Beyond the Rim (Rebels and Patriots Book 2)

by A. G. Claymore

  With the flow cut off, Armstead finally emerged from the second open trunk. He began his circuit of the room, checking each door for signs of approaching trouble.

  Julia was halfway through deactivating the backup circuits when her suit’s sensors picked up an electrical potential from one of the dangling remote conduits. Someone had just tried to destroy the ship.

  She resumed her work and, when she had only one left, something new grabbed her attention. The main reactor powering the distortion drive was increasing its output.

  The self-destruct was safe enough, as long as nobody tried to pull it free from its housing, so she left the last backup circuit for the time being.

  She approached the alcove containing the glowing magnetic containment-torus of the reactor. Having failed to destroy the ship, the crew was now trying to jump her to a place where they could get help from friendly forces. If she didn’t prevent that, then the boarding party would be stranded and surrounded by hostiles, assuming they had even made it aboard yet.

  She saw the emergency scram controls, but she seemed to remember Daffyd telling her it would disable the Sucker Punch for weeks until they could get everything back into working order. She wished her former chief engineer were here, but he was far too sensible to volunteer for a mission that took him out of the Imperium.

  Then she remembered Daffyd’s workaround for an emergency distortion override. Human reactors could be scrammed and restarted within a few centi-days, but the Grays were simply too methodical to find themselves in need of an emergency scram.

  His response to that was the life-support override.

  She raced across the room and swiped open the life-support control holo. The interface was still in Gray glyphs but she didn’t need to wait for the translated interface to load. She remembered the green circle at the center of the panel and what it meant.

  She reached out and touched the circle, causing it to tell the ship ‘Sorry, but all available power is now needed to keep the crew alive. Please try again later.’

  With a sigh of relief, she returned to the self-destruct pedestal. The last backup finally came loose from the device. She lifted the bomb casing free and carried it over to the open escape trunk. She pulled the detonator assembly away from the unit and threw both through the open hatch.

  When both trunks’ inner doors were closed, the compartment re-pressurized and they could open their helmets. “Engineering secured,” she announced, using the prearranged signal that indicated the bomb had been deactivated.

  It would give the boarding party a bit of breathing room, knowing that they didn’t have to take the ship in a mad, reckless rush to prevent the enemy destroying it. All boarding parties were refraining from direct mention of the nuclear devices, knowing that, if their signals were intercepted, the Grays would rush to use their self-destructs before they lost the option.

  “Hold this compartment,” she ordered Armstead. “I’ll see if the boarders need help forward.” She closed up her helmet and opened the main door.

  The small party of Grays who’d been rushing down the companionway to stop her were still there. They brought their weapons up to bear on her but their rounds were ineffective against her heavy composite plates.

  She didn’t even bother to bring her weapon into it. She simply bore down on them, aiming a kick at the foremost of the five enemies. The light body crashed into two of his fellows and they went down in a tangled heap.

  She backhanded another as she went by and was rewarded with an enemy damage panel on her HUD indicating a severe skull fracture.

  She reversed her left arm from a backhand into a forward punch, still not breaking stride, and slammed the armored fist into the last of the Grays. The punch crushed its face, lifting the clone’s feet clear off the floor.

  She continued on, knowing Armstead was coming out to finish off the survivors. She reached the central riser and pulled herself up to the command deck. The sounds of small arms fire grew louder as she stepped out onto the deck plating.

  She moved over to the starboard end of the transverse hallway and looked around the corner. Ava’s party had created barriers by dragging furniture and equipment from nearby rooms and they were trading fire with Gray guards who had the advantage of a purpose-built armored guard post.

  A dead woman lay just beyond the temporary barricade. Her chip identified her as one of Ava’s crew.

  Julia walked up to the group of Humans and looked down at Ava. “I’m glad to see you have the sense not to rush a fortified position in light armor.”

  She waved at the enemy. “I’ll go wide around the curve and draw their fire. That should open the way for you to rush in on the inner side and pour fire into the port-side guard post.”

