by S. A. Tholin
10.
CASSIMER
The planet-wide ocean of Velloa was as vast as it was unnatural. Centuries ago, when mankind had still afforded itself such follies, some long-lost empire or conglomerate had tried to turn the distant world into a paradise. Rock formations, glittering with quartz, broke the surface of the water in imitation of Kepler's natural karst islands. But while Kepler's islands were dappled rose and azure with roosting birds, Velloa's were dark and barren, yellow froth churning around their bases.
Velloa had become an ocean, but had refused to be a paradise. It sat on the edge of the explored universe, nine hundred light-years from Earth, and its alien nature had resisted the touch of its would-be colonists. The efforts had been abandoned, the planet left to slip into obscurity as just another piece of worthless galactic wilderness, far from anywhere of relevance.
It was a bad place to live, but a good place to hide a primer research facility.
The Kalevala had built a laboratory and a manufacturing plant inside a hollowed-out rock tower, repurposing the ruins of an unfinished resort. No tourists had ever come to Velloa, and as the Primaterre shuttle raced across the bottle-brown ocean, Cassimer couldn't help but feel that the planet was annoyed by the sudden influx of visitors. Great waves reached towards the shuttle, chartreuse foam spattering the viewports.
"Stars," said Hopewell, who seemed incapable of feeling unwelcome, "good place for big wave surfing. Just look at the size of those plungers!"
"The water is so dark." Tallinn pressed her fingertips to the viewport as she looked out. "I wonder what swims in it. Something big and old. Something scaled. Don't you get the sense that something's watching us? A shadow, just below the surface?"
Yes, a hundred times yes, but such thoughts were impure, and Cassimer had no choice but to remind the team to remain focused. Had to remind himself, too, that he was no longer suffocating on Scathach. He was on a mission and out here, he was in control. Out here, he could breathe.
"Secure your gear." He stood, bracing against the bulkhead. Visor shut, armour sealed, climbing harness strapped on. An on-sight ascent in hostile territory was going to make for an interesting start to the mission. He flexed his fingers, making sure his gauntlets were responsive. They'd be a barrier between him and the rock, strengthening his grip but weakening his connection. No fine cracks for his fingertips to follow, no tactile feedback.
A shame, but also a necessity – because the Kalevala hadn't revealed their facility's location out of the goodness of their hearts, nor had they succumbed to threats. They were a dying people, the primer their one fool hope, and they'd clung to it like drowning men. But then the facility had gone dark overnight, and when ships had been sent to investigate, they'd gone dark too.
The Kalevala, already strained to breaking point fighting the Gustavians, had been left with only one option. As Cassimer understood it, they had offered the Primaterre a deal. The location of the primer facility, in return for support against the Gustavians. Whether that support would materialise in the form of aid, or if Vysoke-Myto would have his war, was beyond Cassimer's clearance.
But first the primer facility needed to be secured. Though minor, the system housed several colonies and stations owned by various factions, and the Gustavians had a fleet positioned near the Cascade. The Kalevala could send no support, and the Primaterre were reluctant to send troops into foreign-controlled space. It would be seen as a provocation, if not an outright precursor to invasion.
Instead, they had sent a single shuttle, allowing Cassimer a small team. Lucklaw, Hopewell, Rearcross and Juneau had all accepted his request though they'd been owed a rest. Tallinn, Kiruna and her sniper partner Daneborg had been given no choice in the matter.
"But this isn't like Cato," Vysoke-Myto had said. "If the mission turns bad, retreat. Consider it a fact-finding mission."
Good advice that Cassimer had meant to follow – and then they'd reached Velloa and discovered why the facility had gone dark.
A squadron of red-and-black RebEarth ships were in orbit, surrounded by debris fields of railgun-battered wreckage. Scanners had detected a dozen ships, their flagship impressive enough to rival Rampart's frigates. Such a fleet couldn't have slipped through the Cascade unnoticed. They had to have been in the system already, amassing forces. None of the system's factions were Primaterre allies, exactly, but most were trading partners and all were – or should have been – opposed to RebEarth. But one, or all, had allowed these ships safe harbour and passage.
