by S. A. Tholin
"Stay low," he said. "And stay put. Not far now, but I've got something to take care of first."
He crept up to the crest of the dune. The vehicle hadn't moved; the sniper was on his way down from the roof. He didn't make it.
Once all vessels were dead and the vehicle's engine block sent plumes of dark smoke into the sky, Cassimer shouldered his Hyrrokkin. He could see the question in Joy's eyes: was that necessary?
He wiped mud from her forehead and leaned into kiss it.
"No correction is too small to make."
She smiled, shaking her head. "Such a perfectionist."
◆◆◆
They were four hundred metres from the train station's archway when the roar of engines surged like a wave. Cassimer ditched the duffel, keeping only his weapons, and heaved Joy into his arms.
Still he wasn't fast enough. His HUD tracked the oncoming hostiles, counting vehicles - six, seven, eight - and calculating the dire odds. Bullets spewed geysers of mud into the sky. No hits, and at this range, it had to be intentional. The demon wanted them alive - or at least Joy.
"If I set you down," he murmured in her ear. A short run to the station. Maybe short enough that she'd make it if he provided a distraction.
"No," she replied, in a granite-hard tone worthy of old Commander Ullapool, and wrapped her arms tight around his neck.
A hundred metres to go, and the nearest Epona pulled wide to flank in a spray of slush. Ninety metres, and the Epona came to a halt outside the station, its doors sliding open to release a dozen armoured men. Eighty metres, and the sound of gunfire drowned out all else.
He dropped to his knees, cradling Joy. He braced, awaiting the first impact - and realized that these bullets weren't meant for him.
The dark maw of the train station lit up with muzzle flashes as men in red and black armour came pouring out. The demon fought back, but its vessels were untrained and unworthy, and fell one by one.
"RebEarth," he said, and how strange it was to say the name and want to laugh. "It's RebEarth, come to kill Primaterre."
"Hide your guns in the mud, quick." Joy scooped up a handful of the stuff and ran her fingers across his face. "Just a local loony now, okay? Don't talk to them, don't look at them - act pathetic."
Easier said than done. A unit of RebEarthers ran past, followed by another unit in their newly-won Epona, and every muscle in his body tensed instinctively. The sky rumbled as two phoenix-painted shuttles shot over the mountains.
"Please," Joy said. "The Primos, they killed everyone. My whole settlement... please help."
"Not fucking here to help," growled the RebEarther who'd stopped to investigate, and Cassimer tightened his grip around the submerged Morrigan. "But you'd do well to get out of our way, because we're about to light those bastards up."
"Thank you." Joy's hand closed around Cassimer's, and he could feel the fear fluttering in her pulse. They stayed like that until the RebEarthers were gone, spread out to hunt and destroy, and then they ran.
Twenty metres to the station, and Cassimer thought he saw movement on the shadowy stairs. Fifteen, and he was certain; more people heading their way. Ten, and bright light burned against his vision. He saw a glimpse of ragged silhouettes on the stairs - cowering, hiding their faces - and then his eyes shut against the pain.
A wave of heat followed, and he knew that heat, recognised it from the cauldrons of Kalau'a Valley. Again he fell to his knees, again he made himself a shield for Joy, because here it came -
- a force like a giant fist, punching him into darkness and silence -
- and when it was over, he followed the explosions and the wailing and the groaning back to consciousness. A quick finger to Joy's neck - still alive, though she hardly looked it - and then he pushed himself to his feet, pulling her into his arms.
Shattered fulgurite had showered the plateau with needle-sharp shrapnel. Vehicles lay on their sides, wheels spinning grey mist into the air. One RebEarth shuttle burnt, embedded into the mountainside. The other spun out over the plains.
The first of the Dozen Daughters had made her fold. A boiling crater marked the impact - miles wide and growing wider, as tremors tore gashes through glass and rock. Flame-licked spirals of smoke and dust towered over the plains, swelling and undulating, spreading to block out the sky. The Cascade, a glimmering moon in the haze, crackled with silver light.
