Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  Too much.

  "Lucklaw, how long to move the array?"

  "Hours, Commander."

  "All right. Can't abandon base. Need to sweep the building and ensure it remains standing. Florey, Rhys - with me. Hopewell, stay with Lucklaw and the array."

  "The state you're in, you're not going anywhere, Commander." The soldier with the golden cross on his cuirass spoke up. "Hopewell's fine - a sprained ankle and a few bruises won't slow her down."

  Cassimer's gaze darkened briefly as a beat of silence passed between the two men. A power struggle, Joy thought - perhaps the commander was not in command of all things. "Fine, Rhys. Be quick about it."

  "Take a seat." Rhys pointed to a sheltered spot behind a concrete block. "You - what's your name? Joy? If the commander's to get his wish, I'll need assistance."

  ◆◆◆

  Cassimer removed his helmet. The left side of his face lay in ruins, deep gashes cut from jaw to cheekbone.

  "Open the med kit," Rhys instructed Joy, as he busied himself plucking chunks of molten visor from the commander's face. Globs of tissue came away with each, and Cassimer inhaled sharply.

  "Don't be a baby, Commander," said Rhys, glibly and entirely unfairly. The pain had to be unbearable, especially now that Cassimer's adrenaline was crashing. The brightness in his eyes was fading and his body no longer trembled with intensity, but shock.

  The med kit was a black box emblazoned with the sun and golden cross. Compartments of medical equipment nestled inside, some of the items foreign; some very familiar.

  "If it weren't for all the stims in your system I could allow you more anaesthetics, so if it hurts, you'd do well to remember that you brought it on yourself."

  "Just get on with it," Cassimer said, his voice a low growl.

  "I'm working as fast as I can. Joy, get the med kit open yet? Inside you'll find gloves..." He trailed off as he saw that she was already wearing them. "Good. Now what I need you to do is to clean the commander's face and apply the staunching pads. You done this before?"

  A question so absurd she almost laughed.

  "No. I used to work a lab assistant. Spend enough time in that sort of environment, and hygiene becomes reflex."

  "Lab assistant? Interesting."

  She couldn't tell whether Rhys was sincere or not. Judging by the way he spoke to the commander, she wouldn't put sarcasm past him.

  Deep furrows had been ploughed into Cassimer's face, deep enough that she could see the pale glint of bone - or teeth - beneath the blood.

  Oh my god. I can't do this. I can't even look at it.

  But she had to do it, and had to do it quick. Maybe if she pretended like it was just another day in the lab, only instead of pineapples, she was working on a man. Epidermis, dermis, hypodermis. Cold and clinical words to make it less horrific.

  But no - that was the wrong approach. Better to remind herself that Cassimer was a human being; a person in need of her help. A man without whom she'd have been carried deep underground.

  "This is going to hurt," she warned. He looked at her then, and for the first time, she saw a hint of a smile in his eyes.

  "Not compared to what this butcher's doing," he said, indicating Rhys.

  "And not compared to last month's little mishap," Rhys said. "At least this time your limbs are all still attached to the appropriate sockets."

  "Don't tell me you make a habit of getting injured?" She tried to keep her tone light as she gently cleaned the wounds, laying bare the horror. Teeth, not bone, glimpsed through torn tissue. Cold sweat pearled at her nape, and maybe her nausea was evident on her face, because Cassimer placed his gauntleted hand on hers. He held it there for a moment, warmth flowing from his armour to her skin.

  "So much for doctor-patient confidentiality. You're making me look bad, Rhys."

  "The shrapnel in your face is making you look bad." Rhys yanked the last blackened shard from Cassimer's cheekbone. "Keep pressure on those wounds while I prep the reconstruction strips. Joy, in the med kit there's a small black case of vials. I'm going to need one - preferably one labelled with the commander's name."

