The Gray Matter (Rebels and Patriots Book 3) Read online

  “Not exactly a yes,” Edrich groused.

  “Maybe not, but I’m feeling a sudden operational need to fill that vacant wiper position in the auxiliary reactor room.” Daffyd nodded at the riser. “Get your ass in gear and try to act like filming me’s a big deal.”

  When Daffyd stepped out into the main companionway leading to the bridge, he found two confused-looking technicians standing watch outside the doors.

  “Look natural now,” Edrich called to them. “Act like you see him every day…”

  Daffyd breezed past as if they didn’t even exist. If there’d been Marines guarding the bridge, he’d have had a much harder time of it, but these two were simply stationed here as some sort of secondary duty.

  The two ratings clearly had no idea what they were doing, so they were unlikely to interfere with someone who did.

  “It’s alright, everybody,” Daffyd proclaimed loudly as he swept onto the bridge.

  All eyes turned to him as he grimaced, tapping his chest with his fist. “I’m here to help.” He managed to spit the words out just ahead of an impressive belch.

  The young man at the engineering panel regarded Daffyd without an abundance of hope on his face. “Maybe you should have kept notes when you invented this thing. Tiānxiǎode! I must have been a senator in a past life to get shafted with this gǒucàode posting…”

  “Don’t you worry, lad,” Daffyd assured him, throwing in a slight sway for dramatic effect, “we’ll get it sorted out and, when we do, the ladies’ll be all over you!” He was laying it on thick, but the bridge crew were all engineers and, as a rule, very sceptical.

  The young man rolled his eyes. “Oh, sure. Surviving a top-secret, unheard-of project really helps your chances with the opposite sex.”

  “Mr. ap Rhys!”

  Daffyd turned at the loud address to find the officer of the deck staring at him. The officer jerked his head toward the ready room. “A word, if you please.”

  He stood by the door as Daffyd entered, then put a hand on Edrich’s chest to stop him. “Why don’t you just wait out here?” he said, clearly not meaning it as a suggestion.

  ***

  Commander Pulver waved the door shut and rounded on the gin-scented intruder. “I won’t have you giving my men false hope, Mr. ap Rhys.” It was one thing to cut the team off from the outside universe while on a project, but to subject them to visits from imbeciles without notice was really too much.

  Daffyd tilted his head slightly. “False is a bit strong, don’t you think?”

  Pulver treated himself to a sardonic smile as he strode around to the far side of the control table that dominated the room. “So, what you’re asking me to believe is that you managed to invent a source-directed wormhole generator?” He raised a hand. “And this is the really clever part – you somehow managed to trick a Gray shipyard into building an attack carrier with ready-made housings for all three rings as well as setting aside space for the generator array?”

  He didn’t really expect an answer to that, and ap Rhys clearly had no intention of providing one.

  Pulver turned to look out the large window on the outer wall. “We’re down to a matter of weeks, at best.” He took a deep breath and blew it out between pursed lips. “Senator Nathaniel got me appointed to this project because he knew we’d never figure out how that generator works. All he has to do is wait until the right moment. One of his cronies will make waves about how dangerous it is to have an alien ship that Humans can’t understand, and the entire program will be eliminated, along with the engineers who know just enough to tarnish Imperial prestige.”

  “Like the old saying, eh?” ap Rhys offered. “Two men may keep a secret, providing one of them has just killed the other?”

  Pulver spun to face the man, noticing he was sniffing at his coffee mug.

  Daffyd gave him an apologetic little shrug and set it on the control table. “Seems to me, your daddy bought you the wrong commission. You should have asked for something a little safer than the Imperial Corps of Engineers. Maybe a nice cozy combat posting out on the Rim…”

  Pulver felt a sudden urge to hit the man but the control table stood between them. An angry lunge across the surface might make him feel better, but he’d randomly trigger any number of the surface or holographic command macros that were currently open.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he retorted, “but I can take comfort in the knowledge that, even if we do manage to unlock the secrets of this ship, you will still end up dead from some ‘unfortunate accident’. The longer you’re in front of cameras, the more people will come to realize what an idiot you really are. You won’t live much longer than us.”

