by S. A. Tholin
It was a ship, just like she'd hoped for so long. A ship, painted red and black. A ship, its hull bedazzled with gaudy blinking lights.
It was the ship that Duncan had sold the Ever Onward's location for. He had wanted it to be their escape, but now that it had come, it would carry none of them to safety.
Hal spat on the ground. He'd barely even looked at the ship, his focus on the sky. The blue shimmer of the force field had gone, and Hal stared at where it should be as if he was afraid that it might not come back online. As if he had no idea how to fix it if it didn't.
He went back to the hut and pushed the door closed. After another morose look at the sky, he disappeared down one of the many alleyways.
Good. The cold was starting to get to Joy. Even the Primaterre jumpsuit underneath her rags couldn't keep up with the subzero-and-dropping temperature. She climbed down the side of the shed, as quietly as she could, and dashed across the shadow-webbed courtyard and into the darkness inside the tower's four massive legs.
The door wouldn't budge. She shrugged the backpack from her shoulder. Lucklaw had stuffed it full of scrap, for that authentic scavenger look, but the real treasure lay underneath the junk: the disruptor device, ration bars, water canteens, and a flashlight.
She flicked the light on. The generator hut had once been protected by a high-tech security door. A retinal scanner still sat on the wall, but its screen was dark and cracked, and a rat's nest of wires poked out the back of it. The door showed signs of having been forced open and then repaired; all of its sophisticated security measures rendered useless. The only thing keeping it locked now was a rusty padlock that looked like something straight out of a history book, meant to keep prisoners in a dungeon or a pirate's treasure chest safe. Just a lump of metal - and more than enough to keep her out.
She'd need tools to break or cut her way in, and apart from the flashlight and a knife, her Hierochloe gun was all she had - and it was loaded with frangible bullets, designed for safe use inside a spaceship. They would shatter on impact, useless against the lock.
Cassimer? She texted his name across the open team channel. No response, not even a curt correction. Commander, he'd said, and it made sense, but it was difficult to call him that when the name on the tip of her tongue was Constant.
She tried again, still getting used to the idea of typing by thinking, and her HUD informed her that no team members were in comms range. She was all alone, and not even Imaginary Finn had any advice to offer. He had been quiet for a while, which she'd chalked up to her keeping company with the Primaterre. With them, she was a little less lonely, a little less mad. But maybe she was beginning to forget what her brother sounded like. Beginning to forget what he would say.
"No," she whispered. "No, I know what you'd say. Be prepared, Joy. That's what you'd say. Be prepared to do what's necessary, because you're all you have."
35. Cassimer
After days of grey plains, the landscape gave way to a maze of ruins where lightning glass slicked the sides of crumbling buildings. The dust piled high, as soft and feathery as the first snow of winter. Here and there, the sensors picked up lighter patches indicating sink holes, some several hundred metres deep. Their straight-forward journey became an agonising meander, and before too long, the Epona's engines choked under the strain.
They dug her out, but it took Hopewell a good hour to get the Epona going again. Through misty twilight, they kept going, the vehicle's progress aided by Cassimer and Florey's strength. Side by side, in dust that swallowed them to their waists, the commander and gunner put their shoulders to the Epona and pushed.
At first, it was a welcome distraction. Far better than being a passenger with nothing to do but sit in silence as thoughts scratched and clawed. Among the ruins of the city, at least he had purpose and focus, and the simple company of Florey. Where the gunner's friendship with Hopewell was light-hearted and personal, his relationship to Cassimer was one of long silences, born not out of awkwardness but kinship. Florey was a soldier through and through, loyal and competent. He said nothing because nothing needed to be said. A good man, and so too was the silence.
But the road was long and the gloom of dead dreams was imposing. The Epona slowly rolled past a leaning tower block where the wind whistled through darkly-glaring windows. Tattered curtains wrapped around frames like burial shrouds and the Epona's floodlights illuminated peeling wallpaper. Glimpses of history, and Cassimer's imagination brushed the dust from the pieces, carefully excavating the past. The tower block groaned as its spine straightened. The curtains hung in windows warm with light and flower boxes. The dead city's sounds - creaking metal and wind-whipped brick - faded, replaced with distant music and laughter. The sounds of the living and the unafraid, of those who had seen promise in the stars.
