Iron Truth

by S. A. Tholin

  "Better be sure about that."

  "Of course I'm sure. Got nothing on the sensors other than the core functions. Even they are pretty glitchy. No life support either, and the gravity generators are shot."

  "Well, you take care in there. Florey says to watch out for trip wires - pirates like to roll low-tech to avoid sensor detection." A brief, static-static filled pause, before Hopewell predictably added: "And don't drink the brane beer!"

  ◆◆◆

  Cascades were the connective tissue of civilisation, making possible near-instant travel and transfer of data, and every day, thousands of ships travelled through the hundred-odd Cascades in existence. Cascades were amazing; Cascades were ubiquitous, and nobody knew how they worked.

  Lucklaw supposed it was a bit like cavemen discovering fire without understanding thermodynamics. Everyone knew that Cascades opened rifts into a brane through which mass and energy could be folded, but a thousand years on from the first Cascade to be constructed, nobody could say for sure what the brane was - or what it was like to travel through it.

  There were theories, of course, from the scientific to the downright crazy, and the latter was the kind that tended to stick in people's minds.

  Lucklaw, with his degree in physics, shouldn't be scared of ghosts. But as he climbed through black corridor after black corridor, occasionally glimpsing even blacker space through cracked portholes, it wasn't quantum mechanics that made his stomach cramp.

  Damn it, Hopewell.

  The official story was that folding was instant. There was no real scientific proof to support it, but it sounded better than we've no idea, and most people were happy to swallow it for just long enough to make the fold. It was certainly a happier thought than the popular theory that folding meant death. Some claimed that you might enter the brane, but what would exit on the other side was a copy. The you that went in the brane was still there, stuck forever in an unimaginable netherspace. And sometimes, they said (with their voices lowered to a hush), in Cascades so old that reality has begun to tear around them, you can see the ghosts. All the once-yous, screaming in silent accusation at their imposter.

  Thanks ever so much, Lieutenant.

  He pulled his way through a plasma-cut hole in a door, into a chamber where, in the pale blue cones of his suit lights, the shadows of up-ended beds became the gnarled branches of a forest. A dark-spattered sheet drifted past, and his stomach knotted at the thought of sleeping underneath the massive rift generators.

  Navigating the cluttered space wasn't easy. Clothes and bed linen made tangles; larger furniture, obstacles. A large desk blocked his way, and he dove into the shadows below it.

  A mummified corpse greeted him, arms outstretched.

  He shoved it aside, into a crate of clattering bottles.

  Brane beer. A nervous laugh escaped him, as he was reminded of the second most popular Cascade theory.

  The brane was not just a netherspace attached to the universe, but a universe in its own right. Alien; incomprehensible, but with its own laws and lifeforms. When a ship folded through, the things that lived in the brane could see it. Worse, could interact with it. Stupid - Lucklaw had done hundreds of folds, and he felt fairly certain that he'd know if he'd been interfered with - but that didn't stop people from believing it.

  They wipe your memory, his best friend in high school had said. That's why you can't remember being probed.

  You do remember, but it's too weird for your brain to process, so the memories are repressed, his raid guild leader had insisted, and so did the midday news-stream adverts for hypnotherapists claiming to be able to Unlock Your Brane Brain.

  I swear that bottle of beer wasn't in my hand before the fold. The brane creatures must've put it there. That particular quote belonged to Corporal Hargreaves. Obviously just a pathetic excuse for being caught drinking, but Corporal Hargreaves was Lieutenant Colonel Hargreaves now, and still told the same old story. Wasn't like no beer I'd ever tasted, and the next day - you wouldn't believe the hangover!

  Rubbish. Except...

  What had Elkhart said? Something about scratching shadows; hunters skittering in the veil between worlds.

  A distant clatter made Lucklaw stop cold. Sensors showed nothing. Common bloody sense said there was nothing. He took a deep breath and dove deeper into the cold and the black.

