Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  Just as his stim-enhanced urge for violence whipped itself into a froth, everything started to go wrong. Joy shone the light of truth on Elkhart and one and one no longer equalled two. The world ceased to make sense.

  Elkhart's flesh did not change, his bones did not groan and shift under his skin, but the man who had claimed to be Tower had disappeared all the same. His voice dropped and took on a different cadence, and his words hit Joy like bullets.

  She fell to her knees, and Cassimer wanted to run to her side, but instead raised his rifle. She cried out in agony, and he wanted to hold her, but stood fast. A cry of her brother's name was followed by a tearful Constant, and Earth have mercy, he almost surrendered at that, almost lost himself. But he had to be their sword of truth and their shield of clarity, now more than ever, because while Elkhart might once have been human, he was no more. Another thing rode him now.

  "Demon!" The half-snarled word was all he could manage. He bit down hard on his tongue before the scream inside his chest found its way out.

  "Demon?" Elkhart smiled and if it hadn't been for the Andromache's shields, Cassimer would've pulled the trigger there and then. "The scratching shadows. The hunters that skitter on the edges of the forbidden. The dark prowlers whose claws rent my side as I slipped between the veils. Yes, I know those creatures well."

  The rough Kirkclair accent took on a lilt, his voice becoming smooth and soft as honey. A foreign rhythm set the pace of Elkhart's words, almost too strange to comprehend.

  "But they do not hunt here, soldier, in this realm of iron and earth, where borders are defined and impassable. No demons here, but for the ones of your own making."

  Mist gathered around the Andromache, evaporating in great sighs as the shields burned them off. Bright light beamed from the open airlock and turned Elkhart into a searing white outline of a man. Underneath a halo of platinum hair was nothing but the taunting void. Teeth flashed in the darkness as it spoke of things that did not make sense. Black glass flowers and jade lanterns, sea-stained armour and the taste of memories.

  Cassimer's HUD glowed with messages as the rest of the team shot incredulous comments and questions back and forth, but he paid them little attention. No matter the shape of the thing, no matter its origin, it was a devourer of minds, a corrupter of the pure. A demon in every way that mattered, and as it approached the shield, he was struck by the notion that when light once more fell on its face, it would wear the leering mask of the mess cook.

  "No closer," he warned, voice cracking in a humiliating display of weakness. The thing that called itself Elkhart stopped - but it smiled, and there was plenty in that smile that Cassimer didn't like. A sense of superiority and a sense of knowing, as though it could see his every thought. And why not? Every mirror, every dim corner. He'd never been alone, not since the Hecate, he saw that now.

  "Lucklaw, status on the Hecate's shields?"

  The silence lasted just long enough for him to notice his own mistake. Too late to retract it, too late to make excuses.

  "She's clammed up tight, Commander." At least Lucklaw had the decency to let it pass without comment or correction. "Would take hours to gain access. Preparing battering ram for cryo systems."

  "Florey, arm the explosive. We'll retreat and detonate remotely."

  Even if the blast didn't destroy the Andromache (Andromache, Andromache, get it right), it would bring down the structure around it. The vast underground silo would collapse in on itself in a crushing tumble, becoming just another tomb for Cato's collection of graveyards. A fine prison for a demon, and he found himself hoping that the Andromache would survive and trap the grinning creature. Leave him to rot until the smile slid from his face and his teeth clattered to the floor.

  Although the demon wouldn't be alone. Thirty thousand Primaterre citizens slept within the Andromache, and that thought gave him pause. Terminating them might be called an act of mercy, or necessity, but leaving them to be the playthings of a demon? Bastion would find ways of justifying it, but could he?

  "So quiet." Elkhart no longer smiled. "But not on the inside, am I correct? How clever the Primaterre are, to have wrought echoes of divinity from iron and earth. Mind-speak and dream-ships, shimmer-shields and icy immortality. Look at yourself, soldier, and the strength you possess. Taller and more powerful than nature made any mortal man. Bones imbued with the gifts of the deep-dark earth, blood coursing with harnessed elements. The Primaterre have made gods of men, and an army of demons for their gods to fight. A heaven and hell of human making. But you are beyond their reach now, soldier. You do not have to do their bidding."

