Beyond the Rim (Rebels and Patriots Book 2)

by A. G. Claymore

  “Eighty percent already,” Paul answered. “They’ll be at a hundred before any inbound ordinance reaches us.

  “Gotta hand it to the Grays,” Julia growled. “They may rely on standardized battle drills, but it sure keeps ‘em moving, even if you catch ‘em off guard. They’re wasting no time coming at us.”

  “So we’re actually going to charge down on four enemy warships?” Hale asked her politely. He adopted a nonchalant expression. “Just curious…”

  “Brace!” Horrocks shouted.

  Everyone made a desperate grab for support and leaned to port as the Mary Starbuck slewed wildly to starboard. A flurry of angry red streaks flew by the portside windows.

  “Yes, Mr. Hale, we are,” she replied. “Unless you have a better idea. We can’t run the other way because it only takes us deeper into the singularity effect and we can’t hit ‘em with our point defense weapons…”

  She stared at Hale for a moment, then turned her head to the helm. “Horrocks, as we get closer, our mobility becomes more of an asset, right?”

  A nod. “Aye, ma’am. The Grays’ ability to turn in place is far outstripped by our tandem engines. We can dance circles around them, but they’re probably inside the singularity’s area of effect by now. The instant we start running for a clear jump, we get an ass-full of ordinance.”

  “Yes,” she waved impatiently. “But if we have a cruiser running interference for us…”

  Hale’s mouth hung open but his expression was one of pure admiration. He finally closed it, only to open it again almost immediately. “If you’re planning to carry her by boarding, my staff and I have some free time on our hands, seeing as we only have our automated turrets left.”

  Julia nodded as she activated a ship-wide channel. “All hands, this is the captain speaking. Anyone who isn’t currently needed to keep the ship from falling apart is to report to the main hangar armed for boarding operations immediately.”

  “Brace!” Horrocks shouted again. Everybody grabbed for a handhold as the deck suddenly dropped away from them. “Y’know what? Just grab something and hold on for the time being,” he added.

  She made her way over to Horrocks, nearly flying over a railing as the ship dodged to port. “We’ll need a window,” she told him. “Put us close to their ventral hangar and we’ll make the hop. Try not to wander in front of any big guns until we take the cruiser, we need that suppression field intact.”

  “Not to mention Mrs. Horrocks would like to keep her little boy intact,” the helmsman shot back.

  She gave him a friendly slap on the back and turned for the same door she’d recently come in through as a rescued prisoner. Hale and most of his bridge team grabbed weapons from under their consoles and fell in behind her.

  Paul walked over to a locker on the wall labeled weapons and opened it to find an EVA suit. With a sigh, he stepped to the next locker marked circuits and discovered a rack of assault weapons. “A very long and serious talk,” he reminded the bridge crew as he made a desperate grab for the locker door. Horrocks was too busy maneuvering the ship to keep yelling out warnings. “I have no intention of getting killed until I’ve had a chance to put my foot up the ass of whoever’s responsible for these lockers.”

  He jogged out of the bridge to catch up with Julia and her knot of volunteers from the bridge. He caught the frown on her face, accentuated by the dark rings around her eyes. She’d activated her electrochromatic tattoos to cut down on glare.

  “I’m coming, Captain, and that’s all there is to it.” He was pretty sure she was about to tell him to stay aboard the Mary Starbuck and oversee the damage control parties, but he had no intention of staying behind while she had all the fun.

  It was also a safe bet she’d be a lot more aggressive than her crewmen would expect. She might end up cut off if they weren’t able to keep up. Paul, on the other hand, knew what to expect from his own training, not to mention previous boarding operations in her company.

  They took the descender shaft to reach the main hangar. They were momentarily pinned against the starboard panels as the ship shifted to avoid enemy ordinance. The ascender shafts, as one might expect, had no grav-plating and, therefore, no inertial dampening.

  They emerged onto the main hangar deck. Roughly sixty crewmembers stood there, weapons at the ready and curious looks on their faces.

