Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  "That's the demon."

  "Earth have mercy," Rearcross muttered across the team channel. "Perceive the moment. Be aware."

  "This demon doesn't work that way," Hopewell said. "He needs time to get inside your head. Although, in the case of your head, maybe not too long."

  The demon was going to die, one way or another, but if it had brought RebEarth into a war-zone to interrogate a man, it had to be for a good reason. Uncovering that reason had to be their priority, and limiting casualties would be a good start.

  "Ready concussive, Tallinn. Hopewell, Rearcross – breach on my mark."

  "Hang on, Commander – I've got something weird," Lucklaw said.

  Cassimer repressed the urge to sigh. Though the young comms specialist was very much deserving of his promotion, he still had an annoying tendency of making his commander waste words getting him to the point. "Go on, Lieutenant."

  "Look – that woman there, by the window – is that lichen in her hair?"

  Her black braids were dusted with red speckles. Cassimer had taken it for dye, but Lucklaw was right. That was lichen, and that could mean only one thing.

  "The demon isn't hiding among RebEarth. They know what it is."

  "And they're working with it?" Hopewell said. "Are they out of their minds? This is crazy even for RebEarth."

  But it wasn't crazy at all, not to the impure and the superstitious, and Cassimer understood why the strange mural seemed familiar. Scarsdale had told him, hadn't he, providing RebEarth's perspective on demons.

  "'Bright-winged creatures, come to strike at the dark hearts of the Primaterre.' It's something a RebEarther once told me. It's what they believe demons to be."

  "Oh great. Another mission that doesn't make a lick of sense. I must be cursed."

  "No such thing as curses." Cassimer checked his Morrigan – ammo block full and ready to go. "Truth and clarity, people." And then, edging towards the door: "Breach."

  * * *

  His kick took the door from its hinges, sending a guard sprawling on the floor. The apartment ceiling collapsed as Hopewell and Rearcross crashed in from above. Cassimer shot the nearest RebEarther, one boot grinding the spine of the fallen guard. Tallinn's concussive grenade arced over his shoulder.

  A chirp passed between suits and grenade, making them aware of the incoming blast. Cassimer's visor automatically darkened. Audio off, shock absorbers on, and he sprinted into the scintillating smoke.

  He grabbed a dazed RebEarther and slammed the man's head against the wall, leaving a smear of blood and cigarette ash. The gunners incapacitated two, another falling to Tallinn. The remaining hostiles fell back into the kitchen along with the demon. In cover behind brutalist pillars, they returned fire.

  Cassimer's active protection field flared outwards to divert bullets from the bloodied man in the chair. Tallinn rushed in to haul the chair out of the line of fire and out of the room.

  Hopewell and Rearcross engaged the RebEarthers in the kitchen, exchanging bullets in a hail that tore through concrete.

  Cassimer, APF burning hot, charged at the demon. Projectiles turned into plasma against his reactive plates, spattering the walls as he vaulted over the kitchen counter.

  The demon dropped its assault rifle when it saw him coming and grabbed a knife from a block.

  A big mistake, because Cassimer remembered when it had learned how to use knives against banneret men. He remembered his own knife in Joy's muddy hands, and the sound of her tears when she woke from nightmares reliving the moment.

  He shot the demon twice in the chest. The impacts threw it backwards against the wall, the knife clattering from its hand. Its mouth opened as if to speak. It couldn't, because it no longer had lungs or a heart, but to him, it looked like it was trying to say a name. To him, it looked like it was trying to say Joy.

  He shot it again, erasing its stolen face.

  "Commander," Lucklaw said, the pitch of his voice rising a touch. The comms specialist had been tasked with securing prisoners. Five RebEarthers lay rounded up by the windows, their wrists shackled behind their backs. They were twitching, their feet kicking against the floor. Bloody foam frothed from their mouths.

  "Earth have mercy!" Rearcross opened fire. Two RebEarthers died before Hopewell wrenched her partner's rifle from his hands.

  "Commander said to keep them alive!"

