The Gray Matter (Rebels and Patriots Book 3)

by A. G. Claymore

  “Rob,” Beam tried to cut in.

  “Never would’ve come out here if I’d known how dangerous space is,” Rob ploughed on. “Should’ve clued in when we were hired while standing next to the corpses of our predecessors. Y’know, my momma used to…”

  “ROB!” Stanich barely kept his voice below a yell. “Shut your cakehole. These are Humans.”

  “And they said…” Beam looked aft as the airlock hatch-pins retracted with a reverberating clang. “… that they were the 1st Gliessan Dragoons.” Beam had expected a bit of adventure, working as a loadmaster for a few runs, but he’d never expected to meet living legends.

  This was as close as it got to walking into the pages of history. The girls back on Roanoke would go bananas over a story like this.

  “One GD?” Rob laughed. “You fell for that? What are the chances…” He trailed off as troops poured into the bridge.

  They wore armored EVA suits and carried what looked like the standard Imperial assault rifles you see in adventure holo-stories. Each one had a crest with three small stars and the characters ‘1GD’ beneath them on their shoulder armor. It would be easy enough to fake a crest, but that armor was like nothing you could find anywhere in the colonies.

  Beam couldn’t hold back the grin. These guys were the real deal.

  Probably.

  The dragoons pulled the bridge crew away from their consoles and moved everybody up against the lockers along the aft bulkhead. One of them retracted his helmet.

  “I apologize for the inconvenience,” the man said mildly, “but you boys represent a critical strategic advantage to the colonies.” He suddenly seemed to remember his weapon and lowered it, gesturing at his comrades to do the same. “I’m inspector Paul Grimm,” he began but then caught himself. “Make that Justice Grimm of Roanoke,” he amended with a wry grin.

  Beam’s eyes grew wide. He was in a room with a man who’d executed an Imperial Grand Senator, strangled the life out of him with a silk scarf right on the podium. Beam had signed on with the Pony Express to make a new start, to become someone interesting.

  This even beat the prize money he’d be getting for helping to seize the Gray cruiser that had captured them earlier.

  As far as he was concerned, he could ship out on a thousand more runs and never be able to top a story like this.

  “We’re sorry to Bergen you like this but you boys are holding the key to the coming war with the Grays. A couple of your crewmen are about to become real-life, larger-than-Monty heroes. I’m talking commemorative statues and everything.”

  Beam felt another thrill run down his spine. He could just imagine pointing to some giant statue back home and telling his children that he’d shipped with that guy.

  “We’re going to need you to call Beam Wehr and Rob Midline up here.” Grimm checked the chronometer on his wrist holo. “We need to shove off as soon as possible. We’ll take your boys aboard the ‘Dope and chat with them in transit.”

  Holy hells! His kids, if he’d ever have any, should be able to recognize the statue without any help from him! Still, how the hells could any of this be making sense?

  Rob was quick to advise them as to his and Beam’s whereabouts, along with a steady stream of chatter. If they wanted a chat, they’d sure as hells get one. The man had no inner dialogue at all. If he thought it, he said it.

  Without really giving it much thought, Beam followed Grimm toward the rear bridge hatch. It wasn’t like he could resist a squad of armed and armored combat veterans.

  “We’ll leave you a navigator and some crew to help you find the place,” Grimm called over his shoulder.

  “Find what place?” Stanic asked.

  Grimm turned around and smiled. “Our boarders tell me you’re carrying nearly twenty thousand talents of FMG.” He watched as four of his men retracted their helmets and took up posts around the bridge. He looked back at Stanic. “Let’s just say we’ve got a surprisingly large number of glaucoma cases that need medication…”

  Beam found himself sitting opposite Grim on the shuttle flight to their ersatz carrier. He tuned out Rob’s chatter but he couldn’t ignore the growing sense of unease.

