The Gray Matter (Rebels and Patriots Book 3)

by A. G. Claymore

  The locals were still angry, but they fell back in awe at the sight of heavy Marine armor.

  Pulver felt a rush of euphoria as well as a healthy dose of affection for the Corps. The armored escorts fell in on either side of the engineers, walking between them and the locals, who were now falling back to leave a wide path open for the Imperials.

  They rushed up the ramp and the shuttle lifted off while it was just beginning to close. The pilot swung the craft around, giving the crowd a good look at the rail-gun in the nose as well as the half dozen rotary cannon built into the fuselage.

  Not a single rock was thrown as the craft lifted above the roofs of the city.

  He looked across to where the lance corporal was locked into an HMA restraint. The helmet was retracted and he gave the man a nod of thanks. He moved aft to where ap Rhys lay on the deck. The dragoon engineer had regained his senses.

  “Your ship jumped away the instant we arrived in orbit,” Pulver told him. “They must have had the drives spooled up and ready to go on an instant’s notice. We figured that meant somebody would have been left behind and it looks like we figured right.”

  “Tcho sa ga’lima!” the prisoner commented pungently. “After all I’ve done for them? So much for the honor of the 1st Gliessan Dragoons.”

  With the ramp up, the shuttle’s progress toward orbit accelerated drastically and Pulver had to slump down into a side bench. He gave the prisoner a speculative look. “Why not help us find them?” he suggested. “Clearly they don’t care what happens to you. I’d want to give them a piece of my mind, if I were in your shoes…”

  “Oh, I can do a damn sight better than help you look for them,” ap Rhys growled. “I know where they’ll head next. Standard operating procedure. If they have to leave without everybody back aboard, they’ll be heading for a rendezvous where they’re supposed to wait a couple of days; give the missing crew a chance to catch up.” He looked away. “Not that I expect the rat bastards to wait more than a couple of centi-days before moving on…”

  Pulver grinned. He was starting to develop a liking for this cloak and dagger stuff. “You’ll take us to the rendezvous?”

  Daffyd raised an eyebrow. “Will it improve your opinion of me enough for you to let me go free afterwards?” He held out his bound wrists.

  Pulver pulled out his knife and sliced through the bonds. “You have my guarantee,” he said. He wondered if the prisoner had noticed that no specific guarantee had been proffered. He’d said nothing about freedom himself.

  As phrased, it was a pretty empty promise. One might argue about context, but Pulver was an engineer, he preferred to stick to absolutes.

  Confidence

  Julia sat on the ledge of the main gallery, looking down into the canyon where the overburden ramp was steadily disappearing beneath a relentless carpet of green. The rain kicked up a slightly dusty scent as it pounded the waste rock.

  She took another deep, calming breath as shouts echoed up the passageway from the main chamber. Almost two thousand crewmen were dead after the ambush at Odin’s Eye. Two thousand men and women who’d looked to her for victory.

  She clenched a fist, staring down into the narrow canyon where a swarm of not fur nothings were ascending from a corpse they’d just picked clean. Their chittering calls raised the hair on the back of her neck. Those dead crewmen had also looked to Captain Fall for victory and he’d led them to their deaths.

  He’d still managed to come home safely, though, and now he was in the main chamber painting her as the cause of all their woes.

  A deeper call echoed from further along the canyon, forcing the small predators into a tighter, defensive formation. As they grouped together in fear, a large, four-meter wingspan creature dove on them, scooping most of the not fur nothings into its gaping jaw in one pass.

  She watched it fly off, trying not to think as the large creature faded into the rain. Caleb, the sole survivor of the miners and therefore the owner of this world, insisted the large predator was a stage in the life-cycle of the not fur nothings.

  It was hard to believe the smaller, hand-sized predators could transform into the much larger beast, but he’d pointed out a small clutch of metamorphosis-sacs one morning as they were scouting a nearby canyon and, after managing to control her revulsion at the sight, she’d admitted the truth of it.

