The Return of the Grey

by Robert Lee Henry

  His helm broke the surface. Dirt slid off his faceplate. He was facing back up the slope. High up, mag cannon blasts were pulverising the ground in a gradually rising band. Suited figures followed the band’s ascent, readying for an assault on the ridge top. Mike swung his arms and kicked to bring his head around. The valley floor was before him now, but the air was so laden that he could barely make it out. Shapes moved in the murk. A swirl thinned the dust and he saw the men. They saw him too, their helmets turning slightly as they marched by, double time, weapons slung. Not marines. One would have stepped out of line to pull him free by now. Enemy!

  He clicked his jaw to open his comm. ‘Centre. Black Hands on the slope below the cannon impact. Only twenty metres down. More enemy on the valley floor, moving fast, in force, to the east.’ The orange flicker above his eyebrows told him his transmitter was functioning and that he had been received. The plan grew as he gave the orders. ‘Anyone left of the squads on the centre front jump into the talus slides. On my count at five. Work your way to the bottom. Don’t engage. Centre ridgetop, grenades to just past the cannon blast line on my count at ten. Flanks, lob for the eastern valley floor. Delaney, take the reserves and go down the centre on twenty. Make for the spine and go for the cannons. Anyone from the front that makes it to the valley floor follow me up to the cannons. One… two.’ At three, he was clear of the talus. He kept his hands behind his back. With all the dust, the enemy wouldn’t know him from one of their own. At six, he stepped through a gap in their file and started running back up against the flow. Arms pumping, he made the repeated clenched fist signal that the scouts had reported as the enemy’s sign for incoming. It transferred their alarm from his strange appearance to their own welfare. They only had time to hunch their shoulders before the first grenades hit, luckily behind him. The cannons were up ahead, on the start of the spine where they could command the south ridge. Under their cover, men were streaming out of the pass and down into the valley. The cannons were critical. They had broken this battle open for the enemy. Maybe won it.

  Probably our own guns, thought Mike. Captured early in the campaign. Mag cannons were devastating on the Rim. The extremely powerful field on the high velocity projected matter drew particles out of the iron-rich Rim dust in its wake, causing additional fields only slightly weaker in intensity to spin up and follow. The impact of the charge could be increased ten-fold. What was a powerful weapon employed in precision strikes between craft in space became a brute mauler of men and stone in the atmosphere of the larger Rim fragments. The enemy had learned that to their cost. But learn they had.

  Here, the marines’ initial attack had closed the end of the pass; the fire from the south ridge demolishing the enemy front ranks, the main mass held behind the crush of motionless men, the advance limited to a small number of red suits trickling around the edges into the valley, like blood from around a clot.

  It had looked good; a superior field of fire, the enemy only able to engage on a limited front, reasonable cover and an open line for supply, reinforcement or retreat. The Armourer would have been proud of him. Then the enemy cannon had been brought forward, staggered up through the ranks in the pass, two always firing while the other was moved. The battle turned. The marines were neutralised, their positional advantage reversed. To be on the front side of the ridge was death. To show yourself on the ridgetop was death.

  ‘Don’t give up until you are dead, and even then, wait five minutes,’ was an old marine saying. Tollen’s probably, thought Mike. What he was doing now was crazy, running through the enemy. But he wasn’t into his five minutes yet so he kept going.

  ‘Disrupt them. Destroy their timing,’ had been more of the Armourer’s advice. ‘Their battle control is held tightly by their commanders. They plan and analyse well, but they can’t react quickly. Look for what is critical. Change the battle. Chaos suits us. Squad to squad, we have the advantage.’

  How about one-to-one, or to be honest, one to one hundred? That was the number between him and the guns. But he was on the slope below now, swinging up towards the pass. The air was clearer up ahead. He could see the men working the cannons, and to the side, a command group, a tall thin figure in the midst. Arms were pointing in his direction. He pointed back and fired. An easy shot, even on the run. From the command group, he swung his fire onto the cannons. Around him, men leapt off the path and hurried to unsling their weapons. He leapt with them, dropping a grenade as he went. More confusion. Below him, they didn’t know what had happened. Those turning to target him from the far side of the path looked into the grenade blast. Suited men next to him rose only to draw fire from their own men above. He crawled through the dust to a jumble of boulders lying where the sweeping descent into the valley abutted the steeper slope of the spine.

