Silence. I could hear him breathing as we watched Terina. Her eyelids would flutter from time-to-time, like she was dreaming.
“Maybe the Harvesters are a blessing,” he partly joked. “We’ll see what they do to them before they try it on us.”
And that made me feel ill, guilty. Again.
“And I just stoked that fire,” I admitted. “I provided them samples of the modules, the results of our exams. I was hoping for good faith, but I didn’t realize how completely paranoid they were. So all I did was reinforce what Asmodeus did: Scare them. Provoke them. And now they’ll jump for him and do exactly what he wants them to. Blindly. Stupidly.”
And your people are giving them the fuel to do it—I didn’t say it. It was clear he already understood that.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
I lied to him, told him I didn’t know yet. He would have wanted to come with me, would have insisted, would have followed me if I’d refused, just for a shot at ending this horror.
So maybe I was anticipating what came next. Maybe I saw it coming.
And I walked right into it anyway.
The Siren’s Song was waiting on the Station pad when Paul led me out. I’d called them before I went into the Station, told Azazel I needed to meet them. I didn’t anticipate that they’d run to meet me here, risk exposing themselves to the UN satellites, give the Earthside paranoiacs one more reason to believe we were in a conspiracy with the ETE.
“What’s the play?” Bel asked me at the hatch.
I didn’t answer him. I cycled into the ship, headed straight for the aft section. For Fohat.
The Toymaker was still sealed in his containment tube, his recently-exploded head grown back to the point that his skull was intact again, though not his hair (except for a few random blonde wisps). There was so little flesh on it that he resembled a desiccated mummy, only with pale, baby-like skin tight over the bone. Stripped of his golden armor, his body was similarly wasted, having to consume itself to repair his injuries, to re-create his brain and most of his head from about the nose up. Murphy’s last act of service.
“Is he back to consciousness?” I asked Bel urgently, the first words I spoke to him.
“Partially. I still haven’t been able to sift anything useful from his visual memory, just more images of cut caves that could be the Pax Keep. But now we know it is. We know that’s where he went.”
I dropped the fields, opened the container. Bel sealed the hatch behind us, turned up the scrubbers to make sure no part of Fohat could try to make a run for it. Then he sat to monitor while I interrogated the old fashioned way.
“Where did he go?” I asked the paper-skinned skull. “Asmodeus. After Pax, what was the fall-back?”
I got nothing for several seconds. I grabbed him by what hair I could get my fist around and shook him until I could hear his neck grind. His jaw flopped open, like he was insensate. But then the thin lips twisted up into a grin, exposing the budding teeth of an infant poking out of his upper gums, while his lower jaw still had most of its adult set. The contrast was deeply disturbing to look at.
“Sometimes… I remember Janeway… You remember Janeway…?” It took him a lot of effort to speak with his underdeveloped unbalanced mouth, and his words slurred, rasped.
I looked to Bel. He shrugged.
“It’s the rebuilding brain, digging up fragments, apparently finding leftovers of the body his Seed took over.”
“I remember Janeway,” I decided to confirm. “You ate him alive. Took his body for your own. That’s him, haunting you for it.”
He chuckled dryly, weirdly with his mismatched mouth, and opened his sunken eyes. The left one was too small for the socket. The right one was just a cluster of metal contacts, like a multi-pin plug, where his hardware implant used to be, the cluster-eye linked to his creations, letting him see through all their eyes, letting him watch them murder. I want to rip the rest of that linkage out of his head, slowly. But instead, I focus on what’s pressing, lever:
“Asmodeus. He left you. He’s done with Pax,” I lied more than assumed. “Where did he go then? Where was he going to go after he was done there?”
The baby/mummy head shook, the eyes closed.
“He left you,” I kept selling. “He milked you for your all your precious knowledge, downloaded everything of value without you even knowing it, then he left you to us… He took all your skills, and all your toys. Now they’re his. All his. No more toys. No more toy making. Just this. You in a cage with us. Until we get bored torturing you. And there’s long line waiting to get a turn.”
