Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  * * *

  The shuttle entered its designated airlock, a narrow aperture at the base of an external pylon. Heat emanated from the walls in waves, and a deep humming sound beat against Joy's eardrums. A smoky smell of grease, tinged with electricity, scratched her throat.

  "Closer," Elsinore said, "and make sure your camail is covering your face."

  She was already practically pressed up against his back, and she'd checked her camail and her suit's systems five times. Her prismatic suit's hood covered her head, the camail a veil of ribbons falling over her face. All camouflage functions were engaged. It should have been nice to not be the most frightened person in the room for once, but it wasn't, not at all.

  "Would've been simpler to do this without you," Elsinore muttered as he stared into the biometric scanner.

  True, but she understood why Hammersmith had sent her. She could see the slick of sweat on Elsinore's neck, could feel him shiver. It would have been easier for him to go alone, but she wasn't sure he could have done it.

  He placed one hand, picked bloody, on the panel, and the door rolled open. Almost soundlessly, with none of the clanking and rusty protesting of the doors in Room 36B. Lights came on, flooding the corridor beyond with an incandescence so bright it seemed boastful. Why yes, we have brand new light strips in our maintenance conduits! Don't you? No, they didn't, and Joy, sick of eating dinner rations by plasma light, was about to ask Elsinore if they might be able to 'borrow' a light or two, when the speaker next to the biometric scanner crackled:

  "Good morning, Waldorf! Nice to see you're on time for once."

  Elsinore froze. He glanced over his shoulder at Joy, looking about ready to bolt for the shuttle, and she experienced the strangest feeling: a sense of control.

  Cato and Basic Training had left their marks without her even noticing. She was here, in the moment, and while she couldn't stretch her awareness like Constant, she had begun to see things the way he did. The Cascade schematics were crystal clear in her memory. She knew where they were, where they were going, where the cameras and security systems were, and which gun would take out their shuttle if Elsinore did try to flee. The fear was still there, all right, but on a different level of her consciousness. Visible, but blurred. She was above the fear, and pound as it might against the ice between her and it, it wouldn't break through.

  Voice modulation. Tell them: "Morning. The Eschathon servers went down, so I figured what the hell, might as well see how badly you guys have been treating poor Sol."

  Elsinore followed her instructions, his voice – now a stranger's – quivering slightly. Not necessarily a bad thing – to someone who knew Waldorf, it might come off as the lingering effects of a hangover.

  "Eschathon? You still play that garbage? Stars, I'm glad I'm Primaterre. Not having a primer must be bloody awful."

  This one was easy. Joy had spent enough time among the non-Primaterre to know how one might reply.

  It sure is, but at least sitting down doesn't hurt. You know, on account of not having a Primaterre stick up my arse.

  Elsinore relayed her words reluctant and wide-eyed, but the man on the other end laughed.

  "Yeah well, you take care down there. We've been having some issues with the heat sinks. Wouldn't want to have to come down there and sweep your ashes off the floor."

  * * *

  "You were pushing it back there. The insults..." Elsinore shook his head. "Primaterre citizens don't take kindly to mockery."

  "A perfect example of the stick in question," Joy said, smiling. "I could tell from the man's tone what sort of relationship he has with Waldorf. My brother had plenty of friends just like that. They'd say the most horrible things to each other, but that was just how they communicated. If you'd been polite, trust me, they would've wondered if something's the matter. They might even have come down here to check on you, although, they'd never have said that. They'd be down here to borrow a wrench or check on the heat sinks, or some other excuse."

  "People aren't machines, Somerset. Keep thinking that you can decode them, and you'll end up in trouble. All you're doing is guesswork."

  "Guesswork that got us inside the Cascade. And look at it! Fifteen hundred years old, but it's still got that brand-new feel."

  The corridor was polished to a mirror-sheen, lights reflecting endlessly. Where a small porthole invited a view of space, the glow of waiting ships speckled the opposite wall. It was like walking through a pocket universe, her prismatic suit so tight and so subtle that she looked less human and more a cluster of stars. The ribbons of her camail fluttered with her every breath, revealing glimpses of red hair and pale skin.

