“Now, as for my demands… Well, actually, I don’t have any thought up yet. I’ve been a little busy planning the party. I suppose I could follow the precedent of my predecessor and tell all you righteous high-gravity dickheads to pack up and fuck off back home. But we haven’t had a proper chance to play yet. And this really isn’t even about you.
“As I said, mostly I see you as a bunch of annoying idiots, and that’s me being kind. The truth is, I’m really only doing all of this to fuck with Mike Ram. He’s just so much fun that way. If he wasn’t around… Well, I’d probably have to find a way across space to visit the old homestead, then rape and pillage my way across your theo-fascist wonderland. But, while I’ve got your attention, I suppose I should demand something…”
He makes a show of exaggerated concentration, then suddenly holds up a finger in mock decision.
“Pussy!” he announces with exaggerated cheer. “I’ve always liked pussy! And just in case you theo-fascist prudes don’t use that word properly anymore, what I’m talking about is women. To have sex with. These nano-buggers inside me keep me hornier than a teenage boy no matter how much I get. So send me a tribute of pretty young virgins—there’s a precedent for seventy-two, I believe. That’ll be a nice start. Say, under twenty-five Earth years and less than sixty kilos Earth weight? Otherwise, I’m not picky. They can even be pretend virgins—I’m sure you have lots of those. And I don’t even mind the religious prudery. That’ll just make the screaming sweeter. I even promise to upload video of the highlights so you don’t have to wonder what’s become of them. You might even be able to make some money off of it if you’re so inclined. Now don’t give me that look—I’m sure you still have porn up there, no matter how much you pretend you’re better than that in Mandatory Church. So start rounding up the recruits! My current stable of fuck toys is getting pretty thinned out. You mortals are such fragile things.”
He’s horrible, disgusting, and proud of it. Was he like this when he was mortal, or is this what immortality did to him? (I can’t help but flash on what Ram showed us of Kali’s erotic tastes.)
But worse: He’s taunting them to attack him, like he wants an excuse for bloodshed and mass destruction. Or maybe he just enjoys rubbing our noses in how helpless he thinks we all are.
“In the meantime, I’ll be happy to accept a few of the local Malibu Barbies in exchange for not ruining their marvelous architecture,” he won’t stop. “They’re a bit exotic for my taste, but I expect they still have all the important bits. And throw in one of those genetically modified cows, too. I’d love a good steak.”
Asmodeus disengages from the uplinks, but the last thing I see is his camera zooming in on Ram, as if to enjoy his helpless rage. But Ram’s rage doesn’t look like I expect. He looks amazingly calm, almost content. I see his mouth curl into a half-grin, like he’s thinking of something, something evil that he knows will make him happy. He turns and vanishes into the forest. Erickson, confused, follows him. Then the feed is gone.
A few seconds after that, a storm of encrypted chatter floods the Unmaker channels as they race to discuss their options.
I look down and realize Terina’s eyes are open. The irises look like massive diamonds. If she was conscious, I realize, she also would have heard the chatter.
She looks at me, expressionless, and then closes her eyes again. She hugs her Companion a little tighter to her breast.
Two more hours pass like years. There’s no chatter on our own channels. I expect Ram’s keeping silence so Asmodeus can’t hear us planning. That means it’ll have to be face-to-face. And where?
All I can do in the meantime is watch the feed from orbit, and Asmodeus hasn’t budged, hasn’t done anything more. Every few minutes, I rearrange the desiccating flesh over Terina, trying to shift the most resource-rich of what’s left closer to her, scooping away the residual waste matter which promptly blows away in the breeze coming across the slope.
Without any prior stirring or sound to serve as a warning, Terina suddenly sits bolt-upright and starts screaming. I reflexively jump back, but not too far. The scream starts like the last one, like a broken device, but then quickly clears, smoothes, becomes human. She tears at herself, throwing off the gore and ripping away the remaining outer “skin”. Oblivious to my presence, she throws herself forward, onto her hands and knees, and then uses her weapon like a staff to lift herself to an unsteady stance.
