The Return of the Grey

by Robert Lee Henry

  ‘Hi, Penter.’

  ‘Seca said you’d be back.’ Penter tried to move, but all he managed was the tremble of his bloody chin. ‘How is she? I can’t see that side.’

  Mike reached over Penter’s back and rolled the other suit to stare into Seca’s dead eyes. ‘She’s right here beside you.’

  He wasn’t close enough to make out what Penter said in return. ‘Squad’ was the only word he caught. Then Penter’s eyes took on the same look as Seca’s.

  Mike lifted his head into the storm and raised his weapon across his chest. Shards cut his face. We hold, he told himself and then his world went dark.

  CHAPTER 80: RED JUSTICE

  Bley had no curses left. He had no energy to spare for them. He could barely crawl. Twice already he had tried to get up the slope, to follow the slanting tracks of the others. And twice he had rolled down the side. He had to reach them. To get inside the blue glow.

  It had gotten harder each day to keep up with them. His wound had gone bad. The stink of it filled his suit. With the stink had come fever, bone burning fever. It damped the pain in his leg, but his thoughts were driven out by the heat. He needed to think. To stay alive.

  They had tried to lose him, he was sure. But always before he had found the blue glow. He needed it to rest, to sleep. Even in his fever he knew that the creatures were around. That they would eat him if he lay still long enough. Many times he had burned things that stirred the rocks, coming for him. Too many times. His laser was almost out of power. His laser? Yes, it had come on the belt with the new suit legs so it was his.

  He dug his arms in to pull himself around then pushed with his good leg. Have to get out of the loose rock, he told himself. Then maybe I can rest, safe on the bedrock of the ridge, for a few minutes. A few minutes. That’s all I need.

  He woke when something pulled on his belt. Only a light tug, but it iced his heart, drove his eyes wide. He froze, not daring to breathe. His face was down. Nothing moved in the space he could see around his shoulders. Seconds stretched until he was forced to gasp for air. Nothing. After a few more breaths he had almost convinced himself that he had imagined it, part of a fever dream, when his arm was seized and he was dragged up the slope. Pain rocketed from his leg to his head and almost made him pass out. His eyes swum. Something big had him. He wailed on every indrawn breath.

  It banged him along the slope. Time stopped. Pain and the pull on his arm became the constants of his life.

  Just when he thought that he could endure no more, motion ceased. The pain receded slowly, in pulses, like waves on a dark tide reluctantly ebbing from a flat and featureless muddy shore. Not featureless, feverless. I can think! The pain must have won. Fever burns thought, pain floods fever. Like some children’s game.

  Make sense! he demanded. This may be your only chance.

  He was on his back. In a high place because there was nothing in the field of his vision except air and sky. A very high place, the sky was so close. After the two collisions, the sky had lifted, so high that it was strange to them, like being on another planet. A good sign, the others said. More treachery, he knew. The Rim had not killed them one way. It would try another.

  Very slowly, he turned his head. Nothing but sky on either side. Maybe he had been left, abandoned. No. More likely he was safely stored to be consumed later. Panic made him stretch his neck and roll his head. There! Hope! The faintest of glows played on the underbelly of the sky, at the edge of his vision. He knew that blue glow. He had learned to search the sky for it. The others were near! If he could stand the pain, he could roll down. He was so high, surely this slope would take him close. Unless there were cliffs. Then he would fall and die. But to stay here was death. To be eaten alive or left to become more appetising carrion. The pain won’t matter once I am moving. Bley steeled himself to try. Roll the shoulders and the legs will follow. He pulled one arm in tight and pushed with the other. His shoulder rose, came over. I was right! The glow was there, down below him, in a wide valley. Something caught his shoulder and slammed it back down. ‘Aaahaaah!’ Bley tried to scream around his swollen tongue. His eyes darted to his shoulder. He didn’t dare look higher.

  A boot, a man. Bley was so relieved that it was not some monstrous creature that he did not consider the ghost and so saved himself from deception. An enemy, an enemy scout! I’m saved! His mind worked fast. They will find out who I am and kill me. No. There will be a way around it. Having come so close to death, having almost given up, infuriated him. I am me! I won’t die! Fury catalysed his thoughts.

