Beyond the Rim (Rebels and Patriots Book 2)

by A. G. Claymore

  Not a problem for the combat-rated implants that he and Julia carried around in their sinuses. “Found out what killed Foch,” he advised her. “Should be safe enough for us. I’m pinging you with the system connect.”

  Good initiative, Paul. I need you to take over damage control, was the first text message he received from her. He might have been a cop for most of his time in the Corps, but he’d still spent his fair share of time in endless damage control drills while shipping from one Rim world to another.

  He pinged the engineering compartment but got no answer. Hopefully, the chief engineer wasn’t wearing the same cheap implants that Foch had been relying on. With a sigh, he decided to run a complete ship-wide check on his own. Every system was connected to the ship’s processors and he managed to get a good picture of the vessel.

  Members of the bridge crew looked at him as though he’d gone mad, watching as he interacted with a projected version of the ship that only he could see. If Foch was any indication, implants out here must be very rudimentary.

  He reached up to expand a view of the bow, seeing several cracks. Optic fibers embedded in the composites of the outer hull were failing to close their circuits of light, proving not only that the cracks were there but also that they were widening every time Horrocks engaged in one of his erratic course changes.

  Alarmed, Paul set his view to target the engineering crewmen. He found a large group of them clustered around the chief engineer who was sealing a ruptured coolant conduit.

  Angrily, he activated the overhead speaker in the compartment. “Hull breach in Alpha-two, Bravo-two and Bravo-three. Designate highest priority.” He couldn’t believe the senior engineering officer was down in the weeds dealing with a petty repair when the ship was about to come apart.

  He was no engineer himself, but he was reasonably certain, from the Mary Starbuck’s light construction, that the hull provided a great deal of the ship’s structural integrity. He checked the crew list and found the engineer’s name.

  “In other words, Gunther, leave a pipe fitter to lock down that coolant leak and get your ass over to the real problem before we shake to pieces.”

  He watched as a crewman took over the leak repair. Satisfied that the most pressing issue was now at least recognized, if not exactly dealt with yet, he continued his assessment.

  The sensor array was a complete mess. The entire outer hull was a patchwork of blinking red warning icons. He noticed a single light-green icon, blinking in the cargo hold and he reached out to touch it. The display came up and he grunted in mild surprise.

  He stepped over to the sensor officer, touching him lightly on the shoulder to get his attention. “You got any use for a Dodecatronics Inc. Compressed Band Emitter/Receiver?” he asked as the man turned to face him.

  “Yeah,” he sounded disconcerted by the fact that Paul appeared to be staring right through him. “In fact, I was using one until it got smashed off the hull by that explosion.”

  Paul nodded. “There’s one sitting with a pile of other parts on a pallet down in the hangar. What do you need to get it installed?”

  The sensor officer turned to one of his specialists. “Kim, drop the three dorsal mounts closest to the hangar.” He turned back to Paul. “A couple of electrician’s mates and one of my own people should be able to plug it in pretty quickly, but no guarantee we’d be done before this engagement is over.”

  Paul nodded. “Tell me what compartment you need the gear moved to and I’ll task someone.”

  The sensor officer turned back to Kim’s terminal. “Dorsal sensor twenty-three,” he replied.

  Paul looked for the closest crewman to the pallet and, when he found him, shook his head in a blend of resigned amusement. He activated the nearest overhead speaker. “Wei, you with the sandwich,” he boomed, fighting the urge to chuckle as the man looked up at the ceiling.

  “Yes, you,” he affirmed. “Fifteen meters to your left is a pallet with a sensor on it. Get it up to dorsal sensor compartment twenty three immediately.” Paul shook his head in disgust. “Move, dammit!”

  He guided the man to the pallet – it wouldn’t have done for the fool to show up with a pallet of steam fittings when time was in such short supply – and then confirmed he was heading the right way with his critical load.

  The engineering team had reached the cracks in the hull and began pumping a sealant into the gaps. Most of it simply spewed out into space where it was vaporized by the shielding but it was steadily building up in the gap and Paul was surprised to see some of the optic fibres reconnecting.

