The Return of the Grey

by Robert Lee Henry

  Barry was glad of the company but not sure of the logic. How could you shoot fear?

  ‘Okay. Open your eyes. Now, you didn’t point over that way at all,’ said Tollen, indicating their left. ‘Your arm was up this way for a long time though.’ High and to the right. ‘There is bad ground out there. That’s what you’d be feeling. We came around it. No one goes into that ground unless they are forced in. It is old ground, something rare on the Rim. A place that hasn’t been hit for a time. Things crawl in there to live. Things we don’t want to mess with. Anybody with sense avoids the badlands.’ The old marine spat to mark his words. ‘But then, yah, then, your arm came down, pointing there.’ This time he brought up his sidearm to point. ‘Just there at the base of the ridge.’

  To their right but close, not far off the path he would have taken to the mess hut.

  ‘See that loose rock,’ said Tollen. ‘We’ve gotten sloppy. That wasn’t there when we set up. It was clean stone or we would have cleared it. That stuff has come down with the shakes. Now there is enough to hide some creeping thing out of them badlands. Let’s see!’

  Fear froze Barry again. We’re not going out there! Please.

  ‘Shade your eyes,’ the sergeant directed. Then he fired on the stone, broadband laser, not where Barry expected, further along to the right where the rubble thinned. ‘Just getting it ready, heating it up,’ whispered Tollen. ‘Now, watch smart.’ He switched his aim back to the rubble near the path and fired, bolts of concentrated energy stepping along through the loose stone, blasting fragments into the air. Suddenly the stone heaved in a run that ended where it thinned. Something came partway out then slipped back only to burst out again, this time curling and flopping violently. ‘Got you, you bastard!’ cried Tollen. Laser light bathed it. Edges flamed as it twisted and writhed. The desperate motions waned under the burning beam, finally ending in an inanimate shrivel.

  Like paper in a fire, thought Barry. It’s not more than that now.

  The door to the mess hut opened and heads peered out. ‘If any of you idiots steps outside without a suit on, I’ll shoot you too!’ bellowed Tollen.

  They probably think that that is me on the ground smoking, thought Barry.

  ‘Let’s take a look,’ said the sergeant, stepping forward.

  No! shouted Barry in his mind, but he had a death grip on Tollen’s suit so out he went.

  Tollen kicked it with his boot, a thing about the size of a throw rug.

  Very much like a rug, thought Barry. Wide and flat … at least it must have started that way. Like thick leather with a fringe. With little curled things like designs all over, like little mouths. He couldn’t look anymore.

  ‘Have you eaten yet?’ asked Tollen. ‘No? Let’s go then. This will keep until there is better light.’

  They marched away, Barry once more in tow.

  ‘See. I told you we could work it down and shoot it,’ said Tollen glancing back over his shoulder. His wide smile told of his pleasure that the lesson had gone so well.

  ‘You can let go of my suit now,’ said the sergeant when they reached the door of the mess hut.

  CHAPTER 44: OULTE’S RUN

  ‘Hold on! Hold on!’ cried Oulte over the comm. ‘Stay on my wings!’ There was a gap opening ahead and they could punch through. ‘Full power!’ He felt a strong field develop and pull them toward the mass to their left. Gravity. They were sideways to it and it was winning. ‘Roll ninety degrees right then lift toward the gap!’ This was hard on his wingmen. He did not need to tell them to centre on him. They had been flying formation for hours now. He rotated slowly, giving them time to roll and arc to stay on his wings. They had to be on his wings to see what he was doing and do the same a split second later. It had got them this far together. Safely.

  They shot through the gap and into the familiar black of open space. The feeling of relief was so great he would have pissed himself if he had any water left. ‘Power down. Let’s see where we are.’ They glided while their sensors probed the space around them.

  Oulte studied his screens. As he watched, heavy colours representing matter and fields bulged and impinged on the light grey that was their clear space. ‘Damn! We are not through. We are still in the Rim.’ He eased his helmet back off his forehead. ‘I may have killed us.’

  ‘Hell, Oulte. We should have died a thousand times already, we are lucky to have made it this far,’ said Chris over the comm.

