Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  "Lucklaw," he managed, glancing over his shoulder.

  The comms specialist shook his head. "You can't help her, Commander. But given the time, I can."

  The time. Cassimer understood, shoving the door shut on unprotected fingers.

  Tallinn looked between the two, and though Joy was not her responsibility, though she had never even met her, though her attention was already split, the medic neither questioned nor hesitated.

  "Can you put me in contact with the patient?"

  "Negative. The strain would be too much." Lucklaw grimaced, wiping blood from his face. "For the both of us."

  "All right. Then pass this code along for me. It'll open the medical augment advanced user's menu. See, med-augments are made to keep soldiers safe. They're tested and checked and made absolutely accident-proof, but that means they err on the side of caution. That's great, of course, but any real medic can tell you that sometimes you need to think outside the med-kit." She looked up at Cassimer with a smile so reassuring he couldn't help but wonder if it had been taught at the medical academy in some equivalent to the leadership courses he had passed. "I'm trained to cover up to a hundred troops at once. Three is not a problem."

  "Kivik's unit is entering the hospital. Towermen on the move. I think they mean to seize the armoured vehicle."

  Daneborg's sitrep left no room for doubt. A quick order to his gunners, and then Cassimer threw open the door, kicking back the horde. He ran in a storm of APF sparks, flanked by Rearcross and Hopewell, ignoring RebEarth, seeing only the objective, chasing only Tower.

  Kivik had left three guards at his armoured vehicle. Two were dead, another was trying to climb back inside, his leg bleeding badly. A shot to the back of his head finished him, and Lutzen pulled him aside and threw the sample case into the vehicle. He made to climb in, but a warning shot from Hopewell stopped him.

  The Tower captain turned, slowly. His four remaining men turned as well, coolly facing the guns of the banneret team.

  "Hand back what you stole and we will treat you mercifully."

  Cassimer's offer was more than fair, but Lutzen responded with gunfire and his towermen with worse. Primaterre channels turned to static. Targeting data was scrambled, HUD read-outs jammed. Something scratched at Cassimer's visual augments, a worm-like thing trying to work its way inside to turn his own senses against him. His defences were too secure, but the very attempt was a deep violation.

  Hopewell swore and lobbed her entire grenade pack towards the hospital. A series of explosions rattled glass from window frames, sent flames gushing through vents and RebEarthers jumping from gantries.

  "Check your packs," she shouted, "all of you. Bastards activated everything I had!"

  Grenades could be hacked. Comms could be jammed. Guns could be recalibrated. But knives and fists were immune to Tower's tricks, and Cassimer ran, slamming Lutzen into the vehicle's side. Rearcross was beside him, breaking the arms of one towerman before putting his knife to use against another.

  A RebEarth driver stared over his headrest with wide eyes. Primaterre fighting Primaterre would be a new thing for him, too. Scum like him might even instinctively know the word that it had taken Cassimer's mind minutes to settle on.

  He pressed Lutzen backwards, one hand clamped around the man's wrist, the other about his neck, squeezing his gorget until it cracked. Lutzen's thermal knife was at Cassimer's throat, reactive plates bubbling and sending plasma rivulets down his chest. In the heat of his failing suit, the word burnt bright:

  "Traitor."

  "Collaborator," Lutzen spat back.

  And there was an iron edge to that word that cut deep and cut true. It didn't make sense, but–

  –pain jabbed at his temple as a battering ram smashed through his firewalls. Something had breached his suit's systems, brushing against his primer and augments. A worm, wriggling and gnashing and eating.

  Releasing suit seals, his HUD announced, and he couldn't cancel the command, couldn't do anything. Only Lucklaw could hope to stop such an assault, but Lucklaw had far more important tasks.

  Suit seals hissed open. Lutzen drove his knife in a downwards arc, finding an open greave seal, and stabbed deep into Cassimer's thigh. Bone shattered and exposed osteo-augments melted. A burst of arterial blood spattered the vehicle as Lutzen snapped the knife handle off.

