The tent goes silent. I’m sure everyone is thinking some version of what I am, doing the math of contagion: One of these things infects multiple others before it drops. They in turn infect even more. And so on, exponentially.
Fohat made this as a weapon, a weapon to kill everyone who isn’t Modded. Somehow I’m sure it wasn’t his idea alone, considering what I’ve heard about Asmodeus.
“So how do we kill one,” the Ghaddar speaks up, being practical, “without a nanotech weapon?”
We take our group back outside, with Khan, Terina, Negev and Cousteau following. We stand at the edge of the second pit, looking down at poor Alistair.
“He’s still just flesh and bone,” the Ghaddar calculates. “Shooting or stabbing won’t do if he has no need of his vitals to keep fighting, but cutting him up…”
“Take his arms and legs,” I agree. “Or sever his head.”
“That means getting close, which is what it wants you to do,” my father warns.
“Severing the head would stop the body, but the head will still be able to scan and transmit,” Straker qualifies. “And the ‘stinger’ would still be live. If someone were careless with the head…”
“We could blow them apart,” Rashid remembers the tactics we’ve used against the bots.
“Costly,” my father considers our limited ordnance. “And useless at close-quarters.”
“Frag alone won’t hurt these things much,” Straker agrees. “You’d have to shatter them with the concussion.”
“HE penetrators might do some good damage.” Murphy puts his hand on his revolver. “But standard ammo… Would standard ammo do any good?”
“The device isn’t that tough,” Straker gives slightly good news. “And it doesn’t have regenerative capabilities. A well-placed shot could disable it.”
“But you’d have to hit it blind through the neck or skull,” I give my concern. “It’s not a big target, even if you know where it is.” I estimate the target by drawing a circle with my finger just below and behind my own ear, then another about the base of my nose.
“I’d allow you to use our fallen warrior to test, but Akinaga wants to see how long he’ll last intact,” Khan closes a door that we’d probably all thought about, but didn’t suggest out of respect.
“I’d hope we don’t get further opportunities to test,” my father says, “but I’m sure I’d be wrong.”
Akinaga’s people bring more equipment out as they seem to need it. Their gear is fascinating. They have very little still-operational technology, but have craftily rigged a number of tools, including microscopes and serum separators. They soon have an impressive field lab in their tent.
Straker steps away from the group, out in the open. She draws her sword, holds it up in front of her face again, and appears to meditate, perfectly still.
“Send runners to the Pax,” Khan orders Cousteau. “Tell them what we have learned. Warn them. If they see any of these things, they must remove the heads and destroy them, and avoid the mouths at all cost. If any of their people are injected, they must be mercifully destroyed.”
Cousteau gives a quick bow and runs to do her duty, but not back to the colony. She heads for another section of the Wall, and disappears into what could be a cave.
(Watching a Katar run is both a bizarre and elegant sight. When Terina ran, it was graceful and loping, with long, fluid strides. But one of their warriors in full armor adds to this a kind of flapping motion of their laced sectional shoulder, pelvis and thigh protectors with every stride.)
“Ensure that all of our warriors know of this and understand the danger,” Khan then commands Negev. “Get word to our scouting parties. If they encounter more of these, tell them to bring them here for study only if they can do so safely. Supply them with Sodegarami and Sasumata. Otherwise, destroy them completely, behead and burn them, and report their locations and descriptions.”
Negev also bows and moves with purpose, but for another section of the Wall. The entire structure may be laced with their military facilities, well-hidden. It would explain how hundreds of warriors appeared on the Wall when we approached, but I haven’t seen large numbers of them inside the colony proper, other than our company of guards.
“Kah-Terina,” he summons next. His daughter steps forward.
“Go now. Summon a meeting of the Five and their families.”
She bows obediently, but flashes a concerned look at me before she goes with her pair of personal guards back across the field.
Straker is still locked in her meditative state. I wander in her direction, but don’t want to disturb. I suddenly realize that Khan is right by my side, towering over me.
“My daughter is quite fond of you,” he tells me with a quiet growl. “I see the way you look at each other. I remember being young and a slave to those inexperienced emotions. I do not doubt your skill and bravery as a fighter, and I can imagine you are an exotic thing to her eyes. But you are wrong. Stunted, brittle-boned and oxygen dependent. And your only Value is that you helped bring my daughter home safely. That Value is not equivalent to my daughter.”
I have no reply in my throat. He turns and walks away as if nothing passed between us, as if I’m inconsequential, and goes back into the tent to supervise Akinaga’s work.
“What did he say to you?” my father, being a father, wants to know.
“He was just thanking me for bringing Terina home to him,” I lie badly.
The others join us in our mini-vigil. Straker soon lowers her Blade and puts it away, turns to face us.
“I’ve informed Colonel Ram and the others of the situation. They’ll pass the word to the the Silvers—the Forge—and to the ETE.”
“And the Unmakers?” Murphy asks warily.
“I’ll leave that to him to decide. But I need to go. I need to see Eureka Colony. Find out what’s happening.”
“I want to go with you,” I declare impulsively, still simmering from Khan’s disrespect.
“Of course you would,” Murphy derides me in good humor.
