Quartermaine had not been present at the last exec meeting. He’d been up amongst the satellites trying to coax his scout in. The long time out in space with little or no human contact often made a scout’s return difficult but this was more than that. His scout was in trouble. The last messages had been nearly incomprehensible, talk of sirens and Ships with little fact. They conveyed an odd combination of urgency, yearning and fear.
The choice of shepherding Trahern through his summary panel or going out after the scout was an easy one. Debrief had done all that they could with Trahern. His return down the Arm checked out, from the scavengers that had fished him out of the Scarson Eddy thinking that they had scored big with five empty suits, to the miners that took him on out of pity and finally the freighters that never carried an unnecessary ounce. Five years it took, building up strength as he came, to walk through the gates of Base unaided. Contact with the Guard would have seen him returned in a fraction of that time. But not in a state acceptable to the Grey. That was Trahern all over. So was the last battle against the Ships up alongside the dead zone. A Weave of two hundred craft. The marines going out in suits, what a wonder!
Quartermaine would have believed the story without proof. But he had confirmation. His scout, the selfsame man he went out to bring in the other day, had long before reported wreckage spread out along a stretch of dead zone drifting on the edge of the deep. Fragments of spacecraft and suits and small clouds of red mist; that was the fate of the Grey Group. He had kept the knowledge to himself back then; Base needn’t know how successful the Ships had been, a whole Group destroyed. Not when there was the chance they would face them again. But the years went by without sign of the Ships and he had let it lie.
Strange, it hurt more with one back than it did when he thought that he had lost them all.
The Psychs would keep working on Trahern but in the meantime he would be placed on limited duty. The problem was the missing years. Trahern claimed no memory from the time he fused his drives to blast at the Ships to his recovery at the end of the Arm. The Ships had won that last battle, held the field, so to speak. Perhaps they held Trahern as well. The alternative was four years drifting in the void. Not likely that a human could survive that, but Trahern had always been in the ‘not likely’ category. Quartermaine had his hopes. In time, there would be a resolution. However it went, it would be done with care. The Guard owed Trahern that, at least.
But at the hearing Colda had produced regs requiring complete reassessment of capability. The obscure rules were meant to be applied to personnel that had been inactive due to long term illness or disability. The time period was seven years, long enough that these regulations had not been called on in all of Quartermaine’s service with the Guard. Colda’s group pushed the ruling through the meeting. Quartermaine would have stopped them, arguing that Trahern was on mission and active the whole time. He doubted the execs outside Colda’s group knew what was involved. Trahern would have, yet he did not argue his own case, a decision that worried Quartermaine. Complete reassessment included the Box. Trahern had been through the Box twice in his initial training. It was unlikely he would survive a third time.
This was too cunning for Colda alone. It stank of the Houses. A man of limited ability and of no great intelligence, Colda had been placed in Planet Control as a face-saving ploy for a younger son of the Houses, or so Quartermaine had thought. Harmless enough in that service. But then I let PlanCon join the Guard and against all predictions it maintains its cohesion. Just as surprisingly, Colda gains and holds the unit’s command. Now, with nearly a third of our strength under him, a rise to overall command becomes feasible, especially if all his competitors are eliminated. Eventually, control of the Guard passes to him and control of the Passages to the Houses. A bold, opportunistic plan, long in the making but close to fruition now or they would not have tipped their hand. The Guard on Base had been compromised several times in its long history but had always managed to shake loose and return to its true duty. Quartermaine was not sure that would be possible if the Houses got their sticky grip on it.
He continued to stare out across the plain at the Box but his mind was no longer on Trahern. He would need as small a team as possible, of those he could trust. The Armourer had the best tactical mind in the Guard. He would be one. Nata was a possibility. But together they would be too direct, too easy to predict. And, he admitted, too naïve. He needed someone with more cunning, someone able to outdo the Houses at the deviousness and ruthlessness they were known for. He turned to Celene. But how to get her to forgo the psych’s noted impartiality?
