“I don’t know,” Julia admitted, “but the sooner we start the better. We don’t want anyone in a critical position going all squirrely on us in the middle of an action.”
She turned to Hale. “Captain, I understand we lost one prize crew?”
Hale nodded. “One of Commodore Klum’s teams from the Roger Corman. We’re just waiting for the prize crews to consolidate their hold, but we won’t need to stay here for very long.”
She nodded. “Have your sensors picked up any changes in the gravimetric veins? We ran into an unmapped gradient on the way back here.”
“We have,” he confirmed. “A thin capillary suddenly manifested in the auxiliary mess, which is why we had to move off-station a little.” He grinned. “It’s also why we need to clean some food off the ceiling in there.”
He turned to the sensor officer. “Colm, how’s the re-mapping coming along?” Hale’s commodore had expressed an interest in the gravimetric changes and so he was subtly demonstrating that he was on top of it.
“We’ll have it done before we jump out,” Colm replied. “Now that we’re linked to the prize bridges, we’re able to access a wide network of sensors.”
Hale turned back to Julia. “I never say no to extra data,” he declared cheerfully. “Never know when you might need it.”
He looked down at the furiously dark Gray captain. “Who’s your friend?”
“Oh, this?” She made a show of looking down at the enemy. “Found it on Commodore Klum’s new cruiser. She gave it to me as a keepsake, but I’m thinking of re-gifting it.”
“I sure as hell don’t want it back,” Ava muttered darkly.
Hale grinned. “I bet N’Zim would love another to go with his set. They always seem to change their tune when they meet him.”
“He does have a way with the Grays,” she agreed. N’Zim also had a way with training Humans in interspecies relations.
He’d advised that the Grays were touchy about their own feelings of superiority. It was easier for him to interrogate the prisoners if their Human captors refused to take them seriously.
Technologically, they far surpassed the Imperium in many respects, the point-controlled wormhole generator on the Sucker Punch being an excellent example. If Julia hadn’t seized it from them and wiped out most of their research program, they might be inserting planet-killers over Imperial cities right now.
That didn’t mean they’d have an easy time of it, however. There was still the matter of the Imperial Navy and Marines. They still possessed their aging fleet of super-dreadnaughts and even their small, twelve man ship-destroyers fired antimatter rounds that could tear the heart out of a planet killer.
And, though small, a ship-destroyer was festooned with point defense turrets. No matter what the Humans built, they made sure they could serve as close-in brawlers. Julia’s Gray-built cruiser, once you got past the main rail guns at the bow, was poorly defended for a ship of its size.
That, as far as the Grays were concerned, was the job of the lighter destroyers. Unlike the heavy rails on the Ava Klum, designed to deliver a knockout blow in one shot, the destroyers carried fast-firing, medium-calibre rails, designed to disable systems and drive off attackers intent on flanking a cruiser.
The Grays definitely believed in pure roles. The one under her arm was apparently one of those who took the concept to extremes. N’Zim would doubtless be able to learn much just from throwing this one into a cell with one of the non-Purists from the Naughty Helot and observing the confrontation.
“I’ll take it down there and see if N’Zim is interested.” She turned for the exit but stopped halfway. “Captain, it might be best if we obtain the linkage codes for our new ships before we bend space for the rendezvous.”
The linkage codes were part of the assault plan against Cerberus Station, commonly referred to as the Hellhound’s Gate. If either commodore felt an immediate withdrawal were needed, the recall command would use the linkage codes to override every ship in the fleet and send them all to the pre-programmed rendezvous.
Privateers were an argumentative bunch and Julia had convinced them that an operational necessity might require immediate action. Any pause to question orders could very well mean being captured or killed by an enemy relief force.
She wanted one less thing to worry about during the three-day jump to the first rendezvous, but she knew she’d have a long argument on her hands from at least one or two of the captains. Fall, especially, would make a fuss before handing over the code.
