Refuge 9 (Fire and Rust Book 5)

by Anthony James

  The temperature wasn’t much above freezing and Conway put on his helmet. As soon as the neck seal formed, his skin warmed up and the HUD filled with data. The other twelve members of Squad 1 hadn’t arrived and, from the comms talk, the muster wouldn’t be complete for another couple of minutes.

  Conway didn’t want to wait that long and he requested a channel to Colonel Thornton. The request was granted with hardly a delay.

  “What’s happening, sir?” asked Conway.

  “Have you mustered?” asked Thornton.

  “Not yet, sir. Almost.”

  “I’ve got some bad news for you, Captain.”

  Conway was expecting to hear something similar. “Is there any other kind of news?”

  “It turns out that Captains Griffin and Isental aren’t quite ready to trust the Raggers yet. We’ve been asked to make a partial deployment.”

  “How partial?”

  “You and your squad, Captain.”

  “Figures. What’s the reason?”

  “I don’t know. The Iron Cell will set down for ten seconds, you and your squad will exit onto the surface of Glesia and the transport will depart.”

  “Well shit, sir. That doesn’t sound too great for my soldiers. Is the Iron Cell coming back or are we pulling this mission off without assistance?” It was hard for Conway to keep the bitterness from his voice. He didn’t much care.

  “I appreciate you’ve been dumped on, Captain Conway. The plan is for the Iron Cell to return as soon as possible. I don’t have the specifics on when that’ll happen.”

  “What about the mission objectives, sir? I don’t have the details on those. Are we to proceed to the goal?”

  “I’ll get you the briefing documents before you leave. You are not to act beyond ensuring the safety of your troops. Find someplace safe and stay low until you hear otherwise. The Iron Cell should remain in comms sight at all times, so you’ll have someone to talk to if needed.”

  A data file appeared alongside the voice comms and Conway downloaded it into his suit computer without reading it.

  “I’ve received the mission file, sir.”

  “Good. The deployment should happen in approximately fifteen minutes. I hope it turns out like I said, Captain. This one is out of my hands.”

  “I know how it works, sir.”

  “If it’s any consolation, you were selected by a random number generator they had on the bridge. The pilot pressed a button and your name came up.”

  The method was a surprise; the result was not. Conway didn’t like it, but he couldn’t do much more than shrug it off.

  “Deploy, sit tight, wait for the Iron Cell to return.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  The channel went quiet except for the background hum which told Conway that Thornton hadn’t gone anywhere.

  “Sir?”

  “Good luck, Captain.”

  The words gave the game away. Conway and his squad had been given the job of deploying into the middle of a shitstorm in order that everyone else could watch and learn. He gritted his teeth and, for the first time in years, wondered if he was in the right place. His family wanted him back alive and that wasn’t going to happen if the ULAF’s random number generators kept spitting out his name. He felt like a sacrificial cock and balls being slapped onto the pressure plate of a bear trap.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Conway. The words didn’t come easily. Thornton closed the channel without speaking again. Maybe he understood.

  A short time later, the last of Squad 1 arrived in the forward deployment bay. They had plenty of questions and Conway answered as best he could. All the discussion made it difficult to read the mission briefing file, though if Thornton was to be believed, it wouldn’t be relevant just yet.

  Minutes passed and the constant questions died away. Conway took the opportunity to read the file, which was short and lacking in both superfluous and required detail. In all, it was what he expected. He made the file available to everyone else in the squad.

  “Stealing alien secrets is my specialty,” said Kemp.

  “I would say you have greater expertise in talking crap,” said Lieutenant Rembra, checking the ammunition housing for his chain gun.

  “I talk on a higher plane to most people and aliens, Lieutenant,” said Kemp. “If you listen carefully, maybe you’ll learn something too.”

  “I have listened before,” said Rembra. “Those were moments of my existence which I can never recover.”

  “Man, I am so misunderstood.”

  “I think we understand you perfectly, Kemp,” said Private Berg.