  Ava stood, and the two pulled their weapons free from the plates on the back of their suits. Julia started forward, moving to the left to draw the defenders’ fire away from Ava. She was halfway to the guard post when Ava rushed past her to crouch in front of the starboard-side bunker.

  She aimed across into the port-side defensive position and fired three bursts. “Port guard post clear,” she announced.

  Julia could now take the starboard post without a Gray sneaking up behind her and shoving its rifle under her armor plates. She simply raced across and threw herself onto the four enemies, snapping their bones under the weight of the heavy suit.

  She climbed back to her feet, her front plates covered in oxidized green blood. She turned to Ava. “I’ll go through the door first and you can use me for cover.”

  She led the way in and the two managed to eliminate the entire bridge crew. They came to a halt in front of the last Gray, the captain if his position in the middle of the tactical holo was any indication.

  His head was tilted slightly back and his eyelids were blinking very slowly, a sure sign he was in a rage.

  “Your presence has fouled my ship,” he droned.

  Julia ignored him, turning to Ava. “The ship is yours! You might want to freeze her out as soon as you can, just to get rid of the Gray smell.”

  “You noticed a difference from doing that?”

  Her HUD was displaying a readout of the Gray’s color and he was now several shades darker. Acting as if he weren’t there was infuriating him even further. “Absolutely. That sulfury stink disappears almost entirely, even though we really did it to kill off any…”

  “You will pay for this insolence,” the clone insisted.

  “We’ve already paid,” Ava told him, “with our efforts, and you’ve lost your ship to Humans for lack of same.”

  “You might have fought us off,” Julia told him, “if you’d had proper Marines to handle your shipboard defense.” If this clone was one of Rodrigues’ Purists, she wanted to find out, and so she’d wanted him angry before suggesting he might have needed Human help.

  “Defeating you with the aid of your own kind would have been no victory at all,” he declared. “We will prevail without contamination.”

  Julia bent down to thrust her armored face into his. “Or die because of it.” She retracted the helmet and the Gray’s head moved back a finger’s width.

  “You!” He blinked several times. “You will be one of the first we will make an example of.”

  She grinned wolfishly. “We no longer includes you. You belong to us now.”

  She turned from the dark gray captain. “Do you mind if I take it back to my cruiser?”

  Ava waved a negligent hand, apparently understanding why Julia had adopted her present attitude. “You can have it, if you want. I had no real plans, other than maybe having it stuffed so I can use it for a towel holder.”

  Julia wrinkled her nose. “It would probably stink up the towels, unless you had its hide treated.”

  Ava nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps I’ll stick with citrus wood. Camden,” she called over to one of the crew pulling a Gray corpse off a console, “take a shuttle from the forward bay and give Commodore Urbica a ride back to her ship.”

 
; “It doesn’t matter if you listen to me,” the Gray captain warned them. “It only matters that you hear me. Hichef! Sila barqa!”

  The internal paging system came online with a light hiss of background noise.

  “Dremana chimela est,” the Gray shouted, his amplified voice bouncing back from the companionway as his voice rang out from the ship’s speakers.

  Julia frowned down at her prisoner. She’d heard that last bit before, when they’d taken the Naughty Helot. She’d assumed it was some kind of Gray curse, though verbal outbursts did seem unlikely from their species.

  “That must mean something,” she muttered, turning to Ava, but she stopped talking when she saw the look on her face. Ava had that same, slightly confused and apprehensive look that seemed to herald an attempt at suicide. She darted a look of fear at Julia.

  Julia took two steps to reach her and put her in an arm-lock, forcing her to the floor. She ignored the protests of Ava’s crewmen while she pulled a plastic wrist lock from the forearm of her armor and secured their commodore.

  She shook her head, ever so slightly, as she stared down at Paul’s sister.