Insights
“Brother N’Zim,” Julia greeted the monk politely, motioning for him to lead the way into the briefing room. “Inspector Grimm tells me you’ve been working well together.”
“He does provide startling… leaps of insight,” N’Zim admitted. “He might almost be mistaken for a M’Noan, if not for his soft exterior.”
Julia allowed a quick smile, knowing she could easily camouflage its origins. “I’m sure he’s flattered to hear it.” Her amusement was really coming from the knowledge that Paul had accessed the communications records of the Purist cruiser before returning to the Ava Klum.
Bringing the records back before jumping out had been ruled too time-consuming, much to N’Zim’s displeasure. Paul could store the data on his implant, but it would have been unwise to tell the brothers that.
Instead, knowing what the Purist ships had been saying to each other, he’d been able to steer the monks in the right direction. It would be wrong, however, to say the Brotherhood was becoming redundant.
Even armed with his knowledge, Paul would never have had the same effect on the prisoners that the brothers possessed. Had he confronted the new prisoner with proof of his plans for a relatively bloodless ambush of a Gray trading route, he would have simply shut up.
He’d watched in near amazement as N’Zim had told the Purist what he ‘knew’. Even though it had been presented almost exactly as Paul would have, the Gray didn’t react as expected. He first behaved almost like a scolded child, petulantly declaring that N’Zim had got it all wrong.
Under N’Zim’s steady glare, the Gray had quickly ‘run out of reactant’, trailing off into an uneasy muttering.
N’Zim had intentionally overstated the Purist plans, accusing the captain of waiting to pounce on a commercial convoy and kill every soul aboard the ships, leaving the corpses as a warning to those who’d deal with or use non-Grays in any way.
Amazingly, the captain had risen to the bait. He launched a vehement (for him) protest, insisting that they had only planned to knock a few cargo convoys out of distortion, fire a few disabling rounds to show they meant business, and then move on to their next target.
Paul would never have gotten such results, but the monks had a very strong effect on the Grays.
Julia shared a look with Paul as they took seats in the briefing room. They had already reviewed the findings last night and come up with questions for this meeting. Hale was there, as well as Ava and her son, Thomas, officially transferred as a liaison between the two small but growing fleets.
N’Zim’s fellow monk, Ch’Tradi, had likewise signed an agreement with Ava and left this ship for her new flagship, the cruiser N’Zim. As gestures went, this one wasn’t far off the mark. N’Zim had appeared to be pleased by the Human compliment, but who could really tell? Ava had simply wanted to build on the new, integrated relationship with the Brotherhood.
Of course, the monk’s relationship with Captain Fall could best be described as stormy. The man was making no secret of his opposition to having the Brotherhood aboard his ship.
“Whenever you’re ready, Brother.” Julia turned over a mug and poured herself a black coffee.
“Perhaps the first thing we should cover,” N’Zim crackled, “is the long-awaited confirmation that the Gray Purists really do exist. Our latest guest has revealed a surprisingly large organization.”
“What percentage of their population do you think they represent?” Julia asked.
&
nbsp; “Given the administrative locations and officials he’s mentioned so far, I feel safe in saying they are organized to control nearly fifteen percent of the Gray population.”
“Too bad it isn’t more,” Thomas muttered.
“They may be relatively small,” Paul offered, “but they’re an obviously motivated and active fifteen percent agitating against a largely indifferent eighty-five percent.”
N’Zim poked a claw in Paul’s direction. “A good point. Such an organization can have a disproportionately large impact on a highly ordered society. They’ve managed to plunge you into civil war with a similarly small group of compromised Humans.”
“Very interesting,” Julia agreed, “but will this have any bearing on our plans at Cerberus?” She darted a glance at Ava.
“Aside from providing us with nine Gray warships,” N’Zim chortled, “no.” He waved his claw from left to right.
“Our guests from the Naughty Helot have confirmed that they were indeed the ones behind the Dresden Incident which sparked the war among your people.
“They also indicated that they control roughly seven percent of Spirian forces as well as three percent of the crews out of Roanoke.”
