Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  "I don't," he said and held out his gauntlet towards her. A power cell lay in his palm. "There's a shuttle on the eastern platform; goes by the name Esmeduna. Flight-ready, but for the lack of a power cell. Can't give you a ride off-world, Doctor Voirrey, but I can give you half a chance."

  She gave him a sceptical look.

  "Take it, and keep that gun of yours ready. The man who claims the Esmeduna as his own might make you use it." The memory of Joy's bruised face rekindled his anger, and he added: "If he does, don't hesitate."

  She took the power cell and cradled it close to her chest. "Why? Why would you do this after I..."

  "Because," he said, "I'm trying too."

  52. Hopewell

  Halfway down the control tower when the rain started to fall. Halfway to the shuttle when a RebEarth squad spotted her. She was fast, and they were shit shots, but one bullet had clipped her thigh and with her suit's defences still malfunctioning, it hurt like a bastard.

  Sensors were glitching too, showing either nothing or way too much. Not good, because the rain was coming down hard and thick with dust, dropping visibility to near zero. Between the storm and the gunfire, she could barely hear herself think.

  She took cover behind a concrete building at the corner of an intersection. The RebEarth shuttle's garish lights tinted the rain red at the end of the eastern alley. An easy run, even with the RebEarthers bearing down on her, if only it weren't for the son of a bitch sniper. Impact craters pockmarked the alley floor, and the wind howled through fist-sized holes in the concrete walls. He had a serious weapon, with a calibre of bullet that didn't need to penetrate her suit to do serious damage.

  He was west of her position, judging by the angle of the bullet holes. Elevated, at that, and she tried to recall the geography, but there were too many cranes and towers, too many junked shuttles stacked on top of one another. Truth was, he could be anywhere and -

  - a bullet burst through the wall less than an inch from her face, shrapnel scratching her visor. Two more shots followed, and she cursed, rolling away, rolling into the alley, scrambling to finding cover. Mud exploded into the air, concrete dust spattering her armour.

  You bastard. She shrugged her missile launcher from her shoulders. Would have to fire blind, but oh, he was asking for it and she had a ship to catch. Lucklaw had dropped the force field ahead of schedule, and considering how twitchy the corporal had acted since Florey's attempted mutiny (what a boneheaded stunt that had been), she didn't trust him not to take off without her.

  Ready to return fire, she took a deep breath and tried not to think about the likelihood of hitting a civilian target, tried to not think about the schools and hospitals and orphanages. Nexus probably didn't have any of those things anyway. Even if it did, these people were all sick or mad or bloody houseplants. Killing them didn't count.

  "Hopewell, three o'clock on shuttle roof." The commander's voice, calm and cool in her ear. "On the count of five."

  Thank the Earth and all the stars. She switched out the missile launcher for her borrowed rifle and linked it to the commander's targeting data. On five, an explosion ripped through Nexus, and she swung out of cover and pulled the trigger. The general direction was good enough, rifle and bullet both working to course-correct.

  "Six hostiles approaching from the west. Take second alley on the right. After that, it's -" Another explosion, this time powerful enough to rock every shelter along the alley. When the commander spoke again, some of his cool had gone. "It's a straight shot to the ship. Go now."

  "Do you require assistance, Commander?"

  "No. Heavy resistance, but I'm handling it."

  Stars. Half the damn town gunning for him but still he took the time to look out for her.

  A quick dash through crimson rain, and there was the shuttle, airlock sealing shut the moment she was through.

  Its interior was no less gaudy than the exterior. Murals depicted rising phoenixes, their flame-wreathed talons tearing grey-armoured soldiers to shreds. An open door led to a bathroom, and she'd expected RebEarthers to be pigs, but it was remarkably clean. Soap dispensers on the walls, even a can of Martian Mountain air freshener inside a glass cabinet.

  The next door opened up into a passenger lounge. The Rising Flame - outside of their creative flair for cruelty, nobody could accuse RebEarth of being imaginative - was a modified Hepto-class transportation shuttle, capable of carrying twenty passengers, with additional space for vehicles on the lower deck. Probably hot goods snatched from an annexed system. As much as RebEarth hated the Primaterre, they sure liked using their toys.

