Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  "I've been lied to my whole life. I don't even know which of my thoughts are my own. The only thing that I know for a fact to be true, is how I feel about you. " He shook his head. "I've thought of nothing else. I've turned my mind inside out trying to find the words. When I find her, I'll tell her. When I find her, she needs to know. When I find her, I will know what to say. But here you are, and I can think of nothing."

  "You're here." She traced the outline of his bruised face with light fingertips. "I need no words. Just you."

  He flinched at her touch, and she thought she might have hurt him, but then he surged forward and took her in his arms, and the sensation of his skin against hers was so intensely real it made her gasp. He kissed her, stiffly, awkwardly, fingers weaving anxiously through her hair. She leaned into him, wrapped her arms around his neck and felt his warm breath on her forehead as he whispered to her how glad he was that she had come back to him, and all she could think was that she never wanted to go anywhere else again. Anywhere but here became nowhere else I'd rather be, and in spite of her pain and her fear, she smiled.

  He spoke her name, and she answered with a kiss. Gentle, reassuring, a soft invitation. He drew a ragged breath and when she kissed him again, his uncertainty turned to urgency.

  It was a sort of wonderful madness, and she welcomed it, willing to let it consume her - when the sound of a door sliding open broke the spell.

  Cassimer turned his head slightly, listening to something in the distance.

  "Three this time. Ground floor. Splitting up to attempt a flanking manouvre. "

  "We're in quite a bit of trouble, aren't we?"

  He smiled - wider and brighter than she'd ever seen him smile before. "Not as much as they are."

  ◆◆◆

  Two fell to the Hyrrokkin, but for the third, Cassimer unsheathed his knife.

  "Stay put and stay low." He dug out a black handgun from his duffel bag. "Take this, and remember: only one mercy for demons."

  The gun was a Skadi 550 according to her primer, but she needed no technology to tell her whose it was. If the nicotine smell hadn't given it away, the carefully scratched letters on its grip would have: JR+CG.

  But where was the medic himself? The last thing she remembered was his worried eyes and the reflection of her own bleeding face in his visor. They'd stood in the dark-glass hangar and shared a secret, and then...

  And then the darkness had taken her. But half-formed memories tugged at her subconscious, and she couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible had happened. That Rhys no longer needed his gun because of something she'd done.

  "Rhys?" She tried his private channel, but there was no response. Connection unavailable, said her HUD, helpfully suggesting that she contact tech support if the issue persisted.

  Maybe he was out of range. Or maybe the signal couldn't reach him outside the Andromache - because even though Cassimer hadn't said, she knew that's where they were.

  Exploring the wreck of the Ever Onward had been like picking through the bones of a beached whale. A dead thing, quiet but for the groans of decay. In contrast, the golden and purring Andromache was Joy's first real contact with the Primaterre Protectorate, and with every second, the nebulous concept of her new home became more real.

  White-washed walls glowed with inner golden light that spilled down the aisles between cryo pods that were soft and rounded, nut-brown like seedpods. The Primaterre sun glowed on each, sea-shimmer reminders of purity scrolling around the logo. The Andromache's interior was Earth re-imagined, a portable version of the home the Primaterre protected.

  But the sleepers inside the pods were far from gentle creatures. Predators, she thought, looking at the nearest one. A tall man with densely sculpted muscle, who seemed alert even in stasis. A gnarled scar ran down the length of his left bicep, and a patch of skin on his thigh was a few shades pinker than the rest of him.

  The woman in the next pod fit no neat niche. Chalk-white skin gave her features a smooth look Joy had only ever been able to achieve in photographs (after judicious use of filters). One side of her head was closely shaved, but on the other, ruby hair spilled over her shoulder in stiff curls. Brightly-inked ivy and roses wrapped around her ample right thigh, continuing up her torso to taper out on her neck, one delicate leaf brushing the underside of her jaw.

  Cassimer was coming back up the stairs, carrying a vest and dragging something bulky along the floor. A body, judging by the trail of blood, but it seemed to blink in and out of existence, one moment flashing rainbow colours and the next disappearing entirely. Then Cassimer dropped it, and she could see the prismatic silhouette of a man.

