Refuge 9 (Fire and Rust Book 5) Read online

  Barron laughed – a rare sound these days - and took the adjacent seat.

  “Five days out and three left to go,” she said.

  “With one more stop to make sure the Sekar aren’t following.”

  “Sekar?”

  “It’s the new official word for our enemy.”

  “Who made that one up?”

  Conway shrugged. “Maybe they pulled it from the databanks on the Zemilius,” he said, referring to the spaceship he’d been party to recovering from the Ragger transport hub on Qali-5.

  “When’s the briefing coming for this mission?” she asked.

  It was a question which Conway would have normally deflected. Now he felt like a shitty CO for doing it. The trouble was, he didn’t know where they were going or what was coming, but he was sure it was going to be bad. Times had moved on from the good old days of shooting dogs on shithole worlds.

  Back then, humanity was finding it hard, yet the fighting was honest. The ULAF swung a punch at the Fangrin and the Fangrin swung right back, usually with much greater force. Nobody in the Unity League wanted to lose and everyone had known it was almost inevitable. At the same time, the dogs were as honorable as any opponent could be, so nobody believed that the Fangrin would inflict mass murder as punishment when the end finally came.

  Then the Raggers showed up – as murderous a bunch of assholes as Conway and everyone else could imagine. Just when the Unity League’s citizens were coming to realize that there were far worse species in the universe than the Fangrin, along came the Sekar to demonstrate the reality of infinite space when it came to the potential for savagery.

  “Sir?” asked Barron innocently. “The briefing?”

  “I don’t know, Corporal,” said Conway with a sigh. He rubbed one hand across his scalp and felt the prickles of his fresh buzz cut. “All I’ve got are the rumors.”

  “Yeah but you’re a captain now, sir. That means you hear higher-level rumors than the common grunt.”

  It was an accurate assessment, though the higher-level rumors weren’t any more certain than the lower-level versions.

  “You know I don’t keep you in the dark, Corporal. Never have, never will.”

  Barron’s eyes twinkled. “We all know that, sir.”

  Conway took another sip of his coffee and looked around for somewhere to tip it out. He ignored Barron’s grin, climbed from his seat and made his way to the disposal chute, where he dumped the remains of the liquid.

  A second familiar voice came to him. “Hey, Captain, what’s the news?”

  It was Private Elvis Kemp, in amongst the others at the food station.

  “No news, Private. I’m sure everything will be made clear soon enough.”

  “Same story every time,” said Private Johnnie Calhoun, a soldier with a loud mouth who Conway hadn’t met before the start of the flight.

  Lacking patience to listen to another round of bitching, Conway took his rifle and left the passenger bay. The corridors around the upper level weren’t too busy with maintenance teams and he was able to return to his quarters without having to push his way through groups of technicians.

  Conway shared a room with five others, all of them junior to him in rank. Humans and Fangrin weren’t required to share and many of the Iron Cell’s bunk rooms had been refitted so that the aliens could travel in the same level of discomfort as the human passengers.

  With his new rank, Conway could bunk with other officers if he wanted. On the Iron Cell there were no luxury apartments and everyone got more or less the same treatment. Besides, Conway liked to be with his squad.

  When he entered, the room was empty and he remembered seeing most of the assigned occupants back in the passenger bay. With three bunks on each wall, space was at a premium. The drone of propulsion never went away and everything creaked to its own rhythm. As well as that, the turbulence was bad all the time and the bunks were fitted with harnesses to prevent the sleepers being thrown onto the floor by the shaking.

  The soldiers shared one chair and one viewscreen. The showers were along the corridor if you felt the need and the nearest toilets were further towards the nose section. Most of the troops suited up and stayed suited up until they arrived home and could enjoy the real comfort you only got on ground facilities.

  The viewscreen had a timer on it, currently showing three hours and counting down. When the timer hit zero, the Iron Cell and its small escort would enter local space, wait around for a couple of hours to make sure the Sekar weren’t right behind, and then set off again on the final part of the journey.