  Twenty. Delaney would be on the way. The steep slope hid the cannons from his view. He had to get close enough to disrupt the guns. Nothing for it. Up he went, legs pumping, falling forward to his knees and elbows at times but never stopping. The first grenade he threw came back down past him, detonating far enough below not to hurt him, the shock wave actually helping to propel him up the slope. The next grenade cleared the lip, a shower of stone and metal telling him it had got among the guns.

  Impacts on his suit and the stone around him became more frequent as he was targeted by troops in the head of the pass then died as they were in turn hit by marine fire from the ridge. The cannon fire must have eased to let his men get their heads up. When he crawled over the edge he saw why. The rear mag cannon had been destroyed, the carrier over on its side. Too much damage for the grenade alone. It must have set off the carrier’s power source. The middle cannon was repositioning, trying to come around to meet the newly perceived threat from the valley. The blast from the first had loosened the ground and they were having trouble. Only the lead cannon was still firing and it had swung to target the eastern ridge top where Mike’s cover fire had just come from.

  High up the centre, Delaney and the Good Squad came out of the dust to burst through the startled Black Hands. Mike threw the last of his grenades back toward the pass then unclipped his armour hook and ran for the middle cannon. The panicked crew abandoned the platform, except for one who tried to swing the barrel all the way around. He was a fraction too late. The armour hook with all of Mike’s weight behind it cleaved him from shoulder to hip. Mike’s momentum carried him past the cannon’s support and into the curved plate shielding, the contact hard enough to stun him. He caught the gun control with one arm and slowly pulled himself up. Peering over the armour, he saw that the crew at the front cannon were bailing out, marines from the ridge almost on top of them. Strikes on the steel and on his suit reminded him that the bulk of the enemy was behind him. He swung around to find the cannon lined up with the length of the pass. Grabbing the other control arm he opened fire. The gun bucked but his weight kept it on line. The enemy soldiers charging at him were pulverised, a freak wind splashing him with their gore. Those further back didn’t fare any better. Packed shoulder to shoulder, they couldn’t fight, could barely move. Their own supply sleds blocked the far end of the pass. Mike wondered at the confidence of the enemy commanders. That was his last thought for a while.

  The cannon tore into the massed troops, filling the air with bloody debris that was swirled and shot on and compounded until it took on an existence of its own. The screaming sky seemed to dip down, drawn by the horrible amalgam. Mike howled along with it. Lightning struck out of the looming murk. Thunder punctuated the sweeps of his aim. He didn’t stop until the gun was exhausted, out of power. Suited arms pulled his from the controls. The howling in his mind faded with the storm in the pass. He could see and hear and feel again.

  ‘Mike! Mike!’ In his comm, urgent.

  ‘I’m here,’ he answered, opening his palms to those around him, their arms falling away in response.

  ‘We’ve stopped them at the east end of the valley. There is no way for them to go except back up at the guns. Th
ey are forming up down there.’

  Delaney’s voice, Mike recognised. He looked around. Marines held the lead cannon. It was roaring, blasting men and dirt into a barrier somewhere on the valley floor out of his sight. As much as he didn’t want to, Mike knew that he had to look. He swung his legs up over the plating beside him and dropped to the ground then walked to the edge of the spine, too tired of life to worry about getting hit.

  The enemy had managed to get about five hundred men down into the valley ready to flank Mike’s squads. A fine stratagem that could have carried the battle, allowing the other thousand in the pass to roll in behind the rest of the marine force on the Rim, to repeat the flanking motion on a grander scale. But it hadn’t gone that way. More than half the men in the valley were down and the rest were as good as dead, trapped below the cannons. They would be destroyed like the troops in the pass.