How many more systems sat passive as the Primaterre's enemies grew in strength in their space and on their soil? It was unacceptable, and Cassimer was happy to set them straight – starting with Velloa.
"The facility is located inside a cave, surrounded by walls, turrets and force fields. The main entrance is via the external landing pads located on a tongue of rock, as the cave is too small to accommodate shuttles. It is a high-security compound, and as RebEarth won't want to risk damaging the research, it's likely that they've yet to breach. We will enter through a secondary access point close to sea level. Kalevala intel indicates that it should take us inside the compound walls."
"Secondary access point," Hopewell muttered. "Bet you anything that's fancy talk for 'sewer'."
"Once inside, we're to make contact with the Kalevala personnel on the ground. Be advised that they have been out of contact with their command for nearly seventy-two hours, and will see us as hostile invaders. We can expect resistance, but should endeavour to limit casualties. The Kalevala have provided us with a list of high-value personnel that they wish returned alive. It's our job to deliver them, and any intel of value, safely back to Scathach Station."
Scathach Station, where perhaps the high-value targets would indeed be handed back – or perhaps the Primaterre would tell the Kalevala that apologies, they couldn't be saved, nothing we could do, and Tower would receive yet another batch of prisoners. Regardless, that decision wasn't Cassimer's to make.
"What of the RebEarth ships?" Kiruna's visor was down and dark. In armour, she was indistinguishable from Daneborg. The two recon men were tall and lithe, as though made in the same mould – possibly literally, electing to go through the same type of augmentation. Fast as cheetahs in the field, as slippery as eels, both specialised in deep operations.
"Yeah." Tallinn rubbed her thighs nervously, sparks arcing from her armour. "Once we're inside, it's unlikely we'll escape detection. How are we going to get off-world with an enemy fleet in orbit?"
"No," Kiruna said, a touch impatient. "How are we going to destroy them, Commander?"
"Earth have mercy." Hopewell laughed, delighted. "Really ought to work with you more often, Kiruna. I like the way you think."
"I don't." Juneau had run her mouth about this and that the entire journey, but seeing the RebEarth squadron had silenced her. Not a word in over two hours, barely even a breath when their shuttle slipped past the blockade. She was still strapped into her flight harness, tapping her feet on the ground, plucking at the high collar of her ballistic jacket. No sealed suit of armour for her – she'd feel the brackish waters on her skin. "A fact-finding mission, I believe your company chief said. Well, Commander, we've found the facts. It's high time we leave and report back to Bastion so that they may send reinforcements."
"Negative. RebEarth have had three days on Velloa already. Any further delay, and we risk the primer research falling into their hands. We're doing this now."
Though Juneau blanched and Tallinn fidgeted, Cassimer could feel the rest of the team respond. He wasn't the only one to feel cooped up on Scathach Station, nor the only one to feel the shadows pushing in from every side. It was time to bring the light.
"And the fleet?" Juneau persisted.
He could've shut her down with a on a need to know basis, or reprimanded her for the impertinence, or dismissed her question with vague promises of a plan. Instead, he chose earnestness.
"I'll think of something," he said, and Hopewell la
ughed again.
* * *
Carried on waves, the remains of a Kalevala ship clattered against a rock tower over and over again. Pieces of a smouldering engine were embedded in the rock, throwing out enough radiation to make Cassimer's HUD flash with warnings.
Their shuttle hovered above the churn of waves and underneath an outcrop of rock. A difficult manoeuvre, but the pilot had merely smiled and said no problem, Commander.
"Good to go, Commander." Rearcross would be his belayer for this climb. The gunner stood at the open shuttle airlock, holding on to its side as he leaned out for a look. The route was steep, but craggy. Their entry point was eighteen metres down, periodically obscured by waves. The shuttle couldn't descend any further without significant risk, and a direct rappel was made impossible by outcrops and overhangs.
Cassimer stepped up to the threshold, surveying his options. Several routes were immediately visible, the rock's texture as clear as a roadmap. He'd have to jump some distance, and the rock was chossy, covered in a film of soft sediment. Finding a hold might be tricky, and the brown sea roiled fitfully below. No scaled creatures swam in those waters, unless of course, they did.
