Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  Luck runs out, Imaginary Finn warned.

  "That's not near the bridge, is it?" Rhys panned his binoculars along its length.

  "No. That's the stern. Nothing back there but cryo storage. The upper two decks reserved for colonists, and the remainder for botanical and zoological samples," Cassimer said.

  "Thank the stars. Don't fancy the look of that climb."

  Neither did Joy, but at least climbing didn't involve getting shot at. The bow was where all the lights were, and that scared her more than any height.

  "ETA on aerial view?"

  "The drone had to make a detour to avoid the storm, but it's in position now. Seizing control." Lucklaw's hands twitched slightly, as if he was playing some invisible computer game.

  Joy looked up but saw nothing. The drone was an invisible eye, quiet and deadly. She imagined the black lenses of its cameras staring down at her, cold and unfeeling, and felt very small.

  Maybe Cassimer noticed her shiver, because he handed her his tablet again, screen light low and directed away from the RebEarth camp. The video feed from the drone was remarkably clear.

  Makeshift shelters of corrugated steel had been erected near the middle of the wreckage. Welding torches, wielded by men in combat gear, burnt white-hot as they cut into the Ever Onward. Solar panels pried from the hull were being loaded into a large truck. A guard walked the perimeter, the light mounted to his assault rifle sweeping across rippling dust. Six men in total - Cassimer had been right.

  Then the drone moved around the wreckage to the north, where floodlights were aimed at an open airlock. From the darkness within the Ever Onward came a steady stream of men, carrying salvage towards more trucks parked nearby. Whatever ship had brought these RebEarthers and their equipment to Cato had to be sizable.

  "Century-old or not, this is going make a nice contribution to the RebEarth war chest. Bet they can't believe their luck," Rhys said.

  "Luck is fickle," Cassimer said, in an echo of Imaginary Finn.

  "I see another Ereshkigal suit in play, in better shape than the one at the station." Lucklaw shook his head. "I'd love to know how the suits ended up in RebEarth hands. They'd done a pretty thorough job filing off the serial numbers. I'm running analytics on the interface chip I collected, but I don't know that it'll tell us much."

  "Well, maybe you'll get a chance to examine another one," Rhys said.

  "The RebEarthers aren't the only ones who shouldn't push their luck," Cassimer said, putting an end to the conversation.

  The bridge lay buried underneath a tumble of rocks and dust, but appeared structurally intact. Five hundred and sixteen metres away from the ship's nose, according to the drone, a third and final gathering of RebEarth men waited by an open airlock. A trail of ashen footsteps, lit by stark construction lights, led into the ship. Three men stood guard outside. No, two men and a woman. Feehan's sister? If there was a family resemblance, the drone didn't offer enough detail to tell. But the man hunched over by a series of glowing monitors...

  ...the rigid curve of his back, the anxious hands running across his shaven head, and the fingers missing from his left hand. Yes. Joy would know him anywhere, this man who had become a part of her life whether she liked it or not.

  "That's Duncan. By the computers."

  On the screen, a white square appeared around Duncan.

  "Him?" Cassimer asked.

  She nodded, and the square turned green, which seemed a promisingly friendly colour.

  "That makes twenty-one hostiles plus however many may be inside the ship." Rhys sucked his teeth. "No easy way of going about this, commander."

  "If you wanted easy, you joined the wrong team." Cassimer sounded distracted, physically pulling away from the team as though he needed space to think. She wished she had some advice to offer, but all she could think was abort. Even the thought of Finn couldn't change the fact that the challenge seemed impossible.

  "Aerial assault? The drone could take out a good chunk of their forces."

  "Not without risking damage to the ship. Not without revealing our presence."

  "What about her?" Lucklaw nodded towards Joy. "They don't know who she is, or who she's with. Give her a gun or some explosives and she might at least be able to manage a distraction."

  "Good idea," Cassimer said. "With some amendments."

  ◆◆◆

  Amendments aside, as Joy walked towards the cluster of lights, it was with the words bad idea! Very very bad idea! running through her head. When the potential Ms Feehan spotted her, and the shouting began, and guns pointed towards her, the thought lost its shape and became a panicked whine.

