Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  Then she raised Rhys's gun and fired.

  But if shooting a friend had been hard, shooting a brother was impossible. A mental block, a tremble in her fingers, or the quaking ship - her shot went wide, missing Finn's shoulder.

  Finn sighed and tightened his fingers around the trigger.

  "No," she said, the sour taste of regret rising in her throat. "Please. Please don't. I -"

  A deep bell-like sound reverberated through the ship. The Dozen Daughters were uncoupling, turning the massive Andromache into twelve ships and a Cascade. Pale grey light filtered in through viewports as the core chamber's outer shell fell away. Finn stood in a kaleidoscope of ash and azure, and for a second, the light in his eyes was his own.

  Then the trigger was pulled taut to a sound louder than thunder, and the light grew brighter and brighter, until the world was brilliant white.

  ◆◆◆

  Red was the first colour to return. The red on her fingers, interlinked with Finn's. The red of his hair, fanned in a pool of deeper red.

  She held his hand and felt the warmth fade. She ran her fingertips across the golden band on his ring finger and was glad that neither cryo tech nor demon had made him take it off. It was too tight, but he'd never got around to resizing it, and she was glad for that too. If she removed the ring now, she'd see the inscription FINN & MIANA FOREVER imprinted on his skin, and that was good. That was as it should be.

  She had no memory of running to him, nor did she remember Cassimer arriving. But he was there now, giving her dead brother CPR. Strong hands worked a ribcage that would never again feel the beat of a heart, stopping only when he forced air into lungs that would never heave on their own.

  She watched until she couldn't anymore. Then she stood and walked towards the grey light. Her legs were so numb that it felt like gliding through a cloudy sky and that was silly; she couldn't fly, it was silly and it had to be a dream.

  The outer shell had peeled away, leaving walls of glass set in titanium panels. Outside, the serpentine Dozen Daughters were shadows in a raging dust storm. Some of the Dozen rose above the wind and thunder, but others foundered, engines sputtering white fire as ignition came too late. They fell, one by one, like petals towards the pull of Cato. She traced the descent of one, her fingertips on cool glass. Down it went, down and down towards the grey wastes.

  It chains us, the demon had said, and perhaps there was truth in his madness. How close had they come to the stars? She imagined the universe - the anywhere but here - as on the other side of a window, inches away.

  She traced the Daughter until it vanished below the blue-streaked choke of dust, and all she could see in the glass was her own reflection, with eyes so much like her brother's.

  My fate was sealed the moment my pod slid shut. I died a long time ago, Joy.

  She pressed her palm to the window. "Maybe the transfer could've been reversed. Maybe you could've been saved."

  And maybe there's an ancient lake monster on Mars. Come on, Joy, if Cato should've taught you anything, it'd be to not believe in fairy tales.

  "But if -"

  But if nothing. You saw what he is. What he does. The sea rises until there is no more ground. It rises until you drown in him. It rises until you can no longer stand because there is no more you. There's only the sea.

  She tasted the salt of tears on her lips. Here they came; the droplets cultivated in dark tunnels and empty ruins. Here they came; every ounce of despair, because Imaginary Finn was right. His body's death had been instant, but his mind's had been protracted over decades. He'd been taken apart, bit by bit, thought by thought. Her brother, twice murdered. "I'll make him pay, Finn, I swear it."

  Hey, I'm all for dousing Cato with weed-killer - but do it for yourself, not on my account. I have only one thing to ask of you.

  "Anything."

  Don't let me be your Hecate.

  "I don't understand," she said, even though she did.

  Every day of my life, you were there for me. A thirty-something man should be able to go to sleep without first having to run by his sister's apartment to check her locks twice and maybe knock and wake her so that he can make sure her oven's switched off and the fire alarms are working okay. A thirty-something man should be able to get through the day without calling his sister every couple of hours just to reassure himself she's still breathing. That she's still alive. That she wasn't snatched away while he wasn't looking. God; I must've annoyed the shit out of you.

  "Sometimes," she said and smiled, thinking about dusty footprints on her clean floors and the way he insisted on 'fixing' her settings whenever she made the mistake of letting him use her computer. "But never because of that."

