Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  "What about Copenhagen and the other soldiers who died on Cato? He left them to an all but certain death."

  "That was different. There was a storm, and you know what Cato storms are like. No man can fight that; not even the commander."

  "You only think it's different because you weren't the one to make that call. To him, it was the same. Everything you feel now, he felt then."

  "But that was... there was nothing he could do. He made the right decision."

  "Doesn't mean it feels right. How do you think I know about Copenhagen? He told me, Hopewell, because talking about the dead is the only way he can stop thinking about them for even a little while. He left them, but they never left him."

  "He just doesn't go on and on about it," Lucklaw muttered.

  "Shut up, Lieutenant," Hopewell said. "And shut up, Hopewell. Stars, what am I even doing, making this all about me? I mean, I know why I'm doing it. It's because I honestly don't know what to say to you, Joy. I can barely even look at you, but I am so glad you're here. Before we went to Here–"

  "Classified," Lucklaw said.

  "Right. Before we went to the classified hellhole where everything went wrong, I sent you a message with pictures of–"

  "Tiles." Joy smiled. "Yes. I saw."

  "Stupid bloody tiles. And I kept thinking, she's going to get a message where I'm asking which tiles will look best in my beach house kitchen, and then the next message down is going to be me telling her that the commander's gone, and I... well, I guess you noticed that I still haven't worked up the nerve for that one."

  "It's all right. Nobody else did, either."

  "I thought Rhys would," Lucklaw stammered, blushing.

  "If you count an all-caps PLEASE GET IN TOUCH, then yeah. I suppose he thought it'd be best delivered in person, but..." She pinched her hand very hard to stay focused. "But there is no good way, not really. My superior told me, in the end. I'm glad none of you had to do it, and I am glad that you didn't run into whatever storm took Cassimer, Hopewell, because I need you now. It doesn't matter what happened or how it happened. What matters is what we are going to do about it."

  "What can we do?" Lucklaw said, giving a defeated shrug, but Hopewell smiled.

  "What can't we do?"

  "Exactly. If Cassimer were..." Dead. Such an easy word, only a single syllable, and yet she couldn't make herself say it. "If he were..." Still she couldn't finish the sentence, and when she sobbed, Lucklaw pulled her into an awkward hug. She cried into his shoulder for what seemed like forever and yet not long enough. She'd once told Constant that they might've been born from the same exploding star, and now she knew it was true. Without his fire, she could feel the void against her skin.

  When she'd been quiet for a few minutes, Lucklaw asked: "Sandwich?"

  She smiled, sobbed, and accepted the offer. Kindness made the world a little more bearable, and with a cheese sandwich in her hand, she could continue:

  "RebEarth and Skald would both want to make a show of it. The fact that we've seen no execution footage and received no horrible messages means we still have a chance to save Cassimer. We can still fix this. On Cato, I waited seven months for a chance to save Finn, but I am done waiting. I was just promoted–"

  "Again?" Lucklaw frowned.

  "Afraid so. I'm now a Tower strike team captain–"

  "Seriously?" Hopewell laughed, then coughed, straightening her face. "Sorry. It's just, you know..."

  "Ridiculous. Yes, I'm quite aware," Joy said, managing to smile at the absurdity. "I've been granted the mandate to enlist a banneret team for a joint-op. The op in question is not a rescue mission, but my superior is a very busy man. Weeks can go by without him checking in."

  "Seek forgiveness rather than permission?" Hopewell grinned. "I like it."

  "So I've got the mandate and you've got the manpower. All we need is intel. A location."

  "Easier said than done. There have been no confirmed sightings. The cataphracts scoured the hospital grounds, but they found nothing..." Lucklaw swore as he realised his own breach of operational security. "The commander and Tallinn could still be in the classified location, hidden away, or they could've been taken off-world. Their primers have made no contact, but that might only mean whoever's got them is smart enough to use advanced jamming tech. It's a needle-in-a-haystack situation, except the haystack's a whole bloody galaxy."

  "Perhaps I may be of assistance." One of the station crew cleaning the drifter's habitat dropped her sponge and approached, soap suds spattering her coverall legs.

