Scum of the Universe (Fire and Rust Book 7)

by Anthony James

  “There’s no need. The Raggers are dead.”

  “We thought that last time.”

  With a sigh, Stone stopped pacing. “You’re right. I’ll wait for the all-clear.”

  That all-clear came from Captain Vince. The man was a veteran of the ULAF and he was mortified at the lapse in security.

  “Not your fault, Captain,” Stone assured him. “I’m going to the secondary bay.”

  Vince was torn, that much was clear in his rugged features. “I’ll escort you there myself.”

  This time, Stone took the airlifts and he arrived at his destination without further incident.

  “We’ve located three bodies, sir,” said Vince.

  “Have them brought here,” Stone replied, not breaking stride.

  He found Tonstin, RL Crane and many others talking animatedly next to the death pulse hardware, which was the same wire-strewn cube as the one he’d seen in Weapons Factory Zero. The wires were roughly patched into the nearby stealth cylinder and other, thicker, cables joined both to a pair of the power blocks from the Defiant’s stores. To Stone’s mind, the whole lot appeared fragile and he didn’t know how it would handle being slung underneath a Viper. The weapons team had plenty of work ahead of them.

  “Fleet Admiral Stone,” said Tonstin, waving the group to disperse.

  “A good result, like you said. Have you analyzed the output data?”

  “We have preliminary findings. What interests you specifically?”

  “Radius of the pulse sphere, recharge time and the falloff between the source and the extremes,” Stone replied promptly.

  “Sphere radius was five hundred kilometers.” Tonstin looked at her handheld. “Falloff, minimal.”

  “What about the recharge time?”

  “Those readings will require analysis by a computer.”

  Stone leaned against one of the consoles. “Five hundred klicks is a lower range than the Ravok original.”

  “The limitation is in the supply.” The Fangrin gestured in the direction of the power blocks. “The pulse range should scale upwards with a slight exponent if more were power available.”

  “With enough supply this thing could send a pulse across an entire galaxy?” asked Stone with great interest.

  “No. A point of inflection eventually occurs and the pulse will expand no further.” She gave another grin-of-happiness-or-possibly-something-else. “Besides, the other parts of the weapon will fail long before the power limitation is reached.”

  “Can you wire up those other three power blocks and afterwards make everything more robust?”

  “We require further time to analyze.”

  “Why can’t the two actions run concurrently?”

  Tonstin blinked, slowly. “We will make it so. I cannot guarantee adding three extra power blocks will be feasible given the tools available to us.”

  “Do what you can,” said Stone. “And contact me the moment you figure out the recharge time.”

  He turned and beckoned Captain Dyer to follow. Captain Vince was watching from the periphery and he hurried over with twenty or more soldiers. Stone accepted the escort and returned to the bridge.

  00:15:44:09

  The monitoring team were not due for more than three hours. Nevertheless, Stone was not expecting a lull in activity. He had officers and civil councilors throughout the Unity League to speak with. The pressure was building everywhere and he could sense the panic. It was one thing for your armed forces to be involved in a conflict on a faraway planet, it was another thing entirely to learn that the fighting was about to move not to your doorstep, but right into the middle of your kitchen.

  Keeping everyone onside was an impossible task and on several occasions, Stone was required to overrule an angry councilor, or just plain close them out of the channel.

  “This isn’t the time for arguments,” he muttered.

  When he checked, the timer had fallen a couple of hours. Before he knew it, Lieutenant Roden was announcing the presence of a Ragger vessel on the sensors.

  “It’s small and moving at a medium speed, sir. A shuttle.”

  00:12:10:00

  “A few minutes over the four hours,” said Stone. It seemed like Indriss-Zar-005 had paid heed to his threat to shoot down the monitoring team if they came early.

