Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  "Cassimer?"

  "You've got your kill switch, I've got mine. The commander's got his own, as well as the codes of everybody else on the team - including yours, now. It's for your own good."

  "In case of possession," she said, remembering the blood-streaked face of the Ever Onward's captain. If some shred of the man had still existed, trapped inside his own mind, forced to watch as his body did all those awful things to the flight crew, it was easy to imagine that he might have preferred having his brain fried by a kill code.

  "Yes," Rhys said, eyebrow arched with mild surprise. "And similar situations. You know, this is the part most recruits have trouble accepting. The idea that someone else has the power to end your life like that -" He snapped his fingers. "It's a tough thing to swallow. Some can't, dropping out before they've even started training."

  "Well, I've kind of lived with that idea for quite some time. Any of you could've killed me at any point. I couldn't have stopped you, and nobody would've cared. So an actual kill switch doesn't really make much difference."

  "Suppose that's true," Rhys said, tapping his cigarette against a sun-emblazoned ashtray.

  Lucklaw shook his head. "She only thinks that because she doesn't know us. But relax, Somerset - you're about to find out what the Primaterre is. Who we are." He touched a finger to his tablet, and Joy's vision was filled with the light of a sun.

  ◆◆◆

  In the sun's burning core, a voice came to her, cheerful and disembodied. It welcomed her to the Primaterre, and as it spoke, the fire faded to smoke. She floated in a vast and hazy chamber, and no matter how she turned, she could see no exit. She was faint and transparent, barely more than smoke herself. She had become a ghost, torn from her body into this empty space. Cold rings of panic wrapped her heart, her mind resisting the experience, synapses fizzling and veins throbbing. If she returned to her body now, she was sure her nose would drip with blood.

  "Behold," said the voice, "the Primaterre Protectorate."

  One by one, luminous planets appeared in the emptiness, centred around the glowing orb of Earth.

  "And the walls by which we guard it."

  Brick by brick, the walls of a castle grew high and forbidding around the worlds, encasing them behind crenellated parapets. It was at once far away and so close she could touch it; small enough for her to cradle in the palm of her hand, and so huge and sprawling that she stood inside its courtyard, staring in awe at the broach-spired towers. In the highest spire, a circular window, stained milky-white and ebon, was wreathed by the rays of the Primaterre sun.

  It was beautiful, but when she looked at it, the rays reached for her; inside of her. Her mind stretched as they pulled and tugged, and she wept with fear for what would happen when it snapped. It reached breaking point - and the taste of blood was like a heat-shimmer around her - and then relaxed, the sun's rays becoming whisper-soft. They coaxed and hushed, warmed and comforted, and as they settled to frame the edges of her mind, they told her not to worry, to listen to the voice.

  "Bastion, Rampart and Moat. Oriel, Tower and Sanctum. No matter your path, you walk with truth and clarity. You are Primaterre, and Primaterre protects us all."

  The castle disappeared, and the voice changed from pompous to jovial as it first ran through a list of functions available to the basic military package, before moving onto suggesting upgrades available for purchase at the nearest Primaterre station (which, it helpfully added, was Hildr Station - a mere fifty light-years away).

  All the while Joy flailed, nauseous in the grey nothingness. She tried rubbing her eyes, but when her hands touched her skin, it felt like she was somehow touching herself from a thousand miles away, and her stomach turned at the very idea.

  With a final trill of thank you for your service, the voice fell silent, and Joy was alone in the void, with nothing but careening panic to keep her company. She tried once more to picture her computer. It was on her kitchen table, where Finn had carved his initials while their parents were still alive to send him to his room for it. She could see it clearly, could trace the blocky letters F.S. with her fingers, could hear the sound of a boiling kettle and smell toast - but no matter what she did, Lucklaw's advice was no help. She was stuck in the void; stuck inside herself.

  "Oh please," she whispered, and her breath stirred the soft fluff of dandelion seeds at the edges of her mind. "Let me out."

  EXIT LOBBY?

