The accusation hits like ice, because I’ve already suspected it’s true.
Asmodeus makes the little girl grin at my doubt.
“Interesting…” he purrs, sounding vaguely distracted. “But I do love a mystery, so I’m not about to let this one go, even though it ironically puts me in the same boat with the sickeningly-vapid God-Wads: What’s my purpose in life? What’s my Creator’s plan for me? Well, at least I know the answer to one of those questions, so that puts me ahead of the game, doesn’t it?”
“If your purpose is me, then bring it to me,” I demand levelly.
The little corpse does an exaggerated shrug and eye-roll.
“You know it doesn’t work that way,” he chastises me, pretending to be exasperated. “I can’t hurt you. You can’t hurt me. So what have we got? Your compassion and my Schadenfreude. I had compassion once. It sucked. It got me killed, or so I’m told. Won’t make that mistake again. Can’t, in fact. But you… I can stick hot pokers in you by hurting these pathetic little creatures we used to be.”
He’s right, and there isn’t a fucking thing I can do about it. Unless I become what he is. And I think that’s what he really wants, that’s what he’s always wanted: to prove we’re the same. Brothers in sociopathy.
The corpse-girl grins at my fuming.
“Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll move on when I get bored. I mean, the whole zombie meme has been done to death, after all—no pun intended. Okay, maybe a little pun intended. But then it does still have some untapped potential… And it seems to upset you in a new and unique way, so I must be doing something right.”
I’m getting distracted by the sounds of battle echoing in the tunnels. He’s wasting my time here.
“Speaking of upsetting you in new and unique ways… I’ve never been into little girls myself, but since I’m here, and I do like to watch, shall we see if you are?”
He makes the dead girl start to undress.
I feel a surge of shame and disgust and rage. It propels my sword through her skull. It releases her body from his control, but somehow I can still hear him:
“Mission accomplished. You are just too easy…”
I get back to the Pax, running. Asmodeus’ voice echoes triumphantly in the tunnels.
“Was it the pedo or the necro? Ah, well, maybe next time… I’ll try to get someone more your type. And maybe a little less ripe…”
We need to contain this. We need to evacuate the Pax, take away his Harvester fodder, even if it does mean putting them back out in the open. We’ll need to get them out of his easy reach, take away his fun, at least for awhile, long enough to clear the Keep and seal up any sections we can’t secure.
I know he’ll just go elsewhere, but maybe I can catch him when he makes that move. Unless he already has.
Our combined efforts get everyone out into daylight, out into the bowl of the long box canyon that forms the approach to the Keep. I jumped over another six disabled Harvesters on the way out, and two dead Pax Hunters. Lux and Bly report similar casualties.
As the evacuees mill in the canyon, I listen for Harvester signals. I hear nothing, but a gestating drone doesn’t transmit until it’s complete and online. Any of these people could be infected. We need to check them all. I count nearly four hundred men, women and children. And then I get news that’s only part of our problem.
“Your containment is shot,” I hear Azazel, see him circling above us in the Siren’s Song. He flashes me video from the hull cameras and his own eyes: There are two other visible exits from the mountain, both of them streaming terrified evacuees. Warm bodies are fading into the forest.
The Pax Hunters are holding the ones in the canyon on the inside of their defensive wall, but the Pax instinct is to hide, to fade into the green. I can see more heat blips slipping away, some in small clusters, probably families.
Small consolation: Most are heading generally west, back toward their ancestral ruin. Away from Katar.
“Try to gather your people together,” I encourage Archer. “We need to ch…”
I hear a signal, see a Harvester come staggering out of one of the Keep caves. This one is a teen boy. The Hunters put three arrows into his skull before he falls, tumbling down the cliff.
“We still have too many unaccounted for,” Archer insists. “We need to clear our home.”
“Asmodeus has a way in that you don’t know about,” I argue. “He was able to get to your Leder, put something in his brain. He was turning one of your Hunters into a copy of himself, a clone. We need to evacuate until we can clear every tunnel, then reinforce your defenses so nothing can slip in. And we need to check everyone thoroughly, maybe quarantine them.”
“The infected may have already spread too far to contain,” Bly complains, too frustrated for discretion. His sword and mail are splattered with gore. Lux’s brilliant white and chrome are still absorbing her own stains.
“You need to save who you can,” Lux tries a softer approach. “Protect who you can. So your people can live, once this is over.”
I look skyward. Phobos is making one of its quick passes overhead, visible in daylight as a dull blob that looks about one-third the size of Earth’s moon, even though it’s only eleven klicks long (because it’s barely six thousand klicks up). I know UNMAC has been scrambling to rebuild their base up there, as well as a new space dock in lower orbit, this time armed and armored against Disc attack. I also know they have at least one mass driver up there that serves as an impromptu rail-gun, pointed down at the planet’s surface. And probably more nuclear warheads, salvaged and revitalized from the stockpiles they should have scrapped a century ago.
Are you thinking what I am? Bly asks in my head, discretion returning.
