Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  "Moot point, since we'd have to use the Cascade to contact them in the first place."

  "Well, what if there was a backdoor in the blocker... one that Wideawake wouldn't know about. Is that something you could use?"

  His scorn turned to ice, and Hammersmith scowled. "Elaborate."

  "Lucklaw didn't just help me install the blocker. He wrote a script on the fly – something he called a tunnel – and injected it into the code. When I returned to 36B, I added the same script to our Cascade database."

  "So the Lucklaw boy's been creeping around 36B's systems all along. So much for trust."

  "You lied to me right from the beginning, Hammersmith. You showed me fake psych evals as emotional blackmail. You had Lutzen smoke Rhys's brand as some sort of subliminal manipulation." She hadn't been sure about that, but when she said it, the look on Hammersmith's face confirmed it. In the corner of her eye, she could see Rhys slowly shutting his med-kit and standing up. "You told me the banneret team were going to die if we didn't put an end to the priming. You told me Cassimer wanted to die."

  She paused to shake her head at Constant and Rhys. They'd moved to flank Hammersmith, looming over him, both now clearly on Team Hopewell when it came to the towerman's fate.

  "You didn't need to do any of that. I understood the mission – I believed in it. What I couldn't believe in was you, and the rest of 36B. I didn't trust you. And can you really say that I was wrong?"

  "She is the only member of your team who stayed the course," Rhys said. "Including you."

  Hammersmith looked at him, then Constant. "Doesn't look like she was ever on my team."

  * * *

  Lucklaw had proven himself once again. The tunnel he had constructed connected only two points – the signal blocker in Sol's Cascade and Room 36B – but it was still operational.

  "No response." Hammersmith frowned. "No primers in range. Connecting to the surveillance system."

  With its armoury emptied, 36B's war room looked hollow and desolate. If it weren't for Hopewell's mural, and the footprints and scuffmarks on the floor, it easily looked like a place abandoned for centuries – but while the Imago was in its hangar bay, the Instar was gone.

  Hammersmith switched to the core chamber cameras. The hull was intact, the remaining droplets of plasma coalescing in the moat.

  "Oh," Joy said, with some relief, as she saw the two dark figures in their chairs. "There they are."

  Hammersmith quietly zoomed in, and now Joy could see the blood; so much of it. The two analysts had died in their seats, unaware of their approaching end. The third analyst lay face-down in his bed where, after nearly eight months of connection, he'd finally been allowed a real night's sleep. He, too, had perhaps died unaware and unafraid.

  Sapporo hadn't been so lucky. Sapporo lay dead in a supply cupboard and in his quarters, and halfway down a corridor.

  "Don't see his arms or legs," Rhys said, studying the monitors closer than Joy could ever imagine wanting to do. "They're missing, as are the limbs of the other analysts."

  "Because arms and legs have the best carving bones." Juneau pressed a hand to her lips. Her dark eyes were wide, her eyelashes heavy with tears. "And the little finger bones make such lovely sounds."

  Dry sounds, dead sounds; the sounds of Joy's nightmares. Finger bones strung up on wire and hung from the ceiling of a tunnel, jangling as drifters skulked by. Bare feet stirring dust not two metres from her face; jagged metal scraping against concrete walls. The taste of blood in her mouth as she stopped herself from screaming or so much as breathing, hiding under the spider-webbed undercarriage of a train. Yes, she knew the sounds of bones quite well.

  She made it halfway down the laboratory stairs before she had to throw up. She bit her lip to stop herself from crying, but the taste only reminded her of Cato's tunnels, and she doubled over again, retching.

  "Hey." Gauntleted hands held her camail, stroking back hair that crackled with static. "You don't want to mess up your suit. I wasn't expecting to see that aurora on Tower blacks when I painted it, but it looks real good."

  "It does." Joy gave Hopewell as much of a smile as she could manage. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome. Now square your shoulders, clean yourself up and get back in there. I've got to go give Florey a hand keeping seventy-odd RebEarthers out of the station." She patted her rifle. "I don't give a damn how many red-and-black bastards are out there, or how many tricks the houseplant's got up its sleeve or pot or whatever the hell. We can handle it, and I know you can too. See you when the dust settles, Somerset."