  She fell to her knees on glassy crust, hands raised. Cassimer had removed the manacles, and she found herself missing the tightness around her wrists.

  "Please don't shoot. Duncan, it's me. Duncan -"

  Ms Feehan (and now Joy was sure of the relation, could see it in the sharply upturned nose and the fiery gaze) stepped forward and jabbed the butt of her rifle into Joy's chest.

  A conversation was taking place around her, but pain and loss of breath garbled the words. She saw glimpses of oiled gun barrels and dark-stained combat boots kicking up dust - and then a hand, reaching down.

  "What are you doing here?" Duncan asked, pulling her to her feet.

  "I could ask you the same thing." She turned her head and coughed, spitting darkness onto the ground. "The Ever Onward was our secret."

  "Answer his god-damned question." Feehan raised her rifle to Joy's face.

  "I came to wake my brother from stasis." She gave Duncan a pleading glance, as sincere as she could manage. It was, after all, nearly the truth. "I couldn't wait any longer, Duncan."

  "How did you get all the way out here?" The suspicion was still there, but waning - as though Duncan wanted to believe her, because the alternative meant that very bad things were about to happen to one or both of them.

  "Train, a few days ago. Then I walked, like before, only this time through the tunnels."

  "Any reason I shouldn't just shoot her?" Feehan asked, and Joy hoped that Duncan could think of one, because she certainly couldn't.

  "She's part of my deal with your boss. Three tickets off-world in exchange for the arc ship. You want to drop that down to two tickets, fine, but I expect recompense."

  "I don't know." The RebEarth man spoke for the first time. He was short, stocky, with blonde hair curling from underneath his helmet, and regarded Joy with extreme scepticism. "Lockwood and the others still aren't back from the train station and this girl just appears out of nowhere? Doesn't sit right. I'm going to call it in, see what the boss thinks."

  "You think I didn't already try that? God, you're slow." Feehan stuck her tongue out at the man. "Good thing you're handsome. Anyway, couldn't get through. Too much interference. This fucking planet, you know."

  The blonde man shook his head. "Don't like it. Feels like a god-damned Primaterre trick."

  "No way is she Primaterre," Feehan scoffed, but Duncan's brow furrowed.

  "Duncan," Joy said and tried to take his hand to veer him off the dangerous path, but he pulled away. "Duncan, I've come to save you."

  "What the fuck is going on?" Feehan took a nervous step backwards.

  "Joy, are they with you?" Duncan spoke in a low, hurried voice. "If they're here, you need to tell me."

  "Duncan, you need to be quiet and you need to get down on your knees -"

  Feehan swore, raising her rifle. Mid-curse, a heavy sound interrupted her, and she was sent flying backwards, falling hard on her back in the dust.

  Joy knew that she was dead. The curly-haired man knew it too - the shock apparent on his face in the brief moment that he still had a face. Then he too was on the ground, some of him all over the ground. Death had come in silence and from a significant distance, but that made it no less final.

  Duncan reached for his sidearm.

  "Touch that and you're dead," Joy said, stumbling over her words in order to get them out.
Had to be quicker than Cassimer's trigger finger.

  Duncan's hand changed its course to reach for her instead.

  "Touch me and you're dead."

  His face twitched and there was a mad glint in his eyes, but his hand dropped - and she was so glad for it.

  ◆◆◆

  "How many inside the ship?"

  Duncan knelt, arms behind his head. A pair of manacles just like Joy's (now returned to her wrists) pulled so tightly at his skin that his veins grew fat and dark. Cassimer's shadow spilled over him like ink.

  "Three."

  "Three. Lie to me again and that's how many fingers you'll lose."

  Duncan gritted his teeth. "Five. That's the truth."

  "I know. Any of them wearing Ereshkigal suits?"

  "No. Lockwood's got one and the boss has the other. Lockwood..." Duncan's eyes widened. "You must have come past Lockwood and the others. How? I examined that suit, saw what it could do. I wouldn't have thought it possible -"

  "How many RebEarthers in total?"

  Again Duncan was reluctant to respond, and Joy couldn't take it, couldn't bear watching him at the wrong end of a gun.