Had Joy lived in such a building? He hated that he didn't know. Hated himself for not asking. Had the others? Did Hopewell know what manner of place Joy had called home? Did Lucklaw know what she liked to do, what she liked to eat, how she liked to dress?
He imagined one of the apartments as hers and filled the darkness with light, the window frame with glass and the flower box with vivid colour. The wind caught the curtains, and for a moment, he saw her. Smiling, glowing, as warm as a sunrise.
He lacked the pieces to complete the picture, and though none of what he imagined felt right or true, he kept toying with the fantasy, shifting details around. Anything to distract himself from the truth.
"If you wanted to keep her safe, you shouldn't have made her a soldier." Rhys's voice, shattering the good silence. Only the fact that the medic had the decency to keep his comments to a private channel stopped Cassimer's temper from turning jagged.
"You wanted to leave her to die." Couldn't keep the rumble of accusation from his voice. Logic told him that Rhys had acted with the team's best interest in mind, perhaps even with mercy. But emotion screamed louder, shouting that there could be no logic, no forgiveness. To Cassimer's heart, Rhys had in that moment been the enemy, and even now, it held a grudge. A small, seething thing that burned and scraped whenever he looked at the medic.
"I'm just wondering what you were expecting. You know what the job is. You think that because you're wearing armour I can't tell you're driving yourself crazy? Regret, concern - doesn't matter - you knew you were offering her a dangerous life. Possibly a very short one."
"She's more than capable. I wouldn't have offered her the opportunity otherwise."
"So was Abergavenny. So was Copenhagen."
"Look, Rhys; whatever it is you want from me, this is not the time. Focus on the mission."
"But you're not focused, are you? And when we rendezvous with Joy, where will your thoughts go? I watched you on the Ever Onward, saw how with every step of the way, you became more and more wrapped up in her. I get it, I do - there are some girls you meet that you can't get out of your head."
"You have no idea what you're talking about." Joy wasn't in his head; she was in his veins and under his skin and in his every breath. But his bones were Primaterre and their marrow, duty. Watching her disappear into the train station had been proof that he could still do his job. He could still make the sacrifices and the hard calls.
"Sure I do. One smile from her hits you better than any stim, doesn't it? An easy thing, to exchange one addiction for another."
The small, seething thing flared. In his newly repaired hand, fresh tissue protested as he clenched his fists.
"Commander, I'm seeing movement on the sensors," Hopewell reported over the team channel. The lieutenant was still in the driver's seat after fifteen hours straight. Florey had offered to take over, but she'd declined - on account of you being a worse driver than my blind aunt - and Cassimer had let her be. Better to keep her busy at the wheel than fidgeting in the back.
He stopped and signalled for Florey to do the same. The city was quiet. Even the wind had abated, leaving the night as clear as Cato nights got. The Epona's sensors, linked to his HUD, gl
owed bright with contacts approaching from six o'clock.
Florey, scope pressed to his visor, swept his rifle in a wide arc. "I've got nothing."
"Lucklaw, can you make sense of these readings?" The band of contacts was a kilometre deep and several more wide. It was a ribbon of green, hot and bright and closing in fast. It'd take an army of thousands, but thousands couldn't stay hidden from sight.
He hoisted his own rifle to his shoulder and panned it across the cityscape. Caught a glimpse of fluttering curtains and his skin prickled at the memory of Joy's touch, and at the hope of a life that could be lived behind such a window.
In the dead city, nothing stirred, but heavy clouds towered on the horizon.
"Sensor malfunction?" Lucklaw suggested, reluctant and anxious. "It's that or an invisible army. Or one giant creature. Either way, it's less than five klicks out, so we should be seeing something."
"Weather report?"
"No electrical interference. No significant drop in temperature. Looks clear."
