I smell corpse. The flash I had, of consuming a corpse, embracing it in a grave… I am.
I shove myself in the direction I think is up, pushing between the larger boulders, prying, digging, despite every joint and bone screaming at me. As soon as I make any airspace, dirt and sand runs in to fill it. My lungs have sealed, not that I can expand my chest to take a proper breath anyway. I have no idea how long I’ve been recycling, but my gauges are all in the red, despite whatever I’ve managed to consume. (I must have dug my way to the corpse, found it by scent or luck, the horrible necessity that I hope I never get used to.)
I make some headway, a meter or so, but it spends too much of what I have left.
I go for smaller efforts, giving my pulmonary nanites more time to scrub the CO2 I’m producing into oxygen. I still can’t tell how much physical damage I’m suffering, but I’m getting warnings from my lungs, kidneys, liver and spleen (I remember taking Asmodeus’ spear through my spleen), probably all pounded by the pressure wave. And I’m still fuzzy, disoriented, vertiginous, so head trauma is also a given. But considering the force of the blast waves and the battering I took from the mountain, I shouldn’t even be in one piece.
My limbs do all seem to be there. They do feel deeply bruised, joints torn, but my long bones are miraculously intact—none of that was illusion. My limbs and torso and spine are all being crushed under the weight of however much of Mars is on top of me, but I can move, just not very much.
Then I feel something shift above me, hear the grinding of heavy rocks, get more loose sand pouring into the little space I have.
“He’s here!” I can barely hear through the rocks. Then in my head, buzzing and distorted: “We’ve got you, Colonel. Hang on…”
It’s Lux.
The pressure on me starts to ease, lets me move, shove myself upwards. Soon I can dig more freely, swimming slowly and painfully through the regolith. When I break the surface, I almost explode out of it. Hands grab my armor and drag, hauling me up and out, crying out in agony all the way.
The hands that grabbed me lay me down across the rubble. My body feels like it’s going to fly apart in every direction, so suddenly relieved of the pressure of being buried. It takes several seconds to clear my vision enough to see the violet of what I assume is a dawn sky, then several more to make out the shapes of Lux and Bly.
“He’s in one piece,” Lux reports as I sprawl across the jagged rocks like they’re the plushest of beds. “He looks like he’s been through a garbage disposal, he’s filthy and he stinks like corpse, but all the major bits are where they should be.”
“We have an hour before first flyover,” I hear Azazel warning in my head. “No time for a nap, Colonel.”
“The Unmakers have been buzzing the site multiple times per day, starting as soon as they can get the ice off after sunrise,” Bly tells me. “We’ve had to search at night, heat-cloaked.”
“How…” I cough out a mouthful of dirt. “How… long…?”
“Six days,” I hear Bel. “We thought we’d be finding pieces, considering…”
I turn my battered body, flop over onto my elbows and knees, feeling my ribs and spine grind, but I have to get a look around, and I can’t do that on my back. The glow of the sunrise is my only real bearing. The Pax Mountain has been turned into a series of massive craters. Only short sections of the original crest remain intact. Everything else is shattered rock, like a blasted quarry, just like what I remember “seeing” from my apparent hallucination of the Barrow. (Was that really Yod, seeding my delirium with reality while he took his opportunity to speak with me?)
“Here…” Bly hands me something from his satchel, urgently shoving it in my face. I smell roasted meat, but old, getting rancid. “It was better when it was fresh. We found some of the Pax live stock…”
It’s a chunk of muscle the size of a holiday roast, roughly butchered. I don’t argue with the quality, I just grip it with both of my broken hands and let my nanites start digesting it, processing the desperately needed protein. I assume the charring wasn’t from cooking, but from the heat-energy of a rail-gun strike.
I should be in the same shape as this unlucky cow. How am I in one piece?
The answer is painfully obvious: Yod did more than fuck with my head while I was buried. But while he was at it, why didn’t he just heal all of my injuries? Or is he assuming I’d want the pain, as penance for my stupidity? (And he would be right, of course.)
