Galaxys edge rim jumper.., p.1
Galaxy's Edge (Rim Jumper Book 7), page 1
GALAXY’S EDGE
THE SEVENTH RIM JUMPER NOVEL
Copyright © 2023 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: 978-1-952412-28-8
Published By: Vagabond Publishing
Cover design by MiblArt
Printed in the United States of America
GALAXY’S EDGE
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
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
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About The Author
Chapter One
Kole Anwynn woke with a start and jerked into a sitting position. The sheets were twisted around his waist, and he shoved them away as he struggled to get free of the constriction. His eyes were wide, and his lungs were heaving as he jumped to his feet and stared around the rooms that had become his home whenever he was on Titan.
It took him half a minute to realize that the scream which had woken him had come from his own lips. His shoulders slumped and he ran a hand over his face as he groaned into it. The nightmares brought on by his long stretch of torture had finally begun to skip nights, but they left behind sleeplessness and exhaustion when they did visit.
He turned back to the bed, glad to see Neela was still sleeping peacefully beside the empty spot he’d occupied until a minute ago. Her head of dark curls was buried in a soft pillow, and the covers were pulled up far enough to all but hide her face. Kole was grateful his scream had been abrupt enough not to wake her.
He wrapped his arms around his chest, shivering in the cold that was made worse by the panicked sweat covering his body. The thought of crawling back under the sheets and cuddling next to the woman he loved was tempting, but he knew sleep would elude him no matter how hard he tried to reclaim it.
Kole ducked into the small washroom attached to the quarters and slapped the panel to close the door behind him before the lights switched on. He leaned his palms against the metal surface of the sink, blinking and staring at himself in the mirror. His face was haggard, with heavy, dark smudges under his eyes that did nothing to improve his looks. It was the scars that captured his attention the most, however. They were remnants of sessions spent strapped to a cold table while a psychopath with surgeon’s tools peeled off strips of his skin.
He dipped his chin, pulling his eyes away from the shattered reflection of his new face. The doctors on Titan had been able to speed up his body’s healing process using dermal regeneration procedures, but the scars were too deeply entrenched to be remedied easily or cheaply. It was another debt set at the feet of Colonel Isiah Herrera, the Hegemony Intelligence officer who had ordered the torture. And then stood there watching with satisfied glee while it was carried out.
Colonel Isiah Herrera had become convinced Kole was responsible for his wife’s death. He saw her brutal actions as justified, and he viewed the deaths of any number of innocents as acceptable to end a threat to his government. That coupled with a desire for revenge had led the officer to agree to work with one of the pirates he should have been eliminating. A bitter man named Deadeye, who had split from Jaeger when she threw off the cloak of piracy to reveal the Mudamir Rebellion to the people of the Hegemony.
Days of torture had been followed by Kole being left on a prison planet in the middle of the Arx Nebula. It was a facility rarely spoken of throughout the galaxy, filled with the worst criminals of the galaxy and the political dissidents the Hegemony Senate sent there to die. Many of the criminals in the tunnels known as the Pit had been captured by Kole during his bounty hunting career. They were quite eager to welcome him.
He stared at his face in the mirror again, grimacing at the scarred visage that returned the stare. Kole had never thought of himself as stunningly handsome, but he’d been reasonably attractive before suffering the delicate attentions of Doctor Jones. There was talk of an attempt to cut away all the scar tissue and use the dermal regeneration process to let his skin heal properly, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to sign up for that lengthy and painful of a process. He’d already suffered more than one panic attack when entering the medical bay since returning to Titan.
Kole sighed and bent to splash water across his face. The only good thing to come out of the torture was a measure of anonymity. The lustrous hair that had once covered his scalp was gone; the few patches that still grew from areas the sadistic surgeon’s knife hadn’t yet touched he shaved off. That coupled with the beard he’d grown out to help hide some of the scarring on his jaw gave him a completely different look from the one the galaxy was familiar with.
He patted his face dry with a towel before returning to the main room of the quarters he and Neela shared. The young woman had shifted in her sleep, and her arm now lay across the empty half of the bunk that was his. Kole felt a smile tug on his lips as he looked at her, and he felt a well of emotion that he’d never known before she came into his life. The assassin who had attacked him in the black and then led him to her home world of Hebat Prime would have earned his gratitude for that alone, had the man not also saved his life during the Nebula Run as a way to apologize for taking the contract.
