by S. A. Tholin
A row of elevators ran along the west side of the office. One set of doors was open an inch. Cassimer stuck his gauntleted fingers in the gap and pried the doors open to the sound of shifting rusted metal.
His suit lights switched on to reveal a badly corroded elevator shaft. The walls were thick with rust and a bristling growth that his scanners indicated was organic. Part fungus, part algae, neither a species his primer had on file.
"Lichen," Hopewell said. "The building's full of the stuff."
Cassimer probed the wall. Brittle lichen fell to dust under his fingers. Dead, or near enough. It certainly wasn't thriving. "Anything else you've failed to report, Lieutenant?"
"No, Commander." Her voice carried an appropriate amount of shame.
"Keep your visor closed at all times." He passed the order along via the team channel. Unknown organisms were to be treated as threats at all times. Yet another problem that couldn't be solved by brute force. "Abergavenny, we're going to need to set up the habitat."
"Yes, Commander." Abergavenny's voice was barely audible. The transport shuttle - seventeen klicks away - couldn't be reached at all. The lack of feedback and connection was unsettling, but until Copenhagen could set up a comms array, they would have to operate under forced radio silence.
"Florey, Lucklaw; sweep the upper floors. Hopewell, you're with me."
He lit a flare and the elevator shaft was briefly ablaze with tumbling red light. The flare dropped deep, eventually landing on a choke of collapsed brickwork and dust somewhere around the 4th floor.
"Well, if you absolutely have to fall to your death, I suppose it should be done from as great a height as possible," Hopewell said.
A ladder ran down the eastern wall, but the rungs didn't look like they could take a man's weight anymore, let alone the weight of an armoured banneret man. The elevator cables looked in better shape; taut and solid. If the electricity could be restored, the elevator might even be functional.
"Commander, are you sure that's a good idea?" Hopewell sounded concerned, and Cassimer supposed an elevator shaft was as much a tin can as a transporter ship.
"We're only descending one floor." He grabbed one cable, gave it a tentative pull. "The cables will hold."
The banneretcy's armour - even his own, much-modified variant - was significantly lighter than what he had grown used to as a cataphract. His armour then had been a several foot-thick carapace of metal and armour plates. In comparison, what he wore now seemed skin-tight. The first time he'd worn it had been with a sense of embarrassment, as if he'd stood naked and vulnerable before the world. But while a cataphract's role was to be an unassailable dominator of the battlefield, a banneret man's role was infinitely more varied. No mission was the same as the next and, as such, their gear required greater mobility and adaptability. Three years on, the lack of sheer bulk still felt inadequate. The rocket that had shattered his sternum a month previously had proven as much. The ability to move faster or to climb down elevator shafts didn't seem worth the loss of protection. The banneretcy's armour didn't compare favourably.
But then, nothing compared with being a cataphract. And that's why you left, he reminded himself as he continued the descent.
A set of elevator doors appeared in the gloom. One kick was enough to buckle the rigid metal; another made enough of a dent for him to reach in and pry the doors open.
A sigh of stale air fogged his visor. His HUD told him that it was three degrees warmer than the air in the elevator shaft, high in carbon dioxide and biological components indicating mould. Nothing particularly toxic or detrimental detected, but he couldn't shake his dislike of the veins of ruddy lichen that clung to the walls.
Though his suit's sound-dampening fields were active, his footsteps seemed to resound in the narrow corridor. He upset a silence which had matured over centuries to become nigh-on tangible. If these ruins were graves, he was their desecrator.
All right. He took a deep breath. According to the station psychiatrist, he had a tendency to obsess on the morbid and the morose. A negative spiral, she'd called it. Little wonder, considering his line of work. If the psychiatrist were with him now, even she would feel the walls and the years pressing down on her.
Cool white suit lights cast long shadows across office walls. Broken chairs and a table, bowing underneath a section of collapsed ceiling. A skeleton sprawled across a desk. Glass glinted a chaotic pattern on the floor.
Not so morbid after all. This was a tomb.
