Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  Metal tore and reactive plates fractured. His suit flagged half-a-dozen systems red before he even hit the ground. In a shower of shattered glass, Cassimer tumbled into the mud. Three sheds had stood between the clinic and a small square, and now three sheds lay in ruin. One had been inhabited - he'd caught a glimpse of pale faces and writhing limbs as he'd hurtled through - and as he pushed himself to his knees, he saw shadows fleeing down the alleyways.

  And here came Scarsdale, screaming through the mud. He'd shut his visor and tried to snap the cuirass back in place, but it flapped, jammed on his own guts. He saw Cassimer too late to stop running, skidded into the square and stumbled onto one giant metal knee. One gauntlet clutched an assault rifle and the two shoulder-mounted autocannons were green-lit, but Scarsdale was struggling, too clumsy to use the suit the way it begged to be used.

  Cassimer lunged out of Scarsdale's reach and splashed through sucking mud to flank him. The Ereshkigal suit's active protection field should've been flaring, but either the suit was damaged or Scarsdale was hampering it, because it remained dormant.

  He threw himself onto Scarsdale's back and looped one arm around his neck, forcing the man's head backwards. He pried the cuirass open and reached in. Mushroom-pale flesh split around his bracers, skin curling as his own protection field crackled with heat.

  Scarsdale wailed and to Cassimer it was the rising pitch of the air raid sirens on Galatea, only keener, sharper, not muffled by tonnes of damp earth. He closed his eyes and the darkness was the darkness of the tunnels, the sweat on his skin the seeping waters of the swamps. The man in his grip, into whose chest he bored his Morrigan, was not Captain de Bracy and did not deserve a clean death. But this - he fired once, twice, emptied the entire ammo block and knew that it wouldn't be enough - nobody deserved this and Earth have mercy, he didn't deserve having to do it.

  "Yield," he growled, breathless. "Yield and I'll see that you die a man and not an abomination."

  Scarsdale shivered. His hands stopped clawing and he no longer struggled to stand. The RebEarther was seeing sense, and -

  Cassimer's APF sparked under a spray of bullets. Three RebEarthers had come to investigate the commotion.

  He swung his arm back and returned fire. One RebEarther went down without so much as a sound. The other two found cover - a crumbling concrete wall proved sufficient, a stack of crates not so much and a shriek came from behind them as the Morrigan hit her target. More hostiles were approaching, dotting his HUD with movement. He had to finish Scarsdale now.

  But Scarsdale had other ideas. The giant pushed himself to his feet and shook his great shoulders. Gauntleted fingers clutched at Cassimer's arm, and he had no choice but to let go or lose his use of the limb. He slid from Scarsdale's back, landed in mud and turned into a blinding volley of gunfire. Most of the bullets evaporated harmlessly on blistering armour plates, but one clipped his temple, cutting a deep groove in his helmet.

  Scarsdale's hand closed around his neck and forced him to his knees.

  "Cease fire," Scarsdale bellowed. His men obeyed - stupid - and Cassimer took out another two before the Morrigan was wrenched away. Scarsdale pushed him down, grinding him into the mud.

  When Scarsdale pulled him back into a kneeling position, and the last of the ashen sludge dripped from his visor, it was to the audience of a half-dozen RebEarthers. A couple of them wounded; all of them flushed with fury. None of them afraid.

  "He killed him!" The cry came from a heavily-armoured RebEarther beside the body of the first to die. Grief turned to hate as his gaze turned to Cassimer. "Fucking Primo shot Hayling!"

  "Quit your whining," Scarsdale snapped. "Dell, you recording this?"

  The RebEarther who'd taken cover behind the crates limped forward, one blood-soaked hand pressed to his shoulder. "Got it, boss."

  "Not going to get a steady shot shaking like that. Well, what the hell. Help me get this bastard's helmet off - we're doing this now."

  "The captain will want to do it on the ship. He's got it all set up and scripted -"

  "Fuck the captain." Scarsdale's grip tightened. Cassimer could hear his suit cracking. "This is my show."

