by S. A. Tholin
The door opened and daylight spilled into the room, revealing the state of the little clinic. Every streak of dirt and blood was thrown into stark relief, every garland of dust-matted cobwebs turned thin and light.
A man entered, keys jangling in his hand, and the sun was no kinder to him. Jaundiced skin, sagging darkness underneath bloodshot eyes. A sneer of resignation etched long lines on his face, so set that his expression barely changed when Cassimer looped his arm around the man's throat and squeezed. The man sighed and went limp. No fight in this opponent, nothing at all but a well, isn't this typical acknowledgment of helplessness.
The woman who followed him was a different story. She stood in the doorway, staring down the Morrigan, and scowled. Angry, this one, and unhappy. But not stupid, because she didn't scream. Didn't say a word, and when Cassimer quietly ordered her to come in and shut the door - "Lock it." - she obeyed.
"Identify yourself." He tightened his hold around the man's neck until he had to make a decision. Killing would be easier. Killing might be a kindness to someone so miserable. But was it necessary?
"You're the one trespassing. How about you identify yourself?" The woman crossed her arms and cocked her head. "Not that you need to; I can see what you are. Just another thug with a gun. Too well-equipped to be local, too corporate to be RebEarth - bless their little hearts - so I take it you're one of the nasty bogeymen I've heard so much about. The Primaterre."
Cassimer nodded and made his decision, easing the unconscious man onto the dirty operating table. "Commander Cassimer. And you're Doctor Susan Voirrey."
Her dark eyes narrowed. Then she made a disgusted face, waving her hand dismissively. "Of course. Joy evidently told you about the Ever Onward, so why not about me? Only question is how badly you hurt her for the information."
"We never..." His objection faltered as he realised how untrue it was. Never hurt her? Only in the worst possible way.
"Not too badly, I imagine. Silly girl never did know when to shut up. But since you're here, I suppose you didn't get everything you wanted from her." Voirrey's mouth pursed so hard her lips turned pale. "Hope you've got the stomach for it, soldier, because you won't get any answers from me without making one hell of a mess."
"I'm not here to hurt you," he told her, biting back his aversion for this doctor. This so-called friend, who'd made Joy walk the wastes alone. "I'm here because Joy needs your help, Doctor Voirrey." And you bloody well owe her that.
◆◆◆
"I can't do this."
Under different circumstances, Voirrey might've impressed him. Fifteen minutes in her company had made clear that she was no-nonsense compressed into compact human form. Under different circumstances, he might've felt sympathy when her voice finally cracked.
"You will do it." Patting her back was out of the question; a stern glare and conviction in his voice were all he had the time or energy for.
Voirrey had made the requested arrangements and now busied herself tidying the clinic. Strange, because the two-room shed didn't look like anyone had made an effort to keep it clean for quite some time. Cassimer had cut his way inside through a back wall, entering the clinic through a storage room black with mould. Voirrey's assistant lay in there, bound and gagged among crust-topped waste buckets. The clinic was no better. A rusted oil drum overflowed with soiled rags, and the sink - before Voirrey had started scrubbing it - had been caked with ruddy grease. The examination table was dotted with dead insects. The notion that the state of the clinic reflected the doctor's state of mind had occurred to Cassimer. A cause for concern, as was her sudden cleaning frenzy. He didn't need much from Voirrey, but he did need her to act natural.
"Relax," he told her. "How much longer until he comes?"
Voirrey shrugged, and he supposed it didn't matter. Too bloody long was the truth of it. Seconds ticked past on his HUD, tracking time as it marched towards the inevitable. Failure. Death. An unexpected development to derail his plans. Something always happened - that was the nature of the job, and the measure of the soldier his ability to adapt and adjust.
In that, Cassimer had always excelled, but the night before, in the alley with his Morrigan pressed to his temple, he had forced himself together. He had made himself into a rigid shape, unbending and unflinching, focused only on the parameters of his mission. If he was asked to flex, he thought he might break.
"Do nothing out of the ordinary. As soon as you've finished, you can leave."