  "Duncan, please tell them what you know." She glanced at Cassimer, afraid that he'd disapprove, but he said nothing. "It's important."

  "Thirty-five men," Duncan all but spat. "Six of them were already here, hiding out on Cato. They sent word to their people off-world, but because of the electrical interference and the state of the Cascade, it took weeks before the message went through. A ship arrived a couple of days ago to drop off the men and equipment."

  "Where's the ship now?"

  "In orbit. They didn't want to risk a landing, and the Cascade's too dangerous to use more than necessary."

  "Who's in charge?"

  "His name is Scarsdale." Duncan's face distorted, as though it pained him to speak the name. He hadn't wanted to - out of loyalty?

  "This man?" A photograph glowed on Cassimer's tablet. Black hair, dyed a gradient red, fell to the shoulders of a man who'd once been handsome. A scrollwork of phoenix feathers framed his jaw and cheeks, curling inwards around cold green eyes. He was scarred and bruised, but it was his smile that spoilt his looks. Too wide, too wild, too out of place in such a hard face.

  Duncan nodded, almost imperceptibly, and then he looked at Joy. "Three tickets off-planet, Joy. I had it sorted. Maybe one more week in this place and then we would've been gone, but you just had to go and bring the fucking Primos down on our heads, you stupid bitch -"

  Cassimer's boot struck Duncan's ribs with a sharp crack.

  "He the one who built the components you brought?" Lucklaw didn't bother tearing his eyes from the computer screen, but at least he hadn't called her civilian. "Explains how primitive they were. Took me a lot of work to integrate them."

  Duncan spat on the ground, his dust-caked lips turning in a snarl, but something (perhaps an aching rib) kept him in check.

  "Lockwood, the Feehans and now maybe Andrew Scarsdale as well. Not bad for a day's work. Reckon the air tastes purer already," Rhys said. He'd finished burying the dead RebEarthers and stood over their graves, smoking a cigarette.

  "It tastes like cheap tobacco," Joy said.

  Rhys rolled his eyes. "Well, pardon me, princess. It's a big plain; step back a ways if you don't like it."

  "Put it out, Rhys." Before Cassimer had finished the sentence, the medic had ground the cigarette butt into the dust. "Lucklaw, status of the ship's systems?"

  "Failing. Looks like Duncan was trying to shut down the emergency protocol and hack the system to grant his own h-chip full access. Good idea, terrible execution."

  "Keep to the facts. Is the bridge accessible?"

  "Lots of high-security doors between us and it. Quickest way is the hack Duncan was trying to do. I'm pretty sure I can crack it, but I'll need an h-chip." He nodded towards Joy. "I'd recommend using hers. Working from a clean slate will be quicker."

  Joy touched her arm. There was no scar, no mark to speak of, but sometimes she thought she could feel a sense of something foreign under her skin.

  "Do you need to take it out?"

  "What? No, you idiot. I've already scanned and accessed it. In theory, all I need to do is connect to the Ever Onward's security database and transfer the profile of someone with security clearance to your chip. A simple identity spoof, nothing too tricky."

  "Try Finn Somerset. He's the chief of security."

  "Your brother?" Lucklaw shrugged. "Sure, that'll work. At least Duncan managed to get life support working again, so that's going to save us some time."

  "Good. Get it done." Cassimer moved towards the airlock, his armour flickering as its camouflage shifted from dust grey to match the Ever Onward's white interior. "Rhys and I are going hunting."

  "Wait." Joy frowned. "Duncan - you rerouted power to life support? How could you do that? The cryo pods -"

  Duncan sighed.

  "You know what your problem is, Joy? You just won't let go. You couldn't stay in Nexus because you wouldn't accept the new rules of life. You decided to hitch your wagon to the scourge of the galaxy because you have this idea in your head that civilisation is order, neatly packaged inside branded uniforms. I've got family on the Ever Onward too, but they've been dead or as good as dead for over a century. The power going out won't make a difference. It's time to let go and adapt to the present. Adapt, and survive."

  Incandescent rage flared through her veins, urging her to violence, urging her to hurt this man who would see her brother dead. Scream at him, it insisted, kick him, beat him. Make him understand that there are ties that cannot be cut and principles that cannot be compromised.

