Iron Truth (Primaterre Book 1)

by S. A. Tholin

  The further into the ship they ventured, the more obvious the damage. They navigated around rubble, shimmied carefully past a gaping hole in the floor, and eventually, Cassimer's intended route proved a no-go, blocked by dust and stone. Two sets of grey footprints hinted that the RebEarthers, too, had tried to go that way.

  "Commander, I lost contact with the drone," Lucklaw reported uneasily. "Could be interference, but I'm blocking a lot of comms traffic."

  "RebEarth ahead of us and RebEarth behind us." Rhys shook his head. "Don't like this, Commander. Too easy to get trapped in here."

  "Lucklaw, can you pinpoint the origin of the comms signals?"

  "Not to an exact location, but as far as I can tell, it's not coming from inside the ship."

  "All right." The puzzle pieces had changed, but all he had to do was figure out how to best make them fit the design he worked towards. "Drop the comms block."

  "If they radio through..."

  "If the comms stay down much longer, they'll be suspicious enough to come looking regardless. At this juncture, it's better for us to listen in and stay apprised."

  The weight of the ship and the mountain it had crashed into; the darkness as fluorescent lights gave way to rooms where the power had irreparably gone out; the absolute silence punctuated only by the groaning of metal. These things, and the acute awareness that any second everything could go wrong, made his muscles tense, sparks flying from nerve-ending to nerve-ending. It was the good kind of stress, a keening predatory blood song, and it surprised him. He'd expected the sedative administered by Rhys to dull all edges.

  He checked his vitals and found that Rhys had cancelled the administration.

  No sedative?

  No need: vitals stabilised to satisfactory levels. Then, after a beat that the medic somehow made drip with wryness: Guess the suit glitch ironed itself out.

  Cassimer couldn't get the text conversation off his visor quick enough. Couldn't handle Rhys's impertinence, had to focus on other things.

  Such as the radio conversation that suddenly flooded his ears. Loud voices, shouting to compete with the howl of a rising wind.

  "...found the vehicle five kilometres out. Looks to be in working order, but there's nobody here."

  Cut comms? Lucklaw wondered, but Cassimer shook his head. Too late for that. Too late for anything but letting things play out.

  "What do you mean there's nobody there?"

  "I mean it's bloody empty, no sign of Lockwood or the others."

  "Shit." A brief pause. "Lockwood, do you read? Where the hell are you?"

  Lucklaw coughed nervously and Cassimer gave him the go-ahead.

  "Told you we had trouble with dust choke. Couldn't get in touch earlier due to interference, so we decided to walk the rest of the way."

  "Nice to hear your voice, Lockwood. Have to say, you sound pretty good. You know, for a guy who got hit by a train."

  And there it was. A relief, really. Now things became simple, the mission stripped down to its very core. Kill or be killed.

  "Say, you got the Feehans there with you? Would love to hear what Gaia sounds like with a hole where her lungs used to be." The voice had taken on a sing-songy mocking tone, as if it too belonged to a man who was pleased with the new turn his mission had taken. "We know you're inside the ship, Primo, and we're coming for you."

  ◆◆◆

  The second fastest route to the bridge was also the route that the dusty footprints followed. Somewhere ahead were two RebEarthers, aware that the Primaterre were coming their way. Con: they'd have time to prepare. Pro: it'd be good to finally get rid of them.

  "If they're smart, they'll stay out of our way." Rhys used his rifle to check round a corner. "Finding Lockwood dead had to have loosened their bowels a tad. Far as they know, we could be cataphracts."

  "Yeah, right." Lucklaw's voice had an anxious edge. "If we were kitty-cats, they'd be dead already. If we haven't engaged, it's because we're weak or outnumbered. They'll know that."

  Though it seemed trivial under the circumstances, Cassimer had half a mind to reprimand the corporal for disrespectful language. Eshi suit had been bad enough; kitty-cat was crossing the line and then some.

  "Cassimer." Joy's whisper, loud in the dead silence of the ship, saved both him and Lucklaw the trouble.

  She'd stopped, by a security door firmly shut and solid enough that it would take significant force and firepower to breach. It was no surprise the RebEarthers had left it alone, continuing down the corridor instead.