  51. Cassimer

  Bright construction lights drained the square of all colour and reduced the world to black-and-white. Exposed ground and compact shadow. Life and death. Honour and dishonour. Success and failure. Cassimer ran the calculations and adjusted accordingly, searching the delicate threads of fate for the right one to tug. In hopeless situations, subtle made all the difference - such as struggling against his captors only to relent as soon as they'd dragged him two-point-five feet off their original mark.

  Two-point-five feet between success and failure. Quite a generous margin, in his experience. In the corner of his eye, he could see the tapering spire of a control tower that had previously been blocked from line of sight. It hadn't controlled anything in decades, but a green aviation light pulsed, signalling a flight that would never come. A good focal point, a steady beat to which he could match his breathing and heart rate.

  More RebEarthers had arrived, but not as many as there could've been; Scarsdale had dismissed offers of assistance over the radio and evaded questions. Funny, really - Cassimer hadn't wasted much thought on the man since their first encounter, but clearly, Scarsdale had thought of little else but him. The RebEarther held him, one hand around both his wrists and the other around his neck. Held him close, grip trembling with restrained excitement. Andrew Scarsdale, murderer of thousands, had only one more chance to kill and he was determined to make it his legacy.

  On Scarsdale's command, the construction lights were centred on him and Cassimer. A murmur went through the small crowd of RebEarthers, and a few of them looked visibly ill. None of them, however, dared to turn their faces from their boss, no matter how grotesque he loomed when there were no shadows to conceal his decay.

  Scarsdale seemed to relish their reactions. He spoke directly to the camera, introducing himself with as much bombastic flair as a man with no teeth could manage. He growled and snarled, using his monstrosity to accuse the Primaterre. They had done this to him, he said, and did it to their own people every day. Life and death made unholy, Mother Earth's will subverted and corrupted.

  When Scarsdale finished talking, a RebEarth man stepped into the circle of light and smashed the butt of his rifle into Cassimer's cracked visor until it shattered. Then fingers, dark with dirt, scratched and clawed Cassimer's face, digging deep inside to wrench off his helmet.

  Focus on the light. Breathe. Perceive. See with clarity the design you've made, observe the pieces moving into position. Remain anchored.

  But the chill of Nexus clung to his skin and fingers tugged at his hair, pulling his head backwards until his neck strained at breaking-point. He tried to swallow, tried to breathe, but there was nothing between him and Cato, nothing between him and the shadows, and though they weren't real, he could feel them reaching for him. And wasn't that worse? Demons weren't real, demons didn't exist, and still he felt their eyes on him, still he heard the thin echo of laughter. Earth have mercy; he was a thousand light-years from home, on his knees in the mud, and there was no denying it - he was completely fucking insane.

  "What are you laughing about, Primo?"

  Cassimer wasn't sure whether he'd laughed or sobbed, but he refocused on the green light and refused to respond.

  The edge of a blade whispered against his throat. No longer hot, but unmistakably his own weapon turned against him. And over there, a RebEarther wiped mud from the Morrigan, and another hungrily eyed his armour. Vultures, waiting to pick him clean. Scavengers, waiting to dig into his bones for augments. Scum, the lot of them, and especially Scarsdale, whose flesh blistered and dripped.

  "How about you be a good boy and state your name for the viewers at home?" Scarsdale loosened his grip slightly, just enough to allow Cassimer to breathe in more than short gasps.

  Breathing was good, but he wasn't going to say a damn word. Not yet.
The last piece of the puzzle wasn't in place.

  Scarsdale sighed, his breath hot and fetid against Cassimer's cheek. "Will someone who can do it without killing him hit this bastard in the face?"

  There were plenty of takers, and Scarsdale magnanimously let each have their turn. Bone cracked against bone and knuckles split on his teeth. For every blow, names were thrown in his face. Names of lost loved ones, none of which he recognised. Names of worlds, some of which he did.

  "Galatea." He spat blood on the ground before looking up at the woman who'd spoken. "I was there."

  "Yeah? I was born there." The woman spat too, a hot glob of saliva landing above his right eye. "Lived there all my life until you Primos burned it to the ground."