  Bloody parasites, she thought, but eyed the lounge enviously. Quilted blankets draped over red-velvet seats. A table, spattered with blood, had been set for dinner and, Earth have mercy, was that steak? Steak, mashed potatoes, even a couple of bottles of beer. These RebEarthers sure travelled in more comfort than banneret companies. Hell, Bastion wouldn't even allow a bar on Scathach no matter how many petitions were signed and delivered. Official word was that alcohol on base would be counter-intuitive to purity.

  Well. What a joke that was.

  Soon as I get back, I'm hitting the nearest speakeasy. Get good and drunk, and the only purity I'm going to worry about is the purity of the damn alcohol.

  Inside the cockpit, Lucklaw sat awash with the rainbow glow of flight instrument lights. A RebEarther, bruised and bloodied, was tied to the co-pilot's seat. A tacky-fresh mural showed a body slumped at the feet of a black-armoured man, who triumphantly offered up the corpse's head to the beak of a descending phoenix.

  Florey sat in a corner, tending to an unconscious Rhys.

  "Here's your rifle." She dropped it, dripping with grey rain, onto the floor. He started to say something, but she shook her head. Didn't want to hear a damn thing out of his stupid mouth. Didn't even want to look at his stupid face, to be perfectly honest.

  Instead, she walked up to stand between Lucklaw and the RebEarther. The former ignored her, too busy with whatever comms specialists did. The latter, however, turned his head to glare at her. So angry, so seething.

  She opened her visor to pop a piece of gum in her mouth. "That," she said, nodding towards the mural, "looks nothing like our commander. Here, let me show you." She pushed his seat forward and turned it to give the RebEarther a view of Nexus.

  Dark smoke and bright gunfire created a strobe-light effect on the eastern horizon, flickering, flashing, so rapid that when a tripod pylon collapsed, it seemed to happen in slow-motion. A thousand tonnes of corroding steel choppily moving through the air, listing, falling, crushing everything in its path. A series of explosions plumed around the toppled pylon.

  People spilled from alleys and shelters, and in the strobe-lit rain, their faces went through a cartoonish shift of expressions: confusion/realisation/panic. And though they were sick, though some of them ran with great scoops of lichen in their hands, and though they might be houseplants, some of them carried children. Saplings, Hopewell thought and wanted to laugh.

  The shuttle's engines changed pitch from whine to roar, and the viewport filled with kicked-up dust.

  "Strap in," Lucklaw said, his eyes blank and mind part-elsewhere. A thin line of blood ran from his nose. "We have permission to launch."

  Hopewell slid into the seat behind him and locked her safety harness into place, her stomach responding by doing flips. "So, I just realised that the reason we're jacking this ship is that Albany crashed ours. Twice."

  Electricity brushed her shoulder as Florey sat next to her. She gave him a scathing glare.

  "And Albany was an actual pilot." She paused, briefly entertaining hope. "You wouldn't happen to be an actual pilot, would you, Lucklaw?"

  "I captained the Ever Onward and a Karon," the corporal said, face set and strained. "Simultaneously."

  "And crashed them both."

  "Look, just be quiet, all right?" He tapped the instruments, and the shuttle began to quiver, eager and purring. "Albany had bad luck with th
e weather. Besides, this'll be easier. We're not landing; we're only going up."

  I certainly hope so, Hopewell thought, tightening her grip around the armrests. Florey reached over to squeeze her hand like he always did at takeoff, but she pulled away. Didn't look at him. Still wanted to punch his face. But then he made a little noise, the tiniest sigh, and ugh, she couldn't help it. Just one quick glance - stars, he looks so miserable - but she held his gaze a little too long, lighting his eyes with the hope that she'd forgiven him.

  Hell no. Not until he earned it.

  The shuttle rose through rain and wind, higher and higher, Hopewell squeezing tighter and tighter. Sludge covered the viewport, but Lucklaw switched its function to display their increasingly aerial view of Nexus. She couldn't say she cared for that, thought that a man should keep his eyes on the road even if the road was no road at all but open sky.