Except it didn't. No matter what Lucklaw's data said, a darkness was rolling in from the south.
"All right. Everybody back in the Epona until we know what we're dealing with."
"Hang on, Commander," Florey, walking a few paces out, said. "Got something. See it, in the shadow of the listing tower block?"
A wave-like pattern of ripples in the dust. Brittle grass swaying in the wind. But no grass grew on Cato and as his sight adjusted to the distance, the field became a roiling mass of scratching and skittering legs.
He slammed the Epona's door shut as soon as Florey made it inside. The seal hissed and a red light indicated that the locks were engaged, but it didn't seem enough.
"Poney's good to go, Commander. Have to take it slow, though." Hopewell pressed her foot to the accelerator. Smoke and dust puffed against the windows. "What's going on out there?"
"Spiders," Florey said.
Hopewell laughed. "Real funny. Be serious, Floz."
"Less than a kilometre out now." Lucklaw's hands trembled as he buckled himself in next to Cassimer. "We'll be all right, though. It's not like they can breach the Epona. Can they?"
"Even if they did, they'd have to be some pretty mean spiders to even scratch your armour. Relax, kid," said Rhys, who didn't sound relaxed at all.
"Earth have mercy." Hopewell, shaking her head, pushed the accelerator a little harder. "You know, for a moment I thought Cato might actually start to grow on me - nice and quiet, sandy like the biggest beach I ever saw, but never bloody mind."
The Epona pulled away from the oncoming horde, turning from ruined buildings into a featureless valley nestled between two mountain ridges. When they'd planned their route, Joy had pointed out a mining complex set within the eastern ridge. A potential shelter from storms, but only in an absolute emergency, she'd said, explaining that the one time she had ventured out there, through a maze of slime-coated sewers, she'd found the complex replete with salvage. The place looked untouched. On Cato, that's a lot scarier than any amount of bone piles.
A fair assessment, but he passed the coordinates to Hopewell nonetheless. Spiders didn't constitute an emergency, but whatever they were running from might. He wanted to believe that the darkness on the horizon was only a storm, and that the spiders were only spiders. But like demons, they were creatures of shadow, hiding in corners to spin webs and confusion. On the Hecate, the clawing hands had been human, but their touch on his skin had been much like the scratching of spider legs.
Clear your mind. Perceive the moment.
The auto-chaplain's soothing green text filled his vision. Yes. All right. The moment. The rumble of the Epona. The occasional hitch of the engine. The outside view, so dark that Hopewell had switched on all the floodlights, and fulgurite trees cast long, thorny shadows across the valley floor. A rhythmic pattering on the roof.
"Spiders?" Lucklaw looked up.
"Rain," Cassimer said, and as the dust on the Epona's windshield turned to sludge and the wheels screamed for traction, he understood how much worse their situation was about to get.
36. Joy
The landing pad bathed in the light of hundreds of diodes decorating the ship's hull with the image of a flame-licked phoenix. The diodes switched on and off, animating the flames and the phoenix's unfurling wings.
Around the pad, the long-dormant spaceport had begun to wake. Garbled text scrolled across departure and arrival screens. A soft-voiced public announcement played on repeat, reminding newcomers to pass through decontamination.
But these newcomers paid no heed to instructions. Tattooed and branded, they emerged from the ship's airlock, regarding the surroundings with suspicion and hostility. Twelve in total, all wearing BALLISTIC REACTIVE PERSONAL DEFENCE ARMOUR -
- Joy winced as her HUD's sudden intrusion made her temples throb. No cause for concern, Cassimer had said. A side effect that would pass in time, Rhys had said. Just relax, Lucklaw had said, with a tiny smirk.
Easier said than done. She blinked away the text that wasn't really text, but words shunted straight into her brain, and tried to follow Lucklaw's advice. Intel was important, and Cassimer would want to know all about the RebEarthers. Might need to know, although she hoped it wouldn't come to that.
The dozen men were all heavily armed. Assault rifles, handguns, shotguns - even grenade launchers. Her HUD provided names for each, and she tried to memorise them.