  It was one thing to be on the sidelines, watching history be made. It was quite another to be directly involved. A lot of those guys ended up dead. He leaned back and closed his eyes as the shuttle banked to head for the Rope a Dope. He could just picture Stanic pointing up to a pair of statues. They were on my crew, Stanic would tell his kids. Real shame, what happened to them…

  People dream about being famous, about saving the universe, but they rarely gave thought to the difficulties involved. This sounded like a dangerous gig. Grimm did say there was a war coming and that Beam had a role in that.

  They slipped in through the aft hangar doors and settled on the deck. The hangar itself had the sort of clangor and bustle he’d have expected of a combat carrier but the ornate arches that spanned the large space, forty cubits above them, were an eloquent reminder of the ship’s original role.

  It was a story Beam had reveled in, daydreaming behind the counter at Soylent Orange, doing his best to ignore the idiot customers. The hardy colonial stock of Roanoke was fertile ground for the story of 1GD, citizen warriors who’d retrofitted an old luxury liner into a carrier. They’d defeated Gray forces and defied CentCom through a mix of daring, wit and sheer luck.

  Their Gray-built attack craft were only export versions, inferior in every technical aspect to both the renegade Marines they’d fought and the Gray forces themselves. Still, they’d come off the better force every time.

  Grimm led them through an oval section that had probably served as an overpriced shopping promenade but which now held orderly racks of spare parts. Forward of that, the passage ended in a large lounge-area where dozens of off-duty dragoons were taking their ease.

  The inspector waved them to a couch, angling off to the bar by himself to get drinks. He returned with one of the dragoons from the boarding party and they set mugs of coffee in front of Beam and Rob.

  Beam suddenly straightened his back, leaning forward a bit. “You’re Daffyd! You were with those Imperials who rescued us at Uruk.”

  “I accept tips in any denomination,” the engineer told him cheerfully. “I had to put my Imperial pals in storage for a few deccas so I could come rescue Paul, here.”

  “I might be a little dense,” Rob said, “but I’m still not clear on any of this. Are the gray-bellies planning to start a war?”

  “Not so they know,” Grimm answered. “But before we get into that, we’ve got thousands of people brainwashed by the Grays to keep the civil war going between the colonies. We’ve had a huge team working on ways to get around it, but the best we’ve managed so far is to trigger their conditioning and watch them kill themselves.

  Beam shuddered. “They were trying to do that to us, just a few days ago…”

  “And they failed, didn’t they?” Grimm set his mug down and rested his elbows on his knees, leaning in toward Beam. “It was the FMG?”

  Beam scratched at the stubble on his cheeks. FMG might not be illegal in most colonies but the Imperium was dedicated to stamping it out and this man was an inspector from the Eye. “Umm, Inspector…”

  Grimm held up a hand. “Please, just call me Paul,” he urged. “I’m not an inspector out here, just a man who’s trying to save his sister.”

  That took a second to assimilate. Of course it was common knowledge that Grimm… Paul… was the brother of Commodore Klum, but there was a limit to how much crazy shit a man could parallel-process in a situation like this.

  Ava Klum had been brainwashed by the Grays!

  And Beam had found the cure?

  Paul cut into the mental wandering. “How much did it take to break the conditioning on your crewmates after you freed yourselves? We need to spread the cure as efficiently as possible.”

  “And then we take the fight to the Grays,” Daffyd added with relish.

  “We gave
each one a half tube,” Beam told him, fishing out the tube in his chest pocket and handing it over. “We were just guessing it would help, but an engineering supervisor had killed himself, so we had to try something.”

  “The biggest difference between us and the rest of the crew,” Rob cut in, “was the fact that we had regular access to the hold where the FMG was stored and, brother, we were accessing the living shit out of that hold!”

  Paul leaned back in the seat and looked at Rob for a moment, just long enough to be slightly uncomfortable. “I’ve worked as a cop on Rim worlds,” Paul told him. “And I think you’re missing the point of being loadmasters on a Fool’s Hope. What were you going to do when you hit Irricanan orbit and you had to report to the station and give a manifest engram? Your value was in your ignorance…”

  “Hey, don’t look at me like that,” Rob told Beam. “If we’d kept our value as loadmasters, we’d be a couple of brainwashed zombies right now.”

