Paul sighed. “You needed someone to diffuse that self-destruct. Nobody would have made it back if this entire crew hadn’t each done their part.” He’d realized he was claiming most of the credit so he’d changed tack in mid sentence, making sure he spread the credit where it was justly due.
Ordinarily, he was better attuned to that kind of thing, but he was understandably preoccupied.
“You should call her,” Julia urged. “We don’t want to just show up at her door. Maybe she can get up to the station by the time we clear our inspection.”
Paul nodded dumbly.
“Hail the station,” Julia ordered.
“Hatteras Station, over,” the voice replied.
“Hatteras Station, we need to contact our ship’s namesake, down on the surface. Can you put through a relay for us?”
“Roger, transferring you to a civilian connection. Standby.”
A layer of static appeared, then a soft chime began to sound. A man’s voice responded. “Klum residence.” The voice was deep, gravelly and tinted with a patina of age.
Paul frowned slightly. “Hello, I’m looking for Ava Klum.”
“Who may I say is calling?”
Paul looked at Julia, his features in turmoil. “My name is Paul Grimm. I believe Ava might be my sister.”
“Paul Grimm?” There was a short pause. “Good Lord,” the man finally added quietly. “Wait please.”
Paul almost started pacing around the bridge, but he knew he’d be unable to stop himself and so he simply walked over to stand by Julia. She slipped a reassuring hand into his as they waited.
“Hello?” The female voice sounded unsure.
“Ava?” Paul asked. “Daughter of Adrian and Gisa Grimm?”
“I don’t believe it!” the woman blurted. “It’s really you, isn’t it? Paul where are you calling from?”
“We’re docking at Hatteras Station right now but we’ll have to wait for an inspection before we can leave the ship.” He shrugged even though his sister couldn’t see it. “This ship doesn’t have a Human registry yet, so…”
“No! You’re on that Gray cruiser that just showed up?” She was laughing. “Everybody down here’s screaming in panic, thinking we’re under attack.” Her voice took on a sly note. “I bet that means you have that pretty Marine General with you, doesn’t it? This sounds like something she’d get up to.”
Paul’s head was spinning. He’d only recently learned that Roanoke was more than a simple lost ship, but the citizens of this world were getting a steady flow of news from the Imperium, thanks to the fools’ hope ships that somehow knew how to get here.
“I like her,” Julia whispered playfully in his ear.
“Yeah,” he whispered back, “because she called you pretty.” Having her act like this on a bridge was almost as surreal as suddenly talking to a sister he’d lost decades ago.
“What?” Ava asked. “Paul, I didn’t quite catch that.”
“Uh, yeah, Julia’s here.” Paul resisted the urge to scratch the back of his head like a yokel. “Listen, Ava, we’d like to come see you…”
“You’d better come see me!” Ava exclaimed. “If you don’t, I’ll send off a report to the administration on Hardisty and let them know who the master thief was twenty years ago. I’ll be waiting at your docking port on Hatteras. Heading there right now!”
She broke the connection and Paul stood there smiling. Ava’s comment had awakened a past he thought he’d never want to re-examine.
“Master thief?” Julia prodded.
“More like petty thief,” he corrected, “and she was just as bad as I was. We used to steal company supplies and equipment and sell it on the black market. Dad tried to stop us from doing it – said we’d end up shipped off to Mictlan – but he couldn’t watch us every minute. The money we brought in helped keep us from the auction block.”
Governor Urbica’s daughter shook her head slowly. “We really do come from different worlds.” She cocked her head to the side. “How does a petty miscreant end up a cop?”
“No big surprise there,” he insisted. “A good cop has to know how to think like a criminal.” He gestured to himself, a smug air of false superiority on his face. “Who better for that than an actual criminal – a master thief?”
“You mean petty thief, don’t you?”
“Whatever, the point is, lots of cops started out as thieves. They’re just usually the smarter ones who managed to keep their records clean enough to change tracks.”
“And so one becomes a cop and…” she nodded at the holo depiction of the station, which was technically beneath their feet as they made their ventral-on approach, “… the other becomes a renowned privateer.” She reached out to enlarge the view of the station.
“I do love these older designs,” she said wistfully. “It looks just like the one orbiting over Bhavnagar. Nari was built more than eight hundred years ago, back when designers still had a sense of grandeur.”
Paul had seen the station when he’d spent a week on her home world. It had a timeless quality about it. He watched as she explored the holo map of Hatteras. Somewhere on that station, he was about to meet the only relative he had in the entire universe.
Reunion
“Why are you so nervous?” Paul asked. “It’s my long-lost relative we’re meeting.”
“Can you possibly be that thick?” Julia took a hand away from the metal implant running along her left jawline. The thin flexible strip extended up the back of her cheek and circled her left ear.
Every time he looked over at her she was either running a hand over the light stubble on her scalp or touching one of her external combat implants.
“I’ve never had to meet your family before,” she said quietly. “Until now, you’ve been the only one to go through that kind of hell and that was just fine by me.” She gestured at the pressure door in front of them. “Now, I’m about to come under the only scrutiny I’ve ever actually cared about.”