  Sparks leapt from the instruments, quick flashes of blue spiralling around Lucklaw's gauntlets. The shuttle shuddered enough that Hopewell's seat lost a screw, and she found herself leaning sharply backwards.

  "Lucklaw." She snapped her visor shut as electricity slithered up her armour and instantly regretted it as nausea began to swirl and churn. She bit her tongue hard to stop herself from vomiting inside her helmet. Didn't want to die with a face full of pea soup. "Lucklaw!"

  "Don't worry, it's just the force field." But the look on his face told her that she should worry, and through the viewport, she could see the tell-tale blue shimmer, close enough to scrape the underside of the shuttle. One second slower and, Earth have mercy, Nexus would've chomped down and bitten them in half.

  When Florey took her hand, she didn't object. Fingers interlocked, weaving a solid pattern of if we die, we die together. That helped, but it also made her angry, because that motto was the whole point, and he had let her down. Had let them all down.

  Below, Nexus was swirling black trapped inside a flickering dome, like the most miserable snow globe she'd ever seen. The air purifiers would have to work hard to keep up, because white-hot fire blazed across rooftops; shooting stars of destruction that she'd recognize anywhere.

  "Verdandi missiles. The commander's not going easy on the poor town."

  Lucklaw took his eyes off the instruments to glance at the viewport, and she really wished he wouldn't do that. "Can't be the commander. The Ereshkigal suit is a basic model, no mounted arsenal beyond autocannons."

  Huh. Come to think of it, the commander had only taken his usual favourites, the Hyrrokkin and that fancy bank-breaking Morrigan. Weapons that half the banneret company openly coveted, but the destruction below couldn't possibly be caused by them. "Oh, mercy. He's the target."

  "Most people look at a cataphract and think monster." Florey kept his voice low and his eyes even lower. "The behemoths of the battlefield, in whose wake buildings crumble and ships fall from the skies. But nobody who's fought alongside them thinks that. They're not our swords, but our shields. They're such irresistible targets, so imposing and terrifying that the enemy forgets about the sappers, forgets about the medics and the supply ships. Forgets about the infantry and the towermen."

  He looked towards the viewport, a strange expression on his face.

  "Our company was dispatched to Hypatia - long before either of you joined, but Rhys and I were there, in the trenches and the mud and the endless rain of fire. We'd been there a good few months when orders came in that we were to take out a RebEarth comms station smack in the middle of Kalau'a Valley; only the worst damn stretch of territory on the entire planet."

  Kalau'a Valley. Hopewell doubted there was anybody in a uniform who hadn't heard of the place. It was the topic of many a class on what-not-to-do and the topic of thousands more war stories and tall tales, but Florey had never spoken of it before.

  "So we go in, and the general mood is that we weren't going to get halfway up the valley, but we do. And then we see the comms station and shit, it's locked up tight as you like, and we think that, well, this is it, we had a good run but those laser turrets are going to tear us up. But again we make it, and we're inside the station without a single casualty. We clear it, set the charges, and Commander Bergen can't stop laughing, already patting herself on the back for a job well done."

  Hopewell had never heard of Commander Bergen, which struck her as a pretty good clue as to what was going to happen next.

  "That's when everything went wrong. We..." Florey hesitated before continuing: "Long story short, we end up pinned down by gunfire half a K outside the comms station. It's on fire, the valley's on fire, some of us are on fire; we're trying to dig a trench to find cover from the RebEarthers pouring down from the mountains, and that's when we hear the gunships. This whole mission, we'd all been expecting to die, but when it's finally happening, when we know that we're completely fucking screwed; it suddenly feels unacceptable. We did a good job, we beat the odds, this shouldn't be happening. But it is, and there's not a damned thing we can do about it. That's when our comms specialist picks something up on a Primaterre channel - an evac ship, carrying a squad of Helreginn cataphracts. They're evaccing from deeper into the valley, so deep it might as well have been hell. But as soon as our comms specialist explains the situation, their commander aborts the evac, and the cataphracts come blazing down from the sky like a shower of meteors. RebEarth panic, and soon the entire valley is focusing fire on the cataphracts. That's when their evac ship picks us up; this massive black-painted war vessel, and some of the company are unhappy about boarding. Feels wrong, to take someone else's evac. Ship's crew won't hear it, though, make all of us come on board and strap in, and as we're taking off, the valley's being carpet-bombed by the gunships. A cauldron of fire, stretching on for miles."

