Chain Reaction (Rim Jumper Book 6), page 1
CHAIN REACTION
THE SIXTH RIM JUMPER NOVEL
Copyright © 2022 Tim Rangnow
All rights reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-952412-26-4
Published By: Vagabond Publishing
Printed in the United States of America
CHAIN REACTION
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
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About The Author
CHAPTER ONE
“You just left him there?”
Neela sat in the pilot’s chair on the trade ship Wandering Star, feeling almost numb as she stared at the familiar cockpit of Rim Jumper on the viewscreen. Ripper, former pirate lieutenant and current captain of a transport ship in the Mudamir Rebellion, had just told her the man she loved had been left behind in a pirate’s lair during a rescue attempt to retrieve the crew of the trade ship.
When Jaeger had asked them to track down Wandering Star after the captain failed to report in during a standard supply run, she and Kole had spent a week tracing the ship’s planned path in reverse. Only to end up at the location of their first stop, Tachi Station. Nestled in the heart of an exploded planet, the station had been taken over by the Rebellion a year earlier. It should have been simple to find the information they needed about when the Star had arrived on the station and when it departed.
Instead, they’d found strange security personnel waiting to greet them and search their ship. The people who should have had the information they needed were either unreachable on the recently locked-down upper levels of the station or no longer had access to the systems. She and Kole had spent several days fruitlessly searching for answers, before stumbling onto the crew of a cargo hauler. Over drinks, and while she was being pawed and slobbered over by an amorous buffoon, they’d learned that the Star had been seen leaving the station weeks earlier. And that it was being followed by an Occan Interceptor.
Through a series of short faster-than-light hops and exhaustive sensor sweeps, they finally uncovered the trade ship’s location. It was floating dead in space, with the reactor fully powered down and all the ship’s systems deactivated. Unable to dock with the dead ship, Kole had bravely made an open crossing through space to board Wandering Star. After a search of the vessel that revealed no trace of the crew, he managed to get the reactor restarted.
The next roadblock had been system locks put in place by the ship’s captain before whatever unknown event had caused the crew to abandon ship. He had contacted Jaeger to request codes that would bypass those locks. Instead of providing them, she sent Ripper out on his transport. Riptide had also carried his second-in-command and Kole’s former partner from decades earlier, Brie.
After bypassing the system locks, they discovered that the ship had been attacked after the reactor had begun to shut down unexpectedly. Kole had suspected one of the crew was working with the pirates responsible, a group that had broken off from Jaeger after she dropped the cloak of piracy to reveal her true intentions; striking against the corruption at the heart of the Gar Hegemony that ruled the colonized portion of the galaxy.
In their typical macho fashion, Ripper and Kole concocted a highly risky plan to infiltrate the pirate base and rescue the captured crew. Kole pretended to be chasing a bounty on one of the pirates, arriving at their asteroid base and offering to share the credits with whoever would help him.
The pirate leader, a man called Deadeye because the left side of his face had been left horrifically scarred and immobile, saw through the ruse immediately. He’d had Kole hauled away and placed in a secure building that would have been the envy of most security forces on the Rim. It was the kind of cell that neither man had expected to find on a backwater asteroid, and it made escape impossible.
It was then up to Ripper to cause a distraction and draw the attention of the pirates, which he did after Kole was dragged out of his cell and taken to meet with the pirate leader. In the course of the firefight that ensued, Kole managed to break away from his captors, rescue Wandering Star’s crew, and get them all back to the docking cavern and onboard Rim Jumper.
Unfortunately, his own escape was thwarted when the pirate leader arrived with a repeating laser cannon, a weapon that was highly illegal to own and almost impossible to procure outside of the Hegemony military. Under such heavy fire, Rim Jumper’s weapons were damaged and rendered useless. Kole was captured during a mad dash to reach his ship, surrounded by half a dozen heavily armed pirates.
“You left him behind?” Neela asked hoarsely, still expecting to see Kole pop up and reveal it had been a cruel joke.
“We had no choice,” Ripper told her, sadness tinging his roughened voice. “We were out of options, and he told me to go while we still could.”
“You left him.” As she said the words again, Neela tried to convince herself this was a nightmare.
Each of their ships had taken a different series of FTL jumps to throw off any pursuit after fleeing the asteroid base. She’d arrived at their rendezvous point ahead of the others. If she’d fallen asleep in her chair waiting for them, this is exactly the kind of worry-induced dream her mind would conjure. She pinched her wrist, wincing at the pain while feeling a tear roll down her cheek.
