The Gray Matter (Rebels and Patriots Book 3)

by A. G. Claymore

  Uruk

  Daffyd resisted the urge to grin as the shuttle bucked its way through a rainstorm that covered half the moon. Uruk was very wet and incredibly turbulent and the crew of the Sucker Punch, engineers and techs from Nidaveller Station, were accustomed to working aboard stations and ships in the vacuum of space.

  Doubtless, most of them were wishing they’d stayed aboard the Gray cruiser in orbit. The deck would need a good wash-down.

  They should try landing on Irricana sometime. A bad particulate storm there could strip the vanes off an atmo engine in no time flat.

  He treated himself to a ration bar as the men and women around him held onto the seat bars for dear life.

  The wind lessened as they neared the surface. The intensity of the rain seemed to increase but it was simply the slowing of the shuttle relative to the falling water drops. The increased pounding on the upper surfaces of the shuttle leveled off just as the landing points touched down.

  Daffyd walked over to the ramp as it opened and a man jumped in out of the rain as soon as it was halfway down. He looked around the passenger compartment seeing fifteen grey uniforms.

  “Didn’t quite believe it until just now,” he said. “Imperial engineers, all the way out here on Uruk!” He extended a hand to Daffyd. “Name’s Marco Stanic, captain of the Pony Express. We’re damn glad to have you show up down here!”

  Daffyd waved his hand over Marco’s. “Daffyd ap Rhys,” he replied, nodding over his shoulder. “That’s Commander Pulver. He’s the one in charge of our little mission of mercy.”

  Marco nodded at Pulver but stopped to do a double take on Daffyd. “Really?” he asked, his brows knitting together. “One of Urbica’s famous dragoons?”

  “That’s me,” Daffyd agreed. “And I’ve seen your ship around Irricana more than once. What brings you all the way out here?”

  “Got nabbed by the Grays,” Marco replied, looking back and forth between Daffyd and Pulver, who’d come to stand next to his right. “They shoved us into pods and the next thing I knew, one of my loadmasters is pulling me back out and we were in orbit around this moon.”

  “Yeah, we heard that from your boys in orbit,” Daffyd cut in. “What I don’t quite get is how they managed to stay conscious when they went into the pods.”

  A charming grin. “Well, as a hypothetical exercise…” He raised his eyebrows at Pulver.

  Pulver sighed, waving a dismissive hand.

  Marco nodded. “Well, let’s say, for example, that a ship was carrying a small stash of FMG, purely for medical purposes you understand, and say that your loadmasters are both fond of the stuff…”

  “So your loadmasters were stoned,” Daffyd cut in, then grinned, “hypothetically, of course!”

  “Exactly!” Marco nodded. “It might just be possible that a captive in that exact set of circumstances could find himself resistant to the effects of the Gray pods.”

  “Fabulous,” Pulver drawled. He waved a hand at the stack of components that were strapped down on the deck. “Let’s get your boat back in the black so we can all get on with what we were doing.”

  None of Pulver’s people wanted to touch the stack, seeing as it was now decorated with somebody’s lunch. All eyes turned to the freighter captain.

  “Fair enough,” Marco chuckled. “What’s a little stomach acid among friends, eh?” He pulled the strap-release and scooped the stack of flash capacitors into his arms. “They’ll be clean anyway, by the time we get inside the breaking yards.” He strolled down the back ramp and led the way, through pounding rain, to a set of massive, open doors in the cliff-side that showed a freighter sitting inside.

  Just before they reached shelter, the rain let up.

  “Always seems to happen after you get soaked,” Marco mused. He handed off the equipment to one of his crewmen who carried it inside the large structure.

  A horde of avians were wheeling and diving in a swarm, just beyond the roof of the large building.

  The smuggler nodded to Pulver. “My thanks, Commander. Those flash-caps should get our reactor back on its feet.”

  “Why didn’t you have any in the first place?” Pulver asked.

  “We did, but one of the containment emitters was dead. We didn’t know until we’d dumped the charge into the ignition sequence.”

