Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

Joy hadn't considered the idea that Skald might be doing to Constant what he had done to her, but the enormity of it struck her now. The air was cold on her skin, but her stomach roiled with the sensation of warm water. Constant would have a way out – eighty-six characters that could end his suffering in a second – and she prayed he wouldn't take it.

  "Please wait for me. I'm coming," she whispered, and Rhys squeezed her shoulder.

  Though the cranes were automated, a handful of RebEarth crew were working the hold, double-checking clamps and securing cargo. The noise of the cranes and the platforms was so loud that they hadn't heard the door open. They didn't even hear each other die to Hopewell and Rearcross who came stalking out of the mists, their thermal blades steaming as they burnt off blood.

  "Is the commander here?" Trapped inside a cryo pod, his soul slowly stripped inside the sea cave. Or worse, trapped inside one of the pods that had already left the ship. The interior force field opened to let another one through, and some dour, hopeless tone in her heart wanted to sing that that had been the one, that she was onboard the ship but he was with the stars.

  "Can't tell." Hopewell swore, slapping her helmet. "Sensors are down. Comms too."

  "No," Rhys said. "It's our primers. All but the most basic external functions are being blocked. There's got to be jammers somewhere; sophisticated equipment. Either Skald's been a very generous patron, or these RebEarthers have experience trafficking Primaterre citizens."

  "Stars. Where's Lucklaw when you need him? We'll just have to check the pods manually."

  And what of the ones that have already been moved? Joy wanted to ask, but it was better to wait; better to hope. There were still many pods inside the hold, enough that the odds surely had to be on her side.

  Hopewell led the way through the mist, stopping to shine her rifle light through the glass panel of every pod as Rearcross kept watch. Phoenixes and feathers marked many faces, but not all. Some of them looked frightened.

  "Should we free these people?"

  Hopewell shook her head. "We saw something similar on Hereward. The houseplant's been promising them immortality, and RebEarth are falling for it hook, line and sinker. Do you know what they call him? The Bright-Winged One. Like he's some sort of god."

  The Bright-Winged One. Oh, she imagined he loved that. He wanted power and he wanted eternity, desperate for it in a way that only someone who had once felt very weak could be. Had he been in her position once, treated as a plaything, manipulated and watched from afar by someone secure in their belief that they could have him whenever they chose? She thought so, could almost taste it in the memory of his water. He was a torturer born of torment.

  "But he's not a god, is he?" Rearcross's whisper was barely audible over the hum of cryo pods and the mechanical turning of cranes. He swept his rifle light over dark corners, chasing the shadows away.

  "He bleeds." Hopewell shrugged. "God or not, that's all I need to know. If–"

  The glass panel of the pod in front of her exploded, showering her armour with shards that popped and sparked against her APF. Fog hissed from pierced tubing, vitrified blood trickling from the cryo pod.

  "Shots!" Hopewell turned, firing a burst in the direction they'd come from. "Take cover, Somerset!"

  Shades moved in the mists. Lights flashed on, glaring down from the cranes above to highlight red phoenixes on black pauldrons. A woman whose black armour shifted turquoise led the pack. She dove for cover behind a platform, but not before shoving a man out of harm's way. Joy caught only a glimpse of him, but it was enough to see that he was very handsome.

  Not that it mattered. She didn't care who these people were; she cared who was bleeding inside the cryo pod. Ignoring Hopewell's order, she knelt by the pod's side panel. Couldn't save this man's life, so she bypassed the safety checks, forcing the pod open. The man slid from his restraints, falling to the floor. He twitched, spewing black blood from his mouth and where bullets had struck his abdomen, but his hair was blonde and he wasn't Constant, and she felt absolutely awful for feeling so thankful.

  "They're moving to flank us." Rearcross took momentary cover behind another pod, its sleeper taking every bullet meant for the gunner.

  "I see them." Hopewell fished a grenade from her belt pouch. "Somerset, on my mark, move to Rhys's position and shut your eyes. Ready? Go!"

  She dashed across the magnetic tracks, the heat of Hopewell and Rearcross's APF crackling on her skin. The electricity made her hair dance with static, coppery strands gleaming in the air. Her prismatic suit glittered white and rainbow-frosted underneath the stark ceiling lights. She glowed like a beacon, but no shots found her, their trajectories diverted.

