shake,
and both Khan and Spartan realized it was commencing an engine
burst. If it accelerated away while they were on board, they would
become trapped on the ship. Spartan didn’t even hesitate. He swung
his arm around and blasted the control system, pipes, and
machinery. Chunk of plastic, metal, and finally blood, sprayed out
in globs of free-floating mess. The rumble from the ship died at
just the same time. An indicator light flashed on his suit; it was
from the Alliance frigate ANS Serenity.
    What the hell are they doing here?
    Another message,
this time a priority message from their transport came through over
the sound system. Though he was an Alliance citizen, this operation
had been fully funded through trade agreements between his
teetering APS Corporation and the T’Kari
on Hades.
    “ Alpha, we have an
Alliance frigate on intercept course; they’ll be here