  “Quiet,” said Sergeant Lockhart. “Approximately five minutes to land. I don’t want anyone pissing about when it’s time to go.”

  The warning wasn’t necessary other than to focus minds. Kemp stopped talking and inspected his loadout. It was too late to change anything, but most soldiers found the routine comforting. Conway checked the weight of his drop bag without opening it. The tharniol-coated rounds clinked together with his spare pre-loaded magazines. The ammunition reading on his Gilner was right where he wanted it.

  The propulsion note deepened and took on a coarse edge. Conway felt the floor’s vibration through the thick soles of his boots and with it the sense of badly suppressed deceleration. He reached up with one hand and took tight hold of the grab handle above his head.

  A new comms link formed in Conway’s helmet. This time it was Lieutenant Tad Walter, the Iron Cell’s backup pilot.

  “We’re coming in fast and vertical,” he said. “We’re aiming to set you down two klicks from the target structure. The terrain is rough and you should be able to hide out until we come back.”

  Walter’s voice had an edge to it, which reminded Conway that everyone was under pressure here, not just him and his squad.

  “What’s the weather like, Lieutenant?”

  “Shit. Real shit.”

  “Just what I wanted to hear.”

  “Look on the bright side, Captain. If you can’t see them, they can’t see you.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk.”

  “I aim to please. We’re through the upper atmosphere and should be entering the storm any moment now.”

  The Iron Cell was a big spaceship and heavy with it. That made it less susceptible to weather effects. Even so, Conway felt the buffeting and he heard the booming of displaced air ripping past the transport’s hull.

  “One deployment, just like all the others,” said Corporal Misty Brice. “A bit bumpier and nothing else.”

  The buffeting became more intense and the propulsion roared louder than before. Conway had been through dozens of high-speed deployments like this one and he recognized the signs of urgency. He tightened his grip on the bar and glanced at the others in his squad. Most of them stood rigid, like statues, their arms above their heads and hands clamped tightly around the steel handles.

  Barron was right next to him, her face half hidden by shadows which couldn’t quite hide the tension in her features. She caught him looking and winked, letting him know that everything was just dandy. Conway winked back. He remembered a time months ago, watching Barron nervously wait for a deployment onto a Fangrin satellite. Now she was a veteran, as calm as anyone else in the squad.

  “Thirty seconds,” said Lieutenant Walter. “The ramp will drop and you’ve got exactly ten seconds to get out of here.”

  “I hear you.”

  “Good luck, Captain.”

  “Thanks, and same to you,” said Conway. He was getting sick of people wishing him luck, however genuine they might be and however uncharitable it made him feel to think it. The mission hadn’t even started and already he was pissed off.

  The Iron Cell’s propulsion reached a howling crescendo which filled the bay and drowned out any chance of conversation. The deceleration took its toll and Conway’s left arm ached from keeping him anchored to the grab handle, while his right arm ached just as much from the death grip he had on his Gilner.
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  With a thump too great for the life support to completely suppress, the Iron Cell set down. The boarding ramp motors whined and the gears clunked. A square of darkness appeared and then Conway heard the ramp crash against the ground.

  He tore his hand from the grab bar and sprinted for the opening, urging the others to join him. The squad didn’t hesitate. Human and Fangrin alike surged towards the unknown like it was the most desirable prize in the universe.

  Conway’s feet struck the ramp, producing hardly any sound. The enormous bulk of the Iron Cell loomed overhead, but it wasn’t enough to protect him from the wind, nor the iron-hard fragments of ice which it carried. The ramp ended and with it the comparative safety of the transport.

  The night vision sensor in Conway’s helmet adjusted, revealing shapes and forms in every direction, outlined and highlighted in shades of muddy green. He turned, making sure everyone had emerged from the Iron Cell. Warner was the last man and he sprang from the end of the ramp, fearing what would happen if the transport took off.

