Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  The Ever Onward was gone.

  30. Cassimer

  "What did I say about moving your fingers?" Rhys gave Cassimer a long and irritated look.

  "Apologies." Cassimer resisted the urge to clench his fist. The medic had worked on it from dawn to noon, and it was mostly pieced back together now, fresh tissue and regenerating skin covered by a layer of nano weave. Rhys had been right; hands were tricky. But he'd done a good job, and if it weren't for the shiny weave and the intense itching that made him want to ball his fist up, Cassimer could hardly tell that his hand had ever been injured. Considering what had poured out when they'd initially removed his gauntlet, Rhys had done very well.

  The only other bed in the infirmary was hidden behind a screen. A good thing, because he had a thousand things on his mind and couldn't afford to lose himself to thoughts of the girl who lay there.

  Rhys grunted, removing his bloodied gloves. "Now undress. Need to sort out that spine of yours before I hit the damn wall."

  Cassimer unbuttoned his shirt - an awkward and difficult task with newly repaired fingers - and lay down.

  "All of your clothes, Commander. Unless you want them soaked with bodily fluids, that is." Rhys opened a nearby med kit and produced a cigarette packet from within. "Mind if I light one up? Helps me concentrate."

  "Stims would aid you better."

  "Sure, but I'm an old-school kind of guy. And so are you, I reckon." Rhys chuckled over the sound of his cigarette lighter hissing a flame. "Now then, let's have a look at you. Shoulder's going to be fine. The med-techs back at Scathach must've gotten to know you pretty well, because they added several self-repair measures when they fixed you up last time. It'll be back to normal within the day."

  "And my spine?"

  "Nanites should have it straightened out in a few hours. That's the good thing about the sort of bone augments you've got. The bad thing is that one of those very augments has sprung a leak. There's plenty of redundancy built in, so you won't miss it, but while it's in there, it's slowly poisoning you. So," Rhys said, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves, "sorry to say, I'm going to have to go in there and cut it out."

  "Local anaesthesia only."

  "Your choice." Rhys picked up a laser cutter from the table and switched it on.

  An hour passed to the whining sound of cutters and the smell of burning flesh. Enough time to check in with Florey and Hopewell. The latter had picked them up at the station and taken them back to base in silence. Though it was clear she'd desperately wanted to ask a million questions, she'd considerately allowed herself only one: had the mission been successful?

  Yes, he'd told her, and then nothing more. Leaving half the team out of the loop was poor leadership, but the long train journey had been spent reliving his choices, examining every moment. All the things he could've done differently. All the things that could've gone so much worse. All the close calls and what-ifs, turning in his mind. It had felt like drowning in a mire of his own making.

  But now he could wait no longer, and he gave his gunners the bare-bone details of the mission. In comparison, they had little to report - no activity around the base, and no useful data from the array. Good news and bad, although as soon as Lucklaw started sifting through the data gathered from the Ever Onward, the bad might become irrelevant. The corporal had wanted to get to work immediately, but on Rhys's advice, Cassimer had told him to get some rest. He slept now, snoring in the light of his many waiting monitors.

  Against Rhys's advice, Cassimer hadn't slept. When they had climbed the station stairs to the farm, the first thing they'd seen had been Rivka's body, still lashed to the scaffolding, ripe with decay. The red had not saved her.

  How could he sleep on a world like Cato? How could he risk dreams when nightmares stalked the sands?

  "All right, Commander, you're good to go." Rhys sunk into a chair. "Take it easy for at least twenty-four hours or you'll end up back in here. Might want to have a tech look you over back on Scathach - augments aren't my area of expertise."

  "I will. Thank you." He sat, slowly, and began to dress. He felt no pain, only a crawling sense of discomfort. Acceptable. "Tell me about Joy."

  "We have to do this now?" Rhys sighed. "Right. Fine, though I could really use a drink or two first. Nothing's changed, Commander."

  "You said you could help her."

