The barrier of the rim has taken most of the punch out of it, as has the three or four klicks between me and zero. There’s minimal heat, minimal overpressure. Still, in my depleted state, it kicks the wind out of me and knocks me down.
I spin the calculations of hope in my addled brain:
If the Knights had pulled back, had gotten on this side of the rim, had deep caves, they may have survived.
If the Sons had listened to me, had run for the mountains or whatever shelters they had, some might…
Some.
Flat out on my back, too beaten and battered to move anymore, I watch the blazing billowing cloud of nuclear fire rise up into the atmosphere net, push through. Then it expands rapidly in the much lower pressure, forming a blazing umbrella more than a kilometer across, lighting up the world.
Under it, at the base of its surging stem of incinerated matter, there were people. Men. Women. Children.
Asmodeus knew this would happen. Or something like it. He knew.
But I’m not blaming him for this.
I hear a bang echoing from somewhere behind me, from the west. I turn my head with effort to look, and see another fireball in the dark, this one much much smaller and shorter-lived. It looks like a fuel explosion, about five or six klicks away, which puts it at the far rim of the crater. I’m guessing one of the offending aircraft either miscalculated in the dark or got destabilized by the dissipating blast wave or EMP and hit the rim. They were flying so fast, I doubt they had enough warning to eject.
I should feel the weight of the loss—not that many months ago, they would have been my pilots, my people. But all I feel through my mindless rage is the slightest warmth of cruel satisfaction.
I stare up at a night sky on fire, and realize that certain doors are now forever closed to me. I know I should have felt this way months ago, when I became this and they chased me out of my own base at gunpoint. Or when Jackson personally tried to drop a nuke on me and hundreds of good people whose only sin was to fight beside me (to rescue UNMAC personnel, no less). Or when they raped Lisa “for science” or planned to murder Lyra.
I watch the radioactive pyre of who-knows-how-many hundreds of human beings, and know I’m finally done with Earth. A few good, honorable souls can’t redeem them.
And then I start giggling like a madman.
Because they’ve never seen a war like me.
Chapter 7: Say You Want a Revolution
From the memory files of Lisa Ava, 6 June 2118:
“This is Colonel Ram, calling UNMAC Planetary Command. The target marker northeast of Liberty Crater is painting a colonial group that stole our rover. They are not aligned with Asmodeus. They’re just people. Do not fire on them. Do not fire.”
The message is scratchy through the link we’re barely maintaining with our recon flight, chained through remote repeaters, but it’s definitely him.
“This is Colonel Ram, calling UNMAC Planetary Command. The target marker northeast of Liberty Crater is…”
“Ignore him,” Jackson orders, almost growling.
Kastl turns to look at him long enough to get glared down, then reluctantly sends the coded signal to the pilots to continue mission.
The message continues to drone in the background of our feed. It’s automated—no telling how long it’s been since he started sending. Probably about the time we scrambled a response to the bloom of isotope gasses we detected rising over the far side of Liberty Crater.
The signal fades in and out as the AAVs fly, with Kastl tracking them roughly based on calculating course and speed since we have no contact with our orbital eyes, putting blips on the map on one of the big tactical screens. It’s all very old-school, like we’re pretending this is the mid-twentieth century, like a historical reenactment. But we’ve put ourselves in this predicament—or Jackson has—even though the after-action reports will certainly use Asmodeus to justify blowing both the Melas uplink and our own, then systematically tearing the long-range transmitters out of all of our aircraft, limiting us to short-range links barely boosted by whatever planted listening posts that the Katar—or Asmodeus—haven’t found and disabled.
But as the flights round the crater, we get rim in the way, and Jackson doesn’t want them higher, doesn’t want an enemy to see them coming. That makes the flying extra-risky, of course. Without Orbit watching over, they have to rely on radar, map navigation and night vision to keep themselves from flying into a rise. And they’re headed into mountainous territory.
