Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

She smiled at him, her hand trailing up his arm. In the corner of his eye, he could see Wideawake observing them.

  "The heavy lifting's in the stockroom, Commander," the towerman said. "Go down there and handle it."

  * * *

  In the shadows below the stockroom's goods elevator, three antimatter pulse warheads rested in a precarious stack. They were old, possibly of an age with the nukes that had scorched Xanthe, and their markings unfamiliar. It was easy to understand why the towermen had preferred to store them on Xanthe rather than onboard the Cascade. Science said that rift generator proximity probably had no detrimental effects, but probably wasn't good enough when it came to weapons of mass destruction.

  "They're still not coming onboard," Wideawake said. "They'll be loaded directly onto the Hesperia. We just need you to get them on the elevator and into the cart."

  "Is it safe? It doesn't sound safe. It doesn't look safe." Joy stood at the edge of the elevator shaft, peering down at the warheads. In the context of her, they looked worse than unsafe – they looked wrong.

  "It's fine," Cassimer said, resisting the irrational instinct to ask her to step back.

  "So long as the commander doesn't drop them."

  Joy glanced over her shoulder at Wideawake. The towerman's lips seemed to be turned in a permanent smirk. Irritating on base, and improper on Xanthe.

  "A joke," Cassimer clarified to Joy.

  "I'm surprised you're capable of recognising one," Wideawake said. "Thought they drilled that out of you Bastion types in Basic Training."

  "You mistake tact for humourlessness."

  "Tact?" Wideawake laughed, turning a capsule of nerve gas in his hands. "The things you've done, Commander... the epithets you've earned... tactful isn't one of them."

  "Epithets are irrelevant. I know what I am."

  "I believe you. It's the fact that you seem capable of living with yourself that disturbs me."

  "Wideawake, you're out of line!" Joy, flustered, clenched her fists. "I mean, Wideawake, sir – this is neither the time nor the place to argue."

  "Quite. Come on, Somerset, let's leave the commander to it."

  I'm so sorry, she texted, lingering to look down at Cassimer. He shouldn't talk to you like that.

  Don't care what he thinks. But he did care how Wideawake was putting Joy in the awkward situation of feeling like she needed to take sides. That was unacceptable, and far from professional. Only care what you think.

  * * *

  A family of skeletons sat around a board game opposite the stack of warheads. Two adults, three children of varying ages. The smallest clutched a teddy bear in its bony fingers. It seemed an unnatural way for people to have died, but the only other explanation was that somebody had arranged the scene post-mortem. It was possible, Cassimer supposed, that one of the unfortunate survivors had done it. An attempt at setting things right, perhaps, although such an idea could only occur to the truly mad.

  The warheads were heavy, but their bulk was the greater obstacle. He dragged the first across the floor, metal scraping against concrete with a sound that would surely wake any ghost, if there were such things.

  Voices echoed down the elevator shaft. He didn't care for eavesdropping, but in this instance, felt it was justified.

  "...didn't mean an actual workplace with actual people." Joy, upset.

  "For us to capture and trace a trigger signal, there needed to be organic targets. Or, as you like to call them, people. You must've known that when you came up with the idea."

  "I would never have done what you did. I would've found another way."

  "On Cato, you participated in a decision that took the lives of thousands of Primaterre citizens. I wouldn't have expected you to be so soft."

  "That was different. We saved those people from a far worse fate the only way we could."

  "Are you sure about that?"

  Cassimer set down the warhead on the elevator with a loud thunk, took a deep breath, and just about managed not to press the UP button. If he went up there now, he'd punch that leering fucking towerman in the face and that would... that would not be good for team cohesion.

  The third warhead was on the elevator before Joy spoke again.

  "You could've at least told me what you were planning to do."

  "To what end? You think that if we had given you the opportunity to voice a complaint, your conscience would be clear? Or that you could've talked us into reconsidering? No, no, Somerset. That was never going to happen. Hammersmith wants this done, and he wants it done fast. No time to search for other, gentler ways. But don't look at me like that – I'm not so blunt an instrument as our leader. I took the time to create a biohazard spill to limit casualties. I even replaced as many of their remaining staff as possible with a handpicked selection of, shall we say, citizens of little merit."