  That isn't me, was her first thought, but the Morrigan on her reflection's hip told her otherwise. It was her, and if she'd changed, it had been hard-earned.

  "Perhaps we can figure out how to fix up 36B while we're here. I mean, look at these pipes..." She gestured towards the ceiling, where copper pipes didn't spit steam or drip horrible brown sludge. "You know how 36B works. Maybe seeing a Cascade that's actually been properly maintained will give you some ideas."

  And yes, maybe all she did was guesswork, and perhaps people couldn't be read like code, but sometimes she was right. Elsinore grumbled at first, telling her that none of it mattered, that 36B didn't have the budget for it anyway, and besides, copper was actually nowhere near as good as polypropylene (corrosion resistance, you see) – but then, he segued into telling her about hull integrity and force field generators and a hundred other things that she neither understood nor cared to understand. All she cared about was how he no longer trembled, and how he ran his fingertips along the wall. Beginning to feel something real, perhaps.

  * * *

  The terminal they wanted was hidden behind a wall panel on a gantry high above the Cascade's heat sinks. Joy wasn't exactly sure what a heat sink was or what function one fulfilled, but from where she was standing, they looked an awful lot like pools of fire.

  "That's normal." Elsinore stood at the railing, staring into the inferno below. Red-hot metallic fins rimmed tubes large enough to have accommodated their shuttle. Massive fans sat recessed in the walls, the sound of rushing air so loud Joy could barely hear Elsinore.

  He stepped backwards as flames burst from the nearest heat sink. They swallowed the lower tiers of gantries, licking the underside of theirs. "That, however, is not. It'll be caused by an airflow blockage, which sounds like an easy problem to fix, but can actually be really hard to pin down. We had a similar hiccup once that turned out to be caused by sewage leakage. I suggested getting a professional in, but Hammersmith just transferred some files on DIY plumbing to my primer and told me to learn fast. Not as bad as ripping my eyeballs out, mind."

  "We should get started," Joy said, unwilling to linger on that particular subject. The surgery had been necessary, painless, and both patients would be restored to their former selves – or so Hammersmith had claimed – yet it had felt so very wrong. She'd ended up leaving the med-bay, but the sealed doors hadn't stopped her from thinking about what was being done. The bouquet of optic nerves. The skin, expertly peeled from hands. Awful, and yet leaving had felt even worse. Elsinore should've had someone be there for him, and Hammersmith certainly hadn't been about to provide emotional support. "Waldorf's scheduled to leave in three hours. We can push it a little, I think, but for all his quirks, the man is a professional. He wouldn't linger if there wasn't a problem, and if there was a problem, the engineers would want to investigate, and then..."

  "Then we'd have a problem," Elsinore said.

  * * *

  The device was an unassuming black box that would grant 36B a backdoor into the Cascade systems – thereby allowing them to filter and disrupt signal traffic; specifically, the priming signal. It took Elsinore less than ten minutes for the physical install, but more than fifteen to work up the nerve for the next step.

  "One mistake and the Cascade's artificial immune system will kill me. Even if I don't make a mistake,
the strain is enormous." He opened his utility belt pouch and pulled out a med-kit, popping it open to reveal jet injectors and pill bottles. "Beta blockers to stop my heart from overloading, diuretics to decrease blood volume and chems to reduce enzyme production and chemicals to narrow blood vessels. A whole damn pharmacy's worth of drugs – nearly half a mill of merits in this kit – just to make sure I don't drop dead. Earth have mercy..."

  "Why use your primer at all? Wouldn't it be safer to use a computer?"

  "And infinitely slower. That's the clever thing about Cascades: non-Primaterre can't hack them without seizing the entire Cascade and holding it for the week it'll take, and Primaterre can't hack them without risking instant death." He took a deep breath, his eyes filling with silver. "Stand by to med me up if I need it. Here we go."