  Liar, Imaginary Finn teased, but it's true that you never made me feel like a burden. You accepted me as I was, cracks and flaws and all.

  "You're my brother, Finn."

  I am, and that's how I want to stay. I don't want to be the chump who got his mind chewed up by god-damned moss while sleeping. I don't want to be the useless meat-bag that got its brains blown out a hundred kilometres above the surface of Cato. I want to be Finn Somerset, brother of Joy, fiancé of Miana, distance shot record holder at Bob's Shooting Range.

  "Ignorer of dirty dishes and connoisseur of terrible films," she said. "Cheater at card games and shaker of Christmas presents."

  Rather a shaker than a peeler. Don't think I didn't notice the poorly taped back corners on your presents.

  She rested her forehead on the glass. It was easy to pretend that the eyes reflected there were not her own - just very similar.

  "Are you real, Finn?"

  Am I a figment of your imagination, or am I the part of me that couldn't be devoured? The last bit of Finn, floating in the sea of whispers?

  There was a long pause before Imaginary Finn spoke again.

  I can no more answer that question than you, Joy. I'd like to think I'm not, because souls are bullshit -

  "Which is exactly what Finn's soul would say," she said, laughing through the tears.

  See, there you go. That's the spirit - no pun intended. Be happy, Joy, and be what you are.

  "Which is what?"

  Ask Constant. He knows.

  Another pause and, in the silence, she felt only love.

  Whether I'm real or not, I think this is goodbye. Are you ready?

  "Yes," she said. "No."

  How about on the count of three?

  "Okay. Okay, Finn." The tears came again, and she had to wipe fog from the glass to see the eyes that might as well be his. "I love you."

  One

  Two

  Three

  "Goodbye, Finn," she whispered. "Good night."

  ◆◆◆

  Cassimer knelt by Finn, still working to do the impossible. She wanted to tell him to stop, that this puzzle could never be solved because all the important pieces were missing, but then she saw that the hard angles of his face had turned brittle and wet with tears.

  She sat next to him and took his hands in hers. She wiped her brother's blood from them and gave them purpose. First, she asked him to cover Finn, then to straighten the slipping bandage around her arm. Then, to tell her what would come next; what his plan was for the escaping Daughters. He told her, and she listened, and once she'd got him talking it, was like he couldn't stop. Like he wanted to tell her everything, and when she opened her heart to let it all in, she found that it still had room.

  He spoke of Finn; of Cato; of failure and whispers in his blood; of reedmace seeds and tangled roots, and of a captain called de Bracy, and when all he had left was apologies, she let him say it as many times as he needed.

  In the silence that followed, he held her close. Over his shoulder, she could see black mountain ranges come into view. No matter. Dust or blue sweetgrass, she was where she wanted to be, and she told him that as the Cascade sank toward the grey plains, and as dust whipped the glass walls, she asked him all the silly questions in her head. Where are you from? What's your
favourite song? And, laughing, what's your favourite colour?

  And as the bone-white mist of Cato twilight rolled against the windows, she told him that to her, he was starlight.

  60. Cassimer

  The Cascade was sinking.

  Meeks had re-engaged the engines, but the structure had never been meant to fly unassisted, and it had slowly descended through a thunderstorm to settle on the grey dunes. Cassimer wanted to believe that it was too large to be swallowed entirely, but he remembered the quiet cities sitting like coral reefs underneath Cato's dust. The Cascade could sink to street level, catching on leaning skyscrapers before coming to rest where people had once picnicked under a false blue sky.

  Cassimer opened an airlock, and wind, abrasive with dust and cold, rushed inside. Physical contact with Cato, unmitigated by armour, hurt, and when he looked out over the plains, he saw only death. Rain had turned the landscape into a slow-moving sea of sludge. Dust devils danced across waves of mud and through distant ruins. It was twilight, and wisps of mist licked the Cascade's hull.