  There should be more of them. He could only see this one man. The grip never changed while I was dragged. If there were more, they would have shared the effort. Bley rolled his head in all directions, searching. It brought no reaction from the scout. That one stood tall under the close sky, foot planted on his shoulder, gazing beyond, down into the valley. He studies the others, the ground around them. Why? There was something here to learn, to use. Why does he follow us? Why did he drag me here?

  He knew then. This is the ghost. A man, only a man. I knew it! All along I knew it.

  Strength and cunning returned with that conviction. A man I can beat, even now, as I am, like this. I got the legs, didn’t I? Bley slid his hand toward his belt. Slowly, so very carefully. The enemy scouts go out for long periods; that was well known. He will have everything needed to survive. Everything I need. Medicine, bandages, food and water. Bley’s fingers touched the belt, crept along it. No laser! It was gone. Not to be deterred, he slid his hand on, searching. Nothing to use as a weapon.

  The scout looked down. I must have moved too fast. Bley curled his arm around his waist and grunted as if in great pain. My dagger is on my thigh inside the suit. If I can get to that and get him to come closer. ‘Help me. Help me! It’s killing me,’ he tried to cry around his swollen tongue.

  What the scout made of the sounds, he couldn’t say, but it was working. He was bending over. Bley popped his chest plate and made to slide his hand in. The gauntlet made it difficult, catching on the rim then becoming tight in the space inside. Too slow.

  When the stench hit him, the scout blinked his eyes closed and lifted his head sharply, exposing his throat.

  Ohh, I could have had him then! The gauntlet finally reached the dagger and he started to ease it free. The scout shifted his boot to the chest plate, pinning the arm in place. Bley couldn’t keep the anger and frustration from his eyes. A mistake. The scout was studying him intently.

  No! Try something else. There must be something else. That was so close. How to get him close again? He groaned and shook his head, brought the knee of his good leg up as if in pain. To buy time. He knew that pity would not work with the ghost. Then he remembered. The pendant and ring! Gold and silver. He could move his arm slightly inside the suit. He lay the dagger on his stomach and reached for the booty on his chest.

  ‘Here. Take this. For you. Gold.’ He yelled, trying to get meaning out through the faceplate. He mimicked giving with his free hand.

  The foot came off his chest plate. Bley snapped the string around his neck and slowly drew the clenched hand out. He brought his other arm over and dropped the pendant and ring into the palm. This he held out, just above his left side, to show the scout. His right hand slid back across to the open edge of the chest plate. When he reaches down I will have him! ‘Here. Take.’ He offered his palm, moaned to show the pain the effort had caused him.

  The scout leaned over. His eyes moved from the tokens to Bley’s face.

  Take them. I’m hurt. So hurt. No threat. I’m dying. Take them and please let me go. Bley was concentrating so hard on projecting this misery that he missed the movement of the foot. His chest plate clicked closed before he could reach in for the dagger. Then the boot drove his right arm to the ground. His left was seized and he was jerked over onto the slope. Pain from his leg flooded his brain. There was a hard tug at each of his arms then he was rolling free.

  Free? He let me go? I’m free!
Then the pain from his arms hit and he screamed.

  *

  Peg watched the body roll down the slope. A body was all it was by the time it reached the bottom. Blood had stopped spraying from the arms about half the way down. Enough to lay a good trace, in this wind, from this height. It would excite all the creatures up the valley. Maybe bring some of the larger ones down. They were more active now than he had ever seen them. Maybe going deep in the ground and waiting out the collisions had built up their hunger. He glanced at the sky. Maybe there was something more coming.

  ‘Maybe I should be on my way. Heh, Sunny?’ He reached down for one of the gauntlets. ‘So that is who he was. The worst of the Black Hands. I should have guessed when he killed the other wounded one.’ Peg tossed the gauntlet up. The weight of the forearm and hand inside carried it high enough for the sky to claim it.

  Phiit. Gone.