  She turned her head at the polite moment as Ava approached. With Julia’s Marine enhancements, she’d heard Ava and her guards far sooner than most would have. Still, she refrained from reminding everybody that she was different.

  “Am I intruding?” Ava waved a hand to indicate the ledge where Julia sat.

  Julia shook her head and Ava sat next to her. Her guards attached her tether to a ring in the floor before backing off to a discrete distance. They were charged with protecting Roanoke’s greatest warrior from the Gray suicide imperative programmed into her mind.

  They’d be in a great deal of trouble if their charge had thrown herself over the gallery ledge.

  Julia looked back out into the rain. “How’s the research program coming along?”

  “Hmm,” Ava began noncommittally, “Brother N’Zim is far more optimistic than I am but, then, my conditioning probably discourages me from circumventing what the Grays have done to me.” She let out a half chuckle as she gave her tether a tug.

  “The less I fight it, the less I feel the urge to kill myself.”

  Julia nodded. “He tells me the latest batch of specialists we captured are starting to make a difference.”

  Ava turned to put a foot up on the ledge. Julia could hear the startled shifting of the guard’s feet, but their leader was simply trying to get a better view of the canyon.

  “Brother N’Zim and his kind have a way with the Grays,” Ava replied. “One from the last batch has a deeper theoretical knowledge than the others. It seems the conditioning is built in layers, lots of them, and they lock from the inside, if that makes any sense to you.”

  Julia frowned. “Does that mean there might be an innermost layer that we can unlock and the whole thing will unravel?”

  A nod. “N’Zim is calling it the keystone. If we can find it, I might be able to sleep without having somebody stand over my bed all night.”

  Julia shuddered. “Sounds like an old ex of mine. Just couldn’t let go.” She looked at Ava. “At least until I broke his fingers…”

  Ava laughed. “If only our problems were so easily solved.” She tilted her head. “But that’s not why I came to see you.”

  Controlled exhale as Julia looked back out into the rain. “I know,” she replied.

  “This is war,” Ava reminded her. “Ships will be lost, crew killed. You’re a Marine, a professional. You know this. Losing people isn’t always a sign of failure.”

  “My failure is more specific,” Julia insisted. “I knew Fall was dangerous but I didn’t remove him from command. It was negligence on my part, pure and simple.”

  “What could you have done? He was voted in. It takes a vote or an outright mutiny to remove him. This isn’t the Imperial military, where you can do as you wish with your subordinates.”

  Julia waved a hand. “I know that, but I could have called for a vote of no-confidence.”

  “Just out of the black?” Ava’s tone indicated her opinion clearly enough. “Certainly anyone can call a vote, but there was no real proof of incompetence. His tactical sense is limited, I grant you, but he’s a skillful networker. Usually our system weeds out the politicians but, every now and then, one of them slips through.”

  Ava leaned in toward Julia. “It’s an open vote. It has to be in order to protect serving officers from constant politically motivated interference. You have to stand up in front of all your crewmates and state your decision, so you really need to believe in what you’re doing to remove an officer. There’s no taking cheap shots from anonymity.

  She pointed down the corridor to indicate the source of the shouting in the main chamber. As if on cue, a
roar of anger reverberated up the rocky passage. “Fall is down there right now telling everybody that it’s your fault we lost those ships. Once he thinks he has enough votes, he’ll make his own call for a vote of no confidence.”

  She looked over to her guards and nodded. One of them turned and trotted around the corner. Julia knew someone was scuffling around in the semi-darkness but she’d assumed they were simply eavesdropping. She revised that estimate when the guard returned with Antonov following.

  Ava nodded her head at Julia. “Tell Commodore Urbica what you told me.”

  Antonov’s eyes blazed. “Ma’am, we’re pissed. Fall told everybody on his bridge crew to keep their mouths shut, but there’s too many of ‘em to keep any kind of secret. As soon as they started rotating off their duty watches we started hearing how he ignored standing orders, not to mention direct orders, in order to go after that carrier.