*
Celene was surprised by Quartermaine’s stare. Calculation changing to mute appeal? What could he want from me?
The attention of the room shifted to her as she moved down and slightly to the front of the Scholar. Not in his direct gaze, but in the corner of his field of vision, as was polite. Her patient wait for notice probably seemed long to the others in the room.
The Scholar turned his head to her after a few minutes, an exceedingly fast time to come from deep contemplation.
‘Scholar, to speak to Commander Trahern it may be necessary to stop this test immediately. Commander Quartermaine will of course accede to an Inner Belt request,’ said Celene.
An angry ‘What!’ from the back of the room, and a ‘Yes!’ from Aesca rose clear out of the brief hubbub her words generated. Celene would skin her duty psych if he missed the expressions. Her attention was fixed, her head almost as far back as it could go to maintain eye contact with the Scholar.
We will have to change our concept of ‘tall’ now, she thought. A small woman, she was used to lifting her gaze to those around her. Good. Let the others know what it feels like. Trahern was of above average height. She thought of him as tall. His friend, the big marine Mike Mancine, was loftier again, yet both would have to look up to the Scholar. Out of all the people that she was familiar with on Base only Colda’s aide was of comparable height. This detail confirmed a suspicion she had about that individual.
‘Thank you for the consideration, however, no interruption will be necessary,’ said the Scholar. For such a thin man, his voice was quite deep.
The chance to save Trahern was gone as quick as that. Well, at least I tried, thought Celene.
‘An introduction,’ continued the Scholar, ‘Elsewise of Plantaget.’ He accompanied the words with a slight bow, a movement his great height made graceful.
‘Senior Psych Celene,’ she returned. She could not nod or bow and maintain eye contact so she resisted the urge, strange for her. More worrying, she had lost contact with the room, his regard somehow drawing all her attention.
A call from Oulte broke the spell. ‘Look, there are marines down on the plain.’
‘That’s Tollen’s lot,’ said the Armourer shaking his head. ‘Trust the marines to be on the plain today.’
‘How can you tell it’s him from here?’ asked Johnson. ‘They look like ants.’
‘Tollen always hangs back to the left and runs that slightly higher ground. Keeps them all in his sight that way. When they hit the broken ground he will have time to swing around in front of them. When they crawl up the rise he will be standing there yelling at them.’
‘If we had no glass I think we would hear him from here, ha,’ laughed Oulte.
CHAPTER 3: ON THE PLAIN
‘WHAT A SORRY-ARSED GROUP OF SOLDIERS!’ bellowed the sergeant. ‘Squad leader, do you know you have an injured man! No you don’t. You, injured man, get up here and kick him in the arse.’ The young marine lying at the bottom of the rise clutching a bloody leg looked up unbelievingly. It had taken all he had just to keep up with them and the sergeant wanted him to do what?
Sergeant Tollen’s roar lifted him onto his good leg. ‘NOW! GET UP HERE AND KICK HIM IN THE ARSE! I know it will hurt you more than him, so it should. He doesn’t know you’re hurt BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T TOLD HIM! You thought you were a hero struggling along. Wrong! You were not a
t full capability and as such, a risk to your unit!’
Pulled erect, the burly sergeant swung him up the slope and held him so he could pivot on his good leg. After casually pointing at the squad leader’s butt Tollen addressed the whole squad. ‘Signal if you’re hurt. Make sure the squad knows. Marines never leave a man behind but they need to know.’
*
The kick did hurt the injured marine more, but it was the squad leader who would never forget it. These were the lessons Tollen took them out on the plain to learn.
‘Okay! There is a cache here with your water, food and extra munitions. Find it and use it. Remember this is meant to be active. GO TO IT!’
