The God Mars Book Five: Onryo

by Michael Rizzo

  As for Murphy, there was no body to bury. Ram himself scoured the blast zone for hours looking for trace of him, something to offer as remains to his people, his wife and son, until Straker found him and handed him Murphy’s revolver. I didn’t see her do it, but she’d picked it up as she ran to save the Katar evacuees, realizing its value to Murphy’s family. Ram took it reverently, thanked her, and told her he would return it to Tranquility himself.

  But there is more pressing business than essential rituals.

  We meet in the privacy of the Siren’s Song. Even Bly, who took off after the battle, needing time to himself now that the fate of likely all of his people was horribly clear. His grief must be unbearable, but his guilt unimaginable. He had led them to that fate, by leading them into service with Chang. For power. For revenge. (Revenge against those who are now his only friends.) And now he probably thinks all he has is revenge.

  Straker tries to comfort him, to be company if nothing else, because of their shared loss. But Straker was only a junior officer while Bly was their leader. And Straker managed to lead some of her people away from Chang with Ram’s help, so at least a few hundred of her kind survive (even if they remain de-facto prisoners of the Unmakers). In return, Bly shows her uncharacteristic tenderness, even affection. I wonder if something more has come out of their shared loss, or their comradeship in this war of super-beings.

  Unexpectedly, this strikes me as ice in my gut, because it makes me think about what I’ve likely lost, if I ever had it at all. If Terina can be “recovered,” her only memories of me will be from the time she awoke Modded. That moment—trying to help her come to grips with what she’d become—and the walk back to Katar… That’s all I’ll be to her, if I was anything at all before that. If I’m lucky, she’ll know my name, my face, and maybe that I’m a friend and not an enemy. But there was that too-brief moment of intimacy…

  I’m glad it wasn’t more. If she’d actually told me that she cared for me, and that was part of what was gone…

  If Peter were here, he’d probably say something very fatherly, like You can start over, start fresh, fall for each other all over again.

  To which Ram’s words remind me not to count on whatever future I can imagine.

  Bel lets me see her, kept asleep, sealed in her couch. Her Companion has already made good progress in healing her physical body, restoring her facial bones, but that side of her face is covered with that translucent silicon-based polymer “skin” again. I remember a childhood tale of a maiden asleep in a glass coffin, waiting for her true lover to awaken her. With a kiss. Or maybe, in this case, with the memory of one, preserved in her living Blade, still hugged to her chest like a precious treasure.

  Then Bel lets us see Fohat, sealed in his own glass coffin, back in the aft lab. His head is trying to regenerate, slowly weaving a skull and growing skin, but his brain is barely formed and exposed. The rest of him looks sick, like a starving man.

  “Sealed in here, without resources to rebuild, his body has to scavenge from itself,” Bel explains, with just a hint of glee. “We could keep him like this, repeatedly destroying his brain, watching him eat himself to re-grow it. Or we can let him rebuild enough to return to a half-life, barely conscious, and try to tap his memories for intel.”

  “I’m sure if he knew where Asmodeus was and what he was up to, Asmodeus has already changed his plans,” Paul Stilson discounts, opting: “You should keep him unconscious.”

  “But then we don’t get to torture him,” Lux pouts. “You are just never any fun, are you?”

  Stilson ignores her.

  “What about Astarte?” Straker wonders more practically.

  “Not a word,” Ram admits heavily. “And that’s bad.”

  “And we’re sure she hasn’t turned on us?” Bly has to ask. Surprisingly, Ram doesn’t even give him a hard glare.

  “She’s still playing her role,” Dee insists. “And that means she has to.”

  “Assuming that was her we saw, and not another DNA copy,” Erickson suggests. “Or a holographic trick.”

  “She brought women—my women—to that monster like some brothel procuress, let them be raped to death, and did nothing to stop it,” Bly won’t forgive.

  “Then it wasn’t her, or she had a damn good reason,” Ram finally defends, his voice a growl. “Both possibilities should scare us shitless.” He looks at Fohat’s body for several seconds, the tells Bel: “Let him come back. Just a little bit.” Then to Lux: “You can torture him all you like.”

  But the way he says it… Lux doesn’t even smile.

  Straker suddenly looks ill, like she’s done something stupid.

  “Sir…” she addresses Ram. “That report you were having me compose… I don’t think I mentioned… When the Harvesters attacked us, some of them were Pax.”

  Now it’s Ram’s turn to look sick. And he’s far from alone in it.

  “Asmodeus,” I remember. “On the ship. He described the Pax Keep.”

  “A dark, damp, dreary dungeon…” Bel repeats the words Asmodeus used.

  “He’s been there,” Straker decides, horrified. “He was trying to tell us…”

  “It’s all about the real estate,” Ram repeats another thing Asmodeus said on the ship.

  “He drew us away,” Dee puts together quickest, of course.

  “We need to get to the Pax,” Stilson decides quickly.

  “He also mentioned Eureka,” I remember further, having my own gut-sinking.