  But something far worse than a bullet did find her – the handsome man, cowering behind a crate. He stared right at her, eyes wide, shocked, transfixed. He seemed frozen, at a loss, but then he leaned towards the black-armoured woman to whisper in her ear.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  "Rhys–" she started, but the medic grabbed her and held her close against his chest, so tight she could see only darkness and stars, and then a wave of heat and light rushed over her, so bright that the stars burned.

  When Rhys let go, the room had filled with white smoke. Fire, whiter still, ran like liquid down containers and ate through red-and-black armour. The RebEarthers who lived retreated through the door leading to the med-bay.

  "That's not going to burn through the hull, right?" Hopewell asked, nervously surveying the damage she'd caused.

  "Phosphor grenades are designed for temporary effect. The chemical process will cease twenty seconds after activation," Rhys said.

  "Well, yeah, that's what the manual says, but you can't always trust those things, you know?"

  "Hey, Team Leader." Rearcross had rushed the med-bay door and stood there now, tapping its panel. "They locked us in here."

  "Why the hell would they do that? It'll only..." Hopewell trailed off, glancing at Joy. "Oh. Oh, shit. Anybody's comms working?"

  That was a negative, and Hopewell swore again. "Team 3 will be cutting the ship's power any second. It's standard operating procedure, and I'll bet you anything that those force fields are fed power from the ship. Our suits can handle space exposure, but Somerset needs to get out of here. We need to..." She patted her belt pouch. "Ah, fuck. I forgot to buy new cutting gel. Rearcross, you carrying?"

  "It's okay," Joy said.

  "It's okay? Look, Somerset, you better not be going all suicidal on me."

  "We don't know how many pods have been transferred to the station. Cassimer's not here, which means he could be over there. When the force fields drop, you need to get on one of those platforms and follow the tracks. Like you said, your suits can handle it."

  "Sure, but I'm not leaving you behind. Never again. Also, I'm not suicidal either, so I'd really rather not be the one to defrost the commander only to have to tell him you got vented."

  "Vented. Interesting choice of word." Joy pointed towards the med-bay door. An air duct ran through the bulkhead, accessible through a narrow vent. Too narrow for the banneret men, but not for her.

  "I don't know..."

  "Hopewell. We don't know if the commander's on the station. He could still be onboard the ship, and those people could be going for him right now. You saw the woman? The one with the raven pauldrons? She had the look of someone eager to do something unpleasant."

  "All right. Yeah. But stay out of sight, and don't engage unless you have to. Notify Polmak as soon as you are out of jammer range, and we will do the same. Okay? You've got this, Somerset."

  "Yeah," she said, pulling her hood over her head, the ribbon camail brushing her face. "I do."

  She had to, because in the split second before the door had sealed, the handsome man had smiled at her. A stolen smile, a thief's smile, and she would not let him steal from her again.

  45.

  CASSIMER

  He wasn't so attuned to the vibrations and noises of ships as Kivik, but he knew
gunfire when he heard it. It woke him from dreamless sleep, an ingrained response that not even fatigue and starvation could prevent. He lay in the cold water, wondering if he'd been dreaming after all, if he still was, or if he had gone completely mad in the end.

  Kivik appeared from the gloom of his cell, the RebEarth captain's face dangerously pale behind glowing tattoos. He looked down the corridor, gripping the titanium bars so tight that his knuckles whitened. The guards were deep in discussion over some game, one of them leaning back in his chair and scraping the last of his rations from a can. If something was going on, they were none the wiser.

  "Ship's been breached." Kivik's voice was a hoarse whisper. Nobody had taken him from his cell or beaten him, but he hadn't been fed for days, nor offered drink. He licked the walls for water rather than drink it from the floor, but only when he thought Cassimer wasn't watching. "I can feel it... a smaller ship, I think. Rough-docked to this one. Good pilot to pull that off. Mayflower could do it. Or Jones. Yeah. He's crazy enough to do it, and I owe him money. Yeah, got to be Jones. About god-damned time."