  "Little merit?"

  "I ensured their security guards were former criminals. Oh, they'd served their sentences and their well-meaning lawyers and families would probably have said that they were turning their lives around, but Somerset, they never do. We are who we are."

  Joy said nothing, but must've made her disapproval clear somehow, because when Wideawake spoke again, he was angry.

  "It cost me time, assets and a great deal of effort to minimise collateral damage. You don't have to like it, but a bit of gratitude wouldn't go amiss. If it had been left up to Hammersmith, hundreds would have died. I saved as many as I could, and I did it all for you."

  Cassimer hit the UP button. Over the grinding of the elevator, he heard Wideawake once more: "And keep quiet about Fox Chapel. Nobody needs to know; least of all your commander."

  When the elevator reached the toy store backroom, Wideawake stood in the doorway, the ever-present smirk on his lips. Nobody needs to know. Except Wideawake wasn't an idiot; he'd know that the senses of a banneret man in full armour were too augmented not to overhear the discussion.

  Cassimer hadn't been eavesdropping after all. He'd simply heard what the towerman had wanted him to hear, but the joke was on Wideawake – a much more amusing joke than any he'd made previously – because Joy had already told him about Fox Chapel Pharmaceuticals. The towermen thought they could play on her divided loyalty, but it had never been divided. She hadn't enlisted because she believed in a cause. She believed in him, and he would honour that faith.

  * * *

  Though his boots were yellow with Xanthe's dust, the view of the planet from the Cascade was still a staggering sight. It was the world of Primaterre nightmares, the source of corruption, and knowing the truth changed nothing. It was like staring at the face of a terrible god.

  David Florey, formerly of Scathach Banneret Company, knelt before the core chamber viewport. Blue plasma light delineated his sharp features, catching in the greying hair at his temples. His eyes were closed, his head lowered, and he whispered mantras under his breath.

  Hopewell hopped down from her perch on the plasma moat's railing to stand at attention.

  "Welcome back, Commander. I'd ask what it was like, but you know what, I don't think I really want to know. And please pardon Florey – he's not being disrespectful on purpose. He's just going to need a couple of minutes to acclimatise."

  "I understand. Good to see you managed to convince him to return."

  "Wasn't hard. All it took was the right words."

  "And the right person asking," Joy said.

  Hopewell smiled and held one hand out over the moat. Plasma rose in globules, following the movement of her fingers with almost sentient curiosity. "Guess so. It's a shame Rearcross can't be here too, though." She moved her index finger, and plasma afterglow briefly spelled the initials KR in the air. "I wish I could tell him that everything he's ever been afraid of is a lie. I wish I could take the fear from him. But I think that the truth would more likely break him. Can you even imagine what seeing Xanthe would do to him? He'd get on his knees just like Florey, but I don't know that he'd ever get back up again."

  "
If we're successful, it's possible that without the repetition priming reminding him of his fear, he may overcome it in time. Years from now, he might wonder why he was ever scared of demons in the first place."

  "Huh." Hopewell frowned. "Interesting thought, Somerset, but I can't imagine what the Primaterre Protectorate would be without that fear on everybody's minds. If we start thinking that purity isn't necessary, then who will we become? Is everything going to change? I don't know that I'm up for that. I like things the way they are."

  "You don't. You're just telling yourself that you do because you're scared." Lucklaw stood on a second storey gantry, arms folded across his chest. Behind him, papers taped to the wall fluttered in the intermittent breeze of a fan.

  "Excuse me, Lieutenant?"

  "To like things the way they are is to like being a slave. It's to like being held hostage and to have a gun pressed to your head at all times. It's to like being told what to do and think by people who didn't earn that right – they took it. There's nobody in this room who believes you'd put up with that sort of treatment, not even for a second, if it weren't for the fact that you're terrified. An actual gun pressed to your head – you can handle that, we all know it. You're scared of change, not death. But trust me, Hopewell, if you think the beaches of Kepler are nice now, imagine how they will look in the light of freedom."

