Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  * * *

  The loss of Kiruna had brought the insidious word if floating to the surface. Previously one soldier in a company of six hundred, she had, post-mortem, become the most important of them all, her absence a shadow clouding the banneretcy quarters. Heated talk about vengeance had turned into the sharing of Kiruna-related war stories, and then finally to silence, as each soldier considered the if. If it were me instead of Kiruna. If it will be me next time. If it'll be a bullet or worse.

  It was a process that purity could only mitigate, not negate. Only time and work would set their minds straight. So when Cassimer and Vysoke-Myto neared the banneretcy commons, they were surprised to hear the sounds of laughter.

  The doors opened to a scene more relaxed than it had been in weeks, if not months. Soldiers talking, playing games, reading – and at a table in the midst of it all, Rhys sat playing poker with Hopewell and Rearcross.

  "Captain Rhys." Vysoke-Myto stepped up to shake the medic's hand. "Good to see you back on your feet. No bastard tougher than an old bastard, eh?"

  "You ought to know, CC."

  "Not that I'm complaining, but I wasn't expecting you back yet."

  "Got a few more weeks before I return to active duty, but I couldn't stand spending another minute in the med-wing. I asked the docs to pretty please let me return to barracks before I catch a fatal case of homesickness."

  "Well, come round my office later and I'll open a bottle of something nice to celebrate."

  "Thanks, CC, but a close call makes a man question his choices. I decided it was time to give up my vices." Rhys stubbed out his cigarette. "Well, except for smoking. Got to keep my hands occupied or who knows what they might get up to."

  "Wow," Hopewell said. "You quit drinking? The brain damage must've been worse than we thought."

  "Yeah, maybe you should go back to the med-wing, Captain," Rearcross said. "I think you might've suffered a stroke."

  "Considering the sort of impertinence I'm putting up with, I can only conclude you must be right. Straight flush, by the way – thanks for the merits, Lieutenants." Rhys placed his cards on the table; the gunners grumbling as they transferred merits to his account.

  "I'm pretty sure gambling is a vice, too," Lucklaw, perched on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to Cassimer's quarters, looked up from his tablet.

  "Only if you lose, kid." Rhys stood, brushing cigarette ash from his trouser legs. "And now, if you don't mind, I need to have a word with the commander."

  * * *

  They found a quiet corner of the common room. Rhys sat in a chair opposite Cassimer. His face was still scarred, his skin still shiny, one corner of his mouth not quite closing. He gave Cassimer a critical look and said: "Well, you look like shit."

  "On account of being glad to have you back, I forgive the smoking and the gambling, but don't push it, Rhys. I'm not in the mood."

  "Clearly. I've seen thunderclouds with cheerier dispositions."

  Cassimer said nothing, but Rhys refused to take stony silence for an answer.

  "I can tell you're not sleeping. And when you walked in here, you looked to the corners first. To the shadows. They still look alive to you? They'll stay that way, unless you give yourself a break."

  "A break." Cassimer scowled. "Joy isn't on Scathach. She was meant to transfer here after Basic. She was supposed to be here, but she isn't, and I have no idea where she is or who she's with. I can't see her, I can't talk to her. All I can do is protect her the only way I know how."

  "Killing demons," Rhys said.

  "Among other things."

  "Yeah, well, you should consider this: there may come a day when she needs your help. When she does, she'll need you at your best – and whoever that is, it certainly isn't the dead-eyed stim zombie I see before me."

  "Fuck off, Rhys."

  The medic rolled his eyes; the new one moving jerkily in its socket. "Spare me the hissy fits and consider a different scenario. One day, Joy will be here, and it won't be because she needs you. It'll be because she wants you. And which you do you want to give her? Which one do you think she deserves?"

  "I..." Lost for words. Lost for thoughts. Nothing left but churning, scratching darkness as deep as Velloa's waters. So deep he might drown, but Rhys was looking at him, and in his look was an offer. An extended hand, a willing ear, an understanding of the situation. "Three years, Rhys. If they're all going to be like this, I don't know how I... I just don't know."