  He jerked his head toward the door. “Now, get off my bridge!”

  He watched the two men shuffle out of the bridge before picking up his coffee and carrying it over to a heating pad. The fool wasn’t entirely wrong. Pulver had already caught himself wishing he’d ignored the lure of secret work and shipped aboard a cruiser or an LHV. Engineering officers on combat postings had a much higher life expectancy than those involved in black projects.

  A curl of steam rose from the mug and he reached out to retrieve it. He sipped as he walked to the window to look out at the small constellation of ships surrounding Nidaveller Station. Some were involved in other projects but a large number of them were warships, posted there for security. One of these days, a cruiser might have an ‘accidental discharge’ and Pulver’s troubles would come to an abrupt end.

  His eyes narrowed as he saw an escape pod drift past. A Gray-built escape pod. “Maxwell!” he roared.

  Maxwell, the second lieutenant stationed at the sensor suite, appeared in the doorway. “Sir?”

  Pulver turned to Maxwell as he pointed out the window at the pod. “Do you have an explanation for that?”

  Maxwell looked past him. “Huh!” he grunted. “I’d imagine it has to do with that shuttle.” He pointed out the same window.

  Pulver wheeled back to look. “Ō, zhè zhēn shì gè kuàilè de guòchéng!”

  A shuttle, bearing three stars and the letters 1GD was bearing down on the pod. As the two engineers watched, it scooped the pod into its front loading bay and turned toward the next surprise.

  “It’s that old derelict they towed in here two days ago!” Maxwell exclaimed. “I thought one of the other projects was going to use her for parts. How is that thing even moving under its own power?”

  Pulver thought it fitting that ap Rhys would die in the old relic. “Comms, signal the security force. Advise them that we…”

  Just as the shuttle flew in through an improvised landing bay door in the stern of the old ship, a wormhole plunged into existence directly in front of them. As Pulver watched in silent rage, the ship slipped out of sight, taking most of his remaining life expectancy with it.

  He turned back to the control table. Sure enough, a green authorization icon was quietly pulsing, just under the spot where ap Rhys had set his coffee. The damned oaf had authorized a wormhole right under Pulver’s nose. His ears grew hot.

  If ap Rhys was a buffoon, what did that make Pulver?

  Cherchez le Oaf

  “Daffyd ap Rhys?” General Sir Edmund Windemere blinked in surprise. “Why in twelve purgatories would that imbecile come here?” He leaned forward in his chair, raising one eyebrow. It was a gesture to tighten the sphincter of any Engineering project leader. “And how did he get access to the wormhole generator on the Sucker Punch?”

  Commander Pulver had pretty much resigned himself to death after ap Rhys had played him for a fool, so he wasn’t terribly worried about Windemere’s displeasure. Being chewed out by his superior meant he was still alive, for the moment.

  “I’d imagine he did it the same way he got past the security pickets around Nidaveller Station in the first place,” he said mildly, enjoying the barb against his general who, to be fair, was responsible for the interlopers being at the research station in the first place. “He acted like he was supp
osed to be here.”

  “We know better.” Windemere pounded a fist on his desk.

  “You and I do, certainly,” Pulver conceded, “but we can’t tell the staff, now, can we?” It was clearly not meant as a question. “I have enough people aboard the Sucker Punch to take her into combat and you have enough troops guarding Nidaveller to fight a small war.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Tell them and you can forget about secrecy. Some of them are bound to make it home one day, and you don’t want them contradicting the official Imperial line on this project."

  “Sod the Imperial line.” Windemere looked down at his desk. “I’m in this up to my eyeballs.”

  “Sir?” Pulver knew that the project teams were often liquidated in the name of political expediency, but Windemere was in charge of the entire station. He’d been here since the discovery of pointy rocks. Was his head on the block as well?