  "An invisibility suit?"

  "Tower tech, more suited to tricking sensors than the human eye. The Andromache is more than just an arc ship, Joy. She's a Primaterre warship, and the demon has been making use of her arsenal. It keeps sending vessels in here at regular intervals, each time with new tricks. It's careful, though - apart from this..." He showed her the vest he carried. An armour-plated ballistic vest, her HUD informed her. "...it's not sent in anybody with equipment that I might use."

  "Clever," she said.

  "Too clever. A little more force and a little less thinking, and it might've killed me by now." He shrugged, rummaging through his duffel bag. "A mistake it'll come to regret. Here; these are for you. Take one if you feel a headache or nosebleed coming on."

  She looked at the bottle before taking a pill for her pounding migraine. Antihypertensives. That made sense - the physical symptoms of "demonic possession" were all indicative of a hypertensive emergency. Headaches, retinal haemorrhaging, agitation... untreated, a life-threatening condition.

  Cassimer showed her a jet injector. "I gave you an injection as soon as you were out of the cryo pod. Apologies, but Rhys insisted it was urgent."

  "Rhys?" She smiled, relieved. "I had the strangest feeling that something terrible happened to him. That I hurt him somehow."

  "It wasn't you that hurt him."

  "What?" The hangar, the swirling mists, the encroaching darkness. Her reflection in Rhys's visor, his eyes, wrinkled with worry. And -

  And the trigger against her finger. Smoothly sliding backwards. Coolly sliding across her skin.

  "It wasn't you." Cassimer took her hands, his warmth erasing the tactile memory. "He knows that. He understood what was done to you, and he did what no one else has ever done, finding a way to cure the possessed. He did that for you, Joy. He wants you to come back to us. He wants you to be saved."

  She nodded, but she remembered his visor shattering. She had shot him, like she'd shot Duncan, and she looked at her hands, enclosed in Cassimer's. So pale and small in his, and yet guilty of so much. Friend-killers, spattered with the blood of men whose names she'd known.

  And then she looked at Cassimer's left wrist, where the hem of his sleeve swelled, dark and wet. "Your shoulder. Did I do that too?"

  "My own carelessness did that." He glanced at the wound with disinterest. "Emergency augments are compensating. No critical damage."

  She didn't care what his primer might report; she hated seeing him hurt and hated even more how he treated it like nothing.

  "Someone tried to kill you. That's not nothing; that's everything. Do you get that? You matter. Not the commander; not the soldier. You." She placed her palm against his chest and felt the steady beat of his heart. "So please be careful, and please let me bandage your shoulder."

  "We don't have the time. The demon was marching the last of its vessels aboard when I arrived."

  "And those ten thousand vessels could be outside waiting for us. You might be needing that arm, Commander."

  ◆◆◆

  He unzipped the front of his jumpsuit with obvious reluctance. She helped peel the skin-tight material from his shoulders and saw the sudden hardening of his jaw line. Strips of torn fabric had set in clotted blood around the wound. Picking them away one by one made her stomach turn, and no doubt hurt him - but his focus was elsew
here. On the shadows and the corners, and all the dark places.

  Inside the wound, the damaged tissue undulated rapidly. His pulse, was her first instinct, but then she saw the too-white gleam of fresh bone. It was growing inside of him, as nanites deployed lab-made cells and tissue along preset paths, knitting new tendons and nerves. Amazing, absolutely incredible, but all she could think was how many times has he been put back together again?

  No matter how fast a body could be healed, a mind still needed time to process and recover. Though the nanites might be saving his life, they gave him no respite.

  "So, what's the plan?" He'd given her the gist of it already - stop the Andromache from reaching the Cascade. "Do we have backup coming?"

  "In a manner of speaking." His voice was strained. "Who better to take back a Primaterre warship than her own crew?"

  "Wake the sleepers?"

  "If you can."

  "Me?"

  "The demon woke you. I've no experience with cryo tech, and given what you told me about Duncan, I thought it advisable to wait for you."