He turned the skeleton over. Old bones, stripped of flesh and marked with deep grooves where some necrophagous creature had dug in for supper. The clothes - a chequered blouse, khaki slacks and a pair of plimsolls hanging from bony toes - were ripped and fraying, but the colours were remarkably well-preserved. She'd been a woman once, and he didn't need to scan the body to know that she had been dead as long as the building.
Still, he was not the first to disturb the peace of her tomb. A sledgehammer had been taken to the walls at some point, and pipes ripped from their brackets. Desk drawers lay upended, folders and printed paper had been trodden into grimy papier-mâché. Scavengers had done their worst to this place, but that, too, had been a long time ago.
"East side clear. You got anything, Commander?"
"Nothing but bones."
They swept the rest of the floor, checking the structural integrity as they went. The building was in good shape, all things considered, and Cassimer saw little reason it couldn't stand for another hundred years. The stairwell here was also blocked, but scorch marks on the walls told him that its collapse was not a failure of the construction.
"Traces of saltpetre. Very basic explosives."
"There are bullet holes in the walls here, Commander." Hopewell picked through the debris on the floor. She straightened her back and showed him a small metal object. "Lead casing. Don't think I've ever seen that before."
"Settlers on unsupported worlds can be very resourceful. If the inhabitants of Cato have access to lead, they're lucky. I saw a world once where the people had gone completely primitive. All they had for weapons were hollow reeds and darts. Apparently very efficient for hunting the local wildlife."
"But entirely inefficient against cataphract armour?"
"There was no need to test that theory. After decades of being forgotten, they were more than happy to turn their world over to the Primaterre."
"And who wouldn't be?"
Plenty, in his experience, but for someone like the lieutenant, it might be hard to imagine. She'd been born on Kepler, one of the worlds that had benefitted the most from becoming part of the Protectorate. Trade had led to massive wealth, which in turn had led to rare heights of terraforming and environmental curatorship. When Hopewell daydreamed about beaches, she didn't need to imagine what fresh sea air might smell like, or how sand might feel between her toes.
A coral-hued city set between sparkling sand and sea; a place that most people in the galaxy dreamed of one day visiting; a world where the locals lived in sun-golden purity, safe from pirates and RebEarth scum. To Hopewell, that was home - courtesy of the Primaterre Protectorate.
"Primaterre protects us all," he said, and the words momentarily chased the gloom from his mind.
"Primaterre protects us all," echoed Hopewell.
Good, and true - but for their own protection, they had to ensure they set up base in a safe location.
"We should seal the elevator shafts."
"You think that's what the locals were trying to do?" Hopewell nodded towards the blast-damaged stairwell. "Keep something out? Or in?"
"More likely a fight between scavengers gone wrong." He knew what she was thinking, because in spite of purity, his own mind had strayed to the same, familiar tales of inexplicably abandoned ships adrift in space, or colonies where everyone went missing overnight. Ghosts, monsters and even aliens all haunted the imaginations of space-farers.
All nonsense. Abandoned ships were likely victims of pirates, deserted colonies cau
sed by natural disasters, disease, raiders - or settlers simply deciding to take off for civilisation without bothering to leave a note behind.
There were no ghosts and no monsters. Excluding other humans, the demons were the only evil in the universe - and there was no mistaking a demonic outbreak, no mystery surrounding the carnage left behind.
"Shit!" Hopewell took a step backwards, her active protection field sparking. "Apologies, Commander, but Earth have mercy, would you look at that!"
The light on her gun fixed on an object in the last doorway. One-point-thirty-five metres in length. Organic and eight legged. Probably arachnid. Definitely dead.
He nudged the brittle carcass with his boot. It lay on its back, long legs curled in towards the mottled brown torso.
"Our first sight of the local wildlife. Looks harmless enough." Still, he sent a quick heads-up to the rest of the team. Best to make everyone aware of potential threats, however minimal.
"Looks disgusting more like."