  A sigh. “No sense hiding it.” He looked up to meet Pulver’s gaze. “They’re coming for us both.” He got up and went to the sideboard where he kept an impressive array of intoxicants. “The Windemeres are part of the Santa Clara Block.”

  Pulver nodded to himself as he accepted a tumbler of whiskey. The Windemere family must be heavy shareholders in the circuit production at Santa Clara. Their wealth would take a beating from Senator Nathaniel’s plan to break the Santa Claran monopoly and disperse circuit production throughout the Imperium.

  He frowned at the general who motioned for him to sit. “I don’t see how that makes you a target, unless…”

  “Unless I’ve been running a project on the sly to implement compatibility codes on computing components.” He took a swig of the amber liquid and sighed appreciatively. “Once they implement the new standards, you’ll need the handshake-circuits in every component. Cortical processors, quantum busses, memory crystals, even I/O devices will fail to work if they don’t have the circuit.”

  “So…” Pulver took a drink. “… If Ganges sets up a factory to build cortical processors, they won’t work without this new coding circuit?”

  “Which will be proprietary, of course,” the general added. “So it would increase the difficulty of Nathaniel’s little plan by several orders of magnitude. The Gangians can’t just set up shop to produce circuits; they’d need to build an entire computer industry from the ground up.”

  “But that leaves a major bottleneck in the computing industry,” Pulver said, “and it’s sitting on the edge of Gray space. They’ve already tried to destroy the main factory ship once. It would be madness to think they won’t try again!”

  Windemere chuckled. “Madness and money usually go hand in hand. Show me a single person of wealth who’d put the Imperium ahead of personal fortune!” He shook his head. “The Imperium is nothing more than a framework for families like ours to squeeze money out of the poor.” He waved his tumbler at Pulver. “Or are you going to tell me your father got the money for your commission from hard work and good intentions, and not from raiding the planetary coffers on Kansas?”

  “Are you saying that my project and now my probable death is just part of a plot by Senator Nathaniel to root you out of here before you can implement this compatibility program of yours?” Pulver’s death might save the Imperium, when viewed from that angle, but he was in no mood to feel noble.

  He’d much rather keep on breathing.

  “Hmm…” Windemere looked straight through Pulver as though he wasn’t even there. A grin began to soften his ordinarily angry features.

  “I wonder,” he began quietly, “did that drunken oaf had a direct role in this or is this simply a coincidence and Nathaniel hasn’t even heard of it yet. Even if that’s so, he’ll waste no time when he does hear of it.” He focused on Pulver, eyes shining with mischief.

  “I’ve always liked you, lad…”

  “Umm…” Now it was time for Pulver’s eyebrows to raise. “No, you haven’t. Just last week you invited me to visit you on Loki… so you could feed me to your dogs…”

  Windemere sat up a little straighter, squinting at the young engineer. “That was you?” He shook his head. “A little advice, young man – never remind your boss that he doesn’t like you. Honestly, how did you make it all the way to commander?” He waved off the question.

  “Never mind that,” he breezed. “I like you well enough now. You’ve shaken the tree, as they say, and the solution has dropped in our laps. You have a full crew, even if they’re mostly engineers, and I’ve got a few ships and troops at my disposal, as you so inelegantly pointed out earlier. We’re going after that gin-soaked hundan and, when we’ve got him, we’ll make him say Senator Nathaniel put him up to the whole thing.”

  “In front of a holocam and a recognizable notary?” Pulver asked helpfully.

  A nod. “And then we’ll tuck him away somewhere safe. That should keep Nathaniel out of my hair for the time being.”

  “Our hair, if you don’t mind, sir.”

  “What? Oh… yes. Of course, that’s implied, young man. Do try to keep up.”

  Pulver nodded to be polite, but he didn’t want to leave his life entirely in Windemere’s hands. Part of a general’s job was to spend lives in accomplishing his goal and he had no doubt that Windemere would shove him into the intake, as the saying goes, if the general’s goal of self-preservation called for it. He wanted to keep his boss close.