She’s panting in panic, looking down at herself—her new self—in total terror.
“Terina!” I try to get her attention, showing her empty hands. “Terina… It’s okay… You’re…”
“What is this!?” she cries, showing me her own hands, one perpetually gripping her Companion. Her diamond eyes are wide, pleading. “What is this body?!”
“It’s…” I have trouble knowing where to start. “It’s what your DNA would have made you look like, if you grew up on Earth. Just like my face.” I gesture to myself, as if that’s any comfort.
She stares at me in a shivering mix of dumb shock, paralyzing horror and insane disbelief. She looks like she could explode from the inside.
“You were dead!” she sobs, but it sounds more like rage. “They said you were dead!”
At least she’s distracted from her own condition.
“I was. Sort of. In the ship we found… There was an immortal. Someone I knew. It was the same ship my parents came here on. He… He healed me. Passed his tech on to me.”
I’m lying to spare her, not telling the whole truth of it. She doesn’t need to hear that, not right now.
She’s not listening. Her diamond gaze has shifted, past me, west. Home.
“I heard him… Asmodeus. His threats. His sick demands.” She grips her Naginata in both hands now, eager to use it. (I expect it’s just as eager to be used.)
“We need to plan,” I try to make her think. “He’ll fire on your people. He could level your City with one shot from his railgun. Or unleash his Harvester seeds.”
“Then we need to hit him hard and fast, destroy him before he can use his weapons!” she insists through perfect white gritted teeth, all rage. I wonder if this was what I was like, when Peter unleashed me on Eureka.
“And that’s why we need to plan,” I focus her. “Where he can’t hear us. How do you feel? Can you travel?”
She steps out of her “grave”, which looks a few centimeters deeper now than the rut we put her down in. She kicks the rest of the dead off of her. I notice she still wears the Forge daggers on her belt, or maybe a facsimile thereof, just like the rest of her clothes and ornamental armor. At least her radiation levels are way down. She takes a few tentative steps. Her shorter, more muscular legs have an odd spring, like she’s become lighter despite the visibly added mass. I remember this, learning how to move, being so much stronger, so much quicker.
“You’ll get used to it,” I reassure badly.
“What happened to me?” she asks, more calmly, looking at her new weapon, her Companion.
“Radiation poisoning did a lot of tissue damage. It took you time to heal.” Then I think to test her memory. “Do you remember how you got here?”
“Like a dream…” she says absently, but she stares northwest, back along the path she came. “People were coming. Modded beings. I could feel them. I didn’t want them to stop me…” She looks at me. “You. It was you.”
“And Erickson and Ram. As soon as your father realized where you’d gone.”
“You dared the radiation?”
“And the water. But it was easier on us. Still, we’re pretty poisoned. We need to stay away from the Normals for a little while. Eat.”
“But you came for me?” She sounds surprised by that.
“Of course I did. You’re a friend. A good friend.”
She moves toward me, lowers her weapon. But I’m not sure I like the way she’s looking at me now. I should, but not now.
“Is that all I am to you? Friend?”
I can feel her tryin
g to dig into my thoughts. Worse: my feelings.
“Nothing else?”
She circles me like an assassin.
“Am I ugly to your eyes now?” a touch of rage comes back. She spreads her arms as if to show me more of her new body.
“No. And you weren’t before. You’ve always been beautiful to me. I think you know that.”
I feel shaky, unsure, uncomfortable. But also aroused. I don’t want to be. But then I realize: I can smell her. I know that smell. Sex. Her sex.
“And what are you now? Just an armor suit? Or are you still a man?” She’s daring me, taunting me. It’s not like seduction, though. It’s like she’s picking a fight.
“I’m trying to help you,” I insist.
She stops. Looks ill. Frustrated. Shocked. Another storm of emotions flashes across her face.
“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?”