  "But they're turning. The demon's vessel is dead, the corruption seeking new hosts. We have to kill them before–"

  "This demon doesn't bloody work that way."

  "Cool it, Hopewell. Tallinn, get in here." Cassimer knelt by the woman who wore lichen in her hair. It fell from her braids, scattering on the floor in a chaotic pattern. Though the touch disgusted him, he held her head still as Tallinn examined her. "Poison?"

  "Affirmative." Tallinn fished a deflated gelatinous vial from the dying woman's mouth. "They're using carbolic acid as a kind of primitive kill switch. There's nothing I can do. Looks like we'll be going home empty-handed."

  "What about their captive?"

  "Alive, just about, but we ought to put him out of his misery."

  "Not before he speaks."

  * * *

  A squad of Gustavian infantry appeared from the east to engage the Kalevalan gunship. Bullets blazed down the frozen-over highway, debris misting the air as the gunship's chain guns ate away at the office block where its enemies were taking cover. Mortars whistled past the high-rise windows frequently enough to make the RebEarth hideout rumble with impending collapse.

  "We should move before the building comes down on us," Rearcross said, glancing down the corridor.

  Tallinn shook her head and injected the tortured man with a careful blend of anaesthetics and stims. "He wouldn't survive it. If we're interrogating him, we're doing it here and now."

  The man made a small, pained noise at that.

  "This is not an interrogation," Cassimer said. "We're here to help."

  "Help..." the man muttered. "Since when... did the Primaterre help anyone?"

  "We have no quarrel with the Kalevala. We came here to kill the demon who did this to you."

  "They said... said it was a spirit." The man licked his bloodstained lips. "Thought demons were a god-damned Primaterre fever dream, but now I know. Now I know. You were right all along."

  Cassimer swallowed the bitterness and nodded. He could live with the Primaterre lie as long as he had purity of purpose and as long as he had Joy.

  "The demon tortured you for information. What did it want?"

  Tallinn's drugs must've kicked in, because the man laughed, a long and moist sound. "I told them before the torture. It did this to amuse itself while waiting for the information to check out."

  "What information?"

  "Not much you can do to me that hasn't been done already. No reason for me to spill Kalevala secrets to Primaterre scum."

  "There's vengeance. The satisfaction of knowing that the demon won't get what it wants. The peace of mind of knowing that your last breath was spent fighting corruption."

  "Debatable." The man had reached that unpleasant stage of drug-assisted death where he was more talkative than he should be, where his eyes gleamed with false and too-bright life. "You say you have no quarrel with Kalevala. I say only because you don't know."

  "Don't know what?" Cassimer texted Tallinn to raise the levels of euphoriants in the man's system to further increase his willingness to talk.

  "Don't know about the facility." The man's pupils widened, turning his eyes black rimmed by bloodshot white. As foam collected at the corners of his mouth, Tallinn muttered a nervous apology. She'd given the man too much too quickly, and he smiled now, childishly happy as his heart began to give out.

  "What facility?" Cassimer knew only three ways of asking questions: straight, threateningly, or violently. This man needed a lighter touch than his to coax the secrets from his tongue, lighter than that of any of the soldiers present. Joy would've been able to do it, with warmth and light, an
d a gentle hand on skin yearning for compassionate touch. He was glad that she was far away, but he felt a sting of empathy for the man who was dying in the company of dark-visored strangers.

  "Kalevala's last chance. Behind facades, we've been dying for a long time – but now even the facades are crumbling. We wanted what you have. We wanted to be you. Our last chance... our last..." The man's eyelids fluttered shut. His chin slumped to his flayed chest, and he whispered his final words: "Blood... my blood."

  "Gone." Tallinn sighed, shaking her gauntleted hands as her reactive plates burned off gore.

  "And so should we be," said Rearcross, earning himself a scornful glare from Hopewell.

  "Commander, you should see this." Lucklaw had searched the apartment. He leaned over a desk littered with food wrappers and dirty cups. A space had been cleared for someone to do electronic work. Clipped chips and circuitry lay scattered among tools and trash.