  “You didn’t check?” One of engineering techs demanded.

  “Not while we were sitting in a hostile Gray facility, sonny.” Marco replied mildly. “We had no idea when another cruiser might happen along and find us standing next to a pile of their dead pals.”

  “Well we have a small fleet up there.” Pulver nodded upwards. “We should be able to hold this place long enough to do a proper job this time. Let’s have my team go over everything before you try to flash up.”

  They were halfway to the freighter when Pulver slowed, putting a hand to his ear with a frown. He looked to Daffyd. “With me,” he ordered and peeled off to the left. A smattering of gunfire echoed from somewhere down the hall as they walked and Pulver, to his credit, quickened his pace toward the sound.

  They passed through a glazed walkway into another building where three of Pulver’s Marines were holding back a collection of strange looking aliens, one of whom had several layers of what appeared to be a chitinous husk shot away from the side of his head.

  “We walked in here,” a lance corporal began explaining, “and they converged on us. Tried to take our weapons and equipment. We managed to convince ‘em that we don’t feel like cooperating, but now they seem confused as hell.”

  Before Pulver could respond, they noticed the sound of running feet and turned to look at the other exit from the room. The lance corporal signaled to his two men and they took aim at the opening.

  A Human face appeared around the doorframe and ducked back. Daffyd had formed a fleeting impression of a man who hadn’t washed or eaten well for a very long time. His skin hung loosely from his skull and his eyes had flashed a look of confused disbelief before disappearing again.

  “Don’t shoot!” a voice shouted hoarsely. “I’m a Marine. I’m coming out unarmed.” True to his word, a hand dropped a 10mm caseless pistol to the floor in the middle of the doorway.

  “Advance one and be recognized,” the lance corporal shouted back.

  The man stepped out, his hands raised and his chest heaving from his run. “I was starting to think nobody would come to relieve me,” he croaked. “Michaels bought the plot three months back when a scavenger dove on him. He tripped and fell through the zapper. Been alone ever since, unless you count these helmet-heads.” He waved at the aliens.

  “Why are you here?” Pulver demanded.

  The filthy Marine blinked at him. “Those hundan didn’t even tell you what the duty would be?” He shook his head. “Simple enough. The sooner I can show you the ropes, the sooner I can get off this poor excuse for a planet.

  “The captives who die in the pods or just can’t absorb the programming get sent down here because they know too much.” He waved at the aliens. “These guys, who seem to be some kind of ‘wild’ version of the Grays, from before they started cloning themselves, process the prisoners.”

  He shuffled over to a panel on the wall and hit a large green button.

  The Marines’ weapons twitched a little closer to their shoulders as the entire floor of the room began lowering.

  “They take away any tech or clothes and send it down for sorting.” As they came to a halt on the next level down, five more of the aliens began approaching but stopped in confusion when they saw the armed Humans.

  “These guys sort everything.” He waved at the conveyors, built into the floor. Objects, no doubt from the previous batch of prisoners, lay on the various belts, halted until more material made it economical to start them up again.

  Daffyd wandered over to one of the belts and bent over to pick up a small holo-toy. It was set to project a cuddly, furry creature that probably never existed, unless it was on the original home-w
orld, lost in the mists of time.

  He stood, looking up from the creature in his hand to the filthy Marine. “Where do the prisoners go from here?” His voice had a hard edge. He’d seen how little regard the Grays had for Human life, and he didn’t think this facility had been placed here for the good of their captives.

  The man pointed. “Through there,” he said simply. He led the way out to an open walkway, five meters long. Canyon walls rose up around them. “We take ‘em out one at a time or we’d have trouble on our hands,” he explained with a wild-eyed grin.

  At the end was a gate with what looked like a greenish energy shield. “Michaels had just put a prisoner through when an avian tried to take a slice out of his shoulder. He bobbed, when he should have weaved, and fell right through…”

  He stood there, staring through the shimmering green portal.

  Daffyd edged closer to the railing to the right of the opening. The last thing he wanted to do was take a look, but he knew he had to. He reached the rail and looked down.

