Scum of the Universe (Fire and Rust Book 7)

by Anthony James

  The Viper struck the ground with a thousand overlapping sounds of tortured metal. Something detonated with a bursting thump and the squad crouched lower still. The blast sphere expanded, lighting the dome’s interior in bright orange, shaking the lift and the nearby parts of the main structure. Hundreds - thousands – of growth tubes popped in the heat with a sound like breaking teeth.

  The worst of the Viper’s destruction passed and Conway gathered his wits.

  “Anyone hurt?” he yelled.

  Nobody reported injuries and he turned his attention to the platform above. Part of it was ripped clear by the spaceship and a thirty-meter length hung down, attached by a piece of metal so thin that Conway couldn’t believe it was holding.

  Most of the Raggers directly above the lift were gone, leaving a few dozen counterclockwise around the upper level. Like a rotten stench that wouldn’t disperse, these enemies seemed to be gathering themselves. Conway’s mind went back to Corporal Barron’s idea about these Raggers being worker insects with no interest in their own survival. When you didn’t care if you lived or died, maybe a near miss didn’t slow you down.

  The channel to the Raider remained open, like Kenyon was waiting for the outcome. Conway told him.

  “We made it, but we’re still in the shit.”

  “Not much we can do about that, Captain.”

  Conway shot an incautious Ragger and shifted his gaze to the hole in the dome’s roof. The structure had a double skin, but he could see through to the rich, dark blue of the planet’s late evening sky. Unbidden, his mind drew an imaginary line straight through the hole.

  “Think one of you flyboys can get an Ultor into that hole and hit the platform 150 meters counterclockwise from our position?”

  Kenyon understood at once. “If it’s a possibility, we’ll get it done.”

  The shock of having a burned-out Viper drop by within spitting distance meant Conway had overlooked his magazine change. His ammo readout hit zero and he cursed while his free hand went into his drop bag.

  Seconds later, Conway was firing again. By now, the Raggers had a good idea where their target was and they fired without concern for their own lives. It made them easy targets, but there was no way for the squad to completely shut down the enemy fire. Warner, already injured, took a shot in the leg and Ravil grunted that he’d been hit in the chest. A moment later, the Fangrin sank to his haunches with his head lowered.

  “Where’s that missile,” said Conway under his breath.

  The Viper squadron didn’t let him down. An Ultor came through the opening in the roof so fast that Conway didn’t see or hear it.

  “Incoming,” said Kenyon, at the moment of detonation.

  The Ultor went off in a white flash that left echoes dancing on Conway’s retinas. The blast wave came a moment after, with the heat and sound caught up in it. All the squad could do was hold on and wait for it to pass.

  When his eyes cleared, Conway was confronted by the sight of a new hole in the side of the dome, its edges glowing angrily with plasma heat. Where there had once been a platform and Raggers, now there was no sign of either.

  Like an unstoppable train, the lift kept on going. The platform opposite where it was due to stop was buckled, yet mostly intact. Conway swung around further and saw that the Raggers were gathering clockwise where the upper platform was untouched by the missile or the falling Viper.

  “Enemies clockwise.”

  As he was turning towards this new threat, Conway spotted Ravil fall to his side. Blood gathered in a huge pool around the Fangrin and Corporal Brice stabbed him with another of her injectors.

  “Dammit,” she swore.

  Brice left the dead soldier and scrambled between the living to the place where Warner was doing his best not to complain. Conway put it from his mind and vented his fury on the enemy soldiers who once again didn’t seem entirely sure where their targets were located. The squad took full advantage, cutting the Raggers down without mercy.

  “Running low on ammo,” said Torres.

  “Less than two mags here,” said Berg. “No spares to offer.”

  Conway’s bag was similarly light and he changed in his last full magazine. A few loose rounds clinked, but he didn’t have time to load them.

  “Nearly at the platform,” said Kemp, shooting with a steady rhythm – he was probably the only member of the squad who could aim as well as Conway.