  The words formed like white clouds in the grey, and when she nodded, they disappeared. The grey unfurled in great swathes, peeling back to reveal the habitat infirmary.

  It was empty. The smell of stale cigarette smoke lingered, but the ashtray contained nothing but cold ash and stubs. The lights were on, harsh and unforgiving, but through the doorway, she saw only darkness.

  "Hello?"

  She tried to stand, but her head spun, her vision flecked with static. Something wet trickled down her lip, and when she touched her face, her fingers came away red with blood.

  "Somerset." Cassimer appeared in the doorway. Save for a few pale scratches, his armour looked as good as new, and he every bit the titan she'd once thought and now knew him to be. The black gun (PR SERIES 6 MORRIGAN - the words flashed across her vision and she twitched at the intrusion) was in its holster on his hip and his rifle (HYRROKKIN APW) slung over his shoulder. "Time to move out. You good to go?"

  She nodded, because what choice did she have? Had to make at least a decent impression on the first day on the job. She stood, on wobbly legs, and held a hand to her face to stop the dripping blood.

  "A common reaction." Cassimer handed her a packet of medical wipes. "No cause for concern."

  "Thank you, Cassimer."

  "Commander," he corrected.

  "Commander," she echoed, and how strange it was that a single word could put all the distance of a horizon between him and her.

  The rest of the team had already bundled into the Epona. She followed Cassimer to the vehicle, eyes fixed on his back, understanding that there were things Joy could have done that Private Somerset could not; understanding for the first time what it was to set aside the self and become something both greater and lesser. She had made her choice hoping to gain, not once considering what she might lose.

  As she climbed into the Epona, finding a cramped seat between Lucklaw and Rhys in the back, a soft tone rang in her ear and the annoying floating text returned to her field of vision.

  FILE SHARE REQUEST FROM SENDER [003927SSBC, Cassimer, C] PENDING - ACCEPT/DECLINE?

  "Accept?" she muttered under her breath, unsure if it would work. There was a jab of pain at her temple, and another droplet of blood fell from her nose - but that didn't matter at all, because the text informed her that the entire discography of Neave Crescent Creek was now hers to enjoy.

  ◆◆◆

  It was dark by the time they reached the farm. A brazier burned at the entrance, but its light was thankfully not enough to reach the scaffolding. Rivka hung there still; her smell carried across the dunes by the wind, along with whirling spirals of dust.

  "Depending on weather conditions, our ETA to Nexus is forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Due to interference, we're unlikely to be able to maintain comms. We'll signal you once we're in position."

  Two to three days. Knowing Cato, it could be four, or a week, or maybe never. The Epona braved the plains with gusto, shredding glassy slopes into clouds of glittering dust, but it wasn't invincible.

  "We'll wait to ensure that you board the train safely. After that, you're on your own. You clear on the details of your mission?"

  "Yes, Commander." Infiltrate Nexus, gain access to the force field generator, wait for the team's signal. Lucklaw had given her a device meant to temporarily disable the generator. Small, didn't weigh a thing, and yet she could feel it at the bottom of her old backpack like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Though, anybody looking to search her backpack would have to have zero sense of smell, because it reeked. Whatever the Primaterre so
ldiers had done to it, it was simultaneously making her sick and thankful for the world's greatest camouflage.

  They'd returned her old clothes as well. Dirty, smelly, and thoroughly disgusting, but at least she wore a Primaterre jumpsuit underneath, its grey material warm and snug against her skin. It wasn't enough to make her comfortable about going to Nexus, but it helped - and so did Cassimer's continued instruction.

  "This line of Eclipse Compacts is infamously prone to jamming. I replaced the stock recoil rod with a custom job, but it may still experience failure to fire. The built-in target assist is too basic to do you much good. Better to take your time and trust your instincts."

  She listened patiently as he explained to her how her own gun worked. She'd carried the piece for protection and hunting for nearly eight months now, and there was little she didn't know about it, and little that she needed to be taught about aiming. Cassimer knew that, of course. And so she listened not to the words he was saying but the words he couldn't say, and when the dunes rumbled to herald the arriving train and he could delay no longer, she smiled and thanked him.