The squad leader tapped out three, including the injured man, to keep lookout, and moved the rest down the rise to start a pattern search. Tollen let them go for about five minutes then called a halt. ‘Not bad Squady, might get by on the Rim. But I’d do it this way.’ Picking the injured man up by his pack he strolled down the slope. ‘He’s not dead so keep him working, that’s good. But that’s not just a watch point. If you are attacked, he has to keep them off you. That’s a lot to ask of a one-legged man.’ Motioning the squad leader out of his position at the centre of the search pattern, he gently placed the injured man down in the vacated spot. ‘You’re in command,’ he told the squad leader, ‘but you don’t have to run everything.’ Pointing to the injured man he said, ‘He centres the search. You take the closest line. If the squad is hit, you drop out of the pattern and direct the fight. He keeps the search going. The pain in his leg will keep him sharp.’
Tollen half-turned and straightened to take in the whole group. ‘If they drive you off a cache on the Rim, you’re going to be in a bad way real fast.’ With that quick bit of reorganisation, he set them off again.
‘Come on now, your man is bleeding to death! Hurry up!’
He kept up a steady stream of abuse to try and rattle them. The cache was well hidden and could easily be overlooked. But the marines worked well, checking the centre for their line and directions, also noting the blood seeping through the self-applied field bandage.
The cache was found and opened, food and water distributed on a rotation keeping three marines on guard at all times. The injured man was being seen to. This is a good squad, thought Tollen.
The wound was ugly. A long sliver of plastron had gone in above the ankle, running up between the muscle and the bone to punch out just below the knee. How to get it out had stopped the two marines attending to the wound. Tollen spun his amour pliers off his belt, leant in, gripped, jerked and straightened up. Holding the bloody stake up for all to see, he called out. ‘Look what Pegleg was carrying! Could make a decent weapon out of this.’ He’d seen that before, crude blades worked from shards of plastron made brittle from exposure to space. This one was big enough to have come off the corner of a container. Lying here on the plain who knows how long just so it could injure a good man.
He played his belt laser over it, burning off the blood the way they would on the Rim then kept the heat up until the edges softened. He tossed it down and stamped it into the ground, folding it with the toe of his boot until it was a harmless lump.
Satisfied, he turned his attention to the wounded man. Nodding the others out of the way, he took over, powdering and bandaging the leg as he talked. ‘On the Rim, a blood trail like that will draw all kinds of things you don’t want to have to deal with. Up there you stop and seal it, quick as you can. Don’t see many like this up there though. This is more like the wounds you get in a space action. Bits of metal and plastron are always flying around when you blast and board. There a bit of blood doesn’t matter. You just carry on. Still let your squad know, though.’ Tollen lifted his head and called across to the squad leader. ‘When you have to blast and board, put Pegleg here up the front. He’s mastered the technique.’
Standing up, Tollen eased his pack and lifted his helmet to rub his short hair. He always wore the same gear as his trainees. Kept them straight. Any of those clever enough to see he ran the easy ground were clever enough to keep their mouths shut about it.
‘Okay, pack up that cache and get ready to move out.’
To make sure that the sergeant knew that he’d learned his lesson, the squad leader called out for any injuries. Unable to resist making sure that everyone else knew that he was ‘making sure’, one of the others called back ‘I think I've had too much sun, Sir.’
Making sure they didn’t forget him, Tollen jumped in. ‘Well Sunstroke, I’ve got just the thing for you. You see that Pegleg over there. He’s going to be your parasol for the rest of the day. Throw him up on your shoulders. Pegleg, if he opens his mouth again, you shove your foot in it. Your good one, not that bloody wrecked one.’
Tollen moved them up onto the easy ground. He would usually run squads along Tracka-dan’s fence. The old fellow would come out and abuse them. A great show but all in fun. The shock of it was good for the trainees, something different and unexpected. But the old cadreman had not looked well the last time Tollen had seen him. Better let him be.
Tollen swung the squad wide of the farm, pointing out a route that would take them eventually around to the Box. Once they were moving well he left them and cut across the middle ground. He slowed then stopped, eyes on the Box the whole time. Trahern was in the Box and that wasn’t good. The Box could screw you up and Trahern was already screwed up enough. Tollen had pulled strings to get most of the escort duty on the Grey. He knew the regs and the reasons for them but there were things he had needed to find out for himself, face-to-face, not second or third hand. His old squad, his first squad, had gone with the Greys. And never came back.