  “Foch was killed in the fight,” Julia told them. “I was voted in to fill his position.”

  There was no time for a proper reading in ceremony, if they even bothered with that kind of thing, so she simply told them the straight facts in order to head off any dissent or bickering.

  The ship shifted again, knocking several crewmen off their feet. A loud rumbling howl indicated a probable glancing hit.

  “We’re facing off against a Gray cruiser and three destroyers,” she continued. “Our main guns are down and the enemy’s between us and our exit strategy.” She made a show of mulling over the situation before giving a tiny, tilted nod of her head.

  “I’d say our chances are better than even.”

  They laughed without restraint. Their situation was bad and they all knew it. Anyone offering hope was welcome, even if she was probably full of bullshit.

  “We’re going to take that cruiser and use it to cover the Mary Starbuck. If we can keep the cruiser in good working order, we might just take her home with us.”

  She definitely had their interest now. A cruiser would be worth a lot of money to the crew.

  Dem was among the crowd of boarders. “How are we gonna operate the damn thing,” he demanded, “especially in combat? I very much doubt their interfaces will be set up with Imperial Standard Tongue.”

  “Not a problem,” she said, nodding at Paul. “The two of us were there when we took the Sucker Punch from them. We have the translated interface stored on our CPU’s. Either one of us can start conning the ship from the moment we get aboard. The trick’s going to be killing enough of the Grays so they don’t realize what’s happening and lock us out for good.”

  She waved at the rows of boarding pods. “Mount up, and…” She gave them a cheerful grin. “… try to have some fun over there. It’s not every day you make yourselves into folk heroes.”

  Dem approached as the boarders raced for the pods. “Congratulations, Captain… uh General Urbica?”

  She laughed. “Duke Melchitt is the Captain General of the Marine Corps, so we’ll have to use plain old captain, which is fine by me. The Corps doesn’t exist out here.”

  Dem nodded approvingly. “Well, Captain, you’ll have to take a deduction from your share to buy them back but you might as well take those with you.” He pointed to a pallet against the wall. “One of the other boarding teams found ‘em while we were rescuing the two of you. Took eight guys to bring them back but they’d be worth a pretty stack of crust to the right buyer.”

  Julia’s mouth hung open in shock. She walked over to the pallet and pulled out a knife, using it to slice away the high-tensile wrap that held the cargo in place. She touched a control and the stack of metal plates began to organize themselves with eye-blurring speed.

  She turned and backed into the rapidly assembling Heavy Marine Armor as Paul activated his own, lighter dragoon suit.

  “Ohhh, baby,” she crooned as the suit enfolded her body. “I thought this was gone for good.”

  Heavy in this context was a bit of a misnomer. Centuries of advancement in armor design had resulted in a suit that was far lighter than the original prototype of the HMA series.

  HMA Prototype 0001 had been built using solid, depleted-uranium plates and the weight had required a massive power-plant. Fusion reactors were much bigger back then and that had meant yet another size increase to the suit design.

  By the time the vicious cycle had finally arrived at a workable balance between suit and reactor, HMA-P-0001 had grown to three times the size of an average Human. It was a terrifying thing to face in ground combat, but it was essentially impossible to f
ield more than a few companies of HMA equipped troops. The maintenance effort to keep them in action was nothing short of staggering and their size prohibited their use in shipboard combat; one of the Corps original criteria for the program.

  With advances in lightweight-armor technology as well as power-plant miniaturization, the size gradually came down to that of the current model. Julia’s suit employed depleted-uranium, but it was limited to a thin strike-face. What lay beneath was highly classified.

  Though the modern suit now increased the wearer’s dimensions by no more than a hand’s breadth at any point, the original name had survived. Seeing as HMA was still the best protection in the known universe, there was no need to downgrade the name.

  Paul watched her go through the standard series of exaggerated movements to calibrate the suit. His own, borrowed suit, now unfolding its way up his legs, was much lighter and didn’t take quite as much of a setup process. Still, he’d used the HMA suits while training on the twenty-nine moons of Beaufort and he much preferred the mobility of the dragoon armor.

