by S. A. Tholin
"If you want to cool nerves, you might want to start by turning off the incessant music," Juneau said. "I expect it's meant to be calming, but your soldiers aren't stupid, Station Chief – they can tell when their command are overcompensating."
Well. Maybe Juneau was going to be more of an asset than Cassimer had expected. Vysoke-Myto tried his best not to grin, and failed.
After a stunned silence, Amager concluded the meeting with an emphatic Primaterre protects us all, and Cassimer – like the others – echoed the words. Habit made the phrase slide across his tongue like silk, but it no longer made him feel safe. It no longer made him feel content, and seeing how pleased and relaxed the others looked made his stomach turn.
So strong was his feeling of unease that before he left the office, he turned to Amager.
"One of your fish is dead."
Amager, mildly confused, glanced over his shoulder at the bloated angelfish. "Oh, yes. Swim bladder infection. Happens sometimes."
"You should remove it."
"No need. The other fish will eat it. Better than flushing it down the toilet, don't you think? It's in their nature, and nature is purity, Commander."
"Yes, Station Chief," Cassimer said, thinking no. Nature wasn't pure. Nature was raw and dirty and cruel, and many men had in their nature things that should never have existed. Starlight was pure. Truth was pure. Nature was a thing to be mastered and transcended.
And no one, not even a fish, should be left to be eaten by their own.
* * *
Major Juneau was suitably impressed by Scathach Station. She said all the correct and respectful things as Cassimer accompanied her to the banneret company's barracks, keeping her comments to a perfectly tolerable amount, but her awed smile was limited to her lips. Something else glimmered behind her dark eyes – calculations, Cassimer thought. This woman viewed the world in a manner not so different from his own, every detail a piece of a puzzle to be solved. Had she been sent to assist, or to pry? While a battlefield was simple, Cassimer didn't know how to begin to put together the puzzle of a person.
But when he showed Juneau into the banneretcy common room, he found a giant piece of her puzzle waiting there.
It was a habitat cube, its vitro-plastic walls set to transparent. Two sofas had been pushed up against a wall to make room for it, and there was no sign of the company's much-loved pool table. The habitat contained a bunk and bathroom facilities that offered no privacy whatsoever, but was otherwise bare.
A group of banneret men eyed it suspiciously. Hopewell, dressed in fatigues and her blonde hair worn in curls that just about passed inspection, tapped its glossy surface.
"I don't see a door. How are we supposed to get in there?"
"You're not," Juneau said. "And please don't touch the walls. I like to keep them free of grease-stains."
"Hey, who are you calling greasy," Hopewell started, and then she saw Juneau's rank insignia. "I mean, who are you calling greasy, ma'am."
"I don't know. We've yet to be introduced." Juneau's primer reached out in a digital handshake extended to the room, and the soldiers present obliged, providing their details to the superior officer. Names, ranks, specialties and serial numbers were collected by the major, stored to her primer along with corresponding snapshots of each soldier. Only Cassimer had the rank to opt out, and he did. If Juneau wanted to know something about him, she'd have to ask.
"Well, Lieutenant Hopewell, your hands are covered in oil."
"Oh, yeah..." Hopewell glanced at Cassimer. "Apologies, Commander. I was tinkering with Florey's armour when Transpo started setting up this habitat, and I forgot to tidy up."
Florey's suit stood vigilant in the corner of the common room that had previously housed a bookcase. Hopewell had moved the bookcase to one of the bathrooms (the only place you idiots do any reading anyway) to set up the armour stand. Cassimer had allowed it, because he knew that buying Florey's suit back from Supply had cost at least two million merits – almost exactly as much as a deposit on a Kepler beach house. And so the spectre of Florey hovered over the common room, and every day Hopewell cleaned or made adjustments to it.
"No time like the present," he said before turning to Juneau. "Guest quarters will be provided. The habitat isn't necessary."
"Oh." She laughed. "It's not for me, Commander. It's for – well, see for yourself – here he comes now."