It was hard to tell what was real anymore; hard to tell what was truth and what was lie. Joy had told him stories from myth and legend, tales he once would have discarded as impure nonsense, but was now forced to contemplate. He had lost his bearings on Cato and found himself having to re-evaluate the universe.
"The New Inverness monster is probably not real," Joy had said, in a wistful tone that betrayed a deep desire for the opposite. "The lake was created in Mars's first round of terraforming, as deep and dark as the lochs of Earth. The first colonists must have missed their home, and it's possible that the story of the monster was a product of that homesickness. Why shouldn't their new planet have the same air of mystery as the highlands and the outer island theocracies did? Some theories suggest that the monster was actually a genetically-altered porpoise, designed in a lab and released into the lake to make the legend real, but I prefer the idea that the monster was always there. A Martian thing from aeons ago, lying dormant on the abyssal plains. And when the water returned, it woke, rose from the dust, uncoiled and swam. And perhaps it isn't a monster at all, but a beautiful thing. A marvel of nature."
And probably not real, but she was. His Joy, his light, this girl who believed that monsters might be beautiful even though the entity they'd discovered on Cato was anything but. When Cassimer jumped from the shuttle, he thought only of her.
And when his boots scraped rock for a foothold and his fingers clutched at crimpers, he remembered how different climbing had been in her company. He'd told her not to be afraid, and then he'd spent the rest of the afternoon in dread. The route had been novice-friendly, their equipment triple-checked, but the cliffside had seemed to shift around her, metamorphosing from the known to the dangerous. One mistake. One piece of failed equipment. One moment that he'd never be able to undo.
But they had made it to the summit, and he pulled her up and her breath had been a hot flutter against his neck. Below, beech trees had swayed in a climate-controlled breeze, the view at once familiar and utterly alien. Joy made life amazing and terrifying in equal measure, and he wasn't sure how to handle that.
On the off-chance that she felt the same way about him, he descended slowly, ensuring that every stretch of the climb was as secure as possible. The mission was important, but not as important as survival.
The rock was slick with water, crevices filled with fizzing foam. A white-capped wave rushed against the cliff, its crest licking his legs. The pull of the sea was strong, each wave a potential moment that couldn't be undone. If he lost himself to one of them, no amount of armour would save him. He'd be crushed against rock or pulled down and down to settle on the seabed. But no scaled creature would feast on his bones, because Velloa was a dead world. No birds in the sky, no algae on the rock. No insects or seeds on the wind, no whale song in the sea. It was a graveyard-silent reminder that death was the true state of the universe, life nothing more than a strange quirk, an uninvited visitor to a realm of perfect void and burning stars – a marvel of nature.
The access point was a deep-set concrete culvert barely visible from above. A wide channel coursed down its centre, fetid spillwater overflowing into the sea. Hopewell's suspicion had been on the mark.
He was securing the final anchor for the climb when a bottle-brown roar swallowed him. His armour protected him from the impact against the rock, and then the wave fell away, holding onto him. Above, the shuttle's engines burned, the air shimmering with heat. Below, the sea was as dark as a pit of shadows.
The dynamic rope snapped back, and Rearcross, inexperienced at belaying, failed to soft-catch. Cassimer slammed into rock a metre to the right of the access point. He pushed off the wall, swinging inside.
His suit lights switched on, washing concrete walls pale white. Featureless tunnel led upwards in a sloping curve. The waves lashed the opening, sea water mixing with waste water to spatter the walls.
Cassimer moved a few metres into the tunnel, quiet and wary. Rushing adrenaline made focus easy, and as he secured an anchor to the wall, he could hear what the rushing sea had drowned out. Gunfire, hard and relentless, echoing down pipes. The concrete reverberated with the tremble of a distant explosion. The Kalevalans were putting up a fight, but he doubted they'd hold out much longer.
Rope secured, he texted the team to begin their descent. Hopewell came down first, her armour glistening wet and her face lit up with a big grin. He leaned out, grabbing her hand, and pulled her into the tunnel.
"Cato was nothing but sand, and Velloa is nothing but sea. One of these days, it'd be nice to visit a world with a proper beach," she said.