  Commander Blackwood had been working on a plan of sorts to keep the Raggers away from the secondary bay – on the off chance they asked for a guided tour. The plan was lacking in sophistication and at its most basic involved delaying tactics, sleight-of-hand and, ultimately, murdering the Ragger assholes and pretending it was an accident.

  Stone hoped he wouldn’t be required to put the plan into action. In reality, the monitoring team would have plenty to keep them occupied on the bridge, unless they’d been sent with an underlying mission to explore the carrier.

  The shuttle came ever closer and Lieutenant Roden obtained a sensor lock. The vessel wasn’t much to look at and Stone watched its approach impassively.

  “Scans for explosives come up clean,” said Roden. “That spaceship’s too small to hide any secrets from us.”

  “Keep an eye on it,” said Stone.

  “Yes, sir.”

  A second death pulse came without warning and Stone dropped to his haunches, retching. The other members of the crew fared no better and he heard cursing from numerous sources.

  “Get me the weapons team!” roared Stone.

  It took almost a minute to get a response from the secondary bay, which didn’t help his foul mood.

  “What was that?” he shouted, when Tonstin finally came into the channel.

  “A second death pulse.”

  “You were meant to give us a warning! The Ragger monitoring team is inbound…oh shit.” Stone dashed across to Lieutenant Dowd. The man wasn’t yet recovered and Stone gave him an urgent shake. “Request a channel to that shuttle!”

  Ten seconds later and Stone breathed out in relief when Dowd reported that the shuttle responded to his request for a status update.

  Stone checked that Tonstin was still waiting. “You could have blown everything!” he said, no longer willing to tolerate her lack of concern for his authority. “If you’d killed the Ragger monitoring team, their fleet would almost certainly have destroyed our planet! Billions dead because you screwed up!”

  “I…I am sorry.”

  It was like someone had opened a valve and Stone’s anger rushed away. “Tell me the result.”

  “We performed a second successful activation of the death pulse generator, this time with two additional power blocks connected. The radius was eighteen hundred kilometers. We underestimated the exponent.”

  “What about the recharge time?”

  “That is not so clear.”

  “Explain.”

  “For the second firing, we waited until certain…agitations…within the hardware had fallen to zero.”

  Stone opened his mouth to ask what she meant by agitations. He decided he’d rather not know. “Go on.”

  “We could have activated the death pulse immediately after the first discharge.”

  The lines were easy enough to read between. “Except you were concerned about adverse effects.”

  “Yes.”

  “What sort of adverse effects?”

  “Destruction of the hardware, destruction of the Defiant, other destruction not predictable from the available data.”

  “What about harmlessly shutting down? Did that appear on the list of possibilities.”

  “No. Destruction was the only outcome.”

  Such were the risks when dealing with scarcely understood technologies taken from the underground facilities of long-dead alien species.

  “Do you have time to construct a probability model for the outcomes, based on the discharge intervals?”

  “I will look into it.”

  “It is time to move on to the next phase, Tonstin. The death pulse hardware must be made robust enough to be carried by one of
our Viper assault craft.”

  “I understand.”

  “And no more unannounced activations of the hardware.”

  “Not unless you order it otherwise.”

  “Thank you. You’ve pulled off something special here.”

  “I hope it is enough.”

  The channel went dead and Stone readied himself for the arrival of his unwanted visitors.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Stone didn’t personally greet the monitoring team as they came off the shuttle in the main bay. Instead, he ordered a large contingent of soldiers to bring the enemy to the bridge, with instructions to take the longest and slowest route available.

  When the monitoring team finally arrived, watched over by suspicious and grim-faced soldiers, Stone spared them only a single glance. The Raggers were unarmed as required and wore grey spacesuits and bulbous helmets, the visors of which were closed. They were scrawny and tall, yet broader in their suits, which made them appear more physically imposing.

  A bullet or two in the head would bring them down to size, thought Stone sourly, continuing to ignore them.

  “You’re the perfect host, sir,” said Commander Blackwood in a whisper.

  “Damn right.”