  Peg took the pendant and ring off the palm of the other gauntlet and sent it after its mate.

  Phiit.

  The jewellery went into his breast pocket, carefully. If I have time, I will return it to him. If that place is still there.

  The armour hook, he threw down into the valley. Let the blood add to the trace. He didn’t need it anymore. He didn’t want it anymore.

  ‘Was I right to do that, Sunny? Was that justice or vengeance? Or just plain mean?’ It was more than Peg had intended. The roll to the bottom, some blood, sure. To incite the creatures, and to frighten the Black Hands and turn them back. A quick death though, not something as vicious as this. But when he had seen the Red Suit commander’s emblems, it had become personal. ‘Couldn’t leave that sneak with his hands, whatever hell he is going to.’

  Only the good ghosts came back. To see their friends. That’s what Peg thought. But better safe than sorry.

  Peg made his way south, staying on the ridge tops. No more running through the valleys. Not with the creatures stirred up the way they were. Even the ridges, usually safe because of their bare rock, were dangerous now. Some of the larger creatures had taken to lying just below the crest on the darker side and ambushing anything that passed. Peg stayed right on the spine and studied both sides before progressing. He thought that he might recover the suit. It was stashed not far away. If he was going to be seen on top of the ridges, he might as well be the Red Ghost. The suit would not slow him down at this careful rate either.

  He was close to the cache when he saw the other ghost. Peg turned to see what Sunny made of him but his friend was gone.

  The ghost sat on a flat shelf of rock next to a break in the ridge. A good spot. He could see both ways and there were no shadows nearby. Not that those things would matter to a ghost, but they suited Peg. He had the feeling that this ghost was waiting for him.

  There would be plenty of ghosts now. Peg was sure. Something big had happened in the west, before the collisions. A huge battle. He hoped his friends had fared well. Maybe that is what this ghost had come to tell him. Not that they talked, but Peg could ask and search for the answers in their eyes.

  He got close. This was the grimmest ghost he had seen yet. He had a stony look to him. Even his eyes were grey.

  ‘Hello there, Ghost,’ greeted Peg. ‘You look like you have come far. Did you by chance pass the big battle? Could you tell me how my friends went? They are the Good Squad. That’s what people called us.’

  The ghost smiled and Peg knew that he knew them.

  ‘And old Tollen, the sergeant. He carried me once you know. Like Sunny.’

  The ghost’s smile faded.

  Peg’s spirits dropped. ‘I haven’t seen their ghosts so I thought that they might still be alive. But maybe they don’t know where I am. I move around a lot out here.’

  He didn’t know what else to ask. He was very surprised when the ghost spoke to him.

  ‘Time to go back, Peg.’

  CHAPTER 81: ON BASE, VIGILANCE REWARDED

  Strength. That is what we need, decided Visco. Strength and stability, he had thought in the past. But maybe not. Reports had come in advising that the PlanCon Group had already encountered Ships. And destroyed them. That Colda ruled with an iron fist. Two Blues had transferred across to PlanCon. A thing unheard of in many years, especially from a cadre as prominent as the Blues. I wonder how Coltrane views that?

  That these two were also his, intrigued Visco. Two of the nine Blues he had managed to process through the Box before their cadre embarked. Two of the others had succumbed to the trance malaise early in the mission. That left five to be watched. If these also developed a preference for Colda, he would have to re-evaluate.

  Colda had never been in the Box. Perhaps it would change him, not kill him. Enhance his ability to lead. But he is never alone. How could I get him into the Box?

  Thoughts of the Box brought Serin to mind. If he does not die soon, I will have to kill him. He had hoped that the Box would do it for him. From the marks on Serin’s face, it must have come close. Serin would not accept anyone above him. Not Colda nor Coltrane, nor anyone else. In time he will read my contribution as a threat. He could lead the others against me. I can’t have that.

  Greetings at the other end of the room made him lift his head. Only La Mar, shuffling along on crutches. Her recovery was going well. He saw her in the corridors often. A little further from Med every day. This was the first time that she had made it to command. Each day she pushed at both the bounds of her body’s capabilities and the doctor’s forbearance. The doctor. Now there was a woman. Angry and powerful … and so alive.