  "They appear to have been using this building as a headquarters for some time now – at least a month. This," he said, pinching two halves of a chip between his index finger and thumb, "is a deactivated key chip. These other chips are attempts at reproducing and reactivating it. Must've been tricky, because the data's pretty corrupted. All I can get from it is a name – Tornea Medical."

  "They're in bio-tech," Tallinn said. "Quite successful – Bastion actually bought a new type of injector from them last year, and Bastion hardly ever deals with non-Primaterre companies."

  Bio-medical. Cassimer took a deep breath, ignoring the shuddering walls and the approaching gunfire. The RebEarthers had come here for a reason. They'd stayed here for a reason. This apartment contained the puzzle pieces. All he had to do was put them together.

  Two of the dead sported fresh bruises on their faces. A third had a bandaged shoulder, the white gauze stained dark. They'd seen recent combat, but none of them wore protective armour. Their weapons were lightweight, fitted with suppressors.

  A pair of handcuffs lay in the rubble in the kitchen. An open med-kit displayed a neat row of vials. One was missing, and Cassimer didn't need Tallinn's expertise to recognise the drug as a sedative.

  "They came here for a snatch and grab. Whoever this man was, they infiltrated a Tornea Medical facility to get to him."

  "Dangerous operation in the middle of a war-zone," Lucklaw said. "Not worth the risk if all they wanted was a bio-engineer. He had to have been in possession of specific intel. He had to have..." The lieutenant's eyes widened. "Tallinn, can you run a DNA scan on him?"

  "What am I looking for?"

  "If it's there, you'll know it when you see it."

  "That's not really how this works, Lieutenant, you'll need to – oh. Oh stars."

  "A primer," Lucklaw said. "I'm right, aren't I, Tallinn? That's what the man meant about his blood, and about becoming us. The Kalevala are trying to reproduce our primers."

  "They're not quite there yet, but close, I'd say. The Kalevala figuring out the primer manufacturing process is bad enough, but RebEarth getting that tech? That's bad news."

  "They'd be able to infiltrate the Protectorate, indistinguishable from citizens." Rearcross looked ill at the prospect. "As though the houseplants living among us weren't bad enough already."

  Hopewell said nothing, nor did Lucklaw, but they both looked to Cassimer, the same discomfort on their faces. The secret the three of them shared had made itself impossible to ignore. The primers, the synthetic DNA modification that marked a person as a Primaterre citizen, were more than just data storage and connectivity. They were tools of mind control, whispering the doctrine of purity in the ears of the Primaterre people, using repetition priming to condition them into unquestioning believers. Worse, they could receive a trigger signal which turned their host into a violent 'demon'.

  Demons weren't real. Cassimer had understood that on Cato and had forced himself to accept the fact every day since. Demons were not real – but the red demon, the alien entity that Hopewell had named the houseplant, might as well be a demon, and it too knew the secret. If it sought to reproduce primers, no doubt it also sought to reproduce the repetition priming. With RebEarth as its unwitting allies, it could come to possess an army of mind-controlled soldiers. Slave-minds, the demon had called the Primaterre. It was unlikely to treat its own new slaves any kinder than it had the population of Cato.

  We'll take care of it, he texted Hopewell and Lucklaw. There was nothing else that could be said – the secret had to remain just that; a quiet dread.

  * * *

  Gunfire echoed up the stairwells as Gustavian troops, evading the Kalevalan gunship, engaged the remaining RebEarthers. A new exit strategy had to be formed quickly, and Cassimer elected for the roof.

  "Lucklaw, notify our transport ship. Recon units, head for LZ5. We're en route."

  "Commander, a squadron of Gustavian gunships just buzzed us. They'll be at your location in less than five," reported Kiruna of Recon Unit 2. She was an excellent marksman, her temperament as cool as Tuonela's meltwater, but as it turned out, a poor estimator of time. Cassimer's team were two storeys from the roof when the Gustavian gunships arrived three minutes ahead of schedule.

  "Since when is air support early?" Hopewell complained as they ran up a stairwell turned into a frozen waterfall by burst pipes and extreme cold. "Rampart could learn a thing or two from the Gustavians, because they only know two ways of arriving: in the nick of time, and way too bloody late."

