Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  Two corridors from her room, she found Elsinore and Florey staring intently at an open panel in the bulkhead, both men with their hands behind their backs and their brows furrowed.

  "...the central heating system's connected to nearly a hundred kilometres of pipes, running all up and down the Cascade. I've sectioned them off as best as I can, running new connections to bypass the damaged parts of the structure, but there's problems every day. Frozen pipes, usually, and sometimes they need bleeding, which obviously is a bit of a job."

  "And you alone are responsible for the maintenance?"

  "Yeah. That was my eighteenth birthday present from Hammersmith. I've been helping out since I was a kid, but the past decade or so, it's all been on me. Nobody else has the time for it, unless there's a catastrophic event that they can't ignore."

  "A lot of work for one man. Impressive. Don't think much of your tools, though." Florey kicked the toolbox on the floor. "Hopewell should've said something. I could've brought my own, helped fix this place up."

  "I suppose it must be alarming to stay here when you're not used to the creaking or the impending threat of hull breaches."

  "No. I just don't like to see a thing left to decay."

  Joy approached, and the men turned toward her. Elsinore quite like a deer in headlights, Florey cool and disinterested. She had no doubt he was a perfectly lovely person – there had to be a reason Hopewell was so keen on him – but whoever he was, it was someone who had no interest in getting to know her. Fair enough.

  "Somerset. I need to talk to you. I need to–" Elsinore was cut short as Florey shoved him against the wall, palm pressed flat against his chest. Elsinore coughed, the air knocked out of him.

  "Keep walking or stay to hear what he's got to say. Your choice," Florey said, his too-green eyes locked on Joy.

  She hesitated, unsure if she wanted to do it like this, or like anything at all. But it had to be done sooner or later, and now was surely better than in the middle of the most dangerous of missions. She nodded, and Florey eased off.

  "You told them?" Elsinore gave her a wounded look. New people, a rare new chance to make connections, and all of it tainted by one mistake.

  "Yes."

  "The commander too?"

  "Yes."

  "Earth have mercy. Is that..." He glanced at Florey, horrified. "Is that what this tour was about? Getting me somewhere you could kill me?"

  "No," Florey said. "I wanted to see the inner workings of a Cascade."

  "Nobody's going to do anything to you, Elsinore. Just tell me whatever it is you want to say."

  "Sorry," he said. "I wanted to say that I'm so sorry. If I could take back what I did, I would. I'd give anything to have it undone. I'd die if that's what it took for you to forgive me. I need you to understand, I don't know why I did it, but I know I'll never do it again. I swear it."

  "Until you know why, you can't make that promise. I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to think about it," she said. "You were in a stressful situation, and under pressure, people do and say things they never normally would. But you've never had normal. You don't know who you are. Maybe you're the Elsinore who makes me laugh when we watch shows together. Maybe you're the Elsinore who has spent his life in the service of others. Or maybe you're the Elsinore who likes to hurt others. You don't know, and I don't know, but what we're doing here... if we're successful, you will have the chance to find out, and I'm not going to take that from you. I want you to figure yourself out. And when you do, if you still want it, you can ask for my forgiveness again."

  He stared at her, tears gathering on pale lashes. His mouth twitched, as though he wanted to say something, but she hoped he wouldn't. She hoped that he had listened, and that he had heard.

  To her surprise, Florey spoke up:

  "Your feet have never touched soil. Your lungs have never filled with real air. You've been bereft of all that Earth provides, cut off from your roots. Nobody's going to do anything to you, because you're not a person. You're nothing. When you become something, then we will judge."

  57.

  CASSIMER

  The Hesperia had docked with the Cascade, and Cassimer's team had been tasked with transporting the weapons and tech Room 36B had collected over the years to the ship. Crate after crate of the exotic and the outlawed, the obsolete and the unstable – such as the plasma cannon Cassimer was holding.