The door to the common room whirred open and a group of Transpo men carted in a quarantine containment box on a trolley. The coffin-sized box contained a man in a hazmat suit, his arms shackled behind his back. Wide eyes stared through the misty plastic visor of his suit.
Juneau pressed her palm to the habitat's wall and a section slid open.
"In there, please."
The Transpo men rolled in the trolley and eased the box to the floor. One of them kept his sidearm trained on the man in the hazmat suit as the others dismantled the box.
"The precautions aren't strictly necessary," Juneau said to Cassimer. "He's very well-behaved, really. But we live in stressful times, and if it helps keep people feeling safe, then by all means."
The major seemed to have a good head on her shoulders – very reasonable – but the man in the hazmat suit, kneeling on the floor as the Transpo men backed out of the habitat, was an unpleasant surprise.
Juneau tapped the habitat again, and the door sealed seamlessly. At her command, the man's shackles fell from his hands.
"You may remove the suit now."
"Yes, Major Juneau." The man's voice was tinny over the micro-speakers in the habitat's walls. Underneath the suit, he was tall and rangy, his hair trimmed down to a neat buzz cut. He could've been anyone. He could've been Primaterre. But something about his movements reminded Cassimer of shadows and whispers, and something in his voice – his tremulous tone, or his clumsy enunciation – had a touch of ruin.
"He has come such a long way," Juneau said, watching the man fold up his suit. "Didn't even speak when we first met, but now look at him. You've become quite the gentleman, haven't you, Bone?"
"Bone?" Hopewell approached the habitat, peering in at the man, who crossed his arms nervously and looked anywhere but in her direction. Frightened, like a caged animal. Twitchy, like a tunnel rat. "Weird name."
"We found him in an old culvert. He was making – well, I wouldn't call it art exactly, but it wasn't entirely without merit. Sculptures, I suppose, out of bones and faeces. We had to call him something, and Bone was certainly the better of the two alternatives." Juneau chuckled softly. "Doesn't suit you much anymore, does it, Bone? Ought to give him a proper name, but he wants to wait until he can remember his real one. He thinks he had one, once, and though I doubt he'll ever recall it, hope is a fine thing."
"He's from Cato." Cassimer could almost taste the planet's dust in his mouth. The thing in the habitat shrank back into a corner.
"Oh hey," Hopewell said, rapping her fingers against vitro-plastic before giving the thing a wave. "I see it now. One of the drifters, yeah?"
"Get that out of here now." It was hard to speak, hard to look at the thing, even harder to look away. A man once, perhaps, but now it was a tunnel skulker, demon-touched and corrupted. It twitched, running a trembling hand over its head, and Cassimer saw that hand around Joy's ankle, saw the man as a shadow falling over her.
"As part of my transfer conditions, it was agreed that I would get to keep working on my own project. The company-chief okayed setting the habitat up here. It's quite safe, Commander." But Major Juneau shrank back too, an anxious flicker in her eyes, and with a tap of her fingers, she turned the habitat's walls black.
Not enough. The thing was still in there, still scrabbling around, happy in the darkness. It made Cassimer sick, but Vysoke-Myto had given his permission, and now the other banneret men were giving him strange looks; even Hopewell looking worried – not about the thing, but about him.
"It does not leave the habitat," he said and left the room before he would have to do s
omething worse.
* * *
Inside the grey walls of his quarters, he could breathe again. Wanted to shower, as if mind-filth could be washed away. Should be checking his internal mail; Vysoke-Myto had sent along specs for his next assignment. But it was 18:15 Bastion time. He was late, and nothing else mattered.
18:16 and his comms connected, but the security checks on the other end took long enough for his stomach to churn.
18:18; and then there she was, smiling at him from his wall display, and he linked the feed to his visual augments instead, filling his vision with Joy. So close that he could almost feel her warmth, but 'almost' was a greater void than space itself.
"Constant," she said, and he leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes for a second. "I'm so glad you're there. I was running late, so worried that I'd missed your call."
"I'd wait for you," he said, and then couldn't say anything else for fear of saying too much.