  Cassimer sank to his knees. The blade had sheared his femur. Med-augments stopped the blood flow and tried to knit his bone back together, constructing useless tissue around the embedded blade. The corrupted swarmed him, dirty hands tugging him backwards, clawing at his open wound. He fought them, struggling in a sea of the corrupted, but when he finally found a pocket of air, Lutzen was there. The Tower captain crouched inside the armoured vehicle, his gun aimed at Cassimer's visor.

  "For the Primaterre to be free, its heroes must die."

  There was truth to Lutzen's words, but he was talking about the wrong person. He was talking about the Cassimer who destroyed demons in recruitment vids, who smiled on movie posters, who was Bastion's gleaming trophy.

  But that's not who he was. He was the Cassimer who bled on foreign soil, whose team fought beside him; the Cassimer who was angry, under whose ashes fires burned, the Cassimer who had been betrayed and violated, and the Cassimer who loved Joy.

  And that Cassimer didn't care whether Lutzen spoke truth or not.

  The Kali fired. The round melted in the palm of Cassimer's hand. Finger bones fractured, reactive plates smouldered. He heaved himself into the vehicle, his left leg dragging behind him, bleeding again, bleeding everywhere. He grabbed Lutzen's arm and threw the man out of the vehicle. Two other towermen were in there. He shot one, and the other – clutching the sample box – opened the door on the other side and jumped out.

  The RebEarth driver, who was still alive and had to be thanking the stars for it, slammed his foot on the accelerator.

  Cassimer stumbled out of the moving vehicle and into the corrupted. Shots went off, killing them, coating his armour in blood and guts. Rearcross was... he had no idea where Rearcross was, or any of them, his sensors scrambled and comms nothing but a white-water of static.

  "Stand down and we won't kill you," a towerman shouted. "We only want what we came for."

  "So do we, asshole!" came the response, and at least Hopewell was still alive, alive enough to be angry, maybe alive enough to finish the mission if Cassimer could not.

  An explosion came from the north. Cassimer rolled over and saw the pharmacy burn. Tallinn dragged Lucklaw from the flames, but a towerman seized the opportunity to disarm her, knocking her to the ground. He put his Kali to her visor and shouted for Hopewell to back off, or else.

  Cassimer tried to sit, but his leg wouldn't obey. He raised his Morrigan, but his vision blurred and the targeting sensors were no help. The corrupted piled on top of him, wheezing against his visor, his blood smearing their clothes.

  And then they were gone, chased away by Ratatosk fire. A towerman ran, but made it only a few metres – dead before he hit the ground, dead before he knew it.

  "Fucking bastards." Valletta knelt by Cassimer, his rifle raised and visor open. He spat a glob of blood and shattered teeth on the ground. "Pardon my language, Commander, but I abso-fucking-lutely hate having to get dental work done. Reckon I should send the bill to Tower?"

  "Reckon you should get yourself and the commander out of the open!" Tallinn beckoned to them from behind a corrugated steel fence that offered no cover but for visual. Juneau was with her, Lucklaw on the ground next to them, the towerman who'd tried to take them hostage dead to Valletta's Ratatosk. "The drugs I administered will keep you on your feet for twenty minutes and conscious for maybe another ten, if you're lucky. Just try not to take another blow to the head, because then all bets are off."

  "Yes, ma'am." Valletta, skin slick with sweat and eyes wide and dark with stim energy, helped Cassimer up, dragging him over to Tallinn. The sniper was pumped so full with drugs that his intensity was palpab
le. He shouldn't be conscious at all. Barely was, truth be told. Running on instinct and reactions moderated by Tallinn – not so much a soldier as a puppet.

  "Thought Tower were supposed to be smart." Tallinn wrenched Cassimer's greave off, shaking her head. "But they're just like everyone else. They see a medic with a gun in her hand, and they think that's her weapon. Very stupid."

  Very stupid indeed. Whatever she'd done to Valletta was coursing through Cassimer's veins now. Stilling time, cooling his skin, healing burns and injuries, sharpening senses. He felt fine, felt great, felt ready to run and eager to kill, and blood bubbled from his leg, gushing waves textured with fragmented bone. There were ten inches of white-hot knife wedged in his thigh, and he felt as though he should be allowed to react to that. But Tallinn had made him feel fantastic, made him want to laugh even as she dug into his femur to seesaw the blade out, breaking it free from old bone and new.

