Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  She gave chase. A towerman turned to face her, but Daneborg's Ratatosk chewed him full of holes. Her boots splashed through rainwater and blood, and some of the regret turned to anger, and some of it to despair as Rearcross took out the next man to turn on her.

  I follow your lead, he'd said, but how could he follow someone who'd left their own leader behind?

  And then there was just her and Captain Lutzen, and, sure, he was fast, and yeah, she could feel him inside her systems and she could hear her suit seals release with a hiss, but fuck his little tricks and fuck him.

  She slammed into him shoulder-first, tackling him into the street, giving him a taste of what her high school coach had called her greatest weakness: a tendency to play too rough.

  He fired his Kali, blooms of light scoring her helmet. She crushed his fingers around the gun, snapping his wrist backwards, and drove her fist into his veiled face.

  And then something like a snake slithered through her mind, biting down hard. She cried out – the world turning black for a moment. Lutzen shoved her aside and staggered towards Juneau. The Oriel officer stood in the light of the blinking billboard, her suit tinged red, the recovered sample case cradled protectively in her arms.

  Lutzen raised his Kali, and Hopewell pushed herself to her feet. He heard her coming, heard the pounding of her boots, and he turned. Hopewell put two rounds in his chest, knocking him flat on the ground.

  "Samples secure, Major?"

  "Yes." Juneau, panting, out of breath, clutched the sample case close to her chest as she stared down at the groaning Lutzen.

  "Good." Hopewell put another round in the towerman's forehead. Camail chain links tinkled to the asphalt, swimming away in the rain.

  "Lieutenant!"

  "You got a problem, Juneau?" She holstered her sidearm, kicked Lutzen's Kali from his limp hand, and tried to keep another regret from sinking its claws into her.

  "It might have been interesting to hear what he had to say first. I just scanned him – whatever this was all about, he was not a vessel."

  "As far as you know. He could've been a Cato local, from before the Ever Onward landed."

  "Which would only have made him an even more valuable specimen. Still, I don't think he was. I don't know this demon as well as you do, but do you think this has the feel of Skald to it?" Juneau shook her head. "I don't. The way I've observed it interact with you and the commander... it's always been personal. It's always wanted to hurt you, but these people... they just wanted the primers. They weren't trying to kill us."

  "Until they were."

  "Until they were. Yes." Juneau glanced at Valletta, who was pacing in a sloppy circle. "But only when they had to. Don't misunderstand, Lieutenant, your actions were justified. Practical, even, as we are in the middle of a battlefield. But questions are always useful; answers even more so."

  "Wouldn't worry about it." Rearcross exited the alley, the unconscious Lucklaw slung over his shoulder. "I left one alive back there, but he triggered his kill switch when I shackled him. There were never going to be any answers. Only," he said, giving Hopewell an approving look, "solutions."

  And, maybe, with one problem solved, another could be tackled.

  "We have the samples. Juneau, you and Lucklaw hole up and keep them safe while the rest of us go back for Tallinn and the commander."

  "Negative, Lieutenant." Daneborg had come down off the roofs, and he shook his head at her. "The hospital's swarming with RebEarth troops. If there was an opportunity, it's long gone."

  More like lost, by her.

  The siren rang a third and final time. No cataphract ships darkened the skies yet, but they would come soon. Comms were still glitchy, but her sensors were back online and she had access to geographical data. Their position was deep inside enemy territory, but with the cataphracts on the way, chances were RebEarth would retreat to the forest or into the network of tunnels underneath the city. The motorway was the simplest, most straight-forward route out of the city. It'd take a couple of hours, but–

  The sound of engines interrupted her thoughts. She signalled for the team to step back into the alley seconds before Kivik's armoured vehicle came tearing onto the motorway, smashing through abandoned cars. Through its narrow windshield, she could see the silhouettes of men in red-and-black, and screw stepping back into the alley, she was taking this shot.

  "Daneborg."

  He was by her side before she'd even finished speaking his name. The windshield shattered to his Ratatosk, her own rifle punching holes in the vehicle's interior, fragmenting phoenix armour.

  The vehicle careered past them, coming to a screeching halt a hundred metres down the road. Its mounted guns turned.

