Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  When it was time for lights out, Gogently sat in contemplation, cross-legged on his bunk. Vienna fell asleep without muttering a single mantra or checking the shadows underneath her bed.

  Den Haag had been right. The vigil had built up, not torn down, their psyches. Den Haag had been right; cruelty could be a kindness, and Joy lay awake pondering this until the first few rays of Ach-all-Wrong's brown sunshine crept in through the windows.

  4.

  CASSIMER

  "The red lichen isn't so different from our primers," Major Juneau said, and as far as Cassimer was concerned, she couldn't be more wrong.

  The lichen was impure in every way and shouldn't be compared to anything Primaterre. Everything the major said about it rankled, especially since she put it so reasonably. Evil shouldn't be spoken of in rational terms. Evil shouldn't be spoken of at all.

  But the team had a long journey ahead, and Juneau's chatter was a decent distraction. Lost in discussion with the major, Hopewell seemed to have forgotten that they were onboard a shuttle. Better, Cassimer supposed, than squeezing her armrests and pining for Florey.

  "It infiltrates the nervous system, interacting directly with cerebral tissue to create a connection – a sort of organic wireless network," the major continued.

  "Mycelia." Another too-reasonable term for evil. It was how Joy had described the moonbeam roots that haunted her dreams. It grew in the in-between, she'd told him, not in nothing; we think it's nothing, but it isn't, Constant, it isn't at all.

  "Not a bad comparison, Commander." Major Juneau sounded insultingly impressed.

  I'm more than a suit with a gun, he wanted to tell her, but she didn't need to know that. She didn't need to know anything about him.

  "It's capable of transferring data up and down this network, but the transfer is slow and the human mind immense. The full transfer of a selected vessel's mind takes decades. The Primaterre personnel rescued from Cato had only spent a few weeks in cryostasis. Their recovery was fast, the detrimental effects limited to post-traumatic stress and nightmares. But the demon had also put Cato locals into cryo pods, shortly after waking its first wave about thirty-five years ago. When we woke them..." Juneau paused as though needing a moment to collect herself. "If the transfer is interrupted, whether it has just begun or has gone on for decades, the human vessel retains all its memories. Unfortunately, they also keep the memories of their time inside what the demon calls its place of truth. Essentially, they are the victims of years of relentless psychological torture. There is no therapy that can help them; only debilitating doses of pharmaceuticals. This demon doesn't kill its victims, but it might have been kinder if it did."

  "Earth have mercy," Rearcross mumbled under his breath.

  "Indeed, Lieutenant, but the fact that it takes the demon decades to create new vessels is to its own disadvantage – as is its lichen form. It grows slowly and isn't particularly hardy. Even an average immune system purges its spores in a matter of days – weeks at worst. To corrupt the mind of a host, repeated and sustained contact is imperative. This, however, damages the brain."

  "Don't need to be a scientist to figure that out," Hopewell said. "A couple of days on Cato made that obvious."

  "Yes, I envy your time there. It must've been quite fascinating to discover and study this demonic entity."

  "We didn't have time to do a lot of studying," said Lucklaw, blinking silver from his eyes. On mission, he was always sharp, but on Scathach, always distant. Busy, he claimed, always busy with something. Too busy for Cassimer's liking. So busy that it made his stomach churn with unease, and sooner or later, he would have to confront the lieutenant. Only the creeping dread that he wouldn't like Lucklaw's answers had kept him from asking too many questions so far.

  "The human mind is always alert, Lieutenant; always perceptive of its surroundings. You likely learned more than you know, which is partly why I agreed to transfer to Scathach. There's much to be learned here, I think – from all of you."

  "Not from me," said Rearcross, shifting backwards in his seat.

  "Not from any of us. We're not lab rats, Major, and I better not catch you looking at me like you do your buddy in the hab; like you're two seconds away from getting the scalpels out and dissecting the poor bastard."

  "Language, Hopewell," Cassimer reminded his gunner, but gave Juneau a look that made clear that inappropriate language or not, Hopewell had her commander's full support in this matter. There was nothing to be learned from Scathach Banneret Company that wouldn't come down on all of their heads. Juneau was a cat balancing on the side of an aquarium, one paw in piranha-filled water.