  It didn’t take long for the Raggers to assert themselves. One of the group – as ugly as all the others – identified Stone as the man in charge and approached with what might have been intended as a swagger.

  “I am Kafrol-Zu-003-0072. You will show me the data from your battle computer.”

  Stone grunted and didn’t look up from the screen he was studying.

  “This will escalate quickly if you do not cooperate, human.”

  With no need to be civil, Stone made no effort to be so. He straightened and turned so that he was looking the Ragger directly in the eye. The alien’s skin was smooth and stretched and Stone got the impression it was very old.

  “You’re an offshoot from one of the big boys,” he stated. “You must be very proud of yourself.”

  The Ragger either didn’t understand or didn’t care. “We will see your battle network data.”

  “Help yourself,” said Stone, lifting his arm and making an expansive gesture across the entire bridge.

  Kafrol-Zu-003-0072 spent a few seconds looking from place to place. “Which of your consoles?”

  “That one in the corner,” said Stone. “You’ll need to switch it on.”

  “Show me.”

  “I thought I was being sent technically competent individuals.”

  A muscle twitched at the corner of Kafrol-Zu-003-0072’s eye. Stone smiled.

  Without another word, the Ragger fell into the trap and accepted the challenge. It approached the console and, after studying the device, pressed a switch.

  “Not that one,” said Stone. “The other one.”

  Following a short period of fumbling, the Ragger flicked the right switch and lights appeared. The console took a minute to boot. It wasn’t much, but Stone would take whatever delays he could engineer.

  To his disappointment, the Ragger was more familiar with the software than it was with the hardware. The creature’s long fingers darted from place to place, calling up menus and selecting the correct options with such confidence that Stone guessed it had been trained on a stolen copy of the ULAF control software.

  “I will take a copy of your battle network data,” said Kafrol-Zu-003-0072. “And transmit it to my superiors using the comms unit in my suit.”

  “Fill your boots.”

  Without warning, the bridge lights flickered once, twice, three times. The lights came back but every console went offline.

  “What is this trick?” demanded the Ragger, flicking the power switch up and down.

  “The Defiant is not long out of the shipyard,” shrugged Stone. “We are having technical difficulties.”

  “You will resolve those difficulties,” said the Ragger. “I repeat my warning from earlier: this will escalate rapidly.”

  Stone waved to get Captain Vince’s attention.

  “What is it, sir?” asked Vince, speaking with exaggerated slowness, like each word was an effort.

  “Our comms are offline – please contact the maintenance team and ask them to reboot module X19-124D.”

  “Yes, sir.” Vince went quiet for a long time. “Which module was it, sir?”

  “X19-124D.”

  “Got it, sir.”

  “I want an ETA on when the power will be online.”

  Kafrol-Zu-003-0072 wasn’t having any of it. The alien rose from his seat and towered over Stone, who stood unflinching.

  “Get. The. Power. Back.”

  Stone gave what he hoped was an infuriating grin. “What’s that ETA, Captain?”

  “The technical team have restarted the module, sir,” Vince replied, dragging out his sentence like a medieval torturer playing with his victim on the rack. “Eee Tee Ay, five minutes. Maybe a little bit longer.”

  “This will not happen again, human.”

  “No, probably not,” agreed Stone. “It’s an intermittent fault which only occurs when the carrier is at a standstill.”

  The overhead lights dimmed again, strengthened and then the consoles came back to life. The hardware booted and Kafrol-Zu-003-0072 watched it happen with obvious impatience.

  “I have orders from my superiors, human. Should your behavior breach certain guidelines, one of the cities on New Destiny will be destroyed.”

  “If your fleet destroys one city, I will destroy your fleet,” said Stone calmly. “Though not before we have killed you and your monitoring team. You have lived a long time, Ragger. I can see it in your face.”

  “I have lived for hundreds of years, human. I will live for hundreds more.”