"Fortunately, that has no bearing on our mission." He shone his light into the room beyond the spider corpse. Toilet stalls lined one wall; the other displayed a row of sinks below a long rectangular mirror. Plenty of dust, lichen drooping from the ceiling where panels had come loose, but no sign of cobwebs. "Keep an eye on the ceiling. It may be where these creatures like to hide."
"Yes, Commander." Hopewell's light panned across the ceiling, chasing shadows from rusted pipes and frayed electrical wiring.
The stalls were empty save for debris, but water pooled at the bottom of dirt-streaked toilet bowls. Though stagnant and cloudy, it couldn't have been there a hundred years. The building's plumbing was functional, replenishing toilet tanks with water from some artesian well. He sent notification to Copenhagen, who would be able to make use of a water source.
Smears of dirt blurred his reflection in the bathroom mirror, his suit lights a pale halo around the shadow of a tall dark-armoured man. An empty soap bottle sat on a sink, its floral pattern still vivid, and the blithe, cursive slogan (have a great day!) still legible.
This room had never been meant for men like him. The mirror should be reflecting the faces of office workers chatting to one another as they refreshed themselves. In the corners of the ceiling sat ruined speakers, meant for pleasant music and gentle reminders to not forget next week's office picnic. The scent of aloe vera soap and ammonia-cleaned floors, a glimpse of sun through tinted glass windows, the distant laughter of workers full of purpose and devoid of fear - these were the things for which this room had been meant.
Not dark-armoured men.
5. Cassimer
The city no longer looked like a graveyard. Silence had been replaced by the low hum of generators and the roar of tires seeking traction in fine dust. The darkness, too, had been driven away by brilliant floodlights. Less than ten hours since landing, and already Primaterre civilisation was taking root on Cato.
Sparks flew from above, angry red fireflies mixing with ashen dust. Abergavenny and Lucklaw were busy welding girders to build a makeshift shelter for the transport ship. It was too large to cover completely, but a lean-to hangar of steel and tarp would protect it from the worst of any storm.
The interior of the old bank had been cleared to accommodate the large transparent habitat cube. Rhys was spraying it with decontaminants, his shape blurred by the wavy texture of the vitro-plastic and fumes. Another sixty minutes or so, and it would be ready for human habitation.
Even in hazardous conditions, the banneret men could operate without a habitat. Cassimer had done so many times, living for months at a time inside his suit, but it was better not to. Better for morale. It was good to see one's own skin once in a while, to be reminded of humanity and vulnerability.
"Commander." The mermaid on Copenhagen's helmet sparkled pink in bizarre contrast to the rusted pipes and the gun-metal grey tool box the comms specialist carried. "Scavengers didn't make it easy, but the water's up and running now. Analysis confirms it's potable, but I set up a couple of filters anyway."
"Very good. Got any thoughts on how to locate our target yet?"
Copenhagen set the toolbox down. "A few, but you're not going to like them."
"Just give me the details." Liking things was hardly something he expected.
"Early surface scans show no signs of the missing ship." Copenhagen had sent out their eight drones, one in each cardinal and intercardinal direction, to serve both as scouts and as early warning storm detection. "But given the dust storm we just saw that means little."
"You think it might have been buried?"
"Or otherwise obscured from our sensors. I'm running analyses on the weather patterns, but I don't expect much success in predicting the storms. Boots on the ground in these conditions is highly inadvisable. That leaves us with two ways of locating our objective. The first requires that I build a sensor array capable of picking up traces of signals. That would also give us access to long-range communications, though given the state of the Cascade, exo-contact might be sporadic."
"And the downside to this plan?"
"For best results, the array needs to be as elevated as possible, especially given the levels of interference. I've picked out a few potential spots in the mountains, but off-base work is a risky proposition."
"And your other idea?"
"Any scanner that was active on Cato when the Andromache arrived would have recorded it. A comms relay, a weather station - if I could get my hands on a piece of equipment like that, I should be able to sift through the data and pinpoint the landing site."
"You're suggesting we reach out to the locals."