  A small black case. He couldn't have settled for a worse description - the med kit (itself a black case) was cluttered with them. She opened box after box, and third was not the charm, but the seventh contained rows and rows of delicate vials filled with dark red liquid. It looked like blood, but the vials were so small it didn't seem like it would be enough to do much of anything. She searched them with trembling hands, squinting to read the tiny labels. Hopewell, I. Lucklaw, A. Exeter, S. Familiar names mixed with the unfamiliar, and she wondered how many Primaterre soldiers were actually on Cato.

  "This?" She pulled out a darkly gleaming vial. Its label read Cassimer, C.

  Rhys glanced over his shoulder and nodded. "Hold onto it for a second."

  Torn foil sachets littered the ground around him. Thin strips of a gauze-like material hung over his wrist, and he began to apply them one by one to Cassimer's wounds. Once finished, Rhys took out a small bottle from one of his belt pouches and sprayed the strips.

  The gauze began to melt, merging with skin and tissue, covering the wounds with a plastic sheen. The commander made no sound, but his lips twisted sharply. Whatever this treatment was, it was far from painless.

  "Vial."

  Joy handed it to the medic, who used a jet injector to administer it into the commander's neck.

  "Done?" Cassimer asked.

  "As good as it's going to get. I'd ask you to take it easy to avoid tearing the new tissue before it's fully formed, but what would be the point? You're cleared for duty."

  "You're going back out there?" Joy gave Cassimer a concerned look. It seemed to her it would be safer for everyone if he stayed.

  "Of course he is. This is the commander's favourite part, flooding his system with stims, getting ready to go. Quite the rush, isn't it, commander?"

  Rhys's tone was a surprise, but what he was saying wasn't. The brightness she'd seen in Cassimer's eyes - his intensity - had been more than just adrenaline and training. She could see it returning now, fatigue and shock washed from his face.

  Cassimer wordlessly shoved his helmet back on and leaned towards Joy, so close that her skin tingled, anticipating a whisper - and then she heard the electric whir of the manacle snapping shut. She pulled her arm away, too late. Chained again, this time to a rusted railing.

  "For your own safety," he said, but there was a touch of reluctance in his voice, and she understood why. If the building did collapse - if more drifters attacked - if the force field failed - if she was abandoned in the cold - then the chains would be the death of her.

  "I don't think you should've cleared him for duty," she said as Cassimer disappeared into the stairwell. "And I don't think you should be speaking to him like that, either. Is that how you usually address your superiors?"

  "Only the ones I give two shits about." Rhys, shaking his head, began to pack up the medical kit. "Any of that blood yours?"

  Her borrowed t-shirt was tacky with gore. Bits of bone - and other things - stuck to it, and she had to peel the cotton from her skin. Tiny beads of blood grew from the shallow crescent cut across her abdomen. She showed it to Rhys, who gave a disinterested shrug.

  "A scratch. You'll live."

  "That's it? You're not going to treat it? Not so much as a plaster?"

  He snapped the locks on the med kit shut. "The commander's close encounter with a landmine netted him a bill in the region of thirty-seven thousand merits. How many merits do you have?"

  "None." Or so she assumed. She'd left her Kirkclair bank account with a balance of 238 pounds, and Cato's economy, such as it was, ran on barter and payment in kind. If merits were currency, it was not one with which Joy was familiar.

  "Tough luck, because in the Primaterre Protectorate, you get what you earn."

  17. Joy

  "I say we drive out there and raze the farm to the ground." Hopewell had made the same point seve
ral times. Her outrage cut through the cubicle wall with knife's edge sharpness.

  After three freezing hours on the roof, Cassimer had returned, the other soldiers in tow, and with that strange, drug-fuelled gleam in his eye, he'd declared the building cleared. The habitat lay in partial ruin, but the commander's quarters were intact - and so Joy once more found herself chained to his bed. She'd rubbed her face raw, using the few clean spots of her t-shirt, but nothing could scrub off the crawling sense of violation. The drifter had spat at her. He had looked at her like she was nothing, and he had spat in her face.

  She'd been a person once. Not a very important one, but a person nonetheless. Cato had reduced her to an object to be beaten, spat and trod upon - or chained. Irrelevant; a speck of dust in an infinite universe, robbed of even the illusion that she might matter.

  Cheer up, Joy. This isn't like you.