  “Bozhemoi!” He stepped back from the railing and brought a hand to his mouth, his stomach suddenly his own worst enemy.

  “Yeah,” the filthy Marine conceded, “I had the same reaction, when they brought me here, but you learn to tune it out.” He shrugged. “They’re enemies of the Imperium. Can’t just turn ‘em loose …”

  “Enemies?” Daffyd roared as Pulver took a look over the railing. Daffyd waved the holo-bear in the Marine’s face. “The child you took this from was an enemy?”

  Pulver scrambled away from the railing, stumbling to the deck plating where he gave up his lunch. The lance corporal stepped to the railing and shuddered in disgust. He turned to his two men, shaking his head. “You don’t want to see this,” he told them as a squadron of hungry avians dove past behind the gate. “There’s thousands of ‘em. Just thrown down there for the animals to eat.”

  “It’s like the massacre at Gilgamesh,” Pulver whispered.

  “No!” the skeletal Marine insisted. “The killers at Gilgamesh were all evil monsters. The Navy chased them back to their world and destroyed it. This is unpleasant but we have orders…”

  He fell back in surprise when the back of Daffyd’s meaty hand slammed against the side of his mouth.

  “Zatkinice!” Daffyd shook his hand to ease the sting. “I always thought the Navy line was a load of dermo. They let folks think that this kind of thing only happens when evil people get nasty ideas. They miss the point entirely.

  “We all possess the capacity for evil. Any group of people, on any world, can slip into unspeakable atrocity if they aren’t on guard against it.” He pointed a finger at the man. “You’re just as bad as the bastards who destroyed Gilgamesh or those renegades that burnt the atmosphere off New Damascus.”

  “Kinsey didn’t send you,” the man blurted in sudden awareness.

  “Chto za huy?” Daffyd grabbed the man’s tunic and pulled him back to his feet, bringing his face close to his own. “Rufus Kinsey? That predátil?”

  “Traitor?” The man shook his head. “No, he’s a…”

  “Traitor!” Pulver grabbed the man by the collar and tore him out of Daffyd’s grip. He swung him around and released him on a trajectory that would take him through the green shielding.

  The Marine’s arms flailed for balance as he passed through the portal. The light went out of his eyes the instant his head passed through and he fell, limply, to the corpses below.

  Daffyd stared at Pulver, waiting for him to come back to his senses. “You know, Commander,” he ventured quietly, “that man might have led us to one of the key players in a plot that nearly crushed the Imperium.”

  Pulver’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the portal. He’d heard Daffyd, but still needed time to absorb the meaning. He nodded. “Yeah, we should have pumped him for information but I just couldn’t stand the thought of a thing like that drawing breath when he’d killed all those poor people.”

  “Can’t say I disagree with that,” Daffyd admitted and, anyway, bringing Kinsey back to the Imperium probably wouldn’t win any favour at Court. He’d be a reminder of how fragile Imperial society continued to be.

  The erbium mines on Irricana and the circuit factories on Santa Clara still remained as single-failure points. Sitting close to the Rim, either world, if destroyed, could bring the Imperial Military and the economy to a halt in a matter of months. The circuits only lasted for a quarter of a year at most and if there were no new replacements available, ships, weapons and computers would start failing rapidly.

  Too many aristocrats and Grand Senators were being enriched by the status quo and they were far more concerned about their bank balances than they were about the future of the Imperium. Bringing Kinsey back wouldn’t extricate them from their current predicament.

  But killing him would be a service to the universe.

  Daffyd sighed. “How about we get that ship off the ground?”

  Pulver nodded. “The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”

  It was unclear whether he meant the planet or Gray space in general.

  This Just In…

  “three, two, one…” Robin checked her screen. “Distortion drive secured. We’re in the pipe.” She touched a hand to her ear. “Roger that, Orbital Control. Holding coordinates confirmed. Will confirm when we reach position.”

  She turned to Julia. “Five-day slot confirmed, ma’am. We’ll be five clicks out from the station, in the outer holding pattern.”

