Refuge 9 (Fire and Rust Book 5)

by Anthony James

  “That’s got to be it,” said Griffin. “The hardest lies to see through are the ones which are mixed in with truth. I don’t trust Hass-Tei-112 at all, but I can’t separate the reality from the pretense – not without relying on guesswork.”

  “The ULAF can’t deal with these assholes,” said Kroll angrily. “They’ll stab us in the back at the first opportunity. We should deny them the chance by doing it first.”

  “That’s exactly what my mission report will recommend,” said Griffin. “The Raggers are treating us like useful idiots – the same as they did with councilors Huff, Becker and Clevenger during the peace mission to Reol. Only this time, the stakes are even higher. The trouble is, we don’t know exactly what is on the table. Teleport tech and vague promises of a way to combat the Sekar.”

  “They’re desperate for whatever’s in that facility down there,” said Dominguez. “In my eyes that means they won’t let us have it.”

  “Unless the data will take us years to unravel or decrypt and the Raggers know that,” said Kenyon.

  “You think they’ll willingly share?” asked Shelton in disbelief.

  “No I don’t. I’m just giving out ideas.”

  Griffin’s patience with Hass-Tei-112, already stretched close to breaking, ran out. “What do we do about it, then? A surprise attack on Prime011 is out of the question.”

  “And if you call it wrong and the Raggers use your actions as a reason to break the truce, you’ll be in the shit with high command,” said Dominguez.

  “That’s the least of my worries,” said Griffin truthfully. “I’ll trust my judgement wherever it takes me – us – and if I get it wrong, at least I did my best.”

  “Sir, you want to look at this,” said Dominguez. “A Ragger transport just landed at the deployment site on Glesia.”

  “Show me.”

  The grainy feed wasn’t enough to conceal the presence of the spaceship which had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, a short distance from the ruined building on the surface. Griffin stared intently at it.

  “That’s definitely a transport?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s not big enough to be anything else. It must have flown in low from elsewhere and set down.”

  “Are they unloading?”

  “I can’t give you a definite answer, sir.”

  “What else would they be there for?” said Griffin.

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “So much for the death pulse.”

  “Maybe something’s changed and they’ve decided to send in a few more of their troops to test the waters.”

  The facts were uncertain, except for one: the Raggers were up to something and since they hadn’t informed Griffin of their plans, it seemed logical that they either didn’t want him to know or no longer cared. Both were equally worrying.

  “Get me Captain Isental,” he snapped.

  “He’s here, sir.”

  The Fangrin had spotted the arrival of the transport as well and he wasn’t happy about it.

  “We have become surplus to requirements,” he growled.

  “I agree,” said Griffin.

  His mind worked rapidly through the limited possibilities. None of them were palatable and not one offered a chance to move the situation to a more favorable position. With utter certainty, Griffin realized only one viable course of action remained.

  “We should get away from here,” he said.

  “I have come to the same conclusion. My heart demands that we strike first, while my head knows that we must not be responsible for breaking the truce should we be proven wrong.”

  “And if Hass-Tei-112 is honest, he won’t object.”

  Isental gave one of his rumbling laughs. “I am expecting otherwise.”

  “Me too.”

  With agreement reached, Griffin exited the comms channel. His hands fell onto the controls, while his eyes roved across the instrumentation. The Broadsword was ready to go.

  “What about Captain Conway and the others?” asked Kroll.

  “This is the best way to save them, Lieutenant. If we die, nobody will ever find out they’re still alive.”

  “It sticks in the craw, sir.”

  “Mine too, Lieutenant.”

  Kroll sighed. “We’ve got to do it.”

  Griffin didn’t prolong the conversation. “What’s our distance from the enemy?” he asked.

  “We’re thirty thousand klicks from Prime011,” said Shelton. “In all probability the Raggers have one or more additional spaceships at a closer range.”

  “You can’t outrun a railgun slug,” muttered Griffin, repeating the old truism.

