Refuge 9 (Fire and Rust Book 5)

by Anthony James

  “We know what the Raggers are about,” said Conway. “I’m not here to tell you they’ve changed – hell no – but we’ve already learned what they’re capable of. That makes it harder for them to surprise us.”

  “Can we shoot them at the first sign of treachery?” asked Private Calhoun.

  “Not unless I order it, soldier. Besides, I told you we aren’t supposed to be rubbing shoulders. In truth, I don’t know if we’ll see a Ragger or not. If that changes, then it changes.”

  A few voices were raised at the same time and Conway detected the uncertainty amongst the soldiers. They knew how to shoot and they were good at it. That only worked out when your target was definite. None of these troops wanted to be watching their backs every step of the way, since that made it much harder to focus on what was in front.

  Conway was honest and he didn’t attempt to deny any of the concerns, nor pretend they weren’t real. Soon, he accepted that the only way to resolve the matter was a deployment. When that came, instinct and experience would take over and the soldiers would do what was necessary.

  The questions and answers became circular and Conway dismissed the troops before they convinced themselves the mission was a disaster before it got started.

  “You’ve got three days, give or take,” he said. “Go and enjoy yourselves.”

  “Yeah, right. Thanks, Captain,” said Corporal Rick Freeman. “Shit food, hard beds and nowhere to take a dump in peace.”

  “Just how you like it, Corporal.”

  The soldiers gradually left the room, leaving the two maintenance techs still working on the pipe.

  “Anything I should be worried about?” asked Conway, aiming his question at the techs.

  “You’d never forgive me if I told you, Captain,” replied one.

  It wasn’t clear from the man’s expression if he was serious or an excellent liar. Conway didn’t ask again and left the room.

  “Best if we don’t know, huh?” asked Barron, falling into step.

  “Sometimes I like to embrace ignorance,” said Freeman from a pace ahead. “This is one of those times.”

  The following three days were difficult. The soldiers were unable to settle and the usual light-hearted interplay took on a new and unwelcome edge. More than once, Conway was obliged to break things up before they became too heated. On one occasion, he was required to physically intervene when two men started throwing punches. They were faces he didn’t recognize, but the fury in their eyes was worrying.

  The Fangrin didn’t fight each other and they appeared calm on the surface. Conway was beginning to understand the aliens a little better and the signs of agitation were there when he looked for them. When they were on edge, the Fangrin stooped a little lower and lifted their shoulders in towards their neck. To Conway’s eyes, it looked defensive.

  “All this stress is to be expected,” said Sergeant Lockhart in the upper passenger bay after the fight. “This isn’t about being stuck on the Iron Cell and it’s not about the Raggers. It’s about everything that’s happened up to this moment. Most everyone I speak to has lost someone. In the past, it used to be that you knew of a person who’d got shot by the Fangrin. Now, some of these men and women have lost their entire families. And the Fangrin…well they’ve got their own tales.”

  Conway didn’t feel like sitting, eating or drinking and he paced around. “I know it, Sergeant. Back when it was us and the Fangrin, we thought we had it bad. Hell, we did have it bad most of the time, but we signed up to fight and if we got killed, that was how the game worked out. Everything’s different with the Raggers and the Sekar, and I can’t predict how it’s going to affect the soldiers I command. I look in their faces and I see a rage that might never end. Even if we beat the Sekar tomorrow and the Raggers crawl back under their rock, this is a burden we’ll take home with us.”

  “This is the test, Captain. It’s not something we wanted and we’ll need to be strong to come through it.”

  “And what if we don’t?”

  Lockhart smiled without a trace of humor. “In which case maybe there’ll be no unity left.”

  “Which none of us want to happen.”

  “No, that’s not worth contemplating.”

  Conway caught a note in Lockhart’s words, like the man was slowly coming to accept a new purpose in his life. Or maybe he was teetering on the point of no return. “You don’t need another thing to fight for, Sergeant.”

  “You think I’m looking for excuses?”