  "The primer samples," he said. "Anybody got eyes on them?"

  "Lutzen's got them. Hopewell and Rearcross are in pursuit. The fighting's moved into the hospital, so apart from the corrupted, it's mostly clear."

  Not for long. Comms were still down, but Cassimer could see Daneborg signalling with his rifle's targeting laser from a rooftop. They had incoming – fast.

  "Valletta, grab Lucklaw." Cassimer pushed himself to his feet with Tallinn's help, leaning hard on her shoulder.

  Before they were even halfway to the gates, a convoy of RebEarth trucks pulled into the hospital courtyard, cutting them off. Headlights fell on the banneret men, and there were no choices left, none at all.

  "Lucklaw." The comms officer was unresponsive, but a twitch of his eyelid made Cassimer believe that he heard. "Keep her safe. Tell her..."

  But there were no words to convey the message, none at all, and he said nothing more. Joy had always understood his silences. He could only hope that she would forgive this final one.

  He let go of Tallinn's shoulder, sank to his knees and chambered a round in his Hyrrokkin. "Get Lucklaw and Juneau out of here. Go, now."

  "Commander..." Tallinn hesitated even as Valletta ran, Lucklaw slung over his shoulder.

  "That's an order, Captain. Go."

  She ran, and he fired his first shot. Took out the driver of a truck, sending the vehicle crashing into a watchtower. One more shot, and in the corner of his eye, he saw Valletta and Lucklaw slip through the hole in the fence. Juneau next, and the RebEarthers hadn't seen Cassimer yet, hadn't seen his dark armour in the rain and the chaos and the mad crowd of the corrupted, and he smiled at that, smiled at the insane idea that he might make it out.

  Metre by painful metre, he hobbled towards the hole, staying low. Almost there. Almost there. Sheared chain links scraped his armour, and then the headlights of a truck washed over him. It raced down the street, veering sharply right to hit Tallinn.

  She fell. Alive, but stunned, and while she was struggling to stand, RebEarthers were approaching from the truck and the courtyard. So many. Too many. Cassimer had made it outside the fence, his escape route an alley less than ten metres away, but Tallinn was alone, and maybe she could make it with his help. Maybe they could make it together.

  He reached her seconds before the first RebEarther. Took her arm as the first shot smashed his overheated reactive plates. Told her to get up and shouted for her to run as gauntleted hands pinned him to the ground.

  38.

  HOPEWELL

  Triple-checking did not change the unfortunate facts.

  Fact one: Rearcross was eleven months older than her, but his enlistment date was seven weeks later than hers.

  Fact two: The mission had turned into a complete shit show.

  Fact three: Seven damn weeks made her the team's senior officer, and the shit show entirely her responsibility.

  "Fuck!" Even the freedom to swear seemed hollow. She'd often wondered why commanders didn't curse more – who was going to reprimand them, right? – but now it made sense. When you were in charge, fuck just didn't cut it. If there was some command-level swear word that worked better, she wasn't privy to it, and Earth have mercy, hoped she'd never have cause to be. "Damn it!"

  She didn't really want to say that. Had pretty much got the swearing out of her system, but what she really wanted to say was what the hell do we do now?, and that, she was fairly sure, wasn't something leaders should say.

  Oh, stars. Leader. The word churned in the pit of her stomach. This wasn't what she was meant to do. She was all about teamwork, but now, looking at the team, all she could think was you poor bastards, stuck with me. Did Commander Cassimer ever feel like that? Did he ever wonder what the hell to do? It was comforting to think that of course he did, everyone did – but deep inside, she felt pretty sure that the commander knew what to do even when he didn't. Like decision-making was his marrow.

  But the commander was kneeling in the pouring rain, surrounded by RebEarth troops, and they'd been in this situation once before, him and her. Only difference was, he'd called all the shots then. He'd told her what to do and when to do it, and she'd done a damn good job.

  "All right, so..." She squared her shoulders to at least give her ragged little team an impression of confidence. They'd regrouped in an abandoned apartment overlooking the hospital. Not safe, but safe enough to catch their breath. "So we've got to go back there and get them. We've still got explosives and..."