  * * *

  She took Hopewell's advice and returned to the laboratory, where Hammersmith was still flicking through 36B's surveillance cameras. The office space Joy and Juneau had shared was in disarray. The furniture had been smashed, papers meticulously shredded and strewn about like confetti. The habitat's door was open, Bone nowhere to be seen, but with blood and black pen the drifter had covered the walls, floor, and even the ceiling with frantic zigzag patterns and circles within circles.

  Joy took in the scene calmly until she saw the pattern smeared on her desk. It was as chaotic as the rest, as meaningless and mad, but she had seen the same circles and flourishes reflected in Rhys's visor as he had wiped her own blood from her face. Tunnel language or not, these words she was certain she could read.

  "Little sister," she whispered, and her armour sparked slightly as Constant put his arm around her shoulders.

  "Your science experiment murdered my analysts and stole the Instar," Hammersmith said, turning his accusing glare on Juneau. "One of the three ships in existence that are capable of folding through 36B. Primaterre tech and Primaterre secrets in the hands of a complete unknown. Are you satisfied with that result, Major?"

  "Of course not," Juneau sneered. Though upset, the major refused to be bullied. "Don't be ridiculous. Besides, I sealed his habitat quite carefully. Wideawake must've let him out, and last I checked, Wideawake – regardless of his true identity – was your operative and your responsibility."

  "Don't you put this on me. That thing should never have..." Hammersmith trailed off, his frown deepening. When the silver cleared from his eyes, Joy saw fear on his face for the first time. And for the first time, he turned to Constant as if seeking his help. "Commander. You need to see this."

  The monitors flickered, and the gloom of 36B was replaced by Earth's sunset glow. A woman stood on a cliff, her arms outstretched. The wind whipped her black hair, lifting her red veil to reveal a triumphant grin.

  "Earth, brothers and sisters. The Mother Spirit welcomes us home. Can you see her golden sun and glittering seas? The wind sings our name, the trees bow to our return. There are no demons here, only spirits. The Bright-Winged One spoke truth, and look!"

  The camera panned to show the darkening sky, before the scene cut abruptly to a view from a RebEarth ship adrift between Primaterre frigates that neither fired nor moved. The ship's sensors showed no life signs onboard Rampart's ships.

  "The Primaterre claim to guard the Earth, but they hold it hostage. The Mother Spirit would rather kill them than see them set foot on her soil. They are jealous exiles, not protectors, and I call on you to join us in their destruction. Brothers, sisters; come. Earth awaits."

  Hammersmith cut the feed, and the monitors went black.

  "Our Martian and Cascade fleets are on the move. Losing the entire Earth fleet has got Rampart in a panic. They're scrambling everything, even Transpo shuttles. If they all cross the Luna Belt – and once they see that RebEarth broadcast, there's no doubt in my mind that they will – it'll be the biggest military loss in Primaterre history, and our enemies won't need to fire so much as a single shot."

  "It'll be a victory to feed the RebEarth cause for decades," Constant said.

  "It already is. That broadcast is being folded through to every Cascade in the galaxy."

  "RebEarth's signals are getting through?"

  Hammersmith nodded, and Joy understood his fear. Data
was no different to ships as far as a Cascade was concerned. If it folded one, it would fold the other.

  "We need to warn Rampart now," Rhys said. "They have to turn back before it's too late."

  "How do we convince Rampart not to pursue? It'll go against their every instinct." Hammersmith shook his head. "They'll never listen."

  "They will," Constant said, "if they trust the messenger."

  Joy's armour detected his primer reaching out. It was capable of intercepting signals, and Elsinore had taught her how to, but even if she'd been quick enough, it would never have occurred to her to shut Constant down.

