The Return of the Grey

by Robert Lee Henry

Quartermaine’s cabal here on Base had been decimated. No. Wrong term, Colda corrected. Decimation is one in ten. Duimated. One in two. Of the four identified by his agents, two were dead. Nata and the Armourer, both grand opponents. And fate had not stopped there. Johnson, the guileless clerk, was blinded for merely assisting the others; and Specialist Celene, he could think of her now without danger, had suffered so, her love dead and she herself, chased in terror, pinned to a wall and cut across her belly. So sweet, fate is, to flatter me. My whim converted to reality.

  The inadvertent rhyme brought a smile to his face and his smile drew a cheer from the crowd. A feeling of warmth suffused him. The cheers were real. He had not ordered them. A dignified procession, solemn yet stately, that had been his intent, his command. To make his point. But this was better. Cheers and banners. He hadn’t thought of banners, but they added so well to the scene. A wonderful welcome. Not surprisingly, almost all of the cadres were present, even some marines. They rush to join the ceremony, to associate themselves with me. I will allow it, he decided. He nodded his acknowledgement. Another cheer.

  *

  ‘They cheer for real,’ said Joe Pack.

  ‘So would I, if I were them,’ said La Mar. ‘Once he goes through the gate they are out from under his command, Group battle command that is. PlanCon is still his, but he can’t kill them out of hand anymore.’ Colda’s command had been extreme; the whole of the sweep deemed to be a combat situation, hesitation to obey an order read as refusal. After a few examples, his command had become absolute. La Mar wondered how Coltrane had managed to stay alive.

  ‘Looks like two more, Commander,’ said Pack.

  La Mar was not here to welcome Colda and his Group. Her hand-picked team of Amazons and marines had a more distasteful task. To pick up ‘imprints’. That was the purpose of the banners, with symbols drawn in margins or cut out to allow light to filter through. Fine, almost delicate on the first of the banners, becoming more prominent as the Great Gate was approached, finally dominating the display on the column at the inner edge of the gap where her team waited.

  Two men in PlanCon’s green and blue were crossing the flow of the parade, gradually angling across towards the marked column. La Mar noticed Pack’s right arm lift and follow them.

  ‘What have you got in your arm today, Pack?’

  ‘Commander?’ he returned, lifting his eyes to hers for less than half a second.

  Hard to look innocent when you are that alert. ‘If I catch you with a mag cannon in there I will insert it elsewhere. You get my drift.’ Pack had carried a mag cannon in the false arm on Celene’s escort. At her request. La Mar didn’t want him to ever have to do that again, too dangerous.

  ‘Wadded projectile, Commander.’

  A knock down weapon. Good choice for this. She signalled her people out of the way, to give him a clearer field.

  They had not had a problem yet but she was apprehensive about these two. Colda’s ‘finishers’, the two Blues that had transferred across to PlanCon. Employed to terminate engagements with Ships. In the actions she had reviewed, their savagery had been unsettling. Now she had an explanation.

  The two men’s eyes were up, fixed on the black banner at the top of the column. They pushed through the crowd, unaware of those they jostled. Gati bumped them both then flashed a sign to La Mar. She relayed it to the rest of the team. They are armed.

  La Mar skirted Pack’s field of fire as she followed the PlanCon pair to the column. Two together is tricky, have to get both to turn at the same time. Sian slipped up on the left.

  ‘They will touch the column then step back, looking for the next sign. That is when you must direct them to the final display.’ Celene’s instructions. ‘Once they are under its influence they will become manageable. Any other course will result in resistance, and a struggle, however brief, would warn off others.’

  A set of small lights, set out below a glowing six-rayed figure; that was the final display, mounted on the back wall of a dark container slid flush against the inner edge of the great wall itself, meant to enthrall and thus entrap devotees of the Empty Cross. It held nothing for La Mar but she had seen its effect on others. Bethane was among those that had not passed the vetting for this operation; a concern not quieted by Celene’s words. ‘There is a bitterness imbedded in that cause that resonates more strongly in some of us than in others.’

  She hadn’t let the Specialist leave it at that. Too easy for this to become a witch-hunt. If they all had it to some degree, who would decide how much was too much? And what would be done? Build another Box and run everyone through it? Take everyone out on the plain? That last had a sting in it when she said it. The patterns used in the vetting and around her here at the Gate had not come from the Box. That was a mound of slag now. They had come from that stinking lair out on the plain.

