Scum of the Universe (Fire and Rust Book 7)

by Anthony James

  “Those Hantisar ships are really doing a number on the Raggers,” said Dominguez. She sounded as exhausted as Griffin felt. “That last death pulse hit the place where the Sekar came down as well. We got lucky there.”

  “Maybe the Vanquisher already took it out with those tharniol bombs,” said Kenyon.

  “It’s gone and that’s what matters,” said Dominguez. She cleared her throat. “Sekar rift dead ahead, sir. Thirty thousand klicks.”

  “Doesn’t look like much,” said Griffin, staring at the jagged, image-enhanced line on the forward sensor feed.

  “It’s stopped growing anyway.”

  “Are we certain the Ragger fleet is neutralized?” asked Kenyon.

  “Why don’t you get on the comms and find out, Lieutenant?”

  Kenyon sounded surprised, as if he hadn’t realized he could do that. “Sorry, sir. I guess all this happening has taken it out of me. I’ll find out at once.”

  While he waited, Griffin dug around in the hastily cobbled together control program for the death pulse generator. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for and didn’t locate anything to enlighten him on the likelihood of a hardware failure. The agitation levels critical hadn’t changed.

  “Fleet Admiral Stone believes the Raggers are defeated, sir. I told him what we’re up here for.”

  “And?”

  “The Defiant is coming our way.”

  “Why?” was the only thing Griffin could think of to ask.

  “They have a second death pulse wired up in the secondary bay. I told Admiral Stone our hardware is at critical levels. He ordered us to hold fire and get clear.”

  “I’ve got the Defiant on the sensors, sir, along with a bunch of our Hantisar warships. Damn those are fast ships.”

  Having come to terms with his imminent death, the change of outcome left Griffin close to tears.

  “Pass on my thanks to the Defiant. For all of us,” he said. “Orders received and acknowledged.”

  With hands that wouldn’t stop shaking, Griffin banked the Raider away from the Sekar rift and let the Defiant take over.

  End

  Six days later, the Raggers showed up at Earth, this time with a fleet of eleven hundred warships, five of which were the capital ships used by those of first echelon rank.

  What they found was not a place waiting meekly to be wiped out by incendiaries. Instead, the aliens were themselves taken completely unawares by six Hantisar warships and one Viper, each fitted with a death pulse generator. While the Raider was only capable of generating an eighteen-hundred klick radius pulse, the Hantisar craft had much deeper wells of power which the death pulse cubes were wired directly into.

  As the Raggers found to their great cost, the Hantisar fleet could send a death pulse across a much greater range. Earth was left unharmed.

  Two months later, the first defensive death pulse satellites were sent into Earth orbit, using stealth modules taken from the abundance of drifting Ragger spaceships. A week later, other satellites went up at New Destiny. A month after that, every inhabited human world and many of the Fangrin worlds were protected not only from surprise Ragger attacks, but also from the Sekar.

  Six months after Captain Conway and his squad stole the genetics data from the Ragger facility on Hul-J5, a widespread program of immunization was implemented to ensure that both humans and Fangrin would no longer be vulnerable to the Sekar life drain.

  Three months after that, the Conway family welcomed a new arrival.

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