  The plaque above the door spelled in dim diodes: CRYOGENICS.

  "Looks like we could get to the bridge through there. Longer walk, but at least we know for certain there's no RebEarth in there. And if we seal the door behind us, they'll have a hard time following us." Rhys's points were good and practical, and all things Cassimer had thought of as well - but he couldn't trust that his own judgment wasn't being swayed by honey-brown eyes.

  "All right. Open it up."

  "I don't know," Lucklaw said. "There's something strange about the sensor readings. Temperatures read very low."

  Rhys shrugged. "It's Cryogenics. Stands to reason it'd be colder - though I suppose there could've been a nitrogen leak."

  "Is that a problem?" Cassimer asked.

  "Not for us. Would kill her in a breath or two."

  "You're finally speaking to me and that's what you've got to say?" Joy smiled nervously. "I think I preferred you quiet."

  "I get that a lot." Rhys opened his med kit and pulled out a rebreather. "Put this on."

  She did, and on Rhys's okay, was about to open the door when a metallic sound reverberated through the ship. It was long and loud, propagating through corridors and pipes as hundreds of bouncing echoes. It was as deep as the ancient sound of a church bell, but made by a thing anathema to celebration and worship; a thing made only for destruction.

  "Scarsdale," Cassimer said, calmly.

  "The Ereshkigal suit?"

  "Affirmative." The Ereshkigal suit, as worn by Andrew Scarsdale, had just torn through the hull of the ship.

  Cassimer's adrenaline spiked, some part of him relishing the opportunity to do combat with another man who would play at being a cataphract. Using the train had taken the edge off his first victory. Man against monster, that was the real trial.

  And maybe he could win. He felt like he could, and another dose of stims would make him feel like he could take on every single RebEarth bastard and come out on top. His cataphract instincts screamed for him to do it, but he wasn't a cataphract anymore; no longer the unassailable, lonely castle.

  "Open the door."

  Joy, rebreather firmly strapped to her face, nodded and slipped past him. In the light of the chip reader, every vein in her wrist was visible, a network of turquoise beneath pale skin. It was a humbling display of vulnerability, and he understood that his urge to fight wasn't courage. Nor was Scarsdale brave in his metal husk. Facing the world in nothing but borrowed fatigues and sneakers a size too large - that was courage, true and pure.

  The doors slid open to darkness and a wall of water.

  26. Joy

  Clear water burst through the doors. Gauntleted fingers clutched at her shoulder but couldn't hold on, and then the cold rush had her. She tumbled down the corridor, thrown against the walls. One impact knocked the rebreather askew, and she swallowed water that tasted of rust and plastic.

  Drowning on a space ship? Come on, Joy, that's too absurd! You can't die like this!

  She agreed with Imaginary Finn's incredulous voice, wanted to somehow come on and save herself. The force of the water was too much to fight against, but its ferocity had decreased. It had to be levelling out, couldn't possibly flood the whole ship.

  She twisted and kicked, narrowly avoiding getting caught in a tangle of wiring. She surfaced briefly - breathed - and saw the hole in the floor, that gaping maw that she had tried very hard not to look down into when they'd passed it earlier. Now it was a whirlpool, water frot
hing around its jagged metal edges. She grabbed aimlessly for a hold on something - anything - but the current sucked at her, pulling her over the edge and into the hole.

  She landed hard on her hands and knees in churning, foaming water. Knee-high and rising, but she managed to push herself up, swimming, crawling, wading away from the waterfall.

  Up ahead, she could hear voices over the rush of the current. Nearby, and closing in fast. An open doorway offered refuge, and she hurried towards it. Her lungs throbbed with pain. She pressed the button on her med-bracelet and waited for the relief.

  None came. She turned her wrist and saw that the display had gone blank. No number, no light, no response at all. A crack ran down one side, revealing yellow and black wiring looped around circuitry, all of it dripping wet.

  "Oh my god." The whisper turned into a muted wail as what she'd always dreaded became real. "I'm going to die."

  Then voices came from just around the corner. Angry, excited, and entirely unfriendly. As I'm going to die (eventually) became I'm going to die (in the next few seconds), Joy snapped out of her frozen state.