  A shotgun blast rang out. In the hospital courtyard, the commander fell to the ground as the RebEarther who'd shot him reloaded. He was still moving, fingers clutching at his Morrigan, but it was kicked away from him and the shotgun pressed against the back of his head and fired again.

  "No; oh mercy, oh please no. Daneborg, you got a shot, you take it now, you hear me?"

  But Daneborg didn't hear, comms still down and would stay down until Lucklaw woke the hell up, and outside, the commander was still moving. She willed him not to, to please stay down, and she could hear Tallinn, restrained and struggling, shouting for him to do just that. The RebEarther put his gun to the commander's head a third time, and thank the stars, he finally stopped moving. He lay prone in the rain, smoke rising from his cracked helmet. Dead or unconscious or sedated by Tallinn, Hopewell couldn't tell, because the stupid fucking towermen had done something to her systems.

  But she still had her weapons, and she still had Rearcross, and Valletta too, sort of, and that would have to do.

  "All right, let's go. Let's do this."

  "No." Juneau, sweating behind her vitro-plastic visor, shook her head. "Smother the king and lose the game. Remember what I told you, Lieutenant Hopewell? You go back for the commander, you'll get us all killed. The primer samples must be our priority. We can catch up with the towermen, but we have to go now."

  "I'm not leaving the commander and Tallinn!"

  "Then you'll lead us all to our deaths. Us first, the Primaterre Protectorate next. Play to win the game, Lieutenant – not the turn."

  "I..." It should be easy. The answer was obviously to go back, it was the only thing that made sense, the only thing that felt right, but... but while the choice was hers, she wasn't making it just for herself. She hated how pathetic she sounded, how pathetic she must look as she turned to Valletta and Rearcross. "What do you think?"

  Valletta shrugged. "Definitely getting killed if we go back. Doesn't mean we shouldn't."

  Yeah, but he was dripping with stim-sweat and would happily go out there and fight an army if she asked him to, so, stars, the only other person she could actually rely on was Rearcross.

  And he, her big, dumb, new partner who wasn't so bad after all, just gave her this look of complete and utterly undeserved trust, and said: "I follow your lead, Lieutenant."

  "Look, Hopewell – I understand," Juneau said. "I do. You know I do. You know I..." Her voice cracked, and she looked towards the hospital where half a dozen RebEarthers were struggling to haul the commander into a vehicle. "I don't want to leave them, but what we want is irrelevant. You've got t
o know that by now."

  The crack of a Ratatosk rifle sounded nearby, two blocks away, maybe. Daneborg. Either in trouble, or engaging the towermen. Whichever one it was, the fact that he'd removed his suppressor meant that he wanted backup. In lieu of comms, it was the only way he had of communicating. Noisy, imprecise, but perfectly comprehensible.

  In the courtyard, Tallinn was shoved into a vehicle. She held onto the door frames, bending them in her grip, breaking the leg of a man with a kick. She fought, and then the RebEarther with the shotgun stepped up and fired into her visor at point blank range. Tallinn fell backwards in a burst of dark visor shards and strands of chocolate-brown hair that Hopewell had braided so many times that her fingers remembered the silky texture, remembered and would never forget.

  And Hopewell's feet wanted to run there and her heart screamed at her to do it, to fight for the team and die with the team if that's how it ended, but she was in charge now and maybe Juneau was right. Maybe what a leader wanted mattered even less than what a soldier wanted.

  "Let's go get Lutzen."

  * * *

  A decision wasn't a momentary thing. It was a lingering regret that followed her through the alleys and streets of the city. They spotted Daneborg – signalling to them from a rooftop with his rifle – and she immediately thought of a dozen ways he could have helped bring Tallinn and the commander back. Assaults and ambushes came fully-formed to her, clever plans far too late, and she missed Florey more than ever. He wasn't a leader either, but he was good at ideas and he was good at killing people, and stars, back on Cato, he'd attempted mutiny, sure, but when push came to shove – when the commander had really needed him – he hadn't hesitated. He'd gone back. He'd gone back, and how disappointed he'd be in her.

  "There!" Rearcross caught sight of the towermen, firing a burst in their direction. They were dashing down an alley that opened up onto a motorway. A giant holographic phoenix glowed on a billboard, casting crimson light across road dividers and puddle-filled potholes.