  "Come now, Lieutenant." Juneau smiled, undeterred. "Surely you have stories to share? What little Bone has told me has been most interesting, but it would be nice to get an opinion from someone whose mind wasn't corrupted by demonic lichen."

  "Truth be my sword and clarity my shield." Rearcross placed his palm on the Primaterre sun on his cuirass. The Martian gunner was three hundred pounds of muscle and augments, but ever since Juneau and her science project turned up, he'd been twitchy. Problematic, in Cassimer's opinion. Annoying as shit, pardon my language, in Hopewell's, but I'm keeping him in check, Commander.

  "Shut up, you idiot." Hopewell's idea of 'keeping him in check' certainly differed from Cassimer's, but seemed to work. Rearcross took every sharp remark with cheer, even outright criticism slipping right off him. Good-natured, his file said – dumb as a box of rocks, Hopewell said. "I told you that's not how this demon works. Major, do me a favour and set the man straight for us?"

  Juneau's smile widened. Setting things straight was, as far as Cassimer could tell, one of her favourite pastimes. "Well, as I was saying, this corrupt entity is far more limited than the demons unleashed from Xanthe. It can't touch your mind without physical contact, so as long as you haven't been near any red lichen, you are quite safe, Lieutenant Rearcross. Furthermore, influence is not the same thing as possession."

  "Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly," Hopewell said smugly. "There's the loonies, right, who are people influenced by the houseplant. It creeps into their heads and gives them orders, which drives them crazy. But the good thing about being under its influence is that it won't take you as a vessel. Doesn't like the minds it harvests to be all scrambled up, I guess."

  "Impressive. I hadn't expected such insights from–"

  "Dumb grunts with guns? Nah, your first instinct was right, Major. We're all a bunch of hard-charging fools and if it sounded like I said something smart just now, well, it was probably just a fold hallucination."

  Their shuttle had reached the first leg of their journey, the Dunscaith Cascade. While folds were instantaneous, security checks were not. A queue had formed as dozens of ships awaited inspection – their crews likely furious. The discovery of a new demonic entity had brought about stringent security measures, and some, like the Cascade checks, were too stringent for the galactic community's liking.

  Cascades had, since the construction of the very first, been free for all to use. Whether RebEarth scum or pirate, tourist schooner or Primaterre frigate, no ship was ever denied their fold request. That was the way it had always been – until now. The Primaterre legislators claimed it to be a temporary measure, applied only to particularly sensitive systems, but dissenters would have it that temporary often became permanent, and regardless, it ran counter to everything the Cascades represented.

  Lucklaw watched the Cascade through a viewport, silver flames licking arcing pylons as a fold was processed. Still that distant look in his eyes, still that thoughtful set of his lips. The lieutenant was spending far too much time thinking, and perhaps – this concerned Cassimer a great deal – doing things.

  Yes. He was going to have to have a talk with the lieutenant very soon.

  "So, small team today. That means we're either going somewhere boring, or somewhere way too interesting. Don't mind either way, but I can't deny I'm curious." Hopewell craned her neck to look out the
viewport. A snub-nosed barque floated there, and then, very much not there, the view of copper-tinted hull and rail cannons replaced by star-spattered space. Its fold request completed, the barque had gone somewhere – as far as twelve hundred light-years away, or perhaps just a quick hop into the next system over. The universe seemed to always be on the move. Humans, stars, planets – none of them still. As though they all had to keep moving, or else they'd sink.

  "Our destination is classified." On Cassimer's HUD, the mission brief flashed to remind him just how classified. Mentioning the system was off-limits, revealing the coordinates a capital crime. He couldn't even name their destination, though it would become utterly clear to the team once there.

  "Typical. Just point me in the direction of what needs shooting, I suppose."

  If only. There'd be plenty that needed shooting where they were going, but none that he had permission to pull the trigger on. Frustrating.

  As the shuttle prepared for its fold to process, Cassimer thought of the entity that lived in the in-between. He visualised its pale root system and reaching tendrils and the fake smile it had worn as Finn Somerset, and he imagined himself burning it, crushing it underneath his boot, grinding it into dust and ash.

