Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  "Negative." Albany coughed. The crackling over the channel wasn't all static. A fire blazed somewhere near her position. "Shuttle went down. The lightning... shit. Cassimer, you son of a bitch, you were right."

  "Albany, you need to put out the fire."

  "Fire? How did you know?" She coughed again, and a good minute passed before she spoke. "I've got... I'm pinned to my seat, got a piece of rebar through my guts And Halliday... oh stars, there's bit of his skull in my lap." Her voice quivered. "I'm dying here. Need assistance."

  Cassimer glanced at Lucklaw's screens. The storm still raged; temperatures dipping towards fifty degrees below zero. There would be no rescue party, not for hours yet.

  "You need to secure your ship, Captain. Rhys; advise her."

  "Don't pull out the rebar. Cut it off if you can, otherwise try to pull it from the chair. Your suit can dispense pharmaceuticals, yes?"

  "Already took every damn painkiller it had."

  "Now take some stims." Rhys ran down a list of adrenaline and focus-boosting drugs. Briefly, he muted the channel and looked at Cassimer. "This is going to kill her, Commander. The combination of drugs alone will cause kidney failure, but the increased blood flow will get her long before then."

  "She's already dead. The shuttle needn't suffer the same fate."

  ◆◆◆

  In the habitat's glossy surface, Cassimer could see reflections of past failures. A scar across the bridge of his nose, another running down the side of his neck. Dark eyes, deep and cold as the void of space. A stranger's eyes, and the more he looked at them, the more he wondered if they were his own at all.

  "Albany." The channel was private now, the conversation between him and the captain alone. "Do you see the panel?"

  Guided by Rhys, Albany had managed to free herself from her seat. Things had come pouring out and she'd started to panic, but Cassimer had told her to focus on the mission; that everything would be fine as long as she could reach the manual emergency override and put out the fire. The shuttle should have suppressed the fire automatically - the fact that it hadn't spoke volumes. Albany might have set it down in one piece, but the damage would be extensive. Perhaps irreparable.

  Even so, there was valuable tech and equipment aboard. Potential survivors too - beyond the navigator's grisly fate, Albany didn't know the status of Exeter or the rest of her crew.

  "Crawling towards it. Almost there. Feels like this should hurt a lot more than it does." The sentence ended in a giggle. The combination of drugs in her system had made her giddy. She coughed. "Hard to breathe in all this smoke."

  "Close your visor; use your suit's oxygen." Basic instructions, the sort of things he might expect to tell a child, not a military aviator. But such was the end. He'd seen wiser and more experienced people than Albany need step-by-step instruction on how to pull the pin on their last grenade; on where to aim their gun and how to squeeze the trigger. The dying mind shed reason.

  His own most recent near-death experience was still fresh in his mind. Lungs pounding against shattered bone. Heavy blood loss leaving him feeling empty. The screaming in his ears as his teammates called for medevac. Maybe there had been something he could've done to help; some medical protocol he could've activated. He could even have triggered his kill switch code, ending his suffering and preventing his teammates needlessly endangering themselves while attempting to rescue him.

  Instead, he'd lost himself in the memory of a smell. Chemical floor cleaner and new boots. Sea-breeze detergent and the hot tang of blood. Gunpowder, almost as acrid as the stench of urine. Many smells, but in his memory they united as one: the smell of hiding. Dying in the burning ruins of a city, he'd thought only of hiding underneath a bunk and listening to the sounds of killing. Fragments of memories. A stack of magazines on the floor. A deck of cards stashed between the mattress and the bed frame. An old piece of gum with somebody's fingerprint perfectly preserved in its centre. His fingers, bleeding on the floor as clawing hands pulled him out from under the bunk. It was into that darkness he had fallen as tendons snapped and tissue tore. He'd tried to perceive, to be aware, but the fear he had learned as a boy had bloomed wild and uncontrollable.

  Whatever memories now burned in Albany's mind, turning logic and reason to ash, he hoped they were better than his own.