  "Alley," she shouted, ducking behind a brick wall for cover, but it wasn't enough, not nearly enough to stop the onslaught. Daneborg was ahead of her, in a fog of brick dust and debris, and she followed him through a door kicked open by Rearcross. She caught a glimpse of shelves stacked with canned goods before her HUD chirped INCOMING MISSILE and then it was rubble and fire and something that she really hoped was tomato soup all over her visor.

  She picked herself up, shoving a shelf aside. The exterior walls had been blown away. Her HUD showed the outline of the armoured vehicle and informed her that it was readying to fire again.

  What a fucking asshole was the thought coursing through her head, but somehow her mouth managed to be more responsible, and she called for the team to burn all power to their APF. She dropped to her knees, shrugged her Verdandi missile launcher off her shoulder and–

  "Hold." Daneborg's hand on her shoulder. "Listen."

  Engines. More of them. Many, many more, and the sound of gunfire and ricochets pinging off Kivik's vehicle. Its guns turned to face the way it had come. Another missile streaked off in that direction, and then the vehicle was moving again, barrelling down the motorway.

  Seconds later, a convoy of RebEarth trucks sped past.

  "We should move before any of them think to stop and investigate why Kivik tried to blow up this building," she said, trying to will her hands steady.

  "Did I just hear you say Kivik, or am I hallucinating?" Valletta groaned, pressing a hand to his helmet. His face was slick with blood, his pupils wide enough that his eyes looked almost solid black. "Feeling a bit light-headed. You want me to take this off so you can put a plaster on me or something?"

  "Your helmet's about the only thing holding your skull together right now, so no."

  "Oh, great. And you're telling me the Shipwrecker's here too?"

  "He was," she said, "but he's gone now. And so should we be. Come on."

  * * *

  But the road was long, and pretty soon, Valletta couldn't walk. It'd been a good fifteen minutes since he'd stopped making sense and the insensible babbling had become painful to hear. When he finally collapsed, it was a kind of mercy. Daneborg picked him up, dragging him along, and Rearcross had Lucklaw slung over his shoulder. Juneau was struggling too – not injured, but unused to the unforgiving pace.

  They took fire occasionally, and it became increasingly clear to Hopewell that getting out of the city might not be so easy after all. What looked like a straight line on the map was an endless, car-clogged gauntlet dotted with snipers. On an elevated section of the motorway, she got an excellent view of what lay ahead: a vast sprawl crawling with red-and-black troops.

  "We should call in for an evac," Rearcross said.

  "Your comms online again?"

  "No. Was hoping yours were."

  "Anybody?" They all shook their heads, and she sighed. "Right, well, the next person with a suggestion had better make it within the realm of possibility. You got my hopes up, Rearcross, and trust me, none of us need that shit right now."

  "Apologies. Lucklaw's comms must still be working, though. We could try snapping him out of whatever he's doing."

  "Whatever it is, he's doing it with the commander's blessing. I'm not about to interrupt that."

  "I get it, I
do, but stars..." Rearcross grimaced, adjusting the weight of Lucklaw over his shoulder. "Kid's heavier than he looks."

  "There's Kivik again." Daneborg nodded to the east. The armoured vehicle was at an intersection a few blocks away, pinned between RebEarth blockades. Taking heavy fire, but unfortunately, it looked like Kivik was going to escape that trap, too.

  "Slippery bastard. Hey, Daneborg – you see that? Is that a ship?"

  "Yeah. Landed on a football field, by the looks of it."

  "It's in the direction Kivik's headed. It's got to be his ship, his way out of here." She eyed the roof of a nearby building. Not such a long jump. She could make it, and the weak and wounded could be brought across on a safety line. "It's, what, six kilometres away? Kivik's drawing all the fire to his position. We could probably slip through the alleys and take a few shortcuts. We could be there before him, no problem."

  "I can't say I care for how you turn 'probably' into 'no problem' in the span of a sentence." Juneau said, frowning.

  "I expect you won't like how my 'please be quiet, Major' becomes 'shut the fuck up' right quick, either," she snapped back. "Anybody else got objections?"