  “I said what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Fall, Ava’s flag captain, demanded. He glared down at the still-kneeling Julia, his assault rifle aimed at her unarmored face.

  “She’s been conditioned,” Julia insisted. “Just look at her!”

  Fall kept his weapon on target. “This is just some bullshit attempt to take over our side of the fleet,” he growled. “The second I look down, you’ll close your helmet and punch my head clean off.”

  “She’s right, Fall.” Ava rolled over onto her back and tried to sit up. Julia reached out and helped her.

  “Another micro and I’d have splashed my brains all over that console.” She nodded at the comm station. “They must have done this to me years ago, back when I was returning from that raider attack.”

  “You did say you’d lost track of a few days when you got back to Roanoke.” Julia frowned up at Captain Fall. “Ō, zhè zhēn shì gè kuàilè de guòchéng! That’s what the Gray was doing on the Naughty Helot! He was trying to see if I’d been conditioned. He said the same damn words when we nabbed him!”

  “But why didn’t she try to kill herself before this?” Fall demanded.“Why would she?” Julia shrugged. “She hasn’t been in danger of capture since those raiders and who’s to say she has the same conditioning as the people who’ve come later?”

  “But I’ve been shooting at Grays!” Ava protested. “Surely they’d want to…” She shook her head ruefully. “Right. Dead giveaway if I can’t pull the trigger on a Gray.”

  “Well, what the hells do we do now?” Fall demanded.

  “We stick to the plan.” Ava struggled against her bonds for a moment. “Fall, you can continue as flag captain; you’ll just report to Julia instead of me.”

  “What we need is a commodore,” Fall began, but Julia cut him off.

  “We have one.” She fixed her eyes on his. “Our split chain of command was a necessary evil but there’s no need to keep it that way out of sheer bloody-mindedness. It usually leads to disaster, sooner or later.” She looked down to Ava. “Why don’t you come over to the Ava Klum? You’re still perfectly lucid, so we could use your guidance. We’ll put a guard on you round the clock so you don’t…” She looked away her ears reddening.

  “Don’t try to kill myself?” Ava laughed, but it was laced with anger and worry. “I’d rather not see me kill myself as well, so I’d appreciate any help. We should have Thomas meet us at the hangar bay. He should come with us.”

  Julia had the distinct feeling that Ava didn’t trust Captain Fall with her son. “Captain, please be so good as to have crewman Klum meet us in the hangar.” She saw a tiny flicker at the center of Fall’s eyebrows. He didn’t like that request one bit, but was it because he resented Julia or because he wanted to take Ava’s fleet and her son represented leverage to him?

  She scooped up the angry Gray and tucked him under her left arm. “Camden, you were going to show us to the shuttle bay?”

  The ride back was her first chance to see how the larger fight had gone. Once the plan had been launched, there was little need for her to stand around on the bridge of the Ava Klum, especially when her presence on a cruiser could make such a difference. “We’re swinging pretty wide,” she mentioned to Camden. “Some of the enemy nukes haven’t been secured yet?”

  “That’s right, ma’am. A couple of those destroyers got wind we were boarding their ships and managed to organize themselves pretty good.”

  She suppressed a curse. Despite their lack of armor, the privateer prize crews could carry a vessel through speed and aggression. If they got bogged down or faced an organized resistance, there was a good chance of failure.

  “Take me to the nearest one,” she ordered. “Armor can get their assault back on track.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me what ship you get off on.” He turned the shuttle but, just as they were settling on the new course, the gas ahead of them was lit from within by a brilliant light.

  “Shit!” Camden muttered. His fingers flew over the controls and the shuttle spun around and accelerated at full power. “That’s one destroyer we aren’t taking with us. Hang on back there, Commodore Klum,” he shouted, “we got a blast wave chasing us.”

  Julia doubted the warning would do much good. Ava still had her hands tied behind her back.

  They checked their restraints as the small craft sped away from the flash. The shuttle bucked as the leading edge of the blast caught up with them. The gas of the unique nebula, denser than most atmospheres, was now blowing past them from behind, buffeting the tiny vehicle.