When the Earthers find out about this, they’ll burn this place, blast it to dust, Lux answers for me. There may be no point in trying to secure the site. We’d just be leaving these people under the barrel of a rail-gun.
Then we need to get everyone away from here, now, Bly concludes with some urgency. We can check them for infection later.
But I don’t budge.
“What?” Bly demands as I continue to stare at the sky.
I’m listening for signals, frequencies. If this has gotten any attention from Orbit, it’s still being kept quiet.
“Azazel, get the ship away from here,” I order. Then to Bly and Lux: “Help the Pax round up their own. Keep them together. Get them moving in the same direction. Then get Bel to help with the checks. And don’t assume we still have three days gestation.”
They don’t like me dismissing them, but they do what I ask.
“What are you going to do?” Lux has to ask as they go.
“Something probably very stupid.”
I reach out, hack in. Send my message.
“This is Colonel Ram, calling General Richards. We need to meet. Your terms. Your ground. I have something you need to see.”
Actually I don’t, not yet. So I go back into the cave network and get it.
The reply comes forty minutes later. I assume that means they had to consult with Earth. But they do give me a where and a when. Only the reply isn’t from General Richards. It’s from Colonel Jackson.
Chapter 2: Confidence and Paranoia
The “when” is a few hours after dawn the next day
The “where” is a remote plateau in the maze-like Badlands, about twenty-five klicks west of the ruin of the original Pax Colony. The Badlands are situated just this side of the “teeth” of Coprates—a row of sharp peaks across an especially narrow part of the great valley. This funnels the daily wind-cycle into a sand-blasting intensity, resulting in erosion that’s carved the Badlands into a treacherous labyrinth of rises and fissures as the underlying layers of fractured rock have been exposed and sculpted into a nightmare landscape. The elevation is also a few klicks higher than the greened regions of Coprates, which means thinner air and more extreme temperature shifts. It all combines to make the place barren, inhos
pitable, and extremely treacherous to traverse. Not even the subterranean-dwelling Forge bother expanding their territory this far. (Though I had heard that Abu Abbas—used to the deserts of Melas—had bargained for the real estate with the Pax and Katar as a potential new home for his people, displaced by Earthside stupidity. But now that his people have proven their commitment to defending the peoples of the Trident—at the cost of his own life among many others—I expect they’ll be welcome anywhere in that region.)
The wind here screams like no other place in the terraformed Marineris chain. If this is the “mouth” of Coprates, it wails like a Banshee for hours on end every morning and evening, as if mourning (or heralding) all the death in the green to the east.
Earthside apparently has at least one asset in the region, and one they must feel is both secure enough and expendable enough for a meeting with a potentially valuable monster: The Long Range Recon Vehicle designated Leviathan Three. It’s an ingeniously rigged monstrosity, built on-planet out of salvaged and repurposed parts: Four massive treads from mining machines supporting a freight shuttle reactor and an armored pressure hull, crowned by a spare base battery turret. Its camouflage paint job is a pathetic effort, since the thing is well over twenty meters tall and thirty long.
Slightly promising sign: they don’t turn the guns on me when I approach.
Parked near it are two older ASVs, museum pieces restored and sent to Mars in Earth’s rush to provide us support against threats that evolved into something entirely other before they could arrive. Outdated and clumsy compared to the newer, sleeker models, they’re also probably seen as expendable, likely only here as transport for those I’ve come to meet from Melas Two (since the Leviathan would take days to make the trip from there to here at its top speed). I hear no link chatter between the craft, and that tells me they’ve probably taken the precaution of shutting down their network, worried I might hack in and do something… well, I’m sure they’ve imagined all sorts of extreme possibilities.
Covering the ships, and not as invisible as they think they are, are a team of snipers in Heavy Armor shells, nested in the rocks all around and about three hundred klicks out. They have to realize by now that I can increase the processing speed of my brain and nervous system enough to see bullets coming and react, assuming anything they could shoot me with could do more than piss me off. But I suppose they felt they had to have some kind of security onsite. I fully expect they have a satellite rail-gun positioned overhead, should things go as bad as they’ve fantasized.
Me, I’ve brought myself. And my flyer, which has been taking on a strange but beautiful gryphon-like shape the more I’ve used it.
I think I surprise them by coming in from the west instead of the east, but I had an errand to run that I’d already delayed too long, and recent events also required I have an urgent face-to-face with someone at the same location. I kept it brief, using the need to be at this meeting to excuse me from lingering. I tell myself it was to avoid things getting uncomfortable, though the truer version is that I just can’t deal with the peripheral drama right now, and ran away from it like I’ve always done. (This gives me a brief chuckle inside my helmet at the idea that I’d rather sit down with Earthside’s commanders-on-planet rather than spend more time than absolutely necessary at Tranquility.)
I set down seventy-five meters from their impromptu mobile outpost. Before the dust of my landing settles, I pull off my helmet and fold it away, tie my eternally-unruly hair back into the ponytail it refuses to stay in, dismount my fantastic ride, and casually start to walk in like this is routine. I almost immediately get fed a warning on one of the old UNMAC channels:
“Leave your weapons, please, Colonel.” It’s Jackson again.