Julia set her mug down abruptly. That must have been discovered since Paul had last been down in N’Zim’s domain but, considering Ava’s predicament, it wasn’t entirely a shock. “Do we know which Roanokan ships?”
“Not without direct access to the records on the Naughty Helot.”
She resisted the impulse to look at Paul, who carried those records with him in his sinuses.
“Strangely,” N’Zim rattled on, “they become very quiet on the subject of their so-called kill-switch. They seem to view it as the ultimate failure, something that will harm their attempts to hasten the fall of your Human Imperium.”
“You sound like its fall is a foregone conclusion,” Paul needled the monk.
N’Zim held out his right claw, three jointed pincers splayed out as he rotated his arm in a circular motion in a dismissive gesture. “Empires are as waves upon a beach,” he croaked. “Each is but a short act in a comic tragedy.”
“So all we need to do is wait around for a few thousand years and the Grays will fade into obscurity?” Paul heaved a sigh of relief. “And here I thought we’d have to do something about them.”
“If anything,” N’Zim cackled, “the Imperium will fall long before the Grays. The hottest flame always burns out the fastest.”
“You know,” Paul mused, grinning at the Monk, “I bet the M’Noans base their computer architecture on pithy sayings rather than hexadecimal.”
“Perhaps we should,” N’Zim waggled his head in a pretense of consideration. “Just imagine the variability it might introduce.”
“Is there any way to erase the programming?” Ava cut in, raising her bound hands. “Just curious.”
N’Zim stopped his cup of cold coffee half way to his mandibles. “Not without active Gray assistance in the programming and we would still need to capture and deprogram every single person they’ve done this to.” He took a large sip. M’Noans loved coffee but had to drink it cold. Hot drinks were fatal to his species.
“Well, you’d have at least one subject to test methods on,” Ava said with a wry grin. “And we found…” She turned to Paul. “… How many others so far?”
“Thirteen,” he replied, “but we’re nearly done so I don’t expect many more. We only have one privateer ship left to report in with results.”
Julia set the mug down and leaned forward, raising an eyebrow as she looked past Paul to where Hale sat. “But we’re still in contact with the ship?”
He nodded. “As of our last waypoint. We’ve had to carry out most of the crew checks during the jumps or we’d be sitting idle for too long. The Ellen Marks will be the last ship to finish. We’ll find out how they fared when we drop out at the main rendezvous.”
“We can secure the victims for now but, what do we do with them long term?” Julia asked. “If we turn them loose, they’ll probably kill themselves but where’s the kindness in locking them in a tiny room in the brig for the rest of their natural lives?”
“Maybe the Purists would be willing to help come up with a way to deprogram our people?” Thomas offered hopefully.
“The chances are slim,” N’Zim croaked, not unkindly. “Though their chief grievance with the Quorum is the use of our people for genetic research, they also disapprove of any meddling in what they would refer to as the political affairs of a lower species. It’s unlikely you’d find any expertise in the operant conditioning of Humans among their ranks.”
“Unlikely but not impossible,” Julia insisted. “The Gray I brought back from Ava’s flagship knew a trigger phrase that set off her conditioning. Would they make that kind of thing public knowledge when it could inadvertently reveal the entire program?”
“He must have been working with them.” Paul nodded. “The two we took off the Naughty Helot are part of the program for certain. Maybe we can find a way to compel their cooperation?” He cast a meaningful glance at N’Zim. “You do have a way with them, after all.”
“Yeah,” Hale agreed. “You want to tell us why they’re so different around you?”
N’Zim tilted his head to look at Hale, one claw stroking his mandibles as he gave it some thought. “No,” he said simply before turning to Paul. “I doubt I can find the leverage to get them to help and certainly not in time to make it worthwhile.”
“Why the hells wouldn’t it be worthwhile?” Thomas nearly shouted, waving a hand at his mother. “Thousands of our people are affected by this. There’s one right there. We should be prioritizing this.”
