Scum of the Universe (Fire and Rust Book 7)

by Anthony James

  “Sir, I thought you should know – one of the maintenance teams has discovered a dead Fangrin on M-52.”

  “What happened?”

  “They don’t know, sir. They’ve called in a medical team.”

  “Someone must know!” said Stone. “Most of the maintenance crews are taught advanced first aid.”

  “Yes, sir. No marks on the body. Looks like natural causes.”

  It was a bad time for this to happen and a dead member of the ship’s crew deserved to be recognized as more than a mere distraction.

  “How long before the medical team gets there?”

  “ETA less than five minutes, sir.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  Stone turned once more to the feed from Christensen’s suit helmet. Only a few seconds had elapsed and already the Raggers were exiting the room.

  “They made the exchange,” said Dyer. “Now the clock starts ticking.”

  “Right, we’re going to begin analyzing what they’ve given us,” said Christensen.

  She waved an arm to direct the members of her team to lay out the pieces of kit they’d brought with them. Most of it was handheld, except for one cruncher/decoder bot that would be able to smash through any encryption locks the Raggers might have installed to slow things down.

  “What’s that up on the wall?” asked Stone, spotting something when Christensen turned her head. “Above the door.”

  “One moment.” Christensen took a couple of steps closer and focused the sensor on the area. “Looks like they had a sign up there.” She swung around. “Same over the other doors.”

  “Did you see any other signs on the way there?” asked Stone, racking his own brains for the answer as well.

  “I remember one just outside the airlock,” said Christensen, returning to her table. The sensor pointed at a handheld computer with a screen covered in numbers. She fumbled a wire into one of its ports.

  “They took away anything which would give us a clue about the ship’s purpose,” said Stone, his underlying concern rapidly transforming into something more.

  “We’d probably do the same, sir,” said Dyer.

  “We wouldn’t remove level and area designations.”

  “Only signs relating to function,” nodded Dyer. He didn’t look happy about the situation either.

  “The pressure’s getting worse,” said Christensen. “Starting to give me a headache.”

  Stone felt things slipping. “Any change in their hull readings?” he demanded.

  “No, sir.”

  Lieutenant Dowd shouted something incoherent and jumped from his seat with a surge of convulsive energy. Stone was there in four long strides.

  “What is it?”

  Dowd’s hands flew across his console. “I’ve detected a wide-band signal emanating from the hull on M-51. Not one of ours.”

  “Then what?” With a deep, penetrating anger, Stone knew exactly what it was. “Get security into that area. Immediately!”

  At that moment, Christensen said something which caused Stone to spin once more.

  “Getting a null reading on the environmental,” she said. “Strange.”

  “We need to get them out of there,” said Stone. “And block that transmission! Now!”

  “I’ve got Riviss-Uld-95 on the comms for you, sir.”

  “Stall him.”

  “The medical team reached the body, sir,” said Swain. “The Fangrin was paralyzed by a shock weapon and then injected with a toxin. Definitely not natural causes.”

  “Which toxin?” asked Stone, already knowing the answer.

  “A Ragger one, sir.”

  In that split second, Fleet Admiral Stone recognized that everything had fallen apart. His mind struggled to formulate a plan that might salvage something from what was about to become a complete, unmitigated disaster.

  “Put a railgun slug into Z020. I want that ship out of action!”

  “What about Captain Christensen?”

  “Do it!” bellowed Stone. “Aim high!” he added, aware that nobody had precise knowledge about the exchange team’s position on Z020.

  “The feed from Captain Christensen’s suit went dead, sir,” said Lieutenant Dowd.

  Stone’s saw it from his periphery – one moment, Christensen was doing something on her tablet, the next the feed went blank. He wheeled towards it.

  “Get it back.”

  “Working on it.”

  “Direct hit with railgun upper 2,” said Commander Blackwood.

  “I have made the wider fleet aware, sir,” said Lieutenant Swain. “Admiral Isental requests guidance.”