  “What the hell are we doing out here?” Conway wondered aloud.

  Six spare Gilner rifles stood on a rack below the screen – the guns were left everywhere, each with a full magazine of tharniol-coated rounds in case the worst happened. He picked one up, turned it over and returned it. Then, he sat on the edge of the lowest bunk and switched on the viewscreen. A list of on-demand TV came up and he switched the screen off. Conway was bored and on edge, and both feelings were becoming harder to handle as the journey progressed.

  The ceiling speaker crackled once and then a voice spoke.

  “All ground officers, Grade 4 and above to Lower Bay Two.”

  The message was repeated twice more, though Conway didn’t hear the last repetition since he was out of the door already.

  It wasn’t difficult to navigate the Iron Cell’s interior. Once you’d seen one transport, you pretty much knew what to expect and the only differences were in size. Conway descended in an airlift and hurried towards LB2. The maintenance teams were more in evidence here, closer to the propulsion and the life support units. They seemed to know what they were doing and Conway didn’t notice any sign they were in the middle of a hardware emergency. For some reason, he always expected the worst.

  Lower Bay Two was nearly identical to the upper passenger bay which Conway had recently vacated. The engines were a little louder and there was an odor of something like rags soaked in oil. Other than that, it was the same.

  The man in charge was Colonel Thornton. He’d been in charge on Qali-5 as well, where he’d almost lost his life and his regiment. By all reports, Thornton had survived through a combination of luck, dogged determination and a well-timed aerial bombardment of the Ragger armed forces.

  “Close those damn doors,” said Thornton, pointing at the four entrances. He was medium-height and broad, with grey hair, a heavy brow and a short temper. In one hand, he held a tablet computer with the same disdain he might have reserved for a particularly odorous turd.

  Conway took the first seat he came to. He was here along with the other officers of captain rank or above – he estimated there to be almost forty humans and Fangrin in the room. He didn’t know them to look at, but was sure everyone had plenty of combat experience. For this mission, the aliens had been assigned human-equivalent ranks and most of them seemed to be content with the organization.

  “Well, folks,” said Colonel Thornton. “I expect you’ve been asking yourself where an eight-day lightspeed trip on the Iron Cell is going to leave you. I also expect you’ve been wondering exactly how deep the shit will be when you step off that exit ramp.”

  A few of the officers nodded. The Fangrin growled low in their throats. It didn’t take a wise man to guess they were all desperate to learn the details of what was coming.

  Thornton lifted the tablet to his face, like he still couldn’t believe the words on the screen. “We’re going to Glesia.”

  The name was familiar to everyone. Back when the Unity League and Fangrin were aiming to destroy the Ragger manufacturing planets, one of the three fleets – AF1 – hadn’t returned to base. Those warships were missing, presumed lost, and the result of their mission was equally unknown. Whatever had happened to the fleet, its warships had stopped broadcasting not long after their arrival at Glesia. They hadn’t even reported an attack, which made it an unwanted mystery which the ULAF wasn’t in a position to resolve.

  “Wh
at’s happening at Glesia, sir?” asked Conway.

  Thornton pursed his lips. It seemed as if he wanted to stretch the moment of truth out for as long as possible, to keep everyone dangling.

  “We’ve got a mission, Captain. And you remember that shit pile I talked about just a minute ago? Well it’s going to be deeper and thicker than any you’ve waded through before. It’s going to stick to your combat suit and you won’t be able to get the smell out for a hundred years.”

  It seemed to Conway as though Colonel Thornton could do with cutting out some of his own shit and get to the point a little sooner. He kept his mouth closed and waited. The answers would come in time.

  “I’m about to give you an outline mission briefing, ladies and gentlemen. This is the moment that top secret becomes information you can disseminate to your men and women.” Thornton wore a genuine real-life watch – an oversized circular lump of alloy with a strap which wrapped around his combat suit at the wrist. He lifted it to his face and looked at the screen. “We’re going into local space soon. Keep your briefings until we’re back at lightspeed. Is that clear to you all?”

