Beyond the Rim (Rebels and Patriots Book 2)

by A. G. Claymore

  She held up a hand, extending her forefinger. “First, no reporting on our activity in any way that might obstruct our activities. We don’t want to identify a rich opportunity only to have it snatched out from beneath our noses by a rival or enemy.”

  She extended a second finger. “No collecting personal data on our crew. You’ll find that your brother will have a miserable existence if my crew think they’re being spied on.”

  She extended a third finger. “And no selling data related to the strengths, weaknesses or dispositions of our vessels. Steering clear of those areas still leaves you with a great deal that you can report on. I think it would be enough to justify a continuous position on our ship as a strategic advisor.”

  The three monks put their heads together and a rapid fire succession of staccato croaks and hisses ensued.

  Julia kept the smile from showing on the outside. They wouldn’t bother arguing if her offer had no merit. Their conversation was surprisingly short, at least by Human standards.

  “We are intrigued by your offer,” the leader croaked. “But we will need time to consider it. First, let us agree on the value of your data on the Gray Cruiser.”

  Nibbling at the bait. Time to jiggle the hook.

  “Five years,” she told him.

  The leader’s head rose a few inches. “Five years? Five years of what?”

  “Five years of service for one of your sharpest monks. The moment he steps aboard my flagship, I send you everything I have on the Gray cruisers.” She smiled. “I’ll even include detailed schematics on their standard self-destruct unit.”

  The leader leaned in slightly, head cocked to the side in an almost Human gesture. “What, as your people are fond of saying to me, is the catch?”

  She shrugged. “There’s no catch, really. Call it a running start in your efforts to unlock the secrets of the Grays. Once your advisor joins our crew, he’ll have free run of a Gray cruiser. He could easily replicate the data I’m offering you, given time.”

  “And the prototype carrier you seized at Irricana?”

  “If the relationship works to our mutual benefit,” she replied, “I’ll trade that data for an agreement to have one of your monks aboard any ship under my control. It would help to grow your intelligence-gathering network and it would provide my forces with continuous access to information from the Brotherhood.”

  Another flurry of clicks, croaking rattles and hisses.

  The leader turned to her. “We will need to confer with the other chapters before giving you our answer, but we would have one rule of our own that cannot be ignored.”

  “And what is that?”

  He extended a long-jointed, chitin-armored finger at her. “If we do this, others will want a similar deal eventually, when its wisdom is proven. When that time comes, there will arise conflicts of interest where a brother on one ship may know of an impending attack by an enemy because that enemy also has one of ours aboard.

  “We will not allow such information to be passed. Just as you would not want to suffer defeat because one of our brethren warned your target, so must other captains be accorded the same confidentiality.”

  She nodded, relieved they were already reaching that conclusion. “You realize this would cost one of your brothers their life?”

  “We do. He will die with the crew he serves, but they must not try to force information that he is unable to give them.”

  She allowed another curt nod. Of course it was easy to agree while sitting here. When lives were on the line, it might get a little more difficult to keep such high-minded ideals in play. “Good. We have an understanding of the parameters. How long do you need to confer?”

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  If You Want it Done Right…

  Crashing the Party

  Darius Mecklenberg had a pretty nice apartment. It was even a little bigger than Paul’s place on Home World but the cost of living here wasn’t quite so high.

  Paul was reclining on a couch in Darius’ large walk-in closet, waiting for the ruckus in the bedroom to come to its contractually agreed-upon end. Paul had seen just about everything in his years as a cop and courtesans who specialized in roughing up clients were no surprise to him.

  He’d been searching the place when Darius had come home with his companion. Paul had only the bedroom balcony and the closet to choose from and, considering Darius’ company, he wouldn’t be bothering with his closet anytime soon.

  The racket reached a crescendo and he heard the loud smack of a fist against a face.

  Darius’ contribution to the evening’s festivities seemed to come to an abrupt end. The sound of feet, a light pair, moved about the room accompanied by the occasional clink of metal links.