  Stone didn’t hesitate for even a moment. “Destroy their fleet,” he said.

  “Multiple launches detected from the Ragger spaceships,” sir,” said Lieutenant Roden.

  “Get the Vipers out there,” snapped Stone.

  He leaned over his command console and watched it fill with missiles. In the background, over the noise of the crew, he could hear the Defiant’s vast array of countermeasures as they spilled thousands of interceptors into space.

  “I lost the game,” he said to Commander Blackwood.

  “And now we get to sweep the pieces onto the floor, sir. We’ll get something out of it.”

  Stone thought it was a good way of looking at the situation. Calmness returned and he waited to find out if his analysts were correct about the disparity between the two fleets.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Ragger replication facility was as unwelcoming as Conway thought it might be, though nothing that compared to the meat locker. The red-lit central space filled much of the dome and he could see the curved roof high above. Dozens of different noises assailed his ears – the gurgling of fluids and the swish of glutinous liquids being sucked through pipes. Added to those was the sound of metal clanking gently against metal and a peculiar susurration that came from everywhere. Underlying it all, a low drone that gave him a headache after about five seconds.

  Conway and his squad stood on a wide metal platform that followed the perimeter of the vast space. In front of them, an elaborate arrangement of thin metal struts and walkways supported thousands upon thousands of Ragger growth tubes. A network of silvery-colored flexible pipes entered the growth tubes near the top of each one, doubtless to provide nourishment and extract waste.

  The tubes themselves were made from a clear material, exposing the horrific half-grown contents within. Occasionally one of the part-formed Raggers writhed or thrashed, disturbing the thick-looking fluid they were suspended within.

  Level after level of these growth tubes rose towards the topmost part of the dome’s ceiling and Conway didn’t bother counting. Instead, he hurried across the twenty-meter width of the walkway and looked over the railing, with the nearest growth tube about ten meters opposite.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Lieutenant Rembra joined him and muttered his own curse in the Fangrin tongue.

  “More tiers of growth tubes below the ground.”

  Conway leaned out a little further. The shaft was immense and seemingly went on forever, filled with force-grown Raggers in their tubes. The numbers were so big that Conway could only stare in disbelief.

  “Millions of the bastards,” said Kemp.

  Conway stepped back from the railing and looked about. In the distance, he watched a group of Raggers cross the walkway and exit the central area.

  “The newly-grown Raggers come up on these open lift platforms,” he said, fitting it together. “They pick up a gun from somewhere and then they go out into the forest.”

  “What for?” asked Barron. “This all seems crazy to me.”

  A clunking sound made Conway return to the railing. He saw movement below and a lift came up from one of the lower levels, with what he guessed was exactly fifty Raggers on it. The lift platform wasn’t exactly generously sized and one of the aliens suddenly fell off the edge and into the shaft. Not one of the other Raggers so much as blinked.

&nb
sp; “Tough being a Ragger, huh?”

  The lift stopped about fifty meters away, with its closest edge joining perfectly with the perimeter walkway. A section of the railing slid out of sight and the Raggers stepped off.

  “Let’s get away from this doorway,” said Conway.

  The squad followed and the newly arrived Raggers exited the dome without spotting the soldiers. Conway looked around again. He felt exposed but couldn’t see any obvious place to plug in a data extractor.

  “Let’s go this way,” he said, pointing clockwise.

  At the same time, he requested, and got, a channel to the Raider. He filled Lieutenant Kenyon in on the situation.

  “We’re carrying a nuke. Maybe Captain Griffin will drop it straight into that shaft once we’re done.”

  “I think he’d be doing the universe a favor.”

  “Listen. We’ve been keeping our distance, but there’s something unusual going on.”

  “No shit?”

  “You said there are Raggers leaving the dome. We’ve just watched them engage with the Sekar near the tree line.”

  “And?”