  There was movement below. A small group, maybe fifty strong of the two hundred left alive, were charging forward. A smaller lot made for the valley walls to the east.

  ‘Close the east end. Hold fire at the front,’ Mike ordered. Standing clear on the top of the slope, he raised both arms to the height of his shoulders and thrust his palms out forwards. The advance below halted. He dropped one arm, then opened and closed the fingers of the hand on his outstretched arm three times. A universal signal for a comm channel. His tapped his comm up and heard them click on.

  ‘I’m sick of killing today,’ he said. ‘Drop your weapons and you will live.’

  *

  Kayrooz walked up the slope toward the commanding figure. He stepped carefully to avoid the narrow rivulets of blood that were finding a way down the path. He had never seen the like in all his battles. The blood would soak into a pocket of dust and he would think it was stopping only to see it well up and rush free and clear over the stone and go on down to the next hollow.

  He walked in a daze. The devastation had somehow distanced him from his senses. As though the Gods had taken him aside to show him the extremes of their handiwork. A quirk of their humour to allow him to view with proper awe their accomplishments before he was placed back inside events where fear and horror would cloud his mind. He lifted his eyes to the form at the lip of the pass. Overlarge yet man-like. A suited man, big but familiar. A soldier, a warrior like me. He hoped this dream would break soon on some substance of normality.

  The battle had been won. He had led his men into the valley under the cover of the cannons and the dust, more than five hundred of them, easily outnumbering their opponents. They had only to cross the southern ridge to turn the enemy’s flank. He had looked back, one last time before giving the order, and that had been the end. If I hadn’t looked, it wouldn’t have happened, was his strange thought now. It was only one man. He had seen him on the slope below the cannons, fired at him, to no avail. The distance was too great for accuracy on the Rim, yet it was not that alone. There were impacts all around the scrambling figure from closer firing but Kayrooz knew that nothing would stop him. The Gods of the Rim did not recognise sides. They wanted more death, more blood. And the cannons had delivered it. They had chewed up his men and spat them into the landscape. He hated the mag cannons. They seemed to delight in tearing men apart. The cannons, the Rim Gods loved and shrieked along with. All else was there to be ground to a pulp.

  If I hadn’t looked, it wouldn’t be. His steps slowed. Close now, Kayrooz closed his eyes and wished. He will be a man in a hardsuit with weapons that I know. There will be others around him. Metal and stone and machines. Tactical, explainable. But when he opened his eyes his nightmare held. The figure in front of him was covered in gore. The larger bits still leaked thin blood that ran in the groves and craters on the scarred suit, down to join the flow under their feet. Kayrooz’s mind would not accept what he saw in the pass beyond. He concentrated on the closer horror. ‘Terms?’ he forced himself to ask. What would the Rim require now? He knew to the bone that it was not done with him yet.

  ‘Leave your weapons and walk away,’ it said.

  ‘Where?’ he asked, still caught in his dream.

  ‘East down the valley until you come to a large break in the south ridge. Go through that out onto the plain. You will be under our air cover there. Make contact and they will direct you to a trans-shipment area. After that, off the Rim.’

  Off the Rim? The possibility astounded him. Is this some trick of the Gods? To prepare me for another cruel lesson. Or have I snuck this into the dream, hoping it would become reality also?

  The blood-daubed being mistook his hesitation. ‘If you wish to carry on, you may walk back through the pass to rejoin your force.’ Dripping gauntlets lifted the gory helm to reveal a human visage.

  Kayrooz removed his own helmet and his dream merged with his surroundings, the reality sharpening. The sky above howled and everywhere was the tang of blood and ozone. Red dust stuck to his face. He met the enemy’s gaze. He saw compassion there. Life. He is offering us life.

  ‘How do we know you won’t fire on us?’ asked a voice over the comm, sounding hollowly from the helms in their hands.

  Bley, one of the Black Hands. Kayrooz knew that carping tone well. The enemy leader ignored the question.

