“Lyra! Move it!!” It’s Horton. He’s followed us into the canyon, picking off Harvesters to cover us. Sharp is with him, but she looks frozen, terrified, following only because it’s all she knows to do. In L-As, they’re as good as naked out here to both AP rounds and darts. I don’t see Corso or Sung. “We need to be leaving! Exit! Now!”
He’s right. With the main force retreating through the forest, some of the Harvesters are turning back after the stragglers out in the open, which includes the four of us and at least ten others I can see, some injured, some just hugging the rocks in terror, afraid to move.
I’m down to my last full magazine. It’ll take hours to days for my nanites to make more caseless ammo, depending on available resources. I grab the nearest dropped weapon and empty it, scanning for the most promising retreat. We can’t go out the way we came in. We’ll have to climb over the treacherous terrain. And since we’re in a bowl, we can’t see what’s waiting for us on the other side of the crater rims. Even hacking the designated mission satellite is no help: The drones don’t radiate enough heat to track from orbit, and there’s too much smoke from the downed ships to get clear visual. (That means the UN commanders are as blind as we are.)
I hear screaming up the slope to the west of us, someone shouting desperately for pickup, shouting for a medic, shrieking for help. They don’t sound military. They’re not. I see what looks like a small group of civvies in some kind of basic thermal gear, masks and protection. One is down, being helped by two others while a third is shouting and waving for a flight that’s either been blown up or is long gone, headed to exfil points set nearly a klick from here. Lucky for them, there aren’t that many Harvesters that way right now, so I shout for Lyra and her team and the other survivors to follow. It takes a second barked order from Horton to get the wounded and terrified troopers moving. We all start scrambling as fast as we can over the treacherous talus and up-slope to join the abandoned civvies.
I shoot one mangled Harvester crawling their way. The shouting man sees me and starts waving and calling for us to help, but then I see him shot through the chest. He looks at me dumbly for an instant before he collapses. One of the others helping the wounded man dives to check him, bawling in grief and horror. Horton locks the drone that made the shot and bursts its head. Lyra drops two more. They just fall, like they’ve been turned off.
When I get up to the civvies, I realize they’re not only unarmed, they’re equipped with camera gear. They appear to have had two armed security people, but both are already dead. The wounded man, who’s been shot high up in the left thigh, has a minimal transparent mask and goggles, and under them he appears to be wearing makeup.
“What the fuck is this?” I have to demand out loud, looking at insanity in the middle of nightmare.
“You… You’re him! You’re Ram! The nano-hybrid! Face-real!” one of the others stammers at me like he’s simultaneously star struck and scared of me more than the Harvesters.
“Embedded reporter,” Horton tells me distastefully as he fires surgically in our wake. Sharp has gotten enough of her nerve back to help him, but she’s a much poorer shot. Lyra scavenges the dead security team, recovers a fresh PDW and a pair of pistols. And ammo, which she divides with me and Horton.
“This is Gil Ryan!” the other civilian, a young woman, tells me like I should have instantly recognized the man in the makeup. “The UNN anchor!”
Oh, great. A celebrity.
He looks like he’s passed out, probably in shock, but he’s not bleeding profusely enough for his leg wound to prove fatal in itself.
“This way!” Lyra indicates a nearby burning ASV wreck, part way down the far slope. It’s spewing enough smoke to give us visual cover that way. I waste a few rounds putting holes in the external tanks to make sure they aren’t still pressurized. The remaining hydrox mix blazes a mushroom of fire into the air as it bleeds off, but it won’t blow on us now, and maybe it’ll serve as a signal, get some friendly eyes on us. We move into the acrid smoke, keeping low.
But now that I’m on high ground again, I can see that we won’t be getting assistance our way any time soon. The remaining aircraft are hovering over their designated exfil points, and I can see the barely-coordinated retreat pushing through the green, dividing to head for individual aircraft, which are using their thrust jets to batter down the growth and create rough landing zones. As the troopers make these points, they start loading with only slightly better discipline than they did when they were getting swarmed by drones.