“We’ll get him back,” Ripper said. His eyes met hers on the screen, and she saw anger in them. “I destroyed two of their ships in the docking cavern, you and Brie took out another and damaged a fourth while you patrolled outside the asteroid. That leaves two or three working ships, at most. Jaeger will send us some additional help, and we can –”
“I saw a Hegemony freighter,” she said, cutting off his flow of words. “On the far side of the asteroid.”
Ripper’s mouth moved wordlessly for a few seconds. “Hegemony? Are you sure?”
She nodded slowly, fighting the swell of emotion welling up inside of her. “Positive.”
“But what was… maybe the pirates captured it recently.”
Neela shrugged. “Maybe, but it didn’t look damaged. I think it was there for another reason.”
“You think Deadeye is working with the Hegemony?” Ripper scoffed in disbelief. “The fleet doesn’t work with pirates, Neela.”
“They might if those pirates had information that could help them track down and remove the leader of a growing rebellion,” a new voice said. Both of them had forgotten Brie was listening in on the comm channel while piloting Riptide. She sounded as stricken as Neela felt, but there was steel in her voice, as well.
Ripper cursed loudly and rubbed a hand over his face. “Okay, this is potentially bad, but it doesn’t change anything. It’s just a freighter, so it will be lightly armed at best. I’ll have Jaeger send us half a dozen ships for reinforcement, and then we go in to rescue Anwynn.”
“You left him behind,” Neela said quietly, finding it harder to speak past the lump growing in her throat. Her cheeks were wet with tears now, and she couldn’t stop thinking about all the terrible things the pirates might be doing to Kole while she sat out there in the middle of empty space.
“We’ll get him back,” Ripper growled. “Brie, contact Jaeger immediately. While you’re doing that, I’m going to dock with the Star so her crew can transfer over. Neela, you belong here on Rim Jumper.”
She nodded faintly, only half hearing his words as images of Kole in pain and needing help flashed through her head. When they’d first met on her home world of Hebat Prime, she’d been taken hostage by a pair of burgeoning criminal masterminds who had been behind a failed assassination attempt on Kole. He had traded himself to save her.
It was her turn to risk everything to save him.
The docking process went smoothly, and she was waiting beside the airlock as the Star’s crew boarded their beloved ship. The captain, Jerry, wrapped her in a tight hug as he thanked her for assisting in their rescue. He also promised to do everything they could to help get Kole out of the pirate’s lair. She smiled wanly in response, waiting only as long as she felt was polite before running through the docking tube to enter the ship that had become her home.
Ripper was standing in the cargo bay, his arms crossed over his chest defensively. His posture was tense, and his eyes refused to meet hers as she marched up to him. “We’ll get him back,” he said, voice roughened by strong emotion.
Neela looked up at the grizzled transport captain, tilting her head to the side as she examined him. She’d had a lot of time to think while he maneuvered Rim Jumper close enough for docking. Time that she spent putting herself in Ripper’s place, and realizing that things might not have turned out any different.
“It’s not your fault,” she said softly after a long silence. “I know Kole better than anyone, and he’s just brave and stupid enough to risk his life to make sure others are safe.” She reached up to squeeze his arm. “It’s not your fault.”
He finally met her gaze, and she saw a measure of gratitude there behind steely determination. His posture relaxed slightly. “Jaeger said there are two ships that can join us within twelve hours. Another can be here in about twenty. If we wait a few days longer, we’ll have half a dozen or more.”
She nodded, patting his arm as she stepped away. “You and Brie should meet them and make preparations for a rescue.”
Ripper’s eyes narrowed at her words. “You make it sound like you won’t be here.”
“I won’t,” Neela said briskly. “As soon as you go through the docking tube, I’m taking Rim Jumper back out to the asteroid. I can’t just sit here and wait, not if there’s a chance I could get Kole out of there right now.”
“Neela, they’ll be ready for someone to try saving him. There’s no chance you’ll catch them by surprise again, even if you had working weapons. Which you don’t. You can’t go alone!”
“I can, and I will.” She turned to smile at him, knowing in her heart she was making the right choice. “If I’m not back within a day, then you know the pirates are waiting for you and heavily armed. Don’t follow me unless you have at least half a dozen ships for support.”
Ripper shook his head in disbelief. “I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”
“No.”
He snorted a laugh, and she saw a hint of admiration in his eyes. “Fine.” Ripper turned suddenly, striding across the cargo bay toward the airlock. Instead of entering, though, he tapped a few buttons on the display beside it. The round inner airlock door swung closed, and there was an audible thunk as the magnets holding the docking tube in place were released.
“What are you doing?” Neela asked.