  They didn’t make it far from the ramp. The Iron Cell’s engines climbed in volume once again. From outside, the spaceship sounded different, with a heavier bass that had a noticeable physical presence. The transport lifted off the ground without waiting for the ramp to close. It rose through the storm, a dark shape which for several seconds didn’t recede, only revealed more of its bulk. Then, the transport dwindled as its propulsion threw it into the sky at an ever-increasing rate.

  Conway watched for a few seconds, until the loudest sound was the wind and the tiny shards of ice beating against his ULG combat suit. He tore his eyes away and looked around for somewhere to lay low. Glesia was shaping up to be as bad as anywhere and he hoped that whatever it was that got Captain Griffin worried, it would be resolved quickly so that they could get on with the mission.

  “Come on,” he ordered. “Let’s find somewhere that’s out of this damned wind.”

  Chapter Seven

  The darkness on Glesia wasn’t absolute, but it was close. Although the wind wasn’t strong enough to knock the soldiers from their feet, it blew in irregular gusts which buffeted them constantly, making it hard to predict and adjust. Underfoot, the ground was solid ice and grit which gave the grey appearance Conway remembered seeing on the feed in the Iron Cell’s upper passenger bay. The coarseness in the ice was a blessing in a way, since it greatly improved the grip.

  Aside from that, it was as bad as Conway expected. The temperature was minus 350 Fahrenheit and the thin atmosphere was laced with enough toxic gases to kill anything living in a single breath. On top of that, the planet had a moderately high gravity which was already testing Conway’s fitness.

  The rough terrain which Lieutenant Walter had mentioned was exactly that. Ice-shrouded boulders protruded upwards in the distance like rotten teeth in white-frozen gums. Meanwhile, the wind carried the ice fragments so thickly that a few of the soldiers questioned if the combat suits would hold up against the pelting onslaught. At first, Conway dismissed the notion as excessive worrying, but then the idea got its claws into him and he began worrying too. The suits were tough but they weren’t invulnerable to environmental damage.

  “Let’s get behind that boulder over there,” said Conway, pointing at a dark shape ahead of them. “Maybe the wind will lessen.”

  The destination wasn’t any more than a hundred meters away and they trudged towards it with Conway in the lead. The human soldiers leaned into the wind to keep their balance and even the powerful Fangrin were forced to offer the same concession. The aliens didn’t speak much, making it difficult to judge their mood. If the Fangrin remained quiet, the human soldiers didn’t hold back in their opinion of Glesia and Private Kemp waxed lyrical on the wonders of the universe.

  “One day we will get that damned tropical paradise,” he said. “And I’m going to string a hammock between two trees and lie with a rifle in one hand and a beer in the other. Then, I’m going to shoot alien bastards while drinking that beer.”

  “Yeah, sure, Kemp,” said Torres. “If that tropical paradise comes, it’ll be the day after you retire.”

  “I’m not planning to retire. I’m going to stick around in the ULAF forever. One day I’ll be Fleet Admiral Elvis Kemp.”

  “That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard,” said Torres. “Private Kemp today, Private Kemp tomorrow and Private Kemp ten years from now. That’s if they don’t kick you out for scratching your ass when you should be saluting a real senior officer.”

  Conway listened to the conversation with interest. It seemed like Torres and Kemp were just going through the motions of bitching at each other. He smiled at the thought.

  A comms channel from the Iron Cell opened in his ear.

  “How’re you all getting on, Captain?” asked Lieutenant Walter.

  “Just fine,” said Conway. He detected an unspoken question. “Does that come as a surprise to you, Lieutenant?”

  “I’ve been asked to keep an open ear, Captain. I guess this is an uncomfortable situation for everybody.”

  “That it is.”

  Conway closed the channel and pressed on. A glance behind offered reassurance that his squad was still with him. The darkness, the cold and the flurries of ice were enough to make anyone feel isolated.

  The ground was rough, but the soldiers were accustomed to difficulty. They came to the tall boulder, which was much larger than Conway had first thought, with a base many meters around. The ice didn’t cling uniformly to the surface and the visible rock was rough, like it was immune to erosion. In this position, the wind remained unrelenting, so Conway skirted the base, trailing his fingertips along the ice and stone.