  Only the thought of the Primaterre soldiers held her back. She couldn't give them cause to think she was a problem. For Finn's sake, she had to stay calm. For Finn's sake, she blinked tears of anger from her eyes.

  "Don't worry about it. See this?" Lucklaw held a black device, about the size of a macaron (nestled in her palm like a little bird - the memory stabbed at her, reigniting her desire to stab Duncan). It was egg-shaped, the Primaterre sun logo emblazoned on its matte surface. "It's a wireless power cell. It'll keep every system on the ship running while we're here. It's probably got enough juice to fly this old tin can if we wanted to."

  "Sure, for ten spectacular seconds before the even more spectacular crash," Rhys said.

  "How does it work?"

  "Do you know what a Dyson sphere is?"

  She shook her head and Lucklaw smirked. "Then I doubt there's any point in trying to explain."

  ◆◆◆

  The Ever Onward proved more of a challenge than Lucklaw had expected. He'd stopped explaining to her what was happening after his third failed attempt at breaching its database, and since then, she'd heard nothing out of the comms specialist but a rising crescendo of swearing.

  "If it's the admin check that's giving you trouble, have you tried -"

  "Quiet," Lucklaw snapped at Duncan and then cursed about losing his focus.

  It was odd to watch him work without actually touching any equipment, connecting directly to the ship. Joy remembered the intense flow of information she'd seen on Rhys's screen. Was that how the soldiers saw the world? Every little detail broken down and explained; the weather never cold but exactly minus 5.6 degrees, the sky never dark but lit by thousands of named and outlined constellations. All the pieces of the universe laid out before them, each making the bigger picture infinitely more complex.

  "Will you stand still?"

  Even though she didn't believe for a second that it'd make a difference, she obliged the corporal. No more pacing to keep warm, no more rubbing her arms to stop the crawling sensation under her skin. It was an odd feeling to know that there was a chip inside of her and that Lucklaw, in a sense, was inside of it. Invasion was the word - or violation. A distant echo of how Naomi Winstanley must've felt as the demons dug their claws into her mind.

  The comms specialist hadn't sworn for almos
t a minute. A good sign?

  "How's it going?" she asked, trying her best to sound cheerful and not at all doubting his abilities.

  "Should be past the worst of it. Establishing a connection was the hard part; my stupid bloody network adapters refused to recognise the ship. And right in the middle of it all, the commander requested an update from the drone. Always picks the worst possible moment, you know? Lucklaw, hack the ancient arc ship and rewrite an h-chip - a piece of tech which, by the way, I'd never even seen until a few days ago. Lucklaw, monitor the comms channels. Lucklaw, manage the eye in the sky. Lucklaw, make sure the civilians don't cause trouble. Stars." He shook his head. "Like I haven't got enough on my plate."

  "What you do is pretty impressive," she admitted. "The voice changing trick was creative."

  "Nothing special. Learnt that in Basic Training." The pride that seasoned his voice belied the humble words. "Working this ship is a whole different league. Even Copenhagen would've struggled."

  Copenhagen. One of the Primaterre casualties? Perhaps the woman whose clothes Joy wore. The thought made her skin crawl even worse.

  "What's it like to have a computer in your head?"

  "Computer in my head?" He laughed. "The primer is a synthetic modification of my genetic code. It's not in my head, exactly - it's an intrinsic part of me, the information stored inside always available. The whole team's got network augments, allowing us to connect to other systems, and to each other, which is how we communicate. Which is how the commander is currently bitching at me about the quality of the drone footage." Lucklaw groaned. "Hang on."

  A few minutes of silence passed by. In the distance, engines rumbled, and Joy could see Duncan glancing in their direction.

  "Right." Lucklaw sighed. "Where was I?"

  "Augments," Joy said. "But if I'm distracting you..."

  "I piggy-backed on Duncan's chip to access the security database. He hasn't got admin clearance, so I'm running a few scripts to try and crack that. All automated, so I've got time to talk."

  He certainly did. He hadn't even called her anything objectionable or condescended much. A nice feeling - though likely more to do with the subject matter than it was to do with her.