  “If that’s to work out, you’d better hope nothing bad happens on New Destiny.”

  The stalling tactics, in combination with the time required for a suit comms unit to transmit the file containing uncompressed battle network data resulted in a significant delay.

  00:10:44:04

  The communicator in Stone’s pocket buzzed and he pulled the device out to find a text message from Captain Dyer. Anything important was to be handled this way in case the Raggers had microphones in their suits capable of recording spoken conversation.

  Dyer> The Raggers are too efficient. At this rate, we’ll have to hand over the Hantisar warships before the Juniper arrives.

  Stone> That may happen. As long as the enemy don’t have time to figure out the sensor arrays.

  Dyer> Agreed. There’s no way the Raider will pull off a death pulse run if the Raggers can penetrate its stealth.

  Stone tucked the communicator away and took his seat at the command console. The transmission of the battle network data was completed five minutes ago and he didn’t think it would take long for Indriss-Zar-005 to study the numbers.

  He was right.

  “Inbound comm from Indriss-Zar-005, sir,” said Lieutenant Dowd.

  “Bring him in.”

  “You have Fangrin ships with you,” said the Ragger angrily.

  “Yes. They hate you as much as we do.”

  “Send them away and retransmit the battle network data.”

  “Happy to oblige.”

  The process required another hour and, for once, the Raggers couldn’t accuse him of stalling. At last it was done. The Fangrin warships – both of their own construction and those of the Hantisar – departed into lightspeed.

  Afterwards came further delays as Indriss-Zar-005 checked the data again. Then, he required proof that the Fangrin hadn’t simply gathered on the far edges of the solar system. This necessitated a more in-depth examination of the battle network data in order to extract the expected time at lightspeed from the synch codes.

  Since a lightspeed journey could be interrupted at any time, Stone expected his enemy to require further assurances, which he was unable to provide. The Ragger bitched, threatened and made a few demands. Eventually, it was settled a
nd Indriss-Zar-005 was forced to accept that neither he nor Stone could control the movements of the Fangrin fleet.

  00:09:17:33

  “I have sent you my demands,” said the Ragger at last. “You will fulfil them. The ships of your fleet which are elsewhere will be handed to us the moment they arrive.”

  The transfer of a warship wasn’t as simple as throwing over a bunch of keys and saying watch the paintwork.

  “It will take time to remove the security locks and shuttle the crews from those warships to the Defiant,” said Stone.

  “Perhaps I did not make myself clear, human. Your crews will remain onboard until my own personnel are ready to take over.”

  Stone bit down on his anger. “I cannot abandon those people.”

  “But you have already abandoned so many more. Isn’t that right, Fleet Admiral?” said Indriss-Zar-005, adding particular inflection to the last two words. “You’ve given up every member of your species to us and now you quibble over a mere few thousand.”

  “It is you who quibbles over a few thousand, Ragger. You have the concessions you came here for and I will not give you any more than you have. This is the line. Step over it if you wish.”

  Indriss-Zar-005 didn’t speak for a time and Stone was uncertain which way this would fall.

  “Very well, human. Evacuate your ships and send them on autopilot to coordinates of my choosing. I’m sure I do not need to remind you of the consequences should I find those vessels sabotaged in any way.”

  “They won’t be sabotaged,” said Stone, failing to mention the nuclear devices already onboard each Hantisar spaceship. With luck, he wouldn’t need them. “If I was going to sabotage my fleet I’d use them against you instead.”

  “I have been thinking,” said the Ragger, “I will require you to leave a crew on a single warship – a Hantisar craft. They will begin teaching my personnel how to operate the vessel and later I will return your crew to you unharmed.”

  Stone grimaced and knew this was the best he was going to get.

  “I agree. The evacuation will take some time to accomplish – the Defiant only carries six shuttles.” He took a deep breath. “The ULS Juniper is due here in a little over nine hours. When it comes, I will have access to additional transports.”