“The Modding plays with your emotions,” I guess. “I’ve heard it can increase libido, arousal.”
She looks like she’s going to cry.
“I’m not like this,” she pleads. “This isn’t me.”
“I know,” I give poor comfort. “You get used to it.”
“I don’t want to get used to it!!” she snaps. But then she looks at the Companion in her hands. “But I wanted this. I risked my life… destroyed my life… What am I?”
“You are the First Daughter of the War King of Katar,” I insist. “You serve your people. Your people need you. That is what you are.”
I think I see her smile, calm for an instant in the chaos of her heart and mind. She looks at me.
“And you? Do you serve my people?”
“I’m not leaving you.”
In a blur, she darts straight up to me, body-to-body, and kisses me. Deeply. Hungrily. But it’s not like any kiss I’ve had before. I feel myself being drawn into her, becoming part of her, part of one machine, all power and electricity. The world spins away.
She breaks contact, jumps back, both of us breathless.
“That was… That…” She can’t find words.
“I…” Neither can I. I’m just hoping we can do it again. Soon. But not now.
“We should go,” she says before I can, looking west.
“We need to find the others,” I agree. But I can barely make myself move.
Chapter 6: The Battle of Katar
As we hike, I help Terina suppress the signals that her Companion is putting out, so Asmodeus won’t be able to track us so easily.
“The Wizard…” she remembers. “I heard his Companion as I came back across the Lake. I could feel him feeding. Feeding on corpse-men he’d taken from those sent to Katar. He had found Asmodeus, on the other side of the mountain, but was too weak to confront him. He wanted to be stronger.”
“Why did you go after him?”
“In my need, I would kill living men, maybe the first I found. It could not be Haven. Not Pax. Certainly not my own. So Asmodeus would feed me. But the Wizard already had flesh. And he was weak.”
She shakes her head, like she’s trying to clear away the memory, or her craving for protein regardless of the source.
“We do what we need to, if the cause is right,” I give poor absolution, our absolution, the absolution of the Modded.
“Jikininki…” she mutters. Then chuckles sadly. And tells me: “A story Akinaga-sama told me when I was a child, a lesson: If a person is too greedy in life, they will return in death as a Jikininki, a spirit that must live by eating human corpses.”
“They call me Onryō,” I tell her. “The Eureka Keepers named the owner of this Seed that.”
“Vengeful Spirit,” she knows.
“They murdered his wife and child. I still feel his rage, his grief.”
She slows, turns to me.
“Is he part of you?” she guesses.
“He is,” I admit. Then lie again: “He always will be, I suppose. A ghost in the Seed’s programming.”
“Does he control you?” she’s concerned, and not buying my understating.
“No,” I keep lying. “But I hear him sometimes. There wasn’t much left of him when I found him.” Or the other way around.
We head around the north side of the Spine, and climb up to the exit of the escape tunnel. We seal it behind us once we’re inside, hoping that hides the entrance again.
Terina hurries through the length of the tunnel, but then hesitates when we get to the inner-slope door. She has a lot to be apprehensive about, starting with her new appearance and how her people will accept it. I suppose she could say she is someone else, another immortal ally, like I did. But her father knows what she’d gone to do. And she’s still dressed and armed like the First Daughter of the War King.
“I can go first,” I offer.
“Summon my father,” she asks quietly. “Please.”
I push aside the stone door, only to find we have a reception party.
Ram and Erickson are there, along with all of the others: Straker, Elias, Dee, Stilson, Bly, Bel, Lux and Azazel. I see various reactions in their eyes as they see Terina. Only Lux has the nerve to grin at the result.
Ram gestures us to move out of the tunnel in a certain way, and I realize it’s to keep out of direct view of the Stormcloud. We should be able to move down through the passage of rocks without being seen, get to the relative shelter of the City proper.