“Considering what you’re afraid I might do, I can’t imagine me having a sword or a pistol would make that worse,” I dismiss him (and subtly remind him how helpless he is, which probably isn’t a good move if I’m hoping for diplomacy here, but he just brings out the righteous asshole in me every time he opens his mouth).
“Consider it a gesture, Colonel,” Richards comes on, sounding like he wants this to be productive. (Rather than ending with me beating Jackson to death with his own spine, something I’ve certainly imagined since the psychotic theo-fascist martinet tried to suicide bomb me and hundreds of brave fighters—including his own people—with a four hundred and fifty kiloton thermonuclear warhead because he’s sure my kind carry a plague that will wipe out all life, not to mention being an abomination in the eyes of his twisted version of God.)
I take a breath of the thin, brisk, gritty air, and make a show of leaving my katana and my gun with my ride. For their part, they don’t just blow it up as soon as I walk away. But they do have other surprises waiting, designed—I assume—to keep me polite.
The reactor core beneath the Leviathan isn’t the only radiation signal. There are nuclear shells strapped to the undercarriage. They read as low-yield gun-type tactical, maybe a few kilotons each.
Then I get a one-person welcoming party, as a single figure in an L-A uniform climbs down out of the pressure hull. I can hear her distinctive signals before she turns to face me. It’s Lisa.
Her long dark hair is tied up military-neat, and—of course—she’s not wearing a mask or goggles, needing them no more than I do. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t transmit anything, just waits for me. I quickly see why: They’ve rigged her with some kind of collar bomb. They have to know it won’t kill her, but they must be counting on it disabling her if she tries anything. They’ve also got her wired with sensors, likely set to detect her communicating with me, or trying to hack them. (I expect they’ve made good use of their time with her, trying desperately to come up with countermeasures against our kind.) She gives me a tired, bitter grin. I want to tell her I’m sorry, but I know that will make it worse.
“They’re waiting for you,” she tells me flatly.
“Tell them I need a nano-containment tube.” I’m sure they can hear me.
About thirty very awkward seconds pass, and the lower airlock pops again. An H-A suit climbs down, tube strapped across his chest. When he gets boots on sand, he unclips the tube and hands it to me. I recognize him through his visor.
“Juan… Captain Rios…”
“It’s good to see you, sir,” he gives sincerely. We don’t trade salutes, not under the camera eyes of his new superiors. Our reunion is understandably uncomfortable, given the circumstances, but he’s prepared to do his job as always.
“I’m sure this is somehow my fault you’re out here,” I give by way of an apology, feeling crushed. He’s a good soldier, a fine officer. But Dee told me how he was basically exiled to this duty, his Company taken from him and given to cherry Earthside New-Drop true-believers, all because of his prior loyalty to me. (And I’m thinking about helping Jackson meet his God in some satisfying fashion again, and Burns with him, but I know there’s a planet full of faith-driven idiots just like them lined up to take their place. I’d have to declare war on the Earth.)
He doesn’t answer, just forces a smile and shows me how to work the container. I put my “presents” inside, and he checks the seals and fields. A familiar female voice over his link declares it safe. Then he takes the tube back up into the vehicle. And we wait again.
“The samples you’ve provided are secure, Colonel,” Jackson comes back on the link channel. “You have permission to come aboard.”
I realize I’ve never met Jackson face-to-face, that to this point he’s just been a voice over link, but every interaction I’ve had with him so far makes me want to rip this pressure hull open with my bare hands and show him that the last thing I need or want is his permission. And there’s my curse again, the most unfortunate side-effect of what I’ve become: The arrogance of the invincible. I used to say I wasn’t anything like the monsters I hunted, and I was absolutely confident in that distinction, but now… The only thing that keeps me from being what Asmodeus is, is that I won’t let my
self give into it, no matter how seductive it is.
Lisa gives me a knowing nod. I swallow my anger and climb the ladder.
Another slightly promising sign: I’m not met by gun barrels when I come through the airlock. They do keep their distance. And put up a few barriers.
The rear of the hull looks like it’s devoted to tight crew quarters, supply lockers and one sealed lab space. Through the layered viewing port, I see the familiar face that matches the familiar voice I heard on Rios’ link: Lyra Jameson. Anime-big eyes and white-blonde hair bob-cut like the last time I saw her, but there’s more experience in those eyes now. I can only imagine what she’s been through since I left her with these people during my last attempt at a diplomatic gesture. She raises the cylinder I gave Rios where I can see it, and gives me a nod of thanks, though there’s still an edge of anger flashing in her eyes, the pain of perceived betrayal. I told her I would show her the bigger world, and let her assume that meant she would be traveling it with me and mine. But instead I turned her over to UNMAC, as living proof that UNCORT had secretly sent recon ships to this planet decades ago; and, already knowing there were people living here, ordered experimentation on living humans.
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 3