  ◆◆◆

  He'd never been inside a Cascade core chamber before, but he was reasonably sure the pylon arches shouldn't be spitting sparks. The moat was a dry riverbed, barely a trickle of plasma remaining. That was...

  Deep breath.

  That was very much not a good sign, as far as his understanding of Cascades went. It wouldn't surprise him if it had already caused ships to suffer catastrophic fold failure. Video of such events was hard to find, but Lucklaw had spent enough time on the wrong side of the net to have seen the mangled messes spat out when a Cascade failed to complete a fold correctly. The worst he'd ever seen - the very video that had made him swear off the gore sites - was the one where the crew had come out alive. Alive, but so incredibly wrong that the rescuers hadn't known where to begin. Eventually, Rampart had sent a caravel ship, and three pulsar missiles later, the problem had been sorted.

  He set the first explosive charge underneath the main control panel. In a way, he'd be doing the galaxy a favour by taking out this groaning death trap. Just a shame that he still had to make one last fold.

  There were no signs that anybody had been inside the core in a very long time. No attempts at repairs had been made, and when he reached out to its systems, he found them choked with software update notices, dating back at least sixty years. Data was still being pushed out here, but without anyone to authorise the updates, the Cascade decayed. Possibly beyond saving - as far as he could tell, it'd take a small planet's worth of resources to patch up the structural faults alone.

  For the second charge, he climbed to the top of the pylons. The sparks became blue flame against his armour, licking harmlessly along his limbs. When he moved, he left traces of fire in the air, a ghostly phantom of himself.

  From the pinnacle, he could see the starry void and the miserable speck that was Cato. That such a dustbowl had been the theatre of his first mission. That he should now be sitting in a Cascade looking down on it. It was insane, and he thought of the version of him that had folded into the system all those weeks ago.

  "Are you watching?" he asked his past self, turning this way and that as if he might find a brane ghost staring down at him. It didn't seem such a strange concept since he'd entered the core, where reality itself felt different. Weaker, or more malleable.

  He probed the air with his fire-wreathed finger and felt resistance. Push a little harder, and it might part. As though reality was just one layer of many, and here, on the silver pinnacle, a mortal hand could peel it back for a peek into the beyond.

  "Lucklaw, do you read?"

  "Earth have mercy!" He couldn't help but grin. "Commander. It's good to hear your voice."

  "And yours," came the reply. "What's your location?"

  "I'm inside the Cascade." And the commander was still on Cato. The Cascade's signal strength was enough to get a read on his location, roughly five hundred miles west of Nexus. "Did you find Somerset?"

  "I'm here." Her voice cut like silver through the static. "Alive and feeling the stun gun burns. I'm told that was your idea."

  "Glad to hear it worked."

  "Of course it did. You're brilliant, Corporal, and I owe you."

  "You're welcome, but I think it's more like we're even."

  "You only think that because we haven't asked you our next favour yet."

  She laughed, and then her voice was drowned out by the commander's, his tone making it more than clear that what came next was no favour, but an order.

  "Five frigates are coming your way within the hour. Primaterre ships, but not friendly."

  "I've almost finished setting the charges." And now his shoulders were made awar
e of the weight of that task. The command to initiate the detonation sequence sat ready on his HUD. An hour was enough time to complete the task and make it back to the Cephalopod for a final fold. But it wasn't even close to enough for the commander and Joy.

  "Belay that order."

  Oh thank the stars.

  "The frigates are going to attempt to fold out. When they do, we need you to reroute them."

  "Uh, Commander." He licked his lips, imagining that this was what it felt like to deliver a death notification. "With all due respect, the Cascade's security is both tight and deadly. Even without a time restraint, there is no way I can tamper with the settings."

  "Understood, Corporal. You're to intercept and modify the fold requests sent from the frigates."

  "Sort of the same principle as when you intercepted RebEarth radio chatter and sent fake responses back."

  He cursed under his breath. Of course this was Joy's idea, and of course she thought it was sort of the same principle when it wasn't even close.