  The doorway opened up into a vast hangar. Lights flickered in the back, casting the room a dim twilight. Rows of great and beastlike shadows loomed in the dark.

  Staying low, staying quiet (easier said than done in water-logged sneakers), she crept up to the nearest one. A ship? Was this the shuttle bay? No - her hands found the massive treads of a wheel - not ships. Agricultural equipment. Tractors, cultivators, harvesters - everything the Hierochloe colonists would have needed to grow their own crops.

  Short-stalked wheat and Tradition rye were the crops that had been deemed likeliest to thrive on Gainsborough and would've made up the bulk of the first few seedings. Swaying fields of gold and blue, as far as the eye could see. She would never have come into contact with these machines, but her work and theirs would've been inextricably linked. A botanist and a hulking mass of steel - together, they would have worked to feed a new world.

  She patted the tractor; felt for it even though it was just a machine. The two of them were just as stranded, just as lost and bereft of purpose. But while it would never see the fields it had been meant to plough, she still had a chance.

  She kicked off the squeaking sneakers, hid them behind the wheel of the tractor, and hurried deeper into the gloom.

  "...the hell did all the water come from?"

  "Who cares? Got anything on your sensors? Mine won't boot until I set the system clock, and the system freezes when I try to set the clock. God-damned piece of garbage."

  "Like mine's any better. It's barely recognising you, for fuck's sake." Churlish now, with a touch of greed. "Wish I had some of that Primo gear the boss keeps rubbing in our faces."

  "Hey, Nystrom had plenty of Primo shit, and you saw what happened to him."

  "Fucking animals," the other voice agreed.

  "It takes a lot of brute force to crush a man to death - especially someone with as many augments as Nystrom. We could be walking into a company of kitty-cats."

  "No way they'd send cataphracts to a shit-hole world like this."

  "You got to agree, though, we're not dealing with run-of-the-mill Primos here. These guys are serious -"

  "Hey!" A third voice interrupted. "Do you see a campfire 'round here? How about tents? No? Then how about you stop telling each other ghost stories and fucking focus."

  "I'm focused." The churlish voice again, this time raised to a simmering temperature.

  "Oh yeah? Then how come you missed this?" A cone of light swept through the doorway. Joy shrank back, deep into the wheel-well of a tractor. "Wet footprints."

  In her hurry to get away, she hadn't even thought of that. Another stupid mistake, another miscalculation.

  "One set. Small feet for a Primo." White light flashed around the room as the searchers ventured deeper.

  Joy reached for the tractor's door handle. With a wheeze, the door slid open and she climbed inside the cab. Another wheeze as the door shut, as loud as a hurricane to her ears.

  The tractor's interior was pristine, still had that fresh-from-the-factory sheen. She squeezed into the footwell, trying to make herself as small and unassuming as possible.

  As long as you're still breathing, there's every chance you'll make it through this.

  Imaginary Finn's voice might've been comforting, if only he hadn't mentioned breathing. Her lungs felt like knots in her chest, her limbs growing weaker as the knots grew tighter.

  "Got a pair of shoes over here," called one of the voices and Joy swore under her breath, because the sneakers were emblazoned with the Primaterre logo just like everything else the soldiers owned and used, and now there was absolutely no chance that the voices would give up and leave.

  "All right, fall back. The boss is on his way."

  And now she heard the heavy, metallic footsteps of the Ereshkigal suit. They grew louder and louder until she could no longer hear the rush of water, and the only sound was that of the approaching war machine.

  ◆◆◆

  Bright searchlights revealed the hangar to be larger than she'd thought, stretching hundreds of metres in every direction. There must've been another exit once, but the back of the hangar had caved in and was filled with dust and rocks. Between her and the only remaining exit, stood Andrew Scarsdale in his stolen armour.

  Logically, she knew that there was a man inside the suit, but her brain screamed monster. The name Ereshkigal had sounded familiar, and with its shadow bearing down on her, she remembered it as the name of a goddess worshipped on ancient Earth. Dread Ereshkigal, queen of the land of the dead; passer of judgment and lover to the god of plagues.

