Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  "I suppose everyone assumed it was quiet because the system wasn't a priority target. That RebEarth were spread too thin to do any real damage. A reasonable enough assumption, and one of the worst mistakes in recent history. RebEarth weren't quiet because they didn't care; they were quiet because they were planning to hit the Cascade."

  "But that's crazy!" More than crazy. Unimaginable. "Is it even possible?"

  "It shouldn't be, not with the kind of security protecting them. But RebEarth must've found a way, because one day we lost all contact with the system. One second it was there, a quick fold away, and the next it was gone. No communications, no nothing. We don't even know how badly the Cascade was hit. Bad enough that they've not been able to repair it from their side in the past twenty-two years. If it was bad enough that the whole thing went up... Plenty of Primaterre ships would've been caught in the explosion. Plenty of Transpo ships in particular. Repair ships were dispatched immediately, but without the Cascade to fold through, it's a twenty-odd year journey. And once they get there, who knows how long it'll take to repair it, if it even can be repaired. Until then, all I have are ifs. If anyone's alive. If Cecilia is alive. If she still thinks of me. When it happened - when I realised I might never see her again - I cracked open the boxes of booze we'd bought for the wedding, and I drank the lot of it. Except for one bottle of champagne. I'm saving that for when the Cascade reopens and then - no matter the outcome - I'll make a toast to Cecilia. It'll be flat as all hell, but I doubt anything will ever have tasted as good."

  "I'm so sorry, Rhys. I understand what it's like," she said, childishly envious of the bottle of champagne. It was a thing to hold and cherish, an physical connection to the lost and loved. When her parents died, Finn had been that connection - but of Finn himself, nothing remained. Except for the h-chip, that little thing inside of her which told the world the lie that Finn lived.

  "You ought to, but you sure don't act like it."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Andrew Scarsdale might never get his revenge, but you have to know that sooner or later, that's how our commander's story will end. Is that what you want for yourself? A life where every knock on the door makes your heart leap; where you open every notification with dread; where you go through your days without really living, because no matter where you are, your heart is elsewhere. Like me, you've seen enough to be able to imagine the worst. You didn't just overhear Scarsdale; you felt every damn word, saw every gory detail played out in your mind."

  He was right, and she had to bite her lip to stop it from wobbling.

  "Our commander's heading towards a bad death. There will be suffering, but there needn't be tears."

  "You want him to die unmourned?"

  "I want you to live without the grief, and I want you to understand that the commander's not like other people. Oh sure, he's cleared for duty, but how much of that is truth and how much of it is Bastion's wishful thinking? They'd rather have their prize possession KIA than psyched out - makes for a better story. The only reason I'm not using my authority to have him pulled is because I'm sure the bastards would only convince him to return to the cataphracts. And that, princess, would kill him as surely as Andrew Scarsdale's blade."

  "If you're trying to help him, you've got a strange way of going about it."

  "I like to think I was making progress. Pardon me for not being happy about my good work being undone by a kitten-eyed redhead."

  "Hey," she protested, heart thudding against her ribs. "I think you've got this all wrong."

  "Have I now? I see the way he looks at you. There's a fine line between desire and violence, and I'm not sure he even understands the difference."

  "You're out of line, Rhys, and you might know the soldier, but you don't know the man half so well as you think. He'd never hurt me."

  "Not intentionally," Rhys agreed. "But he has manoeuvred himself into a position of complete power over you. His rank, his merits... I can't help but worry for the both of you."

  "I thought everyone started out with ten thousand merits."

  "That's not - " Rhys paused, a thoughtful look on his face. "Huh. He didn't tell you."

  "Didn't tell me what?"

  "Didn't tell me what, sir. Come to think of it, you've been quite impertinent this whole conversation. Ought to write you up for it, Private."

  "You do that," she said, "and I'll tell Cassimer about our little conversation. Somebody's going to end up in trouble, but I'm betting it won't be me. Sir."

  "Ouch." He laughed. "Kitten's got claws. Tell me, are you going to hold a grudge like the commander, or are you the forgive and forget type?"