  Hopewell and Lucklaw both gave her looks that very clearly said what's a janitor doing butting into a banneretcy conversation?; Lucklaw's perhaps more derogatory still.

  But there was something familiar about the woman. The curve of her hip, the perpetual hint of a smile. The short dark hair was wrong, but... Joy squinted, trying to picture the woman with a different cut, a different colour. Something artificial. Something bold. Blue? No – red. Long curls of bright ruby red, bouncing against a tattoo of roses and ivy.

  "Meeks?"

  "Occasionally," the towerman replied, her smile widening.

  "I thought you died on Cato."

  "The Andromache's escape pods were built to withstand quite a bit of punishment. Still, by the time the rescue crews dug me out, there wasn't much of me left. Practically a new woman, me," she said, gesturing at her body.

  "You should've let us know. I was... I thought about you, a lot." And dreamed, too. Nightmares about the woman left behind for Cato to swallow whole.

  "What a charming waste of brainpower."

  "You're Meeks?" Lucklaw stood, his fingers fidgeting nervously. "The towerman who..."

  "Who held your hand? And who's been putting up with you for the past couple of months. 'I spilled my drink, janitor, come clean my mess. I can't be bothered to wipe the Hereward mud off my boots, janitor, even though I can clearly see that you just mopped these floors'."

  Lucklaw, blushing deeply, stammered a mortified apology, but Hopewell interrupted.

  "We don't apologise to Tower in our own home. Joy excluded, because she's more us than she'll ever be them, and because she doesn't slither in here like a lying snake. You been spying on us?"

  "On you," Meeks confirmed, "on the boy, and the medic whose ashtrays I keep having to empty in spite of the station's non-smoking rule. And on the commander, of course. But I wouldn't call it spying so much as 'keeping an eye on', and if I were you, I'd be grateful."

  "You know where Cassimer is." Joy hardly dared say it, and regretted it the instant she did. A silly hope that would now be dashed, crushing disappointment delivered via smiling Meeks.

  Meeks did smile, but she didn't disappoint. "I do, and I'll trade you for the intel."

  "Trade? You'll tell us right now, or so help me–" Hopewell took a deep breath, just about reigning herself in. "If Tower knows where he is, then why are we still sitting here?"

  "Tower doesn't know. I know."

  "And why the hell would you keep it to yourself? It's been weeks!"

  "Because there are more important things than Commander Cassimer."

  "Cassimer's the only reason you're still alive," Joy protested, although what she really wanted to say was no, there aren't, not a single thing in the entire universe.

  "Debatable. And even if that were true, there are more important things than me, too."

  "That's for damn sure," Hopewell muttered, and she was right, but it didn't matter. Whatever Meeks wanted, whatever Hammersmith would say, whatever would come next; Joy would trade anything for Constant.

  So she took Meeks aside and told her this, and the towerman smiled and said:

  "You're in possession of the access codes to a Cascade. Give them to me, and you'll have what you want."

  "You're going to need to be more specific than that," Joy said, her pulse pounding.

  "Hah. Is that so? Your career is going interesting places, I think. The Sol Cascade, and don't bother denying it."
/>
  And Joy would trade anything, she really would, but if she traded this, the chance to correct the great wrong might be lost. Would Constant want that? Would he want her to complete the mission or to help him?

  "Why do you want them?"

  "Classified." Meeks tilted her head. "You're afraid. Afraid that we are at cross-purposes? Oh, Somerset. You are still so new to our time, and so very new to Tower. Because I owe you, and yes, I believe I do, I will tell you this: Colonel Hammersmith and the sepulchre known as Room 36 are not representative, nor are the banneret men's paranoid suspicions warranted. I don't know what your mission to the Cascade entailed, nor can I reveal what mine is – but I promise you this: the Andromache may be dead, but her mission is not, and for as long as I have air in my lungs, my every breath is spent protecting the Primaterre. Unless you're out to destroy us all," she said, smirking, "we can't possibly be at cross-purposes."

  Though Joy was, in a sense, out to destroy the Primaterre, she gave Meeks the codes. Because she could see artificial sunlight in Constant's window, and she couldn't stand knowing that his room was empty and might remain that way forever. What he wanted was irrelevant; this call was hers to make – and it wasn't hard at all.