There’s gunfire at one of the LZs, but just single shots, too few and far between to be defensive. I zoom in on the clearings, and watch a trooper get pushed down by his fellows. He puts up his hands to beg, but gets shot down by them, right through the visor. I see this happen two more times. The easy guess is they’re killing the infected.
The ships lift off as soon as their bays are full, leaving behind dozens, to fly south toward the Grave base. By my count, they’ve lost half their aircraft. Jackson tries to reassure the abandoned troops that the remaining ships will be back as soon as they can unload, fifteen minutes, and orders them to hold the LZs.
“We need to move,” I tell my charges. “Right now.”
Lyra’s put a basic pressure bandage on Ryan’s leg. He’s barely with us, still lost in shock, babbling. His crew try to help him up, but don’t have the fortitude for it, not even in .38 gravity—these new-drops should be relatively superhuman until their muscles start to adjust. So I reach down, grab Ryan by his minimal protective vest, and pick him up like luggage, get ready to sling him over my shoulder.
Lyra stops me, looks me in the eye, then discreetly pulls a Harvester dart out of Ryan’s back.
I carry him anyway.
Horton barks at the others to get moving.
It’s hard going over the demolished landscape, and it gets even worse when the ground underfoot shifts from rocks and boulders to the crushed down and shattered growth at the perimeter of the bombardment zone. And we continue to take fire from the tenaciously pursuing drones, losing two of our company despite their sloppy shooting.
When we make it into the standing forest, we get the benefit of visual cover, but lose sight of the exfil points. Thankfully, I have them mapped in my visual graphics. The surviving flights haven’t come back yet, so we may still have time to get to an active LZ, but we have more than half-a-klick to cross before the nearest one, and that’s through thick growth.
The Harvesters keep shooting blindly at us through the growth, managing to catch one of the troopers in our group in the plate-gap at his waist, blowing a hole through from kidney to lower abdomen. Sharp catches him and impressively keeps him moving, pressing a hand into the entry and exit wounds as she provides a crutch.
“Sharp’s Upworld,” I whisper to Lyra as I carry Ryan over my shoulder like a sack of mumbling flour. “Do you know her? What’s her deal?”
“She was captured and held by the Silvers,” Lyra edges close to tell me. “The Forge. At Nike. Less than a day, but no idea what they did to her. She hasn’t said.”
My limited dealings with the Forge have shown me that they’re merciless to perceived invaders, but I don’t know if they torture or rape captives. Despite the fact that they live exclusively underground and keep themselves almost constantly covered in layers of heavy handcrafted plate armor, they’ve seemed civilized and honorable during my few meetings with them. (But then, they have reason to be afraid of me, and fear makes for good manners.)
Given how traumatized she seems, I figure she would have been shipped home it there wasn’t a quarantine indefinitely in place. Command probably thought they were giving her—and Horton—an easy duty, babysitting Lyra and her experimental Mod-sensing gear, in an op that should have been a cake walk. They weren’t even supposed to be on the front line.
I look at Sharp without trying to look like I’m looking. With a fellow soldier to take care of, she’s gotten her shit back together.
Then I notice Horton is nursing his right side.
“Sergeant?” I ask discreetly.
He shows me a Harvester dart he’d stuck in his pocket.
“It’s okay,” he tries to reassure me. “It didn’t get through my L-As. Hit plate. Lucky.”
He isn’t convincing. He falls back, makes sure the stragglers are still keeping up, even though that hangs him out in the line of pursuit fire.
But pursuit isn’t our only problem. Besides the random blind shot that still flies our way through the growth at our backs, I also hear gunfire way up ahead. It’s muted and diffused by the green, making it hard to determine distance and direction, but I can guess it’s coming from the exfil points. I hear what sounds like random sprays answered by slower measured fire.
I signal a hold. We’ll need to proceed slowly, and announce ourselves so we’re not mistaken for drones and shot at before we’re identified.