  “Captain Isental has signaled his readiness to depart,” said Kenyon. “He recommends we fly low across Glesia and make for Ertan-W4.”

  “The seventh planet,” said Shelton. “That’s a cool four hundred million klicks from our position.”

  “You’ve been on one of those motherships before, sir,” said Kroll. “How much do they have under the hood?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Too much?”

  “Probably. The last one was fast.”

  With Lieutenants Kenyon and Murray coordinating with the Gradior, the crew waited for the signal. Griffin took another look at Prime011. The Ragger capital ship travelled at a low speed, with no indication as to whether it was under propulsion or simply drifting.

  “Let’s do this,” said Griffin.

  The Broadsword’s engines grumbled and the life support utilization gauge climbed past eighty percent. The muscles in Griffin’s shoulders and neck strained against the accelerative forces.

  “Is the Gradior with us?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Dominguez. “Keeping pace at two hundred klicks.”

  “Hass-Tei-112 demands a channel, sir.”

  “I bet he does. Put him through.”

  It was hard to tell if the Ragger was angry or excited. “What are you doing, human?”

  “I am testing my engines.”

  “What about the Fangrin?”

  “Have you asked him?”

  “The [Translation Unclear] does not accept my request for communication.”

  “I don’t know why he has chosen to follow.”

  “You cannot fool me, human.”

  “I am not trying,” said Griffin, spouting whatever banal excuses he could come up with. Each passing second carried the Broadsword further away from Prime011 and increased their chances of evading the cloaked ships in the vicinity.

  “Bring your spaceship to a halt.”

  “I cannot – the testing is incomplete. Why have you sent a transport to Glesia?”

  “To recover that which is ours.”

  “I thought we were a team.”

  “No. Not a team.”

  “What happened to the death pulse?”

  “It is gone. We will capture the Ravok base and take what we require.”

  “I thought this was a Ragger base?”

  “That is what I told you,” said Hass-Tei-112 with a hiss of laughter. “You needed to believe. Now it is no longer important.”

  “Who are the Ravok?”

  “Another species. Long gone.”

  “You wiped them out?”

  “No.”

  The Ragger was clearly playing a game, but Griffin did what he could to draw out the conversation. Maybe there’d be a few golden nuggets of truth to dig out of the horseshit later.

  “What about the Sekar? They have hurt the Raggers.”

  “We will defeat them.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “The truth or otherwise does not influence what will happen here.”

  “What about the truce?”

  “The truce will hold for as long as we require it. Events at Glesia will remain a secret.”

  That was enough for Griffin. He cut the channel, lifted his hand and gave the prearranged signal. The moment his fingers closed around the control bars again, he banked the Broadsword hard left.

  “
Firing Ultor-VI missiles,” said Lieutenant Jackson. “Railguns targeted. Firing.”

  The sound of detonating missile propulsions overlapped with the thumping expulsion of discharging railgun coils and filled the bridge. Green dots filled the tactical screen on the main console in front of Griffin.

  “The Gradior has also initiated a full launch,” said Shelton.

  “Two direct railgun strikes on Prime011,” said Jackson. “Forty-five seconds to missile impacts.”

  “No sign of hostile response,” said Dominguez.

  “It’ll come,” said Griffin, keeping the Broadsword’s course as erratic as possible.

  Several seconds went by. Missile reload completed and Jackson fired a second volley. The Gradior had a slightly faster reload time and its next wave was already in flight. Griffin noted that the Fangrin ship had fired half a dozen missiles towards Glesia, presumably to knock out the Ragger transport.

  “I’ve got a definite lock on one of those cloaked ships,” said Dominguez. “Prime011 is accelerating on a following path.”

  “Too early for velocity predictions?”

  “I’m running the data through the number crunchers, sir,” said Kroll. “I can’t give you an answer yet. Judging from their mass, they’ll have far greater potential output and will beat us for outright speed.”