  An hour passed. The walls shimmered a churning orange. Joy's prismatic suit did its best to deflect the heat, but her throat burned with every breath. Elsinore had kept his connection to her primer open and if she wanted to, she could see what he did – though none of it made much sense to her.

  A guard passed once, on a gantry two levels up. She'd seen his flashlight long before he entered and had climbed the short flight of stairs back to the mirror corridor. His sensors, if he had any, couldn't detect her, and even if he looked in her direction, it might not be enough. She was polished metal, but for the sleeve of her suit, which glowed as orange as the wall it touched.

  Elsinore looked up when the guard passed, returning the man's wave and transmitting clearance codes across the span. Easy, and when the guard left, he did so whistling. Elsinore, on the other hand, wiped blood from his nose with trembling hands.

  "The blue bottle, Somerset. Give me some of those pills."

  She shook a few black lozenges into his sweaty palms. He took them all at once, and then gagged as he failed to swallow.

  "We should have brought water," Joy said, helping him gather up the sticky pills he'd spat on the gantry. They'd begun to melt, leaving traces of black on her gloves. "There's got to be some around here. Want me to go take a look?"

  "No. Stay. Can't have you getting caught." He forced the pills down, grimacing, and returned to his work.

  The next interruption came from a comms panel on the wall. It was the same man that had spoken to them earlier, his tone a touch more professional this time.

  "Hey, Waldorf – you planning on taking long today? We got a clogged airflow, but before we can fix it, we need to vent those heat sinks. The temps are still within safety parameters, but a few more hours and we'll be pushing it."

  "Going to need my full three hours. Maybe more," Elsinore replied, adding on Joy's suggestion: "If I don't untangle the mess you've left down here, the temps will be the least of your worries."

  "Yeah yeah, heard it all before. Just let us know when you're done, or when you've had enough getting char-grilled down there."

  "Will do." Elsinore's eyes flashed silver briefly, but then he looked at Joy. "You know, we don't have to do this."

  "What do you mean?"

  "We have a ship. We're at a Cascade. It'd take less than five minutes to fold out of here and be gone. We could go anywhere."

  "Well, yes," she said, trying to smile. "Just like you could have fixed up one of the ships from Xanthe. I get wanting to daydream to take your mind off what we're doing."

  "Yeah. A daydream." He frowned, then turned back to the signal blocker. But while people weren't machines and could not be read, Joy could practically see the cogs turning inside his head. He was a prisoner standing by an open door, his grim warden absent. He'd had enough of a taste of fresh air to know that he wanted more.

  Down below, one of the great fans came to a grinding halt. Its turbine kept the pressure going, but the blades wouldn't move. Metal groaned, on the edge of snapping. A rush of fire rose from the heat sinks, bright flames searing the walls. The ribbons of Joy's camail bubbled and curled, melted droplets spattering her face. With a squeal, the fan spun up again and the flames died down.

  "Oh, mercy." She clutched a hand to her cheek where pearls of melted ribbon had embedded themselves in her skin. Her fingertips turned wet with blood and tiny fragments of prismatic scales. "I hope that doesn't happen again. It won't, right? Elsinore?"

  "No, it won't." He stood, kicking the med-kit aside, and shoved his tools back into his belt pouch. His lips were set in a thin line. "I'm getting out of here."

  "You've finished?" she asked, even though she could tell from his face that he hadn't.

  "Why should I? Why should I bother? For Hammersmith? He took my fucking eyes without so much as a thanks for helping. He doesn't give a shit about me, so why should I risk my life for him?"

  "For the mission. For the Primaterre people."

  "Who might as well be aliens to me. Fuck them, too. The galaxy's a big place. I travel far enough, I might never have to hear the word Primaterre again." He made to walk towards the exit, but Joy placed herself between him and it, her hands on either railing.

  "What about Grace?"

  "Grace." He scoffed. "Speaking of daydreams. She was never going to become reality. And so what if she's brainwashed? She doesn't know. She shares a house with her sister on Linnaeus, right at the edge of the poppy fields. She opens her curtains every morning to swaying red meadows and has avocado toast for breakfast before heading into work at the hospital. She's happy. Doesn't know it, of course. Thinks herself lonely. As if she even knows the definition!"