  His primer reached out across space uninterrupted, establishing a connection with the nearest Rampart ship, the frigate Alex Helios, and its captain, Versailles. He spoke to the captain, warning him about the Cascade traffic block and the potential RebEarth reinforcements, but he looked at Joy, and in his eyes she saw only emptiness.

  When she finally understood that the connection meant that Rampart now had his location, it was far too late.

  Earth was forbidden ground. That was law and doctrine, even for banneret commanders. Constant had spoken up to save thousands, but he had condemned himself.

  Joy took a deep breath, shoved aside her desperate urge to want to undo, and did the only thing she could – move forward.

  "Captain Versailles, I'm Tower Operative Joy Somerset. We have actionable intel that RebEarth have weaponised the Luna Belt satellites."

  She had never before seen Constant look at her in anger. How dark it made his eyes; how deeply it hurt her to make him experience too late.

  "Destroy the Luna Belt and defend Sol. The commander and I will hold Earth. We'll see you when the dust settles."

  70.

  JOY

  "Come again, Somerset – we didn't catch that last bit."

  The connection was good, Versailles's voice so clear that she could hear the traces of his Lysander accent.

  "You need to destroy the Luna Belt," she said, but once more Versailles asked for a repeat. Constant stepped in, relaying the information via text and speech, but the captain claimed the messages were garbled. Interference, he said, but Hammersmith shook his head.

  "There's no interference. Comms are fine; they can hear us."

  "They could, if that abomination would let them." Rhys nodded towards the Prime Mover. "It's like Hopewell said. There are things that they are blind and deaf to, just like we once were."

  "I'm still hours away from disconnecting the Prime Mover," Juneau said. "If not more. In the meantime, RebEarth will have free reign on Earth. The fleet may have listened to you, Commander, but they will only tolerate so much. Sooner or later, they will come. Sooner or later, the sky will be full of our dead."

  Juneau was right, and though Joy really didn't want to, she knew what she had to do.

  "Connect me to the Prime Mover. I'll talk to it again, convince it to stop protecting the satellites."

  "No."

  A single word, containing so much anger and despair that she didn't think anybody in the room, not even Hammersmith, would go against Constant in this. He had been to the place of truth just as she had, and he could see how red algae had settled on the Prime Mover. The liquid in the tank was no longer clear, and like Constant, she knew how bitter it would taste.

  "I have to try," she said, and though she could tell that he wanted to say no again, he didn't. He understood necessity, and he understood sacrifice.

  * * *

  The neural connection initiated, and the grey swelled towards her. Its edges lapped at her, tendrils of harmony making ringlets around her consciousness. The Prime Mover did not question, did not wonder, simply existed, awaiting input.

  And then darkness washed over it, choking, drowning, squeezing it like a hissing serpent. Yellow glimpsed between black scales, as bright as the sun but with none of its warmth. Translucent needles closed around Joy, snapping shut, trapping her in a cage of teeth.

  "Skald," she said, trembling, but Skald wasn't interested in talking, not even in taking. His tongue wrapped around her, slithered down her throat, and memories dripped from it like poison.

  she was wounded, leaving a trail of blood and self as she clawed through earth too rich with iron. The sea couldn't save her this time, and she was dying in the deep and the dark. She had been someone once, but the earth didn't care and the worms didn't care, and soon they would have her flesh and her bones and no one would have her soul.

  But she sensed something in that dark; a scent she remembered from long ago. A hunter's scent then, but now the hunter seemed small in comparison to what she had become, so weak and so delicious. It was the scent of prey, and she wouldn't die. She would hunt.

  The bitterness receded and Joy took a gasping breath of air that wasn't really air and tried to remember what her body looked like, because it was nothing like in the memories. She did not have scales, did not have

  the hunt ended and she was alone in her glory. She rode her new vessels and sang her stolen songs as thunder rolled across the dunes. But one by one, the vessels decayed. She rode her last one into a tower and walked the black halls until the vessel's joints dried and snapped. Its bones became a pile, and she grew in its mould until the tower shattered and the wind took her.