  "Well, that depends," Rearcross said. "Are you saying you've got a plan?"

  "A plan? Oh yeah. You better believe it."

  * * *

  The plan was to come up with a plan en route, but she spent the entire run over there desperately trying to think of something and coming up with nothing. When they arrived in time to see Kivik's armoured vehicle gouge up the football field and disappear up the ship's ramp, her heart sank.

  I'm an idiot, she thought, but then she remembered what kind of an idiot she was, and just like that, inspiration struck.

  "Follow me."

  She dashed across the field, and it was good to feel trimmed grass underneath her boots. She could almost hear the cheers of an imaginary audience.

  The ship's ramp had sealed shut, but there was a maintenance hatch next to it.

  "Juneau, you know how to get this open all nice and quiet like?"

  "The ship's about to take off," Juneau protested, her light armour clinging to her body as the heat and force of engines washed over them.

  "So nice and quiet and quick, yeah?"

  Juneau muttered curses under her breath, some certainly impure, a good few shamefully misogynist and all of them very clearly aimed at Hopewell, but that was okay. Juneau earned the right to vent, because she did some mysterious thing to the hatch and it fell open.

  Hopewell took point, sliding through to put suppressed shots into the head and chest of a mechanic who'd come to check on the hatch. "Hurry up!"

  Rearcross heaved Lucklaw inside, but shook his head when he saw what they were getting themselves into. The vehicle bay was large enough to hold several armoured trucks, though there was only one. "There's got to be dozens of RebEarthers on board."

  "Yeah, and the longer you take getting in, the more likely they are to notice. Come on, get your arse in here. If we're lucky, they won't know we're here until it's too late."

  Of course, they weren't lucky. Hadn't been all day, so why should things change now? The first gunshot rang out as Juneau closed the hatch behind Daneborg. And Hopewell figured it would be fine; they were inside a ship – Kivik's escape – and surely his men wouldn't be stupid enough to shoot anything that might threaten a hull or a banneret man's suit. But then Rearcross gasped with pain, and she looked over her shoulder to see her partner sink to the floor. The greave on his right leg had shattered at the knee, a high-ex round pulverising bone. His shin was attached to his thigh by nothing more than wiry osteo-augments.

  "Hopewell," he groaned, clinging onto her arm as she pulled him into cover. "You... you've got to go... back out. Got to win the game."

  "Trust me, buddy, I'm playing to win. Now, I'm going to carry Lucklaw, yeah, but you've got get up for me. You've got to stand, and you've got to run. Just a little further."

  "Can't... my leg..."

  "That's just flesh and bone, cause and effect. It's going to hurt like hell, sure, but if you look at it, really look at it with purity, you're going to see that your suit is already deploying filaments, your bone already repairing. Your suit will compensate. You can run."

  "For fuck's sake, Hopewell," Daneborg spat through gritted teeth as he took out a RebEarther. She'd never heard him swear before and couldn't help but note that it was kind of sexy. Like maybe there was an interesting bit of rough underneath his sleek surface. "The ship's too big. We can't hope to take it."

  "Yeah, but we're not taking the ship." She nodded towards the armoured vehicle. "We're taking that."

  * * *

  It was no Epona, but it had seats and guns and a steering wheel, and enough armour that it had made it through the city unscathed. Hopewell slid into the blood-spattered driver's seat (noting with some disappointment that there wasn't nearly enough blood for her or Daneborg to have landed a kill shot).

  The ignition had a fingerprint scan, but she wrenched open the control panel with her knife, and after a few improvised adjustments to the wiring, the engine began to rumble.

  "The vehicle's still clamped in place," Daneborg said. "We're not going anywhere until the locks are off."

  She reached into her belt pouch and pulled out a tube of cutting gel. They weren't supposed to keep those loose in their belt pouches – Rhys had once given her a way too graphic lecture on the potential injuries – but when properly stored, the tubes took up space that she'd rather use for another ammo block or two.

  "Take this," she said, throwing it over her shoulder to Daneborg. "Go outside, unclamp us."

  "Go outside," he growled. He had definitely had enough of her. She liked him better this way, a little bit challenging, a little bit lippy. If he kept it up, she might be able to forget how much trouble they were in. "And who's going to cover me?"