“And you?” the Ghaddar prods him in turn.
“I’m the ambassador,” he self-deprecates.
My father looks distressed, even more so than when I volunteered myself to go chasing Erickson Carter into an army of bots. But he also looks like he’s mulling a painful decision.
“I think I know how we’re going to earn our Value.”
Chapter 3: Heroes Quest
Their warriors come out in force to line their Wall, just like they did when we arrived. Of course, this time, we’re on the inside of it. Heading out into yet another unknown.
At least we’ll have guides—a dozen of them. Khan insisted that a unit of his own accompany us, led by Negev and including Cousteau. I get the impression that Cousteau volunteered for this, and not only because she knows where they encountered the Eureka Keeper.
Our escort of warriors turns back once to face their colony. Standing across the field are their citizens, fronted by their Kings, with Khan and Terina at their center. They perform a kind of salute with their Naginata, and all those who’ve turned out to see us off give us a bow as one.
This gives me a good look at our own people, clustered in a group behind the Kings, a place of honor likely given in credit for the Value we’re potentially going to earn for us all. They look worried for us, especially my mother Sarai. She also looks frustrated, and I can understand why: We just got here, after crossing hundreds of kilometers filled with increasing dangers. Now we go to face something potentially worse.
(The phrase “a fate worse than death” has a new, real meaning to me now. I glance south, toward where Alistair still stands staring in his pit.)
Then something weird in a strange place: In the distance, from somewhere up around the Oculus, the air fills with small, darting things. Despite the morning wind pushing back that way, the things weave and dart toward us. Fast. As they get closer, I realize they’re not that small. They’re Dragonflies—more than ten
times the size of the Earth species they were engineered from. But these are not quite as big as the ones we’ve seen in the Green.
“A fresh metamorphosis,” Negev tells us. “Life cycle. In our honor. For good hunting.”
“I thought only the Pax bred Dragons?” my father questions.
“We have our own hatcheries,” Negev says with definite pride. “Just wait until you earn their meat.”
I’m thinking I can wait very well, thank you.
When they all rise from their community bow, Terina immediately locks my eyes. And her father catches her at it, catches me returning her gaze, and I get his disdainful glare again. It’s not just his being protective of his daughter. He sees us as inferior creatures, weak and ugly. I give him back the most defiant look I can muster short of an outright challenge. I think I actually see him smirk.
I haven’t been able to speak with Terina since we arrived. Her reunion with her family, her people, has kept her from us, but I expect her father has ensured it.
I try to read her eyes now. I wish I could speak with her, alone, away from the eyes and ears of her people, away from her role and her duty. But if I had those precious seconds, would I even be able to speak, to ask what I need to ask? And how would I even ask it?
I’ve had moments, before we came through their Gate Wall, and I haven’t used them, haven’t asked what I so badly want to. But then, she hasn’t said anything either, other than those brief looks that she quickly acts as if never happened.
She’s not trying to pretend she’s not looking at me now. I see her entourage, her family, trying to ignore it, looking uncomfortable.
And now I have to leave before I know what it means, what she feels.
So I tell myself I’m not doing this for her, or to prove to her father that I’m worthy of something that may be my own fantasy. I’m doing this for my people, to earn our alliance with the Katar, and to try to protect all of us from this new threat.
That, I tell myself, is worth dying for. (I’d just rather it be a proper death, not having my body slowly taken from me and used against my friends. I will blow my own head off before that happens, and I won’t miss the thing growing inside of it.)
Formal farewell rituals apparently complete, we turn and head into the pass through the Wall.
Besides the habitually stoic Katar warriors, I’m in good company, my company: Jak Straker (taking point with Cousteau), Ambassador Murphy, the Ghaddar, my father and Rashid. Our numbers are limited by the number of functioning condenser/re-breathers we have, since we’ll be traveling far from a Feed Line. Of our number, I’m most concerned about my father. Despite however Chang healed him, he’s still burdened by the wounds he’s earned on this journey, and the losses. I don’t want to see him like this, but to other eyes he must be looking old, weary. And the way he looks back at Sarai and the others we’re leaving behind betrays his too-human fears that he may never see them again.
It would be a better thing for him to stay, to continue to establish our relationship with the Katar. But it’s the Katar traditions (and their economy) that are pushing him out: The “king” of a group must earn his Value by his own deeds, not by proxy of his followers. And in turn, his Value is passed down to his people. (Otherwise, each of us would have to earn our Value individually. Or we would need a new Sharif, which none of us want.)
We wind our way down through the zigzag gap, moving in a column single-file since the vertically-walled pass won’t accommodate two bodies abreast in armor and carrying gear. Now that I’ve got a second up-close look at it in better light, the Wall doesn’t look constructed at all, but rather rough-cut from the natural rock, all the way through.
“Bannerman Negev,” my father calls as we’re passing through, “the Pax told us that the Eternals helped them build their Hold Keep. Did they help you build your Wall?”
Negev smirks. “They did. Not so much ‘built’ as dug out, the plains lowered on either side. Perhaps they thought making us a defense would help keep the new peace. The rest of Katar we built without help, using construction equipment we brought from Gagarin and Concordia, for as long as it would keep running.”
