Scum of the Universe (Fire and Rust Book 7)

by Anthony James

  “I have. The meeting happens at once or we leave this place. I may destroy your fleet before we enter lightspeed. Depending on my mood.”

  The Ragger produced a rattling sound which Stone guessed may have been a sigh. “Very well, human. We shall convene, you and I alone on Prime004.”

  “The meeting will happen on a neutral ship, placed between our fleets. No crew, no personnel. Each side brings a party of twelve.”

  “I suppose you wish this neutral ship to be one of your fleet?” asked Riviss-Uld-95 with unmistakable sarcasm.

  “I was thinking of an unarmed ship. A transport or cargo ship, perhaps. You have with you a vessel resembling a simple cylinder which we have scanned and assured ourselves it carries no armaments. The meeting will take place there.”

  “No, that vessel is not suitable,” said the Ragger without hesitation.

  “In that case, one of ours,” Stone replied. “This ship. The Defiant.”

  “I do not think so, human. Should I set foot on your carrier I will be murdered within the hour. I would not wish an accident to befall me.”

  “You are thinking like a Ragger,” said Stone, as though he was talking to a child. “I can see you are not prepared to agree to anything. How can I return home without something to show for it, be that your technology or news of your fleet’s destruction?”

  “We have many transports, human. Only the Z020 is unsuitable. An emissions leak has made the interior…inhospitable.”

  Stone assumed that Z020 was the name of the cylindrical ship. He muted the comms. “Check that name out in the databanks.”

  “Nothing, sir. We have no record of that vessel and nor have the Fangrin encountered it or anything similar.”

  “Would we detect these leaking emissions through its hull?”

  “Not likely, sir,” said Lieutenant Roden.

  With a wave of his hand for silence, Stone took the comms off mute. “If we cannot agree on a meeting place, then we must continue on the comms.”

  “Agreed,” said Riviss-Uld-95 so quickly that Stone was suspicious. “I require time to organize documents and to speak with technical personnel. Three hours.”

  “Very well.”

  The comms went dead again, leaving Stone with the feeling that he’d been somehow duped. Captain Dyer was here to give assistance and Stone beckoned him over.

  “Sir?”

  “Is everything ready?”

  “Yes, sir. We have redacted propulsion schematics and encryption-locked data files for the death pulse which omit any reference to stealth modules and refer only to the methods used by the Ravok to create the original.”

  “All a bit jumbled and with a few pieces missing.”

  “Exactly like you ordered, sir. Enough to fool initial scrutiny, yet easy enough for us to update to full working order if we ever decide it.”

  “Which is exactly what the Raggers will do to us.”

  “Of course, sir. Only if we let them leave before we’ve found out what’s missing.”

  “A race between liars to point the first finger of blame.”

  “Yes, sir.” Dyer hesitated, something on his mind. “Riviss-Uld-95 got that delay he wanted.”

  “Three hours.”

  “Which will become six and then ten.”

  “Dammit,” said Stone. He ran a palm over his short grey hair. “We’ll require time to study their data anyway.”

  “Yes, sir. We expected that. We also came out here expecting the data to change hands straightaway.”

  “I can’t let my enemy run rings around me,” said Stone, wondering if Riviss-Uld-95 had done exactly that.

  “According to Fangrin tests, some of the first echelon Raggers are more than five hundred years old. This one’s had plenty of time to practice, sir.”

  Stone grimaced. “I’ll give him some leash. Three hours. If he plays for more time, I’ll know the Raggers aren’t serious.”

  “Or they have something else in mind.”

  Dyer could spot a hidden motive from a thousand meters, and he was reiterating what Admiral Isental had already said. Two men – or one man and an alien – whose opinions Stone respected.

  “One way or another they have to deal with us. Assuming they want the tech that’s on offer.”

  “These are the Raggers, sir. They’ll try their damnedest to act in a way we can’t anticipate.”

  “The bastards know where some of our planets are,” said Stone with sudden concern. “They’ve left well alone in recent months.”