  The Damascus-Composite plates of his suit were two thirds the weight of HMA plates and they could hold out anything up to 20mm rounds.

  Julia started walking to the blue-hazed opening of the main hangar. The enemy ships were coming closer, growing to fill the entire view through the large launch gate.

  If anyone was concerned about her ability to make good on the cost of her armor, they kept it to themselves. A cheer was roused by those who hadn’t yet boarded a pod as their heavily armored captain walked right over to the edge of the deck, half a step away from the energy shield that held in the ship’s atmosphere.

  Paul joined her there, knowing the pods were already overloaded. He slapped his assault weapon against the mag plates on the back of his shoulder, his left hand drifting down to his hip to discover that the Grays had left his holster there, along with his 3mm Nuttall Special.

  Things were definitely looking better by the moment. Better than even now seemed downright pessimistic.

  “How about I take a team down to engineering and disable the self-destruct while you take the bridge?” he offered.

  She raised an eyebrow. “You gonna be able to understand the schematics?”

  Though the Imperial Engineering Corps hadn’t been able to figure out the wormhole generator on the recently captured Gray carrier, they’d at least sorted out the relatively mundane mechanism used to destroy the ship. Both Paul and Julia carried full schematics in their CPU implants.

  He nodded. “I figured if I was going to be spending any time at all around you, it might prove to be a useful skill and, besides…” He grinned. “Women like men who’re handy, right?”

  She snorted. “Alright, jackass, just make sure you…”

  “Boarding window coming up. They’re recharging the entire broadside right now,” Horrocks’ voice boomed through the cavernous hangar. “Ten, nine, eight…”

  The enemy cruiser filled the view through the forward launch door. The Gray hangar opening, previously indistinguishable on the bow of the large vessel, now loomed larger than its counterpart on the Mary Starbuck. Paul followed Julia to a spot between two boarding pods and sealed his helmet. They both adopted a sprinter’s pose as the count ran down.

  “… zero. Go, go, go!” Horrocks nearly shouted.

  Twelve pods lifted from the deck but the two newest crew members left them behind as they raced toward the opening, angling toward a spot where the two shields were intersecting. An opening was beginning to form at the center of the frothy lightning storm and it grew as the two ships pushed perilously close.

  They could easily pass through the shields, given their low velocities, but it wouldn’t be wise to get caught in the growing chaos of the interference pattern where the two shields fought against one another. Best to go where the danger was receding.

  Paul was first this time, thanks to his lighter dragoon armor. It had a much better power to weight ratio than Julia’s heavier Marine armor and he had to remind himself not to leap as he cleared the warning lights at the end of the deck.

  He was perfectly aligned on the enemy hangar but a leap would have killed him. With no grav-plating beyond the atmo shield to pull him back down, he’d simply drift upward to bounce off the Gray hull.

  He let his momentum carry his body straight across, congratulating himself on an insertion run well executed.

  Then he realized he was about to drop onto an enemy hangar deck with no weapon in his hands. He reached over his left shoulder to grab his assault rifle and pulled it free just as he passed the atmo shielding of the Gray cruiser.

  His last minute reach left him off balance as he drifted over the effect area of the enemy ships grav-plating and his plan of nonchalantly striding onto the hangar deck was turned into more of a tumbling curse-fest.

  It saved him though, assuming the hail of Gray small weapons fire had the power to penetrate his armor. Regardless, it sailed harmlessly above his rolling form and he decided to remain prone and identify the target.

  Two Gray crewmen were firing at him from a spot halfway across the hangar deck and he brought his weapon up to aim at the one on the left. Just as he began to squeeze his trigger, the Gray’s torso was shattered by a three-round burst.

  Ignoring the interruption, Paul shifted his aim but, before he could bring his sights halfway to the second target, the Gray was already dropping. He felt a surge of relief. Julia was obviously still alive and through the atmo shield – small arms rounds moved far too fast to penetrate from the outside.