Worse: As far as I know, neither of the new-drop pilots has had any experience flying their ships in the dark, and probably very little time flying manually. But then none of the new-drop pilots had any experience flying these ships beyond a simulator before they got here.
Jackson still won’t let any of the Sleeper-Vet pilots fly combat, not even in a critical situation like this (maybe especially not in a critical situation like this). I can’t help but feel he deserves to have this go badly wrong on him, but those pilots certainly don’t deserve to die stupid because their CO is.
I know I should act now. I know I should do something other than stand here and watch. But I don’t. And it isn’t because he’s put the collar back on me or brought more of my friends to Ops to “consult,” making the price of any disobedience on my part clear enough.
The upper deck is packed, a full house for his little show of decisive response: They’ve brought Rick and Anton in, as well as Doc Halley. And four guards in H-As to watch over me (or anyone else who tries an impulsive act of reason). Kastl, for his part, is admirably not sweating despite the bomb less than two meters from his back, but his shift-partner—a new drop named Sweet—looks scared to death, hands trembling over her console. The half-dozen techs on the deck below don’t look any more comfortable.
I can’t ignore the math: The only one in this sealed secure space I would consider blowing up with me is Jackson, and he keeps fingering the detonator in his left fist like he’s eager to prove his willingness to die for his “duty”. My duty is keeping me from demonstrating the flaw in his plan.
“Contacts,” Kastl lets us know, but we can see it on the fuzzy video feed from the AAV nose and under-hull cams: Heat blips, faint, small, on the ground. They’re spread out in the lowlands between the mountain range that is the crater’s northeast rim and the mountains up against that rim. On the maps, it’s not far from where Liberty Colony used to be.
The center of one of those lowland areas—a depression maybe forty by seventy meters across—is glowing on the isotope scans. When the spotlights sweep it, it’s filled with a psychedelic haze that’s spread out and columned up toward the atmosphere net. There are heat blips in that cloud, spread in a rough semi-circle that arcs toward the rim side, like a thin perimeter. A few of them move, as if shifting positions at our arrival, which to them would be anonymous lights and the sound of our engines, unless they also have infrared gear.
“They could be colonial survivors,” Halley defends.
“Maybe are, maybe were, if the demon has been here,” Jackson denies.
“Are you willing to fire without confirmation?” I challenge him levelly, even though I know he is.
“Crater One, get a spot on the targets, and put me through on PA,” he surprises me by relenting, though he sounds annoyed to have to do so.
On our screens, the spotlights lance down and light up the active areas. Mostly this just illuminates the pastel fog of the residual smoke, but we start to see details through it.
“There’s the rover bot,” Kastl confirms.
“Looks pretty thoroughly smashed,” Anton assesses.
“And what could do that?” Jackson wonders out loud, then shoots an accusatory look my way. I don’t grace him with a response.
“Look there!” Kastl zooms in until ground details start to clarify through the haze. There are distinctive tracks all over the clearing.
“Box bot,” I have to admit. Jackson’s half-mouth curls into a satisfied grin,
like this is the best news he’s had in weeks.
Michael’s message is still repeating, but it’s much weaker now. He’s not here.
The spotlight shakily plays over the heat blips as the AAVs hover a few hundred meters off the deck, revealing people. Some run from the light, others hunker down behind rocks for cover. They wear assorted colony gear, all in poor repair, and carry UNMAC-issue weapons, which they point up at the aircraft. Most of the guns have been fitted with a kind of long bayonet.
“THIS IS COLONEL JACKSON OF THE UNMAC PLANETARY FO…”
He gets just that far in his amplified announcement when pretty much every person on the ground starts firing up at our ships. Jackson orders them to cut the lights, climb, pull back.
He gives them another chance, repeating his message from greater distance, ordering them to stand down, lay down their weapons and stand out in the open. They don’t stop shooting. Now almost all of the heat blips in the small valley are taking shots at the pair of AAVs, lighting them up with flares. Over the link, I can hear the occasional bullet ping off a wing or hull. The ships pull back farther, higher.