  They found a place where the wind wasn’t so strong. Nobody wanted to sit and they either leaned against the boulder or stood a short distance away. Everyone was vigilant and they scanned the bleak landscape for signs of hostiles.

  “What are we expecting, Captain?” asked Private Warner.

  “Don’t ask me, Private. I was told to hold position and wait for the Iron Cell.”

  “I feel like the fall guy.”

  Privately, Conway agreed wholeheartedly. “Let’s sit tight and not think too hard about it,” he said. “Nobody’s shooting at us and that’s a good thing.”

  “I know shooting - I’m comfortable with it,” said Kemp. “This, I’m not comfortable with.”

  The others felt the same and it was clear simply by watching them. They had their rifles high and their heads never stopped moving, while the open channel was filled with nervous laughter and the type of comments people made when they didn’t want to think about what was going on around them.

  “Maybe we’re too exposed here,” said Conway. “I’ll get in touch with the Iron Cell and find out if we can take a closer look at the target building.”

  In truth, Conway expected an order telling him to hold fast, but that wasn’t going to stop him asking. He requested a channel and Lieutenant Walter answered at once.

  “What’s up, Captain?”

  “The terrain is too open for my liking. I’d like to take my squad towards the target building. We’ll look but won’t touch.”

  “I can’t give the go-ahead for that,” said Walter. “Let me speak to Colonel Thornton and—”

  The comms went dead and the Iron Cell’s receptor turned grey. Conway frowned and watched the receptor to see if it would change to green again. It was possible the atmospheric conditions would interfere with the comms, though a voice channel would usually degrade instead of cutting out entirely. Not only that, the Broadsword’s comms were green and Conway was worried enough that he requested a channel.

  “I can’t talk,” said Lieutenant Kenyon, his voice broken up by the squealing and crackle of interference.

  Something was wrong. “What’s happened?”

  “The Iron Cell vanished off our sensors.”

  “Destroyed?” asked Conway sharply.

  The channel was cut at the Broadsword
’s end. Conway requested a new one and the request was denied. He swore.

  Lockhart detected the change in Conway’s demeanor. “What is it, sir?” he asked on the officer’s channel.

  “The Iron Cell has vanished.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t ask, Sergeant, because I don’t know. The Broadsword is too busy to answer questions.”

  “What about the Gradior?”

  “Their receptors are green but I can’t get a channel,” said Conway, snarling in frustration.

  “That leaves us without support,” said Lieutenant Rembra.

  “Dammit!” Conway felt like the rug had been pulled out from under him. He searched for the Iron Cell again. His suit was fitted with comms boosters, but they wouldn’t find anything if the transport was destroyed. “The Iron Cell had no time to fire its tharniol drive,” he said. “It it’s gone, someone blew it to pieces.”

  “Raggers or Sekar, take your pick,” said Lockhart.

  The Broadsword’s receptor was a flickering green owing to signal degradation, but it was still available. If the Raggers had opened fire, they weren’t victorious yet.

  “What are our orders?” asked Rembra.

  “Last order was to hold.”

  Conway suddenly found himself itching to act. He recognized the feeling as borne from agitation and his ignorance of the situation with the Iron Cell and its escorts. At times like this it was far harder to take the sensible course. He got onto the open channel and gave the squad an update. Their reactions ranged from pissed off to resigned acceptance.

  Several minutes passed and each was painful to endure. The soldiers were jumpier than ever and they couldn’t settle. Then, the wind changed direction and the fragments of ice rattled against their combat suits once more. Conway indicated they should change position and they did, seeking a new place further around the boulder. No sooner had they located a place out of the wind than it changed direction once more. Conway’s anger grew.

  Just when he was on the verge of ordering the squad to march on the objective, come what may, Lieutenant Kenyon opened a channel. He didn’t sound any less stressed than last time.