The connection was delayed by eleven seconds as it passed through relays. Normally, he didn't mind. Normally, he liked the silences between words; loved watching her honey-brown eyes first widen with anticipation and then narrow with a smile. But Basic Training only allowed its recruits thirty minutes off-world comms a week, and with so little time, the delay was torture.
"Are you all right? Is this a bad time for you?"
"No." He pushed darkness and corruption from his mind. "It's fine. What about you? You look–" Beautiful. Dazzling. A dream, just out of reach. "Muddy."
She laughed, using her sleeve to wipe mud from her face. Her boots were caked in clay, her soggy autumn-forest fatigues clinging to her body.
"Yeah, we're doing something called Mud Week. It mainly involves carrying increasingly heavy gear across increasingly muddy ground from sunrise to sunset. Some of the recruits are complaining about it, saying 'how is crawling through mud a useful skill'. I've been trying to tell them that they'd be surprised – but of course, nobody ever listens."
"I remember that." The memory felt strangely new, Basic Training something that had gone past in a blur so many years ago. He remembered how he'd looked forward to it when he joined the cadets, and he regretted that he'd not been able to enjoy it. Back then, his every moment – waking or sleeping – had been spent in the presence of demons. But now some of it came back to him, and he told Joy a little, giving her what advice he could. She didn't need it, but he did.
She smiled, hanging off his every word, and he forgot that he was in a grey-walled room, forgot the drifter and the station's sweaty paranoia, and for a few moments he was with her in the station's park, or in the cedar-scented departures lounge where they'd last parted, still holding her hand.
Then a man's face filled his vision, blocking out Joy. Young, with red spots where he'd shaved too close, and with the too-high-and-tight cut of a too-eager recruit. The man pouted, smooching at the camera, and then he fled, laughing as Joy threw a muddy sock after him.
"Who was that?"
"Private Gogently, who'd absolutely die on the spot if I told him who's on the other end of this call."
"Gogently. Poor marksmanship results. Below average test scores. Unpredictable behaviour. Questionable family history. I'd stay clear of him."
"Yes, I know. I read your assessments of my squad – quite the rotten bunch! The only two you seem to think show any promise at all are Salisbury and Vienna, who, coincidentally, are the only other female recruits."
"Women soldiers frequently outperform men when it comes to skills such as perception and focus."
"Oh yes," Joy said, smiling. "Perception and focus. I'm sure that must be the reason."
He took a deep breath. "This is very difficult for me, Joy."
"I know, Constant, not just for you. I–" She looked away. There was a glitter of tears on her eyelashes, and if she said another word she'd break their unspoken promise not to talk about sad things. Smiles and pleasantries only, or else the fear and the longing would become unbearable. Would become everything.
So he told her about Hopewell's new partner and Lucklaw training for a proper pilot's license, and kept talking until a fire drill siren blared loud across Scathach Station.
"Constant?"
"I'm all right," he said. "But I'm needed."
She nodded, and as the siren wailed again, he almost didn't hear the I love you before her connection dropped. But this time, 'almost' was more than close enough.
3.
JOY
Achall was a nothing-special rock floating in very-special space. Thanks to the colonies on verdant Nerys and mineral-rich Carys, Dunscaith System was a gem of the Primaterre Protectorate, its wealth and peace protected by Scathach Station.
The massive military station could be seen in the night sky, Joy had been told. A star, they said, brighter than all the rest – but not once in her two months on Achall had the sky been clear enough to see a thing.
Attempts at terraforming the planetoid had been made, failed, and abandoned. Here and there, unnatural ridges and plateaus rose from tan rock, too square or too perfectly round to be anything but man-made. The weather was always either too hot or too cold or too wet, and the oxygen levels dizzyingly high or low. On purpose, some recruits claimed, to make Basic Training as awful as possible. On Ach-all-Wrong, nothing ever felt right.
"Almost there." Joy stopped at the top of a ridge to catch her breath. Three kilometres away, barely visible through the beating rain, was Camp Achall, home to five hundred recruits and Bastion training personnel.