  “We’ve got to lose them around Glesia,” said Griffin. “To buy us a head start towards Ertan-W4.”

  “Prime011 has launched countermeasures, sir. So far, no offensive action,” said Dominguez.

  For a split-second, Griffin experienced a twinge of doubt that he’d chosen the wrong course and that the Raggers hadn’t intended hostilities. Then, the power on the bridge flickered briefly – the lights went out and then came back at a much lower level. Griffin’s first thought was that the Sekar had arrived on his ship and then he remembered how a few members of the Ragger fleet were fitted with weaponry capable of shutting down onboard systems. The Broadsword had retrofitted shielding, but it wasn’t combat tested.

  “Lieutenant Kroll, find the cause of that fluctuation. If that was a disruptor we could be in the shit.”

  “Captain Isental reports he is under attack from the same weapon,” said Kenyon.

  Griffin remembered his first encounter with the Gradior inside the cargo bay of the Ragger lifter above New Pacific. The heavy cruiser had been brought down by a sustained disruptor attack and then captured. Here it was happening again.

  The Ragger disruptor struck the Broadsword once more. This time, the lights stayed off for a couple of seconds and the displays on Griffin’s console went so dim he could scarcely see them.

  “It’s definitely a disruptor, sir. The shielding is preventing the worst of the effects, but I don’t know how long it’ll hold up. We can already see it’s not one hundred percent effective.”

  “They aren’t launching projectiles,” said Jackson. “Maybe they want us in one piece.”

  A second after she finished speaking, a railgun slug hit the Broadsword’s flank with the deep sound of clashing alloys. Griffin changed course and the hull creaked with the strain. The disruptor hit the warship again and the propulsion stuttered. A second railgun slug impacted.

  “Damage report,” said Griffin, attempting to keep his voice calm. The Raggers had shown their true colors and it seemed like they were in control.

  “No hull breach,” said Kroll. “Damage to upper and lower rear flank sections nine through fifteen. Also, the propulsion calculations have come back with preliminary results and it’s not good news.”

  “When is it ever?” said Griffin bitterly.

  The disruptor struck the Broadsword for a third time. On this occasion, the lights stayed off for much longer. Griffin waited for the automatic backups to kick in. Eventually the lights returned, but many of the console facilities were either shut down or forced into a reboot. As well as that, the propulsion output dropped to little more than idle and the controls responded sluggishly. Certainly, there was no way the Broadsword could fight effectively.

  Griffin didn’t give up, but really he knew his efforts to pilot the ship out of trouble weren’t likely to achieve anything. A third railgun slug impacted with the hull and the crew waited for death.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The return journey through the Refuge 9 facility was going to be a hard slog and Conway didn’t like the odds. With the primary mission objective completed, the next goal was nothing more complicated than returning to the surface without losing any more soldiers. Unfortunately, the last activation of the main teleporter had created new Sekar rifts and he had little doubt the aliens would hunt down any sign of life until every living organism was gone.

  Having exited the teleport control room, Conway urged the squad in the direction of the wide corridor which served the main stores. They came across the body of Private McCray – a crumpled heap of life-drained flesh in a combat suit. Conway couldn’t bring himself to look into the dead man’s visor. What was left would bear no resemblance to what had once been.

  Torres made the sign of the cross over McCray’s body, something Conway hadn’t seen her do for a long time. Maybe she felt extra sorrow for this dead soldier or maybe it was something in the moment. She didn’t say anything and nobody asked.

  Once they came to the main corridor, Conway ordered everyone onto the gravity truck they’d abandoned on the way in. The vehicle was facing the wrong way but was designed to turn on the spot if required. Soon, Conway had it travelling at speed towards the next teleport node.

  He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination – the lights seemed brighter than before and he hoped it was an indication that the Sekar hold on the place was reduced. The pressure in his head was either gone or at such a low level he couldn’t be sure it existed. Those were two positive developments, yet he wasn’t prepared to believe escape would be easy.