"Said you wouldn't like it, didn't I, Commander?" Behind the translucent visor, her eyes crinkled with a smile. "But yes, reach out. We might not even need the equipment - arc ships are enormous. If one did come here, I'd be surprised if the locals aren't talking about it."
Locals. Cassimer didn't care for gossip or reputation, but he knew as well as anyone that when Bastion assigned him a mission, it was with tacit approval of maximum force. He and his team could burn this already ashen world if that served the mission.
If it became necessary, he would. Until then, diplomacy would serve both the Primaterre and his task better.
"Build your array, lieutenant. I will see what we can get from the locals."
"Plan A and plan B. I like your thinking, Commander."
Get it done, and get it done fast. Not his favoured approach, but it was what the circumstances seemed to demand. The creaking ruins. The lightning on the horizon. The civilisation buried beneath his feet. Stairhaven had been a vanity, but every acacia-lined road and perfect lawn had spoken of optimism and hope. Cato had taken that hope and smothered it.
A cruel planet. A joyless planet. His suit had already adapted and turned indistinguishably ashen. How long before the man inside the suit did the same?
◆◆◆
Albany ambushed him inside the habitat's airlock, her cheeks flushed deep red.
"Your chaplain isn't exactly subtle. You sic him on me to evaluate my purity? I'm not good enough for Commander High-and-Mighty?"
"Your conduct concerned me." Better to weather her rage than fuel it.
"Nobody tells me how to behave on my own damn ship."
"We're no longer on your ship."
"You better back off, Cassimer. I won't tolerate being accused -"
"I haven't accused you. I have a duty to my team, and the chaplain has a duty to see us all down the correct path."
"Might want to tell him that, because he's acting more like a fucking inquisitor." She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I see that frown - oh, boo-hoo, Albany used a naughty word. If demons possessed everyone who ever cursed, we'd all be fucked."
"You're dishonouring your rank and putting us all at risk."
"Fuck off." Albany pushed the boundaries with a smile. "I follow doctrine to the letter. Just ask your chaplain. But if you think I'm going to change my behaviour to suit your personal - and to
be frank - fucked up ideas of purity, you can think again."
"As long as you're in my base, I expect my rules to be followed. If you can't manage that, I suggest you get out."
"Gladly." Albany snapped her visor shut and stepped out of the airlock. A storm raged outside, but they'd constructed safe passage to the shuttle from the bank. Albany would be safe from the weather, if not corruption.
"Pilots," Abergavenny scoffed. He was sprawled on his bunk, his craggy face lit blue by the screen of a tablet, but he'd clearly been paying more attention to the confrontation than the movie he was watching. "There's a reason they spend most of their time locked away in cockpit; borderline sociopaths, the lot of them."
"Isn't your wife a pilot?" Rhys, sitting atop crates of medical equipment, asked.
"Right. And if you want to know the key to a happy marriage, remember that she's off in space somewhere and I'm here."
Thunder rumbled overhead. The habitat's walls had been set to an opaque black, but occasional flashes of blue lightning lit up the outside. The bad weather was getting worse.
Inside the habitat, the temperature was a pleasant twenty-two degrees, with optimal oxygen levels. No trace of dust, not even on the soldiers' suits. The decontamination equipment in the airlock was basic and loud, but it did the job. Every surface was immaculate.
The team had changed into fatigues and lounged about the central area of the habitat, which served as their quarters and commons. There were four ante-rooms: the med-lab; an equipment storage area with workbench and ammunition printer; the bathroom, complete with shower; and a small cubicle serving as Cassimer's private quarters. Unnecessary, but by tradition a commander's privilege.
Cassimer ordered the seals on his helmet and gauntlets released, the vambraces next, and after that the cuirass and pauldrons came off easily. The thin filaments that were his suit's pharmaceutical delivery system retracted from his neck as he removed the gorget. There was no pain, not even any marks, but he never could resist the urge to rub his skin. The filaments were a necessary evil, but that didn't make the thought of them crawling under his skin any more palatable.
