by S. A. Tholin
Cassimer sat on the bed, bent over a chunk of stained and mangled metal in his lap. At the sound of her voice, he looked up, with such relief that her blood warmed, once more adjusting its rhythm to accommodate an extra beat.
He stood, and the metal object clattered to the floor. For the first and likely last time, Joy was faster than him. She picked up the object - his gauntlet, although almost unrecognisable as such - realising far too late that the stains were blood. His blood.
She offered him the gauntlet and he took it, with a hand a shade paler than his wrist. His fingers moved awkwardly, stiff and imprecise.
"Scarsdale?" she asked.
He nodded, curtly, like it was no big deal, and if she'd had any tears left she would've cried for him. Instead, she placed her hand on his, running her fingertips across the smooth new skin. It was a big deal, and it did matter if he was hurt. More so than expected, so much more so that her new lungs struggled to find air.
"What happened?"
"It doesn't matter. The mission was successful." He placed the ruined gauntlet on the bed. There was no fixing it, no matter how advanced Primaterre technology was, and a replacement gauntlet already waited with the rest of the armour. But Cassimer had tried anyway, had spent hours picking the gauntlet apart, dozens of minute components and tools grouped neatly on the bed. A puzzle, she thought, to keep his mind occupied.
"You saved my life."
"Yes." He was close now, so close she could see the pulse in his throat leap. "I had to. I..." He paused, frowning, and she thought he would step away from her and back behind the shields of rank and duty. He did - but not before lightly touching her face with his good hand.
"I wanted to."
◆◆◆
She sat on the bed, among snippets of hair-thin wiring and broken armour, as Cassimer fetched a chair for himself and closed the door.
He regarded her silently for a moment. The mask of neutral professionalism was back in place, not a glimmer of anything else in his dark eyes.
"What do you know about us? What kind of unit we are?"
The question surprised her, and she gave him a wary look.
"You may speak freely," he said, as though he'd understood what she was thinking. That maybe this was a test. That maybe if she said the wrong thing, if she knew too much, this wouldn't end well.
"Nobody's really told me anything," she said, plucking at a piece of curled wire. "I'm guessing some sort of special forces?"
"Of a kind. The banneretcy's primary purpose is exo-operations. We are specialised in handling the very particular dangers of running missions far from the Primaterre Protectorate. As challenging as Cato has been, we are trained to operate under extreme circumstances, oftentimes completely cut off from communications, supply lines and reinforcements, but all of that is just part and parcel of being a soldier. The true danger of exo-space lies in forgetting. Purity is simple in Protectorate space, where everything is a reminder of who we are and why we serve. Out here, in the wilderness... it can be difficult. Soldiers forget. Lose their way."
Those who have to be told, over and over again, or else they forget. Rivka's words echoed in Joy's mind; jeering and unpleasant. She shuddered and tried to chase the memory away.
"Loyalties are tested," Cassimer continued. "Discipline suffers. Mission creep sets in. In order to allow for smooth exo-operations, banneret commanders are chosen not just for their skills, but also for their devotion to the cause. Outside Protectorate space, I represent the Primaterre in all things, and my men don't have to worry about losing their way - they only need to follow, safe in the knowledge that I stand for the Primaterre and for purity. They will not forget, for I am their reminder. I am their sword of truth and their shield of clarity."
"Sounds like quite the burden."
He considered this for a moment, then shook his head. "No. It's who I am. It's no great struggle."
"But you do struggle," she said, unable to resist taking the conversation closer to the man.
"With other things," he conceded, biting down hard on each word. "The degree of freedom is difficult."
"Freedom?" His confession surprised her.
