Scum of the Universe (Fire and Rust Book 7)

by Anthony James

  Vicher took one hand off his chain gun in order to point. “The access panel is lit.”

  In Conway’s mind, that didn’t mean too much. If the dome was abandoned – and appearances suggested that was a realistic possibility – its power sources could likely keep the place operational for many years, assuming the Raggers didn’t shut everything down when they moved out. And from what Conway had seen of the Raggers, they weren’t much interested in tidying up after themselves.

  “The undergrowth is not intact,” said Vicher. “Personnel from the dome have exited the door recently.”

  “I’m going to take a look and see if the override software in my suit will get it open.”

  With Gundro and Vicher watching from the cover of the undergrowth, Conway approached the door. The ground-level foliage thinned out in the last few meters, leaving him increasingly exposed. With his cover gone, Conway dashed the final strides to the door. He stood in front of the access panel, one hand on his gun, the other held out so that his suit could interface with the security computer.

  The interface formed and Conway cancelled the link without activating the intrusion software.

  “We should be able to get inside,” he said on the comms. “Move up. The coast looks clear.”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth, than the door slid into its recess in the ground. Experience wasn’t enough to leave Conway immune to surprise, but he was much less susceptible to it. He stepped sideways and around the edge of the tunnel at the same time as his brain registered the presence of several dozen Raggers. The aliens wore muddy red polymer suits, complete with helmets, and they were equipped with rifles.

  “Hold!” he called urgently.

  To his enormous relief, the stealth webbing fooled the enemy long enough for him to get away without them becoming aware of his presence. Making as little noise as possible, Conway, crept further along the side of the tunnel towards the dome’s main wall. Meanwhile, the Raggers emerged and hurried in a straight line away from the door, giving no sign they expected to find intruders.

  “Get a count on the numbers,” said Conway. “I can’t see them too well from here.”

  “Fifty in total,” said Gundro. “Carrying identical weapons.”

  “Any indication why they’ve decided to come outside at this exact moment?”

  “None. Should I follow?”

  “Are you confident you can do it without detection?” asked Conway, torn between finding out what the Raggers were doing and keeping his squad together.

  “Yes.”

  Conway scraped his teeth together as he considered it. The stealth webbing couldn’t stop twigs snapping or prevent undergrowth bending aside and if Gundro screwed up, then the enemy would be alerted to the attackers. Worse, they’d know about the stealth suits.

  “Leave it – we’ll stick together.” Conway switched out of the squad channel in order to make the crew of the Raider aware of what had happened.

  With that done, he hurried once more to the door and found the Raggers had closed it after themselves. The enemy were still visible, though most of them were lost amongst the trees. Impatiently, Conway waited for the last of them to vanish. It gave the members of his squad time to approach and prepare.

  “What’s the plan?” asked Lockhart.

  “Open it up and get inside. After that, play it by ear.”

  “An intricate plan,” rumbled Lieutenant Rembra.

  “Who’s been teaching you sarcasm?” asked Conway.

  He wasn’t expecting an answer and didn’t receive one. Half-expecting the door to open for a second time, Conway interfaced with the access panel and activated the intrusion software. The software guys kept modifying it to stay ahead of the Ragger detection systems, but Conway felt it was down to luck whether it triggered alarms or not.

  “If those Raggers come back, shoot them dead,” he belatedly ordered.

  After loading up the processing unit in Conway’s suit to one hundred percent for ten seconds, the intrusion software finished and then injected a piece of code that held the door open whilst also fooling the facility security into thinking everything was operating normally. A second later, the door opened and Conway saw another identical one at the end of the tunnel, doubtless leading into the main dome.

  “Gundro, with me,” he ordered.

  The two of them advanced along the tunnel to the second door and the first remained open. Conway repeated his use of the intrusion software with the same success as before and the inner door descended into the floor. On the far side, a wide, red-lit corridor with a high ceiling went left and right, following the outer curve of the dome. Conway noticed a droning sound and the faint scent of raw meat caused him to wrinkle his nose.

  Directly ahead, a rectangular plate of pale blue metal caught his eye and he read the words.

  “Replication facility 93. Teleport Node 89.”

  With no sign of Raggers – at least none visible – Conway gave the order for his squad to move up. The soldiers were ready and it wasn’t long before they were all inside the tunnel and too bunched up for safety.

  “Last man close the doors,” ordered Lockhart.

  Conway already knew which way he was going and that was clockwise towards another tunnel a little way further, which appeared to lead deeper into the dome.

  “Corporal Freeman, have you still got that data extractor?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hold on tightly to it.” Conway set off along the tunnel at a fast walk that allowed him to keep the sound of his footfall to a minimum. “I want everyone to watch out for something we can plug that box into. As soon as it’s full, we’re getting the hell out of here.”

  “We only just arrived, sir,” said Berg.

  “You were hoping to stick around, Private?”

  “I thought maybe we should take the opportunity to admire this fine alien architecture, sir.”

  “Feel free to wait behind when we’re done.”