  When the constellations changed to mark the fold's completion, he hoped that the entity had been watching. Hoped that it had peeled away the shuttle's hull and his helmet's visor and stared him in the eye. If it had, it should be afraid.

  * * *

  Their destination was darker than space itself. The shuttle's lights were absorbed by the matte black surface, swallowed whole by the giant turning station. It was a void in the void, a man-made black hole, and when a docking bay opened to allow the shuttle entry, they flew into more darkness, the pilot guided by systems alone.

  For what original purpose Tower had built Vadgelmir Station, nobody knew, but now its dark walls housed a greater darkness.

  "You know where we are," he said to his team, and judging by the looks on their faces, yes, they certainly did. There'd be warnings on their HUDs, forbidding them from ever speaking the name. There'd be no war stories or tall tales to win here, no memories to reminisce about. Vadgelmir was their secret to keep – or else. "And you know what is kept here, and what is being done."

  In the bowels of Vadgelmir Station, nine hundred and twenty-three possessed vessels screamed. Some had been captured on Cato, but most were from the two Dozen Daughters that had never made their folds. No mercy for demons but death, said Bastion, but before the executions had been carried out, Tower had swooped in. Supported by Sanctum, Oriel and several government figures, they had won the fight, the captives their prize.

  Cassimer couldn't claim to know Tower's intentions, or what exactly was going on inside Vadgelmir, but he did know this: the captive vessels were being relentlessly tortured. Three months of hunting Skald's first wave had shown him vessels who wept uncontrollably, vessels who trembled and stumbled, vessels who could barely stand. The effects varied, perhaps based on distance from Vadgelmir, but they were undeniable. The red demon suffered, and it had earned every ounce of that suffering.

  "All I'm interested in is what we're doing here." Hopewell peered into the shadows outside the viewport. The ship had docked, sitting stationary inside what might as well be nothing, and Cassimer imagined moonbeam roots crackling as the entity wrapped itself around their shuttle to sing its songs and steal theirs.

  "Classified," he said, only because it was better for morale than saying I have no idea. A request had come in from Tower, asking for a small banneret team and him by name. That was all he knew, and if Vysoke-Myto knew more, he'd revealed nothing.

  "Is anyone even out there? What if... well, I know I'm not supposed to go there, but what if..."

  "Hopewell." Calm, but emphatic. Enough for the lieutenant to quieten down. The silence and darkness pressing against the viewports was enough for all of their imaginations to have gone there already. Vadgelmir Station, dead and abandoned. They'd step outside and switch their suit lights on to see dead towermen hanging from a tacky web of lichen; the captive corruption broken free to make the black station the void it pretended to be. "Truth and clarity. Perceive the moment."

  They would step out of the shuttle and they would turn on their suit lights, and no matter what they saw, they would handle it. That was the job, and that was what he had to hold on to.

  * * *

  His suit lights washed a mesh gantry brilliant white before fading into the gloom. The light on his Hyrrokkin reached farther, about half a kilometre, before being abruptly swallowed by Vadgelmir's walls. No lichen, no bodies, no nothing – which, considering that they were dealing with Tower, was unsurprising but no less unsettling.

  "Abandoned?" ventured Hopewell, sweeping her rifle's mounted light across the railing. The grey hull of their shuttle seemed bright; the Primaterre sun on its side a modicum of comfort.

  "No." Lucklaw's posture was stiff, his head raised and alert, but his weapons remained holstered. "We're being checked out. I can feel it."

  "Doubtful, Lieutenant," said Juneau, who'd inched rather too close to Cassimer. "The whole point of Tower is that you don't notice them."

  "That's sort of the thing. I'm feeling too much of nothing. Sometimes lack of evidence is all the evidence you need."

  "Paranoia. You spend a lot of time on the unsanctioned data net?"

  "Well, yes, but that's beside the point."

  "I think it's rather the entire point. Next you'll be telling us about alien abductions, the dark rings of Neptune, or–"

  "Enough." Cassimer didn't care for Juneau's superior smile, nor for the careless chatter. Dangerous if enemies were listening, more so if Tower were. "Let's move."