  "If they're Primaterre ships, their signals will be encrypted. I can't -"

  "I can." An unfamiliar woman's voice interrupted him. "I'll walk you through it. It won't be easy, but your commander speaks highly of you."

  "I've given Towerman Meeks access to the team channel. She will send you the data you need."

  "Okay. Right. So, what, you want me to block the fold requests?"

  "You could," said the towerman, "but they'd notice, and then you'd have five angry frigates bearing down on your position. I'm transmitting the folding coordinates for another Cascade. We simply want you to change their requested destination."

  The towerman kept talking as data began to trickle up the link. Security codes, authority bypasses, and even a hacking tool that reeked of Tower tech. Very nice, but when he tried to make a sneaky copy for himself, it was instantly deleted.

  "Naughty," laughed the towerman, and he decided that he hated her. "But the right kind of naughty for the job, I think."

  Well. Maybe hate was a strong word.

  Following her instructions, he began to construct the bones of their deception. Tricky, but kind of fun, too, and for a moment, he forgot the impending doom and enjoyed his own brilliance.

  "Where is this other Cascade anyway?"

  A brief silence turned long, until, in a burst of static, the commander spoke.

  "You have our location?"

  "Affirmative."

  "Then you have the Cascade's location."

  They explained it, and once he understood, he could practically feel the blood drain from his face.

  "Commander, I..." He swallowed hard. "You need to evac ASAP."

  "Working on it."

  That's when it struck him - the little thing he'd neglected to mention - and he bit his lip until it hurt. He wasn't brilliant, he was a bloody idiot who'd let himself get distracted again, and now the blood came rushing up into his face again.

  "Um, Commander, you should know - you've got an evac en route."

  "Say again?"

  "Lieutenants Florey and Hopewell took the RebEarth shuttle back to Cato. They weren't happy about leaving you behind, Commander."

  "Are you in contact?"

  Was that disappointment in the commander's voice? No. Yes. Oh, shit, it was, wasn't it? But he could still fix it. He could still pull himself together. "Affirmative. I'll apprise them of the situation and relay your coordinates. Terrain scans show a train station west of your position. It's on elevated ground, ideal for an LZ. I recommend sheltering inside until your evac arrives."

  "Copy that, Corporal."

  Not much, but it was the best he could do.

  62. Cassimer

  The escape pod wheezed across the plains, struggling against wind and gravity. It drew its last breath halfway up a dune that rain had turned into a thick-flowing waterfall, and settled in the mud.

  "Roughly three klicks to the train station." Cassimer had climbed to the ceiling airlock and made his way onto the hull. The view offered no good news. The train station was over the crest of the dune, and out on the plains, terrain vehicles from the downed Daughter came roaring towards their position.

  "That's a long way." Joy stood at the bottom of the ladder, looking up at him.

  "We'll make it." He climbed back down to grab his duffel bag. "Meeks, any chatter?"

  "Oh yeah." The towerman swivelled her seat around. "The RebEarthers in particular took both your bait and the whole damn fishing pole."

  The idea had been his, but it was Joy's voice that was being broadcast on repeat across Cato.

  Hello? Is anyone listening? I just saw a ship crash on the plains. I think they're Primaterre. I see soldiers too, heading for our settlement. Please help. I'm scared that they're going to -

  They'd cut it there, at Meeks's suggestion. Tickle their imaginations with an open-ended message, she'd said. He supposed she was right - she'd been right to suggest that Joy play the part, after all. Better a frightened young woman's voice than his.

  "This place is about to get very interesting." Meeks switched between channels with a wry smile.

  "We need to move before it does." The escape pod's emergency supplies were scant. The rations and water were already mostly gone, and the med kit contained little of value. Pain killers for Meeks, and a shot of stims for him - not as effective as the custom stims he was used to running on, but better than nothing.

  Tucked behind a row of space suits, he found a coil of security line. He took it and tossed the remaining rations in his duffel bag, on the off-chance that they'd live long enough to need them.