Horton starts to make the call, but I silence him before he gets two words out. I’m reading motion in the growth all around us, coming toward us. I’m thinking that Asmodeus may have salted this part of the forest with EMP-shielded drones, and Lyra quickly confirms my theory by pointing out an artificial hole in the ground, hidden in the undergrowth. It’s a tube, buried just below the surface, hatch slid open, the surface layer of dirt that poured in forming a negative silhouette around a rough body-shape that used to be inside.
I start pointing out the motion that my enhancements are picking out. I count what may be nine drones, all probably within a dozen meters, all around us, scanning for heat, sound and motion as they shuffle at our target-rich group.
Those of us that still have ammo raise our weapons, but none of us have clear targets. Conversely, the drones can simply shoot at us blindly through the…
I hear the whistling and slicing of something flying fast through the green, punctuated by the distinctive squish and pop of a blade penetrating a skull and module. Then there’s the rustle of something much larger, running fast. Unnaturally fast. But not at us. Toward the drones.
“Stay down!” I order my charges, then push into the growth, leaving Lyra and Horton my borrowed gun and ammo. I draw my knife, starting to miss my lost sword.
I come across a downed drone with a handmade throwing knife through its head. I recognize the manufacture, but it makes little sense being here.
The forest crunches and twists as a drone staggers toward me, weapon raised, but not at me. I move to intercept it, to spike it through the skull, when another blade comes flying very fast end-over-end through the green and nearly splits the drone’s head.
“Mistress! He’s here!”
She steps out of the green so I can see her. She’s still wearing her worn, mismatched work gear and partial handmade armor, bristling with dozens of knives like the ones thrown so powerfully and accurately at the drones. She was always phenomenally good with her namesake weapons, but what I’m seeing now…
“Lord Ragnarok,” she greets me formally, bowing quickly, using the name I’d rather no one ever did.
“Mackenzie,” I call her by her birth name, rather than her earned one: Mak the Knife.
Tranquility Cast. A long, long way from home.
I’m about to ask what’s she’s doing so far east, and so quickly—I saw her when I stopped at Tranquility just before I met with Jackson and Richards, only ten days ago. But then the forest all around me is full of rushing, of body-sized shapes running fast through the growth like projectiles. When they stop, I hear more sounds of violence perpetrated against skulls and modules, and bodies dropping.
Then silence.
“Hey, sexy,” her unmistakable voice purrs at me as she steps catlike through the interwoven Graingrass. She’s still wearing her variation of her body-host’s costume: a snug red laced-together body suit; shiny plate over her shins, thighs, shoulders and forearms—the latter sporting flame-like crests of blades—and partial mail underneath; her collar and belt decorated with grinning metal skulls. And she’s still got Fera’s wild mop of flame-red hair, accented by thin braids woven with bone beads. But her face and exposed skin are the glowing deep neon blue that she’s recently grown so fond of. It makes her eyes and sharp teeth pop brightly, like she’s illuminated by black light, as she grins hungrily at me.
“Calliope,” I also call her by her given name rather than her codename.
Chapter 6: The Cult of Kali
“Fuck you.” (She really hates her given name.)
Lyra pushes through the green behind me as five more Cast step out of the forest to join us, armed with their simple, homemade weapons.
“A little young for you, isn’t she?” Kali jealously assesses, glaring around me at Lyra like she’d rip her throat out just to find out what her blood tastes like. I don’t bother to grace her assumption with a reply, but get to my own questions:
“What are you doing out here?”
Kali doesn’t answer me, but walks a half-circle back-and-forth around me, sizing me up.
“You’ve toned down the look,” she critiques my more practical armor. “It suits you, I suppose. Tired of tripping over the ren-fair bathrobe?”
“Who’s protecting Tranquility?” I really need to know.
“Two-Gun,” she finally gives me a straight answer. “Don’t worry. He’s got things well in hand.” But there’s something she isn’t saying.
“Why did you come?” I reword my original question.