  "Last chance, demon. Surrender the -" Hecate fluttered across the tip of his tongue, and he had to force his mind to obey. "Surrender the Andromache."

  Elkhart glanced at Florey, who knelt by the explosive. "Or you will destroy it? But to what end, soldier? Did he not listen to you, Joy, when you told them what I am?"

  "You will not speak to her." Anger nipped at the heels of his fear. "You speak only to me."

  "I speak to this entire world, soldier. I sing across plains of dust and forests of glass. I sing to the people of this world, over and over again, or else they forget. The human mind is a complex thing, soldier, possessed of an energy that cannot be so easily enslaved. Even as I sing my slaves to their knees, their minds reel, bucking and thrashing like harpooned whales. Fortunately, a slave needn't be sane to serve - but then, the Primaterre know this better than anyone."

  "You know nothing of the Primaterre." The explosive was armed, the command to detonate ready on his HUD. But he couldn't stop thinking about the thirty thousand. They were the Hecate's cadets and crew before the corruption had seized them, and they were Joy, abandoned and forgotten.

  If the corruption hadn't touched their minds, they might yet be saved. Might yet go on with their lives, unaware of the horror that had sought to possess them, and unaware of the men and women who'd journeyed to the heart of a world to find them.

  But the walls were closing in and sharp claws scratched the inside of his skull. The dread had become a physical thing. Behind him, Joy wept for her lost brother, and all around, the shadows began to hiss.

  On the gantries, lights flashed. The temperature dropped sharply as glass lids slid open to release multiplying contacts. Two levels became starless and dark as their cryo pods woke their sleepers and shut down.

  Glum-faced, grey-hued wretches crept from their frozen sarcophagi to encircle the pit in silence. These people had not come from the Ever Onward - they were locals, recently put in stasis. Brittle bones and spongy flesh sagged under the weight of equipment so sophisticated as to look alien on the locals. They wore Primaterre armour and Primaterre guns, stolen from the Andromache. His HUD glowed bright as it identified weapons and counted hostiles.

  Sixty-three was the final count. Sixty-three stasis-fogged, malnourished and inexperienced Cato locals. Laser light flashed across his visor, and the HUD tracked it back to a sniper rifle three levels above. A lighter version of Cassimer's own Hyrrokkin, intended for law enforcement. Even so, the recoil would shatter the local's unaugmented shoulder, maybe crack his skull too, the way he was pressing his eye to the scope.

  Hopewell was surrounded on the second gantry, cornered by a good dozen guns, and Rhys reported movement in the tunnel. And sixty-three locals could quickly become ten thousand if more pods opened.

  Elkhart viewed his reinforcements with thinly veiled disgust. "I make them wash when they come to my fortress, make them wear proper clothes and a coating of civilisation. Even so, I can barely stand their presence. What do you think, soldier? How many can you destroy before a bullet unravels your shimmer-shields and finds bone and flesh?"

  Every damned one of them. The response burned hot on the tip of his tongue, but that was the stims talking, along with the fear and desperation that onboard the Hecate had driven him to survival at any cost. But this situation was different. This time there were costs he wasn't willing to incur.

&nbs
p; "Out of moves, soldier? Not quite, I suppose. You could set off that explosive and give your life to serve the will of distant masters. A notion I find hard to grasp, but I can tell that you are the obedient type. Strong of body but weak of mind, ready to follow orders without question. So allow me to tell you this - setting off that bomb won't complete your mission. You will die a failure."

  ◆◆◆

  "Listen, soldier. I know how set in your ways your kind can be. This one..." Elkhart patted his own chest. "He would've scoffed and called me mad, just as you're doing right now."

  Cassimer wasn't, but he would if he had the time to waste. Through the scope of his Hyrrokkin, Elkhart's smiling face took centre stage, but he saw far more than that. Surveillance cameras, visual augment feeds, sensor reports - piece by piece, he was pulling together the information required to survive and succeed. Still, a note in Elkhart's voice interested him. Fear, he thought, hidden deep and hidden well, underneath a thick glaze of superiority, but there nonetheless. That was good. That was useful.