  "Hypothetically. If she were a citizen. The efforts to keep her alive so far, sure, I can charge basic life-saving measures to mission expenses and nobody's going to give a damn. But what you're asking for goes way beyond that."

  "What do you need?"

  "I don't need anything. She needs a new pair of lungs, essentially; a procedure as extensive as it is expensive."

  "Can you do it?"

  "It'd be a first, but sure, I suppose so - If I wanted to lose my fucking licence or maybe even get court-martialled. Actually, scratch that - no maybes about it. I save her life and when we get back to Scathach I'll be dragged in front of a tribunal before the shuttle engines cool." Rhys shook his head and stubbed out his cigarette. Another one was in his hand before the first had stopped smouldering. "Don't get me wrong, I like the girl. But rules and regulations exist for a reason."

  Yes; to keep Primaterre civilisation - humanity's future - safe. But with Rhys's reminder of unyielding truth came clarity, too. The rules weren't obstacles, the paragraphs and statutes no inked walls. They were guideposts, and they were showing Cassimer the correct path.

  "I understand," he said. "Do it."

  "Do... it? The procedure?"

  "Whatever it takes. Charge it to my account."

  "Commander." Rhys discarded his second cigarette, a serious look on his face. "You need to take a moment and think about what you're saying."

  "A soldier is free to spend his merits as he sees fit."

  "Sure, but we're not talking just a few thousand. There'll be lab work, manufacturing, surgery... low estimate, twenty million."

  Cassimer shrugged. Any number and it would've seemed a bargain. "I can afford it."

  "Not if you want a decent future."

  "I do. For her."

  31. Joy

  Even on Mars, there had been mornings when Joy hadn't wanted to get out of bed. Mornings when dreams had been cut short by merciless chest pain; mornings when listening to the blaring alarm clock had been preferable to the silence that would follow if she turned it off; mornings when lying in the dark behind drawn blinds had been better than seeing her small, clean and utterly lonely apartment. On those days, she hadn't seen the sun even if it shone. On those days, she had felt like a stranger in the crowds.

  Still, it was a rare day that she wasn't smiling by lunchtime. An appreciative word from her boss, pastries in the lunchroom, a cat video passed round the lab - small positives, stacking up one by one until they outweighed the negative. And if they didn't, a quick call to Finn always brightened her day, even when he annoyed her. Especially when he annoyed her.

  But Finn was gone, and she didn't want to open her eyes to a world without him.

  She woke with that thought as her first and stayed with it in the darkness, holding onto it and her tears. But in spite of her refusal to accept it, the world began to intrude.

  The scent of citrus and chemicals lingered underneath a strong smell of cigarette smoke. Distant voices were too faint to make out words, but sounded reassuringly calm. She heard laughter too, but that wasn't reassuring; that just made her angry. Finn was dead. How could they laugh? How could the sun rise and the night fall? How could Cato still orbit its pale star? The loss was so profound that the universe should've stopped in its tracks.

  It's only profound to you, dummy. Anybody else who might have cared is long gone.

  Imaginary Finn was still with her, and even if it was just delusion, the sound of his voice made her sob, made her draw a long and ragged breath full of sorrow and...

  ...and entirely free of pain.

  She inhaled again, filling her lungs with smoke-sat
urated air. It didn't hurt. Nothing hurt.

  Pain had coloured every aspect of her life. Pain had placed limits; pain had sprinkled every moment with dust as grey as Cato's. It had been a barrier between her and those who tried to, but couldn't, understand what it was like to live with pain as a constant companion. Pain had crept alongside her every day and every night, whispering in her ear that it would never leave her. Her entire identity had been shaped by it; she was Joy in spite of pain.

  But the pain had gone.

  And that's a world you do want to open your eyes to. It's the world I always wanted for you.

  So she did, blinking the glitter of tears from her eyelashes, and saw her own reflection in the dark ceiling of the Primaterre habitat. She lay on a bed, wrapped in a silver blanket, and her face, her hair, her eyes were all as she remembered them. Everything was the same, and everything was different.