  They had only subjected one female to the trials of the Box and Crell had killed her, her fear and passivity deemed to represent failure. Visco had not dared to intervene. An early case of the malaise he suspected, that’s all. These subjects were not lost to them, merely frozen by awe and their own abjectness, lacking understanding and purpose, incapacitated while the wonder of the Cross was on them. They could be set right. The ones in Med would have to be adjusted before the psych attended to them. If only I could get them to our vault.

  But that is too difficult with the Doctor there. She will have to become one of us. The thought thrilled him. Not now, not with these cohorts. Later, when they are gone, I will convert her myself.

  The caretakers would have to go. Specialist Celene would be back any day and her investigation would continue. Fate had removed her from Base, at this most critical time, to allow their work to go on. But it was nearly done now. Almost all of the subjects on Base that had assayed the Box twice had been taken in a third time. Over one hundred. The twenty-five Blues that remained on his list, including Coltrane, would not return for weeks. They would be the last of the first intake. The caretakers wanted to try others, ones that had only been exposed to the Box only once, but it was too early for that, the chance of failure too great. They must wait. Once Coltrane was converted, the remainder of the Blues could be tested. After Colda, all of PlanCon. And if Colda did not survive, fate would select another leader.

  ‘Visc. You are mixing cadres here. Is that wise?’

  He nearly jumped. It was La Mar behind him, leaning over, reading his screen.

  ‘Sorry, Commander. Didn’t mean to break your concentration,’ she added.

  The screen was full of lists of craft and personnel and destinations. He had to account for the missing cadremen, those they had eliminated. He did this by assigning them to fake missions, recon and covert tasks involving small numbers. These had to be incorporated into the overall operation against raiders in the Arm. It was complex.

  ‘It is apt, Commander. Befitting of the purpose. They are combined on small tasks only. Recon and intelligence mainly. They should not see action in those functions. It is just that all the cadres will be rotating through the Arm, so I thought it would be advantageous to have had one of their own out there ahead of them. I return the individuals to their cadres for the main sweeps. Or at least that is the plan.’

  ‘Not a bad idea, Visc. Good to get them working together before the
Ships come anyway.’ She leaned back.

  His relief must have showed. She interpreted it her own way.

  ‘Visc. With Quartermaine spending most of his time flying or out on the plain, you are just about running everything. With my cadre gone, I don’t have much to do. Nothing, to be honest. So if you like, send some of the mundane stuff down to me in Med. I can sort and schedule with the best of them.’ She straightened on her crutches. ‘In the meantime, I had better head back before Aesca comes looking for me.’

  He started to rise to walk with her and help with the door but she waved him down.

  ‘I can manage. Remember, send some work to me.’

  Once she was out he turned back to his screen. Not these schedules. They are too complex for you, La Mar. But he appreciated her offer. Maybe the routine operations, the day to day running of Base that used to fill all his time. She could take on some of that.

  ‘Commander Visco.’

  He looked up. One of the comm techs with a printout in his hand. ‘Go ahead, soldier.’

  ‘Commander, this just came in from the Rim for the Senior Psych, from one of her juniors. Should we try to send it on? It could be difficult if they are in or near the Passages.’

  Visco took it from his hand. Coded, but he knew all the codes in use by all the Services. Thank the Cross. It was hard to keep his hand still. There at the end, a mention of stone from the Box and a warning. ‘All the caretakers are involved, not just Donen. Don’t query, just act. Take care. Tollen.’

  This is why I have to be everywhere, do everything. The purpose demands it. No rest, no ease.

  ‘No. They will be back within a day or two,’ he told the tech. ‘It is only a routine matter. I will pass it on to the Specialist as soon as she lands. Send a message to the Rim acknowledging receipt, under my name.’

  He folded the note carefully and put it in his breast pocket, contemplating the tech’s back as he walked back to his station. This is a sign. I can not silence a marine on the Rim. The caretakers, their time is up. One of my trials will come to an end.