by S. A. Tholin
Duncan swore, and the hand on her face balled into a fist. He struck her and -
- for a moment there was nothing but blackness and a vague sensation of falling -
- and then pain lashed her back into consciousness. Dust filled her nostrils and clogged her eyes; hundreds and thousands of grains of sand scratching her throat. Duncan's knee was on her back, his hand on her head, grinding her face into the dirt. He was shouting something, raging and apologetic at once, and kept shouting until in the background, Lucklaw groaned.
Duncan's weight lifted from her, and she activated her med-bracelet.
Lucklaw was on all fours, crawling towards the airlock. Duncan retrieved the gun and fired. The bullet turned to plasma against the corporal's suit, sizzling and dripping down his back. Duncan pulled the trigger again, firing a burst. Dust plumed around Lucklaw, but enough bullets struck their target that the corporal no longer crawled, instead prone and still.
Joy pushed herself to her feet, stumbling in the other direction. Rhys had buried the bodies well - if she hadn't seen him do it, she'd never have known they were there - but he hadn't taken their guns.
In cold dust, her digging hands found still-warm thighs. She ran her hand up Gaia Feehan's legs - fingers briefly entangling with the dead woman's - and then she found it.
"Duncan."
◆◆◆
"You know I don't miss," she warned, hands trembling around the grip of the gun.
"I also know that you feel guilty every time you shoot a spider. Put the gun away, Joy. You're not going to shoot me."
No. She wasn't. Couldn't even if she wanted to; her fingers no longer seemed to obey commands. This wasn't the moment, not the time to cross the invisible line. There had been moments - Rivka's thugs; Rivka; the drifters. She should've pulled the trigger on those people, in those moments of blood and fear. Not now; not when the target was a friend.
"If it weren't for me, you'd still be asleep. You owe me." He turned his back on her and used his foot to turn Lucklaw over. The corporal's unprotected face was moon-pale and slick with sweat. "After this, you'll owe me twice."
Even with Lucklaw's life hanging in the balance, this wasn't the moment. But maybe there was no perfect moment to become a killer, no beautifully bookended guilt-free instant. In the end, it all came down to one thing.
Need.
She needed many things, but right now all she needed was not to have to watch a defenceless man die.
Duncan's finger was on the trigger, the black barrel aimed at Lucklaw's face. One twitch and the corporal would be dead.
Imaginary Finn whispered advice, things he'd told her a long time ago at the shooting range, when the idea that the targets might one day be flesh and blood had seemed absurd. But she didn't listen, didn't need to.
Her brother had taught her marksmanship, and instinct did the rest.
One shot rang out.
Duncan toppled, slumping over Lucklaw. He'd been dead the instant the bullet had burrowed into his neck, she knew that, and she also knew that she should check, should make sure, but something inside of her chest twisted and twisted until it burst in a flash of pain.
The gun fell from her hands and she stumbled away from it, away from the lights spilling from the airlock. The hull of the ship was freezing to the touch and she rested her forehead against it. The word undo blazed against the inside of her eyelids, as though reality could be commanded, as though a simple press of the buttons on a keyboard could turn back time and set everything right.
"Fucking spiders jumped us. One of them bit my goddamn shoulder. This fucking planet, you know?" Gaia Feehan's voice.
If I turn around now, I'll see her standing there, drizzling grave dust.
It was an easy terror to believe, though logic told her that it was Lucklaw doing his best to explain away the gunfire. Good thinking, and she wanted to tell him that, wanted to turn around to thank him for helping pick up the pieces. But if she turned, she would see Duncan, and she didn't want that. Didn't need that.
"Hey. It's okay." There was something awkward about the kindness in his voice, as if Lucklaw was trying it on for the first time. The heat of his armour washed over her, and he turned her in an embrace as awkward as his kindness. She looked up and saw that his eyes were the same shade of blue as the sweetgrass on Gainsborough.
