Lonely Castles

by S. A. Tholin

  "That's right," she said, smiling through the tears. "So you don't have to be afraid either. You will–"

  Thunder drowned out her words, a force as powerful as the sea sweeping her away.

  She tasted blood first, then felt the wet trickle on her lips. Her HUD reported spiking blood pressure levels. Someone – Elsinore, the Prime Mover, or perhaps even Skald – had cut the neural connection.

  She took a deep breath of real air and perceived the moment as she'd been taught. The soft fabric of the sofa behind her, the slight chill of conditioned air – the sensations anchored her to the physical, reinforced the fact that this was real.

  And so, unfortunately, was the thunder.

  Skald was breaking down the office door. Its hinges bowed, its frame beginning to warp. His stolen face leered at her through the window, outlined by sharp tongues of broken glass. When his gaze met hers, he smiled.

  65.

  CASSIMER

  The rust-flaking tunnel wound on for what felt like miles. It became harder and harder to move, and this time, it wasn't his imagination. The tunnel narrowed, so tight that he could barely squeeze round a corner.

  I'm stuck

  The words, projected by Hopewell, glowed in the dark. Her rifle was wedged against the ceiling. Her left leg was raised, her foot on a ledge, but she had no room to move her other leg up, nor any way of backing down.

  I got through, you can too

  Florey's reply made logical sense, but in the water-filled tunnel, logic was nearly as slippery as the creatures who dwelled there. Cassimer pushed towards Hopewell, his armour scraping swaths of algae off the walls.

  Got you, he messaged, placing one hand between Hopewell's shoulder blades. Lean forward. He used his knife to cut through her rifle sling, worked the rifle free and carefully slid it past Hopewell. Clear to move. Carry rifle, abandon it if necessary.

  Thanks, she texted, her relief almost palpable.

  Ahead, Florey had reached a concrete dead end. There was a hatch in the ceiling, but when he tugged at it, it wouldn't budge.

  Locked, he texted.

  Turn back? Hopewell suggested.

  Negative, Cassimer replied.

  Forging on was dangerous. If they encountered hostiles in these close quarters, the odds were not on their side. But he wasn't sure that it was physically possible for him to turn around now, and even if it were, reaching their entry point and having to explain to his gunners that Hammersmith had locked them in, would be a killer for morale. There might be a time and a place for fear, but a dark underwater tunnel wasn't it. Breach.

  Cutting gel didn't work well in water, but it would do the job. Florey got right to it without complaint. Globs of gel separated from the hatch, floating away, each a white speck of pain capable of eating through their armour.

  With a muted squeal, the hatch separated from its broken hinges. Florey shoved it upwards, and pushed himself up and through.

  They were still underwater, but in a much wider channel. Recessed wall lights illuminated a hulking shape, so imposing that for a second Cassimer thought of the lake monster from Joy's stories, and of many-toothed jaws.

  An amphibious ship, he texted, mostly to convince himself

  They must be looking to evac, Hopewell replied.

  Let's make sure they don't.

  * * *

  They swam along the ship's barnacled sides. The dull sounds of footsteps could be heard from within, and above, voices drifted across the water's surface.

  They stopped where no lights reached, deep under the ship's belly, but before Hopewell could set her first charge, engines rumbled. The water moved quicker about them, the undertow so strong it threatened to pull them away. Sunlight and a swell of seawater flooded the channel.

  The Hierochloe guards had opened the submarine pen blast doors. For the first time in over a century, Earth's sun was shining down on them.

  No time, Cassimer texted, placing his hand on Hopewell's. We board.

  He grabbed the ledge of a gantry running along the channel and heaved himself up. His armour was as black as the water and dripping wet, and he towered over the guards who had yet to board.

  His fist broke the visor and the nasal bones of the first guard. The second fumbled with a rifle a second too long, and Cassimer tackled him into the wall, crushing the guard's trachea with his elbow. The third guard, a woman whose file had her down as an expert marksman, took a step backwards, reaching for her radio. Florey's hand shot out of the water, grabbing her ankle and pulling her sharply backwards. She fell, hitting her head hard against the floor. By the time the gunner was on the gantry, she was barely twitching, but he finished her with his knife anyway.

