Nullifier (Fire and Rust Book 6) Read online

  Nullifier

  Fire and Rust Book 6

  Anthony James

  Contents

  The Sekar Battleship

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  End

  © 2019 Anthony James

  All rights reserved

  The right of Anthony James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser

  Illustration © Tom Edwards

  TomEdwardsDesign.com

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  The Sekar Battleship

  The troop transport Iron Cell fell through the ice storm like it was in freefall. Only the boom of its laboring propulsion and the controlled rotation of its hull gave away the fact that it was under pilot control. Above and to either side, warships from the Unity League and Fangrin navies accompanied the Iron Cell. These warships remained as close as they dared, sheltering the transport with their plates of thick alloy armor.

  Finding no respite from the howling winds, the transport set down on the hard-frozen ground with an impact that almost buckled its landing legs and tested the life support units to the limit.

  Within a second of touchdown, three alloy ramps fell outwards from their positions forward and on both flanks. The ramps smashed against the ground, splintering rock and ice.

  Hardly a moment passed and then soldiers spilled from the interior – hundreds of them, human and Fangrin alike, their combat suits protecting them from the subzero temperatures of the planet Glesia. The storm wasn’t kind and it pelted the troops with tiny shards of rock-hard ice, which cascaded against their suits with the sound of hailstones against a glass roof.

  Minutes went by during which the soldiers fought their way across the surface. The ground underfoot was a broken mix of rough stone and grit-riven ice, which added to the hardship. Each man and woman carried a full loadout, but guns and explosives were no use against the unchained wrath of nature.

  Their destination wasn’t far from the transport. A Sekar battleship lay in a crater of its own making, its nearest flank less than three hundred meters from the Iron Cell. The warship loomed above everything. At four thousand meters from nose to tail, much of it was hidden by the darkness and the storms. Even the upper reaches of it were glimpsed only faintly when chance brought a thinning of the ice. The image enhancers in a combat suit could work in near zero-light conditions, but they had no ability to penetrate the worst which Glesia offered.

  The vast battleship was an enigma and one which this deployment aimed to solve. Under guidance from their senior officers, the soldiers hunted for a way inside.

  Five klicks from the Iron Cell, a similar story took place involving a second, smaller transport. This transport didn’t have a name and, though it carried fewer troops, it was afforded the same protection from what remained of Attack Fleet 1 as it came in to land.

  The soldiers onboard – four hundred in total – exited the spaceship and moved to secure the ruins of a stone-block building which was the single known entry point for the Ravok Refuge 9 subsurface facility.

  Up in space, a Ragger fleet watched with motives unclear. This was a tense time for everyone.

  Chapter One

  Captain Jake Griffin held the heavy cruiser Broadsword steady. He knew the storms outside were battering the hull, but their fury wasn’t enough to budge a few million tons of military grade alloy. Here, in the dull blue-white light and the crisp, metallic-scented air of the warship’s bridge, he felt and heard nothing of the conditions outside.

  None of this meant he or his crew were unaffected. The ice and darkness conspired to limit visibility significantly and Griffin was nervous.

  “Anything new on the battle network?” he asked.

  “Negative, sir,” said Lieutenant Harry Kenyon, the Broadsword’s primary comms officer. “Everyone’s watching and waiting.”

  “Sensors?”

  “Another negative, sir,” said Lieutenant Cassie Dominguez. “The closest known Ragger ship is at one million klicks.”

  “That’s the problem right there,” said Griffin, his eyes darting over the data streaming across the many screens of his command console. “We have known enemy ships and we have unknown ones as well.”

  “We’re here to prevent the Raggers attempting any monkey business, sir,” said Dominguez.

  Griffin’s shoulders, arms and hands ached from his too-hard grip on the control bars. This had been a long shift and he’d been forced into taking a stim shot to keep himself alert. The drugs were wearing off and he didn’t want to inject again if he could avoid it. He felt cold despite the protection of his flight suit and his mouth was dry.

  “How are the negotiations proceeding?” asked Griffin.

  “I’m not party to the conversation, sir,” said Kenyon.

  “However…?”

  “I’ve been pressing the comms team on the Revingol. Apparently, Hass-Tei-112 has been only too-willing to talk with Admiral Yeringar.”

  “Any specifics?”

  “No, sir. Only that it’s happening.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad sign,” said Griffin. “I’ve had enough of Hass-Tei-112 and I’ve had enough of the Raggers.”

  “We have ninety ships on full alert, sir,” said Lieutenant Brandy Shelton. “We’re watching the Raggers closely.”

  “Have any more of the enemy ships dropped out of sensor sight?”

  “Only the two we already know about.”