  "About time you decided to rejoin the waking world." Rhys's voice, nicotine-hoarse and wry. She sat up, clutching the silvery blanket to her bare chest. The medic was in a chair next to her bed, cigarette in one hand and a tablet in the other.

  "Rhys," she said, and even speaking felt different; so much better that if she wasn't careful she might never stop talking again. "What happened?"

  Her subconscious answered the question, dredging the word demons from its depths. She had been on the bridge of the Ever Onward, home to nothing but the decaying dead. Lucklaw had played a video of the crew's last moments, but she hadn't wanted to watch much of it. Watching Cassimer had told the story just as clearly. He'd reeled, hot with panic. That had scared her, more than anything, but there had been nothing she could do. She'd been too cold, too tired, too much in pain - and then, while the others had watched their age-old enemy onscreen, her very own invisible enemy had seized its opportunity.

  "You saved me," she breathed, a thousand questions popping into her mind. It was hard to see how they'd escaped the Ever Onward at all, let alone with her.

  "We'll see. Why don't you stand up and walk around for a bit? There are clothes for you on the table."

  The new clothes bore the same winged crest as her old and were the same size. Once more, she'd wear a dead stranger's clothes, and she wondered how the soldiers felt about that. Was she a walking reminder of loss?

  She struggled to keep the blanket wrapped around herself as she dressed. Rhys rolled his eyes.

  "Too late to get coy with me, sweetheart. I've seen everything you've got, inside and out."

  "Gross," she said.

  "Don't be too hard on yourself. Some of the outside bits are passable." Rhys surrendered to an impish smile. "And you've got a real nice set of..."

  "Watch it," she said, in a tone as warning as it was amused.

  "...kidneys," Rhys finished, and she laughed. This aspect of the medic reminded her very much of Finn, but not at all in a sad way.

  She finished dressing, and Rhys looked rather pleased with himself as he ran scans on her.

  "Well, your lungs haven't spontaneously imploded, so I'm calling this procedure a stunning success."

  "What procedure?" she asked, worried that perhaps the relief was only temporary.

  "See for yourself." Rhys gestured towards a monitor aglow with radiographic images. "Top right is you, before and after."

  She'd seen similar pictures many times before. Countless grim-faced doctors (none of whom had been smoking cigarettes) had pointed out the creeping growth of white nodules and explained to her that it was irreversible, that each and every nodule was there to stay. Take your medication, they'd said, and stick to clean, well-ventilated areas - that'll slow down the inevitable.

  Good advice, she knew that now, because where her lungs had once been spattered white like abstract paintings, the image on Rhys's screen showed two spidery masses of near-total white. Cato had done that to her, had killed her a little bit every day. Though she had felt it with every breath, seeing it was a shock.

  In contrast, the after image showed her lungs as two black sacks nestled inside bone, clear of scar tissue and malignant growth. Normal. Healthy. Pure.

  "Not bad for a first time." Rhys viewed the screen with a certain degree of professional satisfaction.

  "But how?" She touched a hand to her chest. "Without so much as leaving a mark on me?"

  "Nano surgery leaves few scars. Remember the vial I asked you to get for the commander? It's called DNAno - organic nanites, custom-tailored to the patient's own genetic code. To rebuild your lungs, I first had to cook up a batch for you. I then laid out the entire procedure in advance in a simulation - which took more than a few goes - and once it was to my satisfaction, I programmed the DNAno to repeat it. First removing the diseased tissue - which turned out to be almost all of it - then generating new tissue. Healthy tissue, and more resilient, to ensure the silicosis won't recur." He smiled at her. "But don't go thinking it's as easy as pressing a button. If you get something wrong in the programming - even the tiniest miscalculation - the most interesting things can happen to your patient's body."

  "I can imagine," she said, shuddering at the thought of tiny robots running rampant inside of her. Building, tearing, repairing in all the wrong ways.

  "Keeping the patient alive during the surgery is the trickiest part. Such a massive procedure is a strain on the system, particularly for an unaugmented body. Very delicate work. Very stressful. You've been out like Sleeping Beauty for a week, but me, I'm bloody knackered."