  The connections were weak, but they seemed to indicate a sealing product that crystalized when exposed to the energy emitting from the existing fibres. It was like watching blood vessels reconnecting after a cut.

  “Hull breaches are minor,” he told Julia. “They’ll be fixed in a few seconds. The sensor team,” he waved to indicate the sensor officer, “are working on getting our eyes back up but we’ll probably have to make do for the rest of the engagement.”

  “Any other problems?” she asked him.

  “If we survive this,” Paul said loudly enough that the entire bridge crew could hear, “I’m going to have a long talk with the whole damn crew. Damage control doesn’t mean a bunch of guys from engineering playing grab ass. It means cross-functional teams, spread around the whole damn ship, ready to deal with whatever happens.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Grimm.” She turned to the weapons officer. “Anything you recommend throwing at the enemy from this distance, Mr. …?”

  “Hale, ma’am, and yes, I was just about to suggest we’re now close enough to launch a round or two of grape at them.” Seeing her raised eyebrow, he hurried to explain.

  “Nested sub-munitions.” He waved toward the enemy. “You can set the distance at which each level separates in order to control the spread. We can saturate a destroyer-sized target at this distance and there’s a decent chance of hitting some of their outbound ordinance as it passes through their shielding.”

  She nodded approval. “Foch did declare weapons free and I never countermanded the order.”

  Hale grinned. “Aye, ma’am.” He turned to his team. “Load nested grape, both mains. Mr. Horrocks, we’ll be slaving the pitch drives to allow the firing solution.”

  “Nested grape loaded. Both mains, sir.” The fire controller held a hand over a red icon on his screen.

  “Fire control has the helm,” Hale announced.

  Horrocks stood ready to take back control if needed, but the window needed for firing was very small.

  “Firing, firing, firing,” the fire controller called out as he touched the red icon.

  The Mary Starbuck ceased her pre-programmed series of evasive maneuvers and pointed herself directly at the enemy ship. A loud, deep-pitched buzz vibrated the deck plates and the ship began her erratic movements again.

  “Rounds complete,” the fire controller announced.

  “I have the helm,” the helm officer intoned.

  “I want both barrels reloaded by the time the rails are cooled,” Hale ordered.

  “It looks like they’re taking evasive action,” the sensor officer advised.

  Hale nodded leaning over to put a hand on his fire controller’s shoulder. “Hand over control to the rounds. Have them adjust the dispersion pattern to follow the target and let them use a couple of sub-munitions to adjust the trajectory as needed.”

  It sounded simple enough to Paul. Ejecting a single sub-munition or two in the right direction could be enough to let an otherwise simple kinetic round track a moving target. Ejecting a small mass, if done at the right moment, would change the direction of the main warhead by just the right amount.

  So why hadn’t the best and brightest in the Imperial Ordinance Corps ever come up with it?

  “Both main guns reloaded, sir,” the fire controller announced. “The rails are cooled and the capacitor bank is ready.”

  “Very good, Mr. Sorensen. Fire contr
ol has the helm,” Hale announced.

  The bow swung back toward the enemy. “Firing, firing, firing,” Sorensen announced.

  The deep buzz again, as the Mary Starbuck sent yet another pair of heavy-kinetic rounds toward the Gray destroyer.

  A series of dull thuds sounded behind the bridge somewhere. Paul saw orange icons in one of the engineering compartments.

  “We’re taking fire,” he announced. “That blast must have hit us harder than we thought. It looks like one of the shield generator mounts is close to parting. Every hit we take is making it worse.”

  It was one of the simplest laws of the universe – for every action, an equal and opposite reaction. The shields were stopping the enemy rounds, but the kinetic energy of that impact transmitted back to the shock-mounts holding the generators in place.

  This ship was frustratingly disorganized. To a former marine like Paul, the entire crew should have been stood down and left dirt-side till they had proper training but he didn’t have that luxury at the moment.