"Leave?" She turned. Her hands dripped water on the metal floor, a loud pattering of droplets that made Cassimer's stim-flooded nerves twinge. A foaming smear of soap-suds clung to her left cheek. Endearing, if he still had the patience for such things. "A lovely enough euphemism, but let's not lie to one another, Commander. I'll do this for you, and then I expect you'll..." She lifted two fingers to her temple and mimicked the sound of gunfire.
"For someone who's never met a Primaterre before, you have a very low opinion of us." Hard to let go of that pride. No matter what lies the Primaterre fed its people, he had seen its achievements firsthand. If he was a slave, then he was a slave to the greatest empire ever built. "I've no cause to harm you, Doctor Voirrey."
"RebEarth are still here. I could run straight to them and tell them about you. I could raise the alarms and let every soul in Nexus know." The doctor wiped her hands on her coat. Arms crossed defensively, she glared at him. This was a woman who'd rather be right than alive.
"You could," he said, "but it would be too late."
"Too late for what?"
The question had too many possible answers, and so he remained silent behind the protection of his visor and waited. Watched the doctor scrub both sink and hands raw. Watched the seconds go by. Checked in with the team. Their positions were no more enviable than his - at least he waited within four walls. Lucklaw, Florey and Hopewell hid in the heart of Nexus, on rooftops and in alleys, and he knew how hard that could be. To watch people pass you by without noticing - as if you were a ghost - knowing that soon you'd be taking the lives of some of those people, or lose your own. Easy for the darkness to settle in then, finding a foothold in a mind busy with nothing but its churning self.
Leadership courses had attempted to train him for such moments. The futility had been obvious from the start - nothing taught in a classroom could prepare one for the pressure and stress of the field - but now the pointlessness was even more clear. Remind them of purity, he'd been taught. Remind them of the Primaterre. Remind them of the corruption we fight to keep at bay. The worthless advice had become utterly false.
Instead, he asked for updates and reminded them of their orders and instructions. Hoped that they would understand what lay beneath the words; that he cared. That bringing them all home safe was still part of his mission. That they were his brothers and sisters, though he couldn't say that any more than he'd been able to tell Joy how he felt.
Then his HUD flashed a warning and there was no more time for talking, no more time for thinking.
"Scarsdale's coming," Voirrey whispered. Eyes wide, hands visibly trembling. Soap-suds made a landscape of frothing clouds on the floor.
"You know what to do." He moved to slip into the backroom. Walls and shadows couldn't hide him from a cataphract, but Scarsdale was only a pretender.
Voirrey nodded, but - Earth have mercy - she was on the verge of tears.
"Don't be afraid," he said. She gave him a scornful look and he understood, too late, that her hands weren't trembling with fear, but restrained rage. She wasn't afraid of Scarsdale; she was afraid for him. Seven months on Cato, bereaved and alone, and Doctor Voirrey had finally found somebody to comfort her. Somebody to - oh hell - somebody to be what Joy was to him.
"He is already dying." Not much consolation, but what else could he say? Couldn't turn from this path now, no matter what continuing would do to Voirrey.
"We're all dying, Commander. It's how we live that matters."
◆◆◆
Cassimer listen
ed from the backroom as Voirrey and Scarsdale exchanged pleasantries. Hard to understand what the doctor saw in the man - hearing his voice, guttural and lisping, was enough to get a sense of his condition. Tooth loss. Oral lesions. A tongue that was more tumour than healthy tissue. Cassimer had seen worse, but rarely anything as protracted as this.
Still, Scarsdale's personality seemed unchanged. He joked with Voirrey, even made her laugh in a manner that was either genuine or incredible acting, and had a few things to say about the Primaterre, too.
"A couple of farm boys came in through the tunnels the other day, in real bad shape. Enough shrapnel in one of them that he looked more porcupine than human."
"Need me to take a look at them?"
"Captain opted for a quicker fix. Don't know how deep this undercity of yours goes, but I reckon it's far enough they're not much more than smears on the floor."
"What on earth did you do that for?" Voirrey's voice turned discordant. Something clattered onto the floor and Scarsdale swore.
"Hell, Susan, don't take it out on me. Can't afford to lose another finger now that we're so close to our prey. Besides," he said, churlishly, "we did shoot them first."