  "Guess that's what happens when you take humans out of the equation," Lucklaw said. "Gustavian ships are unmanned, their preferred warfare by drone or airstrike – remote and clinical."

  "Irresponsible," Cassimer said. "A cause not worth dying for isn't worth killing for."

  He shouldered his way through the rooftop door. A rush of snow and ember swirled inwards like static. The RebEarth shuttle burned, wreckage littering the rooftop. Cracks had separated the concrete into shifting, crumbling floes.

  The Kalevala gunship came spinning towards the apartment building, soft plumes of flame spiralling behind it. Shrapnel showered the roof as the Gustavian ships continued to lay into the crashing gunship. The Kalevala flight crew bailed, their jumpsuits bright blue against the arctic sky. Massive slugs meant to tear holes in titanium bored through the bodies of two, shredding them midair. Another hit the high-rise roof – flaming, screaming, dying fifteen feet from Cassimer's boots. The final crewmember splashed into the icy waters below, and Cassimer wished him the best of luck.

  The Kalevala gunship roared across the rooftop, leaving a scorched streak, and impacted against an office block on the other side of the street.

  "I don't know, Commander, if I could do this from the safety of Scathach Station instead of actually being here myself, I think I might," Tallinn said, nervously glancing out from the stairwell.

  "Don't be a baby, Tallinn," Hopewell said. "They're not even shooting at us. This isn't so bad."

  Two Gustavian ships, their underbellies gleaming gold, flew across the rooftop. One deployed gold-threaded mechanical arms to pick through the brick-embedded wreckage of the Kalevala ship. The other fired casually into the waterlogged street, lasers cutting steaming gouges into the icy surface. A human pilot might have taken pity on the sole Kalevalan survivor, but the Gustavian computers had no intention of letting him live.

  Cassimer found himself wondering how the Gustavian ship would fare against his Hyrrokkin rifle. Not well, he didn't think – one plasma-licked shot would cut through both force field and plated hull.

  But this wasn't Cassimer's war, and he was already fighting on too many fronts.

  "We head south. A straight jump from here into the next building. Lucklaw–"

  An earthen groan drowned out his voice. Across the street, an office block listed sharply to the left. A crack tore open wide and fast, running down its front like a zipper. Inside the building, gas lines caught fire in a soft whoomph that turned into a staccato of explosions.

  Right. No choice, no time to think.


  South; into the water. He texted the team to ensure the message wouldn't be lost in the noise, and then he took point, sprinting across the roof. Charcoal curls of burnt debris crunched underneath his boots.

  The office building collapsed, toppling into the street. The Gustavian ship with its outstretched arms carrying the gutted innards of the Kalevala Vasara was caught in the shower of rubble. Its machine pilot compensated too slowly for the sudden downpour, and in an instant the ship was swallowed up, plunged deep under water.

  Cassimer jumped.

  The street was iced over, tongues of translucent white licking the sides of buildings. He hit the surface and smashed through into a world of crystalline blue confusion.

  The explosions and gunfire became muted and distant. His teammates landed around him, heavy enough to sink straight to the tarmac riverbed. He turned, so slow underwater, so imprecise. Four faces, pale and distorted, stared back at him.

  "Set your suits' guidance systems to follow me. Stay in formation and stay tight."

  He grabbed hold of a bollard and used it to propel himself forward in a great leap. He suspected it might even look as though he knew what he was doing, although in his experience, water was a thing that burst through tunnel walls or was briefly glimpsed through the viewport of a transport ship. It was an unpredictable element, an inconvenience at best. It was the chaos of shifting tides and capricious undertows.

  But as he pulled himself along, he saw that it was also silence and control. A car lay upended at the mouth of the alley, and as he kicked it aside, both his movement and the car's appeared languid. Underwater, even violence was graceful.

  The alley opened up onto the large traffic artery. The north was a hazy churn of rubble, brick and metal raining down from above. His suit sent bubbles of steam upwards as it burnt off shrapnel.