  "It's why I rarely care to explain myself. So tiresome are the accusations of lunacy, so dull are the persuasions required. But circumstances force my hand, soldier, and so I ask that you keep an open mind. After all, your own survival hinges on it."

  "It'd be easier to have a civil conversation without all these guns pointed at us."

  Elkhart laughed, this time with genuine, surprised amusement. "Indeed. I'm sure many a poor soul at the wrong end of your rifle felt the same way. An interesting trait, this hypocrisy of yours. Part of the programming, I wonder, or merely a symptom of the iron-bound human brain?"

  Cassimer had only meant to stall for time, but the demon's words managed to slip through his armour to scratch his skin. It pried and poked, and stirred ash best left alone.

  "Get to the point, demon."

  "Impatient, too. Part of the original design, I think. Hierochloe were only capable of nudging or pushing, nothing in between, and though their name and method have changed, their results are much the same." Elkhart shrugged. "But you are right, soldier, I digress. When my last vessel mouldered, I found myself trapped on this world, in the most base of forms. While stars were birthed and worlds were ended, I grew thick and I grew vast, and I grew bored. Cato is a prison of dust and wind, and for so long I was its only captive. And then your kind came here, in great star-roaming ships, wearing flesh not so dissimilar from what my own once was. Such a blessing, such great luck - but your life spans are so short, and my song so long. My first attempt took nearly fifty years, and by the time the transfer was complete, the vessel had become old and useless. How frustrating to have nothing but time, only to find that my vessels had everything but. How fortunate to find the mind of the man in charge of this facility and learn the secret of halting decay."

  LUCKLAW: what

  FLOREY: Detonate, and wipe this impurity from the galaxy

  HOPEWELL: I must've been spending too much time with Somerset for this kind of crazy to make sense, but I think I understand what he's saying

  LUCKLAW: Yeah, nonsense. Brain all muddled by toxins.

  HOPEWELL: No, no, listen - he's saying he's the human/houseplant hybrid, don't you get it? He's the lichen.

  FLOREY: Hopewell -

  HOPEWELL: He's saying he's been exerting control over the locals to do his bidding, but what he actually wants is to get off this shitty planet, and so he needed bodies. But it takes him a long time to take over a body. That's what the cryo pods are for. He's using them to possess human hosts.

  FLOREY: Impossible.

  HOPEWELL: Why? It's what the demons do, isn't it? Nobody questions that.

  Lichen in the shape of a man. Hopewell was right - that was what Elkhart was saying, and that was what Elkhart believed. Mad beyond saving, like all of Cato's people.

  "So you're saying that you, and all these others, are host to a parasitic lichen." Even entertaining the delusion felt humiliating and dangerously impure. "That doesn't explain the Ever Onward or the Andromache."

  "That is not what I'm saying, soldier, but close enough." Elkhart's lips continued to move, but no words came from his mouth. It felt like mockery, but Cassimer could bear it. A white veil had descended, sweetly defusing his temper.

  "Answers, Elkhart, or I will detonate the explosive."

  "You have your answers. I told you all about Hierochloe, the Primaterre and their secrets." Elkhart smiled, an awful pitying smile. "Less than a minute ago. Don't you remember?"

  The demon's words tapped against the white veil. Cassimer didn't remember, but felt like he should. Heat prickled his neck - had he lost himself in hallucinations? Had his body stood uncomprehending while his mind relived the Hecate? Maybe. The rising heat was no suit malfunction.

  Anybody know what he's talking about?

  Florey shook his head. Lucklaw and Hopewell replied with similar confusion. Rhys and Joy said nothing at all, and he realised that neither of them had spoken in quite some time. Couldn't turn. Couldn't take his eyes off the demon even for a second, but Lucklaw's suit cam had a good angle on Joy's position. Still bleeding, but Rhys had her in his arms - or was she holding Rhys? Anxiety tugged at him.