  * * *

  Their footfall was like thunder, their light an intrusion. He could tell from the echo that Vadgelmir's hangar was vast, the gantry suspended high above something or nothing at all. Though demons weren't real, the sweat running down his spine was, and the twisting pain in his chest was, and if he looked down now, he knew he would see the burning, hungry chaos of Nexus's undercity, or the screaming mines of Xanthe.

  He bit his lip bloody to keep himself from giving into the madness. His suit detected the damage, deploying countermeasures to heal the injury. The taste of blood mixed with chemicals in a cycle of wounding and regeneration. If only his mind could be healed so easily. If only the jagged pieces left behind by the Hecate could be plucked from him like shrapnel.

  "Earth have mercy," Rearcross whispered, one hand gripping his rifle, the other tight around the railing.

  "Relax. If the demon or some other enemy was waiting to ambush us, we'd know by now. The creepy darkness spiel is a hundred percent Tower's MO. No doubt they're having fun watching us play their game–"

  "It is no game, Lieutenant Hopewell."

  The voice was soft, barely more than a whisper. The team turned as one, all lights pointing towards a cowled figure who had appeared behind them.

  It was a man, tall and thin, wrapped in floaty black fabrics. He threw his cowl back, revealing a pale face and a honey-comb textured armoured gorget made from supple ballistic weave.

  "Identify yourself."

  "Station Chief Athens. And you are Commander Cassimer."

  Their primers reached out to one another, requesting and transmitting identification. It all checked out, though Cassimer doubted that Athens was the man's true name. As Tower had been built brick by brick, so were their operatives built secret by secret, or so the saying went.

  "It's good that Bastion listened to our request. As I said to your gunner, this is no game. Now please switch off your lights and follow me."

  Cassimer hesitated. The darkness encroached enough already, suffocatingly soft around his armour.

  "I understand that my station is unnerving, but please understand that we have our reasons for operating as we do. Allow us our quirks, Commander, and we will continue to keep the galaxy safe."

  Cassimer complied,
and the team followed his lead. Athens gave a pleased nod, night vision casting his face ghostly bright. In a rustle of impossibly-black materials, the towerman slipped past the team and continued down the gantry.

  "We have our reasons," Hopewell muttered. "Sure they do. And I'm sure he's got his reasons for being dressed up like a shadow warrior, too. No game? All Tower do is play."

  * * *

  Athens led them through a series of featureless rooms where operatives sat in silent rows. None of them were moving, but for the odd twitch of their hands; all of them in black, colourless but for the silver in their eyes. A hundred towermen, perhaps more, their bodies immobile as their minds flowed down rivers of light between Cascades and worlds.

  "What are they doing?" asked a nervous Rearcross.

  "Processing data. What kind, I've no idea," Lucklaw said, adding in a private text to Cassimer: Could take a look?

  Negative. Absolutely not.

  Athens glanced over his shoulder, smiling slightly, and Cassimer had to bite his lip again, this time repressing anger. Athens was listening, of course he was, him and the shadows and stars knew who else.

  "Private correspondence. Search histories. Personal photos." Hopewell shrugged. "Can't play their not-a-game without information, after all. Got to know all our dirty little secrets. I bet they're sifting through your mail right now, Lucklaw, looking for juicy intel on your admiral mother. I bet they're laughing at your nudes, Rearcross."

  "How do you know about–" Rearcross frowned as Hopewell laughed. "Oh, I see. Very funny."

  Athens shot an irritated look over his shoulder at Hopewell, and other towermen glanced in her direction too, their work momentarily disrupted by a sound that seemed alien in the surroundings. Hopewell herself seemed out of place, too energetic, too affable. Any other time, Cassimer would've told his team to quieten down, but Vadgelmir was stagnant darkness, its inhabitants sly shadows, and if he was being perfectly honest, it was satisfying to see Athens annoyed.

  Their tour of Vadgelmir came to a stop in front of a massive vault door. Dozens of locks whirred and clicked, security measures reacting to Athens' authorisation, and with a sound like groaning earth, the door rolled open.