  Two of the Dozen Daughters loomed within eyeshot. The nearest had sunk fast and deep, the lights of her stern all that remained above ground. The farther ship - ten klicks to the east - looked intact, but her amber-and-azure hull was dark. Over the mountain range to the east, smoke turned the sky black.

  "See anything?"

  He stepped aside to make way for Meeks. Cato would do a better job of explaining the situation than he ever could.

  She hobbled up to the airlock, wincing at the cold, and gave a low whistle as she looked out over the plains. "Nasty place."

  "At least the weather conditions are good."

  Meeks laughed, mistaking sincerity for a joke. "Five Daughters cleared orbit. That makes seven down, and the two out there aren't looking too good."

  "I regret that we couldn't do more for the crew."

  "We already died once for the Andromache, Commander. Dying twice wasn't an unexpected outcome."

  "An arc ship dressed for war. It makes no sense, Meeks. What was it you're so prepared to die for?"

  "That's classified, Commander."

  "Considering the circumstances, can't you make an exception?"

  She smiled. "Would you?"

  Fair point. He turned his attention to the plains. The ground was treacherous quicksand and the air increasingly biting. With her splinted leg, Meeks was unlikely to make it far on foot, and Joy was in no better shape to hike hostile terrain. There was little in the way of shelter - the downed Daughter to the east, perhaps, and in the hills to the west, he saw the glint of a metal archway that could be a train station. On his own, he might make it there - but on his own, he might as well be dead.

  "Walking is a no-go. What about the escape pods?"

  "Won't get us far, but it's our best shot. We need to get to that Daughter, Commander. She's equipped with long-range weaponry that, if we hurry, is capable of targeting her escaped sisters."

  "You want to destroy them?"

  "Your contingency plan isn't enough. Even without a Cascade, those ships are essentially miniature arc ships. Sooner or later, they'll reach a habitable system."

  "Bastion will know to expect them. If they enter Protectorate space, they'll be destroyed on sight."

  "But not all space is Protectorate space. As a cataphract, I expect you saw a lot of things - things you weren't necessarily supposed to have seen. Weapons. Tech. Secrets."

  "None of it your business." One wrong word and Tower might take an interest.

  She sighed. "Look, Commander, I'm not trying to get you in trouble. All I'm asking is that you think about the things you may or may not have seen and then consider this: the Andromache carries things you've never seen. Things even you could never imagine. She cannot be left in enemy hands."

  "I understand the stakes, Meeks. I... Hang on." The dark Daughter suddenly glared with light. The mists were thick and the ship a fuzzy glow, but through his Hyrrokkin's scope, he detected movement. A ramp had deployed, and two dozen contacts came marching out. "Armoured troops in play."

  "Friendlies?"

  "Unlikely," he said, as a Helreginn-armoured soldier stumbled and fell, skidding down the ramp into a slurry of mud. "I think the demon means to come for us."

  ◆◆◆

  Broken was a permanent state, and the only way to avoid it was to keep moving. That was what he had always told himself: Keep going though shadows loom and your muscles crawl with chemical electricity. Stay on your feet even as you start to drift; make your will into a band of steel and wrap it about your spine. Examine your every thought and then smother them in ash, because if you don't, if you let the scratching become a battering, then you will fall. And once you're on your knees, you'll never get up again.

  You won't want to.

  But then Finn Somerset had died, and with a single bullet, Cassimer's shields had shattered. He had fallen; he had broken.

  Ash, only ash, pouring from every fracture - and then the sunrise.

  Where are you from?

  His last view of Kalix had been from the Hecate's mess hall. A patchwork quilt of glaciers, where lavender fields and redwood forests grew in crevasses, veiled by cirrus filaments as the ship had ascended. Beautiful, and utterly uninteresting to a fifteen-year-old cadet who couldn't help sneaking a look at himself in every reflective surface, bursting with pride in his new uniform.

  That memory had been firmly buried by what had come later. His once-home had been reduced to an emotionless fact - a place of birth to put down on forms, a location listed on his citizenship card.

  Where are you from?

  He'd been asked that question many times, but never by someone who made him remember the scent of pine needles and the rush of white-water rivers. His answer had been the same as ever - Kalix, a Class 3 seedworld - but in the context of her, its meaning was redefined.