  Her right hand was resting on the grip of her sidearm, though she didn’t seem to be aware of it. “Bastard didn’t care about his crews. He just wanted the glory of taking out an enemy carrier.” Her fingers tightened on the grip. “Even had the nerve to say we were lucky… lucky that our dead were pulled into the gravimetric ribbons, as if that somehow redeemed his stupidity.”

  “He assumes he’s relatively secure because the officers who’d need to vote on him owe their own positions to his influence.” Ava nodded at Antonov. “Kat tells me the tactical officer, navigator and XO were all eager to pursue the carrier and they even shouted down officers who urged a withdrawal as per your standing orders.”

  “The chief engineer was locked up,” Antonov added, “because he wouldn’t go along with them. He’s still under guard.” She pointed down the corridor to where the ruckus was building. “I’m going to walk in there and call for a vote of no-confidence for his three cronies. When we get them out of the way, we can call a vote for Fall himself.”

  “It would help if you went in there first,” Ava suggested. “Contrast your own professionalism with his empty bluster. Remind the people in that chamber they’ve been listening to a fool before we ask them to vote on his cronies.

  “Right now, they think you’re sitting up here wallowing in guilt.” Ava looked up to meet Julia’s eyes. “They need to know they’re wrong.”

  “They are,” Julia replied evenly. “There’s a big difference between the weight of responsibility and self-indulgent guilt.” She stood. “You’re right, though. It’s time to get in there and put a stop to Fall’s scheming. He’ll tear us apart and the colonies along with us.”

  She waited for the guards to release Ava from the ring in the floor and then led the way down to the main chamber. The shouts began to resolve into individual voices as she moved down the echoing passage.

  The noise began to die out as word spread through the crowd that she was among them, much like a misbehaving class when the teacher returns unexpectedly. Even Fall had stopped talking and he stood on the raised rock platform, watching her approach, his face unreadable.

  She walked up to stand next to him, but gave no further indication that she was aware of his presence.

  She swept her eyes across the crowd. The faces looking up at her ranged from friendly, to confused, to downright belligerent.

  Not a bad start.

  “I will admit,” she began, “that Captain Fall and I don’t agree on matters of strategic policy.” She saw a few heads bobbing in agreement and many of the belligerents had a look of triumph stealing across their features.

  “He feels that the best results will come from an aggressive posture, a willingness to press the attack under any circumstance.” She paused again to let that one sink in. Clearly, his attack on the carrier had yielded anything but positive results.

  In a heated discussion, facts are easily melted down and moulded into something else entirely. Even in an argument where the facts favor you, you can’t simply state them. Angry people don’t want to be confused with facts.

  But if you can let their anger steer them back to the truth, you can talk about it without losing the crowd.

  “No doubt that’s why he ignored standing orders during the fight at Odin’s Eye,” she continued. “No doubt that’s why he ignored direct orders to disengage, deciding instead to lead his three ships in an attack on that Gray carrier.

  “Capturing or destroying a carrier is a notable achievement,” she allowed, “but notoriety doesn’t serve our cause. In case anyone has forgotten…” she paused for a heartbeat. “… we’re in the business of imitating the Purists. They don’t seize the ships of their enemies; they fight when they can and they run when they can’t.

  “This is a war. It may be a secret war, but it’s a war. If we don’t commit, if we stray from the program, we lose.” She finally acknowledged Fall’s presence by looking directly at him. “If the Grays ever figure out who we really are, it’ll cost us more than a couple of ships; it will result in the destruction of every single Human colony.”

  She turned away from him, stepping to the edge of the platform and, before Fall could frame a response, Antonov took Julia’s place.

  “All secondary voting officers of the Dumas, I’m calling for a vote of no-confidence in… Morrison – Tactical Officer, Connolly – Navigation Officer and Burke – XO. In accordance with the forms and custom of our ship’s company, step forward and assemble for the vote.”

  Fall’s jaw hung open as he watched the officers push forward to vote on the three men.