I try standing, but instantly wind up sitting, freshly popping joints. Lux rushes to support me. As I grip the meat for dear life, I do a quick inventory: My surcoat has been torn away, my armor battered and abraded. My gun is still in its holster on my thigh, though thoroughly caked with dirt, as is my armor. My sword…
“My sword…”
Lux goes digging in the hole they pulled me out of as Bly nervously scans the lightening sky. I can see the Siren’s Song coming in to land.
“You’ve missed a bit, Captain Colonel,” Bly says ominously.
“Catching up later,” Azazel prompts from the ship. “Can he walk, or do I need to come out and carry him?”
“I’d like to see that myself,” Bel tries to joke, “like Richard Gere carrying Debra Winger in ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’.”
I hear Lux purring like the thought is inspiring. But then she stops digging, bends down, and slowly pulls a much smaller object than my sword out of my grave.
“What the fuck is this?” She holds it up so I can see it.
It’s the bottle of beer Yod gave me.
Chapter 4: Quagmire
“Explains how you’re not in bits,” Bly concludes what I’m already sure of, as Lux tentatively smells the dusty but intact beer bottle, then nods approvingly.
“Any sign of Asmodeus?” I ask what I consider most urgent, especially if we need to be leaving before the next UNMAC flyover.
“Nothing,” Bly admits, frustrated.
“Any idea where your sword went?” Lux is still worried about that.
“Stuck through Asmodeus’ head, last I had it… Then everything went boom.”
I don’t care about the sword. The sword is too slow.
“Can you walk?” Bly offers his hand, but I force myself to get up on my own. I probably look like a drunk who’s been hit by a bus (and dragged under it for several blocks), but I can already feel the meat helping.
Azazel’s landed on a relatively level patch of blast crater several dozen meters away, the Song’s stealth skin providing visual camouflage. The morning wind kicking up from the east will help hide our dust. Hiking to the ship over the loose rubble is a trial in itself, especially with my hands still busy with the chunk of unfortunate cow.
We get into the ship—climbing up into the airlock was a special agony—and lift off. Azazel flies us off toward “Base”, a hiding spot for the ship he’d found in the narrow shear-walled “tip” of the Central Blade. He’s done a good job restoring the ship’s original radar masking skin, and added a good visual camouflage Mod to it, but we still put out heat and kick up dust when we fly. It’s easy enough to hack the UNMAC satellites to make them not see us, but we can’t get away with it for long without risking detection, so we have to keep our flights short.
I settle my battered body into one of the cockpit flight couches (more like fall into it), and wave off Bel when he comes to check my injuries. I do accept water and one of his nutrient blends (now that the chunk of beef has crumbled to dust in my grip, bone and all). He’s actually getting better at making his concoctions palatable.
No one is speaking. Everyone has the same dour look, and I don’t think it’s about my condition, or even the loss of the Keep. There’s something else.
I’m about to ask what I missed when the screens light up. A massive patch of the forest erupts in an incendiary chain-reaction not far off our port wing, out in the belly of the Central Blade Valley. I watch several acres of lush growth dissolve in fire in a matter of seconds, smaller blazes s
preading from a central detonation point like a giant firework. I’m thinking we’re under attack, but the blast doesn’t send much of a shockwave our way. It does, however, send a lot of thick dark smoke into the sky.
I get my bearings on the landmarks, and quickly realize the target of the detonation, despite how little sense it makes: The incendiary chain scorched a section of growth just to the north of Lucifer’s Grave, probably right at the foot of the crater slope.
“Thermobaric,” Azazel scans. “Metal and oxidizer, probably dispersed as a mist.”
“Local materials,” Bel appraises darkly. “Smart.”
“Smart what?” I’m not following, but I think I can assume who the perpetrator was from a very short list. “What are they aiming at?”
“The forest,” Bel grimly explains. “They’re clearing it. Defoliating.”
In my addled brain, “they” not “he” means
“Earthside?” I’m sure but still don’t understand.