  The room filled with a chorus of affirmations. Thornton offered them a hint of a smile and looked at his tablet again.

  “We have intel which makes us believe that Glesia is home to a bunch of data the eggheads on Earth think will give us a chance against these Sekar aliens. I don’t need to remind you that we are facing a threat about which we know little and that any chance to learn more is to be grasped firmly with both hands and kicked in the balls until it squeals for mercy.”

  Conway kept his expression neutral. If Thornton’s show here was representative of his performance on the ground, then it was a wonder any orders ever made it out to the troops.

  “We have a target to capture,” said Thornton. “We are going to land, extract the data we require and then we are going to return to our ships and fly home where we will deliver that data to high command. Then we’ll have played our part until the next time we’re needed.”

  “What resistance are we expecting, sir?” asked Conway.

  Thornton narrowed his eyes. “Why we’re expecting to run into a whole heaping bunch of those shadow bastards, Captain. And we are going to shoot them full of holes on our way to the mission objective.”

  “Yes, sir. Is their presence confirmed?”

  “No, it is not. On balance of probability and based on intel we are party to, the expectation is that we will encounter many hostiles.” Thornton rubbed his clean-shaven cheek in thought. “And I believe we have you and your squad to thank for discovering the efficacy of tharniol-coated high-impact rounds.”

  “That was Private Elvis Kemp, sir. We got lucky.”

  “Who cares how it happened, as long as it happened.”

  “Do we know anything about what happened to Attack Fleet 1, sir?” Conway asked. Nobody else seemed interested in moving things along. Maybe they knew Thornton enough to keep their mouths shut, or maybe they assumed everything would work out if they kept their heads down and let someone else ask the questions.

  “High command believes that Attack Fleet 1 was taken by Sekar warships.”

  There it was - the first time anyone had confirmed it outside of a closed door. Most people, Conway included, had assumed that the Raggers had blown AF1 out of the skies in the same way they’d nearly done to AF2.

  “Taken?” asked one of the Fangrin. The alien had a Unity League captain’s insignia stuck onto the shoulder of his yellow-grey combat suit. “Or destroyed?”

  The Fangrin struggled with the use of sir, and instructions were that the aliens weren’t to be pushed on the matter.

  “That’s another thing we don’t know,” said Thornton. “You’ll notice that we are not out here alone. It may be that our escort has a secondary mission of its own, besides getting us to the objective.”

  Conway got one of his suspicious feelings. Thornton was making out like he didn’t know and it would be strange for him to be kept in the dark. With everything cloaked in secrecy, it was hard to trust anyone or anything.

  “Won’t they just be destroyed?” asked a different officer, her voice filled with uncertainty. “And us with them?”

  “We’ve been given reassurances that where we break lightspeed, there’ll be nothing that’s going to kill us. How long that situation will persist, I don’t know. I like to keep my two feet on the ground and I hope to have them planted as soon as possible after arrival. After that, the flyboys can do what they want to do. As long as they stay alive to escort us safely home, I don’t rightly mind what goes on up in the air.”

  Conway held in a sigh. An undeniable rivalry existed between the ground and air arms of the ULAF, but there were times it could be a real impediment to the success of a mission. Colonel Thornton seemed to be what many would have called old school in his attitude. To Conway, it was clear that Thornton was the kind of man who liked to drum up the us and them to cover for his own failings when it came to motivating his troops.

  “You have mentioned a source of intel, sir,” said Conway. “Can you tell us how reliable it is?”

  “I can’t tell you how reliable it is, Captain.” Thornton’s expression hardened. “What I can tell you is the source and from there you can make up your own mind.”

  The words were effectively a promise to the officers in the room that they weren’t going to enjoy the disclosure. Thornton smiled.