  Right. No pressure then. "You have a dreadful habit of treating people like experts if they admit to even the slightest knowledge of a subject."

  "I find that when I do, people end up surprising themselves with their own abilities."

  "Like Lucklaw." The comms specialist's absence was more difficult to bear than she could've imagined. Even if he'd laugh, she'd like to hear his thoughts on the mycelia-like network. She'd like to know that he was okay.

  "Like Lucklaw," Cassimer agreed, "and you."

  She'd certainly done plenty she'd never imagined herself capable of - for instance, treating a gunshot wound. As she worked, his back tensed, muscles rolling into hard knots. When her hand brushed the side of his ribcage, he recoiled.

  "I'm sorry. Does it hurt?"

  "Yes," he said, but by now she could tell his lies from his truths. The commander had a rigid need of boundaries, mental and physical. She did her best to avoid touching him - difficult as that was - because while he allowed her to cross his borders, that didn't necessarily mean she should.

  When she finished, he zipped up his jumpsuit and directed her towards the cryo pod containing the ruby-haired woman.

  "Start with her."

  Odd choice. If it were up to her, she might've picked the man - another gun to take the pressure off Cassimer. But even if the woman was no soldier, she might have useful skills. She could be a medic, tech officer, or an engineer.

  Or a junior botany lab assistant.

  "Yeah, well, turns out we're a more resourceful breed than you'd think," she muttered under her breath, pleased to hear Imaginary Finn's voice again.

  The Andromache's cryo pods were easier to work than the Ever Onward's. Complicated jargon had been stripped down to plain instruction, and a gentle computerized voice walked her through the procedure.

  "I still see them." Cassimer had put on the scavenged ballistic vest. He stood near the railing, watching the lower levels. "In the shadows, I mean. I know they're not real, and I keep telling myself that, but I can still hear their laughter."

  He turned to look at her, the darkness in his eyes complete. "I think I might be insane."

  "No more so than anyone in your situation would be. Which, if you think about it, makes you quite sane."

  "I've never spoken about the Hecate. Not to anyone before you. And I only told you parts of it - not the whole thing. Not everything. I don't know that I'll ever be able to. I'm afraid to, that's the truth of it." He grimaced. "I'm afraid, and I'm a coward, jumping out of his own damn skin at the thought of being touched."

  "Do you want me to touch you?"

  "Yes," he said, and there was nothing cowardly about his emphasis, or the way he looked at her.

  "Then be kind to yourself. The want will outpace the fear, and once it has, I think you'll find the fear defeated."

  "I'm not sure it's as easy as that."

  "As someone once said: if you wanted easy, you joined the wrong team."

  He arched an eyebrow. She smiled. He frowned. She smiled wider, and there - his frown dropped, and there was a hint of a twitch at the corner of his lips.

  "It'll be okay, Constant. You'll be okay." She laid her head on his chest and listened to the beat of his heart. Steady, but increasing in speed at her touch. "All you need is time."

  "Which is in short supply."

  "Oh, come now. It's only insurmountable odds. I'm sure you've faced worse." She gave him her best we're-totally-not-about-to-die smile, so good that she very nearly believed it herself.

  "With much less to fight for." The cryo pod's panel began to slide open, and he moved to stand between it and her. "Stay close. And Joy..."

  "Yes?"

  "We don't know these people. You can't trust them, all right?"

  58. Joy

  Her name was Liz Meeks, and she worked in admin. Not particularly useful, and neither was her behaviour. She stepped from her pod, arms defensively crossed, and cried when she discovered that she was covered in lichen. As she brushed it vigorously from her shoulders, she stumbled, fell to the floor, and stayed there as Cassimer explained - in the broadest terms possible - the situation.

  Liz's bottom lip began to wobble as the picture became clear(ish). It had to be a crazy thing to wake up to - torn from the sea cave to madness - and Joy remembered how confused she'd been on the Ever Onward, how scared she'd been.

  She stepped forward to help Liz up, but to her surprise, Cassimer stopped her. A brief touch to her wrist and a subtle shake of the head, nothing more, but the message was clear. Stay away.