Azazel zooms our portside cameras, gives me a view of the recently rail-gun-blasted crater, another of UNMAC’s recent targets. (At least that one was a bona-fide Asmodeus base. Too bad he’d already left before they could get their mass driver loaded and aimed.) On the crescent plateau that forms the west and southwest rim of the crater are a number of new structures that look modular, chained together. There’s also sign of recent excavation: several rectangular areas have been cleared, flattened, packed; and a rough barrier wall has been pushed up between them and the nearby structures. It looks like makeshift airfield, but I don’t see any aircraft. I do see signs of buried fuel tanks, and another dig that looks like a reactor has been planted.
“They dropped and assembled this in a hurry, while you were…” Bel doesn’t bother to dig for a proper word to describe where I’ve been for the last week.
“It’s a forward base,” Dee comes over our links. “Glad to have you back above ground, Colonel,” he digresses to greet me, then continues telling me what he’s probably been monitoring. “They’ve changed plans, shifted priorities, based on recent revelations. They’re actively establishing a presence in the Trident, where they assume the action is going to be. But it’s more than that, given the manifests Colonel Ava gave you. Remember, you have to view whatever they launched through the lens of what was happening when they launched it, and most of this new surge got shot our way nearly a year ago. But by the time they can get anything here across space…”
“…they’re in a different fight,” I finish what’s become the rule of Earth’s best efforts to get back control of this planet. I try to remember what we were facing a year ago. The first Stormcloud had just been taken down for good (a “victory” I’m sure Jackson took full credit for), and we believed—until recently—that Chang may have been gone with it. But there were still holdouts: Chang’s remaining army, his hidden base, and Fohat and Asmodeus were unaccounted for.
“So it would be reasonable to assume they sent what they sent expecting they’d still be in a straight-up fight with Chang and his allies.” For a machine, Dee’s gotten very good at mimicking human conversation, including subtle non- and sub-verbal cues. I can tell he’s setting up his real point. He flashes the manifests that I’d sent him after the infuriating Jackson meet on our screens. He’s had nearly a week to process them, to model his outcomes, which must be like decades to his AI. (I expect he actually finished processing them shortly after he received them, and has been waiting all these days to report to me. I also suspect I was only found because Dee modeled the explosion down to the last pebble. I wonder if he knows where my sword went. Or Asmodeus.)
“Aircraft. Battery guns. Missiles. Satellites,” I list what makes sense, still having a lot of trouble concentrating. “The modular sections to repair and expand the bases.”
“And that makes sense,” Dee mirrors my thoughts.
“But not all the troops,” I say like I’m trying to beat him to it, gelling what it implies.
“Troops are no good in that fight,” Bly concludes from his own tragic experience. “Not against ships and bots. Flesh against machine.”
Chang’s own human troops didn’t last long in that fight, Bly’s people, Straker’s… Our own allies have managed to make do because they had no other choice, but their losses were terrible. And personal. Abbas. Murphy.
“Troops are for occupation,” Bel calculates morosely.
“Aircraft and satellites won’t work for rooting out the locals,” I clarify.
“Or taking control of the ETE Stations,” Lux adds. “Assuming they figure out how to beat ETE tech.”
“And ours,” Bel worries, but barely.
But it’s painfully obvious. The military threat Chang presented was only one priority on Earthside’s target list.
There’s us, of course, no matter how many times we prove ourselves allies and assets in the real fight. Plus the ETE, still stubbornly (smartly) refusing to turn over their technology and surrender their Stations, but, in doing so, daring Earth to take them by force. Taking down all of us would require some tech advantage, but Lux is right on: Earthside will need to occupy those Stations, gut them of their “forbidden” technology. But that won’t take thousands of soldiers.
Except for the Shinkyo offering up a batch of civilian refugees to cover their real agendas, and the three-hundred-odd “rebels” Jak Straker took to Melas Two for shelter when they fled Industry, none of the other local factions has complied with UNMAC’s demands to relocate to a quarantine site for examination, clearance and “relief”. That makes them a scary unknown in Earthside’s eyes, potentially infected by some non-existent world-ending plague. And worse, I think, as far as this new Earth world government is concerned: They don’t obey, they don’t comply, they don’t live and eat and think and worship the way they’re supposed to.