  The lift screeched to a halt, one meter lower than it was meant to. The damage to the upper platform meant there was an additional gap between the two and the railing didn’t fall open.

  “Move,” ordered Conway.

  Lieutenant Rembra was closest and he sprang upwards and across the gap. His broad hands clamped onto the railing and he hauled himself onto the platform. Then Gundro and Hacher went. Immediately, the Fangrin formed a line and pelted the gathering Raggers with chain gun fire.

  The rest of the squad jumped free of the lift, leaving Conway and Lockhart to help Warner. The Fangrin Darax leaned over the railing and plucked the injured soldier onto the platform with apparent ease. Moments later, Conway and Lockhart joined the others.

  “This way!” said Rembra in commanding tones.

  The moment Conway saw the exit door, it struck home exactly how lucky he and his squad were that they hadn’t been left stranded on a section of the platform cut off from the exits. It was a possibility which hadn’t occurred to him amongst all the other priorities vying for his attention. Conway had long since accepted he wasn’t perfect, but this failing struck him hard. The data extractor contained the hopes of an entire species, not just a few soldiers, no matter how precious those roughnecked bastards might be to him.

  By the time Conway’s feet were moving, Rembra had the exit door hacked and open. Gundro’s chain gun ran dry and he retreated towards the way out, while Darax took over the job of laying down suppressing fire.

  Such was the effectiveness of the chain guns in these situations, that the squad made it into the exit passage without hardly a return shot from the Raggers. Rembra was already working on the outer door and the soldiers took the opportunity to cram rounds into their empty magazines.

  “Holding up?” Conway asked Private Warner, his fingers expertly reloading without assistance from his brain.

  Warner looked on top of things, though the wideness of his pupils was a giveaway sign. “I’m good, sir.”

  Conway glanced at the place where the bullet had entered Warner’s leg. It had gone straight through the meaty part of his inner thigh. The polymers of his suit had sealed over the wound, which, along with the congealing blood made it hard to determine the severity.

  “Best hope those sentry turrets can’t smell blood, huh?”

  “I don’t think they’re sophisticated enough, Private.” Conway thought about it some more. “If I’m wrong, we can use you as bait.”

  “Great! Thanks, sir.” Warner fished in his pack and pulled out two magazines. “You’d best take these. I’ve got twenty in the gun, but this arm’s not working so well now.”

  Conway took the magazines, kept one for himself and offered the other to the first taker. Torres had it and swapped it straight into her Gilner.

  “Shit, didn’t know you were so low,” said Conway. “Anyone else onto their last?”

  “Thirty-eight left, sir,” said Kemp.

  “I’ve got forty in the gun.” Conway relinquished the second magazine without regret. “Maybe another ten in the bag.”

  A rumbling sound accompanied the outer door opening and the squad exited rapidly, in case any Raggers were watching from the undergrowth. The plan was to head clockwise towards the deployment site and the squad made it into the deeper cover without a shot being fired.

  Once he was swallowed up by the trees and the ground-level foliage, Conway allowed himself to believe that escape was within reach. Private Warner wasn’t likely to manage two-point-five klicks with a bullet wound in his leg, but he wasn’t short of offers to help him.<
br />
  Conway requested a channel to the Raider.

  “You made it out, Captain,” said Kenyon. “Got the cube?”

  “Got the cube, left one soldier behind.”

  “Well shit,” was all Kenyon could think of to say on the subject. “We’re finding it tough up here. Eight Vipers down and the others scattered, trying to draw the heat away from the dome.”

  “Any luck drawing that heat?”

  “We may be facing as many as six heavy cruisers, Captain. If we could see them, they’d be flaming wreckage by now. Since they’re too scared to show their faces, we’re left punching at thin air.”

  “Doesn’t sound like the pickup will be much fun.”

  “You leave that to us. We’ll get you out of there.”

  “That’s a promise?”