  "Don't know that if you fall asleep, you'll have the strength to get back up again?" Rhys nodded. "Been there, Commander. But it's not three years, is it? It's two years and eleven months. It's 1059 days, 25408 hours, 1524480 seconds. 1524478, now. 1524476. 1524474. See? Each passing moment is forward momentum. Focus on that."

  "Does it help?" Cassimer had no idea what Rhys might be counting down to, but he could see that the medic was speaking from experience.

  "It's a healthier distraction than the drugs, and you can trust me on that. So, 1059 days today. 1058 days tomorrow. That's how you go to sleep, Commander, and that's where you find the will to get back up."

  "Maybe. Thanks." He couldn't quite smile, but attempted to set his face in a slightly less dour expression. "Did you tell Joy the same thing?"

  "Hah, no. That girl spent seven months on Cato, hoping against hope. She doesn't need me to tell her how to wait; she's got that down pat. Seeing Kirkclair again was good for her, though. Gave her some closure."

  "It was a good idea. I owe you for that, too."

  "Hardly. She wasn't the only one who needed a vacation. I wasn't kidding about the med-wing – staying there sucks the will to live out of a man."

  "Oh, I know," said Cassimer, who'd spent more than his fair share of time in surgery and recovery. "What did she make of the Morrigan?"

  "She loved it, though I'm fairly sure she'd have loved an old sock if it came from you. I'd have gone for the flowers or jewellery myself, mind, but–"

  The hoarse scream of a siren interrupted Rhys. It echoed through the station, bouncing between the walls of the common room.

  "Another drill?"

  "No." Cassimer stood, blinking notifications off his HUD. "We're being called in."

  "Didn't your team just return from an assignment? Get another commander to take this one."

  "No, Rhys – we're all being called in." Cassimer looked across the room towards Vysoke-Myto. "What's going on, Company Commander?"

  "It's Vadgelmir Station," Vysoke-Myto said. "RebEarth have found it. They've come to free the demon."

  22.

  JOY

  After a week of working as a towerman, Joy had come to only one conclusion.

  "It's not at all what I expected."

  "After Cato, I suppose social harvesting must seem dull," Elsinore said. "I don't care for it either. It makes me feel like a ghost haunting the margins of other people's lives."

  "It's not that it's dull," Joy said. Hammersmith had given her a list of names to investigate, none of them Primaterre, and it was interesting to get an insight into life in other parts of the galaxy. One man lived in a city built on top of a mobile platform that travelled its planet's ammonia seas. It was always on the move, strip-mining the seabed for resources while avoiding storms. The weather was a big topic of conversation among that man's friends and family, second only to worries about Black Nine raider activity in their system.

  Others led more comfortable lives, many far less so. Their cultures, their concerns and ambitions, even their beliefs were different. Though they all spoke variants of the same language, sometimes it really didn't seem like it, and Joy had to use Tower dictionaries to understand. The only thing the people on her list had in common was their line of work. They were Cascade engineers, employed by the neutral, galaxy-spanning Cascade Engineers Union – and they all kept that very secret.

  Their jobs made them targets, Hammersmith had explained, which was why Joy couldn't access or read any of their social profiles or messages. They w
ere all monitored under heavy security, and even looking could throw up red flags. Instead, her task was to trawl through the online presence of their social circles. With the help of glimpses collected from their friends and families, she was to piece together an idea of the engineers as people.

  "I like it, actually," she said to Elsinore. "It's like a big puzzle. It's just that I don't see what it's got to do with anything. Also, though this is not a complaint, I thought Tower work would be more dangerous."

  "Well, you don't know what Hammersmith intends to do with the information," Elsinore said. "And you might as well get used to that. Everything matters, somehow, but Hammersmith likes to compartmentalise – by which I mean keep everything to himself. Most of the time, none of us have any idea what the other is working on."

  "He doesn't trust you?"

  In the corner of their office, near a Xanthe-yellow viewport, Wideawake gave a wheezing laugh. "I doubt he even trusts himself. That's what a life of deception does to a man."