  “We need to divide,” Ram tempers our urge to go charging somewhere.

  “Anything Asmodeus does, he’ll have thought three moves past,” Dee warns. “He may have drawn us here to attack either of the places he mentioned, or somewhere else entirely. Or he may be trying to draw us away from here because he does want this place for some reason. The Harvesters in Pax clothing may have been to get us to go running there.”

  “The Pax Keep…” I consider, “…it’s more defensible. Orbit wouldn’t be able to see what he’s doing.”

  “So is Eureka,” Straker counters.

  “Eureka can be more easily bombarded from orbit,” I argue back.

  “We need to make sure,” Erickson votes. “We need to go looking for him. Now.”

  “Anybody remember those old horror film where the good guys would decided to split up, even though they knew there was a monster stalking them?” Bel cautions.

  “He’ll have a plan for anything we do,” Dee sums up the trap we’re in.

  “Then we do something he doesn’t anticipate,” Ram decides quickly.

  “Like… join him?” Lux jokes badly.

  Ram looks at all of us.

  “We get help.”

  “You can bring our people to Eureka,” I offer Rashid before we move out. “They have facilities; atmosphere, water, local food sources. They could use your protection.”

  “Soon, perhaps,” he declines. “When it is safe enough to send for the rest of our people, we will need a proper home for them. Until then, those of us left will help defend Katar, should the demon return.”

  “You’ll have the Carters,” I remind him needlessly. “And Dee and his new Bot Army.”

  This last gives him a grin—we’ve never had the machines of the enemy on our side, and in large numbers.

  We embrace like brothers. I tell him I will see him again soon. Then I embrace Sarai.

  “I will make sure our people have a home,” I promise her as my father did.

  Straker is saying her farewells to Ram and the Carters and finally to Bly. She lingers with him, then unexpectedly leans in and kisses him. He looks as surprised as the rest of us, but doesn’t pull away, even reciprocates. They promise to see each other again soon as well.

  Then Straker joins me for the hike back to Eureka. I’m glad she decided to join me. I hope she can make some real peace with the exiled Keepers, bring them in as allies as Ram offered.

  I see Ram give me a nod and smile, and hear him in my head:
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br />   “You’re a better man than I am, Jonathan Drake. If anyone deserves these gifts, you do.”

  I give him a nod back but have trouble accepting his words. I’ve done so much out of rage, not righteousness…

  Ram and Bly join the other immortals in the Siren’s Song. Her engines are already spinning up to launch.

  Khan meets us with his guard on the field. Cousteau is with him, as his new Captain. He offers me a bow, then his hands to clasp in friendship.

  “I disrespected you when we met,” he admits. “I am sorry for that. We are grateful for what you have done for us. I am grateful for what you have done for my daughter.”

  “I hope she comes back to you, sir.”

  “I hope she comes back to us,” he corrects me. Then he bows again, and we pass to the Wall.

  I take one last look at the Siren’s Song as it lifts and flies away west, with Terina asleep in her belly, perhaps one day to wake. I also think of her escort to White Station: Paul Stilson, off to confront his father, and that makes me burn with a fresh surge of grief, thinking again of the things I should have said to mine and put off too long, afraid. I still have what feels like an infinite emptiness inside my breast plate, and can’t imagine how it will ever be filled, even if I do live forever.

  The Ghaddar is waiting for us at the gap in the Wall.

  “I served your father,” she tells me formally. “Now my service is yours, if you want it.”

  “You should serve Rashid,” I offer her half-heartedly. “He’s Sharif now.”

  “Rashid doesn’t need me to watch his back,” she digs at me.

  “And I do?” But then I accept with a nod.

  Straker slaps me across the shoulder plate as we head into the gap.

  “You were really going to tell the Zauba’a Ghaddar to fuck off?” she takes her own dig at me.

  “Not on my life,” I tell her. “And that’s apparently saying something.”

  The hike back to the South Blade is peaceful, even beautiful.

  We stop at the Don Quixote, to refill the Ghaddar’s canisters and check the drone net. The systems report no incursions, nor has there been any distress calls from Eureka.

  On the way out, I stop and leave a ritual offering of food at the graves, and say the Salat for the dead. Then I use my gloved fingers to rub away the red paint filling the carved symbols for Peter Nagasawa.

  He is, after all, with his family now.

  ###

  Map of the Western Vajra (The Green Trident)

  To be continued in Book Six: Valhalla, I Am Coming

  About the Author:

  Michael Rizzo is an artist (yes, those god-awful covers are his), martial artist, collector (and frequent user) of fine weaponry, and a pretty good cook. He continues his long, varied and brutal career on the mental health and social services battlefield, trying to do good work while writing about very bad things.

  He is also the author of the Grayman series, which features Mike Ram and other characters from this series in their much younger days.

  He causes trouble in person mostly in the Pacific Northwest.

  For updates and original art, visit Michael on Facebook.com, and see the Facebook page for “The God Mars Series”.

  Discover other books by Michael Rizzo at smashwords.com