  "I hear you placed first in the Lysander Air Races last year. Compared to that, this should be easy." Leadership training had taught him this: bring up something personal to anchor the soldier in the moment. Remind them of their achievements. Remain calm. Merits, sports trophies, scholarships - all the trivial things that might seem relevant in the classroom, but felt utterly hollow on the battlefield.

  "Didn't take you for a racing fan, Cassimer." Her voice echoed, but sounded less hoarse. He supposed she'd followed his advice on the visor.

  "It's in your file," he admitted. He had visited Lysander, but hadn't had a chance to see either a race or its famous frozen oceans; the mission had been a nocturnal dip into arctic terrain, as bloody as it had been brief. If it weren't for overhearing other soldiers - Hopewell in particular - he wouldn't even have known that the Lysander Air Races were a big deal.

  Albany laughed. "Well, you're honest, I'll give you that. But not very good at this."

  "At what?"

  "The 'you are about to die but please don't cause a fuss' speech. Yeah, captains have to take that leadership course too. Pointless, really - as a pilot, you tend to land safely or take everybody with you in a ball of flames. Little use for pep talks. Tell me, does it work?"

  The addition of fresh oxygen had made Albany significantly more talkative. Not necessarily a good thing.

  "Sometimes."

  "But not always?"

  "No." That was all he wished to say on the subject. The ash was home not just to the worming fear, but other things too. Things best left shapeless and undisturbed.

  "I wonder, what do you - hang on. Hitting the switch now." A minute passed. The only sounds over the comms were the occasional moan and grunt. "All right. Emergency systems engaged. The fires should be put out soon, but stars, I'm bleeding like a pig."

  "Outstanding, Albany."

  "Whatever. Spare me the cheer, and don't bother telling me that the Primaterre appreciates my service or any of that shit. I joined up because I wanted to fly, that's all. But you can tell, can't you? From the moment we met, you've worn this disapproving frown. Like I'm not up to your precious standards. Well, fuck you. We can't all be true believers and paragons of purity."

  "Albany -"

  "Don't interrupt a dying woman. I have a question for you, paragon - what do you think happens next?"

  Easy question; with an answer he could pull straight from doctrine and regulation. "Once you've been confirmed KIA with Bastion, a vial of your blood will be dispatched to Earth. When the seasons shift and the new harvest rises, your essence will live again in every -"

  "Yeah, thanks, I know that crap - although you do say it like you believe it. That's nice. But what I meant was, what about our souls? Where do they end up?"

  Difficult question. Doctrine offered no help, for the existence of an afterlife had yet to be scientifically proven. That demons corrupted souls was fact, and many found comfort in that proof of the spiritual. Albany might, too - but a dying mind was a vulnerable target. The corruption could be reaching for her now, eager to snatch her soul and defile her physical vessel.

  "A sky, perhaps," he said, imagining an endless span for Albany's rebellious spirit to roam.

  There was no response, only the faint hissing of fire suppressant foam. Was it over? Had the pilot drawn her last breath? He thought of her cocksure behaviour and her foul mouth, and the way her hair refused to stay neat, and still the loss stung.

  "Albany?"

  "Still here." But only just, by the sounds of it. "I was just thinking..."

  "Yes?"

  "That maybe you're not an asshole after all. But that was just the drugs talking." She laughed. "Nice to know
you've still got an imagination, though. Not completely battle-damaged. Good that you're the one here with me. Dying in the company of friends is too messy. Too weepy. No reason death can't be a professional affair. I wouldn't mind a song though. Something to put me to sleep."

  Cassimer called up the list of tracks stored in his primer. "Do you like Neave Crescent Creek?"

  "Should've figured you'd be into that old-world style of music. Got that country boy look about you. Sure, play it."

  He did, and when the music died down, there was only silence on the channel. Cassimer switched it off. His reflection hadn't changed, and that seemed strange to him, as though every failure should leave a scar.

  8. Cassimer

  A forest of lightning glass had shot up overnight. Hopewell navigated the Epona between the darkly gleaming formations, opaque branches scraping armoured coachwork.