  "Room 36 specialise in infiltration deep behind enemy lines. Undercover work, as it were. Hammersmith's spent more time wearing RebEarth's red-and-black than he has his Tower blacks. He's mostly retired from the field now, but it's funny, isn't it? I don't have a life, and he's lived more lives than you can imagine." Elsinore laughed, but it wasn't funny at all. "Me excluded, all of 36B came up through 36. Not sure what Lutzen and his crew did there – no doubt more wetwork than paperwork – but they've definitely been undercover RebEarth too. And Wideawake, he was–"

  "The same thing I am here – a polite and charming man who enjoys good conversation."

  "He's our corporate creeper. Industrial espionage and numbers fixing, mainly, working offices and banks across the galaxy. One day he'll be a Heptarchy business man, the next, a Kalevala accountant."

  "And now a cripple." Wideawake sighed, one trembling hand grabbing at a tablet from his desk. It slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor. "Did you get me the Heptarchy birth records I asked for, Elsinore?"

  "Hammersmith doesn't want us to conduct personal business on duty."

  "Hammersmith this and Hammersmith that. Who cares? The man's hardly ever around," Wideawake scoffed, though his pained face smoothed into a smile when Joy handed him the tablet he'd dropped. "Thank you, Somerset. You're not afraid of our colonel, are you? Maybe you can talk Elsinore into bending a rule or two."

  Afraid? Not exactly, but not exactly unafraid, either. Underneath the cold exterior, Hammersmith was in turmoil. His anger didn't scare her, but his unpredictability did. One moment he could be reasonable, the next furious, and sometimes Joy thought that even he wasn't sure why.

  "I think that since Wideawake has been good enough to set aside his medical treatments to work, Hammersmith wouldn't be too bothered about a bit of personal business."

  "You may think," Elsinore muttered, "but I know otherwise. I'll do it, if I can blame the two of you when he finds out."

  "Blaming us will only make him angrier with you." Wideawake chuckled. "The boy never learns. But then, some lessons take a long time to sink in. My last one required a near-death experience," he said, pointing to his face. "Undercover operatives may live many lives, but sometimes our pretend lives catch up with the real one. Once, very long ago, my cover identity embarked on a relationship with a non-citizen. She fell pregnant, but my mission was over. I left and did not think about it again – until the very second an explosion fractured my skull. In a flash of light and pain, the thought of that child came to me. Now I know that before I die, I'd like to know what became of the child. And yes, Somerset, I know that makes me a selfish man."

  "It's easy to make mistakes, harder to admit to them." She could barely look at his decaying skin, the dark drool at the corner of his mouth, but she saw the Oryx team sweater he was wearing and the regret in his eyes as he regarded the tablet, and in those things, she saw the man. "I could assist with your investigation, if you like?"

  "Ah, yes." He chuckled, drool clinging to his chin. "I could use a cup of coffee."

  She made them all coffee in spite of Wideawake's rudeness – she could never tell if he was joking or being disrespectful – but as soon as she set the cups down, Hammersmith's voice came over the PA system.

  "Somerset, report to the war room."

  "War room?" She looked at Elsinore.

  "It's in the lower hangar. You'll have to pass through damaged sections to get there, so take the lift from the core chamber."

  "A lift? Through burned ruins and open space? That sounds really dangerous."

  "It's that or a three hour spacewalk. Guess which one Hammersmith has the patience for."

  * * *

  Halfway through the lift journey, the temperature dropped noticeably. Joy rubbed her arms, shivering, trying not to picture what lay beyond the lift doors. If they opened now... she wasn't half as fearful as she'd once been, but space couldn't be fought. Space won every time.

  The lift shuddered to a halt, doors beginning to slide open, and she held her breath as if that might help. Actually, would it make it worse? Something in the back of her head whispered that holding one's breath in the vacuum of space equalled internal implosion. She didn't know if that was true or just a myth, but it seemed plausible enough that she froze, unable to decide whether to breathe or not.

  Then the doors opened, and she really did forget about breathing for a minute.

  The Cascade's hangar had once housed Karon shuttles and NGNEER ships, the friendly worker bees of humanity's expansion, always buzzing to and fro, maintaining the structure. In their place, a hornet nested.

  It was a sharp-edged arrow's head of a ship. Her hull oscillated softly, swirls of grey dappling her surface and cloaking her in illusory mist. Her airlock was open, warm light spilling into the dark hangar. She seemed unreal, a ship launched from a dream.