Kole reached up to run a finger from his forehead, across his nose, and down his cheek. That was where a knife wielded by one of the pampered twins who considered themselves crime lords had left a bloody streak during his rescue of Neela. There was no physical scar from that confrontation, thanks to immediate medical treatment that had stitched up the wound before it could fester like the more recent ones. He could still vividly recall the streak of cold fire when the knife sliced through his skin and muscle, though.
His was a life full of such encounters. When he’d decided to leave his home world in the Outer Core to become a bounty hunter, it had been because of dreams of fame and fortune. Several years of getting his ass kicked and completing jobs with fewer credits than when he’d started had helped smother those delusions. He chuckled at the memory of those early days, which had served to forge a new toughness within him that allowed him to excel in the difficult situations he found himself in through the years.
He shivered again, biting back a curse as he turned to pull open the single drawer set aside for his clothing. There was a threadbare sweater at the bottom, which had seen little use until the last several days. As part of the continual testing to discover the Ancient ship’s features and commands, some of the researchers on Titan had inadvertently lowered the ship’s temperature well below a comfortable threshold. So far, they’d failed to correct the situation, which left the more than ten thousand people living and working on the three-kilometer-long ship dressing as warmly as if they lived on an icy outpost far from the warmth of a sun.
The door of the quarters opened with a nearly silent hiss when Kole touched the flat square set into the gently undulating wall. The ship was filled with smooth surfaces and gentle curves, and there were few of the sharp edges and blocky protrusions that would be seen on a human vessel. The prevailing theory was that the Ancients had grown the ship in some way, using their strange metal that could flow like water to reveal doorways and openings in the hull. That unknown metal also allowed the ship to heal any damage it took, though the process was slow. It had taken most of a week for the scars and wounds of the encounter with Medusa to repair and fade away, but Titan now looked as good as new.
Kole glanced at the sleeping form on the bunk one last time, taking solace from the sight of her. Neela was stubborn, and she’d refused to back away from the idea of rescuing him despite the obstacles in her way. He was half upset with her for risking her life to save his, and half relieved that she’d been strong enough not to back down under pressure from others, who had wanted her to hold off for a few months. He’d spent a week in Arx, and he was quite certain he wouldn’t have lasted much longer with so many of the prisoners eager to get their hands on him.
The metal flowed to close off the quarters as soon as he stepped over the threshold. Kole stood in the empty corridor for a few moments, enjoying the stillness. It was only a few hours into the day by Galactic Standard Time, and all but a skeleton crew were in their beds getting much-needed sleep before their next shifts started.
A blonde man with rugged middle-aged looks turned a corner, walking slowly toward Kole with his face buried in a tablet that he was scrolling through with a finger. He was clearly absorbed in whatever he was reading, and he looked up with surprise when he realized someone else was nearby. The man’s eyes widened in that first instant, before his expression fell into a neutral mask. Kole returned the man’s nod as he passed, clenching his jaw in response to that honest reaction upon seeing his scarred visage. Despite the two months he’d been back on Titan, there were still many on the ship who hadn’t become used to the new topography of his face.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his thick pants and began to pace through the corridors. Much of the ship had been explored in the year since it had left the surface of Caldor II, and Kole let himself drift toward some of the sections he hadn’t visited yet. With all the new recruits joining the Rebellion with every visit of a transport ship, there were more exploration teams than he could keep up with.
He found himself feeling nostalgic for the days when only the initial couple thousand people called the ship home, when he’d been an important part of each exploration trip. His miniscule knowledge of the language of the Ancients had been required many times, to open portals into other parts of the ship and to decipher the functions of the new spaces they discovered. These days, there were hundreds of people on Titan who knew as much of the language as had been deciphered. Kole snorted a laugh at the thought that there were many who knew more of the language than he did now, since they kept discovering new things every day while he focused on different tasks.
Kole drew in a deep breath, releasing it in a long, melancholy sigh. As much as he often wished for it, there was no returning to the halcyon days of the past. He could only do his best to adapt to the present he’d found himself in.
Chapter Two
Kole wasn’t sure how much time he’d spent wandering through Titan before his steps finally took him to a large chamber in the belly of the ship. This was one of the sections only recently explored and opened up for everyone to access. He’d heard people gushing about it in the corridors and during meals, and some part of his brain must have given in to the desire to see it for himself.
There was a thin strip of solid deck plating inside the wide portal that he stepped through, providing a few meters of perceived safety for those who might be overwhelmed by the apparent lack of walls or floor in the remainder of the room. The first people to stumble across what everyone now called the Fishbowl thought they had stumbled across a damaged section that never healed itself. It was a void larger than the apertures created in the docking bays to allow for freighters, trade ships, and transports to come and go. Kole had heard many people laugh over how those initial explorers scrambled to reach the nearest cache of emergency pressure suits, which they stuffed themselves into as quickly as possible in fear that the air would be sucked out of the ship.