  She flicked a switch on the dashboard and the vehicle's chain guns spun up.

  "That answer your question?"

  He cursed under his breath, and then he was gone. She fired a test volley, spraying the far bulkhead. Impressive stopping power, the holes punched through the hull so large that shafts of crimson light poured in from the outside. Terrible accuracy, but it didn't really matter. Keep the bastards at bay and do enough damage that Kivik could kiss hitting orbit goodbye – those were her goals, and the chain guns were more than sufficient.

  "Earth have mercy." Juneau cowered in the back, wedged between Lucklaw and Valletta. Her hands were pressed to her ears, and Hopewell supposed the racket had to be pretty bad for someone whose suit had no automatic noise suppression. "The ship – it's taking off."

  It was. Hopewell could see office facades and billboards through the holes in the hull. She focused fire on the ramp, chewing up a chunk big enough for a person to jump out through, but not enough for the vehicle. They'd need something bigger, but the instrument panel flashed red when she tried to access the missiles. Outside, smoke rose where the cutting gel burned through steel.

  "Rearcross. Hey, Rearcross, you still with us?"

  He grunted, and she supposed that was good enough.

  "You need to blow open the ramp for us. Get your missile launcher ready, yeah, and then just point and click. You can't mess this one up, buddy, trust me."

  He tried, he really did. She watched through his visual as his bloodied fingers slipped across the matte grey surface of his Verdandi launcher, but he was shaking too much, so much that it crossed her mind that there was a way of messing it up after all – firing straight into the vehicle.

  "Rearcross, you've got to stop thinking. All right? Just do it."

  He wasn't listening, muttering mantras instead, one hand clasped to the sun on his cuirass.

  "Rearcross. Hey, Rearcross." She took a deep breath. "Kyle! You listening to me?"

  He looked at her then, and nodded.

  "Right, so, what I want you to do now is exactly what I told you already. Except while you're doing it, why don't
you tell me why it is that you waited until you were nineteen to enlist, thereby putting me in this amazingly shitty situation? I mean, seriously, what were you doing? I want to know – unless the answer is I went travelling to find myself, in which case, keep it to yourself, forever."

  Movement to the right. She rotated the guns, noting with dismay the rapidly decreasing ammunition count on the vehicle's displays.

  "My grandmother didn't want me to go," Rearcross mumbled.

  "Your grandmother? What's she got to do with it?"

  "She raised me. See, you've got to understand... my great uncle, he was working security on Palace Green when the outbreak happened. It was... I mean, you know what happened there."

  She did. Palace Green, a small colony on the fringes of the Primaterre Protectorate, had been the site of a demonic outbreak almost thirty years previously. Over two thousand colonists killed overnight in a massive frenzy of violence. When Primaterre troops had arrived, they'd found nothing but gore.

  Two thousand colonists dead, because somebody had sent a signal to their primers. She wished she could tell Rearcross that, because he was stiff with fear and it wasn't death he was afraid of, but what might grab him as he slipped from one state of being to another.

  "Anyway," he said, raising his missile launcher. "My grandmother used to tell me stories about my uncle. What happened to him, and what might've been happening to him since. Doctrine says we don't know what it's like to be taken, but my grandmother, she had... she had a real good imagination. When she tucked me in at night, she'd lean in and kiss my forehead and she'd say: the demons have tasted Rearcross blood once, Kyle, so you've got to stay pure, or they'll sniff you out wherever you go."

  "Wow. No offence, Rearcross, but your grandmother is shit at bedtime stories."

  "Was," he corrected. "She passed away a few months after my eighteenth birthday. She hadn't wanted me to enlist, because she figured it'd be easier for the demons to find me out in the great wide galaxy. Anywhere that wasn't her house, to be honest. But I... yeah, I'm scared, obviously, I'll admit that, but I thought about how scared my grandmother had been her whole life. For me, for herself, for her dead brother. And I thought about how other Primaterre citizens might be just as scared, and that... I don't know. I supposed I figured that since I was so used to living with the fear, I should try to do something to help those who aren't. I wanted to protect people, even if... even if it means that I'm taken."