  “Maybe. We all need to face what’s coming to us. It shouldn’t always be war. There’s got to be a time when you pack up your guns, take off your suit and accept you’ll never use them again. When that time comes, we’ll need more than memories and a yearning for the past.”

  Lockhart smiled again and this time it reached his eyes. “I’ll think about what you said, Captain.”

  As the final hours went by, the tension lessened. The soldiers kept themselves busy checking their guns and recounting past battles. Conway patrolled the interior of the Iron Cell, talking here and there to people he recognized. When he stopped to think about it, it seemed bizarre how easily the Fangrin fitted in everywhere. Conway barely thought of them as dogs anymore. All he saw were soldiers – just some of them were enormous soldiers with fur, sharp teeth, yellow eyes and different weaponry.

  The other officers under Colonel Thornton also patrolled and gradually, Conway came to know them. As usual, it was a seemingly competent group – they had the talk and the confidence, but the practical demonstration would have to wait for the mission. Conway wasn’t too concerned – this was how it always started.

  At precisely the expected moment, the Iron Cell exited lightspeed. Conway was in his seat in the upper passenger bay with his harness fastened. The bay was full of men and women desperate to get a glimpse of their destination. The spaceship’s engines roared and Conway sensed the acceleration. The acceleration didn’t last too long and then the feeling ended. A few of the soldiers unsnapped their harnesses in order to get the best positions in front of the many viewscreens.

  The Iron Cell’s commanding officer kept the internal screens offline, leaving the troops in the dark about what was going on. It caused plenty of muttering and most of the soldiers believed it was disrespectful, like they couldn’t be trusted to do what was right if they saw what was coming.

  Conway didn’t have enough authority to order a change, but he had a word with Colonel Thornton about it. Shortly after, the viewscreens came on, though Conway had no idea if it was down to anything Thornton had requested. A few of the soldiers raised a cynical cheer.

  “Can’t see anything so far,” said Kemp on the open comms channel. “Darkness and not much else.” Everyone had their suit helmets on and the channel was buzzing.

  “Just you wait,” said Private Calvin Berg. “It’ll be a tropical paradise, I guarantee it.”

  That got a second cheer, even more cynical than the first.

  “When was the last time you saw a tropical paradise outside of a magazine, Cal?” asked Private Clinton McCray.

  “Listen to me,” said Berg. “There’ll be palm trees and cold beers. Once we’ve saved the Raggers, we’ll kick back and take in some rays.”

  Hoots and laughter filled the channel. It seemed to Conway like he hadn’t heard such high spirits since before he boarded the transport.

  The laughter was unencumbered and when it faded, the good mood lingered. These soldiers weren’t here to overthink the state of the war and the Unity League’s place in it. A deployment would come soon – assuming the Iron Cell didn’t get shot down – and then they could put their talents to good use.

  Following a period of coasting, the Iron Cell slowed to a standstill. The screens didn’t show anything new. Conway was sure that something was taking place – a rendezvous with other spaceships was his guess – and he wondered how long it would take. Nobody was talking on the officer’s channel. Colonel Thornton surely had an idea what was happenin
g, but he didn’t let his subordinates in on the secret.

  “You think they’d put it up on the screen for us,” said Private Eddy Lester, sounding disappointed.

  “It’s one of those need to know things,” said Kemp. “And all you need to know is that you’re an ass.”

  “Aw shoot, Elvis. I thought you loved me.”

  “I’m just messing around with you, son,” said Kemp fondly. He probably wasn’t more than a year or two older than Lester, and still felt senior enough to call him son.

  Just when everyone was getting bored and a few of the soldiers began drifting off to other places, the Iron Cell gathered speed again, gradually at first and then at an increasing rate. The engines boomed and the walls shook. This was the most aggressively it had been piloted since Conway came onboard and he was sure it was with good reason. Nobody came onto the comms to advise the passengers to get into the harnesses again, so Conway didn’t bother. Instead, he reached out a hand and gripped the back of a chair to keep himself steady.