  ‘Yah, but how was that flying, heh?’ called Zammit from his right wing. ‘Did you ever think you would fly like that?’

  ‘That was the best! I wish the other Rangers could have seen that. They would make a song about it,’ laughed Chris.

  No song now, thought Oulte. No one will know. Just another three craft lost on the Rim. He sighed. This place may be the finish of the Far Rangers. But we tried. We did our best and won what sky we could. Quartermaine chose well. This was a job for the Rangers. You need to take risks to learn. There will always be one risk too many.

  His one-too-many had come that morning, if there was such a thing as morning on the Rim. It was early into a period of light anyway. They were patrolling the western low, a long wide zone of plains, badlands and rolling hills. Enough sky for manoeuvring, it was good ground for the Guard and the Armourer had employed it to defend his western flank. But there were fears that the enemy might try to go further west using valleys behind the high east-west ridges that terminated the zone in the north. Mike Mancine had taken ten squads and gone at a run to stop any such flanking attempt. Two days and no word. The Armourer was ready to move at that alone. The Rangers kept craft in the air looking for scouts.

  Oulte’s trio was coming up on the northern end of the zone, the dark in the west the only hint of trouble, when the collision occurred. The ground shifted right from under them, down and away, in an instant, even as fast as they were flying. Must be big, was his first thought as he swung northeast in the start of the looping turn that would bring them safely back down the zone. There is open sky over the ridges, was his second. Only driven apart by the initial shock, the sane side of his brain said. It will all close down soon. The wild side of his mind saw the chance. Slip over the ridges to the north, find the enemy and get back before everything comes together. Give the Armourer the information he needs and he will win this war. Worth the risk.

  His wingmen followed him over automatically. If they were surprised they never had time to voice it. From then on they were flying for their lives, nearly clipping the tops of the ridges as the sky came down, eventually forced into the valleys, running east away from the dark. Electro-magnetic storms flashed past them rendering their sensors useless. Oulte flew by sight and by feel. He made a hundred right decisions to keep them alive, cutting out of valleys before they ended, grabbing what little sky remained to swing them away from the high ground. Then all ground fell away and they arced into a massive wall of turbulence. Their sensors recovered to scream warnings of impending collisions. Their flying became more desperate, just one avoided hit after another. The thought came to Oulte that they were finally truly flying the Rim, out amongst the fragments. He lost track of time, submerged in reaction. Then the sensors had found the gap.

  ‘What do you think Oulte? A song or a monument?’ asked Zammit. ‘The three of us standing together. The Rangers could sit beneath and drink toasts to us.’

  ‘It would be better to have our names on one of Nowra’s trees, and best if we could carve them there ourselves,’ answered Oulte. On his screens the light grey was almost gone, forced into a narrow bubble. The edge of one screen was blank. Dead zone, Oulte realised. There was dead zone along the back of the Rim! We almost made it. Almost flew through the whole Rim. Surely that is worth a song. I will settle for dying with you two, as proudly, was his unvoiced thought. He keyed his comm. ‘Zammit. Chris. One last run. We will follow this space down to the edge of the dead zone. Maybe it opens out again.’

  ‘I am with you Oulte,’ said Zammit.

 
; ‘Me too,’ said Chris.

  ‘Full power,’ called Outle and led them on.

  CHAPTER 45: A GENERAL’S TENT

  Steamsetter moved silently through the tent, searching. Quiet wasn’t needed. The Armourer would be out for at least six hours. It would take an explosion to wake him. But quiet was Steamsetter’s habit. A big man, he had always been extra careful with his movement, afraid of damaging the small and delicate things that seemed to make up the world around him. Even here, in the familiar setting where duty kept him almost all hours of the day, it was the long periods of motionlessness that he enjoyed most, standing beside the doorway, or behind the table looking over the Armourer’s shoulder.