He ran, splashing through knee-deep mud. The train station stairs were dark, but he remembered what he'd seen and knew that way would take them into quivering, sniffing, clawing madness.
"Are we going down there?"
Joy, trembling, looked up at him. He shook his head and looked to the mountains.
"No. We're done with the underworld."
No more darkness. No more madness. He secured his hold on Joy and ran toward the sky.
63. Lucklaw
"Did it work?"
The Andromache's offspring painted the view amber-and-azure, so large and so close to the Cascade that space had been reduced to slivers of black. Five fold requests had been sent - intercepted - and relayed, slightly modified.
The first one had just been processed, and the corresponding ship had folded - somewhere.
"Meeks?"
No response, and he checked the connection. Fine on his side. If the ship had folded into Cato, it was possible comms were disrupted on the towerman's end. It was also possible that she was dead.
Shit. He ran a few pointless scans to distract himself. He wasn't supposed to think about that word, wasn't supposed to think about death. Meeks had told him as much, asking him to think of her as the one pulling the trigger if that helped.
The responsibility wasn't his. Legally and morally, he'd done nothing wrong. It wasn't even a case of just following orders; he'd actually helped save people from a fate worse than death. Was maybe helping save the entire galaxy. All of that was true, and it did help.
But he was inside the core of a Cascade, where reality felt thin enough to drive a finger through it, and but for the sound of his own breath, the silence was complete. He'd folded a ship into a planet, and if her ghosts wanted to reach out from the brane and have their vengeance, it was him they'd be reaching for.
Silver lightning coursed through the arcing pylons. The second fold request was about to be processed, and he took a deep breath. He still didn't believe in brane ghosts, but he now knew for a fact what a fold was like from the inside of a Cascade.
Come on Meeks, respond, say something, anything. I don't want to be alone -
And then reality folded in on itself like colourful origami. He saw
himself, entering the core chamber
himself, strapped into the seat of a Primaterre shuttle and he could hear Albany's voice
And I thought you guys were supposed to be tough
and he laughed, wondering what Albany would think if she could see him now
and he froze, afraid that maybe she was watching, maybe she was reaching
And then reality made another fold. Stars streamed across black and he saw
someone else, entering the core chamber
someone else, laughing and chatting with engineers running maintenance on systems that were still being diligently updated
someone else, breathing air produced by a life support system that hadn't yet suffered catastrophic failure
And he took another deep breath, because here came the final part of the fold.
Nebulae formed at his fingers, swirling and pulling, and he saw
himself, with a cracked visor, floating still and dead above the core
himself, sucked out through the gaping hole where the viewport used to be, screaming into space
himself, laughing
and beyond his self lay the universe and if he looked, if he really looked, he thought he might see it all.
And then it was over. Reality rippled once and smoothed. He looked at his hands to make sure they were just hands, turned them, flexing his fingers, and
when no stars came pouring out, when time didn't flow like a lunar river, he breathed again.
"Corporal, do you copy?"
"Towerman Meeks." He stopped short of blurting out you're alive. "Status report?"
"Status report?" Her laughter cut through the static like the whine of a circular saw. "Well, let me put it this way: I hope this isn't a valuable world, because it is fucked. I mean, this is beyond anything I've ever seen. We're talking extinction level event."
"It's Cato, so, nothing of value lost." Well. Almost nothing. "Status on the commander?"
"Lost contact. Trying to reconnect, but with the amount of shit getting kicked into the atmosphere, I doubt I'll have much luck."
"You think they're alive?"
"You tell me, kid. Can they outrun a nuclear explosion?"
"It wouldn't be the first time this month." He laughed and wished he could open his visor to wipe his eyes. "I wish I was down there with them."
"No, you don't." Dead serious now. "You're exactly where you need to be."