  “We’re facing six hundred ships here, sir, with no idea how much of a commitment that is for the main players. What if the main players are every first echelon Ragger?”

  “I’ve always worked on the assumption that when the shit really hits the fan, they’ll all pull together.”

  “This could be that shit-on-fan moment.”

  Stone shouted over to the comms team. “How long for those Hantisar comms amplifiers to get a transmission to ULAF-1 from here?”

  “Three hours there, three back,” said Lieutenant Dowd.

  “Exactly how long, Lieutenant.”

  “One moment.” Dowd leaned over his console. “185 minutes in each direction, sir.”

  “What was the last transmission we received?”

  “The usual, sir. A handshake to say all’s well.”

  “Keep checking.” He turned once more to Captain Dyer. “Every planet is on full alert already. I ordered our share of the Hantisar fleet onto sentry duty to bolster our existing defenses. The Fangrin have deployed a significant portion of their own fleet to help out.”

  “If the Raggers pick this moment to attack, we won’t be able to stop them.”

  “Even if we fly back now, it might not be enough.” Stone had a tightness in his stomach and this time it was nothing to do with Dr Austin. “Do you think we’ve been brought here as a diversion?”

  “We talked about it before we started this mission, sir.”

  “And I said we had to do something to take control.”

  “Maybe the Raggers thought the same thing.”

  “Why attack our planets?” asked Stone, trying to convince himself it wasn’t a likely outcome. “Why not wait until we’ve exchanged tech?” He bared his teeth. “Unless they think it’ll give them some extra leverage.”

  Stone walked a few paces, turned and walked a few more. “They’re going to wait and see how it works out here,” he said. “And then they’ll decide.”

  “In that case, why keep us sitting at Indul-L9?” asked Dyer. “Exchange and have done.”

  “Travel time, Captain. The Raggers don’t have comms amplifiers, plus it’ll take them hours or days to get a fleet into position at one of our worlds, assuming they didn’t have one waiting there all along. They need to take everything slow to give themselves time to coordinate.”

  “If you’re right, we won’t benefit from returning to Unity League space, sir. We don’t know their target and if we leave Indul-L9 that’ll make the enemy think they have only one option.”

  Stone felt a sudden urge to drop into his chair. He couldn’t allow himself to falter and he ignored the temptation.

  “We’ve got to stick this out,” he said. “For the moment at least.”

  “What about the Juniper? If we’re kept waiting here…”

  “It’s too late to call off the Juniper, Captain. We’ll just have to deal with the possible consequences of the Raggers finding out about it.”

  Stone dismissed Captain Dyer and stood in thought. The Raggers were the worst of opponents – powerful, back-stabbing, unpredictable bullies. The Sekar were an equal or worse enemy, but at least you knew exactly what they wanted. To defeat the Sekar, the alliance was forced to deal with the Raggers, for better or for worse. The more Stone thought about it, the more certain he was that the Raggers planned to attack at least one Unity League planet, in addition to the Sekar who were already doing likewise.

  With so many balls to juggle, Stone asked himsel
f how long he could keep them all up in the air before the whole lot came crashing down, killing a hundred billion people at the same time.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Juniper travelled at lightspeed for twenty-eight hours. It wasn’t long enough for Conway and his squad to settle into a routine, while being too long to sleep through. The soldiers were left to themselves and they passed the time doing whatever minor crap they could think of to keep occupied. Once or twice, an officer from the Juniper was obliged to have a word with Conway about the behavior of individuals, but overall it was nothing of much concern.

  With four hours until the transition to local space, Conway made sure everyone was prepared. The squad was rested and ready and they watched him prowl around the muster room which was adjacent to the Juniper’s midsection armory and near to a dozen additional rooms which had been taken over by specialized teams dedicated specifically to this mission.

  “When do we get our suits, sir?” asked Kemp.

  “I’m waiting on it, soldier,” said Conway.

  “Leaving it a bit late, aren’t they?” asked Freeman.