  Before the girl’s death, it had been the making of things that gave him pleasure, but that joy seemed to have left him. He built only from necessity now. The rack for the Armourer’s suit was made just to get the pieces out from underfoot. Steamsetter had somehow gained responsibility for the furnishings as well as the man. There was a stage in the Armourer’s drinking where the components of the suit would attract his enmity and, if he was capable, his abuse, contributing to the disarray of the remaining fixtures. Steamsetter had hoped, that complete, on the rack, the suit would be viewed more impassively, or at least be of a size and weight to preclude easy animation. The Armourer’s reaction when he first sited the display had been a surprise. It had actually sobered him. A one-off effect, Steamsetter was disappointed to find out.

  ‘So. A general’s tent, this is to be,’ had been the Armourer’s comment. From then on each hut they occupied was called the same. ‘The general’s tent’. It didn’t matter that they were all of blown foam, same as the rest of the Guard’s structures. In the following days, the Armourer had him make a large table for maps, and a box the width of the table and half its length that also sat on top. With sides a hand high, the box was filled with sand. It became the job of Oulte’s pilots and the marine scouts to sculpt the surface of the Rim in the box, of the Rim fragment they occupied that is. The rest of the Rim was a mystery.

  Battle took them across the fragment at pace so the scene in the box was often changed. Steamsetter had worked out a method of spraying the surface with a quick setting polymer, then lifting the form off to render the box usable again. The forms were stored and were brought out if battle moved back their way. The Armourer hated not knowing the ground and drove the scouts and Rangers unmercifully. The latter had not fared well and were now well below half strength.

  Steamsetter walked to the suit, unclipped the chest plate and looked inside. A good place to hide a bottle. Empty. This binge had gone on two days and had to stop. It wouldn’t if the Armourer had another bottle hidden. Steamsetter had already checked the other hiding places. He was sure there was at least one more bottle.

  It was the waiting that did it, set off the binges. Otherwise, it wasn’t bad. Social drinks on the benches outside, maybe an hour or two of heavier drinking on occasion, but never more than an evening lost. Or whatever went for an evening here on the Rim.

  ‘You are not his maiden aunt. Don’t try to stop him drinking. It can’t be done anyway,’ advised Tollen when he had given him this job. ‘Just look after him and let the others know when he is not capable.’ The others were Captain Chalkley, Oulte, Tollen himself if he was there, or Mancine or any of the marine sergeants. They always made sure there was more than one person ready to take over command. ‘Now, I know that this sounds like a hell of an accommodation for someone in the Guard and especially here on the Rim, but this man has a brilliance that we need. The drinking may not only be our trade off for that, it is probably his as well. You can’t use men as ciphers without harm.’ A long speech for the old marine.

  Steamsetter moved to the box. Here, men weren’t even numbers or code, merely marks in the sand. The Armourer spent almost as many hours in study after a battle as before. Steamsetter would see him trail his fingers through the model, imprinting traces of movements, mimicking the flow of the conflict, trying different combinations to see if the outcome could be altered. Not just to understand the enemy but to see if he could have minimised the losses, Steamsetter was sure. To see if it could have been done better. When he was satisfied he had learned all he could, he would smooth away the marks of his men.

  The box was ready now for a new battle. The topography of the ground around their present position was well displayed. Only the far north-western corner of the box was featureless, a gentle rise in the sand the indication of their lack of knowledge. Usually it was left flat until the scouts had penetrated. The Armourer must have some supposition, some preconception, to have mounded it like that, thought Steamsetter. Another possibility came to mind and he dug his fingers in. A bottle, brandy. Always knew he was clever.

  CHAPTER 46: PEG’S TRAVELS

  Peg cut the cloth from around his calf and rolled it up, careful not to get any blood on his hands. It was a good wound, a laser burn, and it wept rather than ran.

  ‘Look, Sunny. All the way through.’ Peg put pads from his belt pouch over both the openings and wrapped them with a short length of bandage. It was the same leg he had injured in training on the plain of Base. This wound went through the muscle. The other had gone up along the bone and he remembered it as being much more painful. Peg wondered if it was going to be an unlucky leg. Sunny would know.

