Free Star Crusades Nexus: Book 05 - Prophecy of Fire by Michael G. Thomas Page B

channel of the Alliance High Command. She spotted several messages regarding unit activations. She only managed to get through two of them before the sound alerted her to the completion of the communication decryption; finally it was ready.
    Why is Earthsec contacting me?
    She looked into the face of a blonde intelligence agent, a face that she had never seen before. In fact, the patch of the agency on the ancient planet and home of humanity filled her with an odd feeling of nostalgia. Teresa found herself trying to look behind the woman, to get a glimpse of the old, dead husk known as Earth.
    “Major Morato, this is a rather unusual request, but we have just made contact with a number of individuals on board a military vessel that breached Sol space.”
    Sol, so why contact me?
    “A Rift opened up less than a day ago, and unidentified ships in the middle of a violent exchange entered. It was a violent space battle, but we were too late to stop the first ship coming here. The pursuers were destroyed in the Rift’s collapse, but we were unable to identify them.”
    The image now changed to that of an unknown T’Kari ship. She recognized the sleek lines immediately as being one of the vessel types used by their newfound allies in the Orion Nebula. The ship had clearly been involved in major action, as she was damaged from bow to stern from a hundred impacts.
    “We have contacted our agents in T’Karan for information on this model, but we are still waiting. According to the files here, it shares features with T’Kari patrol ships.”
    He paused as though uncomfortable with the next part.
    “I appreciate this is somewhat sudden, but we have two humans here, both of whom match our DNA and dental records on file. I believe you may know them.”
    Spartan? she thought desperately.
    He’d been gone for so long she had all but given up hope of ever seeing him. All her remaining assets had been sold off to spend on a hundred leads even though Alliance Intelligence had promised her they were doing all they could.
    “If you are okay to proceed, please authorize the attached stream that has been supplied along with this video message.”
    Teresa found it hard to speak and simply stared at the screen for a moment. It was a one-way message, and if she responded it would continue, but for the time being it froze to a still. She wiped her dark hair back and rested her forehead in her left hand.
    You have to know, just do it! A voice said in her head.
    She shook her head free and reached out to strike the button. The video continued while a secondary stream appeared. The material in front of her was a tracking shot of the interior of a T’Kari ship. The interior corridors and passageways were identical to T’Kari ships that she had been inside before Spartan’s disappearance. Then the footage cut to a gray room where a number of Intelligence agents waited quietly. Each wore a dark suit, and one waited in the corner with a long black trench coat that almost touched the floor. The view tracked to the left until it reached a row of medical tables upon which were the shapes of the humans in question. They were of unequal sizes, with the larger being almost double the total size of the other.
    Here it is.
    She gasped, but it wasn’t the vessel that had stunned her. It was the close-up of two faces. One was of a battered and scarred Jötnar that she instantly recognized as that of Khan, one of her and Spartan’s old friends. The next face however was pale and bruised but unmistakably the face of her husband, Spartan.
    It can’t be, can it?
    The image shifted to one side and was replaced by that of a blond-haired Alliance Intelligence agent. He looked for a moment at her, but it couldn’t have been to wait for her to speak; the delay for the signal traveling through multiple Rifts to Sol was a long one of nearly an hour.
    “We believe this man to be Spartan, formally an officer in the Alliance military and an executive of the defunct