  Good. Quiet was good, and fast was even better. The ship was long and sleek, not too dissimilar in shape to an old-fashioned submarine, but the hull-plating was designed for deep space as much as water. If it reached the sea, it could go anywhere and they might never find it again.

  So even though Cassimer wanted nothing more than to go back and hunt down Hammersmith, he dropped down through the ship's open airlock. Hopewell and Florey followed, and then the airlock sealed behind them and the ship lurched forward, and now there was no turning back, no way to change his mind, and all he could do was keep moving.

  The bulkhead groaned as the ship navigated the channel. Something scraped the hull; the scratching sound amplified inside the ship, bouncing in the cramped space. Behind the glossy Hierochloe surface, she was an old thing, this ship, refurbished and repurposed many times over.

  The close quarters were initially to their advantage. Cassimer took point, and the first few Hierochloe guards they encountered died very quickly. But their presence didn't go unnoticed for long, and when plasma rounds flashed down the corridors, cover was sparse.

  They fought their way through the ship, but for every inch they advanced, the ship rushed further out to sea. Florey kicked down a door that opened up into a makeshift laboratory. Hierochloe employees stumbled backwards, retreating from the dark-armoured soldier whose kick had torn a foot of steel from its hinges. Hopewell joined her partner in clearing the room of hostiles, while Cassimer focused on the room itself.

  He slagged databanks with thermite, smashed open specimen tanks with the butt of his Morrigan. He crushed tendril-like tissue under the heel of his boot; quickly, before he could decide whether it was moving or if that was just his imagination. The ship had dived, a good thirty metres below the surface of the sea according to his sensors. Deep ringing sounds occasionally reverberated through the bulkhead. Perhaps they'd hit rock, or perhaps something had hit them. Who knew what had grown in Earth's seas since humanity had abandoned its old home? Who knew what might always have lurked there? All he knew was how little he knew.

  The door at the far end of the lab opened briefly. A clutch of grenades rolled inside.

  Sparks crackled on the bulkhead as three suits diverted power to their active protection fields. Cassimer's visor informed him of the detonation of flash and stun grenades, but his visual augments had pre-empted the first and his suit's shock absorption mitigated the second. Only one of the grenades had been of the deadly variety – some kind of plasma-based grenade that he had never seen before. A clear silver substance spattered the walls. Where it had speckled his armour, his reactive plates had turned it into a coalescent turquoise.

  "Seems harmless," Hopewell said, curiously prodding a globule on her vambrace.

  "Not to organics." Florey nodded towards one of the remaining tanks. Silver plasma had found its way through thin cracks down the tank's side. The mass of tendrils that had been housed there was turning into slurry, churning as the plasma roiled in the water. "Check your armour; make sure it's sealed up tight."

  "We're onboard a ship, so I'm already checking every three seconds."

  "Not so much a ship as a mobile lab. These people mean to continue the project elsewhere. Could be they already have a second location set up and ready to go. I'm thinking there's only o
ne way to find out."

  "You mean tag along until the ship reaches its destination?" Hopewell's sceptical frown deepened as Florey nodded.

  "Negative," Cassimer said. The ship was already – Earth have mercy – nearly ten kilometres from the coast. Every second onboard it was a second wasted. "We need to return to the station."

  He told them what Hammersmith had done, and for the first time, allowed himself to consider the potential consequences, what he stood to lose, and how much farther the ship travelled from the shore while he spoke.

  "Bloody Tower." Hopewell shook her head. "But Rhys and Somerset can handle themselves, Commander. They won't let Hammersmith go off the rails. Rhys already hates the guy; I doubt he'd need much of an excuse to put him down."

  "He does?" Hate seemed too strong an emotion for the medic, his occasional anger always tempered by his wry outlook on life.

  "He barely said a word the whole time we were in Room 36B. If the captain isn't talking, it's because he's seething."