She looked at him, eyes wide. “What if she thinks I’m not feminine enough for you? Or that I’m too military?”
Paul was shocked. She’d always seemed so confident. Sure, there had been the occasional hint that she might be a little sensitive about the facial implants but it had never seemed serious. Now she was openly anxious and he realized he was being dense.
He put an arm around her shoulder, drawing her in close. “First off, I don’t think anyone could possibly think you weren’t feminine enough and, secondly, my sister has made quite a name for herself by boarding ships and killing their crews. If anything, you’ll probably have more in common with her than I will.”
Her eyes softened and she was about to speak but the overhead light turned green and the large inner door snapped up into its housing.
They both turned to look out at the small group standing there.
Paul tilted his head, eyebrows lowering at the center. A woman stood there, a pistol at her hip, surrounded by four men and two women in black tactical gear. Each held a compact sub-machine gun at the ready.
He barely noticed the guards, though. His attention was riveted on the woman standing at the center. He blinked hard and shook his head. “Ava!”
His sister left her small security detachment and ran through the door, throwing her arms around her brother. Seeing as he was still holding an arm around Julia, she was included in the embrace as well.
“I can’t believe you’re really here,” Ava whispered, a tremble in her voice.
“I’ve spent decades looking for you,” Paul told her, his own voice threatening to fail him. “When I saw you just now, you looked so much like mother, on the day we said goodbye.”
He’d added a year to his age, claiming to be ten so the Marines would take him on as a drummer boy. He’d left his mother and sister with the bounty from their father’s accidental death in the mines. He’d hoped it might be enough to get the two of them somewhere decent.
“How are you even here?” she asked
him. “Why would someone of your standing want to leave the Imperium?”
“It wasn’t by choice,” he told her. “We found a lot of Humans when we raided Narsa. Intelligence suggested a similar program at Sintel.” He sighed. “We got captured sniffing around the planet, then Foch and his crew took us off a Gray ship.”
Ava was suddenly all business. “Is it true Foch is dead?”
“Yeah.” Paul nodded. “Implant blew out during the fight.”
“So, who’s captain of the Mary Starbuck?”
“Oh!” Paul grimaced. “Sorry. Ava, this is Julia Urbica.”
“Yes, I know.” Ava gave Julia a hug. “Welcome to Roanoke, Julia.”
Paul waited till his sister turned back to him. Before she could return to her question he gave her the answer. “Julia’s the new captain of the Mary Starbuck and I suppose the heavy cruiser, Ava Klum, as well.”
Ava’s gaze darted back to Julia. “You mean you were voted in as captain?”
Julia frowned. “I’m not entirely familiar with your customs, but the weapons officer took a vote of the bridge officers and my name appeared on every holo copy of the letter of mark.”
Ava raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious? How long were you on that ship before they made you captain?”
Julia looked at Paul. “Ten minutes?”
He nodded. “Close enough, I’d say, before Foch bought the last drift.”
She nodded. “Nobody seemed inclined to take over after he died and we still had two hostiles to deal with. I gave orders, they followed them…” She looked at Ava. “In the lull between fights, they held a vote.”
Paul smiled. “And then she decided she wanted to add an enemy cruiser to her new command.”
“And it’s named the Ava Klum?” Ava laughed. “Whose idea was that?”
“My helmswoman Robin Metzker suggested it,” Julia explained. “She said it’s customary to name ships after family and that was when we found out you were out here.”
“I know Robin,” Ava replied. “Good in a fight and she would have known I’ve already used our parents’ names in my own fleet.” She gestured toward the security team. “My shuttle is directly across from here. Let’s get down to the house where we can relax a little.”
She led them out onto a broad walkway surfaced in a clean gray metal. The raised side barriers were clad in a lighter gray and topped with a railing of light reddish wood. The walkway was one of hundreds spread around the ring, allowing quick passage across the widest part of the station’s circular cross section.
From where they stood, the river ran beneath them to curve gently upward until obscured by the glazed roof of the ring’s inner hull. A maglev monorail came humming into view on their left, gliding to a halt at a station, two hundred meters away. Tiers of balconies parks and cross bridges were layered up the widening edges of the ring, flanking the river. Trees and shrubbery softened the harsher lines of the station’s structure and a narrow strip of lawn ran along the river itself.
It was very similar to Nari Station. The river served several purposes. It helped to maintain the humidity level, provided a habitat for waterfowl and fish, provided a reservoir to handle shifts in population and, most importantly, gave the station a sense of permanence.
Newer stations, relying on grav plating rather than rotation, made far more efficient use of space, but they always had a more artificial feeling, even to Humans who rarely saw real daylight. Seeing a river somehow touched a deep, atavistic part of the mind.
Imperial Architects had long ago lost their sense of the Human spirit in their designs. Natural touches were slowly phased out and replaced with cramped apartments where occupants had to pay extra for a ceiling height that would allow standing up. The vast majority of Humans in the here-and-now squat-walked or even crawled in their residences.
Paul imagined the Imperium of a thousand years ago must have been a place of grandeur.