  And then she was alone, so full of memory and song, but without a voice with which to sing, or anyone to listen. Once more she was bound to the earth, and though her roots reached far and wide, they provided only glimpses of what lay beyond.

  Eight thousand years of dust and thunder and the deep, black glass, and this was worse than dying, and she remembered with regret when she had bled into the soil and wished she had let it happen.

  Then, a great rip tore open near her roots, and she could see little minds, not so vast as those of her dead vessels, but as bright as stars. As time passed, they ripped open more of the veil, little by little making their way closer to her prison. They would come, she told herself. They will never come, she despaired.

  But they did.

  And for the first time in ten thousand years, she felt hope. But instead of the future she had envisioned, she only got more

  pain. Joy bathed in an ocean of it, drowned in agony, and the loneliness and madness was so much worse now because she wasn't alone anymore. She had a little sister, and she loved her so much.

  Even

  though

  the little sister

  broke her

  HEART

  every SECOND of

  EVERY DAY

  * * *

  She woke to the sound of her own screams. The pain had gone, the darkness washed away by the lab's fluorescent lights, but she couldn't stop screaming. Constant said her name, said it over and over again, holding her tight in his arms, but she had seen so much, felt so much that she could barely feel him.

  Other hands held her head back. Something cold pressed against her neck, and then the cold was inside her, spreading through her. It was meant to soothe like a cooling whiteness, but it only reminded her of Skald.

  "Joy." Constant's voice broke through the whiteness. It had colour, as warm as amber. There was no anger in his eyes anymore; only dread. "It's not working, Rhys. Give her another shot."

  "Hold on, Commander."

  "Another shot, now!"

  "And risk killing her? You need to calm down, or I'll have to do it for you."

  "Don't even fucking think about it."

  She focused on the sounds of their voices, so angry and so worried. Real, she thought, real like seashells and warm sand. She wanted to touch them, to feel the sounds slip between her fingers. Constant held her wrists, but when she tried to raise her hand, he let her. She touched his face, placed her fingers against his lips. Felt how warm and how real he was, and with a sob, she could finally stop screaming.

  "Let me take a look at her," Rhys said, and Constant turned her head gently towards the medic. "Hey, Somerset. Can you hear me?"

  She couldn't quite manage to speak,
but gave him a small nod.

  "All right. Do you know where you are?"

  She tapped the centre of the Primaterre sun on her chest.

  "That's right. And do you know who I am?"

  "Jamie," she whispered.

  "Stars." He paused, inhaling shakily, before giving her a quick kiss on the forehead. "She's back with us, Commander. Let's try to keep her that way."

  "Agreed," Constant said. "Nice work, Captain. Apologies."

  "Don't be stupid. Now, Joy, I need to give you a little something. It'll make you feel much better, but when it kicks in, you'll lose consciousness for a few minutes. That's normal, so don't worry, all right? Just relax and count backwards from ten."

  Ten. Nine. Eight, and she blinked.

  Seven, and when she opened her eyes, Rhys was no longer by her side. She could hear him nearby, his voice raised and sharp. The monitors showed the Sol Cascade again, but the scene had changed. The commercial traffic had scattered to make way for an armada of red-painted ships. A smouldering debris field was all that remained of the Primaterre cutters.

  An explosion rumbled in the distance, and a cup fell off a desk, shattering on the floor. The sound made her flinch, and Constant's arms tightened around her.

  He was still with her. Couldn't be for much longer, because Hopewell and Florey would need him. But while he was, she was so glad, and she told him that, whispered it to him as another explosion made the water in the Prime Mover's tank ripple.

  "I should never have let you do it," he said.

  "He showed me things this time... I think he wanted me to know what it's like to be him."

  "And?"

  "Pain," she said. "Pain and fear."

  "Good."

  "...the RebEarth reinforcements are on their way. If they make landfall, our fleet will die, I guarantee it." Hammersmith stood by the monitors, gesturing animatedly. "She needs to try again."

  "Absolutely not," Rhys said. "As team medic, I forbid it."

  "She already doomed herself when she let her location slip to Rampart, so what difference does it make?"