There’s pride in that statement, and maybe subtle insult to the Pax, since the ETE gave them not only a wall, but helped dig their Keep into their mountain.
We emerge into the morning winds, onto the outer field with the Wall towering behind us, the warriors lining it now facing outwards to watch us go. I see Khan and Terina join them in their farewell vigil.
They all stay as they are until we disappear into the tall, thick green at the mouth of the canyon. After that, we can’t see much of anything past a very few meters in any direction.
The Katar have no trouble at all with the lack of visibility, moving with purpose, probably having traveled this environment since they were old enough for their culture to allow. I remember them mentioning hunting and gathering parties, made up of any able-bodied citizens, but always escorted by their warriors. I also remember the incredible grace and stealth of the Pax as they moved through their own part of this dense living world, and the Katar appear to be just as skilled. Even wearing more armor than the Pax and carrying longer weapons (their bows are over two meters long, almost as long as their Naginata), they weave like the forest is only smoke to them, no physical barrier at all. It behooves us to follow in their footsteps, and mimic their movements as best as possible. But I can see perhaps one reason why Khan has such a low opinion of us: Compared to them, we are squat and bulky and not meant to move stealthily through thick intertwined growth. In this, I expect their disdain is practical: Our clumsiness out here could get them killed.
Their most unwieldy burden are the tools they’ve brought to try to take the animated dead intact for study. Negev took a moment to make sure we were familiar with their use before we left. Both types of tools are on shafts three meters long. The Sodegarami is the most sadistic looking: Its head is a wicked arrangement of forks and hooks, all barbed. Negev called it a “sleeve catcher”, designed to grab a potential prisoner by the clothing or armor without seriously hurting him, though I doubt anyone it was used on would come out un-bloodied. The Sasumata isn’t much more merciful: it’s capped with a large U-shaped fork, blunt-edged but sharp-tipped, and—as Negev showed us with a willing volunteer so we would know how to use one—just the right size for catching a neck or a limb between the prongs and holding on by applying the right twist. Any combination of two should be sufficient to hold and guide an enemy while keeping him well out of reach.
“Did all of this come from the west?” my father asks Negev about the incredibly dense and healthy plant life. “Or did your Founders have engineered plants from the old labs as well?”
I see this question get Murphy’s attention as well, as all the plant life we saw in western Coprates was supposedly spread from his home gardens. But then we passed the Badlands, which were nearly barren, before descending into the lush growth of the Pax Lands. Since then, the valley floors have been nearly as thickly overgrown as the Tranquility Garden, and without the benefit of careful tending.
“Some and some,” he answers vaguely at first. “The Founders had been gifted samples grown at Tranquility, which they carried here in the Crossing. The Pax also had such gifts. But most of this was seeded by the Eternals.”
“How long has it been like this?” I dare ask, all wonder. This gets a quick chuckle out of Negev.
“When I was a boy, there were only small groves. The rest was barely above my knees. Sparse. You could see more rock than green. I remember when we had to change our patterns, when the Pax Hunters began to wear all green.” He reaches out a hand and caresses a branch of Graingrass as he passes—the plant, if I can tell it apart from those it’s grown together with, is over five meters high. “These plants are hearty, stronger than flesh, stronger than us. They grow fast, and need little. If it wasn’t for the insatiable hunger of the Cats and Butters, we would probably not be able to move through them at all. B
ut then, the Cats and Butters feed them in turn, as do the Dragons, the Worms, the Beetles. And us, for our small part.”
“’Cats’?” Murphy wonders for all of us. This gets another chuckle out of Negev.
“The Butter’s larval form. You will see.”
The growth has managed to become even more foreboding.
Behind us, the Spine Range is already barely visible through the foliage. We turned south as soon as we passed the end of the Katar Canyon’s southern wall, which is also the farthest eastern tip of the Spine. But now, from what I can see of the position of the sun, it looks like we’re moving southwest.
Used to getting lost in this place, I’ve programmed my flashcard with a pedometer program that Murphy had, allowing me to roughly measure our progress. I also took the time to draw some notes on my maps, based on the maps that the Katar with us studied during their briefing.
We seem to be heading slightly but steadily downhill, and I think I can see rises on either side of us. This would put us in a narrow ravine that diagonally crosses the “base” of the Central Blade, pointing us directly toward the South Blade.
On my maps, the two Blades start as one valley where we are, but soon branch, divided by the way they cut into the Planum-elevation Catena Rim. The Central Blade is larger, much wider, and stretches roughly west. The South Blade runs at an angle southwest, eventually becoming a narrow canyon cutting ten klicks into the Rim. And about five klicks deep inside that steep-walled gash of a canyon is where Eureka Colony should be.
During the debrief, Cousteau indicated the point that her party encountered the infected Keeper. It was very close to the end of the ridge that separates the Central and South Blades. He wasn’t coming from the lost colony. He was coming from the north-northwest, out of the Central Blade. If I’m reading his course right, he may have been walking home. And coming from the general direction of Lucifer’s Grave, Asmodeus’ hidden base.
The God Mars Book Five: Onryo Page 5