  He turned it over in his hands, at once pleased and uneasy at holding such a relic. A collector's item, if the collector was a madman. The design had been flawed from the start, intended as a portable weapon, but with a weight of over two hundred kilos, it had been too heavy for most soldiers to use. The first prototype – the Etunaz – had weighed five times that. In order to reduce the weight, the designers had been forced to strip it down to its bones, dropping target assist first and core safety measures last. The finished product that Cassimer now held, the Filu-Ezzal, functioned much like a grenade launcher, its revolver-style magazine containing plasma like the stuff in the Cascade's moat. With every shot, the empty chamber regenerated a new plasma orb, in theory creating an infinitely destructive weapon. In reality, of the two dozen Filu-Ezzals created, half had exploded the first time their triggers were pulled. After a particularly catastrophic incident that had caused the deaths of two soldiers and a brushfire, the weapons had been scrapped, the design discarded.

  "Careful with that."

  Cassimer looked up. Hammersmith leaned against a stack of crates. Leaning hard, as though he needed the support.

  "I know what it is. How did you acquire it?"

  "Our former strike team captain had an interest in rare weapons, and many contacts. Most of what you see here was collected by him. How, I don't know. I didn't ask."

  "It stays here." Cassimer set it down, shutting the lid on its box. "Better yet, it goes somewhere it can't hurt if it blows up."

  "An old gun is the least of our worries."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Cascades are quite marvellous, aren't they? All you need is a shuttle capable of making the fold, and you can go anywhere in the explored universe. Empty systems, abandoned systems. The dying and the thriving, the dark and the glittering. It's all out there, and all you have to do is choose a destination. So why didn't you, Commander?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "When you learned the truth on Cato, it must have hit you hard. Everything you are, everything you stand for, based on a lie. The demons you killed on the Hecate weren't demons at all, but people just like you, used as pawns in a greater game. You must have wanted to die. I did, when I first saw the truth, and unlike you, my entire identity wasn't wrapped up in the Primaterre. But you decided to live, and you decided to go back." There was a hard glint in Hammersmith's eyes. "Why?"

  "It's home."

  "Home isn't a fixed address, Commander. Home is wherever you choose to make it. When I consider what you went through on Cato, I think that a rational man would have wanted to escape. An angry man would have wanted revenge. He might have joined RebEarth, put on the red-and-black to rebel against his past. A man in love would have wanted to take the object of his affections somewhere – anywhere – not controlled by fear and brainwashing. Somerset is under the impression that you care for her. But if you do, why have you made her live a lie? You took her to the Primaterre Protectorate and asked her to accept falsehood as truth. She lives surrounded by people who believe in lies, and if she ever has children, she'll be forced to teach them lies. That's madness. That's cruelty. It is not love."

  "I wanted her to be safe."

  "Safe, certainly, in the sense that a prisoner is safe in their cell."

  Cassimer slowly locked the latches on the Filu-Ezzal's box. A thousand fears and worries had made their homes in his mind since Cato, but the perspective Hammersmith offered was new. From Cato to Scathach to Achall, every decision had been made for her, all of them authorised by him.

  Maybe she had never wanted to be Primaterre. Maybe she had never
wanted him.

  Maybe. But he had spent months rebuilding his perception of the universe; months separating truths from lies. He was still a work in progress, but he had come to one decision:

  "I don't listen to whispers anymore, Hammersmith. Whatever this is about, you're wasting your time."

  "It's about ensuring the success of my mission. You're worried that the Filu-Ezzal might explode? Imagine what it's like to have an unstable banneret commander on the team. We're about to act against the Primaterre, the nation that you're meant to embody. The very nation that you were trained to kill to protect."

  "As far as I'm concerned, we are protecting the Primaterre."

  "And if, when we're in the field, the facts change and hostile action must be taken?"

  "Still wasting your time, Hammersmith, asking questions you know the answer to."

  "I should never have brought you onboard."

  "Maybe not. But you did." And couldn't undo it, even if he wanted to. Cassimer didn't need to see the twitch of the colonel's fingers to know that the man was thinking about killing him. The other towerman, Wideawake, had thought about it too, down on Xanthe. "I suggest you make peace with your choices. Regret will cloud your clarity."

  "Oh, I see quite clearly, Commander. I am pure of purpose."