If the desiccated skull could manage tears, I expect he would have cried. But he just kept weakly shaking his head.
I drew my knife, grabbed his right wrist, started cutting. He screamed himself hoarse in his restraints, lopsided mouth gaping and twisting so far open it looked dislocated. I saw Bel give me a look, then look away, keeping his eyes on his screens.
I cut the hand free at the elbow, and put it in a small containment cylinder, where it would begin to disintegrate having almost instantly gotten the master signal that the rest of his body is intact elsewhere (a handy safety so that every bit that we lose doesn’t grow a new one of us). Then I wiped my knife on his dirty robes, and let him watch as my blade and glove absorbed what blood was left, my Mods neutralizing his, breaking them down and consuming them as raw material.
I let him stew on how much more he would starve replacing that hand. But all he did was whimper like a child and shake his head. I looked at Bel. He shook his own head, telling me my questions were triggering nothing useful on the memory hack he was running. Fohat really didn’t know. He knew about Pax, but nothing else. Asmodeus had kept him in the dark, knowing he would be disposing of him soon. And Fohat didn’t think beyond making his killing toys, beyond the joy he got from watching them slaughter men, women and children.
“Fine.”
Before Bel could protest (assuming he would), I drew my pistol and put a timed explosive round through Fohat’s new forehead. Then I slammed the container shut before his skull blew all over the inside of it. What it’s going to cost him to grow that back again gave me a moment’s satisfaction, but only a moment’s.
I let myself out of the ship without saying another word, got on my flyer, and threw myself into the sky to go ask my questions to the right person. And I knew he’d be happy to chat. The fucker always is.
Now I’m sitting in the wind, on the rock ledge just outside the Forge-dug entrance into the mountain, overlooking the seemingly endless expanse of the Lake below me. I don’t remember getting here. Too tired. Too hungry. Too damaged. Too lost in thought, my abused, addled brain endlessly replaying the last twenty-four hours as if anything I could have done or not done would have resulted in a different outcome.
Looking up, I watch Phobos fly across the night sky on one of its four rounds per day, close enough to see the craters that pock its surface. But I don’t see the new UNMAC base on its surface, not even with my enhancements. Nor do I see the orbital station or any of the satellites, including the mass driver (or drivers) that tried to vaporize me. But then I wouldn’t, not from here, since the sky here is Yod’s illusion, as is the horizon of low mountains barely visible in the distance across the Lake. It’s all a virtual projection, a panorama of the world Yod erased, like a convincing scene painting all round this human game preserve, for the benefit of the residents (prisoners?) of Haven, and anyone else Yod lets in here. The Lake, combined with Yod’s cognitive barriers, keep those living here from reaching it, from defeating the illusion, though I’m sure they suspect that’s what it is, especially since they’ve recently had visitors from the “real” world, the outside world.
The Lake itself is peaceful now that the evening winds have died down, its gently rippling surface sparkling in the faint moonlight, soothing. If I wasn’t in so much pain, and so angry, I could happily let it lull me to sleep.
Instead I just stare in a da
ze across kilometers of water that very few people beyond this preserve know is here (even though it’s right under UNMAC’s satellite eyes), appreciating the perfection, the beauty of the illusion. But then I fix on something that destroys it for me: From this side of the Lake, the Pax Mountain is still there, still intact, not demolished by chunks of scrap metal accelerated to meteor velocities and hurled down from space.
And I loop into second-guessing myself again, my choices. It is my fault? Would the Hold Keep still be there if I hadn’t gone running back? I doubt it. I may have added another tempting target to the field of fire, but I’m sure Earthside would have pulverized the site anyway, as soon as they’d confirmed the Harvester infestation.
The Harvester infestation that I reported to them. In good faith.