  “They died. Here’s the thing – we thought for a minute that maybe some of the Raggers didn’t die straightaway. The feed isn’t clear enough.”

  The disjointed facts clicked together in Conway’s head, forming a completed whole. “The Raggers are trying to grow a version of themselves that is immune to the Sekar life drain.”

  “By producing millions of new Raggers, each one made a little different to all the others. Until they hit on the right formula.”

  “They figured out how to do it with those trees.”

  “If they can do it with their soldiers, they won’t need our intel,” said Kenyon.

  “Something tells me they’re almost there.”

  “I agree. I’ll get this information to Admiral Kolb.”

  Conway was aware of the larger mission to exchange tech with the Raggers and he guessed that what was going on here might screw things up for Fleet Admiral Stone. If the enemy didn’t need the alliance’s tech, it meant they had a different motive for agreeing to the rendezvous.

  As soon as Kenyon closed the channel, Conway increased the pace. His squad deserved to know what was happening and he gave them an outline.

  “Seems like you’re not the Savior of the Universe after all, Elvis,” said Berg cheerfully. “Think you can get a refund on those t-shirts you had made up?”

  “Look, just shut up,” said Lockhart in an amiable tone that wouldn’t have fooled anyone into thinking he was in a good mood. “It’s not the time is it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “The Raggers may be in advance of our own efforts,” said Lieutenant Atomar. He didn’t speak much, so Conway tended to listen when it happened.

  “You think?”

  “I have heard our alliance is several months from reproducing sufficient quantities of the nanoparticles required to prevent the Sekar life drain. And that is assuming we have full access to the Ragger genetics data.”

  “While it looks as if the Raggers are on the brink of figuring out their own solution,” said Corporal Barron. “I wonder how many other places they have like this one?”

  “Best not to think about it.”

  Conway was obliged to shut down the conversation quickly. Two more lifts were coming from the depths – one in front of the squad and the other behind.

  “Think we can run past the lift in front?” asked Lockhart.

  “I’ve been asking myself the same thing, Sergeant.”

  “I say not,” said Rembra. The Fangrin shot a glance behind. “We cannot retreat and we cannot advance.”

  “Then we wait,” said Conway, not taking his eyes from the lift.

  “Maybe they’ll go the other way,” said Warner.

  “There’s no exit that direction. We know that because we walked more than halfway around this damned place before we found the entrance.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

  An idea came to Conway “Or what if…”

  He broke into something which was as close to a sprint as he could manage without producing a sound which could be heard over everything else happening in the dome.

  “Come on!”

  “What’s up, sir?”

  “We’re getting on that lift.”

  “Great.”

  The lift stopped, forty meters ahead of Conway, and the railing opened. At once, the Raggers stepped onto the perimeter walkway and turned in the direction of the soldiers. The aliens were armed like all the others and made no attempt to communicate with each other.

  “Five abreast and dead center on the walkway,” said Warner. “Gives us a few meters clearance.”

  Conway diverted to the outer wall and hurried on, doing his best to gauge when it was time to hold still and cursing himself for not paying more attention to how long the lifts stayed after their passengers were gone.

  “Hold!” he said at what he hoped was the last minute.

  The soldiers pushed themselves against the wall, with their guns aimed at the approaching Raggers. To Conway, it seemed like the strangest feeling, being so close to his enemy and not emptying his magazine into them.

  “Go on, piss off you assholes,” said Torres anxiously.

  The Raggers walked past, not looking anywhere except ahead. Just when Conway thought his squad were going to pull it off, one of the Raggers in the last row snapped its head around and looked directly at him. He was convinced it knew he was there and Conway’s finger tightened on the trigger of his rifle.

  He was on the verge of ordering his squad to open fire – had the word on his tongue – when the Ragger looked away without speaking or lifting its own gun.

  “Shit,” said Kemp.

  Slowly and carefully, Conway resumed his progress along the wall, his eyes fixed on the company of Raggers. The aliens didn’t slow and soon they were well along from the squad.

