Interlude - The Assault

Beyond the known worlds, beneath the surface and nuclear winter of the planet Twilight, Keats walks alone through bunker tunnels.  Today he could just be Keats: Sir Hemlock Justinian was not required.  No dinners, no negotiations.  At the entrance to the diplomatic suite, Keats swipes the lock and heaves the door open.  It shuts heavily, cutting off the bunker’s clamour, leaving just the hum of the air units, quiet as a cargo-hold when a ship is drifting.  An emergency lamp above the door throws the only light; the room is intimated in amber and shadow. That’s good: Keats can use the washroom before anyone else gets back. He starts to unfasten his jacket and is half-way across the room before he notices the man in the chair.

‘I am sorry, Keats,’ Cortez raises a glass; the chair’s wings cast his face into shadow, ‘I did not mean to startle you.’

‘Are you alright?’ one hand re-buttons the jacket, the other puts the knife away.

‘I consider things.  It is quiet.’

‘I thought you were entertaining Miss Jessica.’

Cortez laughs, ‘I think she prefer blondes,’ then, lifting a bottle from his side-table, ‘Would you like some?’

Keats smells spirits and shakes his head, and though he doesn’t say anything Cortez reads the concern.

‘I need the practice,’ Cortez sets down the bottle and shrugs in the depth of the chair, ‘Negotiatory lubricant.’

Keats nods and leaves him, but at the door to the washroom stops and turns back.  Cortez had said his name, quietly, something childlike in it, needful.  Keats pads back in and peers into the chair’s shadows.

‘Do you think we overreach ourselves?’ Cortez, thick-voiced.

‘What do you mean?’

‘This is the most horrible planet I have ever descended to,’ Cortez continues and Keats’ response is cut short, ‘And deadly!  I would call it a nest of vipers, but vipers are not so heavily armed.’

‘Nuclear vipers?’

Cortez snorts, ‘I look at how this can end, and nine in ten end with us shot and our ship turned to cooling debris,’ Keats gets a sense of Cortez’s head turning, facing up at Keats, ‘I fear I have doomed us all.’

Keats shakes his head, ‘There are trade-routes with other planets, and the Heidgards are impressed with the Marquis De Havilland.’

‘The trade-routes are a jump we have no key for; the Heidgards are a weak faction in a war-scoured hell.’

‘I’m glad we didn’t side with the Citadel,’ softly, ‘I have no stomach for slave-trading.’

‘I saw the hand of the Pancreator in our endeavours, a galaxy to explore,’ Cortez spreads his arms and growls, ‘The gleam of opportunity!’ he drops his hands, voice cracking, ‘Was I deluded?’

Keats stares down at Cortez, silent.  He finds a glass, pours himself a measure from the bottle and sits in the chair beside Cortez, but leaning forward, elbows on his knees.  Eyes adjusting, Keats sees the stray coils veiling one of Cortez’s eyes; the other glistens.

Keats is used to Cortez’s dramatic moods.  Sometimes Keats would joke with him, sometimes just listen, or sit in companionable silence.  This is different.  There’d been an urgency to him since he turned up with his own ship and jump-key, Keats had thought maybe desperation, but dismissed it since Keats was never much good at understanding people.  Should Keats have stayed with his friend instead of leaving him to play Hemlock?  What if Hemlock was a mistake, a lie too far?  Keats kicks off his boots and curls his legs up in the chair, leaning on the wing so he can look at Cortez.  Cortez asked if he was deluded.  Keats could tell him about delusion.

Through the years of lies – or, if not actual lying, then allowing a false belief to perpetuate – the truth sometimes intruded on Keats and he longed to share it with Cortez.  But would he see it as betrayal?  Keats couldn’t endure that.  Meanwhile, a little part of Keats dreamed that Cortez would fall for the person beneath the lie, and they’d skip hand in hand into the sunset.

But not now.  Cortez has problems enough without his best friend’s betrayal.  And now Cortez, the decisive one, the captain with a plan, sees only doom.  Keats pats his knives and shield unit.  His sword hangs by the door.

‘Yesterday, you did not see,’ Cortez murmurs, ‘Miss Jessica gazing at you all evening?’

‘I thought she was looking at you.’

‘Have you ever been in love, Keats?’

Keats looks away, hiding behind a sip of the spirit, ‘I think so.’

‘Who?’ Cortez leans forward.  Keats wants to reach out and tuck the fallen curls back behind his ear.

Instead, he sits frozen and turns red, ‘I never mentioned it to them.  I doubt I’m their type.’

‘I had often wondered about you.  I thought, perhaps, you might be gay.’