  He found a crew manifest and overlaid the names based on the citizenship numbers in their chips. He found an engineer’s mate and a fitter and directed them to get a spare mount in place. He realized it was a dangerous place to send them – if the generator came loose, they’d be smashed under its weight – but if the mounts failed, the shield would fail and they’d still both die but the whole crew would die along with them.

  The first set of munitions intersected with the Gray destroyer and the bridge went quiet as everyone waited to hear the results.

  “I don’t know,” the sensor officer admitted. “She still seems to be maneuvering just fine so I’d say any damage is minimal, if any at all.” He waved his hands in frustration. “The sensors are just too fuzzy to tell us anything aside from where the enemy’s center of mass is.”

  As if in answer, the holos flickered and the fuzzy data from the neutrino traps disappeared. Before anyone could comment, the screens flickered again and a clear image of the enemy ship appeared.

  Cheers began filling the bridge. Fighting half blind had been putting a serious strain on morale and the sudden activation of the ship’s last sensor was very welcome.

  “Silence!” Julia roared, stepping forward in the sudden quiet to peer intently at the image.

  “No damage,” the sensor officer exclaimed bitterly. “Well, at least we can try to focus the second shots on…”

  “Distortion alert!” Kim, the sensor tech shouted.

  “Oh hell!” the sensor officer breathed. “It’s a gǒucàode cruiser!”

  “And she tumbled out damn close to that destroyer,” Urbica added. “Can you see if they caused any damage with the drop wash when they…”

  “Oh yeah!” the sensor officer suddenly shouted. “Sonofabitch didn’t have time to cycle the shields back-up after drop out. The rounds we aimed at the destroyer all reconfigured for the cruiser when she got in the way. I don’t think she’s answering to helm, if she’s even under power at all.”

  “What state’s their weaponry in?” Julia demanded.

  “Just a few point defense weapons on this side,” he turned to grin at her. “Nothing that can hurt us, and it looks like the destroyer must have taken some of the drop-wash when the cruiser tumbled. Careless damn driving, if you ask me.”

  “Hardly like they planned it,” Julia told him mildly. “They’d have been on their way to investigate when the picket destroyers lost contact.” She nodded at the damaged ships on the holo screen.

  “Ship that big would slide a bit farther coming back into undistorted space so they caught up with the destroyers, even though they’d been approaching us since the singularities dropped them out.”

  Another patter of dull thuds came from behind the bridge, followed by a loud crash from somewhere below. Paul turned his attention to the ship schematic and found that the forward shield generator hadn’t come off its mounts, but they’d cracked far enough to dislodge the power coupling.

  Seven rounds fired by the destroyer, before the cruiser arrived to block it, had shut down the forward shield and crippled the two main rail guns bolted to the deck of the forward cargo bay.

  There’d be no fixing the main guns, not this side of a shipyard.

  “Mains are down,” Hale shouted. “We’d better run for it!”

  Julia pointed at the enemy. “We still need to get clear of our own singularity generators and that’s the shortest route. If we turn around, another cruiser’ll jump us, and they won’t oblige us by blundering into rounds already fired this time.”

  They couldn’t simply shoot the singularity generators. They absorbed all sensor energy, preventing any sort of signal from returning to a searching ship. They could guestimate the position from the way the generators distorted the view of stars in the background, but it was a chancy business, especially while under fire from hostile ships. Only the luckiest of shots would find even one of the several generators in use.

  The generators would keep running until their power sources ran out.

  “But the minute we pass that cruiser, we’re wide open to their undamaged portside batteries,” he countered angrily. “If we hadn’t just lost our mains, we’d have no problems but…”

  He trailed off at the look she was giving him.

  “Stand to your post, Mister.” She turned, face calm, impassive. “Mr. Horrocks take us straight toward the cruiser.”

  He nodded and turned back to his controls. “Straight in, aye ma’am.”

  Her demeanor spread. Even the gunnery officer wiped the look of panic from his face.

  “Hail the cruiser,” she ordered. “Poker faces, everyone.”