25. Cassimer
The Ever Onward's cargo hold was cluttered with spilled-open luggage and lost memories. Photo frames whose batteries had died a long time ago stared blankly from underneath collapsed shelving; jewellery jangled in the draft of air conditioners. Deep in that tumble of history, Cassimer and Rhys had caught up with two RebEarthers carrying sacks heavy with loot. Loud, careless, overburdened - easy to track, easy to kill. But before the banneret men had finished burning the blood off their thermal blades, they'd heard the gunfire and abandoned their hunt.
Cassimer had taken point, running toward the airlock as his mind ran through a series of scenarios. Death waited outside the ship; perhaps even his own. He'd calculated the risks, readied body and mind to react - but not once had he expected to find Joy weeping in his corporal's arms.
It had thrown him off-balance. Even now, as he led his small team through the cargo hold, every whisper from Lucklaw and every half-sobbed response from Joy stole focus from what mattered.
Such as the sound of footsteps. One man, approaching at a casual pace. Cassimer drew his knife. Behind him, he heard the soft rustle of the others taking cover - and then, a sudden clatter. He glanced over his shoulder. Joy was recovering from a stumble. She held onto a shaking shelf, trying to steady it.
"I've got it," Lucklaw whispered, reaching over Joy's shoulders. She sniffed a thanks and once the shelf was stable, Lucklaw positioned himself protectively in front of her, his APF crackling as it extended.
She had saved his life. Gratitude was to be expected, but maybe it was more than gratitude. Maybe the corporal now saw Joy the same way Cassimer did.
He took a deep breath to anchor himself in the moment. The approaching target, glowing bright and hot on his visor, was around a corner, approximately fifty metres away and closing. Another easy kill. The RebEarther would be dead before he could even react.
Much like Duncan, whose body Cassimer had examined. One bullet to the back of the head. A good shot. A good kill.
Joy didn't see it that way, not yet. He wished that there was something he could say, that he could find the words to help her, but his own first kill had also worn a friendly face, and the experience had taught him that there were no such words. He'd heard the doting concern of the first responders and the praise from the officers at Scathach, the nagging analytics of an endless stream of therapists and the mantras chanted by chaplains. A thousand words from a thousand people and not one of them had made him feel any less cast adrift.
Maybe words weren't the key. Maybe Lucklaw had the right of it.
Still, he should've said something. He had, he thought - words like dry ash, pointless and trite. Something along the lines of 'good job'.
Stars, he had hated that the most. The back-patting attitudes of the officers who'd congratulated him with glib smiles and sweaty handshakes. Good job, kid, they'd said, not realising that it hadn't been a job; it had been a fucking nightmare that roiled and churned in his mind even as they pinned their medals to his chest.
And now he was just like them, no better at all.
The target was less than ten metres away, humming a tune as he approached. Cassimer prepared to cut the song short.
Voices whispered behind him. Lucklaw saying something to Joy, who responded. The sound of her voice tugged at him, reminding him how badly he wanted to find the right words, reminding him how Lucklaw had so easily found better than words -
- the target rounded the corner. Less than one second of lost focus; in combat, it might as well be an eternity.
The RebEarther was middle-aged, his face marred by a constellation of tiny scars, with reflexes quick enough t
o block Cassimer's strike. Bone cracked and fractured, and the man cried out in pain, but the knife's trajectory had been deflected, scraping armour plates instead of flesh.
A veteran, this one, and a soldier. The scars on his face, where a spatter of white phosphorus had bored through flesh and into bone, told a familiar story. This man had fought in a purge, had lived through the same searing fires as Cassimer - and he had fought on the same side.
Though his arms were broken, he still blocked every blow with power only possible through augments, undoubtedly Primaterre in origin.
Worse yet, the man understood that he was going to die - that much was clear, even before Cassimer pinned his arms backwards and slammed him into the wall - and he had the presence of mind to both accept that fact, and to make sure that his death wouldn't be in vain.
The man screamed. The white walls seemed to reverberate, the shrill sound a shiver running down the spine of a slumbering beast. Cassimer slammed his visor into the target's face, but even though teeth shattered behind lips that swelled and burst, the man kept screaming.