  "Hey, keep it down back there!" one of the guards shouted. "And step back from the bars!"

  Kivik obliged, muttering under his breath: "Going to kill you first."

  More gunfire. Distant, but it didn't have to be loud for Cassimer to know that this was his last chance. If there were to be any chance of escape, it would be now.

  But he was so tired, and when he tried to stand, he barely managed to get to his knees. He leaned against the wall and tasted blood, and heard in the back of his mind the echoes of screams. He was the sea, and he was still drowning. Skald had seen things that nobody else knew, that nobody else should ever have seen, and that was... and that was...

  He allowed himself a half-sob, pressing his hand to his face. His ring finger was broken where a RebEarth boot had crushed it. He knelt in filth and water, and still it was the mental violation that he obsessed over, his memories and thoughts running on an endless loop. Worse than ever in a sense, because now he believed that he could break that loop, that he could move on. If only he wasn't so tired. If only there was a chance.

  "Was that gunfire?" Kivik moved back up to the bars. The guards didn't notice, nor had they noticed the unmistakable sound. "My augments aren't as good as yours, Cassimer. What do you think?"

  Cassimer nodded.

  "Civil at last. Better late than never, eh? Don't worry, I won't be digging through your bones for those augments of yours. I prefer them fresh off the shelf, even if they are off-brand back-alley junk. Tell you what, as thanks for keeping me company, I'll have my men put a bullet in your head nice and clean."

  "Why don't you do it..." His voice cracked into a cough. "Why don't you do it yourself?"

  "Because I think you'd expect it. The looks you give me... like you think one of us is going to kill the other, end of story. But I don't care for black-and-white fairy tales, Primo. I like stories where the twist is that there is no twist. Stories where shit happens, because that's life. I may be the hero, but that doesn't mean I have to give the villain the satisfaction of putting him down."

  "Hero." Cassimer smirked. "Funny."

  "Yeah, a real good joke. Unless it's not a joke at all. Give it some thought, Hellfire of Hypatia, but do it fast."

  No thought required. He was no hero, but neither was Kivik. He closed his eyes. The eighty-six characters of his kill switch glowed there, patiently green. A comfort, but if the demon hadn't managed to teach him the meaning of surrender, then neither would Kivik.

  More gunfire. Closer this time. Too close for the guards to ignore. One of them tried his comms, but got only static. He looked nervous, unsure of what to do, but when his two comrades proved even more useless, he sighed and squared his shoulders.

  "I'll go see what's going on. Lock down the prison and stay put."

  "And that'll be the last we ever see of him," Kivik muttered, and Cassimer didn't disagree.

  Five minutes passed. Kivik got more anxious by the second, pacing his cell, smoothing back his hair and wiping his hands on his filthy flight suit. The guards, too, were showing signs of concern. One tried the comms over and over again; the other walked up and down the cells, checking the prisoners.

  A distant voice, tinny over an announcement system, echoed down the corridor outside the prison. The invaders, demanding surrender – or Captain Black, assuring her crew that the assault had been broken, all intruders killed. Though it would mean Kivik's freedom, Cassimer hoped for the former.

  "...shouldn't have come here..."

  It was hard to hear over the sloshing water and the comms static, but not so hard that he didn't recognise the demon's voice. He glanced at Kivik, wondering how the captain would take disappointment. Likely not well.

  "...won't kill you..."

  An offer of surrender. More mercy than he would've expected from Skald and Captain Black.

  "...little sister..."

  Cassimer stumbled to his feet and activated every med-augment and stim he had left in store.

  Kivik had described the RebEarth ship in detail. The best place for a rough-dock was near the engine room, through an external maintenance hatch. Breach, enter, secure the immediate area. Split the team into three – bridge, engineering, rescue. Four, if their commander was kill-thirsty. He traced routes through the ship, trying to remember where the gunfire had come from. The engineering team had to be close to their objective.

  The stims hit his system hard, turning colours electric, the texture of the titanium bars intense against his palms. Imperfections were spikes, cracks great fissures heaving with sulphur. The med-augments tried to level him out, slowing his heart rate. He should sit down. He should take a moment to breathe. Instead, he tugged at one of the bars. It was already bent into a crescent shape, weakened and worked.