  “That one saw us,” said Barron. “I’m certain of it.”

  “What if it raises the alarm?” asked Berg.

  “If it raises the alarm, we’re deep in the crap whatever we do,” said Conway. “Now come on.”

  With the enemy far enough away, he dashed onto the lift and stopped at the far end of the platform. The surface underfoot was plain metal and thick enough that he couldn’t feel a resonance when he stepped on it. One of the growth tubes was right in front and Conway got an excellent view of the pulsating biological pale-white mass of unformed Ragger within.

  He turned away in order that he could see the enemy soldiers on the perimeter platform. They were acting the same as before with no sign they were alerted to intruders.

  The Fangrin were hulking brutes, but not so much that the entire squad couldn’t fit comfortably onto the lift. Kemp didn’t mind heights and peered into the shaft.

  “Steady,” said Torres nervously.

  “I’m cool. Anyone know where this lift goes?”

  Nobody knew, least of all Conway. He offered up his opinion. “Those Raggers are getting tooled up somewhere and I reckon it’s right down at the bottom of this shaft. Makes sense that this lift will go there.”

  “I can see a number of flaws in your logic, Captain,” said Warner.

  “Me too, soldier. Let’s not dwell on them.”

  “Whatever you say, sir.”

  With a faint lurch and a whine of concealed motors, the lift started down. It was fixed to one of the thicker uprights that formed the structure supporting the growth tubes and descended smoothly. Conway didn’t enjoy the view, but felt obliged to take mental notes, in case one of the alien research teams back home wanted to speak to him about it later.

  Raggers in tubes. Lots of them, hanging in this clear liquid and fed through pipes. A bunch of alien shit in a place I hate.

  The lift moved rapidly and Conway felt like he’d be failing his duty if he didn’t copy what Kemp was doing by looking over the edge. He did so and felt a momentary giddines
s, more from the size of the damn place than from the height.

  “Not far to the bottom,” he said.

  “What can you see?” asked Lockhart, his voice tight.

  “A circular floor. There’s a lower platform stopping me from identifying the exits.”

  “There’s another lift going up,” said Kemp, pointing excitedly, like he’d spotted a rare butterfly.

  “More Raggers on their way to be slaughtered by the Sekar,” said Barron. “Or not, if one of them gets lucky and has the right piece of genetic code.”

  To Conway’s relief, the lift carrying his squad went all the way down. The journey ended and the soldiers stepped off quickly.

  “That way,” said Conway, wanting to act rather than take in the sights. “Move to that wall next to the door.”

  The door he indicated was twenty meters from the front edge of the lift. Conway performed a 360-degree turn on the way over, in order to get an idea of what he’d brought the squad into.

  The base of the growth tube structure was a solid cylinder with a height of fifty or sixty meters, and the sight of it drove home what an immense piece of kit it was. Enormous pipes and dark-sheathed cables, each five meters in diameter, emerged from the outer walls overhead and joined with the base section, maybe to provide power, data, the growth fluids or a combination of the three.

  “Another lift,” said Lieutenant Rembra. “Coming our way.”

  “Raggers heading for the armory,” said Freeman. “And still no place to plug this damn cube into.”

  “This door nearby will open if I apply my intrusion software to the task,” said Lieutenant Atomar. He lifted a thick arm and gestured along the wall as it curved into the distance and out of sight. “Otherwise, we have at least six others like it to choose from.”

  “And no signage,” muttered Conway.

  His initial thought was to get the door open and make some progress. Conway clamped down on the idea, aware he was thinking like a soldier without a stealth suit - a soldier who had to keep moving or be killed. With the stealth webbing, things were different.

  “Let’s see where these Raggers go first,” he said.

  The Ragger lift came down, with a second not far behind. Given the quantity of growth tubes, Conway was concerned that the facility might become crowded if the enemy had a whole bunch due off the production line soon. Sure enough, a third lift began its descent from way up near the top.