  "You understand what I am," Elkhart said, "but you don't believe. Always the same. The brother to convince the sister - that much was obvious, but for the rest of you? Perhaps the real Elkhart. So remote, but in a place you know well. Glow-ringed Scathach, at once impenetrable and already infiltrated. Elkhart sits now in an office whose walls are water and the winking colours of crowntail bettas. The oakmoss smell of the station chief's cologne is repugnant, but no more so than his nervous objections to Elkhart's orders."

  "So you're not Elkhart?"

  The demon sighed. "Still not listening. Yes, I am Elkhart and I am this one. I am Finn Somerset and the ten thousand. I am the red and I will be thirty thousand more. What matters, soldier, is that you cannot kill me. Your explosives might destroy the Andromache and this vessel. For certain, they will destroy you. Perhaps some of you will live long enough to suffer. What do you think, soldier? Will your bones withstand the blast? Will the machines in your blood repair you as you lie trapped underneath the weight of Cato? No light, no air, no hope, and all the while your own body prolongs the suffering." Elkhart was moving again, approaching until the shield licked his body with starbright energy.

  "And in the dark with you will be your dead. The dead of old and the dead so fresh their hearts are still warm. You'll die calling their names. You'll die defeated. But I will still live. On the plains and in the mountains, in the city and under the city. Among the stars and in the Protectorate, where my first wave has already gone. On Scathach, where I now shake hands with Station Chief Amager. As spiders make homes of your bones, I will be among your people. As your names become dust, I will take your Earth."

  Earth. Elkhart hadn't drawn the word on his forehead in soil and blood, but it was no less ominous coming from his lips.

  "What do you want with Earth, demon? You owe me an answer." For the Hecate and the twenty years of fear. For the ash and the blood. For making him become a murderer of thirty thousand. Yes, he was owed.

  "The demons were the army of whispers and illusion by which the Primaterre seized their prize." Elkhart shrugged dismissively. "I have no need for prizes, no need for profit or material power. But in the dreams of your kind, I heard the call of the sea; I tasted the rich salt of your birthplace. Oceans, pure and deep, and across the span of the void they still call to me. I don't want your blue planet, soldier - I ache for it."

  Most of Elkhart's words disappeared behind the white veil, fading quicker the more Cassimer tried to make sense of them.

  "You see my devoted, soldier. Your weapons in their hands, aimed at you. Aimed at the men and women you call your own. Perhaps you think I've left you with no choice but mutual destruction. Perhaps the command to kill hovers on the tip of your tongue, ready to be issued as soon as you've worked it through in your mind. Will it hurt? Will it be quick?
What comes next? Big questions. Detonate and you will have your answers. Or surrender and perhaps you will have both your life and your answers."

  Lucklaw?

  His HUD showed the corporal on the second level gantry, camouflaged and as yet undetected.

  LUCKLAW: Ready to deploy battering ram.

  Do it.

  "Under what terms would we be surrendering?" He followed the progress of the battering ram on his HUD. Twenty seconds until breach. Had to keep the demon distracted, as much as it disgusted him to speak to it.

  "Terms?" Elkhart tilted his head. The amusement in his eyes made Cassimer want to put a bullet in each. "Are we at war, then? It's been such a very long time since I tasted war outside of dream and memory. I've missed it, I think. The heft of a mother-of-pearl grip in my hand. The weight of bronze on my shoulders. The rising roar of the sea in my veins."

  Being too fond of one's own voice wasn't a flaw limited to young corporals and interfering medics, it would seem. The silver fortress's digital doors were falling, and soon the demon would follow suit.

  "My terms are these, soldier - lay down your arms and remove your armour. You will be escorted onto the Andromache, where I will endeavour to understand the nature of the Primaterre corruption. You will live and I will learn. Fair terms, I think, considering the alternative."

  "I've heard worse," Cassimer said, and that was true. It was equally true that a surrender might provide a second chance at success - once onboard the Andromache, this thing that wore the face of a man would soon learn that a Primaterre soldier was more than his armour, more than his weapons. But his mouth remembered the bitter taste of the word surrender and his heart the promise he had made. "But consider my counter-offer."