"Banneret companies are afforded a great deal of it. Life was different as a cataphract. Back then, every day was strictly scheduled down to the minute. There were always orders to follow, duties to perform. Simple. Pure. But banneret commanders are expected to operate independently, to set their own goals and agendas. Difficult. Very difficult, in the beginning. The first few weeks on Scathach, I spent mostly in my quarters. I'd never had quarters before. Never been alone. The silence was overwhelming, but I didn't know how to be without being told, so I would sit in that silence, staring at nothing for hours. Waiting for orders that never came, that would never come. I knew it was crazy. I knew I was crazy, but I felt trapped in my own mind."
He grimaced, shaking his head as though regretting his words. As though he'd claw each of them back if he could.
"But you broke free of it," she said, kindly, to guide his way through - not back.
"The silence became too loud. I turned on music to drown it out and... it was as though that one autonomous act tore down the walls. It got easier after that. But not easy. Not like it is for the others. Not like it is for you."
She smiled. "If you think I've been having an easy time of it, you've not been paying attention."
"Apologies," he said, so sincerely that she became the one to regret her words. "I didn't mean to downplay your burdens. I'm aware of your situation, but when I look at you and you smile like that..." he said, not looking at her at all, seemingly trying very hard to look absolutely anywhere else. "I forget the darkness."
Mine or yours? she wondered, but didn't want to press too hard. He'd already revealed more of himself than expected.
"Case in point: one question from you, and I have lost my track."
"Yes," she said, blushing. "I have a tendency to talk too much. Sorry about that."
"Not too much." He looked at her now, and she could swear there was a hint of a smile in his eyes. "But we haven't much time, so I'll get straight to the point. As a banneret commander, I'm afforded a great deal of freedom as well as a great deal of authority. Among other things, I am authorised to recruit in the field, should the mission require it and a suitable candidate be available. I would like to offer you that opportunity."
"I'm no soldier," she objected. The very idea seemed crazy, so far removed from how she thought of herself. Joy Somerset, 23, junior botanist, likes reading, painting and baking. Maybe Duncan had been right to call her life dull, but it had been unapologetically hers, and that's who she was - no matter how much Cato was trying to change her.
"Neither was Lucklaw before the Ever Onward," Cassimer said. "Nor I before the Hecate."
A long pause followed, as though he had to recover from speaking the name.
"We all have a Hecate. A place, a time, a situation - doesn't matter. What matters is what you do next. Who you choose to become. There are many paths, Joy, but this is the only one I can offer."
She didn't know what to say. All she could look at was Cassimer's hand, the pale one with stretched plastic-sheen skin. The things that had been done to that hand. The things that had been done by that hand.
"Before you decide," he said, with a note of anxiety in his voice that made her hot and cold all at once. He wanted her to do this, wanted it very badly. "Be aware that enlisting automatically confers Primaterre citizenship. Provisional, to become permanent upon successful completion of training. If you accept, you'll come with us to Scathach when we leave."
"Scathach," she said, struggling with the strange syllables. "Where you live?"
"Scathach's a very large military station, home to tens of thousands. What matters is that it is not Cato."
And there it was, the very thing she'd worked so hard for. A way to go anywhere but here, and with it, the realisation that this was, and had always been, the only way for Cassimer to help her o
ff-world. Voirrey, Duncan, Imaginary Finn; all the doubters and naysayers, all those who'd called the Primaterre liars and murders - they'd been right.
Right, and also wrong. The air she breathed so effortlessly told her that, as did the eyes of the man before her, and the memory of the corporal's clumsy hug.
"You would be required to remain on active duty for a minimum of three years. But after that, you would be a Primaterre citizen, free to go and do as you please. It's a good path, Joy, and you'll not walk it alone."
"How can a path that leads to fear of freedom be good?"
"You misunderstand. After the Hecate, I..." He clenched his new hand so tight his pale skin stretched to translucency. "I burned. Every moment I burned; my every thought and feeling blinding fire. But Bastion didn't abandon me. They gave me purpose, gave me control. Taught and trained me until the fire became ash and I could set aside the Hecate long enough to breathe. I have served the Primaterre ever since, and I am honoured and grateful. It is a path of sacrifice and duty, but it's also a path of merit and compassion."