  ‘A vault, a secret place,’ Celene had said from her hospital bed. ‘They wanted to take me to it. Somewhere on the plain. Find it and preserve it. Quartermaine was too quick with his strike on the Box. I need … we need to understand their condition.’

  Security had searched for days without success. Marines back from the Rim had joined once released from their debriefings, soon taking over completely. The effort grew; centred searches and lines of people with metal rods to force into the ground, servicemen with measuring devices, supplymen in support with food and water, Amazons in suits flying low over the lot. An eerie sight, the bustle of people on the plain. And more frightening, the way all motion would stop when Celene would appear on the wall. Too far away for anyone to know that the tiny figure was her, yet somehow they all did.

  It was Rim-raddled, friend-to-ghosts Peg that found it, within hours of his return with the Greys and the Scholar. Smelt it out, he said. Well it smelt, all right. Burned the nostrils when you were in it. All of the commanders and service heads had been called in to view it. Quartermaine’s order. But La Mar always knew what was behind her, and that day in the vault there had been marines along the back wall, with their hands on their side arms. And the who behind that was Celene. Can’t blame her. I wouldn’t trust anyone if I was her. But the rest of us need to.

  ‘A test. Something simple that everyone understands,’ she had demanded of the Specialist. Celene had given it to her. Patterns, sequences of patterns linked to the conditioning of these ‘devotees’, arrayed to bring them to a stasis state, a rapturous stupor. ‘If they don’t move on, they don’t move on’ is how La Mar had summed it up for her team.

  They were at the column. ‘This way warriors. Especially for you. The Cross beckons.’ Her target turned at her greeting, not quite far enough to leave the view clear for his companion. La Mar caught his arm and pulled him toward her. She felt resistance and swung her other hand up under for a cross grip. But the arm slackened as she came in. As suddenly as that, quicker than she could move, his opposition was over. Her respect for the patterns and her fear of them rose again. Even in the middle of a fight it can take them. She continued her motion to swing her arm around him. A hug, a welcome for the crowd. Over his shoulder she saw Sian follow her lead and drape herself over the other man. A spontaneous outpouring of affection, perhaps uncharacteristic of Amazons, but in the tumult it would pass. They ushered their charges into the container and a curtain was dropped behind them.

  The dark heightened the effect of the display. La Mar caught herself staring. Damn! Light flooded in from the side as a panel slid back and two med techs entered. Sedate them and send them to Med, another two in the bag. Seven so far. Her thoughts were ahead of herself, back out at the parade. Almost finished, not much chance for more. Lucky her senses weren’t. A tremor in the arm she was releasing alerted her. Her knee swept up automatically as he exploded at her and she took him down hard. Twisted and slammed, with an elbow strike to the back of the skull meeting the rebound of his head off the floor. She heard a crack but it came from above her. She rolled clear and readied, only to see Sian let the other man slip limply from her arms. T
he med techs dove in to slap tranque guns against the legs of the downed men then rolled them flat with less hurried motions to check their breathing and pulse.

  Sian looked down to La Mar and lifted her palms. ‘A restraint hold.’ She shook her head. ‘He broke his own neck.’

  La Mar waved the words away as she got to her feet. ‘We are only learning with this.’ She didn’t like any of it. How could Celene study this? La Mar spat on the floor. How could she work in that foul vault, examining, analysing, with her wounds still paining and manacles meant for her hanging on the blood smeared walls?

  An arm poked through the curtain at the front of the container.

  ‘It’s okay, Pack,’ said La Mar.