  ‘Send some of your men with us, mixed in like, till we have gone a ways,’ offered the Black Hand.

  The big man lifted an eyebrow at that. Kayrooz was embarrassed but he had a request of his own. ‘Without weapons we will be prey to the creatures of the Rim, especially the wounded.’

  ‘Keep your sidearms but nothing heavier.’

  Where did this mercy come from? wondered Kayrooz. It is alien to this place. For it to exist told of perseverance, a keeping of man’s honour in defiance of the cruel Rim Gods. We are better than them, was his profane thought.

  ‘We accept your terms. I will put the choice of route to the men,’ said Kayrooz. ‘It may be that some would go each way,’ he added apologetically. ‘I will not command on this.’

  The big marine nodded.

  Kayrooz pulled his boots from the mud with a squelch. He was reluctant to break their shared gaze. ‘Thank you,’ he said then turned back down toward the men in the valley.

  ‘The sky is coming down. If you want to use the pass you best be quick,’ said the deep voice behind him.

  CHAPTER 41: THE RUN SOUTH

  Mike had not been able to take his own advice. The heights he needed to cross were higher than the pass and he wanted to be well clear of the ridges before the sky got any lower but the enemy had been slow to move off. It took a burst over their heads to stop their debating. Less of the enemy had tried the pass than he thought, and many couldn’t make it all the way through. The commander he had spoken to only made it half way. He had come back last, his helm still in his hand, mud and gore plastered to his knees. There had been no recognition in his eyes. Red tears ran down his cheeks.

  ‘Pull up on the flat,’ ordered Delaney over the comm.

  Mike’s legs stumped onto the level ground. It took a few more steps to stop and keep his balance. He sank to one knee and gently lowered the burden from his right shoulder, then tilted to the left to lay down the other. Wojo and Terri. They had been found on the valley floor, at the foot of the talus slopes, weapons in their hands but no enemy dead around them. Their aim had been elsewhere. Not all of his covering fire had come from the ridge top. Mike wouldn’t let anyone else carry them. There was a tap on his shoulder then someone lifted off his helm and offered a water bottle. Tane. He moved past Mike to kneel and adjust the bodies.

  ‘I would have been with them but I got jammed in the slide. The Good Squad pulled me out as they came by so I went down the spine with them,’ said Tane. He turned to Mike, hands on his thighs. ‘Terri is one of mine Mike. I’ll take her from here.’

  Mike shook his head, no.

  ‘Mike. The scouts are standing by. Waiting. There are decisions to be made. You got to command, Mike.’

  Mike shook his head again. I don’t want to think. ‘D
elaney can get us out.’

  ‘Sure he can Mike. Any of us can do that. But that’s not enough. You know that. We need to know if we are going at them again and where.’

  Mike marvelled at the marine’s resilience. We’re only hours out of battle, our dead aren’t cold yet, the wounded are still bleeding, and he is willing to go again. Mike gazed around him at the marines scattered over the flat. Most of them looked back at him expectantly. A pair in tightly strapped fatigues, not hardsuits, fidgeted close by. The scouts. He waved them in. Delaney came from the other side, having completed a circuit of the party.

  ‘How do we stand, Sergeant?’ Mike asked.

  ‘One hundred six fit, seven wounded, twenty nine dead,’ answered Delaney.

  It had been ten wounded when they left the pass. It will soon be less, maybe all of them if we keep this pace, thought Mike. ‘What is this ground like?’ he asked the scouts.

  ‘We are over the highest. You can go pretty much any way from here,’ said Roli, the scar on his cheek twisting.

  ‘Except north or northwest,’ laughed his partner, Collin.

  ‘Yah, northwest would not be so good, it’s coming down out there,’ said Roli.

  ‘It was clipping the ridge tops,’ said Collin.

  ‘Almost got us.’ The scar made Roli’s smile seem huge.

  These scouts are crazy, thought Mike and not for the first time. All from the second contingent, they ran the surface in pairs, no suits, no heavy weapons. ‘Slows us down too much,’ they would say when questioned.