  "And if you're not talking, it's because you're not breathing. Shut up for a moment, Hopey, I need to think." Florey placed a hand on the bulkhead, tilting his head slightly. Behind his visor, his eyes were dim pools of silver. "Ninety millimetre titanium alloy plates. 175 metres long. Eight compartments. Depth, currently thirty-three metres. Yes. All right. We can scuttle her. Explosive charges on my marks – the low-ex exotics that 36B provided; not the showy garbage you like to carry."

  "So you're onboard?" Cassimer asked cautiously. He didn't want to imply the gunner might not be, nor did he want Florey to feel like he had no say. A repeat of what had happened between them on Cato was something he wanted to avoid at all cost.

  "Sounds more like we're about to go abruptly overboard," Hopewell said, her grin widening when Florey shot her an irritated look.

  "Yes, Commander. Tower can't be trusted."

  But I can? The question had weighed heavily on Cassimer's mind since Florey's return. It had been hard enough to learn how to lead people who trusted him implicitly. How to win back a lost trust was beyond him. Perhaps it couldn't be done. He didn't regret his actions on Cato, but he did regret how he'd managed Florey. If he had been a little more open with his men, the gunner might not have reacted as badly. If he had... if he had trusted them with more than just the mission, as more than just their commander.

  He hadn't known how to do that then. Wasn't sure he knew how to do it now.

  "I am thinking of Joy," he said quietly as he assisted Florey with the charges. "I try not to, but it's difficult. It's impossible. Apologies."

  Florey drew a long, deep breath. He looked as uncomfortable as Cassimer felt, but when he finally spoke, it seemed like this was something he'd been wanting to say for a while.

  "I married young, before enlisting, and for a long time, my wife was everything to me. Then we had our first child, and everything became so much more. Now I have eleven children. Twelve names and faces to remind me why I fight and to keep me going against all odds. Twelve names and faces, and an everything so great that the universe can scarcely contain it. But Commander, I can do this job only because Meadow is at home. I can set these charges, kill these people, because far away, she is singing to our children, or baking, or gardening. If Meadow were here..." He glanced at Cassimer over his shoulder, firmly putting the last charge in place. "I don't think I could even breathe."

  * * *

  The charges were set. Florey checked his calculations one final time.

  "When the hull is breached, it will be violent. Brace yourselves for–"

  "We know," Hopewell interrupted. "We did something just like this last month."

  "Just like this?" He gave her a half-sceptical, half-concerned look.

  "You miss out on a lot of fun when you stay home with the kids."

  "Interesting definition of fun. On your mark, Commander."

  "Ready," Cassimer said. "Execute."

  The initial explosion was minor, but the exotic chemicals reacted with the ship's bulkhead. A rapid band of comet-like strikes battered the walls, continuing through the sealed compartments. Fist-sized holes began to spew water; then the construction failed, titanium alloy screeching as it ripped, rivets hitting Cassimer's suit. One last glimpse of Hopewell, of Florey, of a Hierochloe guard rushing inside, a great wave at his heels.

  And then the water came from everywhere; was everywhere. Cassimer was thrown backwards into the ship, carried by a whirling maelstrom of lab equipment and dead bodies. Something heavy struck his shoulders, pinning him down. If he couldn't get up, if he went down with the ship, he'd be stuck at the bottom of the sea, slowly dying like the cataphracts in Galatea's irradiated swamps. Maybe he should have died there like the rest of them, maybe he shouldn't have managed to get back up when he fell, pulling himself to the root-eaten waterline, his hands quivering inside their metal gauntlets. Maybe they were waiting for him, de Bracy and Needham and all the rest. Maybe–

  No. Deep breath. Perceive the moment: his suit kept him safe from the water, and even if he went down with the ship, the currents would calm and he would be able to break free. This was what he did, and he had survived the irradiated swamps and the marshlands of Hereward so that he could one day survive this too.

  Another deep breath. Sight wouldn't help him here, so he darkened his visor and filled it with pictures of Joy and his ears with the songs they both loved, and he went somewhere else, far from the dark water and rushing things. Debris battered him, currents pushing and pulling. Jagged hull scraped against his armour as he was sucked out through a breach, the sound such a long metallic scream that he heard it over the music, felt it in his bones and his teeth.