  Griffin swore. After the allied and Ragger fleets were expelled from the Refuge 9 tharniol sphere, the conflict had been short and brutal. Now, the two sides were at a standoff. Attack Fleet 1 had a numerical advantage as well as de facto control over the crashed Sekar warship and the entry point to the Refuge 9 facility. Meanwhile, the Raggers had stealth-equipped warships and they didn’t seem inclined to leave the vicinity of Glesia while the spoils of war were still seemingly up for grabs.

  It left a short, perhaps illusionary, window of opportunity for the allied fleet to extract useful intel from Refuge 9 and maybe – just maybe – make off with some Sekar hardware.

  In Griffin’s mind, the Raggers couldn’t afford to let either happen. The so-called truce had fallen apart like a cheap suit and Admiral Yeringar was likely doing whatever he could to patch things up. Griffin had issued a hastily composed interim mission report, which contained plenty of o
pinions about the trustworthiness of Hass-Tei-112. Hopefully, Admiral Yeringar was paying heed to the warnings it contained.

  “The closest suspected Ragger planet is two days at high lightspeed from here,” said Kenyon, repeating what Griffin already knew. “An FTL comm travels faster than a warship. Assuming Hass-Tei-112 requested backup already, we might be looking at thirty-six hours before the Raggers arrive with too many warships for us to handle.”

  “That’s if they weren’t already in flight,” said Griffin.

  He’d talked through the scenarios with his crew. The most superficially sensible course of action was to hit Refuge 9 with a dozen nuclear warheads and to destroy the wrecked Sekar battleship by detonating several tharniol drives in the vicinity. The latter would require the sacrifice of a few light cruisers, making it a costly exercise.

  The fact that dialogue was ongoing suggested that Admiral Yeringar hoped to get something from the situation - either because he was a statesman or a born gambler.

  “If he’s a gambler, he’s playing a high-stakes game with a snake,” said Griffin. “I only hope Admiral Yeringar learns quickly what he’s dealing with.”

  “We know him, sir,” said Dominguez. “I reckon this is in good hands.”

  So did Griffin. That didn’t mean a positive outcome was assured - even the best gamblers could screw things up. Or maybe Yeringar wasn’t a gambler at all, in which case Griffin expected an order to come for the deployment of nukes into Refuge 9.

  “If all sixty of those Ragger ships activated their stealth modules and came at us, we’d be in the crap,” said Shelton.

  “They have to fly into this storm,” said Griffin. “That means both of us are fighting blind and I reckon we’re better at it than they are. If visibility was good, they’d already be among us.”

  “This really is a stalemate,” said Lieutenant Effie Jackson. “Strange how both sides want the same thing from Glesia.”

  “The Raggers are too arrogant to share,” said Griffin. “Maybe not all of them, but Hass-Tei-112 is the one we’re dealing with and he doesn’t want to budge.”

  Griffin had fought the Raggers before, but not enough that he could make a good guess at how their high command would react to circumstance. Given time, he would have questioned Captain Isental on the Gradior about it. Perhaps the most senior Raggers acted however they wanted, like semi-governed warlords seeking to prove themselves greater than their peers. At a time like this it would have been useful to understand their motives. The Fangrin and Raggers had been fighting for years and Griffin expected Admiral Yeringar had a much better handle on the enemy.

  He stifled a sigh. “Are we any closer to finding out what material the Sekar built that ship out of?”

  “No, sir,” said Dominguez. “Our sensors and the Fangrin sensors are turning up a whole lot of nulls. I’ve compared our data to what the Gradior is gathering and I’m still none the wiser.”

  “We shouldn’t be reading nulls,” said Shelton. “Because our sensor tech recognizes every known substance. Those we can’t recognize should turn up a best guess based on the weight and composition. Nulls aren’t cool.”

  “A few of Colonel Thornton’s men are carrying sample scrapers,” said Dominguez. “They might get us something to work on.”

  Griffin stared at the sensor feed of tiny figures laboring through atrocious conditions. The first of the troops were almost at the battleship. Somehow, he didn’t think the handhelds would unearth anything new or interesting. The Sekar were different and their existence had thrown the scientific community into complete disarray. It didn’t help that nobody had any tissue samples to study.

  “Any news from the Revingol?” Griffin said, aware he’d asked the same thing only a couple of minutes ago.

  “Still nothing, sir.”

  “Damn, I don’t like this.”

  “I think the important question is this,” Kroll began. “At what moment in our ground operations will the Raggers be forced to act, assuming they have no intent to negotiate?”

  “However deep Refuge 9 goes, the Raggers probably have a weapon which can reach that far,” said Griffin. “When it comes to the Sekar ship, we don’t know how much intel they have. If the Raggers believe it’s invulnerable, then they’ll attack the moment it seems like our troops are getting inside.”