  The acceleration didn’t abate and the shaking became worse. A few of the troops began to wonder out loud if something was screwed up and when missiles would start hitting the armor. It wasn’t useful talk and Conway politely ordered them to shut the hell up.

  After a time, the Iron Cell banked, making the stars on the sensor feed drift rapidly from right to left on the screen.

  “Keep watching,” said Conway.

  The movement across the feed ended, leaving a stable image of stars and darkness. Dead center, a planet. Without access to the sensor measurements, Conway had no idea how large it was or how far away. Neither of those things mattered. What mattered was that it looked completely inhospitable and no place to fight.

  “Tropical paradise, huh?” said Corporal Barron. “If I had the authority, I’d dock you a month’s pay, Private Berg.”

  “All the sand and palm trees are blind side, Corporal,” said Berg, unabashed to have been proven so utterly incorrect in his speculation about their destination. “Trust me, it’s going to be great.”

  “Berg, you ass.”

  Conway held in a sigh. If the sensor feed was an accurate representation, the planet Glesia was a ball of ice. The Iron Cell was too far away for its arrays to resolve the specifics, but Conway was pretty sure the surface would be rough and the storms plentiful. He elbowed a couple of soldiers aside in order to push his face up to the screen. The ice wasn’t uniform and it certainly wasn’t pure. It was different colors of grey – dirty with contaminants. He had no idea where the Iron Cell was heading and couldn’t imagine why the Raggers would choose to build anything on Glesia.

  He stepped away from the screen and prepared himself to wait out the final approach. Wherever the deployment took them, he doubted there’d be any palm trees or cocktails.

  Chapter Three

  The heavy cruiser ULS Broadsword bumped and shook with turbulence. For the entirety of the seven days so far spent at lightspeed, the turbulence hadn’t gone away. It was so bad that new minor faults cropped up with disturbing regularity, keeping the maintenance teams continuously busy. A few minor faults weren’t too much of a worry, but eventually one or more of those minors would set in motion another fault that would turn into a major one.

  Captain Jake Griffin cursed under his breath. The Broadsword’s sensors had been modified to gather additional data specific to the turbulence, but one of the minor faults had caused a failure in the process. Not only that, the lead maintenance officer was adamant this particular issue could only be resolved from the bridge.

  Griffin entered a command into his console to begin a system-wide audit of the sensor software performance. His two sensor officers – Lieutenants Cassie Dominguez and Brandy Shelton – also had their hands full trying to resolve the fault. In truth, Griffin wasn’t convinced this was mission-critical, but hunting for the cause was a good way to pass the time and to familiarize himself with the new software.

  “Maybe we should accept it’s going to persist until we return to base,” said Shelton. “My head is spinning with error logs. I’m worried I’ll forget how to run a local area scan.”

  “We don’t have too many warships equipped with the new data gathering hardware,” said Dominguez. “And none of them are scheduled to make a lightspeed journey as long as this one.”

  “This is important, Lieutenant Shelton,” said Griffin.

  “I know that, sir. I’m frustrated that they sent us on our way without proper training. They didn’t even give us a manual on how they tied the new hardware into the old and how the software interacts with it. I feel like I’ve been given a problem that’s impossible to solve. Like one of those training simulator situations where your spaceship gets blown to pieces whatever you do.”

  The ULAF training officers strenuously denied such simulator programs existed and everyone disbelieved them. When you came up against one of the tougher challenges it was a real pain in the ass, especially since nobody ever told you afterwards if it was possible to win. A few of the programs had achieved legendary status. On balance, Griffin suspected there was an element of truth to the speculation though he’d never been interested enough to pull strings and find out for definite. Suddenly, he was intensely curious.

  “Give it until the end of your shift and then we’ll call it a day, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Two more hours? I can handle that.”

  “After that, we’ll run through the mission goals again.”

  “I could repeat that entire briefing document from memory, sir,” said Shelton.

  “Me too, Lieutenant. That doesn’t change what we’re going to do.”