  "Stars." Hopewell shook her head, half-smiling. "Quite the speech. Been working on that, have you?"

  "No," he said, sullenly, and it sounded very much like a yes.

  "What about our other new arrival?" Cassimer asked.

  "Ah, yeah, about that," Hopewell said. "There was a tiny complication. You're not going to like it, but if it helps, Colonel Hammersmith really didn't like it."

  56.

  JOY

  Barring a hull breach, Joy wouldn't have thought it possible to make Room 36B anymore depressing. Silly. If Cato should've taught her anything, it was that things could always get worse – and as if to remind her, Cato had come to her.

  The drifter called Bone ran in circles inside his habitat, pressing a black marker pen to the walls. It drew dark zigzag patterns, over and over again.

  "Cato shorthand for danger."

  Major Juneau, at the desk opposite Joy's, blinked silver from her eyes.

  "Pardon?"

  "What he's drawing. The locals on Cato used that pattern to represent danger. It was everywhere down in the tunnels. It was..." She shivered, and the drifter stopped to look at her. She didn't like that. Her sleep the last few nights had been ruined by nightmares. Horrible dreams about... about eyes, and she couldn't even talk to Rhys about it for fear of reminding him of his own nightmares. Definitely couldn't talk to Constant about it, because he was mad enough about the drifter's presence as it was. He'd wanted the habitat's walls kept an opaque black, but she had talked him out of that. She couldn't bear the idea of keeping the former tunnel-dweller in darkness. Her own unease was a small price to pay for Bone's basic human dignity.

  "It was like a tunnel language. I used to look at the scrawls and wonder at how amazing it was that even a place as desolate as Cato had its own culture. Not a rich culture, nor a particularly pleasant one, but despite their dismal prospects, the people there did more than just exist. They built things, they grew things, they had children. Once, I heard them sing. They lived. They hoped, even when they knew there was no hope."

  "Quite foolish," Juneau said curtly, smoothing her black ponytail.

  Ah. Joy sighed and turned her attention back to the busywork Hammersmith had assigned to her. Silly Joy, thinking that Juneau was going to want to talk after a week of icy silence. The first few days, she had chalked it up to shock – certainly, the Oriel officer had been given a lot to digest in a very short span of time – but it had soon become clear that Juneau was in fact perfectly composed and civil to anybody whose name wasn't Joy Somerset.

  "Maybe she's got something against redheads," Rhys had joked, quite unhelpfully.

  "I don't have time for petty schoolyard squabbles," Lucklaw had scoffed.

  Hopewell had laughed when Joy asked what she thought. "Girl, if you haven't figured it out by the end of the week, you need to sharpen your perception. This isn't rocket science."

  No, but it was a distraction. The situation was stressful enough without having to share an office space with Juneau and the drifter, but it was the way Hammersmith wanted it. Probably because the office was about as far away from the war room as was possible to get. The banneret team had set up in there, sleeping on cots, sharing the single bathroom and eating rations from boxes older than the soldiers themselves. They didn't complain, and when Joy had brought their living situation up to Hopewell, the lieutenant had given her a blank look. Apparently, since it wasn't a sewer, it might as well be a four-star hotel.

  It was unnecessary, though, since Lutzen's team quarters were empty. She'd suggested giving them to the banneret team, but Hammersmith had shut her down and told her to never mention Lutzen's name again. Clearly, he was taking the loss harder than he liked to let on.

  "Bringing me onto the team, however, wasn't foolish." Juneau stretched in her seat, yawning. "Though I'm surprised you did."

  Surprised that she'd done something not-foolish, or surprised that she'd recruited someone who so obviously hated her? Joy decided to assume the latter and said: "Wasn't my idea. My name's on the paperwork, but we brought you onboard on the commander's suggestion. He thought you'd be the right person for the job."

  "Really? Well, he's not wrong." A small, flattered smile played on Juneau's lips. "I admire your colonel for making the most of what he's got, but four analysts were never going to get very far decoding the primer. Collecting data isn't the same as understanding it. They've tried to outsource it, passing out the work in parcels, but a primer isn't a quilt – you can't simply unpick its seams piece by piece."