  "Nobody lived there. Existed, maybe. Eating, breathing, clawing at what your world had to give, and when there was nothing left, you clawed at each other. Have you seen how Galatea looks now? It's beautiful. Without you, it's beautiful." He couldn't help but smile. "We took what was yours and made it better than you ever could have."

  The woman's face twisted into something ugly and she balled up her fist again, but Scarsdale stopped her.

  "Enough. We want his pretty face to be recognisable."

  "Just kill him already, Scarsdale. He's a fucking asshole. Got no right to talk about Galatea that way. Do you even know how many people died there? How many people you killed?"

  105,633. Yes, he knew the number, and how it divided into categories of ally and hostile, civilian and military. Knew how ugly maths could be after the fact, when sitting in a silent transport ship with conscience on one shoulder and duty on the other. The large numbers stacked up like weights, but the little numbers hurt worse. The simple math, such as thirty-three troops returning to a row of fifty bunks. One plus one equalled two, and his comrades had died because people like Scarsdale were too wrapped up in what they were to see what they could become. He had waded through sludge in collapsing tunnels, and he had taken a knife to poor Captain de Bracy because RebEarth chose chaos over order.

  And so the equation of how many he had killed on Galatea elegantly resolved itself.

  "Only one who mattered," he said, and the woman had to be dragged away.

  Scarsdale turned Cassimer's face towards the bleeding cameraman. "Any last words? Not that this will be quick, mind, but I don't expect you'll be coherent much longer."

  "Yeah," he said, and this time he did laugh. "Yeah, I've got some advice for you, Scarsdale. You want to kill someone, you pull the trigger. What you don't do is stand in the middle of a square and point a dozen lights at yourself."

  A RebEarther slumped over and a rifle cracked in the distance. One more died before anyone had time to react; the bullet tore through his chest and clipped the cameraman's leg.

  Deep breaths. Focus. Cassimer commanded his suit to burn all available power to create a massive protection field. Scarsdale still had the blade to his throat, but it wouldn't kill him half so quickly as the two missiles screaming towards them from the top of the flight control tower.

  "Scarsdale," he said. "Look up."

  The missiles struck, cratering the south side of the square along with the RebEarthers who'd taken cover there. Shrapnel battered Cassimer's protection field, which flickered and wavered under the force of the blast. It held, just long enough, but as the dust began to settle, it fizzled and died and this time the heat wasn't imaginary; something burned. Smoke escaped from inside his suit, licking his throat.

  And Scarsdale - who was human after all, inside all of that metal - had let go of Cassimer's wrists to shield himself from the blast. Cassimer rolled backwards, into Scarsdale, towards the gaping hole of the RebEarther's chest. Among flaps of yellowed flesh and a stomach cavity dark with blood, he turned and reached upwards, pushing his fist into Scarsdale's trachea.

  Bullets whined through the air. Cries echoed between alleys and sheds, HUD counting more and more contacts. He ignored the instinct to turn and protect himself, didn't even let up as he heard the footfall of boots behind him.

  His mission was Scarsdale. Everything else, he had to entrust to the team.

  He pushed through stretching ligaments and snapping bone until his hand closed around Scarsdale's cervical vertebrae. The RebEarther couldn't scream, not anymore, but his dying body vibrated with agony. It was inhuman, it was sick, and Cassimer had no choice but to burrow deeper, to twist and pull and break the man apart. Stims would help, a quick dose to fill his veins with lightning until the world became so intense it'd seem unreal. But Rhys had been right - he needed truth, even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt.

  Heavy blows rained down on his back, but it wasn't Scarsdale. Just the suit, working to keep alive a man who should be dead, and yes, Scarsdale had been right too; it was an abomination.

  He pulled Scarsdale from the Ereshkigal suit. Head first, as a mercy; cranium fracturing as the suit tried to hold onto it. Then torso, arms, all the wet and weeping things.

  When nothing remained inside the shell but ribbons of skin and oozing fluids, he fell to his knees.