  “But they won’t know when that happens,” said Shelton. “Because they can’t see through this storm when they’re a million klicks out in space.”

  “Unless they have a warship already nearby,” said Griffin. “Could the Raggers be close enough to see what we’re up to and escape notice?”

  “Probably,” said Dominguez. “We’ve got spaceships overhead and others sweeping the area. That doesn’t mean a Ragger ship couldn’t have slipped through.”

  “Lieutenant Kenyon, please make the Revingol aware of our discussion.”

  “Yes, sir. Should I recommend our ships devote more of their efforts to low-altitude scans?”

  “Let Admiral Yeringar make that decision.”

  Within two minutes of Kenyon closing the comms channel, five additional spaceships were diverted to low altitude scanning in the vicinity of the battleship and the Refuge 9 entry point. It should have been reassuring, but it was not. This was a bad situation and Griffin couldn’t see any way that it would turn out well for the remnants of Attack Fleet 1.

  “The Ternius and its escort just entered lightspeed,” said Kenyon.

  Griffin blew out. “Taking the death pulse schematics along with the men and women who rescued them back to base.”

  “I guess Captain Conway and his squad deserve a break,” said Jackson.

  “You guess?” asked Shelton with mock incredulity.

  “Okay, so they definitely deserve a break.”

  “Whatever comes from those schematics, it won’t be realized for a long time,” said Kroll.

  “Way to kill the mood, Lieutenant,” said Shelton.

  “I’m just saying. At least they’re safe.”

  “Which is more than we are,” said Lieutenant Murray.

  “Uh – it turns out Captain Conway wasn’t on the Ternius, sir,” said Kenyon. “Seems like he didn’t want to go, what with the mission being ongoing.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “The shuttle that took him to the Ternius is on route to Glesia again, sir.”

  “I hope he remembered to pick up some more tharniol rounds,” said Griffin. He shook his head. “The man doesn’t give up.”

  “How much sense of duty is too much?” asked Dominguez.

  “I can’t answer that,” said Griffin. In fact, it was an easy question for him, since he didn’t have a wife and child waiting back home. Griffin mostly just had the ULAF. If he died, he knew he’d be missed more for his talent flying spaceships than because he was a good father or husband. They’d play Taps at his funeral, but nobody would really know him. The thought struck him hard.

  “Where’s that shuttle going?” he asked.

  “Aiming for the battleship - aft section, sir. They’re nearly in the clouds – touchdown in about five minutes.”

  “The first of our troops just got to the enemy hull, sir,” said Murray. “The sample scrapers have turned up blank.”

  “Surprise,” said Dominguez.

  “There’s got to be something inside,” said Griffin.

  “They’re going to require more than a backpack laser cutter for that ship,” said Kroll. “Is the Iron Cell carrying a gravity-engined cutter?”

  “Only one.” Griffin turned his eyes once more to the dark shape of the battleship. “Even the gravity cutter is going to have a hard time. It was designed to open up Fangrin walls and hulls – not something like that Sekar wreck.”

  “Sir, the Faxandil has reported a sensor ghost approximately sixty klicks due east of here,” said Kenyon.

  “Have they re-scanned?”

  “Yes, sir. A re-scan of the area turned up nothing.”

  “Opinions?” Gr
iffin asked his sensor team.

  “I never liked the term ghost, sir,” said Dominguez. “In current circumstances, everything should be treated as a threat until it’s proven otherwise.”

  “I agree,” said Shelton.

  “We’re the next closest warship,” said Kenyon. “We’ve been ordered to assist the Faxandil.”

  “Acknowledge and confirm.” Griffin cast his eyes over the instrumentation. “I don’t like this.”

  Nobody liked it. The Raggers were watching and it was certain they’d start pissing around at some point. Griffin could only hope that moment wasn’t now. His fingers were still curled around the controls. With a sudden feeling of impending disaster, he rotated the Broadsword and accelerated towards the reported coordinates of the sensor ghost.

  Then came the comms update that everyone had been dreading.

  “Every one of the Ragger ships have turned on their stealth, sir. Orders are to stay low and prepare for an engagement,” said Kenyon, nervous excitement in his voice.

  “What about the ghost?”

  “We’re to keep looking, sir.”

  With his jaw clenched, Griffin readied himself for a fight. The resumption of hostilities wasn’t yet confirmed, but he couldn’t imagine it would end any other way.

  Chapter Two

  The Fangrin shuttle bumped and shook its way through the storm. It was a small vessel, designed to hold twenty-eight dogs and a crew of two. Inside, it wasn’t much different to a thousand others, with scratched bare metal walls, grated floor and narrow rows of bucket seats with torn padding and stains. The air was cloying with the usual odors of oil, grease and weaponry, alongside the musky smell of Fangrin.