Cassimer shoved the man hard against the wall. Bones splintered and broke as the RebEarther's sternum folded inwards. The scream ended in a rush of blood, bubbling from the man's mouth. Deep inside, some augment still worked to keep his heart beating, and Cassimer looked into his pale eyes and said:
"Traitor."
One more push, and it was over. It felt good; it felt familiar and simple and utterly righteous.
He stepped back, armour dripping and sizzling. The dead man crumpled to the floor, and so did Cassimer's sense of simplicity. Something stirred in the ash, and he reached for purity, reaching for words that would help to make sense of it all.
"The Primaterre protects us all," he said, and to his relief, both Lucklaw and Rhys agreed. A sweetness settled over the ash, and he could once more look at the traitor's body without discomfort.
"Jam their comms," he ordered Lucklaw. Even with Cato's disruptive weather, cut comms could arouse suspicion, but if the two remaining RebEarthers had heard the scream, they couldn't be allowed to call it in. "Ship schematics - I need them now."
"Yes, Commander." Lucklaw sounded exhausted. Duncan's battering ram had rattled him, even causing some minor brain damage (temporary, Rhys had said, and nobody will be able to tell a difference anyhow, ha-ha!). He deserved a break, but there was no time. They had to move fast, had to stay focused - but the labyrinthine cargo hold was thick with the past, and Cassimer lost his way entirely.
Whispers crept from air vents, shadows reached from gaping suitcases, and the fluorescent ceiling lights buzzed and flickered. He wanted to switch off the suit's audio, wanted to shut his eyes and retreat to some distant place where lights didn't whine and his thoughts didn't scratch against his skull.
But somewhere ahead were two RebEarthers.
"Lucklaw - schematics."
"Apologies, Commander. The ship's systems are badly corrupted. I'm trying to..."
The corporal droned on, his voice joining ranks with the fluorescent lights.
Shut up shut up shut up. Why must you talk so much when yes or no would suffice? What could you possibly have to say that is of interest? What did you say to Joy?
Heat crept across his skin. His suit reported no malfunction, but that couldn't be right, because he was burning up. His heart rate increased until his pulse throbbed so hard he could hardly breathe. Around him, the walls were bowing inwards, moving and swaying, and up ahead a shadow moved, skittering across the floor with clicking claws.
He drew his Morrigan along with a ragged breath that hurt. The sensors reported nothing, but something was obviously wrong with his suit.
A concerned message from Rhys flashed on his HUD.
Suit glitch, he responded, and Rhys said nothing, but there was a scepticism in his silence that prickled.
Another noise up ahead. Still nothing according to the sensors, but the heat was reaching intolerable levels.
"Schematics. Now." Focus. Focus. Focus.
A notification flashed on his visor. Rhys was preparing to administer a sedative. Cassimer denied the injection, but Rhys immediately overrode his authority. An executive order then. Cassimer issued it, and it should've been enough to tell the medic he should back off, but no. Rhys countered with a team safety order, the one thing that trumped even a banneret commander's will.
That's going on my record. The thought made him nauseous. How many more mandatory sessions with the station psychiatrist? How many knowing glances from superiors who thought they could read a file and know a man? All because Rhys couldn't leave well enough alone.
He turned to face the medic, every muscle in his body crackling with residual violence from the recent kill. Had to suppress that, had to calm down, but the walls were so close.
"I don't think you need the schematics."
Joy, as soft as her whisper, slipped between him and the medic.
"Explain." Focusing on her made it easier to breathe, but no easier to speak.
"I think you know this ship, Cassimer. When I told you about her, you already knew most of what I said; I could tell. We don't need the schematics, because we have you."
His shaken confidence sneered at her words, but something - maybe her unearned trust in him, or the memory of her touch - forced him to consider them. She wasn't wrong; he did know this ship.