  "Forget what?" she said, and when he smiled, she almost did forget - both the conversation, and how lonely Cato had once been.

  ◆◆◆

  Rows of bottles gleamed under buzzing lights. Empties, and ones filled with grey or cloudy yellow. Sweet alcohol mixed with the stench of urine, and Joy pressed a hand to her mouth to stop herself from retching. Drag marks in the dust and a few overturned bottles were the only signs of a scuffle. A trail of spilled greetshine led down a tiled corridor.

  "What did you do with them?" she asked.

  Hopewell smirked. "Well, we didn't shoot them up with sedatives and sing them to sleep."

  Answer enough, and Joy tried to tell herself that whatever they'd done, it'd been necessary. Duncan had advised her to let go, and maybe he'd been right. The world had been turned upside down and shaken like a snow globe, and still her moral compass pointed true north (well - north-northwest). Her ideas of what constituted civilisation clung like barnacles, even as Cato told her the same story over and over again: Nice has no place here.

  And then came Platform 2, where the story seemed to turn a page.

  Its chocolate-rippled marble floor wasn't just clean, but polished to a sheen. The cast-iron benches along the sea-green walls had been repaired many times over the decades, but great care had been taken in the mending. A magazine rack was filled to the brim with yellowing brochures. A ticket machine chirped and blinked under Lucklaw's investigating fingers.

  There was no debris on the tracks, no scattered bones or smears of graffiti. A laminated poster showed a woman staring at a pot of yoghurt as if it were the holy grail. On Cato, it might as well be.

  In amber lights, a sign over the tracks informed:

  2 BRIDEWELL VIA CASTLE STREET 3 mins

  Joy stood at the edge of the platform, looking down the tunnel. One end was dark, but a trail of recessed orange lights glowed in the other direction. A section of ceiling had collapsed, but girders and beams had been put in place as supports, and scaffolding stretched across the tunnel. On Platform 2, faults weren't patched up - they were fixed, and fixed right.

  "Step back, Somerset." Cassimer emerged from the dark end of the tunnel. "We don't know what's down there."

  She obeyed, backing up all the way to the benches.

  "Made a lot of noise, Hopewell."

  "Apologies, Commander." Hopewell shuffled her feet. "But I -"

  Florey nudged her with his elbow.

  "Apologies," Hopewell repeated, resigning herself to shamed silence.

  "Four men, all armed. On guard duty, but also deep in the cups. We moved the bodies into a maintenance tunnel and Hopewell got creative. Made it look like they'd been killed by drifters," Florey said. "Even if the bodies are discovered, our presence won't be."

  "Won't it?" Lucklaw pointed towards the ceiling. The faux-marble tiles were dotted with black domes. "Surveillance cameras, online and streaming to very secure servers."

  "We're being watched?" Hopewell raised a hand towards a camera, two fingers beginning to unfurl from her closed fist. Again, Florey's sharp elbow stopped her.

  "Of course not. My sensors detected the cameras before we entered. I've got footage of an empty station running on a loop, but if someone is watching, they're going to notice eventually."

  "Can you access the surveillance feeds in the tunnel to g
ive us an idea of what we're walking into?" Cassimer looked towards the tunnel. His armour shifted grey and amber, adjusting to the light conditions.

  2 BRIDEWELL VIA CASTLE STREET 1 min

  "Um, Commander," Joy said, pointing to the sign. "It says there's a train coming. Maybe you should come away from the tracks?"

  He tapped his boot against the magnetic rails. "No power. No vibrations. Doubt there's an actual train coming."

  "There isn't," Lucklaw said. "I'd know."