“I think that’s pretty clear,” Jackson decides, leaning over Kastl’s console. “Go dark and light ‘em up, Gold.”
“They’re wearing masks!” Halley protests. “Harvester drones wouldn’t need masks and goggles!”
“Live humans wouldn’t be stupid enough to shoot small arms at aircraft,” he argues. He orders the ships weapons free, and to fire for effect.
Turrets start blazing tracer rounds back at the heat blips, which are now lit bright by their own muzzle flashes.
“Colonel! Stop!” I try. “We need to assess this in daylight!”
“And give Asmodeus even more time to run off with our nukes?”
“There’s no sign of the ‘Horse, sir,” Kastl points out. “It’s just the follow-along…”
“They probably have it hidden nearby,” Jackson is determined. “The pulse will take out any drones we can’t burn. Gold Leader, deliver your package. Zero on the rover.”
“NO!!” I yell at him. Guns get pointed in my face.
“Human beings would run from that!” he barks back at me, pointing to the gunfire being exchanged on the camera feeds. “Those things aren’t budging!”
“Confirm, Base,” Gold Leader insists on getting. Gold Leader would be Lieutenant Colonel Stark, Jackson’s flight wing XO in the cockpit of Crater One.
“Send confirmation, Captain,” Jackson icily orders Kastl. When Kastl doesn’t budge, Jackson repeats the order. Kastl just glares up at him. I can hear him breathing.
Jackson’s free hand goes to his sidearm, but then he decides on expedience, shoving Kastl out of his chair and punching in the code himself.
“Colonel! No!!” Halley screams at him, stepping forward. He wheels around, raises the detonator where everyone can see.
On the screens, we see the AAV’s telemetry confirm weapon arming and payload drop. In the gunfire-strobing darkness, we can only see it fall on the night vision of the AAV’s underbelly cam, distorted and unreal. It goes nose-down, aimed by unfolding stabilizers like a blooming flower. It seems to fall very slowly, but that’s probably my modded neuro-processing. It plants itself in the ground like a spike only a few meters from the smashed rover. Then the view pulls away. Stark and his wingman are burning out of there fast as they can. Their nose-cam night vision shows us the rim of the crater coming up, then they’re over it in seconds, barely clearing the crest. They’re trying to stay low to protect themselves from the blast. The timer on the device only had sixty seconds on it.
I step up to Jackson, right up in his face, glare into his eye for an instant, then reach for the console. The fucker actually pushes his button.
Of course, nothing happens. I disabled this fucking thing shortly after the first time they put it on me. Now I reach up, rip it in half.
“Shoot her!!” Jackson orders.
My collar may have made a poor defense, but now I put it to offense, whipping the halves at two of the guards, hitting them in the visors hard enough to crack the polycarb and stagger them back into the bulkhead. But I still have two more ICWs pointed my way, and panicked fire in here is likely to hit innocents, so I lunge into Jackson, get my left arm around his neck while my right pulls and twists his right wrist, and hold him between me and the terrified guns on me.
“Those weapons can’t hurt me,” I remind them.
“Shoot them…!!” Jackson stubbornly gurgles out as I squeeze his windpipe, waving his free left arm sloppily at Rick, Anton and Halley. And I think they may be about to when Kastl dashes forward, grabs Jackson’s sidearm out of his holster, and points it at them.
“Stay behind me, Captain!” I advise him to use me (and Jackson) as a shield, but my other friends are still at the mercy of panicked trigger fingers.
The heavy blast hatch suddenly unseals behind the guards, and almost instantly gets shoved into them so hard and fast they look like they’ve been hit by a truck.
“Sorry I’m late,” Dee apologizes, then steps into the chamber, and very quickly and smoothly disarms all four troopers.
“Captain! Enter the abort code!” I refocus the stunned Kastl. Keeping the pistol shakily on the guards with one hand, he types with the other. But…
“It’s not working…” He sounds sick. He keeps trying. “It’s not…”
Anton rolls up to help him.