  “I assume you’ll be moving your flag to the Sucker Punch then, sir?” It was a safe bet. The Gray ship was the only one capable of generating a wormhole to return to Imperial space. If the small fleet ended up separated, Windemere would want to stay close to his ticket home.

  The general was selecting ship icons in the defense force holo, appending a command for the captains to report to his office immediately. “Of course I will, so you’d better clear out of that cabin behind the bridge.” He looked up at the engineer. “You still have the coordinates that Mr. ap Rhys used?”

  A nod. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good! As soon as I brief the captains, I’ll head over to join you. We’ll jump as soon as everybody’s back on their bridges.”

  Live Bait

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is the Bastile out of Beaumont. Coordinates are Unity Primary, 125689774 Nu, 43.8843, 22.9933. Have taken heavy damage from raiders. Weapons are down, main reactor offline, twenty-three dead, six wounded. Urgently require medical assistance and a set of flash capacitors to initiate the support generator. Mayday…”

  “Keep it running,” Fall ordered, “but mute the replay. We could be here for a few centidays before we get a nibble and that’ll get old pretty damn quick.”

  The signal was being sent from a Human-built antenna jury-rigged onto the hull of his captured Gray cruiser.

  He turned to Julia. “With respect, Commodore,” he said quietly, “this is too similar to the last ambush for my comfort. The Grays may not be great tactical innovators, but they can recognize a pattern better than any Human.”

  Julia nodded. “And it’s that very trait that constrains us, Captain.” She leaned in a little closer and lowered her voice. “If we get too creative in our tactics, how long before they realize the majority of attacks against Quorum ships were carried out by us and not a splinter faction of their own people?”

  “Oh, I understand well enough,” Fall assured her, “but I still don’t like the idea of dumbing down our tactics. It’s giving us the results we want but it also gives away one of our best advantages.”

  Julia had already seen examples of Captain Fall’s ‘edge’ in tactical and strategic thinking. He more or less favored direct assaults on Gray worlds, throwing in words like ‘surprise’ and ‘unexpected’ here and there to make it sound like he’d come up with something clever.

  It was little more than putting lipstick on a pig, as far as she was concerned. He was a privateer, after all. His combat experience had been focused mainly on raiding commercial shipping and he clearly had no idea what he’d be getting into, assaulting a properly defended enemy
planet.

  Especially when the enemy wasn’t aware they were considered the enemy. It would only take the destruction of one Human-manned cruiser in orbit to bring the combined might of the Gray Quorum down on the Human colonies. Finding Human corpses floating with the debris of a ship that should have carried Gray Purists would prove to the Quorum that Humans were behind the Gray civil war.

  “Squadron reports ready for action,” Tactical announced. “All four cruisers are in position.”

  Patterns. Predictability.

  It may have been risky to emulate Gray tactics, but you could lay out an effective ambush secure in the knowledge that the enemy would follow the same old routine.

  Usually.

  When capturing Human vessels to seize experimental subjects, the Grays typically employed their version of shock and awe. Two cruisers would drop out of distortion, one ahead of the victim’s bow and the other astern. They’d come in perpendicular to the prey’s vessel, releasing a blast of drop-wash plasma in front and behind the Humans before turning to bring their mains to bear on the target from less than a half kilometer.

  They liked to get nice and close to frighten their victims as well as to minimize transit time between the ships. Ferrying captives to their holds would take too long if they stayed too far out.

  The ships in the Human’s ambush squadron were arranged in a diamond formation. A cruiser waited to port, starboard, ventral and dorsal, each one five hundred meters out. Two were aligned aft and two forward, all aiming at the point where the Gray ships would appear. Fall’s ship, as the bait, sat at the middle of the diamond.

  She’d felt the occasional twinge of conscience, over the years, at a few of her more questionable ruse de guerres, but this one had a certain poetic justice to it that appealed to her.

  “Ambush is ready, ma’am,” Fall informed her.