  There was the sound of fabric sliding on skin, the soft hiss of feet sliding into shoes and then something pressing on the mattress. He heard another punch, though he had a strong suspicion Darius was already unconscious.

  That one must have been purely for the courtesan’s enjoyment.

  The steps receded and he heard the main door hiss open and shut. After waiting a few milli-days he emerged from the closet to find Darius, battered and cuffed by one hand to the right side of his headboard. A loose set of cuffs dangled from the left side. The key lay just within his reach on one of the pillows and Paul reached down to take the key.

  He slid the key into his pocket and lifted Darius’ left hand, securing it to the headboard with the loose cuffs.

  Having secured the scene, he strolled into the room where food was prepared. He’d noticed it earlier but hadn’t had the time to investigate it properly.

  The refrigerated cabinet was a surprise. It held a variety of… things… and he thought he recognized peach, or rather, peaches. He took one out noticing that this variety seemed devoid of any external fuzz. He took a sniff and realized it was apple. Folks on Roanoke probably just called it an apple.

  The beer was unmistakeable and he helped himself to a bottle, bringing his snack to the bedroom balcony where he reclined on a canvas chair and watched the Ravennans moving about the various walkways.

  The apple was better than any vat-grown cubes he’d had back home, even though it probably cost only a fraction of its Imperial counterpart. The beer had a complex character, hinted with fruits and spices in a way he’d never tasted before.

  He’d been giving a lot of thought about returning to the life he’d left behind. He had managed to accumulate a great deal of wealth and influence in the Imperium. For the son of a dead miner, that was no mean feat.

  His apartment, his wealth, and his possessions were all back on Home World but, the more he saw of life on Roanoke, the greyer his old life seemed. The thought of staying here was taking root in his mind. His wealth back home would eventually be consolidated and automatically transferred to an organization he’d started to help keep miners from the auction block.

  Roanoke was the kind of place where such charity would never be needed. It seemed a world of vibrant beauty in comparison to the bland globes of the Imperium. Except, of course, for the fact that someone was holding his niece.

  He heard an angry curse in the room behind him and a grim smile came to his face. Darius was about to help him figure out just who that someone was.

  He finished crunching his way through the tough papery membranes and seeds from the apple’s center and stood, picking up his beer as he turned for the door.

  The muttering and rattling ceased as Paul stepped back into the bedroom. The naked man on the bed stared in confusion.

  Paul looked back at him for a moment, face expressionless. To tell the truth, he was impressed the man could lay there without babbling the usual questions or angry bluster.

  Then again, maybe he was just scared witless.

  Paul shrugged. He grabbed the back of a chair and turned it to face the man. “Darius, we all have bad days,” he said, easing onto the chair with a sigh.

  He took a drink of the beer. “This is going to be one o
f yours.”

  He smiled at the hint of alarm on the man’s face. “Not for me, of course,” he reassured him, “but then, I’m not cuffed to a bed waiting for a stranger to peel the skin from my body.” He leaned to the right, carefully setting the beer down on the slate floor.

  Paul was pleased to note a five-percent dilation in Darius’ pupils. He appeared to be taking this seriously.

  “I knew a man,” he continued conversationally, “years ago on TC 465. He loved eating green curry. Always got it from this shop on the dodgy side of the south central marketplace. I tried telling him it wasn’t a good idea, buying food from the Scalies in general, much less anything in a thick, camouflaging sauce.”

  He let out an amused snort as he shook his head. “Old Morgan never was big on listening, surprising for a cop. Turns out he’d been eating the flesh of dead sentients, maybe even the odd bit of Human along the way.”

  He could see the man was desperately trying to pull some kind of meaning from the rambling story. “Some people hear the truth but they continue to blunder along, making things worse. Some have the sense to heed that truth and adjust accordingly.”