  The turbulence passed quickly and Camden put them back on course for the Ava Klum.

  It was hard to reconcile their propensity for scuttling their own ships with their terror of death. For a Gray, the biggest fear was an end to a consciousness that spanned millennia.

  To die in a fight where there was no chance to transfer to a new clone body was seen as a tragedy and, yet, they routinely destroyed their ships, along with the crews, in order to keep them out of alien hands.

  Perhaps it was ultimately rooted in fear. If they didn’t quite believe they were superior, they might be destroying compromised ships in an attempt to hold on to their qualitative edge.

  That edge might be an illusion when brought against Imperial warships but, here in the colonies, it held some truth.

  She looked at the nav screen. “Are we accelerating?” The distance to her ship was suddenly decreasing at a much greater rate but she hadn’t felt the change. “It feels more like free-fall.”

  Camden glanced down at the screen and then did a double-take. “Hell!” He made a quick course correction. “That blast must have had an effect on the gravimetric veins.”

  “Well, let’s not find out what happens when you fly through one,” she suggested. It was enough to know they were the reason for the unnaturally dense nebula. She didn’t need to find out what the veins would do to a ship at close range.

  The bow of the Ava Klum ghosted its way out of the dense mist as they approached and Camden breathed a sigh of relief. It was always a little scary, flying toward a ship you knew was there but couldn’t see.

  He set them down in the forward hangar and Julia released her restraints. “Thanks for the ride.” She gave him a friendly nod on her way to the back. She and Thomas helped Ava up and unbuckled the tightly bound Gray, checking first to ensure the tape over his troublesome mouth was still in place. They stood at the tip as the boarding ramp descended to the hangar deck and stepped off just before it made contact.

  An off-shift navigation officer was waiting, and he goggled at the sight of a bound commodore and a gagged Gray. He managed to snap out of it as Julia and her small group swept past on their way to the bridge. He fell in beside her as she walked to the forward riser. “Ma’am, Captain Hale’s compliments and our own ships, Human and
Gray, will be ready to jump out in two centi-days. Fleet Captain Fall is considering aligning to the same timetable as well.”

  “I’ll deal with him,” she replied. “How many ships did we manage to seize?”

  “The two cruisers and seven of the destroyers.” He looked down at his wrist pad, even though he probably knew the details, simple and lurid as they were. “One destroyer detonated but we managed to carry the other seven.”

  They entered the bridge and she felt a warm flush to see Paul standing there, talking to Hale. She’d been relatively sure he’d be safe in his armor, but being sure and seeing the proof were two very different things.

  Paul’s smile faded as he noticed his sister’s bound hands. “What’s going on?”

  “She’s been conditioned,” Julia explained. “You remember when that Gray shouted at us on the Naughty Helot?”

  He nodded, opening his mouth but then snapping it shut again as he looked around the bridge. He looked back at Julia. “That phrase triggers something?”

  Julia nodded but suddenly leapt to the side as Ava made a backwards lunge for the huge sidearm embedded in the right thigh of the Marine armor. Hale grabbed the bound woman and pulled her back.

  Ava nodded her thanks to Hale before turning to her brother. “If I had to guess,” she offered in a wry tone, “I’d say it triggers a suicide imperative, but with my hands bound it’s not like I know which way I’d be pointing a pistol if I ever got my hands on one. Tactically speaking, suicide probably makes more sense than a fight to the finish. It reduces the risk of capture.”

  “Clearly your mind is still working just fine,” Julia told her. “You’d better stay with us. Maybe N’Zim can pick your brain and we can keep you safe from yourself. Fall will continue as flag captain of Ava’s ships but I’ll be serving as sole commodore of both fleets.”

  “We’re going to have to bring every crewman on every ship into a room and run that phrase past them.” Paul frowned. “How many more people are we going to have to lock up?”