  Still, after one more glance down the tunnel, Cassimer climbed onto the platform, and Joy couldn't help but feel relieved. If it weren't for the fact that it'd be completely inappropriate and unprofessional, she'd have sent him a

  :)

  MESSAGE DELIVERED TO [003927SSBC, Cassimer, C], her HUD announced cheerfully.

  whatno you wernt supposed to send that ssstupid computer

  She stopped, reeled in her runaway train of thought and deleted that unintended message before the HUD passed it along too. She should send a follow-up, though, before Cassimer admonished her like he had Hopewell - beaming disapproval straight into her brain.

  sorry mistake please ignore

  Good. Or was it? Did mistake sound too harsh? Like she hadn't meant to be pleased that he was being careful?

  what i MEAN is i'm glad you won't be run over by a train but sorry for bothering you

  Shit.

  i mean, sorry for bothering you, commander. won't happen againnnnnnnnnn

  The n's kept going for another three mortifying lines that she was sure hadn't been there before she sent the message.

  "Stupid computer," she hissed.

  sorry again having trouble figuring this out makes my head hurt won't happen again starting now!

  "You doing all right there, Somerset?" Rhys's eyes sparkled with amusement. For a horrible moment she thought she'd been broadcasting to the team channel rather than Cassimer's, but a quick check with the HUD put that fear to rest.

  "Yes." A droplet of blood slid across her lips as she spoke, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. "Just a nosebleed."

  "A nosebleed and a face redder than a stoplight." He handed her a wet wipe. "Here. And stick close to me; we're moving out."

  The text on the sign had changed to suggest that the next train to Castle Street would be arriving in little over an hour. The tunnel lay quiet, but walking on the tracks made her nervous. It just wasn't the done thing. You stayed behind the yellow lines and you minded the gap; you didn't crowd the train doors and you most certainly never set foot on the tracks. That was civilisation.

  ◆◆◆

  They followed the orange trail of lights deep into subterranean Cato. The surveillance cameras showed nothing but endless empty tunnel ahead.

  "You look a bit scared, Somerset." Hopewell was about twenty feet ahead, moving in tandem with Florey as the spearhead of the group, but her voice came through Joy's earpiece loud and clear.

  "Of course I'm scared. Aren't you?"

  "Three weeks or so from now, I'll be waking up in a cold sweat thinking what on earth were we doing going down that tunnel? But not now; not ever on the job. Somebody explained purity to you, right? Purity makes the scary simple. Focus on the present. Perceive. Be aware of the real and put aside imagined fears."

  "Easier said than done."

  "Sure, but you should try. Your primer should have the auto-chaplain program installed. If you think it'll help, you can always activate it."

  There was a false note in Hopewell's concern. No matter what she said, the lieutenant was scared - and she'd identified Joy as the weak link.

  "You're worried about dem-"

  "Shhhhh!" Hopewell's hush rushed against Joy's eardrum. "Don't say it. And yes, I know that's superstitious and impure of me, but still. Better safe than possessed, right?"

  So the d-word was out but the p-word was acceptable. Joy shook her head. This aspect of the Primaterre was still hard to swallow. Purity didn't seem rooted in logic or reason; strange, for a doctrine that prized those very qualities.

  "Just try it, Joy. Always good to be pure. Always good to be prepared. Still, I wasn't lying - I'm not scared. Doesn't matter how infested these tunnels are, if they want our minds, they'll have to get past the commander first. If they couldn't do that all those years ago, I don't fancy their chances now."

  Except all those years ago the commander hadn't been as frightened as he was now. Joy glanced over her shoulder just in time to see dark-armoured Cassimer round the bend. Having him watching their backs made her feel as safe as anyone traversing a mysterious tunnel could, but what concerned her was how he felt.

  Certainly not safe. And if demons thrived in shadow and slipped through cracks, then Cassimer had both in abundance.

  You just worry about yourself, Joy. Never mind him. The old sawbones has the right of it; save your love for one who isn't damned.

  Imaginary Finn's sharp tone was as unfamiliar as his choice of words. Perhaps she was forgetting him already. Perhaps she would get him more and more wrong until the memory of Finn faded to an impressionistic blur of the once familiar.

  As sad as that thought made her - sad enough that the next droplet to run down her face wasn't blood - she hoped it'd happen fast. Better to love an idolized haze than a warped shade, because the Finn who'd called Cassimer damned was not the same as the Finn who'd bought her a macaron and kissed her good-bye on the Ever Onward.

  Or perhaps I changed while you slept.