  He stood suddenly and yanked the pillow out from under Darius’ head, dropping it on the man’s chest and pulling out his pistol. He shoved the muzzle of the Nuttall Special deep into the pillow.

  “So tell me, Darius, are we serving up green curry tonight?”

  “No!” Darius nearly yelled. “No! I’m listening; I’ll give you whatever you want.”

  Paul looked off into a dark corner of the room, chewing on the inside of his lip for a moment. Finally he shrugged and sat back down, his pistol dangling between his knees.

  “Who are you?” Darius whispered.

  Paul took a deep breath. He was already committed – had been since he hid in the closet. This could only end one way. “My name is Paul Grimm.”

  “And what do you need from me?”

  That was unfortunate but not unexpected. This man may have coordinated the kidnapping, but he obviously didn’t have much depth on Ava. Didn’t even seem to know what her maiden name had been. He might not know where to find Saoirse.

  “My sister is Ava Klum.”

  More pupil dilation. He’d hit a nerve, but Darius wasn’t talking.

  “I’m not a man with an abundance of blood relatives, Darius, so when I finally find them, after decades of searching, it can be unsettling to find out that one of them is being held hostage.” Paul reached out and tapped his pistol roughly on a naked knee.

  “Wouldn’t you be just a little miffed to find yourself in that kind of situation?” He kept the pistol at Darius’ knee, the muzzle resting against the patella.

  Darius shivered, but he said nothing.

  Paul grimaced. It had been a foolish move. He couldn’t shoot him in the knee-cap, or anywhere else, for that matter. It wouldn’t fit the tidy narrative he’d constructed while listening to the violently exuberant session between Darius and his courtesan.

  He also couldn’t afford to lose precious momentum. Backing off at this point would ruin any chances of getting information from the man. He burst out of the chair, casting his gaze around the room until he saw a fist-sized glass ball with a shell casing in its center.

  He stepped over to grab it and turned back to see a smug look on Darius’ face. Paul quickly stepped back to the side of the bed and brought the object down hard on Darius’ right knee.

  The man howled with pain, lifting his body from the bed with his left leg, his back arching. It must have made the pain even worse because he quickly collapsed back onto the bed, whimpering.

  “Don’t make the mistake of viewing this as a question of whether or not you’ll talk, Darius.” Paul slid his pistol back into the holster. “It’s only a question of when. I’ve been an inspector with the Eye for more than a decade. If I need you to tell me something, you will. The only unknown here is how much of you will be left when we’re done.”

  More whimpering. Odd for someone who paid good money for rough sex.

  “Where’s my niece?”

  “I don’t know,” Darius moaned. “You have no idea how much I wish I could tell you…”

  “Believe me, Darius,” Paul retorted, “I have a very good idea how much you wish you could tell me. You’re hardly the first criminal I’ve had to be impolite with. What was your exact involvement with the disappearance of Saoirse Klum?”

  “I provided the snatch team and gave them the handoff coordinates; that was it, I swear.”

  “So you sent people to grab my fourteen year old niece and hand her off to parties unknown and you think that absolves you?” Paul demanded coldly.

  Darius shook his head. “I just mean that it’s all I know. There’s nothing else I can tell you.”

  Paul moved around to the other side of the bed, looking down at Darius’ left knee, the glass ball still in his hand. “If you’d simply called me an idiot to my face, I would have respected your courage.”

  “What?”

  “You’re playing me for a fool. You claim there’s nothing else you can tell me about my niece’s disappearance.”

  “It’s true!”

  “So, you expect me to just accept that and wander off? I’m not supposed to realize that the grab team you provided might have names? I’m too simple-minded to realize I should find them and see what they can tell me?”

  “I can’t give out their names!” Darius looked shocked at the prospect, even more so than he was at Paul’s presence in his bedroom. “Look, it’s nothing personal. It’s just the way it is. If word ever got out…” His shrug somehow managed to convey all manner of dire consequences.

  But those consequences lay in the undefined future.