"When the ships fold, it's like the universe is flattened - distance, time, all gone - and I'm thinking that those things exist for a reason. That they are shields, protecting us from what's out there. Keeping us safe until we..." He paused. "I don't know how to explain it, but when the ships fold, I can glimpse a glittering thing on the horizon. A promise. Something I can reach one day if I try hard enough. If I do my best."
"It's just the fold sickness, kid. Best trip in the galaxy, I hear. Enjoy it while you can; supposedly the mind builds up a tolerance real quick."
Lights flashed on an instrument panel below. The third folding request was being processed, but something was different this time. More signals were coming from the ship that had sent it. Hurried, sloppy - panicked.
"Meeks, they know."
"The Daughters?"
"Yes. One's trying to cancel the fold request."
"Can you intervene?"
"I don't need to." He kicked against the wall, floating close to the viewport. "The Cascade is locked. There's nothing they can do."
That didn't stop them from trying, more and more desperately. The Cascade's comms system crackled to life and a voice cut through the silence of the core chamber:
"Please."
And then the pylons glowed silver, and where a Daughter had floated was only space, dark and uncaring. And though the voice had been a demon's voice, its final, desperate syllable stayed with him through the fold. He cried, and Meeks was in his ear, telling him that it was all right, that he was doing an excellent job, that he'd made the Primaterre proud. He cried harder then, because Meeks still loved the Primaterre and he no longer had that luxury. He had truth and he had doubt, he had rage and betrayal. A long road back to love, and there was no signal in the universe strong enough to...
...he blinked, watching the last silver flame die out. A signal strong enough to reach every world in the Protectorate. A signal that was never interrupted. A signal that couldn't be received in exo-space.
A signal that couldn't be broadcast in systems where the Primaterre didn't control the Cascade.
Shit. The realisation stabbed like a knife to the gut. He was right, he knew he was - and now he had another secret to carry. Another piece of information that he didn't know what to do with. The knife twisted, and he wished that he could unlearn it.
Except maybe he didn't need to, because the remaining two Daughters had cancelled their fold requests before they were locked, and one of them was approaching. An amber-and-azure serpent, slithering through the black.
"Meeks."
It took her a long time to respond, and when she did, her voice wavered as much as the connection. The towerman sounded terrified, which given his situation, struck him as entirely unreasonable.
"Meeks, one of the Daughters has docked with the Cascade. They're coming for me."
"Hide," she replied. "Hide and -"
The connection cut out.
◆◆◆
Grey-armoured figures glided silently into the core chamber, incandescent suit lights sweeping across humming machinery. In the moat, the trickle of plasma glowed a deeper blue as it reacted to their presence. Lucklaw's suit cam, detached and floating languidly, captured enough glimpses for a head count - seven, eight, nine - and a cold-sweat overview of their arsenal.
Nine. Lucklaw hugged his new Morrigan close. Basic training had included a two-week course in zero-g combat, but that had been well over a year ago, and nobody had taken it much seriously. They were Bastion men, after all, meant to have their boots firmly planted on the ground - not Rampart spacers.
Yeah, it was a good excuse, and he had plenty more - but nine was a big number for one man. Nine was so big, in fact, that he couldn't repress just how badly he'd stumbled his way through training. Base-Sec had been better, but six months in, he'd received transfer orders. His commanding officer had taken one look at them, and then he'd laughed.
Lucklaw's hands tightened around the Morrigan at the memory. That bastard had laughed right in his face, and then he'd read the transfer aloud to the rest of the unit.
(Golden boy's being sent to the banneretcy. Must've cost Mummy a pretty penny!)
Bunch of bloody bastards, the lot of them. Not like Commander Cassimer, who obviously had Lucklaw's record, but had never made a single disparaging comment about his failures, his poor grades, or his family name. Admiral Lucklaw took the view that failure wasn't an option, and the officers at boot camp and Base-Sec had seen his failure as a given. But the commander treated failure as an opportunity to get back up and do better.
I can do that. I just have to breathe, and focus.