  She hugged him then, burying her face in his ash-sprinkled sweater.

  "Thank you," she whispered.

  The medic cleared his throat awkwardly and pushed her away, firmly but gently. His glow of pride had faltered somewhat.

  "Save your thanks for the others. I advocated leaving you behind."

  "That seems to be how our relationship works," she said, smiling. She couldn't be mad with the man who'd single-handedly destroyed her oldest enemy. "You abandoning me to certain death, and me somehow surviving to annoy you."

  He returned her smile, but the strained look in his eyes wasn't just down to fatigue.

  "It's okay, Rhys. I'm sure you had your reasons."

  "The team's safety must be my first priority. Nevertheless, some choices are hard to live with."

  "I know," she said, and realised that the pain hadn't left her after all, but migrated to her heart, where Finn and Duncan had left gaping wounds that no medic could ever fix. She turned from Rhys to wipe her tears.

  There were other radiographs below the images of her lungs. One was of a spine so dense it glowed bright white, shot through with metallic veins. Below that was - and it took her a few seconds to identify the mangled mess - the remains of a hand.

  A hand made for building. A hand made for climbing. A hand whose tanned and strong fingers had once held hers. It could've been anybody's, but she felt sure it was Cassimer's; so sure that she reached out and touched the screen, running her fingers across the luminous outlines of broken finger bones.

  "What about the others?" Guilt twisted her stomach. How long had she been awake? Half an hour, easily, without even once considering the welfare of the men who had carried her across the lightning-lashed plains. "Lucklaw. Cassimer."

  Constant. His name, thrown to her like a life buoy when she was drowning in the overwhelming despair of it all. Constant, she thought and found herself wanting to say it aloud, to taste the syllables.

  "Cuts, bruises and nightmares for years to come for Lucklaw. Those scans are of Cassimer, but I suppose you guessed as much."

  "Is he all right?"

  "Been a long time since our commander was all right." Rhys switched off the monitor and slumped back into his chair. "But yeah, he's back on his feet. He wants to speak to you, by the way. Wanted me to let him know as soon as you were awake, but I like to give my patients a bit of breathing room."

  ◆◆◆

  The habitat looked the same, but like Joy, it wasn't. Every step across the central room felt like braving new territory, ev
ery glance towards the commander's quarters like staring into an unexplored horizon.

  Lucklaw sat at the desk, basking in the light of dozens of monitors, his eyes deep pools of unseeing, all-seeing silver. Blood swelled from his nostrils, threatening to spill over. She wanted to wipe it away, wanted to take him by the shoulders and ask him to please be more careful. As if it would do any good - this seemed to be the Primaterre way, to work your bones to dust if that's what it took. Lucklaw, Rhys, Cassimer; they all treated going above and beyond as what was simply expected. They did their duty, even when sleep became a distant memory and crippling injury an everyday event.

  Admirable, and self-destructive.

  The door to the commander's quarters was ajar. She wondered what was proper etiquette - should she knock? Announce herself? Or step inside? On one hand, that seemed rude - who knew what Cassimer was doing in there. On the other hand, if he was doing something private, it stood to reason that he'd shut the door first.

  And if he was wearing his suit, he'd already be aware of her arrival. Maybe even without his suit. If the radiograph of his spine was any indication, he was significantly more than a regular man. Stronger, faster, taller by design. Very square-jawed, very handsome - though presumably, that was all natural Cassimer, as he certainly didn't seem the type to have cosmetic work done. He even had scars, and considering what Rhys was capable of, she didn't think he had to live with the scars if he didn't want to.

  "Cassimer?" She peeked in through the door.

  His suit of armour had been taken apart and laid out on the floor. Scorch marks streaked the grey material, large gouges cutting across the back and cuirass. A dent in the centre of the back plate hinted at how he'd injured his spine; a foot-shaped dent, she thought, remembering the Ereshkigal suit's intimidating form.