Specialist Celene had seen right through him the first time she found them together. ‘Have a care, Sergeant,’ she said when she had him aside. ‘What you discover may not be to your liking.’ She had been right in a way.
Talk had come easy between them on the escort, the serious stuff mixed in with a light banter. ‘You were gold-rated, weren’t you?’
‘That’s right, Sergeant.’
‘They picked a gold off the floor at Armitage’s. There was a marine leaning on the bar.’
‘That’s unusual, a marine drinking standing up.’
‘A gold and two yellows from the Blue Cadre and him still standing.’
Then he found out that Trahern had been the one that had stepped in to save Mike. He owed him for that.
‘Sergeant Dawes led them out, with rockets on. It was all we had left.’
‘In suits? Out there. Against Ships? Couldn’t you think of a better way to kill them?’
‘The choice was their own, but I would have ordered it if I had thought of it.’
The Grey hadn’t tried to step away from it, nor take credit for it.
‘They spoke of you before they went out. ‘Tollen’s luck’ they called it. Good and bad at the same time.’
That meant a lot. To know that his friends had thought of him there at the end. He knew what they meant; good that he lived, bad that he missed going with them.
He didn’t know how much they were telling Trahern in debrief. Usually information only went one way there. The Grey deserved to know their side of it so he told him, bugger the rules. As soon as he had started talking, it had come back as if it was yesterday.
‘Burnett’s Group met the Ships near Triamo, fought them all the way back to the Passages. The Ships were fierce, intent on a breakthrough. They had the numbers but Burnett held, expecting your Group to come from behind. He couldn’t see through the Ships, there were that many of the bastards, and they’d cleaned up the sensors he’d set out so he didn’t know you weren’t there, that you were never going to be there. The Group held on so long that they didn’t have enough left to get clear. We would have lost them all if it hadn’t been for Quartermaine. He wasn’t part of the battle plan but he stripped Base and came out. Brought everything that could fly and a lot that couldn’t. You see, he pulled the satellites off Base Planet.
No one else would have thought of that, or dared do it even if they had. Left Base bare!
‘Later Quartermaine said it was simple, transports and workships without a gun on them, all that firepower up in the sky. We got there just in time. Ships were starting to break through. Quartermaine threw out the satellites in a forward ring, brought his fighting craft up to plug the base. What was left of Burnett’s stayed out on the edge mixed in with the satellites. The sats recognised them as friendlies, gave them cover. The Ships were blasted, running down that cordon of fire, but they wouldn’t stop. Kept coming in waves. Never saw so many ships. The screens were white there were so many.’ The images in his head took over and he stopped talking.
After some time Trahern asked, ‘You were there? They said you were in Med. That’s why you missed our embarkation.’
‘You knew that, heh? Well, Quartermaine took me, in a chair, as his shadow.’”
That had brought a reaction from the Grey. ‘Quartermaine Wove?’
‘Yeah, he Wove, held the bastards and they fell back. They came one more time. We held again then Quartermaine pushed back. Took the Weave up the cordon, firepower like you wouldn’t believe! Like a buzz saw up a laser! Luckily it broke the Ships before it broke him. I had to tap him out, shadow’s job, you know.
‘That was the end of it. The Ships withdrew and we haven’t seen much of them since. What was left of us limped back. Less than two in ten of Burnett’s Group and only half of what Quartermaine brought made it back. Lucky we held the field and could pick up our wounded, otherwise it would have been worse.
‘Burnett didn’t make it. The Far Rangers were hit hardest of the cadres. Most of the marines were okay, they’d handled the satellites. Lost a few as gunners on some of the modified craft.
‘No one knew what happened to your lot, bugged out said some, lost on some fool move of yours said others. After a while we stopped caring.’
The Return of the Grey Page 4