  "Good work, Hopewell," said the part of him that could run on auto-pilot. His HUD marked her position, a single dot next to the control tower's green light. Long-range work was Florey's specialty, but perhaps the gunner was busy elsewhere - or perhaps there was a reason even Hopewell had been slow to come to his aid.

  "No problem, Commander." Her tone was so light he had to press his hand to his mouth. From her position, she could see what he had done. What had been necessary. She should be horrified, but there was nothing in her voice save for a touch of satisfaction. If Joy had seen -

  - he had to bite down hard to finish that thought. If Joy had seen, stars, she'd look at him the way she had after the skirmish in the train station. So rigid with fear he'd half-expected her to break; so downhearted he'd half-expected himself to break.

  It was necessary, he'd tell her and he'd be right, but so was she. Even if the state of the universe demanded it, if it was some law of nature or inevitability of life that awful things be done, why did he have to be the one to do them?

  Stupid question. Obvious answer: because he could.

  Because without people like him, Galatea and its people would've died a long and protracted death. Because without him, Scarsdale would've spent another month dying. Because without him, Joy would die.

  ◆◆◆

  The cuirass snapped into place and with the darkness came a sense of home. The Primaterre Protectorate and his quarters on Scathach might hold the official title, but to Cassimer, home wasn't a place. Home was the smell of ozone and the squeeze of shock-absorbent sheathing. It was the sound of his breath against a three-inch thick visor and the cool touch of snaking filaments. Home was strength and home was silence, and the suit's systems glowed a bright green welcome.

  Ereshkigal Class armour detected. Export settings?

  Cassimer acquiesced, and his primer reached out to the suit. The digital handshake took only a second or two, not nearly enough time to brace.

  Inside of him, augments subtly shifted their functions to better serve a cataphract. The suit adjusted too, reassembling itself to accommodate his frame. The suit worked fast and enthusiastically, as though it was pleased to house a worthy user. Many of its systems were badly damaged, and its medical supplies depleted. Filaments grazed his skin, but he denied them access - it'd be too much like having Scarsdale inside of him. Primer and suit whispered to one another until their voices were as one, and with connection came awareness.

  He stood in the ruins of Voirrey's clinic and saw with perfect clarity. Broken furniture, shattered glass. Feathery lichen waving in the stuttering breeze of an air-conditioning unit. The smouldering remains of his banneret armour. His knife and the rest of his gear. The injection meant for Scarsdale, unused and discarded. Yes, he saw all of that, but there was so much more to see, and the suit insisted that he look. It took him, pulling his mind up and out.

  There was Nexus, its spiral arms of
sheds and alleys expanding from the open pit of the undercity. There was a RebEarth shuttle, ramp down and airlock open, two men on watch smoking and chatting as Lucklaw and Florey moved in. There was Platform 2, and he followed the curving tunnel as far as he could.

  Nexus from above, through Hopewell's eyes and unsecured cameras on control towers and cranes, and Nexus from below. A thousand images and data points. Too much information for a human mind, but he was a cataphract again and the universe bowed at his feet.

  Hopewell slid down a ladder and he could feel the vibrations in her hands like they were his own. Florey took care of the two guards and the blood spattered his visor and Cassimer's. The knife was in Florey's hands and in his, and he was with Lucklaw, diving into the RebEarth shuttle's systems, floating in rivers of light that made more sense to the suit than him. He was with RebEarth too, a squad of armoured men running towards his location. Plenty of firepower, augments, cameras and computers, and not all of them secured. A torrent of offensive scripts rushed from his primer to the suit, which immediately deployed them in a wide field of hostile code to scramble targeting systems and shut down sensors.

  He could do worse, and he could extend further, but not while the team were in range. Not while there were non-combatants in town. Not while Doctor Voirrey hunched in the alley behind her ruined clinic.

  She didn't try to run. Pointed a gun at him instead, an old thing, ugly in her healer's hands.

  "Is there any point in me pulling this trigger?"

  He shook his head.

  She cursed and placed the gun on the ground between them. When she looked at him, it was with grim acceptance. "Go on then. Just make it quick. Not like... not like Andrew. Maybe I shouldn't have done what I did, but you can't blame me for trying."