  By the time he made it to the next corridor, Conway had spotted two additional exits from the dome a short distance ahead. He swore under his breath at this confirmation of how much time he’d wasted by choosing a clockwise journey around the dome instead of turning counterclockwise.

  Ignoring the vagaries of fate, Conway peered along the new corridor and found it ended at a door, thirty meters away.

  “Lieutenant Rembra, you’ve seen a replication facility. Does any of this look familiar?”

  “This bears no resemblance to the installations I have seen.”

  “Figures.”

  The door opened abruptly, giving Conway a limited view of a brightly lit space beyond. He didn’t like what he saw and nor did he like the sight of another fifty Raggers coming his way.

  “Back!” he hissed, retreating from the corner.

  As he stepped clear, Conway caught sight of more Raggers – lots more – entering the exit tunnels further along the perimeter corridor. He had no time to think about it. With a bunch of aliens coming towards them, Conway and his squad couldn’t wait.

  Options were limited and the most sensible one was to run for the exit. It was too early for risks, and Conway led the soldiers back the way they’d come. Instead of leaving the dome, he took the squad past the exit door and ordered them to wait twenty meters further along the corridor. The Raggers came the same way, but they paused to activate the door panel and walked into the exit passage. Not one noticed the human and Fangrin soldiers pressed against the inner wall.

  “What did you see through the door, sir?” asked Warner.

  “Lots of crap that I didn’t want to see. Big clear tubes and other stuff that I didn’t recognize.”

  Conway gave the enemy half a minute to get clear and then returned to the right-hand corridor again. It seemed like something outside had the Raggers interested and he would have liked to know what it was.

  “Think they’re going to keep coming?” asked Warner. “Could make it tight getting through that door.”
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br />   “We could stay in the perimeter and keep going clockwise,” offered Corporal Freeman. “All we need is one interface port.”

  “One interface port that links to the right computer,” said Lockhart.

  “We’re going this way,” said Conway, thumbing right. “Follow me.”

  He darted into the corridor. The combined sound of seventeen pairs of boots was louder than he wanted, but there were no Raggers close enough to hear it. At the door, he interfaced and ran the hacking software. The door slid left, revealing the horrors of the Ragger replication facility.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Stone felt like he’d been outmaneuvered again. The fact that Riviss-Uld-95 wanted the meeting to take place on the cylindrical ship Z020 meant that Stone now wanted the opposite, despite his initial eagerness for the exchange to take place there.

  Each question he raised on the subject was easily answered or deflected by the Ragger. The energy detected earlier came from a replication power source that Riviss-Uld-95 had brought with him and was entirely harmless. Apparently. The emissions leak was now fully contained and presented no threat whatsoever. Cross my heart and hope to die. Not only that, Z020 was the only spaceship fitted with airlock coupling mechanisms that were compatible with those of a ULAF shuttle. Or so the Ragger insisted.

  After a short time, Stone gave up trying and accepted that the only way to prevent the exchange happening on Z020 was for him to call the whole thing off on the basis of a hunch, and that wasn’t something he wanted to explain to the League Council.

  He tried to think logically about it. The cylinder was a spaceship like any other and it could be destroyed like any other. The Ragger fleet was vastly numerically superior, but the team of analysts on the Defiant had evaluated the hardware on show and concluded that the Hantisar fleet would blow the living shit out of the enemy fleet. That precise term describing the disparity hadn’t appeared in the written report, though it had been stated more than once in the verbal summary.

  “The shuttle is ready to depart, sir,” said one of the comms team.

  “Hold until I give the order.”

  “Roger that.”

  “If you’re about to change your mind, you’d best do it quick, sir,” said Dyer quietly.

  “The data on that shuttle – with or without the missing pieces - could bring the Ragger research forward years.”

  “Yes, sir. This was always about getting ahead. To give us a fighting chance once the Sekar are out of the picture.”

  “Let’s hope it holds up to three hours of scrutiny.”

  “Equally, let’s hope our own team spot the deliberate omissions in what the Raggers are offering to trade.”

  Stone cursed under his breath. He’d always believed tharniol to be the most valuable resource available to him and in many ways it was. Lately he’d come to think that time itself was more important and right now, the Unity League didn’t have any spare. He cursed again.

  “Give the shuttle clearance to depart,” he ordered, still unsure if he was doing the right thing.

  Shortly after, the small craft departed from the Defiant’s main bay. It was the latest model, fast and with a sleek shape. Once clear of the carrier, it banked and accelerated. At the same time, Z020 began its own course towards the center space between the two fleets.

  “Good luck,” Commander Blackwood said, only loudly enough for Stone and Dyer to hear.

  “Amen to that.”

  Lieutenant Dowd maintained contact with the shuttle and kept a running commentary for the benefit of the bridge crew.

  “Just give us the important stuff, Lieutenant,” said Stone, tiring of the mundane reports on thrust and output levels. “And confirm the boosted comms link to Captain Christensen.”

  “The link strength is 99%, sir. As expected. Captain Christensen reports her team are in high spirits and looking forward to getting this finished.”