  "Stars," sobbed Liz Meeks as she stood, rubbing her scuffed knee. "What are we going to do? I -" She paused suddenly, face twitching, as blood trickled from one of her nostrils.

  "First of all, I expect you to not try that again, Towerman Meeks. On either one of us."

  "The preferred term is Tower Operative." Meeks laughed and wiped the blood from her nose. Her posture straightened, worry all but vanished from her face. "Such unpleasant defences. You take your privacy very seriously, Commander."

  "If you've finished sticking your nose where it doesn't belong, we have a job to do. The Andromache is under enemy control. I assume there is a protocol for such a situation."

  "Depends on the specifics. If Bastion sent you, I assume it's serious." Meeks's eyelashes spread as wide as starling wings as she smiled. "Though they might've equipped you better. No suit, Commander? And unless Bastion's budget cuts are worse than I heard, your underling appears to have forgotten to put on trousers."

  Joy blushed, though Meeks was even more naked than she was. The practical Primaterre underwear strained to contain the woman's blooming flesh, and she should've looked ridiculous, quite out of place - but didn't. Meeks wasn't overwhelmed by the situation; she commanded it. This was a woman who would've taken a century of sleep in her stride, who would've made herself master of Cato. She certainly wouldn't have broken down in tears about something so trivial as spiders, no matter how large they were.

  "Don't get cute with me, Meeks. If you can't assist, point us to somebody who can."

  "Relax, Commander. First thing you need to know about Tower operatives: if we look like we're doing nothing, it's already too damn late for anyone to stop us." She sighed. "Well, normally. Has the flight crew been taken hostage?"

  "The working theory is that the hijacking of the Andromache was an inside job."

  "Unlikely." Meeks frowned. "But it's true that I can see no other possibility. The systems are in lock-down mode and my access has been revoked. Only the captains have the authority to engage lock-down, and only the captains can lift it."

  "So you believe us?" Joy asked, surprised at how quickly Meeks was adapting.

  Meeks raised a finely-plucked eyebrow. "I believe your commander, Private. And I believe in proper form of address when speaking to your superiors."

  "Check your attitude, Meeks, and lose the war paint while you're at it."r />
  "Yessir," mewled Meeks, most disingenuously, and one by one, her tattoos began to fade. "Better, Commander?"

  Cassimer ignored her. "This lock-down, you're telling me you have no way of overriding it?"

  "Unfortunately not." Serious now. "The Andromache's crew was always intended to include tower operatives. As such, her systems were built with us - and keeping us out of them - in mind. Manual access to individual systems is the best I can do."

  "Should I wake this one too, Commander?" Joy touched the glass panel of the man's pod. The menus floated underneath her fingertips, vivid and eager.

  Meeks made a face. "What good are kitty-cats without their suits? I've a better idea - the second-shift captain sleeps nearby, and he should be able to reassert control over the ship, as well as raise the troops with a single command. Acceptable, Commander?"

  "Very good." He nodded towards the dead demon vessel whose body shone like the rainbow scales of a fish. "I brought you equipment."

  "Oh," said Meeks, looking at the dead man. "How kind; if a bit bloody. Private, fetch it for me."

  Cassimer's hand closed around Joy's arm. "She doesn't take orders from you, Meeks. Get dressed and get ready."

  Meeks obeyed and then took point, leading them to the lower levels. She walked tall and unafraid, barely even reacting to the numerous dead bodies. Perfectly set curls spilled down her back, swaying across prismatic curves.

  "This is no different than your interview with Hierochloe," Cassimer said. "She means to make you uncomfortable. Get you nervous enough that you'll tell her anything she wants to know."

  "So you're saying I should think of her as a lumpy sofa?"

  "Yes." The touch of amusement sounded warm to her ear; warm and safe like his hand on her arm. "And remember that regardless of rank, you don't answer to her. In exo-space, the word of the banneretcy is law and doctrine. She has no choice but to follow my orders, and that can be humiliating. Nobody likes to have their mission derailed by another. So Meeks plays her games with me to save face, and I'll allow her that, if it helps smooth things along. But you don't have to allow her anything, Joy."