Had he seen it?  Keats’ breath catches.  He should’ve been more thorough, manufactured an affair or two, but that was its own risk: Keats never was a good liar, protected by others’ assumptions and that the lie had become so part of him that it sometimes felt like the truth.  A shield of delusion.  Instead, Keats was asexual, not risking comments about young ladies for fear the falsehood might shine through.  But had he let an errant gaze slip?  Keats mouth opens, closes.

‘Because,’ Cortez meets Keats’ gaze, ‘I am.’

Keats’ eyes glaze.

‘I always dreamed,’ Corteaz breathes, ‘that you were too.’

Keats laughs.  It snaps out high, hysterical.  A sense of something shattering.  He sets down his drink, unfolds from the chair and starts to undress, still laughing.  His shaking fingers slip on the buttons.

Cortez starts to rise, ‘You do not have to, not like this.’

But the look Keats gives him, manic, scares him and he falls back into the chair.

Keats stands naked before Cortez.  He turns so the light falls on his front, silent now, barely breathing.

It takes Cortez a moment to realise what he’s seeing.  Eventually, he asks, ‘What happened?’

‘It would go easier on you, if you were a boy,’ high and fragile, but deliberate, quoting.

‘What?’

‘He said it, before he put me on the shuttle.  Then he died.  And everyone, everyone else.  All dead. Just me.  And up there, in the black, it would go easier on me, if I were a boy.’

And for once, Cortez is lost for words.  His expression changes as the last dozen years reconfigure.

‘I’m sorry,’ Keats is crying, and despite that, Keats’ higher-pitched voice seems easier, ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Then, who is Hemlock?’

Keats’ head shakes: don’t go there, ‘I can’t let him be dead.’

After a moment, in disbelief, ‘Tigerlilly?’

Keats stands, shaking, and doesn’t deny it.

‘You’re insane,’ Cortez breathes.

Keats laughs, wild-eyed.

Cortez chokes, ‘I loved you.’

The laughter comes so hard, so hysterical that Keats collapses, clutching ribs, crying and laughing and curling up in a ball on the rug.

Cortez slams down his drink and rises to slap Keats, but the drink makes him unsteady, and Keats – or whatever rolls and laughs on the floor – frightens Cortez.  He staggers out.

In time, the madness passes, and Keats dresses in panic in case anyone else comes in.  As he creeps to bed, he whispers to Cortez’s door, ‘I loved you too.’

*****

Distant cracks and rumbles wake little Tigerlilly.  A tremor runs through the room.  Trinkets rattle.  Then the alarm bells start to sound.

Distant thuds and rumbles wake Keats.  A tremor runs through the room.  Masonry cracks.  Then the alarm sirens start to sound.

Hemlock grabs Tigerlilly’s hand and runs into the corridor.  People are shouting and fleeing.  Hemlock slips through the press.

Keats fastens shield unit and buckles sword and knives over his pyjamas.  Cortez emerges in damask dressing-gown.  Keats grabs his hand and runs into the corridor.  People are shouting and fleeing.  Keats slips through the press.

The corridor smells of smoke.  Light of distant fires.  Masked men step out of the shadows and cut down guards and civilians.  Hemlock ducks into a side-corridor.

Bits of ceiling fall in showers of dust.  A closer rumbling, cracking, tearing and soldiers appear, masked men that shoot the guards and panicking civilians.  Keats ducks into a side-corridor.

Tigerlilly runs, stuffed tiger in one hand, the other clutching Hemlock’s.  People screaming, dying, the sound of buildings collapsing.

Keats runs, sword in one hand, the other clutching Cortez’s.  He has a pistol.  People screaming, dying, the sound of tunnels collapsing.

The ceiling falls, the way blocked, sound of fire and death beyond it.  Smoke billows black.

The ceiling falls, the way blocked, sound of fire and death beyond it.  Smoke billows black.

Losing Hemlock’s hand.  Separated, smoke washing between.  Masked men with blades emerge from the shadows.

The ground shakes.  Losing Cortez’s hand.  Separated, smoke washing between.  Masked men with guns emerge from the shadows.

A hand over Hemlock’s face and his throat is cut.  Tigerlilly runs.

Keats screams Hemlock’s name.  The solders turn their guns: his shield flares.  Keats kills them, then takes Cortez’s hand.

Tigerlilly, found by the family retainer, spirited out through the tunnel to an ore shuttle and bundled in with an envelope and satchel, and the advice, ‘It would go easier on you, if you were a boy.’

Near the shuttle, enemies closing.  Keats slips his shield onto Cortez and pushes him toward the door, ‘Go, Hemlock!  I’ll slow them.’

The shuttle tears upwards, shaking and roaring, Tigerlilly all alone.  Below, Hemlock is dead.

Enemies rounding the corner.  Keats emerges from the shadows and cuts a throat open.  He slips around bayonets and carves a bloody path, alone with a sword.  Until they shoot him, and he falls, knowing that Hemlock is safe.