  Beam sighed. He’d been pissed at Rob for getting into the cargo they weren’t supposed to know about. Their value to the crew had been nullified and it was looking like they’d be dropped off at the nearest planet with an atmosphere (if they were lucky).

  Still, Rob’s lack of forethought and insatiable appetite for mischief had accidentally allowed them to save the crew of the Pony Express and, if Paul was right, the colonies as well.

  He wondered how many statues were put up because some self-indulgent jackass accidentally became a hero.

  Probably most of them…

  The Recruiting Office is Open

  “Distortion at zero,” the engineering rating announced. “Securing the drive.”

  “Stars match the plot,” the navigation officer began. “We’re…

  “Contact!” a young officer called out from the tactical station. She turned to face Julia. “They’re exactly what you said we’d find, ma’am.”

  “Very well.” Julia shook her head at Hale, who was offering her the command chair. “Your bridge, Captain. I may command the squadron, but this is your ship.”

  She ran a hand over her freshly shaved head. She’d grown accustomed to hair but it wasn’t compatible with Heavy Marine Armor. That her own HMA suit no longer worked was beside the point. There was an impression to be made and she wasn’t one to half-ass the details.

  “Should we hail them?” the comms officer asked.

  “No,” Julia stepped over to Hale’s right side and leaned against a railing circling the rear of the bridge. “They’ll call us soon enough.”

  She’d come here to take new ships into her fleet and that wouldn’t be helped by hailing first. She had a pretty good idea of how she would play this out, but it had to start with patience.

  “Ma’am?”

  She turned to the space behind the railing. “Rodrigues, any luck?”

  The Marine shrugged. “Two suits,” he told her. “We pulled a few modules from the suits Grimm shot up on Roanoke so they’re physically in top condition.” His eyes lit up. “And Oliver, that Maegi that you asked to help us, is some kind of wizard with code! He killed off close to sixty percent of the bloat-ware in the HMA operating system. Those suits boot up in a milli and they look like they’d run a hells of a lot longer than a new model straight off the line!”

  “Which of us will they fit?”

  “Well, we only have four Marines aboard, counting you of course, but the suits are male. You could wear them but you’d be pretty damned uncomfortable.”

  HMA was gender specific and sized for the user. It could adjust for different-sized users and even for the wrong gender, but the adjustments had their limits. Using the wrong suit gender was invariably a bad experience.

  “So suit up and bring ‘Army’ with you,” she decided. “I’ll wear a local EVA suit.”

  “We could bring Garfield in an EVA suit as well,” Rodrigues volunteered. “Three Marine guards are better than two…”

  “Not when one of them is missing his HMA,” she countered. “Raises questions that we’d rather leave unasked till we settle things.” She waved to the rear hatch. “Suit up and wait for me in Bay Five.”

  Rodrigues nodded and moved off.

  She’d selected Armstead to come with Rodrigues because they’d been recruited to her service together. The two had been holding Ava’s daughter hostage but they’d been acting on Colonel Kinsey’s orders. If young Saoirse wasn’t holding a grudge against them, then Julia could see it in her heart to forgive, especially seeing as the girl had the two men completely wrapped around her little finger.

  She turned her gaze back to the holo showing the engineer fleet. How would they react to the sudden appearance of six Human ships of unidentified class and three Gray heavy cruisers? They’d be desperate for help, as they obviously still hadn’t seen through their trap yet, but would they ask for help from what might be a Gray force?

  She’d met Vance Windemere during the hand-off of the Sucker Punch. He might be a windbag, but he was no idiot. He’d realize pretty quickly that Grays wouldn’t be cruising around with Human escort ships. That left only one possibility. The crews aboard the cruisers couldn’t be Grays…

  “Incoming hail from the Sucker Punch, ma’am.”

  “On this holo,” she replied.

  Windemere appeared in front of her, his eyebrows showing he’d recognized her.

  “Afternoon, Vance,” she offered casually. It had to be afternoon somewhere, after all. “I trust we find you in good health.”