I remember the flyover: Two of the sleeker new-drop AAVs screamed over my head from the west just after I’d dropped from my flyer onto the crest of the long, low mountain. I habitually activated my visual camo, and risked a subtle hack to ensure I wasn’t seen. But if Earthside had been tracking me at all, it was an easy guess where I’d gone after I went radar-invisible (and then visible invisible), especially if they believe that Asmodeus and I are in some conspiracy together.
Let them think whatever they want, I remember thinking. Then I went to find the son-of-a-bitch, or at least take some satisfaction in butchering whatever Harvesters were left in the Keep. I’d kill them all, I told myself. I’d kill them faster than he could make new ones, before they had a chance to infect and replicate.
I didn’t meet any resistance at all climbing down to the cliff entrances of the Keep. Then I didn’t meet any resistance when I actually met Harvesters, spread through the tunnels to lurk like sleepwalking sentries. They simply ignored me.
I took small comfort that some were wearing Chang Black (as if being former enemy combatants justified such a horrific fate), but now even the animated bodies of the Pax were carrying guns.
Putting my sword through a skull and taking a rifle to examine, I confirmed it had been modified to fire seed rounds. But even that act of violence brought no reaction from the drones. Nor did splitting the skulls of several more. Every drone I encountered completely disregarded me like I was of no consequence whatsoever.
But close, I could hear signals. Their eyes were his eyes.
“Are you here?” I asked the artificially-animated dead. “Or do you plan to keep wasting my time and your drones?”
I didn’t get an answer, not right away. I found my way in the shadows back to where I’d destroyed his last cloning attempt, hoping I’d find another one brewing, or sign of any equipment he might be using to accomplish the deed. But I knew he was probably doing his copying trick using only nanotech, introduced as a seed into an unfortunate body. There would be no manufacturing assets to destroy, only the finished products or half-formed works-in-progress.
And then I did find equipment. Hardware. Of a sort.
Stacked sloppily as if for disposal in a shop-sized chamber were a number of body-sized metal cylinders. On closer examination, they looked like rough-cobbled versions of Hiber or trauma pods. As I tried to hack into any internal mechanism, slide-away panels sprung open at the right touch. The first few were empty, just insulated metal coffins. But then I started finding bodies inside. Pax. In restraints, gagged, some convulsing in the throes of conversion, others just staring blankly, sensor stalks glowing faintly behind their eyes. The ones that were still suffering I gave efficient mercy, stabbing my knife through their foreheads and into the growing module core, trying not to absorb very much of their blood and tissue as I did so.
I distracted myself from the humane murdering with practical questions as I went: Why would he need these tubes? The infection runs its course no matter what—the infected don’t need to be contained or restrained. Or was this some kind of protection for the conversion process? And if so, from what?
Closer inspection revealed no technology in the tubes other than basic oxygen re-breathers and reservoir cylinders, probably repurposed from Chang’s conscripts. There was nothing to suggest the tubes were meant to assist the conversion process, other than provide it a place to happen. But the outer walls of the cylinders seemed thicker than basic shelter protection or pressurization would require, almost like armor, but made of welded scrap. Arrayed as they were, they reminded me of homemade torpedoes or massive artillery shells, the dregs of an ordnance dump. Is he planning to launch corpse-drones at his targets? The impact would completely crush a body inside, rendering it useless as a drone. Perhaps if he intended to drop them like bombs from very low altitude… but he would need ships…
“Merry Christmas,” I finally heard his voice, sweet and seductive. “Welcome to my own personal Santa’s workshop. These toys aren’t quite ready yet, but I have been busy.”
He was in my head, but I could also hear him echoing in the tunnels. He was here, at least in clone form.
“They’re not for you, I’m afraid. It’s not that you’re on my ‘naughty’ list or anything. I just want to get you something really special. Nothing so vulgar and mass-produced.”
I tried to follow the voice, hoping against reason that it could actually be him, his primary body.
“You know what I want,” I seduced back, offering him violence to draw him out.
“And I want that, too, sexy. But will you still respect me in the morning?”
“No more clones,” I challenged. “No more decoys. You.”