When the room had been further explored in the safety of protective gear, it was found that what looked to be a large opening was actually a layer of transparent hull plating. It wasn’t glass, but instead the strange metal that constituted the entirety of Titan taking on a new property in this one chamber. Once it had been declared safe, the Fishbowl had become one of the biggest draws for the people on the ship. It was almost impossible to find it empty no matter what hour of the day one visited.
Which was why Kole wasn’t shocked to find someone else sitting in a comfortable chair that faced the expanse of space visible through the transparent section of hull. The only surprise was the identity of that person, revealed when they turned to greet a new arrival.
“Are you having trouble sleeping as well, Captain Anwynn?”
Kole grunted as he took a seat in a nearby chair. “Sleep has been harder to come by since my time under Hegemony care.”
A head full of salt-and-pepper hair nodded in sympathetic agreement. “It has been the same for me, since my first days in the Pit,” Marius Amorta said.
“Do the nightmares ever go away?” Kole asked quietly, staring out at the multitude of stars that filled the black void of space beyond the ship.
“They don’t,” Marius said sadly. “They do fade, however, with time. They lose their power to affect you so strongly.”
Kole’s jaw clenched, but he wasn’t surprised. One of the therapists on the ship, a specialist in helping the people of the Rebellion recover from their past traumas, had told him the same thing. She’d explained that the best treatment was to face the pain and hatred, to accept what had happened and push through to the other side. He’d tried, but the nightmares refused to loosen their grip and allow him to move past the experiences he’d been forced to endure.
“I come here every night,” Marius said softly, waving a hand to take in the majestic view through the transparent hull. “I sit here, and I think of the billions of people out there going about their lives on planets and space stations that orbit those stars. The galaxy is an immense place, and we are like drops of water in an ocean.”
“That helps you?” Kole asked skeptically, feeling insignificant when he considered such a broad view.
The older man shrugged. “I don’t know if it helps, but it allows me to accept that what I’ve experienced isn’t unique. There are people out there right now, captain, suffering the same pain that you have. Some will endure it just as you were able, but most will succumb, and their stories will end.” Marius reached out to place a hand lightly on Kole’s arm. “It’s how you come out of such experiences that makes you different from everyone else.”
Kole shook his head, not feeling comforted at all. He’d never thought himself unique or special, despite his self-assurance and confidence. He was just one man doing his best to forge a path through the galaxy. His had always been a path filled with freedom that was mixed with an equal amount of danger. Some might say it took courage to live the life he had, but in his mind, it had only required the desire to accept no one’s terms but his own.
The former senator pulled his hand away, releasing a small sigh with the gesture. “Like anything, it takes time, my friend. One day, you’ll be about your work and suddenly realize it’s been a few minutes since you thought about the many horrors you’ve suffered. Then an entire hour will go by without your thoughts turning to those days that are behind you.” He laughed wryly. “Give it twenty years, and you’ll even get to sleep through the night occasionally without the dreams that pull you right back to the past you’re trying to forget.”
Kole’s mouth thinned into a narrow line. He’d always thought himself tough enough to absorb any blow. Dozens of people had died by his hand during the course of his bounty hunting career, and he’d been in fights for his life more times than he could count. Through it all, he’d adapted to the situation and moved on with relative ease when the job was done. He couldn’t understand why he was having such a hard time doing the same thing now. The torture he’d endured had lasted for days, and he’d suffered more pain than any one person should ever be forced to experience in an entire lifetime, but his mind refused to let go and accept that it was over.
“I hear our friends have still been unable to breach Arx to rescue my green sleeves,” Marius said, changing the subject after a long silence. During his time on the prison planet, he had led one of the five groups that had formed within the Pit. Each group had chosen a color to stain the left sleeve of their jumpsuits, and the former senator’s group had used green. That group was full of the political prisoners who didn’t belong there, and Kole had promised the Rebellion would do everything possible to return and rescue them as soon as it was possible.
“Neela said the Hegemony stationed a frigate and two patrol ships in permanent orbit around the nebula now,” Kole said, trying to shove the dark thoughts to the back of his mind. “Any Rebellion ships that travel routes nearby will continue to stop and investigate, but it may be years before the Hegemony pulls back enough for a rescue attempt that doesn’t require risking our full strength.”