"The Primaterre takes care of its protectors?"
"If it didn't, it wouldn't be worth protecting."
"May I have some time to think?" she asked and once more came to regret her words, because Cassimer gave her a look of genuine hurt. On Cato, he represented the Primaterre in all things. A cause and a man all wrapped up in one, and there was no way of telling him that she cared very much about one and not at all about the other.
"I brief the team in ninety minutes. Make your choice before then. You're either at the briefing, or you're not on the team."
◆◆◆
The stairs to the roof had been swept clean of debris, but nobody had bothered cleaning up the blood. Joy stepped gingerly between tacky patches and bad memories. At least the corridors had been blocked off. Between Cassimer and the sky, no drifters could get at her now. They still frightened her, far more than any RebEarther. The RebEarth cause seemed clear enough - retake the Earth, destroy the Primaterre. It made sense, in a way the drifters didn't.
It wasn't their madness that got to her, so much as the brief flashes of realisation in their eyes, as though they could understand what they were doing, but couldn't stop themselves. As though they thrashed against the bars of their mind-cages. The pilot of the Ever Onward had looked much the same. She thought of him, and she thought of Constant in the bowels of moonstruck Hecate. And she thought of Finn, who -
No. Finn's fate wasn't up for speculation. Better to hope for the best until proven otherwise. He might be dead, long gone and looking down on his sister from the stars -
No such thing as an afterlife, grumbled Imaginary Finn, and she smiled at that; liked to think that Finn had been proven wrong and was grumpily looking down on her from the stars.
- but if he'd lived, if he'd been even a little happy, she could bear the thought.
She pushed open the door to the roof and was delighted to be welcomed by a faceful of whirling dust. Enough of it to have made her sick once, enough to have knocked weeks off her life expectancy, but now it was little more than a nuisance. That felt good. That felt like victory.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, as if Cato was expressing its displeasure, and she couldn't help herself; grinning wide, she flipped off the horizon.
"Feeling invincible are we?" Low laughter came from above. Lieutenant Hopewell sat perched on a rusted beam, rifle rested against her shoulder. "I know that feeling. When you get kicked in the face and it should be all over, lights out, but somehow you get back up on your feet again and, damn, the sheer thrill of being alive makes you think you can do anything. Makes you want to fight the thunder. Makes you think you'd have a good shot at winning that fight."
"Feels amazing," Joy said.
"Yeah, right up until lightning strikes. And considering this is a restricted area, guess that makes me the lightning." Hopewell tapped her rifle demonstratively. "You better get back down to the habitat before the commander finds you wandering."
"Actually, it was Cassimer who told me where to find you. I need your advice, Lieutenant Hopewell."
◆◆◆
"Are you sure you didn't misunderstand the commander?"
It was, by Joy's count, the third time Hopewell had asked something similar.
"Is it so unusual?"
"Not unheard of. Just never expected our commander to field recruit. He's got high standards."
"That I'm not up to?"
"If it were any other man, I'd say he's letting something other than his judgment do the recruiting. But Commander Cassimer?" Hopewell shrugged and pulled out two ration bars, offering Joy one. "He'd never have made you that offer if he didn't think you could be an asset to the Primaterre. Don't see it myself, mind, but I guess that's why I'm not a commander."
"I drove a tractor into a RebEarther wearing an Ereshkigal suit," Joy said, tearing open the wrapper. "Does that sound assety?"
"Sounds like bullshit."
"Smashed him right into a wall. Ereshkigal armour or not, it looked like it hurt."
"Unbelievable." Hopewell threw her hands up in disgust. "I bloody knew something spectacular had gone down. Nobody tells us nothing, though. The commander, okay, I get that he likes to keep things brief, all nice and tidy, but the others? Rhys usually never shuts up, and that little snot of a comms specialist -"
"I'll give you as many juicy details as you like. In return, all I need is your advice on Cassimer's offer."