  “As close to one as I can offer.”

  The channel went silent and Conway relayed the details of his conversation. Nobody was surprised – in fact, this was how it mostly turned out – a sprint from danger with enemy troops in all directions and every chance of having victory snatched away at the last moment.

  Three hundred meters from the exit, the squad came across another of the exit tunnels. The Raggers had wised up to the escape. Their soldiers spilled from the exit and spread out into the forest. Only the stealth suits prevented Conway and his squad from being discovered.

  “Go around,” he ordered.

  It was an unwanted delay and Conway requested an Ultor strike on the entrance to incinerate any Raggers who were thinking about taking an evening stroll through the forest. The Vipers couldn’t see the entrance amongst the trees, but they could use the positional data from the combat suits to hit the target.

  The response was quick in coming and a harsh reminder of how vulnerable ground troops were in the age of space combat. A series of missiles streaked by overhead, too fast to be seen with or without the covering of trees. Conway saw a flash and then he heard the whine of propulsion, followed by a rumbling blast of several detonations.

  “You can probably blow the crap out of the whole place,” he said on the comms.

  “We’re only waiting for you to get clear, Captain. For the time being, you’ll have to settle for Ultors.”

  “Those suit me just fine.”

  Conway angled further from the dome, to minimize the chance of running into the Raggers he felt sure were pouring from the other exits. The new heading wasn’t going to add too much to the overall distance and once Conway got a chance to mentally visualize the path, he was confident he was taking the most efficient course, since they shouldn’t have to spend time avoiding Ragger troops.

  The squad travelled another few hundred meters. The ground was rougher here, with rocks protruding from the rich soil and the light was so limited that Conway was tempted to switch on his image enhancers. He decided to rely on his eyes for a little longer and pressed on through the rustling leaves and the threatening shadows.

  Without warning, a Viper raced by overhead, so fast and so low that Conway caught a glimpse of the orange heat trail it left across the darkening sky. Its propulsion was on full boost and the hard edge of the sound brought his primal fears to the surface. Conway fought and overcame his body’s urge to flee and he strode onwards.

  A second Viper came after the first, at a similar altitude. Through a gap in the canopy, Conway saw it bank impossibly hard, describing the tightest of arcs that brought it almost over the squad once more. Streaks of white light – fifteen or twenty in all – split the air where the Viper had been only moments before. The Ragger missiles detonated a few hundred meters from the squad, their light spreading around the trunks and creating a faint, eerie glow on the greens and browns.

  Seconds after its missiles struck the forest floor, the unseen Ragger ship thundered overhead. It wasn’t travelling with anything like the urgency of the Viper, but there again it didn’t have to.

  “Get down!” said Conway.

  If the Ragger heavy cruiser was actively looking, it could probably locate the squad. As he crouched next to a tree, with the oval leaves of an alien plant concealing much of his body, Conway hoped that a mere few soldiers were beneath the warship’s interest.

  The rumbling faded, though it was soon replaced by other detonations from the south, east and west, along with the shriek of overstressed Viper engines from those same directions.

  Lieutenant Kenyon opened a comms channel.

  “Captain Conway, change of plan. The Raggers have kindly made a new pickup point nine hundred meters south-east of your current position. I’ve fed the course details into your suit computer – you should see a line appear on your HUD. Follow it. Expect a diversion at the last minute.”

  “Roger.”

  As promised, the route line appeared and Conway angled along it, explaining the details as he went.

  “So the Ragger missiles created a new clearing in the forest,” said Barron.

  “That’s what it sounds like.”

  “Which gives the Raider someplace to set down without crushing all those trees again.”

  “That’s right, Corporal. Maybe the Raggers won’t spot our ride so easily.”

  “Great.”

  “And expect a diversion.”

  “Should I burn myself to a cinder now, sir, or wait for a space-launched mega-missile to do it for me?”

  “Best wait and see how it turns out.”