“I’m doing what Anwynn would ask me to do,” he said, keying in the commands to close the outer airlock door. “I’m going with you.”
Neela gasped. She felt a wave of panic when she realized her plan was now putting two lives at risk. Somehow, that made it more real than it had been when she’d made the snap decision to see if she could rescue Kole by herself. “But… what about Riptide?”
“Brie has been doing a great job flying her without me,” Ripper said with a smile. “She can coordinate the ships that arrive, and she’ll lead the attack in case you and I don’t make it back.”
“You’re being stupid,” Neela protested. “There’s no reason to risk your life again, not when you barely made it out the first time.”
He shrugged. “If I’d been left back there and Kole was the one to get away, what do you think he’d do?”
She didn’t have to think to know the answer to that. Neela chuckled at the simplicity of his logic. “He’d try to go in himself to get you out, instead of waiting a couple of days for backup.”
“Exactly. Now, are you flying this rust bucket, or am I?”
Neela sighed and accepted the inevitable. She turned and led the way up the sloping corridor toward the cockpit. As she fell into the pilot’s chair and looked at the half circle of displays in front of it, she couldn’t help thinking it felt good to be home again.
Rim Jumper dropped out of the FTL tunnel, and alarms immediately began to blare in the cockpit. Neela’s fingers raced across the displays as she muted the proximity alarms and dismissed the alerts that were flashing urgently to get attention. She had purposely jumped into the system much closer to the asteroid field than was recommended, not wanting to give the pirates too much warning of her approach.
Ripper breathed a sigh of relief when the viewscreen showed the nearest asteroid was several kilometers away and fading as they passed it at a safe distance. Their target was centered on the screen, five thousand kilometers in the distance and closing quickly as the engines were pushed to their maximum.
“We should be seeing a welcoming party soon,” he said from where he leaned against the bulkhead just inside the door. Rim Jumper was not a large ship, and two people made the cockpit feel crowded at the best of times. “I bet they’re scrambling right now, trying to figure out who would dare to drop out of FTL in the middle of an asteroid field.”
“Good,” Neela said with a feral grin. “I hope they’re pissing their pants.”
The asteroid continued to grow on the screen as she powered up the ship’s laser cannons. Neither was fully functional after the damage they suffered during the last escape from the pirate base, but she’d managed to cobble together some repairs during the FTL jumps to restore a modicum of offensive power. She was counting on the surprise to at least give them enough time to reach the docking cavern. Ripper had told her that the steel wall protecting the inhabited area in case of energy shield failure had been destroyed in the explosions of the two pirate vessels. That would make it easy to get in, find Kole, and fight their way back out again.
She hoped.
A face flickered into view just beside the viewscreen, over a small holographic emitter. “Captain Rokvar, I calculate the odds of your plan succeeding are dreadfully low.”
“I know, ShANN,” Neela said through gritted teeth. She normally took great amusement when the AI, or Shipboard Automated Neural Network, berated Kole with odds for his hastily concocted plans, but it was much less amusing when she already knew that what she was doing was stupidly reckless.
“I would also remind you that Captain Anwynn never reconnected my ability to control the weapons, so I am unable to provide covering fire for you.”
“I know,” Neela said again, hating being reminded just how much of a disaster this could turn out to be. At least Ripper had finally stopped trying to talk her out of it, after spending half of the FTL jumps trotting out a variety of very pertinent arguments against her plan.
She focused instead on the growing oblong rock centered on the viewscreen. The asteroid that had served as a pirate base was more than a dozen kilometers long, though only a kilometer deep at its widest point. The carved-out section was slightly off center, and Ripper had told her they’d built the base in that location because there had already been a large chunk torn out during some long-ago collision with another asteroid, which made it easier to burrow into the rock.
Her palms were sweating from a combination of nerves and overactive anticipation, and she kept rubbing her fingers together to keep them dry. It was quickly becoming a habit, along with biting her nails. Three of the nails on her right hand were bitten down to the quick and crusted with blood, and they ached from the abuse.
“It’s quiet,” Ripper said, walking slowly toward the viewscreen.
“That’s good, right? It means we’re gaining extra seconds to make this work.”
“Maybe,” he said, not sounding too sure.
The dark depression that led into the short tunnel to the docking cavern was visible on the screen now, and Neela pointed Rim Jumper toward it. Her fingers hovered over the thruster controls. She planned to kill the main engines at the last moment and shunt full power to the bow thrusters, slowing them just enough to make a rough landing. With luck, they’d be on the ground and charging down the ramp at the rear of the ship within a few minutes.
“Do a circuit of the asteroid,” Ripper said suddenly.