Nexus locals crowded the edges of the landing pad, wide-eyed and mistrustful of the strangers. It was hard to understand why they weren't running to the ship, pleading to be taken off-planet.
Hal wasn't so shy. He slipped alongside the ship, careful not to get spotted, unaware that he was already being watched. She'd caught up to him a few turns from the landing pads, staying quiet and low. She liked to think that living in the tunnels had made her stealthy, but in truth, it was in her nature to slip unseen through life.
Of course, that wasn't good enough anymore. He had the key to the generator hut, and she needed it. A simple equation for someone like Cassimer. No doubt he would've had the key by now, and Hal would be lying in an alley, unconscious or worse. For her, it wasn't so simple, and she'd been given no instructions on how to deal with such obstacles. That, it struck her now, was perhaps the whole point. The commander wanted her to find her own way.
The crowd parted to let the mayor through, flanked by his personal guard of thugs. Undercity prowlers, the lot of them, thin and sharp-eyed. The mayor's belly rested heavily on his belt, but while his hard-earned privilege might have put meat on his bones, it had also made him twice as mean and paranoid.
One of the RebEarth men stepped forward, greeting the mayor with a familial wave.
Joy pulled her hood down over her face and began to pick her way through the crowd. The destruction of the Ever Onward had ensured the demise of any RebEarther who might recognise her, but they weren't the only people she'd like to avoid.
"...don't want any trouble, Captain." The mayor's voice. Joy approached as close as she dared, doing her best to look natural, which instantly made her feel completely obvious.
"We're not here to cause trouble. Not for you."
"You're here for the Primaterre."
"We're here for vengeance." The RebEarth captain wore the same black-and-red armour as his crew, but the jumpsuit underneath it was pure white. It had a hood, a fringe of ribbons falling from it to obscure his face. "The Primos are few in number but high in value. Tell us where to find them and we'll have what we came for."
"We allow your people to hide here, but this is not your world. Not your home. If you fail to take your vengeance, what's to say that they won't reap their own on us, we who harbour their enemies?"
"The Primaterre love only death and destruction. Their presence on Cato doesn't bode well for your community. Impure, they'll call it, and impure they'll call you, just before they put a bullet in your brain. They're a problem for all of us, so let's solve it together."
"You want to solve a problem for us? Then you can start by disconnecting your shuttle's systems from the spaceport." Hal stood in the shadow of the ship, wiping greasy hands on his overalls. His pockets bulged in a way they hadn't before. "You're keeping the force field from reactivating. If the generator cools down, it might never restart."
The RebEarth captain frowned like a nobleman who'd just been addressed by a beggar. Odd, for a terrorist and wanted criminal. "I'd like permission to bring the rest of my men down from orbit first."
"More men?" The mayor sounded as anxious as Joy felt.
"Got thirty on the shuttle, along with three vehicles, and another fifty men waiting on our ship. Like I said, we're not here to cause trouble. This is going to be quick and clean."
Thirty plus fifty. The simplest of maths, equalling the worst of conclusions. Even Cassimer and his team had their limits.
"Don't care about you or your men," Hal said. "I care about this town. Care about what's coming."
"What's coming?" The captain looked bemused.
"Can't you smell it? A freshness on the wind. A weight on your brow." Hal held his hand out, palm up. "The season changes."
"Whatever," said the captain. "Have I got permission or not? We didn't come here empty-handed; we've got plenty of things to trade and share."
"All right," the mayor said, ignoring Hal's vocal and extremely rude disapproval. "Welcome to Nexus."
He and the captain shook hands, and as they did, a sound began to fill the spaceport. Tapping, rapid and hollow, familiar and yet alien to the environment. Joy looked up, and droplets of water spattered her face, making her blink against the dark sky.
Rain. Light and tentative at first, but soon growing to a downpour. It washed dust and lichen from rooftops, turning streets to ruddy slurry. The winds blew it sideways through Nexus, and in the lights of the shuttle, the drops were rubies and diamonds, rich and heavy, gathering in swelling lines on the undersides of cranes and cables.