“Not for you, dear,” she mocks. “Sorry to crush your ego. And not for these Earth fuckholes either…” She gestures with her claws past me as Horton and the others begin to cautiously join us.
“Oooohh…” she almost sings, pushing past me to step up to Horton, who doesn’t give her the satisfaction of giving ground, not even when she flicks off his cap and pulls aside his mask with her razor-sharp fingertips. “Now this one… He may have been worth the trip… I miss a good, strong body… square jaw… high-and-tight haircut… My Cast are all so skinny and long-haired I feel like I’m fucking an old-timey rock band…” She turns on me. “And you… All you give me when you visit is five minutes of your precious time, and that just to brief me like I’m one of your soldiers. I was fingering myself wet for you the whole time—did you even notice?”
I did, but I ignored it.
“You spent more time with that Hunter-Killer bitch and her kid, bringing them your so-called ‘ambassador’ friend’s gun and giving them the ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ shit. She wasn’t. She hated him for taking your side against their sick established order. The whore was banging at least two of his former brothers-in-arms while he was out giving his life, with their son in the next room. I know: I watched—they only think I fried their security systems along with their Big Brother AI…”
She gets the hint to stop when she sees the look in my eye, softens.
“I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about Murphy. I liked the sexy lunk. I did. He was the only one of those spoiled psychos that was worth a fuck.”
“Why are you here instead of holding Tranquility?”
“Because Asmodeus isn’t there. He’s here. Or at least his zombie horde is. And that’s a hard target. One we can deal with. You’re just wasting your time here, and that’s what he wants.”
I’m about to protest about how vulnerable the Cast with her are to infection, when I hear a short burst of gunfire come at us through the growth. Before I can react, Mak does: She slides in front of Lyra and Horton, her left hand reaching out at bullet-speed. I see three darts sink into the palm of her hand. Her right hand draws one of her knives, and she whips it through the Graingrass at the source of the darts. It shears leaves and branches like a buzzsaw as it flies. I can hear it find its target, hear the body drop. Then she plucks the darts out of her hand, annoyed. I see the wounds run with liquid silver, knit closed. When she looks up at me, I realize her dark brown irises are laced with metallic copper.
“What have you done?” I accuse Kali.
“I had a w
eapon,” she tells me defiantly. “I used it. This is a fucking war.”
I step up to Mak, look close into her eyes, then grab her left hand and examine the already-fading punctures.
“An ETE came to Tranquility,” Kali decides to explain. “A few months back. Cocky kid. Red suit. Out for a happy-ass adventure. He even had a sword…” She’s talking about Erickson Carter. I’ve heard his—and Dee’s—side of this story. “Very cute, in a dorky sort of way, but as prudish as the rest of them. He wouldn’t play with me, so I cut him…” She wiggles her claws in front of my face. “Got me a sample of his nanotech. I managed to stabilize it, keep it from self-destructing.”
“And you replicated it,” I conclude, feeling sick. “Implanted it in these people.”
“I had a weapon,” she repeats. “I used it. When you told me what we were facing.”
I realize that one of the civvies with us has activated his video rig. He’s recording this. I could jam him, hack him, erase his data, but I don’t. Not yet.
“How many?” I need to know.
“Just a few. My elite guard. A gift from their goddess.”
“We’re not gods,” I hiss.
“We are in every sense of those old fairy-stories,” she’s convinced herself. “Demi-gods, at least. And these…” She gestures to her retinue with flair. “…are my faithful.”
“Two-Gun?” I really need to know.
“You should see him shoot now,” she admits with a satisfied grin. “You think he was fast before…”
“And the Domers?” I press.
“Fuck the Domers,” she spits. “They hunted my people for fucking sport. They mutilated and murdered the first sweet young love of the girl whose body I’ve remodeled, took parts of her for trophies. Or did you forget that?”
“One man…” I try.
“All of them!” she rails. “So brave behind their precious guns, so proud of the murder they did, teaching their children to follow in their bloody footsteps. Killing their own so they could keep living cushy in their safe little world.”
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 13