  Imaginary Finn was right, and that was the worst part. She didn't want this. She never wallowed; she focused on the positive. She worked through problems and got on with it, no matter what. Harder on Cato than it had been on Mars, but even now there were good things to focus on. She was still alive, for starters. She had a warm blanket and time to rest.

  The soldiers had been allowed no such respite. They'd set to work immediately, securing the perimeter first, and then moving onto clearing rubble and rebuilding the habitat. The surrounding brick building had sustained enough damage that additional supports were required to keep it standing, and the ceiling vibrated every now and then as repairs were being done on the floor above.

  "I agree with Hopewell. It's a matter of principle," said the tech officer, Lucklaw. Through the transparent cubicle wall, Joy could just about see him, hunched in the blue glow of monitors.

  "If our intel on Cato is on target, we've already neutralised one percent of the population. Add the farm to that and you're looking at five, maybe six percent - edging into purge numbers. Are you really prepared to do that?" Rhys's voice was barely audible over the sound of concrete dragged across the floor.

  "Why not? The locals are endangering the mission. Endangering us. Our orders state -"

  "I know our orders, Corporal. I also know that out of the one percent we've killed, you've pulled the trigger on exactly zero - which, coincidentally, is also the amount of weight your opinion carries. Especially when we're talking the wholesale slaughter of civilians."

  "Look, I'm just saying, we wouldn't even need to get our hands dirty. The Eponas have enough firepower to flatten the farm from a distance. It's the tactical choice - don't you agree, Commander?"

  Joy waited nervously for Cassimer's answer. She could sympathise with the tech officer's point of view - spend enough time on Cato and anybody would want to firebomb it - but sympathy was not the same as agreement.

  "Array provide any useful data yet?" Cassimer's voice. Avoiding the question, huh? So much for hoping that the commander would turn out to be as honourable as he looked.

  "No, Commander." Lucklaw sounded disappointed, perhaps at the change of topic.

  "Problem with the beam expander?"

  "No, Commander, it's working fine. Got the array up and running without issue."

  Another item to add to her short list of Good Things. Whatever came next, she really hoped it wasn't more errands.

  "The interference we've been experiencing isn't just due to the electrical storms like we assumed. It's like there are thousands of transmitters broadcasting out there. Kind of spooky - like the city got buried but civilisation kept on ticking. The people are gone, but their computers and radios are still chattering away underneath all that dust."

  That was spooky. Apart from her excursion to make contact with the Primaterre soldiers, Joy's travels on Cato had mostly been on the beaten track.

  Follow the chalk mark trails from station to station. Don't stray into side tunnels, no matter how interesting they seem. In fact, if they seem interesting, stay well clear.

  Duncan had given her that advice before she left Nexus. Where he'd picked up these Cato survival tips, she had no idea, but she'd appreciated it. It had been good advice, too. Had kept her alive when her curiosity begged her to explore. Still, she wondered what she might have found if she'd been a little braver. Buried houses, where long dead families sat gathered in front of a flickering screen. Office towers where banks of computers hummed while spiders wove homes around them. History and mystery; a world to lose herself in, or a world where she might've found a way to rescue her brother.

  Approaching footsteps shook her from the might've-beens and the what-ifs, and she looked up as Cassimer entered the quarters. The ruined helmet was tucked underneath his arm, but he still wore his suit of armour, the black sidearm sitting comfortably in its holster.

  His face had been restored to sullen handsomeness, the deep gouges smoothly healed over. Four streaks of pale, fresh skin cut like claw-marks across his jaw and cheek.

  "Your face," Joy said, too relieved and amazed to worry about sounding silly. The speed of the healing process was practically miraculous, certainly far beyond the medical science of her time. "I'm so glad - you had me worried there - but healing so fast... I've never seen anything like it."

  "Rhys is an exceptional medic." Neutral tone; very professional - but for the twitch of surprise at her relief. "He told me what you did. Said you might've saved his life."

  "I only did what any decent person would do." A touch of acid crept into her voice. The abandonment was still a raw experience.