  A few minutes after it exited the Defiant’s bay, the shuttle came to the rendezvous point, where it slowed to a halt. Z020, approaching from the opposite direction and at a similar velocity, also slowed, and the vessels aligned their external coupling mechanisms. The Ragger ship was by far the larger of the two.

  “Coupling successful,” said Dowd.

  “Now come the fun and games,” said Blackwood.

  Following Stone’s instructions, Christensen left her suit comms on permanent audio and visual broadcast. The sound of alien voices mingled with the human ones and Stone saw a bunch of Raggers standing at the end of an airlock tunnel.

  “The welcoming committee,” Dyer remarked. “Looks crowded.”

  “No visible weapons,” said Stone, gripping the back of his chair tightly.

  “The readings from Captain Christensen’s suit indicate the interior will support human life,” said Dowd.

  “Contaminants?” asked Stone, remembering the crap he’d been forced to inhale on Qali-5.

  “Nothing out of the ordinary, sir. Captain Christensen’s environmental scanner has completed its first run and has detected no unexpected particles.”

  “Keep an eye on it.”

  Stone allowed another minute or two to go by, for the introductions to be made.

  Hello, I’m a murdering alien bastard. How do you do?

  The thought didn’t make him smile.

  Christensen was ordered to describe what was going on around her – there was nothing in the terms to prevent it happening and the Raggers couldn’t complain about it since they had access to Z020’s internal monitoring systems, which allowed them to watch and listen to everything.

  A Ragger appeared directly in front of Christensen and said something which Stone didn’t catch.

  “We’ve been invited to an area of the spaceship to check out the Ragger databanks,” said Christensen. “They wanted us to hand over ours right off, but I said no.”

  “Any concerns yet, Captain?”

  “Aside from what you’d expect, everything so far looks like an uncomfortable meeting between two sides that hate each other.”

  “What about Z020? What’s your impression of it?”

  Christensen had once commanded a warship, before transferring into scientific research. She was one of those multi-talented people the ULAF could do with having plenty more of in its ranks. Her head turned left and right, giving a view of a featureless room outside the airlock. Three passages led off into the depths of the ship.

  “I haven’t seen enough, sir. It could have been built for any purpose. There’s pressure in the air, which could be a result of proximity to the ship’s propulsion.”

  “Stick together. Don’t let them split you up.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  Stone drummed his fingers. “Lieutenant Roden, does Z020 have its propulsion fitted in that area?”

  “The propulsion runs the entire length of the ship, sir.”

  “Fine.”

  Activity on the cylinder ship appeared to be lacking in direction, like the Raggers weren’t exactly sure what they were doing. A group of them mingled in the room outside the airlock, while others led Captain Christensen and the other forty-nine humans to their destination. Christensen didn’t stop turning her head, allowing Stone a glimpse of the exchange team which followed her. Everyone had their visors lowered and every face bore varying expressions of concern.

  “Not much to see so far,” said Christensen.

  “They’re taking you a long way from the airlock.”

  “We haven’t seen any place so far that’s suitable for us to comfortably check out their data.”

  The exchange team entered a larger room and while Christensen did her best, the space was too full of Raggers for the feed to identify many specific details.

  “Airlifts, sir.”

  “Ask for stairs.”

  Christensen lifted an arm and got the attention of one of the Raggers. She asked about alternative routes, to which the alien gave a single word response.

  “No stairs, apparently. Wa
nt me to push it?”

  “No. Use the lifts.”

  The room had two separate, cylindrical airlift shafts and their doors opened to reveal compact cars, only big enough for six or seven passengers at a time.

  “Go ahead,” said Stone. “Stay in communication with the others in your team.”

  Shortly after, and to Stone’s relief, it was over. The human team gathered in another room at the top of the airlift shafts and a headcount came to the right number.

  “It is not far,” said one of the Raggers in the distinctively sibilant tones they all possessed. “Past this…”

  Stone didn’t catch the last word and didn’t need to. A set of double doors opened and Christensen peered through the tall Raggers in front of her to see what lay beyond.

  “I think we’ve arrived,” she said.

  The visual feed only showed hints and shapes owing to the Raggers crowding around.

  “What are your thoughts, Captain Christensen?”

  “That pressure didn’t go anywhere.”

  “It has you worried?”

  “Maybe. I’ve not been on another Ragger ship to compare.”

  “Anything new on the environmental?” asked Stone.

  “No, sir,” said Lieutenant Roden. “Same as before. No change in propulsion output from the ship either.”

  Stone didn’t like it and realized he was getting jumpy.

  “Proceed as planned, Captain Christensen.”

  The human team was herded into the room and the Raggers parted in front of Christensen.

  “This is it,” she said.

  In front of her was a long table of metal. Upon this table were several cube-shaped objects, grey in color and maybe ten inches along each side. The visual feed was clean enough that Stone could distinguish the interface ports on the cubes.

  “Those are data arrays,” he said. “In case you haven’t already guessed.”

  Now she had some room, Christensen took a longer look around.

  “Plenty of space, three exits, four tables, a dozen chairs, not much else.”

  “Do what you came to do, Captain.” Stone was distracted by Lieutenant Swain waving urgently for his attention. “What is it?”