  Progress was slow. Slower than Cassimer had hoped; much slower than Hopewell wanted. Vitreous crust cracked and crumbled underneath the vehicle's wheels as they struggled to find traction. Cassimer had twice been forced to step out to give the Epona a push. He'd prefer not to have to do it again. Out there, brittle darkness had surrounded him on all sides. Twisting branches had warped his reflection, as though some laughing thing inside the glass mimicked his shape.

  Fulgurite was a natural phenomenon, but on Cato's plains, it looked like corruption. When the winds swept through, they wailed and keened. He had never seen Xanthe, the world where the demons had first appeared, but he imagined it much like this.

  "I've got a signal." Lucklaw wasn't specialised, but seemed to have some affinity with tech work. Good enough for Cassimer to assign him Copenhagen's duties - no potential was too small to squander.

  "Are you sure?" Hopewell snarled. "Because I'm not in the mood for another twenty-mile detour."

  "Look, I'm sorry. It's this planet. It's havoc on the scanners. Ghost signals, disturbances, interference - you name it. But I'm pretty sure the scanners are picking up a Primaterre emergency transmission."

  "Fifteen miles east of our location." Cassimer pulled up the provisional map Copenhagen had drawn up based on topographical data. Much of it was obsolete - the intense storms had transformed plains into steep hills, and through the fulgurite, they'd spotted rusting ruins excavated by the storm. "Weather's good. Got plenty of daytime. Any activity reported by the drones?"

  Nearly all the drones had been caught in the storm. Lucklaw had set up intersecting figure eight routes for the remaining two, to cover as much ground as possible.

  "All clear, Commander."

  "All right. Hopewell, you've got the coordinates. Take us there."

  Space was tight inside the vehicle. The Epona class armoured vehicle was designed to carry a crew of three - driver, and two gunners. Though it was intended for scouting rather than combat, it normally had a sizable arsenal, but Cassimer had ordered the mounted artillery dismantled. To recover survivors before it was too late - and to escape sudden storms - the Epona needed to be as light and fast as possible.

  Beyond the fulgurite forest, metal glinted in the dunes. Wreckage lay scattered for miles, but tendrils of black smoke marked the main site of impact. Scorched and crumpled, the shuttle sat in the centre of a smouldering crater.

  They parked the Epona at the crater's edge and approached. Melted glass clung to their boots in quivering strands.

  Lucklaw opened the airlock. Smoke billowed out, briefly swallowing the corporal.

  "I'll patch into the comms systems to boost my sensors." Lucklaw sounded eager, like he was taking to his new role. A fine thing when a soldier found his calling, but a shame when it happened like this.

  "Lucklaw, with me to the cockpit. Rhys, Hopewell, check the stern and lower deck."

  His suit lights flickered on. Scorch marks blackened the walls. Foam sloshed around his boots, stained maroon with ash and blood. Excluding the navigator, and the two engineers left with Copenhagen, Albany had commanded a crew of three. One could already be accounted for - and not as a survivor.

  One of the gunners, judging by his uniform. Cassimer couldn't recall the man's name; could barely remember his face - and now there was nothing much left to remind him. He'd been strapped in when the ship crashed, but his seat had been thrown loose in the impact. His position - broken neck and spine - indicated that he had died long before the flames had eaten his face.

  Small mercies. A soldier should be thankful for them, aware at all times that the universe was not merciful.

  They found the captain and her navigator in the cockpit.

  Albany had bled to death. The best possible outcome for her, Rhys had said, and maybe he'd been right. She did look at peace, one corner of her mouth curving with a smile. The suppressant foam was pink and bloated where it had absorbed her blood.

  Lucklaw retched - tried to cover it up by pretending to cough - and then he wrenched his helmet off and threw up in a corner.

  "Stars." He averted his gaze from the navigator, whose death had been as swift as it was messy. Part of the shuttle's instrument console had embedded itself in his seat, crushing the man. "Apologies, Commander."

  "Put your helmet back on. There are high levels of toxicity in the air." Best to ignore the corporal's embarrassment; to pretend like it hadn't happened. "The comms system looks operational. See what you can do."