“Signal interference?” Rick wonders.
“He’s disabled the warhead’s detonator override,” Anton confirms, horrified.
“The warhead was armed through its hardwired connection to the aircraft…” Jackson grunts out with a victorious grin.
I tighten down on his neck. I could rip his fucking head off, or crush his goddamn skull. The sick piece of shit is giggling at me.
“We’d need to be there to disarm it,” Rick confirms our defeat.
“RAM TO JACKSON!!! ABORT!!!”
It’s Michael again, now loud and clear, knowing what’s coming, begging for mercy, for sanity, for humanity.
I can’t do a damn thing to…
“ABORT!!! ABORT!!! THOSE ARE…”
The screens wash over white.
“…Crater Two is down… hit the rim…”
It’s Stark, when the feed comes back.
Telemetry confirms: one of our aircraft is down, no ejection registered.
Rick and Kastl are holding our former guards at gunpoint. The techs on the lower level and Sweet up on this one are all quiet, shell-shocked by what they’ve seen and been a part of, but they’re not protesting or resisting my pyrrhic insurrection.
I’ve still got Jackson in a choke hold. He makes an effort to struggle now and then, and I discourage him with a squeeze. At least he’s stopped giggling at me.
But then I hear a ping.
My face is right up against the back of his skull. It sounded—felt—like it came from inside of his head, just for the briefest instant.
“Did you hear it, too?” Dee asks me, stepping up close enough to be nose-to-nose with Jackson.
“A ping,” I confirm. “Someone sending simple flash-code. From inside this room.”
Dee looks like he’s doing a quick scan, his eyes focused on Jackson with a bland curiosity like he’s never seen anything like him before.
“Colonel Ava, would you please hurt him for me?” he asks like he’s asking me to hand him a pen.
I happily oblige, putting pressure on the arm I’m holding barred across my hip. I hear the elbow start to give. Then I hear another ping. Jackson starts twisting like an animal in my grip, even though it’s only doing him more hurt.
“It’s inside his head,” Dee decides.
“Colonel Ram talked about this,” Rick remembers. “Nanotech implants that can manipulate thought processes, behavior…”
“Emotions,” Dee finishes.
“Who—or what—is that?” Halley finally gets the nerve to ask about Dee.
; “Friend from the old days,” Rick gives her the short version. “Sort of.”
“My name is Dee,” he introduces himself without looking at her, still staring at Jackson like he’s something strange we just found under a rock, then coolly refocuses on the priority in my grip: “And he has a nano-device in his brain. A very sophisticated one, designed to avoid any detection technology you currently possess. It would even be difficult for a nanotech hybrid to detect. I only heard it because Colonel Ava did. Colonel Ava likely only heard it because she was centimeters away from the device when it pinged.”
“When?” I demand in Jackson’s ear, as if he was complacent in his own compromising. I feel his struggling change. He’s panicking, terrified. He doesn’t know, but the revelation is shattering him: his greatest nightmare, planted deep in his own brain, violating his very mind. He starts to whimper through clenched teeth.
“He was unaccounted for,” Rick calculates, keeping his distance. “For days. After he crashed his ship into the first Stormcloud.”
“Then Asmodeus has been playing a very long game indeed,” Dee estimates coolly as the implications sink in.
“He’s had this tech for months longer than we knew about,” Rick puts together one of those implications, but certainly not the most crushing one: Asmodeus has been able to subtly manipulate a UNMAC command officer for nearly eight months.
“And how much has he used it—him—to manipulate our decisions in that time?” Halley voices my horror, pointing a shaky finger at Jackson.
“He’s probably only been intermittently using the device to increase Colonel Jackson’s inherent paranoia and intolerance,” Dee estimates clinically.
“Which means he just prodded Jackson to do what he wanted to do anyway,” Anton condemns. Dee gives him a nod.
“To what end?” Halley wants to understand.
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 32