  "I do. More than you know."

  "Right. I'm supposed to feel sorry for you having spent a few months on Cato? I'm supposed to think that you understand? This is you, reaching me somehow?" He spat on the gantry. His saliva boiled and hissed a few centimetres from Joy's boots. "Get out of my way, Somerset."

  "No." She tightened her hold on the hot railings, her gauntlets sticking to them slightly. "This is me telling you that a century ago, I lost everything. A year ago, I was alone and frightened and in pain every day. And I know you can't understand that, because you really have no idea what pain is. What starvation is. What it's like being beaten and threatened and spat on. The Primaterre Protectorate isn't perfect, not even close, but it is a place where I can go days without being afraid. If you knew what I know, if you'd seen the galaxy as I have, you'd know how rare that is. More importantly, you'd know that no other Primaterre citizen has that luxury. Fear keeps them in check, wholesale slaughter brings them back in line if they dare to question. They don't deserve that, and we can't quit now, Elsinore. We have a chance to correct a terrible wrong, and we have to do it. No one else will. No one else can."

  "I don't care." For a second, he looked shocked at his own words, but then he laughed. "I actually don't care. I've never said it before, never even dared think it, but it's true. My great-grandmother did a bad thing. So what? My father died trying to set it right. So what? They made their choices, and now I'm making mine."

  "I'll die if you leave me here."

  "So come with me. Let's go see what lies beyond the Protectorate. Or I can drop you off somewhere and you can make your own way back to the tyranny of the pure. Your choice."

  "Elsinore..."

  He towered over her now, so close that her prismatic suit shifted colour to match the green of his coveralls. His thin face was flushed red, his blonde hair dark with sweat. He grabbed her wrists, prying her hands from the railing. He was so much stronger than he looked – augmented, no doubt – and when he pushed past her, there was nothing she could do.

  He turned, bringing her hand close to his face. "Come with me, Somerset. You don't belong here anymore than I do. We were born under foreign stars."

  "I can't," she said, and he nodded, letting go of her hand.

  She watched him go up the steps and thought of the universe that folded and unfolded at the Cascade's command. One hundred and nine systems, wild and civilised, ugly and beautiful. An infinite number of silver paths were hers to choose between, and yet there was only one. Had perhaps only ever
been one, her destiny fixed the moment she met Constant, or the moment Finn had kissed her goodbye.

  She took the steps in leaps, rushing to catch up with Elsinore. Her Morrigan felt heavy in her hands, but not wrong. Not wrong at all.

  "Elsinore. Stop."

  He did, arching his eyebrows as he stared down the barrel of her gun.

  "An empty threat. Kill me and the mission still fails."

  "I don't have to kill you." She lowered her gun, tracing his figure from chest to leg. "Disabling you would do. A shot to the leg to stop you from leaving, half a million's worth of meds to keep you from dying. You'd have to stay. You'd have to finish the job."

  "You ever fire that before? In case you haven't, let me tell you what it'll do. It will take my leg clean off. My med-augments will keep me alive long enough to feel the pain, but the ammo block it's loaded with? Those bullets come out coated with nano-bores, tiny little hooked things that work their way into the victim's tissue and shred everything they come into contact with. They're specifically designed to counter any attempts at healing. That gun is for when you want to be absolutely sure that your target never sees another sunrise. Nasty choice of weapon, all in all."

  "It was a present," she said, lowering the Morrigan further. Oh, Constant; she understood why he had designed it that way, but there were dangers that couldn't be solved with killing, problems that had no simple solutions. She–

  Elsinore lunged at her, slamming her backwards against the wall. He twisted the Morrigan from her grip, sending it clattering down the stairs. A light strip dug into her back, and he pressed her harder into it. He held both her hands, tight.

  "Relax," he breathed down her face. "I don't want to hurt you–"

  She stomped her boot down hard, finding his toes. He jerked backwards, but didn't let go, and when he looked at her, his eyes were dark and hard.