  “If I had a dollar every time I heard someone say that,” muttered Lockhart. “I could buy one of those big Fangrin TVs that Lieutenant Rembra here keeps telling us about.”

  Rembra and the other Fangrin weren’t saying much, and Lockhart’s comment didn’t change that.

  “Nah, you’d have about twelve dollars, I reckon, Sergeant,” said Berg.

  “We know it’s late,” said Conway, not for the first time. “We have to trust the weapons team is good at what they do.”

  “I’ve seen a couple of them,” said Warner. “They had skulls the size of a gauss turret, just to fit in all their brains.”

  “Yeah, proper eggheads,” added Freeman. “They probably need scaffolding to get a haircut.”

  “Enough of that,” warned Conway. “We’re on the same side, remember.”

  “I know that, sir, and I have full respect for the Brainiac Division…”

  “Just shut up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you suppose is happening back home?” asked Kemp, out of the blue.

  “Depends which home you mean, soldier.”

  “I mean the Unity League, sir. Do you think we’re holding back the Sekar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The ULAF tended to keep certain things under wraps to prevent mass panic, and that included withholding information from lower ranking officers and ground troops. Rumors swirled like autumn leaves, contradiction and counter-contradiction; guesswork passed off as fact obscuring those few truths which slipped through the news blackout.

  The very existence of the veil made Conway sure that the endgame was approaching and no matter how many favors he called, he couldn’t unearth anything specific about his home planet New Destiny. He hated not knowing and just thinking about it brought a physical reaction that gripped his entire body like a vise, squeezing him until his breathing became ragged.

  “Let’s not talk about it,” he said, in tones every member of his squad recognized. “What’s back there, we can’t change. What’s coming to us is in our hands to deal with.”

  “Goddam alien assholes,” said Corporal Brice with feeling.

  One of the three doors opened and a figure appeared, outlined in the opening. Conway recognized her as a senior member of the onboard weapons team, though he hadn’t been formally introduced.

  “Ladies, gentleman, this way.”

  “The suits are ready?” asked Conway.

  “As ready as they’ll ever be.”

  “Doesn’t inspire confidence,” said Sergeant Lockhart.

  “It’s the best we can do in the time.”

  Conway was first to the door. The woman was dressed in a vacuum-proof suit, but the helmet was elsewhere. She looked mid-fifties.

  “And you are?”

  “Deb Morgan.”

  No mention of rank, status, position. Conway didn’t ask. “I’m Captain Conway.”

  “I know. This way,” she said, freeing up the doorway for the soldiers to follow.

  Two corridors and two security-locked doors later, Conway and his squad gathered in one of the areas taken over by the weapons teams. The ceiling was luxuriously high – few spaceships had much wasted space – and the walls far apart. The place was a mess of small-scale fabrication equipment and to Conway’s left a laser cutter spat a white beam into a block of alloy. Most of the other stuff was unfamiliar.

  Morgan was joined by another couple of her team, neither of whom made introductions. Maybe they operated under secrecy rules that Conway was unaware of, maybe they were ignorant bastards, or perhaps they just lacked the social skills to say hello to the soldiers who were putting their lives on the line. He winked at one and the recipient pretended not to notice.

  “Stealth suits,” said Morgan without preamble. “More accurately, stealth webbing.”

  She picked something up from a nearby table and held it aloft. Conway squinted – whatever Morgan dangled in front of the squad, it was difficult to make out. When he shifted his head left and right, Conway detected a shimmering, gossamer material.

  “This one’s yours, Captain Conway,” said Morgan, bundling up the material and passing it to him underarm.

  Conway took it. The stealth webbing weighed almost nothing and was still hard to distinguish even when he held it right in front of his eyes. “How does it work?”

  “It’s like a gown,” said Morgan. “Shake it out in front of you. Arms in the arm holes and then step into the legs. Pull the hood over once you’ve got your combat helmet in place. The webbing is fitted with nano-computers. They’ll draw power from the ULG batteries – power which will also make the material adhere to the outside of your suit.”