  "What about the cataphracts? Any of them make it out?"

  "At least one," Florey said and looked towards the blue dot that was Nexus, disappearing as fast and irrevocably as the burning Kalau'a Valley.

  ◆◆◆

  It took near enough fifteen minutes to reach orbit. Fifteen minutes of listening to Rhys wheeze and bubble. Fifteen minutes of trying to coax conversation from the RebEarther, but he was unwilling to talk, even refusing to update her on the championship scores. Tight-lipped bastard. Probably an Oryx supporter, Hopewell figured, which was nearly as bad as being RebEarth as far as she was concerned.

  And of course, fifteen minutes of ignoring Florey's silent pleas for forgiveness. No. No way; not yet. The commander had called in for assistance, and it should've been Florey's job; everything about it had screamed for his particular skill set. But Florey hadn't moved, hadn't said a word, and his jaw had set in that granite-solid way of his.

  She hadn't argued. Mostly because the commander's situation had been urgent, but also because she felt in her bones that she didn't want to hear Florey's reasoning. There'd been nothing he could've said that wouldn't have damaged their relationship - their team - their everything - beyond repair. And damn it, she'd take a bullet before she let that happen.

  So she'd taken his rifle and run. Climbed up the swaying tower, red with rust and lichen. Cracked suit, glitching sensors, non-existent APF and no backup whatsoever.

  Damn it, Florey. She'd had her heart broken before, but it hadn't ever hurt like this. One lover was much the same as the next, but a friend of the kind she'd found in the gunner was singular. She turned in her seat, upset words riding a wave of gall in her throat - but then the viewport changed, and Lucklaw breathed in sharply.

  The RebEarth ship that sat in Cato's orbit was like no ship she'd ever seen. Perhaps like many ships she'd seen, because there were familiar curves and angles in the alien whole. The convex skeleton of a Rampart barque, repurposed and redesigned to spiral inwards on itself, clad with the antimony hull plates of an Andromeda Conglomerate cruiser. Bits and pieces of ships, some so old their builders no longer existed but for in history books, but the RebEarth ship wasn't just new - she was unfinished.

  Her name, boldly proclaimed in red, was Cephal
opod. Tiny figures floated alongside her, ghostly in the light of laser welders.

  "Captain's pet project," said the RebEarther, a note of pride in his voice, but all Hopewell could think was oh, this he wants to talk about? what about the championships, you mean-mouthed bastard, because it didn't matter what the Cephalopod looked like, and it certainly didn't matter what her captain thought of his patchwork monstrosity.

  The RebEarther glared at her as though he'd detected her disinterest. "Captain was very excited about the prospect of adding arc ship hardware to her. And then you went and disappointed him. Real upset, he is."

  "Hey, it's nothing to do with me." Hopewell curled her thumb toward Lucklaw. "He's the one who crashed the Ever Onward."

  "Lieutenant."

  She smiled blithely at Lucklaw. "Just trying to be helpful. If this guy gets an opportunity to try to shank one of us, it should be someone he's got a grudge against. Not poor little Innocent."

  Lucklaw grumbled something that sounded a lot like innocent my arse. She liked that; it made her laugh, and she wanted to prod the corporal again, tease some of the team spirit back, because stars, did they need it. The cockpit had been oppressive enough, but with the bright swirl of the Cephalopod filling the viewport, the mood had turned downright dejected. The only one with a bit of cheer was the RebEarther, who chuckled softly.

  "What?" She held her palms up. "You got something to say?"

  "Don't engage the prisoner," Florey said. He was right, of course, and he was also the highest-ranking officer with the commander out of range, but she ignored him anyway. Show him how it feels to have a command questioned.

  "You're going to die," said the RebEarther predictably. This was one reason Primaterre protocol was to not engage, but Hopewell couldn't see why. They always said things like that, so why would anyone let it get under their skin? It didn't bother her one bit - but the corporal twitched, and next to her, Florey bristled.

  "Captain's going to nail your corpses to the Cephalopod's hull."