  The Primaterre named their weapons well.

  Three other RebEarthers had fanned out across the hold and were searching it. There were lights and voices in the corridor too - dozens more, possibly. She supposed Scarsdale was mostly there as insurance; a solid wall of death for the Primo hiding in the hold. Only there was no Primo, just a frightened botanist, and part of her wanted to step out of the tractor with her hands over her head and hope for mercy.

  Light swept across the cab and she curled up inside the footwell. No hand tried the door, no voice shouted out, but she could feel tremors. Scarsdale was coming, and he did not weave through the rows of machines; he walked where he wished, shoving tractors aside.

  Then a sharp cacophony erupted in the corridor, loud and unrelenting. Joy peeked through the window and over Scarsdale's wide pauldrons, she saw the corridor glow hot with streaming bullets and muzzle flashes.

  She hadn't been abandoned, hadn't been left to die. Cassimer and the others were coming for her, in a blaze of fire and violence, and it was the most wonderful thing.

  Then Scarsdale turned towards the fight, and her jubilant heart froze. Cassimer had fought similar odds once and won, but not without bleeding. Not without hurting. This time, the other side had all the advantages, and there'd be no train barrelling in to save the day.

  No train. Her hands tightened around the steering wheel. But there were tractors.

  Don't, whispered Imaginary Finn.

  "I don't want to argue with you right now," she whispered back, happy to indulge the madness if it meant taking her mind off the fear.

  But Imaginary Finn wanted to argue, and just like real Finn, once started, he wouldn't let up. The tractor probably wouldn't even start, he said, and even if it did, she didn't know how to drive it.

  "How hard can it be? There's a steering wheel and a clutch and an, uh, make-it-go-forward lever? And the ignition's just a button. Couldn't be easier." She slid into the driver's seat and wrapped her hand around the make-it-go-forward lever. It was as cold as death.

  Thankfully, Imaginary Finn didn't bring up the fact that she had failed her driving test twice and still wasn't licensed to drive even a scooter, let alone an agricultural machine the size of a small house. Instead, he waited until her fingers were hovering above the ignition to raise his final objecti
on.

  If you press that button and it does start, but the Primaterre soldiers are overwhelmed anyway... It'll be just like in the habitat. You, trapped in a cage of glass. They'll hurt you, Joy.

  They'll kill you was what she had expected to hear; they'll hurt you struck her as worse. But it didn't matter, because Scarsdale had raised his weapons, and zigzag lines of heat poured from their barrels, blazing through both air and bulkhead.

  She pressed the ignition and the century-old engine responded immediately, purring with life. A display flickered on, welcoming and authorising Hierochloe's chief of security.

  Hierochloe engineering is second to none. The memory of Duncan's triumphant declaration stung. He'd looked happy then, such a rare occurrence, as though the bleakness of their situation had been made bright by the hovercraft's high-beams.

  Now he was dead, and she would never stop feeling the trigger against her finger.

  She closed her hand around the clutch and it might as well be a trigger, because this tractor would never plough the fertile fields of Gainsborough, but today...

  Today it would kill a man.

  Perhaps deafened by gunfire, Scarsdale hadn't noticed the engine rumbling behind him. Joy glanced down at the display, finding comfort in her brother's name. In a way, he was with her.

  I'm always with you.

  And with that ghostly whisper in her ear, she pushed the lever.

  The tractor lurched forward with greater speed than anticipated. Dust whirled in the air, the headlights casting a glare on the Ereshkigal suit's visor as Scarsdale began to turn. He had a moment to react, and if it had been Cassimer in that suit, she thought a moment would have been plenty. Scarsdale neither evaded nor retreated. He raised his guns, barrels white-hot.

  She pushed the make-it-go-forward lever so hard her hand ached, and roaring, the tractor closed the distance and slammed into the armoured man.

  The tractor heaved as metal ground against metal. The train had dragged Lockwood under, but Scarsdale didn't fall, didn't flinch, bracing against the impact. Sparks cascaded into the air, and he drew one huge fist back before smashing it into the engine block. Something budged, jerking backwards, wedging Joy between the steering wheel and the seat.