  The station was empty, but a clutch of passengers huddled on the train, nervously eyeing the spot where the Conductor had once stood watch. One man rolled a handful of batteries in his palm, biting the thumb of his other hand thoughtfully.

  Blood, old and dried, spattered the aisle. Her own, perhaps, or Cassimer's. In the Epona, Lucklaw had given into boastfulness, describing at length the death of the Ever Onward, and how he'd piloted a shuttle from the imploding arc ship. It felt strange to have survived such a cataclysmic event without remembering a single thing about it.

  She chose the seat where Cassimer had once sat. The screws anchoring it to the floor had come loose, and it listed and sagged. Every spring in the seat was shot, eating uncomfortably into her thighs. She didn't mind, pulling her legs up and leaning her head against the window, against cool glass or an armoured shoulder.

  The train careered down the tunnels - too fast for comfort, in more ways than one. She'd be in Nexus sooner than she'd like, and this time all alone. The soldiers didn't know what it was like in the small spaceport, not really, and that was partially her fault. She hadn't told them everything. Hadn't told them why she'd been forced to scavenge in old tunnels where drifters and spiders roamed.

  She hadn't told them because it would've changed nothing - except perhaps making it harder for Cassimer to make the necessary call.

  Metal jangled behind her, and she turned her head, hand edging towards her gun. The man with the batteries had dropped them into the Conductor's bucket and was sheepishly slinking back to his seat. He wasn't the first passenger to do so, either - the bucket was half-full with scrap and greets.

  She couldn't help but smile. Tell people a scary story enough times and they didn't just believe it, didn't just accept it, but took it deep into their bones. So ingrained was their fear that even when the monster proved non-existent, they still felt compelled to feed it.

  But fear wasn't what she wanted to feed, and a few clumsy commands later, the first notes of Neave Crescent Creek - Gallow's Corner - Gap in the Fence (track 1) began to play. A song inside her head, a melody just for her, and a little bit of something not unlike happiness.

  ◆◆◆

  "Hey. Hey. Hey girl." A man in a stained and threadbare rags trailed behind her as she crossed the platform. He clutched at her, trying to grab her sleeve, but his fingers were warped with arthritis, knotting uselessly inside his palms. "Nice girl. Lonely girl."

  Easy to ignore, easy to walk past, because he was weak and in Nexus, that made him less than nothing. He'd hassled the other passengers for scraps - food, salvage, anything they could spare - before his eyes had turned on Joy and lit up with hope.

  She pulled away from him without a word and willed herself to be ice and steel, because there were others in the station who frightened her worse. The cluster of men by the old ticket machine, whose hushed discussion silenced momentarily as they scanned the new arrivals. The feral-eyed girl who was ostensibly selling fried greets, but watched her customers with a hungry gleam. Searching for opportunity. Searching for weakness. Smelling out the fresh.

  "Beware," croaked the old beggar lady at the exit. "Beware the Driver."

  Joy took a handful of scrap from her backpack and dropped it in the beggar's cup. "For a tale well-spun."

  Morning light filtered in through the force field, the air fuzzy with floating lichen spores and dust motes. A few of the other train passengers were already disappearing into Nexus's labyrinthine alleys, their footsteps soft on lichen-covered ground. A patrol of armed men, whose red armbands marked them as the mayor's guards, patrolled the square outside the train station, but that didn't make it safe. Not for Joy.

  Nexus wasn't completely dysfunctional. There was structure and there was industry, and sometimes it masqueraded as an approximation of civilised society, but that just made it even more dangerous. That had made her believe that it was a city like any other, with law and order and good citizens.

  Voirrey and Duncan had found their places quickly enough, putting their skills to use, but Joy hadn't been so lucky. She was young and pretty, and every suggestion she'd made had been rejected in favour of the obvious.