  “We know this because our good buddies the Raggers have let us in on a few of their secrets. Didn’t you all know? We’ve made a truce with those flesh-eating alien spider bastards.” This time Thornton grinned. “Now who wants to talk about that mound of shit?”

  Conway was sure he didn’t have the capacity for surprise anymore. This news didn’t shock him and only served as a reminder that nothing really changed. The shape and size of the aliens in the sights of his rifle might be different, but the trigger still had to be pulled.

  “You said this was a truce, sir,” he said.

  “That’s right, nothing more than a truce. Don’t ask me the whys and wherefores or how long it’ll hold. For the moment, this is our reality and we’ve got to make the best of it.”

  It seemed like Colonel Thornton’s front slipped a little and Conway detected a hint of humanity tucked away behind it. Maybe he was just pissed off like everyone else and wanted to go home.

  Thornton fielded questions for a short time. He didn’t have many answers and Conway guessed that nobody had. The solution was the same as always – send in the troops and then speak to the survivors, if there were any.

  Once the meeting finished, Conway exited the passenger bay and made his way to the bunk room. He had a lot to think about, but he knew he would only be tormenting himself. Three days remained of this journey and he was going to be clawing at the walls by the time they came to Glesia.

  Chapter Two

  The Iron Cell exited lightspeed at the scheduled time. Colonel Thornton kept the transport’s passengers on maximum alert and everyone was tense. Most of the soldiers only knew sketchy details of the Sekar and only a handful had fought against them. All they knew was this enemy could walk through most known solids and was immune to normal bullets. It was simple enough to understand.

  When the Sekar didn’t show up, the transport and its two accompanying warships went into lightspeed again. Conway was relieved when the waiting was done, since his troops were clearly aware that a briefing was coming. He didn’t keep them in the dark and led them to one of the spaces on the upper decks. With his promotion, Conway was in command of six squads of fifteen – a total of ninety soldiers with about five hundred years of combined experience behind them. If this mission went well, next time he would have another two squads added to the total.

  The part of the Iron Cell Conway had chosen was dingy, cold and a hangout for the maintenance teams when they wanted to talk business away from anyone else. A handful of the techs were chewing the fat and Conway asked them to make room,
which they did without complaint. Another couple of the maintenance techs were doing something to a pipe which was leaking a thick, clear fluid onto the floor grating. They didn’t move and Conway had no intention of asking them to make way.

  Once everyone was present, Conway got started. He kept the explanation brief on the basis that he didn’t have too much to say. In a way, the sparseness of information was a positive – sometimes if you talked too long the important details got lost. Telling just enough was an artform and Conway thought he was pretty good at it.

  When he was done speaking, he invited questions, expecting many.

  “I don’t like it, sir,” said Private Kemp. If Kemp was worried, then that meant everyone else was in an even worse state.

  “I wasn’t expecting you to like it, Private. I don’t like it much myself. Which specific detail concerns you the most?”

  “All of it, sir. We’re meant to be fighting alongside the Raggers? What if one of them tries to take a bite out of my ass when I’m shooting one of these Sekar?”

  “As far as I’m aware, it’s us and the Fangrin doing the hard work,” said Conway, looking at the broad aliens amongst the humans. “The Raggers are providing other assistance, the details of which I can’t tell you because I don’t know them.”

  “The way I see it, this is a normal mission,” said Torres, standing right next to Kemp. “We go in, complete the objective and then get lifted off world. Isn’t that right, sir?”

  As usual, the difficulty was in the execution, but everyone knew that. “That’s exactly right, Private Torres.”

  “So why do I get this feeling we’re about to be betrayed?” she asked.

  “What makes you say that, Private?”

  Torres was a plain speaker and wasn’t ashamed about it. “Too much cloak and dagger, sir. That means someone’s holding out on us. Besides, the Raggers have done enough to prove themselves the most untrustworthy bunch of alien scumbags in the known universe.”

  “That is true,” rumbled Lieutenant Rembra, one of the Fangrin from back on Qali-5.