I ran into more rotting drones as I moved faster and faster through the tunnels. They continued to ignore me. I killed their modules to cost him a few more eyes in the dark.
“Will you be able to tell the difference?” he kept taunting, certainly knowing I was using his chatter to home in on him. “I remember this old movie: Some global conspiracy to replace key VIPs with robot clones. Low budget, total crap. But towards the end, the male and female good guys get separated, and then they’re not sure if the other is a clone, so they kiss, and somehow they just know.”
Then I felt him, moving through the tunnels. Running. Fast.
“Maybe we should do that. I’m game if you are.”
Away from me.
“What are the tubes for?” I tried to keep him talking as I chased him in the tunnel maze, knocking the lurking drones out of my way.
“Asymmetrical Warfare 101,” he was happy to oblige. “I’d almost feel sorry for them, you know? The New-Earth Purity Patrol… But this is going to be fun. Big fun. They’ve never seen a war like me.”
I kept following him through the maze, knowing that was exactly what he wanted. He eventually led me out to the main entrance of the Keep: a long, wide, low-ceilinged cavern that opened up to a wide slit of daylight overlooking the approach canyon.
And there he was, no more hiding: silhouetted against the light, arms wide as if to theatrically embrace a long-lost lover (though his collapsed spear was in his right hand).
“Kiss me, you fool!”
Sword in hand, I took a step forward. He could flee—his exit was at his back—but he let me come on.
The light was also at his back, giving him the visual advantage. And he used it effectively. If this was a clone, it was one of his better-made ones, fast and strong and skilled. I took stab wounds to both legs and my left shoulder just trying to parry his darting thrusts as he kept dancing just out of my reach. I cut one of his hands, his face, but he just giggled at me and ripped his spear through my left earlobe. I smashed his spear down (taking a piece of my ear with it), making an opening, and sunk my sword straight into his nose, twisted it inside his face. But the fucker just grinned, even as his bones split.
“Yeth, baby! Do me! Do me hard!”
That’s when the sky washed bright white, as if lightning had cracked over our heads, but I knew it wasn’t lightning. Asmodeus saw it out of the corner of his eye, and in my hesitation he jerked his head off of my blade, only to look dumbly up at the stone ceiling.
I knew I had
maybe a few seconds, if that. The incoming projectile was flying down at us at mach five or six, rupturing and detonating the atmosphere around it. Asmodeus started to say something smart-assed, but I wasn’t listening. I charged straight into him, grabbing his spear as he reflexively sunk it into my spleen, and I drove my sword up under his jaw and out through the base of his skull. (At least it shut him up.) I kept running forward, using my momentum to throw us both out into space, out of the Keep, because I wasn’t going to let a rail-gun keep me from being sure.
But I knew there was no way…
The crack of the leading shockwave boxed my ears just as we flew from the cave mouth, barely keeping ahead of the projectile that made it. Then the mountain came apart behind us a fraction of a second later, vaporizing into super-heated rubble, the blast wave catching us in mid-air. First I felt him torn away from me as the overpressure crushed my body as it washed over me. A fraction of a fraction after that—still flying helplessly through the air—I got pulverized by that hypersonic storm of rubble like a bug in a shotgun blast.
I landed, torn and broken, somewhere out in the canyon, to be partially buried by the storm of rock and gravel that had devoured me. I couldn’t see anything through the thick searing opaque haze and my damaged vision. Laying there like so much debris, stunned and immobilized, I think it was a few minutes before the next strike, which finished throwing the mountain over me.
The rest of the blasts were just a giant tamping down my grave.
“Nice view, isn’t it?”
He’s sitting next to me on the ledge. Of course I didn’t hear him coming. He probably just materialized himself there, assembled his avatar out of whatever matter was handy in the blink of an eye. Assuming he’s even solid.
As if proving he can read my thoughts, he raps his knuckles on my shoulder plating.
“Nice illusion,” I nod my head toward the false horizon. “Beautiful, in fact, unless you know it’s a cage.”
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 7