"How kind of you."
"Don't be like that when I'm trying to bring you good news. All I wanted to do was cheer you up, yeah, maybe put a smile on your face?"
A few moments of silence passed. When Scarsdale spoke again, it was with some degree of self-satisfaction. Perhaps he'd got the smile he wanted, although Cassimer found that hard to believe. The man was a monster, inside and out.
"Anyway, they would've declined your treatments. When we found them, they were trying to patch themselves up with lichen. Claimed the red would save them. I reckon that's why the captain had them killed - like you, he's not one for the hocus-pocus. Besides, who cares? These locals are all a bunch of lunatics if you ask me."
"Yes," said Voirrey, with some hesitation. She had been in Nexus a long time. Long enough for the whispers to take root? Cassimer had seen no sign of madness in her, but on Cato, it was hard to tell. "Now, hold still. I'm out of the usual medication, but this'll do the trick all the same. Might make you drowsy, though, so don't worry if you start to feel sleepy."
Scarsdale grumbled in response. "As long as it doesn't last too long. Captain wants us on the next train out. The farm boys told us they were injured during an assault on the Primo base." He laughed. "Imagine that - a bunch of rubes with pitchforks going after those abominations? I'm surprised any of them made it out alive. Good thing they did, though, because thanks to them, we have the location of that base. You'll want to keep an eye on the eastern horizon, because when we hit them, there's going to be one hell of a fireworks show."
Scarsdale ran his impure tongue for another few minutes before his speech began to slur. Then, mid-sentence, he fell silent.
"It's done." Voirrey appeared in the doorway.
"You should get out of here."
"What about Sumner?" She nodded towards her assistant. He'd regained consciousness and was staring up at Cassimer with dishwater grey indifference.
Cassimer unsheathed his knife and Voirrey drew a rasping breath.
"Go, quickly, the both of you." He cut through Sumner's bonds and the man slithered away, crawling on all fours towards Voirrey, who helped him to his feet. One last look of hatred from the doctor - and then the two of them were gone, the door slamming shut.
The clinic was silent, empty but for shadows and monsters.
◆◆◆
Scarsdale filled the clinic to the brim. Red-painted pauldrons scraped the ceiling. The golden thread of ballistic fibres glittered underneath laminar trauma plates. The floor tiles buckled underneath heavy sabatons and dismounted autocannons. Light filtered in through barred windows, dappling the distressed grey of the Ereshkigal suit.
But inside the shell of titanium and composites lay something altogether more vulnerable. Scarsdale had removed his cuirass so that Voirrey could treat him, and opened his visor so that he might - what - smile at her? Stupid, said Cassimer's training. Worth it, whispered his lingering regret.
Scarsdale's chest heaved at irregular intervals, an equally irregular heartbeat pounding against fragmenting ribs. Blistered eyelids swelled and stretched over silver eyes. Scarsdale would still be able to see, if a digitised image of sensory input processed by augments could be called seeing. Voirrey's limited supply of pharmaceuticals wouldn't have been enough to kill the man, and the Ereshkigal suit would've detected and countered fatal levels of any substance entering its user's bloodstream. Putting the man to sleep had been the best option. Death would have to come the only way it ever came to cataphracts - ugly and brutal.
Sound-dampening fields on full, Cassimer made his approach.
His thermal knife glowed with heat. Its point, white phosphorus bright, slid towards Andrew Scarsdale's temple. A cleaner death that the RebEarther deserved. A cleaner death than poor Captain de Bracy, a thousand times the man Scarsdale was, had suffered.
Scarsdale opened his silver eyes. Instinct hit before the fear, and Cassimer drove the knife hard towards the man's skull. Scarsdale grabbed his wrist and twisted hard. Cassimer, knowing better than to struggle against an Ereshkigal suit, went limp. The knife clattered to the floor.
"I thought you bastards were supposed to be fast." Scarsdale opened his mouth in a wide and toothless grin. The automatic defences were flooding his system with stims. The suit was making its user battle-ready.
"You wanted to see me, Scarsdale. Here I am." Cassimer gritted his teeth as the bones in his wrist began to vibrate with pressure.