They crossed the bridge, her guards’ eyes constantly roving about the massive open space. Two more men stood flanking the open inner door of another airlock. They stepped into the lock, roughly fifteen meters squared, and waited.
Paul, like most Imperial citizens, didn’t react at the brutal speed of the doors. Anyone who travels beyond their home world quickly becomes accustomed to the necessities of station safety. The inner and outer doors cycled in rapid succession, their quiet operation in contrast to their eye-blurring speed.
They followed a short boarding arm to reach the waiting shuttle and strapped into benches along the outer sides. It was decidedly utilitarian, even military, in its appearance.
They broke umbilicals quickly and pushed sideways to clear the docking port before accelerating. The blue-green sphere of Roanoke slid into view in the window behind him. He wanted to keep talking with his sister, but the interior noise levels were too high and he decided to take in the view as they descended.
They dropped quickly over a large sea before angling up and to port to head for a city that Paul had managed to glimpse as the nose came up. It looked nothing like an Imperial city. For one thing it was not just a building, it appeared to be a collection of buildings.
Hundreds of soaring, glass-clad towers, each more than two hundred levels high, stood like a patch of tall grass in the notch between two seaside mountains. It looked far more beautiful than any city he’d ever seen in the Imperium. More than that, it looked more livable. It seemed as though every citizen could have a window in a city like that.
There could be no rezzas there, from what he could see. Slums filling up an entire cubic kilometer would have been easily visible.
The craft banked hard to port, still well away from the gleaming city, and Paul looked at his sister, eyebrows raised.
“We’re not going into Ravenna,” she shouted. “We have to follow the outer orbit till we get to the west side. Once air traffic control releases us, we can head straight out to Segusium.”
He nodded and looked back out at the glittering sea. As their angle slowly changed, the coastline slid back into view and the western mountain range began marching past the window.
After the third mountain peak, the craft banked hard to starboard and settled on a new course. Paul recoiled in surprise as a mountain peak rolled past, barely fifty meters from his window. The peak had been flattened except for one spike of rock at the western side, roughly five times the height of a man. A door led into the spike from the large flat area and several small platforms containing stone buildings were docked around the edges of the circular flat space, probably held aloft by suspensor drives.
He looked back to Julia, seeing that she had also noticed the strange community.
“Monastery,” Ava shouted. “Their species is indigenous to this world, sort of.”
They were over the mountain range now and descending toward a long valley running between two ranges. A tracery of avalanche scars ran down to the narrow lake in the middle, but many of the scars ran along the axis of the valley, perpendicular to the downhill lines.
They seemed to be too numerous and random to be man-made but, if they had a reason, Paul couldn’t discern it.
The town of Segusium came as a surprise. The shuttle simply slowed to a halt and turned, opening the back ramp to reveal a concrete dock at the lake’s south-east bank that led to a concrete seawall. Beyond the seawall, a quaint collection of stone buildings, mostly with black tile roofs, filled the space between the lake and the small mountain that guarded the south end of the valley.
Two more guards stood there in black combat gear, holding assault weapons with longer barrels than their counterparts in the shuttle. The man on the left, older with a salt-and-pepper growth on his face gave a reassuring nod to the occupants.
Ava led them off the shuttle and up the dock. “I have a place in Ravenna,” she told them, “but this is where we originally settled, twenty years ago.” She pointed at a large building with balconies looking over the lake. “Mom and I lived in one of those apartments
for years before I earned enough bounty to buy a house.”
She looked back over her shoulder at Paul. “Imagine going from a tiny little shaft-cavern on Hardisty to a two-bedroom apartment with a ceiling you can’t even touch!” Her eyes drifted past him. “And the view!”
Paul looked over his own shoulder. He had to admit the view was spectacular. The valley was already half in shade as the early-afternoon sun lost its battle with the mountains. One of the planets three moons was already up, its reflection sparkling on the small waves.
He slowed as he cocked his head. There was a strange grinding noise coming from across the water and he’d never heard anything like it before.
Shaking his head, he lengthened his stride to catch up with Ava and Julia who were engrossed in a tactical discussion. He smiled. True enough, the only two women in his life had more in common with each other than with him. Still, he was glad to see them getting along.
As they approached the seawall, he noticed a telltale slick of grime reaching two full meters above the current water level. The snow melt here must be pretty extreme and he wondered if the early settlers had been caught off guard before deciding to build the wall.
Ava turned to the right as they left the dock, leading them along the seawall. “I usually stayed in Ravenna,” she told him, “because it offers quicker access to orbit.” She kept her eyes forward as she walked.
“But I’ve been out here for the last two months,” she continued, a slight hint of bitterness. “I haven’t been off-world for a while now anyway.”
She led them to the second last home on the waterfront. Two more guards stood by the door.
Paul wanted to ask about the apparently heavy security but decided to wait and let her explain on her own terms. Something was clearly wrong.
He and Julia followed her through the front door to find themselves in a large foyer floored with light gray stone. An older man was descending a curving staircase, a reserved smile on his face.
Beyond the Rim (Rebels and Patriots Book 2) Page 6