  "Rhys had no choice. Defending the array was his priority. Any other course of action would've been a direct violation of orders. I can assure you that he's grateful for your courage."

  Joy wasn't so sure, but she nodded. "As am I - for yours. I don't know how to thank you -"

  "Don't." His jaw tensed underneath new skin. "I had an opportunity to help and I seized it. But I'm no different than Rhys. We're both bound by vows and orders, rules and regulations. Don't mistake what we do for what we want to do."

  "I understand." Faced with the choice of completing her own mission to save Finn, or saving someone barely more than a stranger, would she do any different?

  He nodded and left it at that. The lights on his suit flickered on and washed the room in white light so bright Joy had to shield her eyes. The crate at the foot of the bed scraped against the floor as the commander pulled it out and opened the lid. From her position on the bed, Joy couldn't see the contents of the crate, but Cassimer produced a toolkit from it and set to work on prying the shattered visor from his helmet.

  "Don't you have a spare?" she asked. If he didn't want to talk; fine - she spent enough time in isolation that she could appreciate an awkward silence - but if there was conversation to be had, she wanted it. If there was conversation to be had, it might even count as another Good Thing.

  "I do. If I wear that and it breaks, I no longer do. Best to repair when possible."

  "Very sensible. Is that a purity thing? Or just a Cassimer thing?"

  "Both; as well as experience. Missions that go wrong tend to stay wrong. We can't afford to be wasteful."

  A mission gone wrong. The signs had been there - huge glaring neon signs. The immediate aftermath of the attack on the base had made it clear to her that there were no Primaterre soldiers on Cato but for the handful she'd met. Cassimer, Hopewell, Lucklaw, Rhys and Florey. Five soldiers and fifteen beds equalled nine graves.

  She'd thought of them as her saviours, but their situation was no less precarious than her own. The fact that Cassimer, of all people, had all but admitted it, was enough to make her sick.

  Her stomach churned, and vivid memory rode the nausea upwards. Scratching hands. Red-stained teeth. Warm spit running down her cheeks. The nausea held her in an iron grip, tearing and pulling at her insides.

  She lurched forward, manacle tightening around her wrist, and retched over the side of the bed, shaking with a feverish chill as her eyes blurred with tears. Her fingers sank deep into the mattress, and she
wished she could curl up and disappear, just go to sleep -

  - and then a hand closed around one of hers. No gauntlet, just skin against skin, but no less electric. A warm, clean hand holding her blood-stained and cold fingers. A strong hand, a tanned hand - and her thoughts, distracted from misery, strayed to wonder where a man who spent most of his time in a suit of armour would get a tan.

  She took a deep breath, wiped her face and smoothed her hair. Satisfactorily put back together again, she looked at Cassimer, eager to apologise, to deal with her embarrassment.

  He sat on the other end of the bed, helmet rested on his knee, his free hand working to screw a new, film-covered visor in place. To her surprise, he spoke first.

  "I was fifteen when I boarded the troop ship Hecate to go to Basic Training, along with over three hundred other cadets from my system. We were all there for the same reasons, all eager to serve. We were strangers, but also friends. The first night, we watched the ship fold from Cascade to Cascade, wondering at how large our universe had suddenly grown. The second night - the second night I ever spent in space - demons seized the Hecate. The corruption spread so fast, so..." He paused. His pulse leapt in his throat, and his hand tightened around hers.

  "It's odd - in my memories, it is dark and the demons shadows, but I know that the lights were on. I know that I saw everything. Cadets murdered in their beds by crew. Other cadets, screaming as the demons turned their minds."

  He paused again, and this time Joy thought he might not continue. She slipped her thumb around his hand, brushing his skin. A simple gesture, but enough for the commander to continue.

  "They take their time. If they cannot defile the spirit, they violate the body. When I saw that, when I heard them laugh even as they were screaming, I crawled under my bunk and hid. I lay there as my friends suffered and died, lay there until there was nobody but me and the corrupted. I think they knew I was there the whole time. I think they enjoyed it. And when they came for me, when they pulled me from my hiding place..."