  It had been bearable at first. The unwanted comments and lewd propositions had been shocking, but she hadn't been afraid. Not until the touching started. The pawing hands in the marketplace. The people following her through dark alleys. The eyes staring in through Voirrey's clinic windows. The patients who came in for examinations, only, there was nothing wrong with them - they'd just come to gawk at the new girl.

  Then one day a man had shoved her against the corrugated wall of a shelter and demanded that she get on her knees. She'd told him no and he had let go of her arms, stepped away and then balled up his fist and punched her.

  Next thing she could remember, Voirrey had stood over her, locked in a shouting match with the mayor. The mayor had agreed that the man had crossed a line, as physical assault was not permitted in the marketplace, and that he would be punished for it.

  And what about Joy? She needs protection.

  The only protection in Nexus is to be taken or to be strong. It's up to her which one she chooses.

  In the end, Voirrey had chosen for her. She had packed Joy's backpack with what survival gear and rations the doctor could scrounge up, and then told her to leave Nexus.

  When help arrives, we'll find you. We won't leave you, I promise, but you can't stay in Nexus.

  But here she was, once more under the shadow of the spaceport's skeletal dome.

  34. Joy

  At dusk, Hal returned for his third shift.

  Joy watched him enter the generator hut at the base of the force field tower and set her timer. Seconds began to tick away in the corner of her vision. With any luck, he'd spend ninety minutes in there, just like he had twice before that day. That'd make his movements nice and predictable.

  She'd been to the generator a few times before, in Duncan's company. He'd tried to offer his assistance, but the local maintenance crew had reacted with suspicion rather than gratitude, and Duncan's abrasive personality had quickly made him persona non grata. Back then, there had been more than one man taking care of the generator - and there had been guards, too.

  But the whole town was more quiet than usual. The marketplace bloomed with light, but Joy had hardly seen a soul all day. She'd made her way to the force field tower without issue and had found a vantage-point-slash-hiding-place on the corroding roof of a shed. Before she'd climbed up, she'd had a look inside, and the shed wasn't just empty; it was abandoned. Half-empty cups sat on the pallet that served as a table, along with a plate of food slimy with mould. On Cato, not finishing dinner was the sort of crazy that even drifters would shake their heads at.

  It was the kind of strange that made her thoughts stray to ghost ships and lost colonies. With every creak of the corrugated roof, she held her breath, afraid of havin
g alerted whatever had come for the people who'd lived in the shed. Silly, of course - Nexus was so small that if some mysterious killer was snatching people from their homes, everybody would know about it, everybody would be talking about it, and Hal wouldn't walk into the shadows under the force field tower quite so casually.

  Hal wasn't his real name. Well - probably not. There was always a chance that it might be, just as there was a chance that she was sitting on top of the shed equivalent of the Mary Celeste, but Hal was the name she'd picked for him.

  It was the beard, mostly. Long and scraggly, a Viking throwback that fell to graze his belly button. She'd met only one man with a beard like that before, and his name had been Hal Missenden. He and Finn had met during training for their security guard licenses, but while Finn had gone on to land the cushy corporate job at Hierochloe, Hal had ended up taking work on the oil refineries on Phobos. Six months on, six months off, with more money than Finn's job paid, but every time Hal came back from a rotation, his face had deeper lines, his beard more grey streaks, and his blood significantly higher alcohol levels.

  Nexus-Hal looked like he'd done a hundred rotations on Phobos. His broad shoulders sloped, arms loose at his sides, face set in a permanent grimace. A man bereft of hope, resentful of his fate.

  A shrill klaxon blared across the rooftops of Nexus, and sudden red light washed the courtyard crimson. The door to the generator hut opened, and Hal stepped outside, turning to look upwards. Joy's fingers, numb with cold, tightened around the grip of her gun.

  Please don't see me. Please don't hurt me. Please don't make me hurt you.

  But Hal wasn't looking for her. His gaze fixed on the sky where the stars shone a little brighter and a little bigger than usual.

  Except they weren't stars.

  On the other side of Nexus, by the landing pads next to the marketplace, more lights switched on, brilliant whiteness flooding the night sky as the old spaceport crackled to life.