  When the third song faded, the chaos had ceased. He floated in a slow descent towards whatever waited at the bottom of the sea. It was time to take back control.

  He cleared his visor and stared out into a murky sea. The ship was some distance below him and to the west, glowing like a pyre in the deep. A pod ejected from it, barrelling past him. A stream of bubbles showed its trajectory, a sloping curve leading toward the sunlit surface high above.

  Comms were still down, but he saw the lights of another banneret suit ahead, in the direction of the coast. No sign of the second gunner, but the seabed was not the sandy plain he had imagined. There were reefs down here, with craggy peaks and narrow canyons. His boots stirred the surface of one, sending clouds of sediment into the air.

  His suit adjusted to allow for a underwater walk. An easy thing for an inanimate object; less so for a man. His brief walk under the floodwaters on Tuonela had been among human things; cars, shops, people and their belongings. This was unfamiliar territory, claimed by other creatures.

  Glass-like jellyfish drifted in blooms above him, seaweed snaring his limbs. The reef became a crevasse where pale-haired polyps grew in clusters. Dead man's fingers, his HUD said, and he turned the identification function off. To know the names of these things was to make them real, and he would rather just pass through unnoticed and unnoticing, return to the sun and never think about this place again. Mankind had crawled out from the sea once, and for good reason. This was the domain of devourers; of cold scales and needle-sharp teeth.

  The surface grew brighter as he reached shallow waters. The reefs disappeared and round pebbles rolled under his boots. The seaweed grew thicker here, but soon his shoulders were above the surface, and soon he waded towards the shore.

  Even with a shot of stims in his system, he fell to his knees on the beach. Had to rest, had to give his body a moment to recover. The walk had been rough, far more strenuous than an overland hike.

  "Commander." Florey's voice, relieved. The gunner stood on a rock, watching the shoreline through the scope of his rifle. Long scratches marred his armour, and a crack in his visor had to have made his walk back nerve-wracking. "Got eyes on an escape pod, about two kilometres down the coast."

  Water steamed from Cassimer's suit. Through the fog, he could barely make out the hill where the
lighthouse stood sentinel. The escape pod had been spat up on the sandy beach just before the shoreline became layered flat rock. Debris from the amphibious ship turned and twisted in the waves a few kilometres out. An iridescent tint coloured the sea around it, tongues of chemical spills depositing neon foam on the waterline.

  "Less than a day since humanity's return to Earth, and already the planet suffers," Florey said.

  "You think Hierochloe were right to quarantine Earth?"

  "No. It's our duty to understand how precious it is and to protect it."

  "A light in the void," Cassimer said, "and the Primaterre its sword and its shield."

  "Yes." Florey hesitated. "But not the only light."

  "Far from it," he agreed and pushed himself to his feet. The pod's hatch had opened, white-armoured figures tumbling out onto the beach. Their escape had taken them less than three kilometres from the Hierochloe station. Not far, and definitely not far enough.

  He rolled his shoulders as a second dose of stims flooded his muscles with electricity. "Hopewell good?"

  "En route," Florey said, and minutes later, his gunner partner came bounding down the beach. "Five minutes late and five hundred metres off any given landing zone. I see you've not changed a bit."

  "Don't blame me, blame the planet." Hopewell grimaced, picking pieces of fried jellyfish from her armour. "Earth is disgusting."

  "Earth is ours," Cassimer said. "Let's stake our claim."

  * * *

  The Hierochloe guards tried to run, but when the banneret men closed in fast, running across the rocks, leaping over crags, they hunkered down instead. A dilapidated restaurant, with windows built for a scenic view of the sea, became their last stand.

  They fought hard, and they did not surrender. Twenty survivors became sixteen; sixteen became twelve. Cassimer and his gunners used the cliffside as cover, firing across the restaurant's parking lot, and still the twelve hostiles did not give up. One, armed with a sniper rifle, peeked through a window a split second too long, and Florey took him out. The glass shattered, the dead man slumped over the window sill, his blood dripping down the mildewed facade. Perhaps it was just the sight of the Primaterre sun on his armour, but there was something distasteful about killing these people.