  Peg dug one-handed into his pack and pulled out the good stuff. Sunny had come across it in the kitchens back at one of their first camps. Thin plastic film in a roll. The cooks used it to cover food, keep the dust off. Sunny and he had found it perfect for covering wounds when you were on the run. Wrapped tight over a small bandage you could just about seal a flesh injury. An open wound was an invitation to dinner on the Rim. Bandages were almost as bad, leaking trace into the air or dirt around you. Wrapped with the good stuff you could carry on, hours before sweat or blood beat the seal, and then you could quickly rewrap and go again. Once you were in a safe place you could air the wound. He and Sunny had had some heal completely on a scout. This little one wouldn’t bother him. It might kill the others though. That was his hope.

  He had walked right into them, his amazement at his own carelessness holding him there long enough for them to raise their weapons, sidearms only or he would have been dead. Black Hands, five of them, all this way back, not a day out of the Armourer’s camp. Peg had been heading there himself, back from an uneventful scout up the centre. No sign of the enemy there, where the Armourer wanted them. To find some here was a surprise, on this side of the western low. How many more could there be? ‘Better work that out later, heh, Sunny. I best get rid of this lot first.’

  The Black Hands were hunting him. He had gone slow and dragged his leg to bring them on, up through the broken ground and in along this narrow defile. The valley continued, bending around a low shelf of rock to rise and go out of site in the dust. The dust had been heavy for days, stirred up by the collision over in the west. It was one of the things that had lulled him, that and the nearness of the camp. The creatures of the Rim went deep when there was a hit coming. Somehow they could sense it. Took them a few days afterwards to get back close to the surface where they could be troublesome. A few days when you could move fast. Now he hoped that time was up. There was a long shadow at the base of the rock shelf, a shadow he would go wide around at any other time. An overhang, such places were highly prized on the Rim, and highly contested. Who knows what this one shelters? thought Peg. Let’s see if the Black Hands can find out. ‘Them, not me, hey, Sunny.’

  Peg picked up the soiled cloth cut from his pant leg. He would need that. Slowly, carefully, he made his way up the slope to the side, one foot or hand at a time, no rhythm or regularity to his touch. Up and across, onto the bare rock of the ridge above the overhang. He braced himself then tossed the wadded cloth out into the dusty air. It settled in front of the shadow. With even more care than before, he resumed his slow advance. He stopped when he felt a trembling in the rock, a grating barely perceptible thro
ugh his fingertips. He was nearly clear of the overhang, a few more steps would bring him around the bend. He waited, scarcely breathing. The rock quieted.

  There was motion down the cut, the way he had come. Forms darted through the dust. Peg wanted to talk to Sunny but didn’t dare. Feel them, not me, he prayed to the rock. One limb at a time, he crept around the bend.

  He was nearly to the head of the defile when a flash of laser light sent him diving to the ground. More followed, accompanied by the sound of concussions. They rang all around him. Disoriented, he rolled, searching for his attackers. The firefight died. He lay still in the dust. Nothing. Reflections and echoes, he realised, from the bend below.

  Peg came back around on the far side of the cut, high up on the opposite ridge, in time to see the last suit being dragged into the shadow at the base of the overhang. He assumed it to be the last. There were no traces of the others. The Black Hand was still alive, kicking feebly. Broad dark bands, like heavy cable, had already pinched in the torso of the suit. The figure was dragged back almost sitting up, slowly disappearing into the dark. It must have jammed on the rock because the boots stuck out of the shadow for a long moment until with a scraping, crushing noise they were jerked out of sight. A helm rolled out into the light with the lop-sided curling motion that suggested there was something inside it. A black tendril whipped out and snaked it back into the dark before Peg could see what. ‘His head, I guess, Sunny. And I better get out of here myself before I lose mine.’

  Peg dropped down off the ridge at the start of the broken ground. He picked up the Black Hands’ tracks and followed them back to the site of their first meeting. Five Black Hands, with nothing but sidearms, wandering our ground. What were they doing? What should I do? Report in or backtrack them? Curiosity overcame sense and he started back along the enemies’ tracks, running lightly, feet barely touching the ground, his sidearm in his palm out to the side. ‘Let’s go, Sunny,’ he called. Peg didn’t wait for an answer. Sunny’s ghost never talked, he just came along for the company.