"Damn straight I want to see you. All of you, inside and out. Let's crack that shell of yours, yes?" Scarsdale's left gauntlet clamped down on Cassimer's face and squeezed. "It's going to be a good day, Primo. Well - not for you. Ouch - that was a nasty crack - bone?"
No; a section of his bracer splintering and caving into muscle and tissue. Hurt all the same, too much to hold back the groan.
Scarsdale laughed. "Let's say that one was for dear Doctor Voirrey. Typical Primo, thinking authority is a thing to wield like a bludgeon; that a non-citizen is someone to boss around. But guess what, Primo, some of us have principles. Some of us don't even budge when a gun is pressed against our backs."
Hairline cracks zigzagged across Cassimer's visor. I just repaired this helmet was the first irrational thought. The second less a thought than a memory; Joy, watching him repair it. He held onto that as the helmet creaked under the mounting pressure. His temples throbbed, so loud he could barely hear Scarsdale's jeering voice, so loud he could barely focus - but there it was. The handle of his thermal knife, and his fingers closed around it, and he didn't need to see to gut a man. Paper-thin skin split and soft things came tumbling out, coiling around his wrist. The knife met bone and he plunged it deep. A quick command to his suit, and its protection field flared, electricity arcing across his arm and into the knife, sparking and crackling at the core of Scarsdale's being.
Not enough to kill the man, but enough for him to lose his grip. Cassimer wrenched himself free, stumbling to his feet on the ichor-slicked floor. The Ereshkigal armour hissed and clicked as it repaired and compensated, deploying filaments and armies of nanites into Scarsdale's body. As far as it was concerned, its user was fit to fight.
But Scarsdale was slack-jawed with shock. Gauntlets scooped up fistfuls of innards to stuff them back in, but they slipped between his clumsy metal fingers. For two weeks he'd been slowly dying. Perhaps he had accepted that fact, or perhaps he had denied it - either way, he had reached the point of no return. The suit would keep him alive for as long as it could, but no longer as a man. He had been reduced to a component in a war machine.
If only Voirrey had done what Cassimer had asked. If only this could've been avoided. Morrigan in one hand and thermal knife in the other, he braced himself for the real fight.
◆◆◆
The number one reason cataphracts were hard to kill was
that very few people lived long enough to find their weak spots.
They had them, of course. Everything did. That was something every cataphract learned early on: there is nothing, no matter how large or terrifying, that cannot be destroyed. Vehicles, ships, cities - worlds. None of these things were impervious, and -
"Neither are you, lad." A memory, delivered in Ullapool's granite rumble. "You're going to go out there and wreak havoc and the universe will bow at your feet. You will feel like a bloody god, but let me tell you this: all the real gods are dead. And so will you be - sooner than you'd like, if you don't learn to respect destruction."
Cataphracts learned how to destroy and how to be destroyed, and their strength and might made them all the more anxious. A mortal man had no choice to accept and embrace the inevitability of death, but a man who knew himself to be nigh-invincible was often prone to obsess over the 'nigh'. And so it was that cataphract ships always flew in the shadow of death. Their every thought and conversation revolved around discovering weakness, so that it may be analysed and amended. Their every moment was spent repairing and improving their suits and bodies alike. In the quiet bowels of their transport ships, they'd sit side by side, each soldier focused on achieving transcendence. Steel without, purity within. The heralds of death, others called them, but in truth, nobody feared death more than a cataphract.
Cassimer, who'd feared worse than death, had been an exception to that rule. But when his visor had splintered and he'd thought of Joy, he'd understood that he now fought for something more than motto and ideal, more than purity. Something that was flesh and breath and beating heart, all the light of a star inside a single person.
And with that newfound fear, he made his first attempt at close-quarters-combat. This was the second reason cataphracts were hard to kill: they were vulnerable to melee more than anything, but nobody in their right mind would want to go toe-to-toe with one. Scarsdale blocked, the thermal knife slicing through the exterior layer of trauma plates, and drove his fist into Cassimer's abdomen. As he staggered, Scarsdale threw him clear through the clinic wall.