"Well, there's two things to consider. He told you about the citizenship, yeah?"
Joy nodded.
"There's nobody in this unit who wasn't born a citizen. None of us really know what life outside the Primaterre is like, but I have seen plenty of people who do. I spent my first two years in the service as a sentinel, stationed at the transit camp on Phobos."
"One of Mars's moons."
"Yeah. It's where all the citizenship applicants arriving in Sol get funnelled. An unpleasant little rock; overcrowded, filthy, rife with crime... it's not Cato, but not far from it either. If people are willing to put up with those conditions, for years on end, just for a chance to gain citizenship, I have to imagine that we Primaterre have it pretty good."
"But I'm originally from Protectorate space," Joy said. "The Primaterre might not have existed, but Mars did, and I had citizenship - both there and on Earth."
"True, and if you were to make it to the camps, there's a good chance they'd fast-track your application due to your special circumstances. But let's say you only have to spend eighteen months on Phobos. You end up on Mars and... then what? You have no family, no friends, no qualifications and zero merits. Even with citizenship, that's going to be rough."
"I've got a botany degree."
"A hundred years out of date. There's bound to have been some advancements in plant science since. A lot of catching up to do, and no decent way of supporting yourself while you do. Which brings me to my second point: merits."
"The Primaterre currency, I take it?"
"All citizens in good standing earn a monthly amount of merits. The system gets more complicated from then on, but what's relevant here is that military personnel earn a bonus amount of citizenship merits, in addition to our salaries. Make rank, perform well and keep your head down, and the bonuses just keep stacking up. Might not make you rich, but be smart and you can earn yourself a very comfortable life. Like mine, for instance." Hopewell smiled wistfully, looking out over the dunes. "This time next year, I'll have traded in my fatigues for a bikini, and rations for cocktails. I'll be twenty-nine years old and the proud, mortgage-free owner of a beach house I've dreamed of since I was a little girl."
"Lucky you," said Joy, who hadn't been able to go to a beach since her silicosis had been diagnosed, but now that she could, oh, how she wanted to.
"Can't bloody wait. Thing is, I could never have earned that much as a sentinel. You want to earn the big rewards, you've got to take the big risks. With the commander's recommendation
, you're a shoo-in for the banneretcy once you've got the experience and training. Ten years from now, you could retire and live happily ever after."
"As long as I don't die."
"Yeah, you might get shot in the face by a RebEarther, or you might trip over a curb and break your neck. Death doesn't matter, Joy. Life does, and the commander's giving you a damn good shot at one. You're asking me what I think? I think you should run back down there and accept his offer before he comes to his senses."
Hinges creaked as the door opened, but otherwise Lieutenant Florey's arrival was soundless. He slipped from the shadowy stairwell onto the roof, moving as smoothly as a panther. His visor angled upwards and Joy saw herself reflected in it. For the most part, she had the measure of the other soldiers, but Florey was still an unknown. He hadn't said a word to her and didn't say a word now either, choosing to acknowledge only Hopewell.
"Hey Hopey. Anything to report?"
"Dust, dust, and then more dust. And this little duckling." Hopewell nodded towards Joy, who'd begun to awkwardly make her way down the beam. "Get this - the commander offered her a spot on the team."
"We are undermanned," Florey said. If he had any other opinion on the matter (and Joy, sensing a sudden chill in the air, thought he did), he wasn't going to voice it until she'd gone and he was alone with Hopewell.
"Suppose so. Aren't you going to ask Florey what he thinks, Joy?"
She hadn't planned to, hadn't expected the news to be shared, and now felt rather struck by Hopewell's metaphorical lightning.
"What I think about what?"
"She came up here to ask me if I thought she should accept the commander's offer."
Florey opened his visor and regarded Joy with eyes too green to be natural.
"Somebody stole the cryo pods from that arc ship of yours. Somebody stole your brother. You want justice? You want revenge? Don't see any other way you're getting either."