One of the hostiles pointed towards the viewport, where white tendrils of smoke wreathed around a man-sized hole. Working with cutting gel in zero-g - in a rush - had been tricky. In truth, it'd nearly killed him. Globs of the stuff still floated around the chamber like deadly drops of rain, waiting to eat their way through some unfortunate's armour.
Come on come on. Take the bait.
Three hostiles swum through the hole, nimbly avoiding the sizzling edges, by virtue of the micro-thrusters on their space suits. They'd come better prepared than he, but at least now only six remained inside the Cascade.
They noticed the suit cam next. He'd left it near the western exit; a tasty breadcrumb to lead them down the creaking corridors. Lots of hull breaches in that section, lots of collapsed floors. With a bit of luck, the three hostiles heading west might get themselves killed.
The remaining trio headed north, towards the crew quarters where the darkness was complete and where Lucklaw was crouching inside a toilet cubicle.
The camera feed cut out in a burst of gunfire. Not unexpected. In fact, it surprised him that they hadn't destroyed it sooner. The lichen-creature was slow to catch on.
Slow to do a lot of things, actually. They'd entered the chamber at a near-crawl, which he'd first chalked up to lack of zero-g experience, but now he wasn't so sure. The way they stopped occasionally, and their weird twitching, reminded him more of the demons of the Primaterre lie than of Elkhart. They acted as though they were in pain.
The Daughters. Oh Earth have mercy. They feel each other's pain; each other's death. That's how they knew. And now they're coming for me. Oh stars. Oh fuck.
"Meeks, do you copy?"
Nothing but static.
"Rising Flame, come in."
The RebEarth shuttle was gone too.
"Commander?"
Nothing. He was alone, with nothing but brane ghosts and the signals of a dying world to keep him company. Maybe that was enough. Maybe he was enough. Maybe all he had to do was get up and do better.
◆◆◆
Three vessels approached. Through the night-vision of his visor, they glowed green, leaving ghostly outlines in their wake.
He waited for them with chattering teeth. Without primers, he didn't think they'd be able to utilise their stolen Primaterre equipment to its full potential, but he c
ouldn't be sure. So he'd lowered his suit's temperature to mask his body heat and switched off most of its active systems. His HUD was dark and empty, but for the upper right corner, where a complicated constellation of network connections glittered.
They glided into the room. Quiet, cautious; less twitchy. He held his breath and waited for them to drift into the maze he'd made.
Hunkering down in the toilet cubicle might've been fine for a scared corporal still listening to the advice of a towerman. But he wasn't Tower; he was Bastion, and Bastion only ever hid to lure prey closer.
So he'd moved into the dilapidated dorms and pulled together bunks and shelves; crates and tables; lights and monitors into an asteroid belt of junk to snarl the vessels. At opposite exit, he'd made a nest of mattresses, and that's where he waited. That's where he'd make his stand. That's where he'd show Base-Sec that his mother hadn't wasted her merits. That's where he'd make sure Joy hadn't killed Duncan for nothing, because though he'd told her they were even, that was far from the truth. He'd owe her until the end of time. He'd owe her until he touched that glittering thing on the horizon.
The vessels moved through the labyrinth in a haze of green. When they arrived at its centre, Lucklaw reached into the constellation of network connections, grabbed the first stream he saw, and tugged it into every functioning monitor in the dorm.
A crowd roared with cheer as a whistle blew a trio of sharp signals. A scoreboard declared a decisive victory of 27 to 13, and a flock of blackbird mascots pranced across a gouged and muddy field. A lightshow painted the sky above the stadium, reflecting in the golden trophy hoisted by a victorious team.
The vessels turned, confused and frightened.
Lucklaw raised his Morrigan above the mattresses - a stray thought crossing his mind: Hopewell will be so pissed she missed the big game - and fired.
◆◆◆
He couldn't use the same trick twice on the vessels - that was the downside with fighting a single being with multiple bodies. But the upside was that killing or injuring one was the same as hurting them all. Easy pickings when the enemy couldn't fight back. So easy, in fact, that it didn't even feel real anymore.