  The curtain lifted to reveal marines and Amazons packed densely enough to block the view from outside. Good. ‘These two attacked,’ she explained. ‘After it had stopped them,’ her thumb pointed back over her shoulder to the ‘it’. ‘Don’t know what changed for them, but they can come out of it fast so be careful. Back to work, now.’ She pushed through them, out into the glare of the gate. Dedrin and Sela were in the positions she and Sian had held. Pack moved back up beside them. Good. She signalled herself out of it and slipped into the shade close to the wall. One dead, could have been two. Could have been us two. La Mar put her hands on the wall and pushed to stretch her back and legs. Hope Celene is prepared. I better send word. And to Quartermaine also. Another death. How much is this going to cost us? She let her arms ease until her forehead lay against the cool cement. Twenty-one missing that she was sure of, maybe more when all the missions in the Arm reported in. ‘I can sort and schedule with the best of them.’ She remembered telling Visco that. What a bastard. And I didn’t have a clue. False assignments, non-existent missions. She had started on the sub-commander’s records while the Box was still burning, at his desk in Comm with the techs in the background marvelling at the flaring display.

  ‘It’s flooding all the channels. Communications are disrupted clear across the spectrum. I can’t raise the Passage relays.’

  ‘Clear across the system, you mean, maybe further. That light could go all the way to the next galaxy.’

  ‘They’ll see this from the Rim, and the Gap Quadrant. We better get a signal out after it to let our people know what happened. They might think that we have been attacked.’

  At the console she had found that they had been. Names to add to Tracka-dan’s and Briodi’s. Twenty-one cadremen that had never left Base. Maybe more covered by last minute changes to mission rosters.

  ‘Are you leaning on that wall or is it leaning on you, La Mar?’

  The gravely voice brought her back to the present, to the wall and the Gate. ‘Today I don’t really know, Thomas,’ she answered. She rolled her head to look at him. He was close to the wall also, keeping in the thin shadow. The pebbled skin of his scarred neck contrasted with the smooth cement. He turned away from her before their eyes could meet.

  ‘Damn waste of time this.’ He poked his chin out at the march. ‘He’s got the port choked up and craft scattered from there to here. Just so he can parade in with an audience. The whole lot will have to go out again tomorrow.’

  ‘They did this in the old days,’ said La Mar.

  ‘Yah, old even for me. But that was when they went to battle, not on soft patrols,’ objected Thomas.

  ‘Oh, he’s just trying to prove a point … well, make everyone aware of it anyway,’ said La Mar.

  ‘What? That he’s the most pompous prick on Base. We all know that.’

  ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘That he has met the Ships and brought his Group back almost intact. As opposed to someone else we all know. I bet he tags in at the Grey’s column just in case anyone has missed it. Anyway, what are you doing out here? Didn’t know that you were a fan of spectacle.’

  ‘I don’t care for this.’ He waved at the crowd. ‘But when a marine takes a wad cutter to a welcome I get curious. I keep an eye on Pack’s arm you know.’

  La Mar nodded. ‘Me too.’ She pointed out her team. ‘We have an operation going here. One of Celene’s. “Put his pageant to use,” she said. So here we are; fishing for more of Visco’s Box imprinted deviates. Patterns on the banners. Celene’s plan.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s worked so far.’

  ‘Some trouble just now though?’

  ‘Yah. Always surprises. One dead, his excess, not ours.’

  ‘What do you do with the live ones?’

  ‘Tranqued and shipped to Med, security ward,’ answered La Mar. ‘The Specialist believes that they can be rehabilitated, this new conditioning removed.’

  ‘I heard that it was old,’ said Thomas. ‘War of the Crosses stuff. Didn’t the Mad Command build the Box to stop it? Permanently, so to speak.’

  ‘That’s always been our interpretation. This lot must have got around it some way. “A corruption of a perversion” is how Celene puts it. Well, Quartermaine has put a stop to that. We won’t infect our own anymore. She wasn’t too happy he melted it though. Not before she could study it.’

  ‘Best thing the old fool has done since he took off with the satellites,’ said Thomas.

  A roar from the crowd turned them both back to the staggered columns.

  ‘There. I win my bet,’ said La Mar.

  ‘Hope that was loud enough for him. Otherwise he will make them all go around another time,’ said Thomas.

  CHAPTER 99: MORE PATTERNS

  ‘What is it you need to tell me that you don’t want the others to hear?’ asked Quartermaine. Not much of a greeting but he had no time for ceremony. Anyway, Colda had the market on that covered.

  ‘The Ships are on their way.’

  Damn, I should know better than to get blunt with Trahern, thought Quartermaine. But more words in front of it wouldn’t have made it any sweeter. Here it is then. ‘How much time do we have?’

  The Grey looked across to the Scholar.