  “Urbica,” he nodded pompously. “I must say, it’s a bit of a surprise, finding you out here.” His gaze drifted off focus a little. “Though it might just explain a few things…” He looked to his right for a moment, then waved off whoever had caught his attention. “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “Look, Urbica,” he began than paused. He darted an irritated glance to his right. “Look, we seem to have a bit of a problem over here. Any assistance would be appreciated…”

  She nodded. “Not to worry. I’ll bring a team over right away.”

  Windemere’s eyes grew large, a hand came up in a warning gesture. “No…”

  She cut the connection.

  She looked at Hale. “Standby to notify the fleet when my flag transfers.”

  She headed directly for Bay Five. Armstead and Rodrigues were both waiting by the navshield that held the atmosphere in the large space. Black back-packs with vacuum nozzles held their personal gear and a third pack sat by Rodrigues’ armored feet. Thirteen other crewmen were there, suited up and ready to go.

  Julia stepped over to a row of lockers next to an EVA exit trunk and backed into one with a female symbol above it.

  “I’ve never seen HMA work so well,” Armstrong enthused. “If we could take Oliver back to the Imperium with us, we’d make a fortune fixing Marine gear!”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” she warned him. The EVA suit snapped into place around her body and she stepped out, taking her pack from Rodrigues with a nod of thanks.

  She shrugged her arms into the straps. “There’s a massive industry built around the problems with HMA. Hundreds of thousands of jobs specializing in code patching and line splicing would disappear overnight if you boys showed up with Oliver and set up shop.”

  “Yeah,” Armstead frowned at her. “General, that’s kind of the point I’m making.” Unlike the privateers, her Marines preferred to use the rank given her by the Senate.

  “And you’re a Marine, Army,” she reminded him, unable to resist grinning at the slight tic of annoyance the nickname always brought out in the man, “so you can estimate the battle damage from that course of action.”

  “Well,” he tilted his head a little, “we’d replace that whole industry with just a handful of folks and…” He suddenly looked back at Julia. “Tamade!” he growled. “All those voting employees laid off and more than a few Grand Senators seeing jobs lost in their constituencies…”

  Julia sighed. “You’d be lucky to live through your first Sol in a busi
ness like that. In the Imperium, votes are more precious than Marine’s lives. Doesn’t matter how many of your brethren you’d save, you’d be refused the chance to bid on a contract and then you’d get a free bullet to the back of the neck one quiet night.”

  “Zhentama yaoming!” Rodrigues exploded. “I’m never going back! The whole damned Imperium is a massive tangle of interconnected stupidity.”

  “And on that note,” Julia said, “let’s get over to my carrier and convince her crew they’d rather stay here as well.” She led the team onto a shuttle and the ramp slid shut.

  They passed out through the shielding and lined up on the Sucker Punch. A quick burst from the pitch engines and they were on a trajectory for the stranded engineers. “The real trick in the next few weeks,” she told the group, “will be to preserve the differences that make the colonies a place where an idea like yours would have made you rich men instead of corpses.”

  Thrusters in the nose fired to slow their approach.

  “You’ve heard, by now, that 1GD is out here?”

  Rodrigues nodded.

  “Well, they wear a lighter armor that the local industries will probably be able to build and maintain.” She raised an eyebrow. “A group with experience in armor and a plan to fix the operating system – LDA OS is almost as bugged as HMA OS – can place themselves at the leading edge of that tech and set themselves up for life.”

  The two Marines shared a glance. Julia had no doubt they’d be trying to get back onto the same ship as Oliver as soon as possible. She made a mental note to have him transferred to the Sucker Punch. She could use his skills fine tuning the ship’s jury-rigged Human interface anyway.

  A blue haze played through the portals as they passed into the aft hangar. Julia stood as the ramp began to drop and walked over to the bottom end, stepping off as it thumped on the decking.

  Pulver was already there, waiting for her.

  She’d half expected him to make her come up to the bridge.

  “You don’t really expect to pull us out on thrusters, do you?” Windemere demanded. “That’d take a month for just one…” He trailed off at the sight of fifteen people exiting the shuttle, including two Marines in HMA.