  “Like magnets, only better,” added one of the other scientists.

  Conway gave it a go. The hardest part wasn’t the fact that he couldn’t see what he was doing, so much as his fear of tearing a hole in the webbing.

  “It’s stronger than it looks,” said Morgan, throwing semi-visible piles of bunched up webbing to the other soldiers.

  “How will we see each other?” asked Torres.

  “We thought of that,” said Morgan with a thin smile. “Put it on.”

  “The Raggers can see each other when they’re wearing stealth suits,” said Kemp. “Won’t they be able to see us as well?”

  “We thought of that too,” said Morgan, in a tone which Conway didn’t much approve of. “I won’t explain the technical details, but our stealth operates differently to the Ragger stealth.”

  “We stole their stuff and made it better, huh?” asked Warner.

  “Something like that,” said Morgan.

  Conway could put on a full combat suit in less than two minutes. Adding the stealth webbing took closer to ten minutes. Despite Morgan’s reassurances that the webbing would adhere to the suit polymers, it required adjustment before the new readout on his HUD informed him he’d achieved 100% coverage.

  “Done,” he said, exploring the new options on his suit computer.

  “Everything’s made to be as simple as possible,” said Morgan. “Voice control for on/off. If the Raggers spot you, there’s a further option to cycle through several additional stealth modes.”

  “Change the wavelength or something, does it?” asked Freeman.

  “Don’t worry about what it does...” Morgan paused and her eyes went to the tiny insignia on the upper-left side of Freeman’s chest. “…Corporal.”

  “Just be happy it’s there, eh?” asked Freeman, an edge creeping into his voice.

  Twenty-five minutes after Deb Morgan first arrived in the muster room, Conway, his nine human and seven Fangrin soldiers were wrapped up in stealth webbing. A group of other personnel materialized from out of nowhere, plugged wires into the helmet interface ports, ran some rapid tests and then departed.

  After that, Morgan made every soldier turn on their stealth and she
walked carefully around them, accompanied by her assistants.

  “Good,” said Morgan after a brief discussion with the other two. “We can’t see you. I’ll let Admiral Kolb know that you’re kitted out and ready to go.”

  “I don’t suppose you’re hiding a bunch of Hantisar gauss rifles somewhere in here?” asked Kemp hopefully.

  “Not this time. Two years – maybe three - and every soldier will be carrying one. For the moment, we’re keeping the working samples away from the frontline.”

  “Damn.”

  “I am happy with my chain gun,” said Lieutenant Rembra.

  “Spray and pray, it’s the Fangrin way,” said Kemp.

  “A thousand dead, the Fangrin said. A chain gun hole in every head.”

  “You made that up just now, Lieutenant?”

  Rembra roared with laughter. “That comes from a time when we were busy crushing the Unity League!”

  “When we were kicking your furry butts, you mean.”

  “Enough,” said Conway without anger. He fixed his gaze on Morgan. “Are we done here?”

  “Yes, Captain, we’re done. Look after those suits. Most of all, look after yourselves.”

  Morgan’s expression didn’t change, but the words possessed a genuine concern that made Conway ask if he’d misjudged her.

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, and a word of warning. You may want to keep the stealth suits switched off while you’re on the Juniper,” called one of the unnamed personnel. “Keep them for the combat zone.”

  “Scared we’ll sneak back and steal your propeller hats?” asked Berg over his shoulder.

  The target of Berg’s comment was either too shocked to reply or had too much dignity. Conway ushered his squad from the weapons fabrication area and herded them into the muster room. Predictably, everyone wanted to perform additional testing of their stealth suits, Conway included. Five minutes of pissing about and boredom set in. The suits worked fine, but they were set up so that for the squad there was no visual difference between on and off.

  “We need to test this on some of the crew,” said Warner.

  “No, you do not need to test it on any of the crew,” said Conway firmly. “That’s an order.”