  A Gray appeared on the holo display. “You would be well-advised to …”

  She cut him off in mid-drone. “This is General Julia Urbica of the Imperial Marines. You will surrender your ship immediately and stand by to be boarded.”

  Rapid blinks of confusion. “You,” the Gray exclaimed, though it was recognizable as an exclamation only by context. He opened his mouth again but seemed to have nothing to say.

  “I have need of your ship,” she told him with all the sweetness of a wolf regarding its lunch. “You’re going to help me take a planet-killer for my new flagship!”

  Rapid blinks again. The Gray turned his gaze from her for a moment. A familiar chime sounded on the enemy bridge. “Your plan will not succeed,” he insisted, self-satisfaction evident in the tilt of his head.

  “Chalky little bastard!” Julia raged at him, but there was no stopping it now. The holo image of the enemy captain turned to a haze. It switched back to the sensor input, showing the growing cloud of plasma and debris that had been a partially crippled cruiser only a few micro-days ago.

  “The destroyer’s broken up as well,” the sensor officer declared. “Way too close when the self-destruct went off.”

  “Very good,” Julia responded, her earlier pretense of rage completely gone. She turned to her weapons officer. “Those railguns are damned handy in a fight, Hale, but never forget what your main weapon really is. With a little knowledge of Gray operating procedures, you can get them to destroy themselves.”

  A nod and a grudging smile of respect. “Aye, ma’am.”

  “Helm, keep us moving at best possible speed.” She blew out a breath. “Jump the moment we’re clear.”

  Hale stepped to the front of the bridge and turned to face everyone. Paul’s right hand reached over to his left side, fingers closing on the space where his pistol had been until the Grays took it.

  His concern was unnecessary.

  Hale cleared his throat. “As my weapons are currently offline, I’ll serve as adjudicator.” He gestured at Julia. “All in favor of the incumbent?”

  A chorus of ‘Aye’ was the universal reply.

  “Those opposed?”

  Silence.

  “Election concluded,” Hale announced. He inclined his head to Julia. “General Urbica, the ship is yours.”

  Julia
stared at him. “You choose your captain by election?”

  Hale shrugged. “Every officer is chosen by election. Crewmen vote for ensigns, ensigns for lieutenants, and so on.” He started back toward the weapon station. “Who’s better qualified to make the choice?” he asked as he stopped behind his fire controller. “Some airhead planet-side or the folks who’ll be counting on you to keep them alive?

  “Even your own promotion to general reflects this principle,” he added. “You displayed so much ability, CentCom really had no choice in the matter. If they didn’t promote you, folks would have raised a fuss.” He grinned. “You’re the people’s general, which makes you almost as dangerous to CentCom as you are to the Grays.”

  She waved off his assertions as she scanned the holo for signs of danger. “I didn’t do what I did to win a promotion,” she insisted. “Nor was I trying to win over the public. I was just trying to stop an invasion.”

  Hale spread his hands. “We don’t pander to the troops to get our votes either,” he replied evenly. “That kind of thing might fly in the Imperium where politicians buy votes with the voter’s own money, but that doesn’t work on a privateer.”

  “Damn right,” Horrocks chimed in from the helm. “You notice pretty quick when they’re trying to buy your vote with your own blood.” He looked down at his controls as a chime sounded at his station.

  “Fair enough,” Julia looked over at Paul. “Can’t say it makes any less sense.”

  “I was a non-com for half my career,” Paul reminded her. “Sounds just fine to me.” He frowned, bringing a hand to his ear. “Damage control reports the forward shield generator’s been re-mounted. They’re bringing up the power level now so we should have...”

  “Distortion alert!” the sensor coordinator shouted. “Three more destroyers and a cruiser inbound. They dropped out beyond the area of effect. Heading this way at full pitch.”

  “Horrocks,” Julia called out, “keep those tandem pitch drives busy. Don’t let them get a bead on us, but try to give them the impression we’re going to ram them.”

  “How are those shields?” Julia asked Paul in a tone of mild urgency.