"Dead last, as ever," grumbled Gogently, who wasn't as bad as Constant made him out to be, nor particularly great. He stumbled up the ridge, ignoring poor Vienna, who'd fallen on her knees in mud and was sliding downwards. Not all the water on her cheeks was rain.
"But three minutes better than our time yesterday." Joy reached down to give Vienna a hand.
"Yeah, a whole three minutes will definitely stop our asses from getting chewed out."
"Speed doesn't matter. Persistence does. You can't fix lack of spirit with an augment."
"How would you know?"
"Because I've seen who they want us to become."
"You ought to listen to the corporal." Vienna gave Joy a grateful smile. "Got to be a reason she entered Basic with rank."
"Guess so. Still waiting to find out what that reason is."
Squad-leader Corporal Hassleholm waited outside the camp, his brow heavy with mud and bad temper. Hassleholm had come up from the cadet program, eager to be the best and ready to fly off the handle if his men didn't perform to his standard. He loathed the slow, the whiny, the weak and the soft, and most of all, he loathed Joy. He hadn't expected a recruit of equal rank in his squad, and when he'd found out that she wasn't a cadet, but a field recruit, perhaps he'd worried that she would make him look bad. When she'd gone ahead and done the opposite, his worry had flipped over into contempt.
Basic Training was difficult, no doubt about it. She was nearly six years older than most of the recruits, and while Primaterre life had made them strong, tall and healthy, her life of chronic illness and the long months of near-starvation on Cato had left her fragile, the drill instructor had said, shaking his head.
But she was still there, still running even though her legs ached, and the drill instructor hardly ever shook his head at her anymore.
Hassleholm was a different story, but when she, Gogently and the lagging Vienna reached camp, the expected verbal lashing never came. The corporal was rigid with stress, but this time, they weren't the cause.
"About bloody time," he snarled, shoving Gogently towards the gates. "Get to the assembly. Everybody's waiting."
"Waiting for what?" Joy asked. So far, every Mud Week run had ended with showers (too hot or too cold, the water abrasive with grit, courtesy of Ach-all-Wrong). This was new, and judging by how Hassleholm answered her question without so much as a derogatory word, it was bad.
"The inquisitors are here."
* * *
&nbs
p; The assembly hall glowed with reminders of purity and warnings to always be on the look-out for signs of demonic influence. Its name is Skald, proclaimed a poster where a lichen-wrapped humanoid loomed from the shadows, and it could be anyone.
It was a kaleidoscopic display of lie and truth, sometimes so closely intertwined that it was hard to remember which was which. Demons weren't real, but Skald was, and he had killed her brother and he'd made her choke on his bitter waters.
But the worst-best truth-lie in the entire hall was Constant. He gunned down demons by the dozen. He smiled – in a way the real Commander Cassimer never would – from inside the open faceplate of a Helreginn suit, as cataphracts placed the Primaterre banner on conquered soil. He stood in fire, a city blazing around him, the only shield the Primaterre Protectorate would ever need.
"You a fan?" Vienna removed her helmet and wiped mud from her frizzy hairline. She stared up at the nearest Cassimer, grinding a demon's skull under his boot heel, with a kind of awe that Joy didn't know how to feel about.
"Yeah." She'd known that Constant was a war hero, but she hadn't been prepared for his celebrity. It seemed wrong for someone so desperately private to be put on display, and she knew he hated it. On Scathach, he'd done his best to keep her away from it. Didn't want her wrapped up in all that, he'd said, and she believed him – but she also thought that he liked how she'd looked at him on Cato. How she had got to know the man, without any preconceived notions. "The biggest," she added.
"Me too," said Vienna, and while Joy liked the bookish young private very much ("I joined up to become an interesting person, you know, with stories to tell, but turns out I'm just the same old boring Vienna with sore muscles and a burning sense of regret"), she was certain now that she didn't like the awe one bit. "Got any interesting merch? I've got the early range of action figures, all the posters, obviously, and a signed copy of The Hero of the Hecate novelisation."
Joy had:
the memory of his hands stroking her hair when the nightmares became too real