  The route line took them directly to a clearing, which came as no surprise. Conway called a halt a short distance inside the perimeter tree line. He didn’t want to commit until he knew help was coming. The area ahead was a rough circle about three hundred meters across, filled with lumps of carbon that had once been trees. The smoke was thick and dirty, leaving a film of grime on the soldiers’ combat suits.

  “Where’s our pickup, sir?” asked Kemp. He wasn’t usually anxious, but his voice had an unfamiliar tightness.

  “Waiting on the word.”

  An immense, grey shape dropped out of the sky. It was so dark that Conway sensed it more than saw the details. He switched on his image enhancers and realized that the incoming spaceship wasn’t a Viper. It was the ULS Juniper and the carrier descended with such speed that Conway was sure it was out of control and would impact with the planet’s surface.

  Instead, the spaceship’s massive engines brought it to a stop, less than a thousand meters above the surface and only two thousand meters to the east. At once, tracers from its countless chain guns filled the skies with streaks of bright orange and Conway saw the interspersed white of a thousand interceptors racing away into the night.

  Conway thought he’d never seen a more awe-inspiring sight, but the ULAF wasn’t done yet. A booming of unfathomable depth came to him from the direction of the dome. The sound of the detonation increased in volume and was accompanied by a wind which howled through the trees, making the undergrowth lean sideways and stripping away countless leaves.

  “Ready for pickup?” asked Kenyon.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Conway wasn’t expecting a long wait, but what he got was even less than his expectations. The Raider’s propulsion growled overhead and then it crunched onto the ground near to the tree line. The spaceship was invisible with its stealth and in the near darkness, but Conway felt the weight of its touchdown through the soles of his feet.

  “Move!” he yelled.

  The squad broke cover, heading towards the muted red glow of the Raider’s forward airlock which illuminated the lowered boarding ramp. Conway made sure Freeman was first inside and then he ordered the other soldiers afterwards.

  “A bad habit, sir,” said Sergeant Lockhart. “You can’t always be last man.”

  “I can’t help it. Anything else feels wrong.”

  Lockhart sprinted up the ramp in front and Conway turned to follow. The last thing he saw before he headed for the Viper’s interior was a Ragger heavy cruiser, burning from countless missile strikes and its hull torn open by a barrage
of high-impact chain gun slugs, come hurtling over the clearing on a trajectory that indicated it would strike the ground somewhere not too far away.

  Conway didn’t wait to see the result. He followed Lockhart up the steps and onto the Raider, with the ramp closing before he even made it into the airlock. Once inside, Conway braced for lift-off. The Viper’s escape was as unsympathetic as he expected and when the boosters finally cut off, he felt utterly exhausted.

  “Are we done?” asked Torres.

  “Are we ever done?” Conway answered.

  “Point taken. At least the Juniper made it. Maybe they’ll take us home.”

  Conway didn’t know what was coming next. He closed his eyes and didn’t speak.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Conway didn’t get a chance to settle. Not long after the atmospheric turbulence gave way to the much smoother passage through space, he was invited to the bridge. Making his way from the airlock and along corridors quite literally filled with Fangrin was a challenge. He made it at last, muttering darkly that it had better be something important.

  The moment he stepped through the bridge door, Conway could tell that something was wrong.

  “I can’t turn around,” said Griffin. “Come here next to my console.”

  Conway approached and studied the sensor feeds at the same time. The displays were of blackness and nothing else. “What is it, sir?”

  “First a quick run-down. With the assistance of the Juniper’s new sensor arrays, we destroyed a few Ragger spaceships and escaped with losses. In thirty minutes, we’ll dock with the carrier and be on our way with a data cube filled with some of the Raggers’ most closely-guarded secrets.”

  “I heard we need this to make everyone immune to the Sekar life-drain.”

  “That’s the plan. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help us much against the Raggers and those assholes are making life real difficult for us.”

  “Nothing’s changed there, sir. You didn’t need me on the bridge to tell me that.”