  Abandoning the shuttle was out of the question - Primaterre technology could not be allowed to fall into the hands of local scavengers. Flying it back to base looked increasingly unlikely. Suddenly Albany's smile seemed more mocking than peaceful, and the old familiar annoyance bubbled up inside of him.

  This is what heroics gets you. Death, and a huge mess left behind for everyone else. Thanks a lot, Albany.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to stop, to swallow the bitter taste. Dishonouring the dead was below him. Breathe. Perceive. Accept the facts.

  At the back of the shuttle, any hope of recovering the shuttle lay dead with the rest of its crew. Exeter, too, lay lifeless on the floor.

  "All dead?"

  Rhys, kneeling over Exeter's body, looked up. "Afraid so, Commander."

  Cassimer clenched his fists, resisting the urge to curse. "Right. Strip the dead and the ship of anything useful. Hopewell, I need you to set charges."

  "We're scuttling her?"

  "Got no choice. Our best option now is to recover the comms array. Copenhagen said it would enable long-range communications. Once we've located our objective and completed our mission, we'll call in and request extraction."

  A sound plan in theory, limiting the risk to the team, but when Hopewell started placing explosives, the plan began to feel more like a trap. They'd be stuck on Cato for as long as it took to complete the mission. If they were out of contact long enough, Bastion would send another team, but it wasn't unusual for teams on exo-missions to go silent for extended periods of time. It'd be months before Bastion would even start to feel nervous. And spending months on this desolate world?

  Cassimer looked out over the plains and felt deep in his soul that this was not a planet as much as it was a graveyard.

  ◆◆◆

  The Epona was packed and ready to go when Lucklaw caught trace of another emergency transmission.

  "A secure Primaterre connection. I think it's the other Poney."

  "Commander -"

  "Let's go," Cassimer said, interrupting Hopewell before she could launch into an impassioned plea. They'd check it out; of course they would. If Florey was alive, every second counted. But while the drones reported nothing but clear skies, something didn't sit right. A tingle down his spine. Static where his stubble brushed the inside of his helmet. A feeling that he was making the same mistake Albany had.

  They bundled into the salvage-cramped Epona and set off across the plain as a series of explosions painted the rear view orange. The shuttle burned along with its crew and their chaplain; a funeral pyre large enough to veil the sky black.

  Hopewell pu
shed the Epona to its rattling limit, going so fast that when the second vehicle appeared, half-buried in dust, they nearly clipped it.

  Before Cassimer had even unbuckled his own straps, Hopewell was climbing out of the vehicle and racing towards the other.

  They were in a canyon, where the landscape lay in perpetual shadow. The ruins of a factory - little more than a pile of bricks and corroding cranes - cast long shadows to the west. The plateau where Copenhagen had set up the beacon was only a few kilometres away. Fulgurite grew thick on the lower slopes, and he watched through the scope of his rifle as rivers of fine dust hissed between the dark glass trunks.

  Regret struck, hard and bitter. Copenhagen had evaluated the location from a comms specialist's perspective, making her choice based on what would best serve her tech. He should've asked her to re-evaluate, to pick somewhere that was perhaps less ideal for the mission, but also less dangerous.

  Life as a cataphract had taught him to see the bigger picture and how to manouvre all the pieces into place, but it hadn't prepared him for how fragile some pieces could be. How easily a perfectly arranged picture could be disturbed, once a soldier stepped out of their mobile fortress.

  He couldn't undo the mistakes, but he could do better. He would be his team's truth and their clarity, and he would be their unassailable castle.

  "He's alive!" Hopewell's transmission came as a burst of cheer over the team channel.

  Leaving Lucklaw to watch the perimeter, Cassimer went to the Epona. It looked intact, but for a few scorch marks. Florey sat unresponsive in the driver's seat, and Hopewell was unclipping his harness for Rhys to get better access.

  "How is he?"

  "Core body temperature at 20 degrees centigrade. I've dealt with the arrhythmia for now, but it is imperative to bring his temperature back up as soon as possible," said Rhys. "We need to get him back to base."

  "Hopewell, is this Epona functional?"

  "Yes, commander. Lightning fried a few systems, but I can patch round them. If we dig her out, she's good to go."