  “Very well.” Julia turned to Oliver, another of Mullins’ semi-retired Maegi. “How long to find him and clear that signal out of the stations nav beacon?”

  Oliver pursed his lips for a moment. “Maybe a couple of centis,” he ventured, grinning at her look of surprise. “Finding him’ll be easy enough and, as for the rest…” He shrugged. “…The Maegi recruited me on Norseman, where I was hacking for hire. Shouldn’t be all that long at all.” He sketched a salute and left the bridge.

  Julia could feel the eyes on her. This station was one of the old designs, based on a large rotating ring and designed with a sense of scale and grandeur. Her ragtag force of fake Gray Purists were getting tired of their ships and even more tired of the mine where they’d made their base.

  “Sorry, folks. Nobody else goes ashore. Not unless we want a full war with the Grays.”

  ***

  Less than a centi-day later, she was just stepping out of the shower when her door chime sounded. “Just a moment,” she told the audio pickups. She moved through the dryer cubicle as quickly as possible before stepping into some clean clothes. Her underarmor suits lay unused in her bag. The last suit of Heavy Marine Armor had failed three months ago and she’d switched to dressing like a local.

  “What?” she demanded when she noticed Paul’s grin. He’d been sitting on the couch going over intelligence reports but he’d set them aside when she’d come out of the shower.

  A shrug. “I just like how you look in regular civilian clothes,” he said. “I was so used to seeing you in those skin-tight UA suits…”

  “You saying I’ve got something that’s better off hidden beneath loose clothing?” Her tone wasn’t entirely playful, but it wasn’t exactly dangerous either.

  “No, I think you know I’m an avid enthusiast…” He got a chuckle from her with that. “It’s just more fun when the process of discovery is factored in.”

  “I suppose a cop would take an angle like that.” She gave him a playful smile but it was short-lived. “Come,” she ordered and the door slid open.

  Oliver ushered a young man inside. His eyes lit up when he saw Julia.

  “Commodore Urbica?” he asked, holding up a small stringed instrument. “I’ve come to play for you.”

  Julia sat on the couch next to Paul and waved the man to sit across from her in one of the club chairs. She let him tune his instrument before delivering the trigger phrase.

  “Gravity is a function of probability gradients.”

&n
bsp; The young man kept tuning his instrument but he began talking in a wooden tone. “Standard Date 235326, second era. Edgar Prestonby reporting from Orbit over Masra.” A stubborn string failed to tune and he began removing the over-stretched line of gut. “On or about 235302, a male Human arrived in the central market and spoke with the locals, introducing himself as Daffyd ap Rhys. He was searching for Brigadier General Julia Urbica.”

  The musician set his instrument aside while he fished around in his pockets for a new string.

  Julia looked at Paul. Daffyd? she mouthed, not wanting to speak out loud and accidentally knock the messenger out of his trance before he could deliver the full message.

  “While he was still in the market…” The young musician’s voice drew their gaze back to him. “… he was apprehended by Imperial forces and taken off world. They had support from Imperial Marines in full HMA. Estimate grab team to be either a clandestine unit or a rogue element of some sort. Some locals report that the grab team were all in engineering uniforms, which makes them more likely to be some kind of bizarre rogue element. Masran Orbital Control indicates the Imperials went deeper into Gray territory when they left.”

  The string was in place and tuned. “Report ends. All that blather about probability is bollox. Gravity is just gravity.” The young man looked up, slightly confused to find himself in the room.

  Julia clapped, Paul and Oliver quickly joining in. “Very nice,” she told him. She stood and held out a hand to the door. “Oliver will see you back to the station and arrange for payment. Thank-you for sharing your wonderful talent with us.”

  In truth, she was very glad to escape listening to him play. He seemed very much one of those young men who learn a smattering of music to impress young women. If they’d been sitting in the Imperium, she’d have bet heavily that he’d grown up on a world like Greenland but that he’d never admit it. He’d probably try to give the vague impression that he was from Bohemia.