  So loud, so clear that she had to stop and turn to make sure he wasn't standing there. Her Finn, smiling and confident, or this other Finn; this unquiet ghost.

  "You all right, Somerset?" Rhys once more voiced concern, and she couldn't help but smile. Seven months alone in tunnels, so isolated and frightened that she'd started talking to the imaginary, and now the words Are you all right? were like poetry to her ears. "That nosebleed's getting worse, isn't it? Hang on." He motioned for her to stop, one hand digging through one of his many belt pouches.

  Cassimer caught up with them as Rhys rolled back her sleeve for another injection.

  "Something the matter?" Voice; neutral. Visor; shut.

  "Hypertension. Common to individuals who have primers activated in adulthood. All the new stimulus introduced to the nervous system is quite the strain." Rhys pulled her sleeve back down and adjusted it. "Given the nosebleed, I suppose you've been getting headaches too?"

  She nodded.

  "A sensation of vertigo? No. Good. No vomiting either. What about feelings of anxiety?"

  She gave him a long look, gesturing towards their surroundings, and he laughed. "All right, I see your point. For the time being, I'd advise limited use of your primer. Use my tablet instead of your contacts to take some of the strain off, or we'll have you bleeding from your eyeballs next. Don't worry, though - ten minutes from now, the drugs'll kick in and you'll be ready to take on the world."

  "Good," said Cassimer, though his focus seemed to be entirely on the tunnel behind them. "Keep going."

  They did, although Joy caught herself stealing glances over her shoulder. Cassimer lingered, rifle trained at the darkness. When she lost sight of him, she found herself the subject of Rhys's judgmental glare.

  "Andrew Scarsdale said something about Primaterre medicine that I've been wondering about." She had been wondering about it, but not so badly that it couldn't have waited. Needed to change topic fast, however, before the medic had time to translate his judgment into words.

  "Only thing Scarsdale should be saying is gee whiz, I sure wish I wasn't a wanted terrorist, because Primaterre medicine is the only thing that could save my decaying arse. But sure, let's hear it."

  "He called you aberrations." She told him Scarsdale's anecdote about the officer whose brain he'd kept a piece of, and of how fast the officer had returned to the field.

  "Bollocks," said Rhys, shaking his head. "The human brain is a highly sophisticated organic machine. Our understanding of it is nascent at best,
and comprehension doesn't equal ability to replicate or regenerate. Cerebral tissue can be regenerated, but it comes out blank, bereft of function and programming. If that officer did suffer catastrophic head trauma, his recovery would depend on which parts of his brain were damaged. With extensive treatment and augments, it's possible he could've been saved, perhaps even returned to duty in some form - but he wouldn't be the same as he once was."

  "And his recovery would take longer than a week?"

  "Significantly. Medical science has seen a lot of progress while you slept, Somerset, and it's true we do have some damn fine doctors on our side, but we're not bloody wizards." He rapped his knuckles against her helmet. "So you'll want to make sure you keep this strapped on tight."

  She tightened the strap until it bit into her skin. "What about Scarsdale? Could Primaterre medicine save him?"

  "I doubt it. We could keep him alive a good long while - like the Ereshkigal suit is doing - but the required treatments are so drastic and so exotic that it's likely he would succumb to them, if not the radiation poisoning."

  "So he's going to die."

  "Yes," Rhys said. "And there are few things more dangerously desperate than a dead man walking."

  ◆◆◆

  Multiple contacts three miles out.

  Joy's tablet, on a slight delay, cycled through two more surveillance feeds before she saw what was coming their way.

  People. Scores of them, all wearing identical grey overalls. Some carried lanterns and some carried rifles, but most hands were busy pushing or dragging carts down the track. The picture wasn't clear enough to make out faces, but their hunched postures were familiar enough. These were the men and women of Nexus. They had abandoned their homes and gone into the deep dark to - what? Do maintenance work in the tunnels?

  Ventilation shaft fifty metres back.

  By the time she reached Cassimer's position, he'd already wrenched loose the ventilation grille. Tendrils of lichen spilled from the air duct, coughing spores as Lucklaw climbed up.