  "So, Somerset, how much destruction are we looking at here?" Meeks glanced over her shoulder. "Are we out of the blast zone?"

  "Um." Joy blinked. "I'm not sure."

  "Not sure? What kind of a scientist are you?"

  "I'm a botanist."

  "Botanist?" Meeks shot Cassimer a look of disbelief. "Earth have mercy, Commander - you do realise we're about to open a damn wormhole on this planet?"

  "Like you said, things are about to get interesting." He zipped up the duffel bag and threw it over his shoulder. His spine groaned under the weight.

  "This is why I never liked working with the banneretcy." Meeks shook her head. "Too damn crazy."

  "Whatever it takes, Meeks. You good to go?"

  "Your corporal is a clever boy. Easy to work with - the young and the ambitious always are. Make him think there's a gold star in it for him, and he'll run to the ends of the universe. That said, he is quite young, and he just got visual on the frigates. He's going to need someone to hold his hand."

  "And you're volunteering."

  "The Andromache was my mission long before it was yours, and her crew is my crew. What was it you said to the private? It's not my fault, but correcting it is my duty."

  "It's a hard call to make, Meeks."

  "No, Commander." She looked at him, all pretence gone. "If you'd been to the sea cave, you'd know that it's the easiest call in the world. Tell him, Somerset."

  "What the man in the sea cave does... it's the laughing darkness, and it's the reaching shadows. It's a century-long stripping of the soul." Joy looked at him with honey-brown eyes, this girl whose compassion was her strength and her weakness, and said: "We can't leave them to suffer in his hands."

  "Or as we like to put it," Meeks said, "death is the only mercy."

  Indeed, and he had no further objections.

  ◆◆◆

  Thick mud streamed over his shoulders. He pushed through, spine aching under the pressure. Below the mud was solid glass, and he used his knife to cut holds, slowly plunge stepping up the dune. He was no stranger to free-climbing, but his experience served only to scream in his ear how foolish it was to make such a dangerous climb with so little preparation.

  When he finally topped out, pulling himself over the crest, he fell on his hands in ice-cold sludge. He stayed there for a moment, his every breath sending jolts of pain down his spine.

>   The train station lay at the base of a jagged ridge. Segments of tunnel protruded from the ground, the once-subterranean parts of the station laid bare by rain and landslides. If the station was flooded or collapsed, his and Joy's only chance of survival would be the mountains beyond.

  He carved out footholds at the edge of the crest and made himself a secure seat. Then he leaned over the edge and lowered the security line to Joy. She sat on the roof of the escape pod, unable to stand under the weight of both his Hyrrokkin and his duffel bag on her back.

  Ready? he texted.

  She secured the line around her waist and nodded.

  Less than two hundred kilos. No weight at all. All he had to do was ignore the line biting into his palms and the liquid running down his spine. Two hundred kilos was nothing. Pain was nothing. Focus was everything.

  His HUD blinked a warning.

  Projectile detected.

  Fuck. He stopped pulling, requesting a trajectory calculation -

  - mud erupted from the wall of the dune. Ten metres below his position, but only two to the right of Joy.

  A vehicle had pulled up out on the plains. Armoured figures milled around it, but one sat perched on the roof. Cassimer didn't need his HUD to identify the sniper's rifle as Primaterre.

  His HUD blinked again, twice.

  More mud sprayed from the dune. Through a fine mist, he saw Joy turn and return fire, and through the cold and the wind and the pain, he smiled. No chance of hitting her target from that range, but she was trying and that counted for something. That counted for a whole constellation of gold stars.

  Three more times his heart stopped. Three more times bullets struck glass. And then she was there, mud-soaked and shivering, and he pulled her over the crest and into his arms. Held her tight, breathing in her hair a thank you to fate, and then he removed the gear from her shoulders.

  "Stay low," he said. "And stay put. Not far now, but I've got something to take care of first."