  Joy, in the first snow of winter. Joy, with the scent of crushed lavender between her fingers. Copper hair brushing sun-kissed shoulders. Her warm skin and the soft grass, her touch and the blue sky - the real blue sky - above.

  He found her in the core chamber, drawing patterns in the condensation on a viewport. He'd carried Finn there - high, she'd said, high and with a view - and now her brother's body lay in repose underneath swaying sweetgrass and branching spikes of lavender. A headstone of glass; an epitaph etched by fingertips.

  He didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to do anything, except how to keep her safe, and so he gave her a jacket and a belt taken from a dead vessel, and showed her how to use his thermal knife. But as she secured the knife to her belt, her pale hands splotchy with blood, something inside of him shifted, and words came tumbling out.

  "Cato isn't the end, Joy." He took her hand, hoping to erase the touch of death from her skin, and buried his face in hair that smelled of citrus and, perhaps only in his imagination, of fresh pine. "I'll see you off this world, I promise."

  Stupid, making promises he couldn't hope to keep.

  "Good," she said, and he'd never seen starlight as clearly as he did in her smile. She glowed, so bright that it took him a second to recognise the look in her eyes. "Because I have an idea, and it's kind of insane."

  Joy had found the cliff's edge, and she meant to run.

  61. Lucklaw

  His first attempt to dock the Cephalopod to the Cascade had caused a hull breach. The second attempt had gone slightly better, as the ship's fire suppression system had actually activated automatically. Most of the fires were extinguished, and the fog of smoke had begun to clear, but still, a third attempt seemed inadvisable.

  But was it more inadvisable than jumping across open space? Standing at the edge of Airlock 2, his fingers cramp-tight around the door frame, Lucklaw wasn't so sure. The weight of his backpack pulled uncomfortably on his shoulders - as if carrying the equivalent of a tactical nuke on his back wasn't uncomfortable enough.

  "Maybe this was a bad idea," he muttered to nobody in particular. The
Cascade was less than twenty metres away, and he had secured himself to a safety line, but the thought of going out there made him sick. One miscalculation or crack in his suit, and it'd all be over. That seemed unfair, which he suspected that was rather the thing about space.

  "Damn it."

  He jumped.

  Five seconds of black panic stretched forever in the void. He reached for the Cascade, but had misjudged his speed and clattered into it. His fingers scrabbled across pockmarked hull plates, catching in a crevice. By his fingertips, he hung on.

  Breathe okay just breathe it's fine you've got it

  And then he made the mistake of looking down. His feet drifted in the vacuum of space, and below them - nothing. Nothing at all, but for the pinpricks of stars, and his head spun with vertigo.

  If I fall, I'll fall forever

  He set his jaw and pulled himself closer to the hull. Pressed into it, limbs spread wide, latching on like a starfish. Even though nobody was watching, a blush burnt on his cheeks. There was no way he wasn't looking a damn fool, and in a way, that was nearly as bad as falling forever.

  Inch by inch, he made his way through the Cascade's airlock. It gaped open, edges charred where somebody had gone at it with a plasma cutter. Pirates, probably, thinking themselves clever for using an old Cascade as a stash house. Could be scavvers too, but he didn't think so. Breaking into a Cascade took moxie, more than the average scavenger would have - maybe even more than he had. Stars, the stories he'd heard. The stories he definitely shouldn't be thinking about right now, but also couldn't stop -

  "You doing okay, Lucklaw?"

  He came to a floating stop halfway down the corridor, clutching a trembling hand to his cuirass. "Shit, Hopewell. You about gave me a heart attack."

  She laughed. "Scared of brane ghosts?"

  "Not too scared to be in here." All by myself, he wanted to add. In the dark, he didn't want to add.

  "Point taken. How's it looking?"

  "Like duct tape would be a massive improvement. Whole damn thing is on the verge of falling apart. The fact that even in the best case scenario, we're going to fold out through this thing, is bloody terrifying." He paused, looking at the two snub-nosed turrets at the end of the corridor. "At least the defences are down."