  The war room's other treasures were bluntly real. Weapon racks lined the walls; armoured suits were housed in backlit stands. In the farthest corner, she saw the hulking shapes of cataphract suits. An ammunition printer was churning away loudly, spitting ammo blocks into an open crate. Every inch of space seemed crammed with grenades, drones and unfamiliar, lethal-looking things that required more than Basic Training to use.

  One of Lutzen's men sat on a stack of missiles, cleaning a rifle. He didn't so much as acknowledge her, but she could feel him watching her navigate the maze of weaponry. Hammersmith was nowhere to be seen. Inside the ship, perhaps?

  She stepped through the airlock and into a glow that reminded her of the Andromache. This ship's interior was pleasantly utilitarian, its ash grey bulkhead lit by golden light, but the sharp angles and starkly embossed Primaterre sun logos were unyielding. It was a message the Primaterre Protectorate deliberately projected: compassionate in peace, ruthless in war.

  The ship's cockpit housed eight seats besides the pilot and navigator chairs. It was empty, though its lights were all on. It seemed pristine, entirely untouched, but for the oddly stained white leather of one seat. Not blood, nor oil.

  "That's where Colonel Elsinore died."

  Joy turned with a start, her heart fluttering. Not afraid of Hammersmith? He stood in the cockpit doorway and all she could feel was trapped. Maybe he could sense her unease, because he walked over to the ship's instrument panel and leaned against it, as if offering her an escape route.

  "You took your time getting here," he said.

  "Sorry. I got a little lost among all the weapons of mass destruction. You've got enough to equip an army here," Joy said, refraining from adding but no actual army. "You expect to go to war on Earth?"

  "Perhaps. There could be an army down there waiting for us, or nothing at all. Just an empty server hall where ancient scripts still run, still transmitting priming signals. Either way, we need to be prepared, because we will only get one chance at this."

  "Sounds more like no chance at all."

  "I'm glad you understand," Hammersmith said, which really didn't help at all. "But n
ot fully, I don't think. The Hesperia is a beautiful ship, isn't she? Quite unique, too. 36B is cloaked from the Cascade network, and only three ships in existence are capable of folding through to this system. Our two shuttles – the Imago and the Instar – and our splendid Hesperia. She is capable of sustaining a crew of twenty for thirty-six months, her power cells designed to last twice that long. She is a barque, but carries the arsenal of a frigate. Besides that, she can slip through blockades, unnoticed by Primaterre fleets and even the Luna Belt. She is our hope – and she was their doom."

  His eyes flashed silver as he requested a connection with Joy. As she accepted, she felt the slight tug of softness that accompanied entering a mindspace.

  The cockpit remained the same, but no longer quiet. Crew sat strapped in their seats, Joy's hand so close to a man's face that the mindspace's tactile feedback simulated his breath against her skin. She stepped back, clutching her hand to her chest. She didn't want to feel the breath of ghosts, even if they were just virtual.

  "...station systems prepped?" the man asked, looking over his backrest. He was tall enough to look uncomfortable in his seat, silken-blond and razor-sharp.

  "We are ready to execute, Elsinore," a familiar voice replied. Hammersmith stood in the cockpit doorway once more, but he might as well have been a stranger. At least fifteen years younger, his dark hair untouched by silver, his eyes their natural blue, their augments unexposed. He wasn't smiling, unlike some of the other phantom crew, but his cheeks were flushed with excitement. "Baines is monitoring the signal traffic, and Paget uploaded some last minute data on potential sites."

  "Such a perfectionist," Colonel Elsinore said, laughing, and then all the voices were muted. The real Hammersmith, almost painfully vivid in the mindspace, spoke.

  "We know that Project Harmony is based on Earth, but we don't have its exact location. Colonel Elsinore prepared his first expedition for the long haul, intending to explore Earth. We stocked the Hesperia and drew up lists of known Hierochloe facilities and other sites to hit, and eventually, we arrived at this moment. A historical moment, Elsinore said. He left me in charge of 36B, and then he led our strike team to Earth. It didn't go well."