  The results of the audit came back and Griffin examined the data. His training in this was years ago and he was rusty, which meant it took him five times longer than Dominguez or Shelton to spot anomalies. He groaned inwardly and wished he’d not tried to be so helpful. He unclipped his harness and stood. The turbulence hadn’t gone away, but his body had adjusted enough that he didn’t have to think too hard about his balance.

  At the food station, he waited without enthusiasm while it gurgled and spat. A metal cup of water appeared, which was about the only fluid he could stomach from the machine. The coffee tasted like shit and the machine was dumping the wrong level of concentrates in every other type of flavored drink. One of the maintenance guys could probably fix it in a couple of hours, but they had better things to be getting on with than making sure the bridge crew had a cup of orange juice with their reconstituted breakfasts.

  Griffin drained his drink and returned to his seat, where he called up the mission files once more. They made grim reading and weren’t exactly padded with detail. For the duration of the voyage so far, he’d been trying his best not to think about what he was getting into. It was time to confront the unavoidable.

  “In appearances, Glesia is another ice world, like all the others we’ve seen and flown past without stopping,” he said.

  “Except it is the place where the Unity League suffered the recent and catastrophic loss of thirty spaceships, and the Fangrin more than a hundred,” said Kenyon. “The cause of which is not yet known.”

  “Or which is being withheld from us,” said Dominguez.

  “Our rendezvous contact has promised to provide us with information.”

  “About AF1?”

  “I don’t know,” Griffin conceded.

  “This is the Raggers, sir. I won’t trust anything they say.”

  “That’s up to you, Lieutenant Kenyon. We have our orders which we will act upon irrespective of what you believe.” Griffin sighed. “Look, I’m no more ready to trust the Raggers than you are. We’ve got no choice but to listen to what they say. We don’t know anything about the Sekar and this is our opportunity to change that. Maybe we can neutralize these new aliens quickly and then get back to slugging it out with the Raggers.”

  “Because that’s what it’ll come to, isn’t it?” said Dominguez. “We scratch their backs and they sti
ck a knife into ours.”

  “Let’s move on from this, folks. I’ve told you I don’t like it and talking about it isn’t helping. Let’s give this mission a chance and then we can determine what our next course of action should be.”

  “At least our hands aren’t tied,” said Lieutenant Burt Kroll. After his medical scare a few weeks ago, he’d been given the all-clear to return to duty. Nothing but a minor issue, easily cleared up by non-invasive surgery, Griffin had been told.

  “That’s right, Lieutenant. If I decide we need to shoot the Raggers to pieces, then I have the authority to order it, assuming Captain Isental agrees.”

  The freedom to fire wasn’t much of a blessing. The mission to Glesia consisted of two warships and a lone transport. Committing more resources wouldn’t - according to the documentation - influence the chance of success. Griffin suspected ULAF high command weren’t willing to increase the headcount anyway – not with the Raggers having such a solid track record when it came to treachery.

  All of which left Griffin and his Fangrin equivalent, Captain Endrax Isental, to shoulder the burden of on-the-spot decision making.

  “Handling the Raggers is going to be the second toughest part of this mission,” said Shelton. “The hardest part will be if we come across wreckage from Attack Fleet 1.”

  “We’re here for answers, Lieutenant. Attack Fleet 1 is another part of it.”

  “What if the Raggers don’t allow us to search?”

  “They can’t stop us running scan sweeps,” said Griffin. “If we don’t find anything and the Raggers don’t want us flying off to look further afield, then we’ll do like they ask. I hate to say it, but AF1 is a secondary goal.”

  “Sticks in the craw, doesn’t it?” said Kroll.

  “It does. We have a debt to those men and women, but we can’t pay it yet. If they were alive, they’d understand.”

  “Yeah,” Kroll replied. “It just sucks is all.”

  “We’ve got to keep focus on the living and we’ve got a transport full of them,” said Griffin. “We’re here to escort those soldiers and to gather whatever intel we can. We don’t even need to smile at the Raggers or shake their hands. Once we’ve rendezvoused, then Colonel Thornton gets to deal with the unknowns on Glesia.”