  Paul leaned forward, hammering the glass ball into the side of Darius’ jaw, not quite hard enough to break bones but enough to cut his lips. “You need to focus on what I’m gonna do to you.”

  He moved back to avoid Darius’ inevitable attempt to spit out the blood pooling in his mouth. “For you, it may just be business,” Paul admitted, “but you’re the reason behind a third of my blood relatives being held hostage and I don’t think you’re being very helpful.”

  He cocked his head to the side, still looking at his prisoner. “You remind me of a cop I killed and dropped into an arc-furnace.” He pursed his lips, raising one eyebrow slightly.

  “Well, if we’re going to be completely honest, I killed the cop, but it was a couple of Marines who dumped his body in the furnace.” He nodded approval. “Good lads. Part of a special team from the 488.

  “The cop, on the other hand, was being obstinate. Insisted on believing his powerful connections would somehow protect him.” A dark chuckle. “Powerful people always scurry for cover when one of their minions gets pinched.”

  “They’ll throw me over the railing,” Darius slurred, nodding at the deck where Paul had waited for him to wake up.

  “Well,” Paul mused, “you might be right, but that’s a risk you need to consider in the medium to long term. Right now you need to keep two things in mind.”

  “Whatsh that?” Darius spit up another mouthful of blood.

  “First; if I talk to them, there’s very little chance you’ll be hearing from them again, so I’d forget about them throwing you from your balcony.”

  A coughing fit. “And shecond?”

  “Second, I’ll throw you off the balcony if you don’t talk.”

  Darius gave him a suspicious look. “You’ll kill them all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Gilbert Thuringia,” he rasped, spitting out a tooth. “Citizen number U43-564-9076.” He broke into a fit of coughing. “Dammit! I think I swallowed a tooth.”

  He glared up at Paul. “Just make sure they’re dead when you’re done with ‘em.”

  Paul allowed a small apologetic shrug. “I pretty much have to,” he told him, “if I want to avoid tipping off her captors.”

  The look of comprehension was just starting to daw
n on Darius’ face as the glass ball connected with the side of his head. This time it struck hard enough to shatter bone, driving shards into major arteries.

  Paul struck again and again, leaving no doubt as to the man’s fate. He moved down to the corner of the bed and reached down to grab Darius’ sweater from the floor, wiping the improvised weapon before dropping the blood-smeared object on the bed.

  He couldn’t have let this man go. He’d warn his employers, if not his grab team. He probably would have preferred recruiting a new team over explaining why he’d given out the name of their leader.

  But Paul couldn’t just shoot him. That in itself would have been a warning. A kinky encounter gone wrong, however, shouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

  It was the narrative he’d come up with while waiting in the walk-in closet. A courtesan, specializing in rough treatment, took things a little too far. She’d improvised with the glass ball, striking Darius on the knee, but a little too hard and the patella had cracked.

  Darius freaked out, of course. The local justices already had a file on the man. He was a typical bully – brave when in charge, but unpredictable if cornered. He’d probably want revenge and he wouldn’t have been shy about telling her.

  The courtesan would have been accustomed to being in control over her clients. Having one of them threatening her with dire consequences would have been a disruption in her world-view and she may have lashed out.

  The first strike may have been on a terrified impulse, but then she would have realized that an irrevocable line had been crossed. From there, her actions would have been based on calculated self-preservation.

  Make sure he’s dead, wipe down the murder weapon and get out.

  Paul looked around the room imagining the places where her fingers may have touched something, but he shook his head.

  If she were a regular, and he thought that was likely, then of course her prints were all over the place. She’d probably realize it would look suspicious if they weren’t.

  He had a copy of the planetary civil code on his CPU. He knew she’d be brought in for questioning if anyone paid for an investigation, but there just wasn’t enough evidence to convict her or even lock her up. Chances were, his body would simply be taken away by Graves Registry and his apartment would be put back on the market.