  "You need to be able to see the bigger picture in order to understand the details."

  "Yes. Amusingly, the demon... Stars, speaking that word makes me feel quite stupid. Demon. The fact that I ever believed in such a thing..." She trailed off, tapping her stylus against her tablet in an increasingly rapid rhythm. "The entity made more headway than the analysts in decoding the primer. Makes sense, I suppose – the vessels it took from the Ever Onward must have included all manner of scientists. The data we seized on Hereward has proven most useful, although it's disconcerting that 36B already possessed a copy of the data. I collected it myself, passing it on to Oriel alone. Clearly, my colleagues aren't as trustworthy as I thought."

  "You seem to be handling the truth very well. It's a lot to take in. Too much for many people, I think."

  "Oh, too much for me as well, I'm sure. I own a hab-cabin on Scylla. It's a small world, barely habitable, with air it hurts to breathe, and an atmosphere so thin that at night, the stars seem close enough that you could reach out and touch them. No vegetation, no civilisation, just an endless horizon of rock. Every year I take a week's leave to stay at the cabin, enjoying the universe in its most pared-down form. I drink wine, stargaze and manufacture explosives to clear rocks off my land. I say I'm doing it to create space for a cabin expansion, but really, I'm just working off frustrations. Nothing like blowing stuff up to relax. The gravity on Scylla is lower than we're used to, so sometimes the rocks float – just for a moment. It's beautiful. My point is, this year I think I'll be taking two weeks of leave."

  "And cook up a double-batch of explosives?" Joy smiled, hoping that a smile wasn't going to be a step too far for the major.

  "And maybe something stronger than wine. Especially since I don't have to worry that an inebriated mind is an impure mind anymore. Mercy, do you hear how stupid that sounds? I do. I really do. So stupid it hurts. But the job is more important than my personal feelings, Somerset. Science first, panic later."

  "If that's the case, then what is your guinea pig doing here?" Hammersmith had appeared in the doorway, his gaze sweeping the room like a laser b
eam of disapproval. "A personal project, you called it. Why? The prestige of discovery? Or perhaps you harbour feelings for this creature. Maternal, or otherwise."

  "Ah." Juneau smiled, touching her stylus to her tablet. Joy couldn't read the contents of the opened file, but she could see that it was named HAMMERSMITH, ANDERS. "What a lovely bit of misogyny, Colonel. Were you always like that, or did your thoughts take a turn for the biased after you were made aware of the priming? I'd be quite interested in seeing brain scans if you happen to have any."

  Hammersmith scowled. "That thing can never leave Room 36B, you do understand that? It knows too much."

  "Bone knows very little, Colonel," Juneau said, and in his habitat, the drifter laughed. "But of course. It won't affect my project, other than having to vivisect a little sooner than I had hoped."

  Joy waited for Hammersmith to leave, and then she turned to Juneau. "Vivisect? You mean to cut–"

  "I'll interrupt you there, Somerset, before you go ahead and ruin the whole point of using a big word in the first place. Bone doesn't know what vivisect means. What you were about to say, he's quite familiar with."

  Long, jagged blades sheared from sheet metal. Joy's hand drifted to her stomach, where a drifter's blade had once sliced a crescent of blood.

  "You don't have to do it just to please Hammersmith. He isn't as unreasonable as he seems. I can talk to him for you."

  "It was always my intention to vivisect. I am a biologist, not a sociologist, after all. The answers I seek are in written in flesh and blood, not tunnel languages."

  "Flesh and blood is the most ancient tunnel language of all."

  * * *

  Six o'clock Bastion Standard Time was dinner time, but between Juneau and Bone, Joy had lost her appetite. A few levels down, the banneret team would be eating their meagre meals, and she wished she could go join them. A dusty old ration bar would taste wonderful in the right company. But Hammersmith's orders were for her to go straight from the office to her quarters ("No detours, no loitering, no fraternizing.") and so that's what she did.