  "Hey, stop that!" The pacing guard turned to glare at him.

  And then the power went out. The cell block was shrouded in darkness, every force field deactivated. The guards shouted at each other, static squealing as they tried their comms, and all the while, Cassimer kept working on the bars.

  "I said stop it!" The guard pulled out his cattle prod. He was afraid to approach, but more afraid of what would happen when the creaking titanium gave in. Two quick steps, and he jabbed the prod at Cassimer.

  The shock was barely noticeable in the flood of chemicals and nano-stabilisers. His left fist clenched around the bars, his right lashed out, grabbing the prod. He yanked the guard towards his cell, and though he had done some damage to the bars, it would never have been enough for him to escape – but there was enough room to pull the guard's head and neck through.

  A strangled breath against his skin. The scratching of gauntleted fingers on his face. An angry shout from the other guard. Cassimer pulled the guard's sidearm from its holster, fired once, and the bullet was a burst of colour, a stream of light, slow and impossibly fast. A kill shot, but not instant. The guard had time to understand what was happening and time to cry, and time to wail that he wanted to go home, that he wished he'd never left, that he just wanted to go home oh please.

  The shadows moved to the rhythm of the dying man's voice, taking familiar shapes. Cassimer felt sick and sicker still listening to the wheezing breath of the guard whose throat he squeezed. But he couldn't let go yet, because this ship had once been an Andromeda Conglomerate warship, and she still had some of her original features – such as an auxiliary power system hidden under the cargo hold.

  The emergency strips came online first, thin white light lining floors and ceilings. The door panels reactivated next, briefly flashing green before locking again. Lastly, the force fields shimmered back to life.

  Blue energy crackled around the struggling guard. Sparks leapt from his armour to Cassimer's bare skin, biting and zapping. The field wanted to close, but standard safety features prevented it from closing on or through living organic material. Still it tried, shutting down and reactivating in fast cycles, ove
r and over until its circuits couldn't take it anymore. The field outside Cassimer's cell blew first, but the chain reaction carried through the room, black smoke rising above every cell.

  He patted the guard down for a key card, reached through the bars to swipe it, and as soon as the door clanked open, he broke the guard's neck.

  Though the floor outside was metal and almost as cold as the water, it felt as sweet as the blue grass of Gainsborough. Kivik scowled at him, stepping backwards into darkness, hands raised.

  "Kill me and you'll live to regret it, Primo. My men will–"

  "It's not your men."

  "It has to be. How would your people even know where to find you?"

  Cassimer shrugged. He neither knew nor cared. Joy had found him, and that was all that mattered. 1014 days left. Maybe he'd live to see the counter hit zero; maybe he wouldn't. But while he did live, he would keep her safe from the demon that stalked this ship.

  He stripped the guards of anything useful. Two guns. Camo trousers and a jacket with a phoenix embroidered on the back (he turned that inside out, but the bird felt like a rash against his skin). A bulletproof vest that had done its former wearer no good whatsoever. All the items were uncomfortably small in size, everything else far too small to even bother with.

  "Hey, Cassimer." Kivik waved his hand through the bars of his cell. "Truce, remember? How about you let me out of here?"

  "How about I put a bullet in your head nice and clean?" It'd be a waste of a bullet, especially since he didn't have many of those. A twenty-round mag in each gun made for thirty-nine shots remaining; a disconcertingly low number for someone used to the Morrigan's capacious ammo blocks.

  "I know the ship. You're going to need my help. The prison door, I know the code..." Kivik trailed off as Cassimer punched in the numbers and the door panel flashed green. 35224 – Skald hadn't changed the code, although it could have. Arrogance or negligence? Weakness, either way.

  "Right, so you got that. But there will be more doors, Cassimer. More resistance. And maybe I didn't tell you the whole truth when I described the ship. Maybe I kept a few things to myself. Come on. Be smart. I know you're capable of it; I saw that on Velloa. I thought there could be nothing more blind than a Primo grunt, but it was you who made me see the Bright-Winged One for what he is. Whether spirit or demon, it's a self-serving asshole. And you... it's not just that it's a demon, is it? You have other reasons to hate it. Personal reasons."