  “Maybe the death pulse will fire again,” said Barron from the second seat. “Then we can take a leisurely walk out of here.”

  “You feel like sticking around, Corporal?” asked Kemp. He had his back against the rear wall of the cabin and he juggled rounds between three magazines to make sure everyone had the same quantity in their rifles.

  “I guess I’m not in a hurry to see what happens when Attack Fleet 1 meets the Ragger fleet. I’m even less inclined to witness what happens when that Sekar warship gets involved.”

  “The good guys will win, Corporal. Same as it ever was.”

  “You’re a real romantic, Private Kemp. Did anyone tell you that?”

  “Someone’s got to look on the bright side. The way I see it, I’m the squad’s beacon of optimism.”

  Kemp was irrepressible and Barron could only shake her head in mock despair. While the two of them exchanged wisecracks, Conway got on with driving the flatbed with careful speed in the opposite direction from the teleport control room. The headlight cast shadows from the dead Sekar which appeared here and there on the floor. Gradually, their numbers increased and in some places the aliens formed heaps against the walls or in the middle of the corridor. Conway didn’t steer around the corpses. Instead, he drove right over them. The flatbed was too heavy to be slowed by the constant impacts and it continued onwards, unhindered by the detritus.

  While he drove, Conway pondered Barron’s words about the death pulse. The Refuge 9 entity had mentioned that it would stop firing as soon as the teleporter was repaired. He also remembered it saying that the death pulse hardware only activated when it detected Sekar rifts. Conway’s memory wasn’t perfect and he couldn’t recall exactly what was said at the time. As far as he was concerned, the only way to be sure was to get the hell out of the facility before any Sekar showed up to kill the rest of his squad.

  “Say, Captain, do you remember the way back?” asked Kemp, like he’d just that moment realized it might be a problem.

  “It’s all up here, Private,” said Conway, tapping the side of his helmet.

  “In your head or in the co
mputer, sir?”

  Conway laughed. “Sometimes I don’t know where one stops and the other begins.”

  Kemp fell silent and Conway didn’t encourage any more conversation. They were a good distance along the corridor and the side turning leading to the teleport node would be easy to miss. The thought made Conway nervous and he slowed the truck in order that he could keep a better watch.

  In truth, he wasn’t much looking forward to the idea of leading the way from the facility. His sense of direction was good enough and he had the assistance of the map. The trouble was, the inbound journey hadn’t been exactly straightforward and Conway was finding it hard to tally up his memory with the lines on the map. The step counter in his suit had drawn him a rough plan, but occasionally the results were unreliable.

  He got onto the officer’s channel. “Are either of you confident about the return journey?”

  “Not one hundred percent,” said Lockhart. “There was too much shooting and too many corridors.”

  “I remember much of it,” said Rembra. “However, I could not walk it with a cloth tied across my eyes.”

  The truck’s headlight illuminated a side passage at the place Conway believed his squad had first joined this main passage. He slowed carefully, overshooting by a few meters. Once the flatbed was at a standstill, he rose from his seat and followed Kemp outside. The others were in the process of climbing to the ground.

  Everywhere Conway looked, he saw more dead Sekar and he was obliged to step carefully amongst them. He gave the squad a moment to descend from the load bed and then he addressed them.

  “Right, folks, that’s the last rest you’re getting for a while. Now comes the hard part – we’re heading out of here as fast as possible. Maybe when we reach the surface there’ll be someone left on our side who’ll come and pick us up. The longer we stay out of sight, the greater the chance they’ll give up and go home. That’s assuming Attack Fleet 1, the Raggers and the Sekar don’t destroy each other completely.”

  “On the bright side, my drop bag doesn’t weigh much,” said Torres. “It makes up a little for the extra gravity.”

  “If we’re lucky, there’ll be nothing to shoot,” said Conway.