  "Excuse me, Colonel Hammersmith?" Rhys stood in the doorway, but had no doubt been within earshot far longer. Eavesdropping; an unpleasant habit, but tolerable in the circumstances. "We've finished. Juneau says it's time."

  "We'll see." Hammersmith sighed, as though bracing for yet another hope to be dashed. "Commander, finish up in here and gather your team for a briefing in Juneau's office in sixty."

  Rhys sat down on a crate, a cigarette finding its way into his hand as soon as Hammersmith left the war room. He lit it, leaning back, and shook his head.

  "Don't know what that man thinks he's doing. Doesn't he know criticising you is my job?"

  "Don't you know that open flames are strictly banned inside armouries?"

  "I saw you playing with that big old plasma gun. In comparison, a smoke's hardly a blip on the danger radar. Come on, Commander, take a seat." He patted the crate next to his. "Since you didn't call me Captain or Rhys in that particularly tone of yours, I know you're not about to deny me this simple vice."

  Rhys's company wasn't so bad even if he couldn't keep quiet for stretches longer than thirty seconds. He'd been a Bastion man nearly a decade longer than Cassimer, which might as well be a century at the pace at which their weapons and armour was upgraded or replaced. There were things in Room 36B's crates that Cassimer had read about, but that Rhys had actually used, or seen in action, or stitched up the aftermath of.

  They talked about weapons and the stars outside the viewport, but they didn't talk about Xanthe, and they didn't talk about the Hesperia.

  "Want one?" Rhys offered Cassimer a cigarette.

  No. But was that his own thought or one that his primer had whispered to him? He couldn't be sure, so he said yes, and regretted the choice when Rhys handed the cigarette to him with a smug smile.

  Tar, tobacco, nicotine and over three thousand different chemicals were released into his throat and into the air. His HUD identified them all, a list of ingredients scrolling at the edge of his vision, each flagged orange or red. Chromium, cadmium, beryllium – not so different from the components of the weapons around him.

  "It's disgusting," he said, coughing.

  "Yeah. That's what I like about it."

  "I don't." But he didn't put it out. He liked sitting there, smoking and talking to Rhys. Almost enough that he told the medic he'd missed having him around.

  "Just don't get used to it. I doubt Joy would like it if this bad habit of mine rubs off on you."

  Cassimer grimaced, shaking his head.

  "What?" Rhys asked.

  "I already got Hammersmith's open disapproval. Not in the mood for yours."

  "He disapproves because he's a paranoid Tower control freak and, frankly, a bit of an arse. I disapprove because I care. Not even remotely the same. That said..." Rhys stubbed out his cigarette. "I was hard on you back on Cato, about things that weren't necessarily any of my business. I didn't want to see you or Joy get hurt, but that's no excuse for me to do the hurting."

  "Keeping the team safe is your job."

  "Still, I apologise."

  "Apology accepted. Does that mean you've changed your mind?"

  "She's the best thing that ever happened to you. That was clear from the start."

  The only good thing, he'd once thought. Now he knew that wasn't the case. Now he could see all the good things he hadn't before, the glittering band of victories great and small that terminated in sitting here with Rhys, who was more than his medic.

  Joy wasn't the only good thing, but she was undeniably

  "The best," he said and wanted to say more, to somehow explain how he felt. He couldn't find the words, and even if he had, wasn't sure he'd have found the courage. Rhys gave him a look of sad understanding. As if the medic knew. As if he wanted to explain something too, but had neither words nor courage.

  "It took me longer to realise that you might be the best thing that ever happened to Joy, too. I've spent a lot of time with her since Cato. Got to know her well enough to see that she knows what she wants, and if Hammersmith thinks anyone can force her off the path she's envisioned, he's in for a nasty surprise."

  "You've been keeping secrets from me for months, Rhys. Why do I get the sense that you still are?"

  "Not secrets. Operational security."

  "Can't say I care for it."

  "But you can't argue with it, either."

  "No," he admitted, and Rhys smiled.

  "OPSEC aside, you can trust that I'm on your side, Commander. I hope you know that."

  "I know."