  ‘Fifteen to twenty days, before they reach the Outer Passages,’ said Elsewise.

  What! Quartermaine flung his arm out, roughly in the direction of the Great Gate.

  ‘He doesn’t know,’ said Trahern.

  ‘It’s in the data, Commander,’ explained Steamsetter. ‘The records of interactions during the sweep. These two can visualise it but I couldn’t so we made up a display. Hard to argue against once you see it.’

  They rolled it for him on the desk monitor. Steamsetter explained. ‘All of our craft show as a red trace. The Ships, where they were tracked, are green. We’ll run it through, the whole sweep, so you can see how it developed then we’ll bring back the lot.’ The big man paused for a second. ‘The orange and blue bursts mark the destruction of respective craft.’

  It started as a ribbon of red flowing out from Base Planet. As it passed the Inner Passages it spread until he could see individual lines. Small on the screen, he knew it covered a vast area of space. Fine traces preceded the main mass. The first bursts terminated these and they were orange. Contact, and close. Our scouts lost. He knew this already from the reports but the display brought it home. The red contracted and flowed on. Blue bursts joined the orange. Slowly a pattern developed. Most bursts were on the left flank, both colours about evenly. But elsewhere in the sweep, wide-spaced blue bursts dominated.

  ‘He has achieved ascendancy over the Ships. That has never been done outside of pitched battle,’ said Trahern.

  You and I with Weaves, yet Colda does it here with tactics. I have underestimated him.

  The red flowed on, like a living thing gliding through a barren grey sea. It is alive. It is thousands of lives. The flow and flashes were mesmerising.

  ‘What reference have you used?’ he asked in an effort to bring the experience back to an examination of data.

  ‘We’ve hung it on the two closest spirals of the Arm with Triamo as the pivot. For reasons that the Scholar will make clear,’ said Trahern.

  The bursts died out and the ribbon swung through a grand turn to come back almost parallel to
its original course. The far side of the Quadrant. Now the Group returns. Flashes of orange and blue again. Same pattern. Finally dying to let the red coalesce and wind around the Inner Passages. Plenty of Ships out there, and close, but something more, a concentration in the pattern of engagements and a shape he could not quite grasp.

  ‘Here it is,’ said Steamsetter, replacing the flowing display with a static summary, all tracks and events presented.

  And there it was. A long linear red form with a clear centre stripe edged in bursts of orange and blue. The red was Colda’s route, out one side, back the other. The clear area had been avoided. The Ships were protecting that, realised Quartermaine.

  ‘Colda found a zone where the density of enemy craft allowed his tactics to succeed and stuck to it,’ said Trahern. ‘He moved away from increased contact, almost instinctively. This action kept his Group well out on the fringes of enemy activity; major confrontation was avoided and the sweep completed.’ The Grey pointed to the red form on the screen. ‘By providing this contour he has given us a guide to the distribution of the Ships through the whole of the Gap Quadrant, and a map of their probable route to the Outer Passages. A phenomenal effort and an unequivocal success. That he doesn’t know he achieved it does not detract from the result.’

  Quartermaine had to agree. Probably the best sweep ever carried out. ‘Colda may have missed this, but his advisors?’ His gaze fixed on Elsewise. Colda’s tall aide would be almost as capable.

  ‘They were among his first casualties,’ answered Trahern. The Grey caught his eye and held it.

  Yah, I know. I sent them up for just that purpose, to get a taste of Colda in unrestrained command. I can’t pretend that I didn’t think that there would be casualties. Almost cut off my nose on that one. Stopping the House scheme means nothing if the Ships destroy us all. He forced his mind back to the problem in front of him. ‘I see where the Ships are but how do you get the timing?’ he asked.

  ‘Here,’ indicted the Scholar with one of his long fingers. ‘On the return pass the curve around the central zone does not match. It goes out further and swings back in later, closer to us, in this frame of reference, than the original divergence. We read this to imply an increase in the density of Ships in the area and a corresponding shift away by Colda. Comparing the two sides gives us a rate of increase. Using the numbers obtained from past confrontations we can estimate when the ‘critical’ density for a Ship attack will be reached for this point which can then be extrapolated to the Passages.’ The Scholar’s long eyebrows rose in apology for the apparent tenuousness of the evidence.