"Make sure your APF wasn't compromised by the water," Cassimer replied, readying for the next soldier to descend. A proper beach. He'd like to visit one, but not on the job – with Joy. Yes. He'd like that.
One by one, the team made it down. Kiruna and Daneborg immediately headed into the tunnel for recon. Lucklaw came next, doing a good impression of not being scared. The young comms specialist wiped foam from his visor and got busy trying to intercept RebEarth signals.
"Our line to the Cascade is still open and secure, but there's no guarantee the RebEarth ships wouldn't pick up on outgoing signals. The facility's comms are being jammed, so there's no way to contact the Kalevala men inside. We'll need to be careful – if our presence is detected, their fleet will likely block our Cascade comms."
"See if you can get us an idea of how many men they have on the ground, and what kind of arsenal they've brought." Hopefully no stolen Primaterre equipment this time.
"I could send a drone up for a peek," Lucklaw suggested, but Cassimer shook his head. They'd see for themselves soon enough – no sense risking the drone's detection.
Juneau descended second-to-last, the look on her face suggesting that she'd been more or less shoved from the shuttle. Her helmet had no visor, and strands of dark hair clung wetly to her cheeks. She frowned as she stepped into the safety of Cassimer's shadow.
"Stars. It reeks in here."
"Told you it'd be a sewer," Hopewell said, shining her rifle light up the tunnel. They'd have to traverse a good few miles of tunnel before reaching the compound, and the increasingly intense gunfire made the urgency clear.
"Lucklaw, Juneau, Tallinn – go on ahead. We'll catch up once Rearcross comes down."
The gunner was taking his time, but he was also carrying the lion's share of their equipment. Cassimer leaned out over the edge and saw Rearcross, about halfway down, lumbered with bags and weaponry.
"I wanted to apologise about before, Commander." Hopewell held one hand outstretched, catching droplets of water whenever a wave boomed against the opening. "About interacting with the drifter. What you said... I wasn't there for, I guess, the worst parts of Cato. But I saw enough to know that it was bad, and I should've known better than to bring that kind
of bad to Scathach. To our home."
"No need to apologise." The lieutenant edged too close to the uncomfortable, and he was glad for the droplets dripping from her hand like motes of captured light. A good distraction; much better than having to look Hopewell in the eye, and it struck him that perhaps that's why she was doing it. That perhaps she felt as awkward as he did. "My problem is not with you, Lieutenant."
"I'm glad to hear it, Commander." Too glad, because she immediately decided to stretch the boundaries of their relationship. "He's not so bad though, Bone. Oh, there's plenty of Cato in him still, but I can see the man, too, more and more by the day. I reckon every little bit regained is a victory against the houseplant. No doubt Somerset would feel the same. Stars, if she were on Scathach, she'd probably have got Bone's real name by now. Plucked it right out of the darkness, don't you think?"
"No," he said, instinctively recoiling from the idea of Joy talking to the caged drifter. But though Hopewell overstepped her bounds, she wasn't wrong. Joy would try to save such a man, to lead him out of madness with gentle hands and a kind smile – and that idea disgusted him to the core, because that was his Joy and he had no desire to share her. "Maybe. Irrelevant. She'll never meet him."
"No, Commander. I'll keep talking to him, though, because..." Hopewell trailed off as Rearcross approached the opening, switching to private text instead.
Juneau talks to him. A lot. Pretty much every night. And he talks to me about her.
You don't trust her? he texted back.
Don't like the way she looks at us. Like she's trying to figure us out. Like we're experiments. Maybe it's just what Oriel are like, or maybe it's something more. I don't know. But how can we trust anybody anymore? She says she's got houseplant detection tech – but what if she's a houseplant herself? Would be pretty perfect cover, don't you think?
Juneau would have been thoroughly vetted, certainly put through the Pain Exposure test. She would have stood in a room as a vessel was being tortured next door and medics and chaplains evaluated her reaction. If she'd so much as twitched, she wouldn't have been transferred to Cassimer's company, but Hopewell was right to keep an eye on her. She wasn't one of Skald's vessels, but that made her no less dangerous.