“But that’s not the fight they’re in anymore,” I reflect back.
“Asmodeus just gave them a new one,” Bly concurs.
But then the sick brilliance of it hits me.
“Asmodeus knew what they would send,” I say it, trying very hard not to laugh like a madman.
I watch as the shock hits my fellows.
“So he cultivated a weapon that would specifically wreak havoc on a troop presence, on personnel on-planet,” Azazel makes it clinical, tactical, almost like he’s appreciating the genius. (He’s not the only one, hence my urge to start laughing.)
“And gruesomely,” Bel gives the ugly twist. “The fear of infection will hit them harder than whatever lives the Harvesters take.”
“And then they’re fucked any way they play,” Lux takes it. “If they try to pursue their mission objective, round up the locals, they’ll have to expose themselves. If they don’t, if they pull back, they’ll soon be under pressure to rescue the locals from Harvester attack. Asmodeus will make sure of it.”
The obvious solution is Earth needs to let us handle it, but that plays right into their conspiracy paranoia. I wonder if Asmodeus knows that, and is playing on that too. Knowing him, I’m pretty sure that he is.
“And if it gets too bad, too scary, they’ll cut their losses and burn this place from orbit,” Bly concludes, reflexively looking skyward.
“Asmodeus will make sure of it,” I repeat Lux’s conclusion. “But not before he figures out a way to pass his nanotech through their quarantine.”
“He’ll leave this place a cinder and head for Earth,” Bel sums.
“They’ve already sent foot patrols out,” Dee continues my briefing, letting me know they’ve already fallen into Asmodeus’ game. “Dropped from ASVs or staged from the Grave base. Boots on the ground. Upworld Cherries all—they still don’t trust your former personnel. A few got picked off by Pax that were still defending their Steads. Fire was returned, but no confirmed kills—if the Pax took casualties, they carried them off. But then more got ambushed by Harvesters, same bury-and-wait tactics we’ve seen. There’ve also been sniper attacks on the construction, the shells load
ed with seeds. They’ve already got eight men—kids—in stasis, trying to slow the conversion process with regular jolts of current, like ECT.”
I assume he knows this because he’s been discreetly hacking them. If anyone can get away with it, Dee can.
“These aren’t warriors, Captain Colonel,” Bly gives me his assessment. “They panic when it hits. Freeze. Can’t get the shot, even with their assisted guns. It’s sick, sending them out there. They have no instinct for it, and certainly no talent.”
Azazel keeps us moving, puts the Grave behind us. Another blaze tears through the green in our rear cameras. They want a defensible space around their perimeter, terrified of what may be hiding in the forest. I’m sure Asmodeus is watching, enjoying the pyrotechnics, the spectacular senseless destruction.
“Colonel Burns has called off the ground patrols,” Dee continues, “but they’re still moving troops and supplies down like they’re planning something big. Whatever it is, they’re smart enough to keep it off-network.”
“But dumb enough that Asmodeus is already expecting it,” I grumble. “He’ll massacre them. And while they’re panicking, he’ll find his way through to orbit, then plant something to get him a foothold on Earth.”
“Their planetary quarantine is still in place,” Bel tries to find a flaw in Asmodeus’ plan. “Nothing goes back. I’m sure they’re ready to blow up anything that tries.”
“Asmodeus is a patient fuck,” I warn needlessly. “And he’s working on hacking living brains. If he can take control of key personnel, he might lever a policy change. He might even play dead, try to convince them they’ve won, to get them to drop their guard.”
“But they haven’t won until we’re all dead, too,” Bel worries.
We fly into the shadow of the Rims as the sky in our rear cameras fills with smoke.
I spend the next few days recovering, or that’s what I tell myself. The similarity to my hallucinated (or Yod-induced virtual) time in the Barrow doesn’t escape me, but this hiding place—while no less dark—is certainly more comfortable.
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 9