  Civilisations came and went; nobody knew that better than the girl who had slept while everything she knew turned into a historical footnote. But when she cried herself to sleep at night, it wasn't her Martian citizenship that she missed, or her discount rail card or the low tax on consumables. She didn't weep for politicians, reforms or movements. She didn't mourn the cultures or traditions lost to time and war.

  She grieved for Finn; for Miana, Elodie, and all those she'd loved and lost. Only love lasted. Only connection mattered.

  If the choice was between the Primaterre and Constant, there was no choice. For him, she would do whatever was necessary.

  42.

  CASSIMER

  1019. 1018. 1017.

  Every day a victory, every day another step closer to Joy, except days were abstract constructs. Days were mathematics, a set amount of hours based on old Earth cycles, and days didn't matter in space. Out here there was only darkness, eternal darkness, constant darkness.

  He panicked briefly as he realised he'd fallen asleep, then panicked worse when he realised that he'd been asleep and could have used staying asleep. Without stims, life was unrelentingly real. Though his captors served daily meals, the food wasn't enough to sustain a man who had once been a cataphract. His body was eating itself, little by little; starvation broken down into merciless numbers on his HUD.

  He splashed dirty water on his face and began working on the titanium bars again, refusing to acknowledge his fatigue. A guard passed, barking at him to stop, but took no further action. Of course not. Even if he broke the bars, the force field would still imprison him. They knew that. He knew that. But he had to do something. He couldn't just wait and accept what was happening, couldn't sit in the cold and think about Joy or Tallinn or the Hecate. Whenever he did sleep, it was that ship he dreamt about, and even when he was awake, he wasn't sure, not a hundred percent, whether the walls around him were those of the prison or the Primaterre troop transport ship.

  Memory came, as she always did, and took another man away. He screamed, or maybe the screaming came from the Hecate, or the dancing shadows.

  "Where are they taking the prisoners? What are they doing to them?" His own voice, he was fairly sure, but he sounded like a stranger to his own ears.

  "Do you really need to ask? In my experience, Primos aren't lacking in the imagination department when it comes to treatment of traitors and prisoners of war," Kivik said, leaning hard against the bars of his cell. The RebEarth captain looked tired, gaunt, but far from defeated.

  "There are lines we do not cross, unlike filth like you."

  "Oh? And what are those lines, exactly?"

  "Slavery." Cassimer motioned towards the back of his cell. Chains hung there, and though they hadn't been used to bind him, he had no doubt that they'd shackled others. "That's what this is, isn't it? A slaver's ship."

  "The Host Fetter. Part of the Victual Brothers' livestock branch."

  "Livestock." Despicable.

  "Don't get all hung up on terminology, Primo. Don't want you getting mad and clamming up again. The silence has been driving me crazy. I would've said something sooner, but I wanted to see how long it'd take for you to crack. Too god-damned long is the answer, so come on. Tell me more. Tell me what sort of scum I am. What is it the Primaterre don't do?"

  "What your men did to that woman on Velloa. The worst kind of impurity, and you didn't even punish them for it. Yes, Kivik, we saw your trick, and we saw it for what it was."

  "That's rather the problem with you, isn't it, Cassimer? You see things for what they are, not what they could be. I let those men off scot-free... or I was being practical. Good men – and I use the term in the sense of decent at shooting people and mostly doing what they're told – good men don't grow on trees. A leader can't afford to throw away manpower even if they disgust him. Far better to keep those men around, so that when a job comes up, and it's the sort of job that needs doing but won't be good for the long-term health of whoever does do it, if you get my drift – when a job like that comes up, you have just the guys to assign to it. Shit jobs for shit people – now that's delegation! I'm sure the Primaterre must apply a similar philosophy. I mean, you got your job somehow, right?"

  Cassimer resisted the urge to swear – the RebEarther would only enjoy it – but then Memory came walking down the corridor, and the urge grew stronger. There were hardly any prisoners left, and no matter how bad today was, he wanted to live to see 1016 and 1015 and all the other days.