  Hopewell soon joined them, complaining about being a banneret man, not bloody Transpo. She'd found some old buckets of paint in a supply cupboard and wanted Cassimer's permission to well, can't tell you what, that'd ruin the surprise, but it will annoy Hammersmith, so I won't do it unless you okay it, Commander. He nodded, because why not, and then Florey and Lucklaw joined them too. The former was discomfited and the latter anxious, but in the light of the stars, surrounded by teammates and hazy cigarette smoke, they soon relaxed.

  It was a strange feeling. It was like the smell of ozone and like the puzzlegrass stream banks of Scathach's park. It was like the whitewaters of Kalix and it was like coming home. Cassimer closed his eyes briefly, and it was as though he was back on the shuttle headed for Cato. Before the storm had hit, when Albany was still chattering away in the cockpit and Copenhagen, the mermaid on her helmet twinkling in the overhead lights, was showing Abergavenny her new rifle mods. Before the truth, when they had been banneret men certain in their conviction and their purity.

  "So," Hopewell said. "I guess we're really doing this."

  "Yes." He hesitated. They were; there was no other choice. But perhaps there should be. Perhaps choice was what this was all about. It was the one thing that Albany, Copenhagen and all the others lost had never truly experienced. Their home had come with locks on its doors, their lives ultimately not entirely their own. "I won't order you to. Anyone who wants to may remain here until the mission is over. You have my word no harm will come to you."

  The next silence only lasted seconds. Florey was the first to break it.

  "Nobody's staying, Commander. We're doing this. For Earth, and for our families."

  "For Aurillac," Hopewell said, "Rearcross, and all those who've been made to live in fear."

  "To correct a mistake," Lucklaw said, and Rhys added: "For freedom."

  For all of those things. For the Hecate and Xanthe, and for Joy, so that she might one day teach her children truth.

  * * *

  The drifter hunched inside its habitat. Quiet, with a pleasant smile on its freshly cleaned face, as it drew circles on the wall. Circle after circle, while watching Joy. She pret
ended not to notice, but her body language said otherwise. Tightly folded arms, stiff spine, ready to run. It was the defensiveness Cato had taught her, and that she had tried so hard to shed. But old fears, Cassimer knew, had the sharpest bite.

  Hopewell took the seat next to Joy and flipped off the drifter. He covered his eyes and scuttled off to a corner. The gunner smirked, whispering something in Joy's ear, and both women laughed. Undisciplined behaviour, yet preferable to fear and anger.

  "Right, so, is everybody finally here?" Juneau's cheeks were flushed with excitement, as though she couldn't wait to begin her show-and-tell. "Good. All right, let's begin."

  Behind her, monitors switched on. Earth dominated the screens, surrounded by dots of light that were the Luna Belt satellites.

  "This," she said, tapping one satellite, "is the problem. The Hesperia's first crew died when their ship came within a thousand kilometres of the Luna Belt. The kill switches weren't triggered by the priming signal, but by an electro-magnetic pulse. The Luna Belt is essentially a massive kill zone surrounding Earth. Your Cascade signal blocker is quite elegant, Colonel Hammersmith, but it's not the right tool for this job. Commander Cassimer, could you describe your experience with the signal jammers on the Host Fetter?"

  He shifted in his seat, uncomfortable even though he knew that Juneau had no interest in his personal memories. All business, the major.

  "Primer communications were inaccessible. All functions blocked, but for the internals and the most basic."

  "Basic. See, that's the problem. You all think of the kill switch as a basic primer function, but it's in fact an incredibly sophisticated type of electrocommunication. Certain species of fish, most either extinct or exclusive to Earth, have receptive organs that allow them to detect weak electric fields. Some, such as electric eels, are also capable of discharging electricity. They generate distinct signals to communicate aggression, dominance or courtship, but – particularly outside of water – electricity doesn't propagate. Simply put, the signals are short-range and require a lot of energy." Juneau paused, pursing her lips. "All this is quite obvious once you look into it. We've all been trained in kill switch use; some of us may even have triggered kill switches. We know that the range is limited, and that comms blocks don't affect them."