  He activated the thermal processors in his weapon and linked them to his helmet display. A quick swing of his rifle showed several silhouettes in positions of cover.

  The Grays operated at a lower body temperature than Humans, but they still gave off enough metabolic heat to show up on thermal sights.

  He glanced over at Julia, noticing as he did that the boarding pods were now halfway to the hangar opening. She indicated the right side of the large space with a chop of her hand and, pointing at him to indicate her desire for back up, began moving in that direction.

  Paul got up off the deck and fell in behind her, his head swiveling to scan the various locations on this level as well as a catwalk that ran around the hangar at roughly six meters above the deck. He snapped his rifle up to put three rounds into an intrepid Gray who’d stepped out from behind a pallet to take a shot at her side.

  She rounded the first corner at a dead run, shooting two more Grays before they had a chance to realize they’d been flanked. Paul swung wider to get an angle on a third who’d been behind a small shuttle. He put him down quickly, holding his weapon low in both hands to stabilize it and using the heads-up display to aim.

  To his left, just on the edge of his peripheral vision, he saw her spin and drop. He looked over to see an armored pauldron hanging loose from her shoulder.

  “Anti-materiel rifle,” Julia grunted as she rolled into cover behind a control station. “Glancing blow. Bastard’s behind that cargo cube in the back corner, starboard side.”

  “Keep his head down.” Paul was still jogging and now he broke into a dead run as Julia began firing controlled bursts into the corner. He could actually run faster in the light suit than he could without it. He angled to port, then swung back to starboard as he approached the cargo cube.

  Julia’s cover fire stopped as he reached out for the top of the chest-high cube and vaulted lightly over the steel box.

  Though his armor made him feel light on his feet, he was anything but. He weighed in at close to three hundred kilos and he shifted his feet as he dropped onto the Gray rifleman so as to avoid hitting the heavy rifle.

  It looked like an effective weapon, after all.

  Gray clones were designed for longevity, not combat, and the enemy rifleman’s bones began to snap even before Paul’s weight bore him fully to the deck. The rifle fired once more as his nervous system was scrambled by the blunt force trauma of an armored fist t
o the back of his head, the round vaporizing harmlessly against the atmo shield.

  Paul pulled the heavy rifle from under the pale body and ran a quick RF scan on it. He cast another glance at the dead rifleman with a grunt of surprise. He must have had an internal implant because the rifle had a control link similar to Paul’s own assault weapon.

  His own quantum core implant made short work of the security measures and he established a link to the weapon. He pointed it toward previously spotted locations of Gray crewmen and cycled quickly through the options until he found a thermal image.

  He stood, aiming at the first target, two Grays with their backs against a cargo cube. He put his round between them, turning the far wall of the cube into a lethal spray of shrapnel.

  He shifted his aim to take another who’d leaned around the corner to fire at Julia who was now pounding toward a position on Paul’s portside flank. It was probably a waste of such a heavy round but the results were impressive, in a grisly sort of way. The enemy’s head completely disappeared as the body cartwheeled to slam against the back wall.

  He shifted his aim to engage the last target group but Julia was already there. He watched as her thermal signature rounded the corner of a cube stack and simply ploughed straight into the three enemy she found behind it. Their weapons spun out of their hands as she ran them down.

  Paul took a deep breath and scanned the hangar bay again. “Hangar bay secure,” he announced, stepping over the Gray at his feet and moving toward the middle of the deck. “You get the feeling they’re taking shipboard security more seriously now?”

  “Well, you and I’ve taken three of their ships now,” Julia replied. She came out to join Paul as the first pods passed the atmo shielding. “And we found Marines guarding their carrier at Irricana, so they’d already realized they had weak security.”

  Those Marines had been posted aboard Gray ships by Claudius Seneca, a traitorous Imperial Grand Senator who’d hoped to carve out his own little kingdom on the Rim, with Gray assistance. Paul had personally put the silk scarf around the traitor’s neck. It was a memory he still savored.