  "Don't worry," Kivik said. "You and me, we're special guests. Aren't we, Memory? Not for you to play with, but meant for greater purposes."

  "You were never meant for anything great." Memory's boot heels clicked against the metal floor as she walked from cell to cell. She stopped outside Cassimer's and gave him a long, lingering look. Then she turned to Kivik, crossing her arms. "I'm thinking about renaming my new fleet. How does the Victual Sisters sound?"

  "Sounds like a typical woman, riding the coat-tails of a man's achievements."

  Memory nodded at the guard by the exit. He opened a wall panel and flipped a switch to disable the force field outside Kivik's cell. Memory pulled a cattle prod from her belt. Kivik stepped back, but not quick enough. He cursed, and Memory laughed, dipping the cattle prod into the water on the floor of his cell.

  A pathetic display, but informative. The woman was sadistic enough that she'd pursue even ineffective torture – or too stupid to know that, conducted through the water, the electricity would have little to no effect on Kivik. Either way, that was useful intel, as was the design of the force field control panel. Cassimer had got enough of a glimpse to see rows of switches, each controlling a separate cell. The force fields ran on individual circuits, easily overloaded.

  He waited for Memory to leave, and then he tapped on the bars of his cell.

  "Kivik. You familiar with this ship?"

  "This ship? My ship, no matter what Memory thinks. I'm the one who led a squadron into the Andromeda Militarised Zone to steal her. I'm the one who searched the Black Nine to find the only shipwright in the galaxy good enough to turn a lump of coal with a diamond exterior into a diamond with a lump-of-coal exterior."

  "Facts, Kivik; not your miserable rap sheet. Layout? Escape vessels? Location of jammers?"

  "Sounds like you're planning a prison break, Cassimer. You and me, Primo and RebEarth, joining forces to escape common foes? Like in one of those, ah, what do you call them? Buddy films? I've got the brains, you bring the brawn; I'm the one with a sense of humour, and you're the straight man. You know the movies I'm talking about, Primo?" Kivik drew close to the bars of his cell, his feather-framed smile bright white. "Cryo Cops. Star-Bossed. Freedom Street Fighters. That last one's one of yours, yeah? She's a well-put together Primo wh
o's serious about purity, and he's a smart-looking Primo who's very serious about purity. Quite funny, I thought, though maybe not for the reasons the writers intended."

  Earth have mercy. Cassimer rolled an aching shoulder and closed his eyes for a moment. The situation was bad enough without Kivik's inane prattling.

  "Come on, Primo. What'll it be? Team-up? I do know the ship quite well. Think of the hilarious misunderstandings we'll have along the way; each one a comedic stepping stone toward mutual respect."

  "There are no misunderstandings between us. It is quite clear what you are."

  "Is it?" Kivik's smile dropped. "We've been here all this time, and you haven't even bothered asking what I was doing on Hereward, or why I'm locked up here. Have you even asked yourself that question?"

  "Rabid dogs will bite each other when cornered."

  "Un-fucking-believable. Is that really how you see us?"

  "You're RebEarth. What more is there to know?"

  "RebEarth. As though that is one single organism and not a thousand shifting factions. There are the displaced, who fight under the phoenix banner to reclaim lost homes. There are the opportunists and the profiteers. There are would-be kings like Markham." Kivik paused to spit on the ground. "There are the righteous crusaders and the mercenary raiders. Hell, there's even the Dumbass Brigade, always ready to pull counter-productive stunts like the bombing on Melinoe. The Europa Heptarchy was actively obstructing the Primaterre invasion of Hereward until those idiots decided to bomb the Heptarchy's parliament building, losing their support in an instant. So you see, Primo, we're not all the same. We never were."

  "Different flavours of scum. So what?"

  "Like trying to explain colour to the blind. The fact that you're the one who made me see..." Kivik sighed, rubbing his tired face. "Right. Let me try again. RebEarth is not, and has never been, a force to be reckoned with. If I really believed I was waging a war against the Primaterre, do you think I'd appoint dumb sluts like Memory to be my captains?"

  "Hey!" One of the guards approached, waving his cattle prod at Kivik. "You watch your mouth, or else."