But the Terina’s father blocks our path. With him is Negev and Cousteau. All three look shocked speechless, but then Khan’s face twists in agony. He steels himself as his daughter steps up to him, her Companion held low and behind her. She lowers her eyes, ashamed, but then makes herself raise them to lock her father’s hard gaze.
“I am still your daughter,” she insists firmly. “My heart is still Katar.”
He doesn’t respond for a long time, and when he finally does, he’s looking past her to the rest of us.
“Come. Please.”
I can feel Terina trying not to weep as he turns and leads us down into the City, toward the Oculus. He doesn’t look back at her.
Erickson is looking more himself as we walk.
“They fed me,” he tells me in my head when I discreetly ask after his condition, “though I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the cuisine.”
He’s also not nearly as hot. Neither are the rest of us, but Ram cautions that we still keep some physical distance from the Normals. I try repeating this message to Terina in case she didn’t hear, but she doesn’t respond, doesn’t look at me, just marches at the head of our odd group as if still our guide, her Companion held blade-down with the shaft behind her arm and shoulder like her warriors do. She even marches in step with them.
I ask Peter to try to get a “closed” message to Erickson, who’s walking closest to me.
“Did you tell Khan… did you tell him about his daughter?”
“We had to tell him something,” I hear Erickson. His voice in my head sounds deeply sad.
“We told him we’d found her,” Ram interjects. “We told him she wouldn’t be the same, might not even me herself.”
Of course they wouldn’t have known until she woke… But then I realize: If Ram heard me, then Terina may have. If she did, she doesn’t react, doesn’t even break her intent stride.
We’re led again to the “war room” underneath the structure. I can’t help but notice three bots positioned on the Plaza as if standing guard: Two Bugs and a Box that looks like it was assembled out of salvaged components. They’re out in the open, where Asmodeus (and Fohat) can certainly see them. I remember Dakota and Snyder… Did they beg Chang for release? Or could he not bear being in the company of his former atrocities?
Peter has already altered my face back to his. When Terina sees it, it gives her a start, but she seems to understand quickly enough when she sees my father and Rashid are waiting with the other Kings, as is the Ghaddar. The Ghaddar meets my gaze briefly, coolly, then ignores me. The Kings all must suppress their shock and ho
rror at Terina’s condition, but it thoroughly disrupts their focus.
Ram speaks first:
“You must prepare your people for evacuation. You can move them out through your tunnels under cover of night. Heaters placed throughout the City will convince Asmodeus that you’re still here. Then we can deal with him. If he damages your homes, we will help you rebuild. It can all be rebuilt. But your lives cannot be replaced.”
“We’ve beaten this monster before,” Stilson tries to reassure.
“We’ve beaten Chang,” Dee unexpectedly corrects him, stepping forward. “Ange Apollyon—Asmodeus—is something else entirely.”
“But I thought Asmodeus was Chang’s strategist?” my father remembers.
“Anyone Asmodeus served when he was a man, he was also sabotaging,” Dee explains. Ram nods like he knows. “Anyone who thought they were his master, he ultimately destroyed, just on principle.”
“He let us defeat Chang,” I blurt out as I realize. Then I hastily correct: “You.” But my father is glaring at me suspiciously again.
“Asmodeus is brilliant, merciless, and doesn’t care about costs,” Ram insists, ignoring my slip. “He does what he does just to prove that he can, to prove he’s the better killer. I don’t even think he enjoys his victories. His only joys that I know of are rape, torture and murder.”
“And this monster has my people,” Bly growls.
“And mine,” Straker throws in. “Assuming there are any left.”
“Only as playthings,” Dee gives them the bad news they’ve probably already assumed.
“What about Astarte?” I confront. “What is she doing with him?”
“What she does: Position herself,” Ram defends. “She’ll have convinced Asmodeus that he controls her, like he used to.”
“No matter the cost,” Dee says what Ram holds back.
“She will have done whatever she could to protect your people from his lusts, but she would have to sacrifice,” Bel gives hope and takes it in the same sentence.
The God Mars Book Five: Onryo Page 28