  “We have fourteen officers present from the secondary voting class,” Antonov announced. “The voting may proceed. Gentlemen, in the case of Morrison – Tactical Officer, do you confirm his present position or shall he return to his duties in the gunroom?”

  Thirteen of the officers crossed their arms. One hold-out kept his arms to the side.

  “Crewman Morrison returns to the gunroom by a vote of thirteen to one,” she confirmed. “In the case of Connolly – Navigation Officer, how do you vote?”

  Again, thirteen pairs of crossed arms but, this time, the other crewmen jeered at the hold-out.

  “Crewman Connolly returns to the cartographic section. In the case of Burke –Executive Officer, how do you vote?”

  There was a commotion in the crowd as two late arriving officers of the secondary voting class hurried to the front to add their votes to the final cast. This time, sixteen pairs of arms were crossed. Apparently, the hold-out knew better than to reinforce failure. The crowd raised an ironic cheer in honor of his sudden courage.

  “Crewman Burke returns to…” She frowned. “… to wherever the hell he came from.” An XO would have spent years working his way up from his original posting.

  “Oh, hell no!” A deep voice boomed from the back of the chamber, near the entrance. “That trouble-making jackass isn’t welcome in my engineering department!”

  Heads turned and a wild cheer burst from the crew of the Dumas. Someone had seen which way the wind was blowing and gotten the chief engineer out of lockdown.

  Julia knew that reflected a major shift. The chief engineer led the single largest division on almost any ship outside of the Imperial Marines, who were the exception due to their huge troop complements. His presence, ten minutes earlier, would have been enough to swing the vote against Fall, even without removing his three cronies. Now that he was here, Fall’s removal became a more leisurely affair.

  “I call for a vote of no-confidence in Captain Fall,” the chief engineer shouted.

  By now, the crowd was almost fully behind the idea and they raised a shout of approval as the newly arrived officer pushed his way to the front. “I nominate Kat to convene,” he shouted. “I can’t convene and vote at the same time and I wouldn’t miss this for anything!”

  “Primary voting tier officers are accounted for,” Antonov declared amidst the noise. “Administration not yet elected.” It was a strange quirk among the privateers that the XO also served as the administration officer, but he was out of the way so Julia wasn
’t about to complain.

  “Chief Medical Officer,” Antonov shouted into the sudden silence, grinning at being caught out by the quick drop in noise, “how do you vote?”

  The doctor crossed his arms.

  “Engineering?”

  Another pair of crossed arms and a flurry of pleased shouts.

  “Navigation Officer not yet elected.”

  Chuckles.

  “Operations?”

  Folded arms.

  “Supply?”

  Folded arms.

  “Tactical…”

  “Not yet elected,” the crowd shouted, almost in perfect harmony.

  “Crewman Fall,” Antonov began…

  “Is also not welcome back to my engine room,” the chief engineer shouted.

  Julia stepped forward. “As the former positions held by crewmen Fall and Burke are no longer available, we’ll find work for them at this facility.”

  Fall, his face as near crimson as any Human’s might possibly get, gave her a stiff nod. She held out a hand, inviting him to leave ahead of her.

  As she followed him out, she wondered what she’d do with him. She certainly wouldn’t let him have a position of any real influence but he was likely to cause more trouble if he felt his skills were being underutilized. She wondered if she could live with herself if she simply snapped his neck and threw him to the local wildlife.

  Julia shuddered. She was reasonably confident of the argument in favor of killing Fall. He’d likely get more people killed if left to his own devices but she knew, once the genie was out of the bottle, it would be easier to justify subsequent killings.

  She felt a sudden urge to spin him around and knock his teeth out. It wasn’t enough he’d just killed two ship’s companies; he had to destroy her soul as well?

  It’s Never Simple…

  Pulver was putting on a confident face. He even condescended to notice Daffyd, standing near the damage control station on the Sucker Punch’s bridge. “If your coordinates pay off,” he told Daffyd, “I’ll speak for you when we get back to the Imperium.” He frowned slightly. “Assuming we capture your fellow dragoons, of course.”