He knew that the bulkhead (no longer looming quite so closely) was made of a light-weight carbon composite meant to be stripped and reused as the hull of a Cascade. He knew that the steel in her was Martian, but the copper and gold in her wiring was terrestrial. She had been forged in Mars's orbit, but her veins, like Joy's, ran bright with pure Earth blood.
"Rhys, take point. I need a moment to visualise."
His suit's systems responded eagerly to his commands (almost as though there had never been anything wrong with it) and as he visualised the Ever Onward, the image capturing program began to draw. He had never been much of an artist, and moving didn't help matters. Theoretically, his feet weren't controlled by the same area of his brain as his visualisation process, but in practice, he found that he could really only do one thing well at a time - draw or walk.
A sketchy image of the ship began to take shape. Construction on the Ever Onward had completed in the 1560's, when engineering was commonly the deck below the bridge, but the work on her had started much earlier - 1542, he was fairly certain, when engine cores had still run too hot with radiation to keep near crewed sections.
They were in the cargo hold now, and the Ever Onward had crashed belly-down, so the bridge should be five decks up, past the modular science labs, hangars and two sets of cryo decks. He mapped out a tentative route and shared it with the team. He shared it to his tablet as well, and passed it to Joy. At this point, keeping her in the dark would only be detrimental.
"You drew this?" She looked up at him, eyes wide. "With your mind?"
He nodded.
"That's amazing."
His clunky line-work wouldn't have impressed if she'd seen what others could do, but the awed whisper flattered nonetheless, charming in its sincerity. Joy had no shields to guard her words or thoughts, nor barriers between her and purity. If he asked her how she felt about having killed a man, she would give him truth, raw and undiluted.
She was honest. Self-aware. Pure.
And he was a fool for ever thinking that she was the one in danger.
A quick command issued, a signal sent, and the manacles around Joy's wrists opened. He caught them before they clattered to the floor.
"Why?" she whispered, rubbing her red-ringed wrists. "The demons..."
No matter the necessity, it hurt that he had instilled this fear in her, and it hurt worse that he had made her comfortable with chains.
"They seek out the minds of the impure; those who deny; those who do not see and those who do not wish to see. But in you, I see no darkness, no shadowed corners in your mind." He wanted to say more, wanted to brus
h the hair from her face and the sadness from her lips, but couldn't. Instead, he said: "Only starlight."
"Don't you mean electromagnetic radiation?" There it was, that slight curve of a smile, that glimmer of honeyed warmth. If purity was strength, she was so much stronger than he.
"No less wondrous."
◆◆◆
The traitor's DNA was a match to a Petty Officer Perseverance Nystrom, listed as MIA. Cassimer requested more information, and his primer offered up what little it had. A photograph, in which the PO had not yet earned his scars, and Amalthea - the name of the supply ship on which he'd served as quartermaster.
Little over a decade previously, Amalthea had been en route to Hypatia when the ship went dark. The Primaterre recovery crew that had eventually found the wreckage reported that it had been completely destroyed. From compressed and scorched metal, they'd pulled the bodies of four crewmen, and DNA tests on tissue indicated that six others had certainly died. The remaining twelve men and women had been presumed to have met with the same fate, but with Nystrom here...
"Chances are that's how RebEarth got their hands on the Ereshkigal suits." He kept the conversation to the private channel. Joy didn't know about the traitor, and as far as he was concerned, she shouldn't. It was Primaterre business and unpleasant business at that.
"A supply ship heading to support a purge would've carried more than just two Eshi suits," Lucklaw said. "More than just cataphract gear. And if Nystrom didn't defect alone, there could be other Primaterre traitors here."
Primaterre property in the hands of RebEarth. Not the first time, certainly, but he couldn't remember ever hearing of Primaterre soldiers defecting before. It was difficult to even entertain the notion - it slipped around in his head, nonsensical and shapeless. Only the word 'traitor' took solid form; cold and hard and dripping with shadows.
Still, it was a good discovery. Once informed, Bastion could take the appropriate action and lock down this particular problem. To keep his racing mind off other things, he wrote a quick draft of a report.