“At the expense of other strategic considerations?” N’Zim hissed gently. “We can eliminate the core of this conflict by seizing Cerberus Station and sending that signal. Only then will the truth make any impact, the fighting would only go on, otherwise.”
“But thousands will die if we go to Hell-Hound’s Gate!” Thomas looked around the room for support, but Paul and Julia were looking at Ava. Hale was nodding in support of N’Zim’s last statement.
“Thousands are dying already,” Hale told him. “While we talk, someone is losing their life because of this conflict. Do we let that go on for years while we try to find a cure?” He looked at Ava. “They’re living under a dangling sword. Sooner or later it’s going to fall on them, but we could save millions of people on both sides if we can drop it now and stop this war.”
Julia sighed heavily. “Alright, the plan stays in place. We can’t reveal what we know until the conditioned crews are out of the picture. They’d just keep fighting, even against ships that are no longer hostile. We meet at the rendezvous, leave the Human ships to hold our fall-back position and jump the Gray ships in to Cerberus Station.”
They were going to seize the Hell-Hound’s Gate.
The Real Enemy
Technical Knockout
“They’re getting very unsettled.” Hale’s voice announced from Julia’s helmet. “Still no sign of defensive activation, though. Looks like they’re concerned by our lack of response but not in the least that we’re approaching with a fleet of Gray warships.”
Julia looked out the front windows of their Gray shuttle. Through the blue haze of the Ava Klum’s forward shielding, the view of Cerberus Station finally settled as the cruiser slid to a halt in its parking coordinates, directly opposite the control room windows.
“Welcome to Hell Hound’s Gate,” Ava grinned over at her from the pilot’s seat. She activated a new channel, as she looked out toward the right side of the cruiser’s forward landing door. “All set, Dem?”
Dem gave them a wave and a thumbs up. A heavy rail-rifle leaned against the bulkhead next to him.
A regular assault rifle would have done the job just fine, except the barrels were too short to reach out beyond the nav-shield. Dem had done this sort of thing before, and this had been exactly how he’d done it, so who was the c
ommodore to argue?
“We have got to get more of these suits,” Thomas declared as he lifted the shuttle off the hangar deck. Ava had loaned the suit to her son for the mission, since she couldn’t be turned loose in battle armor. “Commodore Klum said she might know a few manufacturers who’d like a chance to examine light armor. I don’t think our materials industry is up to the challenge of making HMA, though. They just don’t have the light-weight composites.”
Julia nodded to herself. Ava wasn’t the sort to fall behind any curve. She’d identified the viable path – light armor over heavy – and she’d be the first to have a full fleet equipped with it. The armor would quickly spread throughout the lost colonies, but she’d still have an edge in experience and tactical innovation.
It was proof that her mind was still intact, despite all the Gray meddling.
Of course, her plan might be moot very soon. The war was about to end. They were going to deal the knockout blow in a matter of minutes. Once the kill-switch signal was sent, they’d reveal the Gray plot and start working to bring peace to the colonies.
Ava would command the best force in the most peaceful region, assuming she could ever be deprogrammed. Most likely, she’d arrange to have them hired on as Roanoke’s first standing Navy.
They passed the nav shield and angled slightly to head for the administrative landing bay. Located at the center of the massive ring, the administrative block couldn’t rely on rotation to generate a semblance of gravity and so it had been installed with the relatively expensive (at the time) grav plating.
“Matching rotation,” Thomas stated calmly. He timed the evolution to align the shuttle with the station’s central block, rotating at one revolution per milli-day. They eased through the station’s atmo shielding and moved toward the orange-marked pads at the back.
Two Marines stood at the entry to the main riser.
Julia climbed out of her seat and headed into the passenger compartment at the back. She looked at Rodrigues and Armstead. “Last chance to sit this out, boys,” she warned. “Two former members of the 538 are fifteen meters away from us and we’re either going to trick them, kill them or both.”
Beyond the Rim (Rebels and Patriots Book 2) Page 23
