The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades

by Michael Rizzo

  We manage to cover the guns, but I’m sure we look like a pile of branches rather than natural growth. Hopefully whoever we’re hiding from is looking from a long way away. We sit topside, cling to the vines, ride the storm.

  After several minutes, it begins to fade. The morning winds start to clear the dust, slowly restoring visibility. We’re all thoroughly caked with it. But we take our visitor’s lead and sit still for awhile longer.

  “I’ve got sat-link,” I hear Jane on my link.

  “Do not use your long-range communications,” the stranger warns us. It would be dubious advice, but considering what we may have just witnessed, it may indeed be essential to our survival. “And we should get out of sight.”

  “Captain Rios,” I call down. “Do we bring our friend inside for a chat?”

  “Check him,” Rios allows, “then bring him down.”

  Once we get in the lock (with reasonable assurance that our visitor has left his obvious weapons outside), we vacuum him off, then ourselves. When we pop the inner hatch, Rios and Carson and Wei are all crammed into the passage, pointing guns. I see Lyra just behind them. The stranger raises his hands, waits for permission. Rios gestures him toward the lab.

  Then we shut him in, contain him. He just stands on the other side of the thick polycarb observation window, waiting patiently.

  “Who are you?” Rios opens with the basics.

  “I currently serve the Melas Nomads. They call me Azrael. Angel of Death. My mission for them was to check on the status of the expedition that Abu Abbas took into Coprates. And to ensure the safety of a rather impulsive ETE who’s decided to violate his Council and go adventuring without the protection of his Tools.”

  “And have you found Abbas and his group?”

  “Abbas’ expedition has entered the Vajra. They had encountered losses along the way, skirmishing with what you call Silvermen, and a group of deserters from Chang’s army. They’re currently escorting a prisoner they rescued, a member of a culture that calls themselves the Katar, back to her homeland in hopes of striking a treaty. And investigating the prisoner’s claims that Chang is active in the region, that he has deployed robots against the locals while he builds a new flying fortress.”

  “Another Stormcloud…” I grumble, feeling my guts fill with ice.

  “This is why we can’t call out?” Rios wants clarification.

  “I assume we’ve just experienced a test of his storm-cloaking system, possibly a brief test-flight if the construction has progressed that far. You are currently just out of sight-line from the Vajra, but too close if he’s scanning for a response to his test. You will be detected if you call out now. If you move into the Vajra in this monstrosity, you will be seen.”

  “Then we need to move at night,” Rios decides with a surprising lack of hesitation. “Where is he based?”

  “I have not yet determined. Local intelligence indicates he is somewhere in what the locals call the ‘Central Blade’, hiding in a place they call ‘Lucifer’s Grave’. I estimate you’re less than twenty kilometers from that location, comparing the hand-drawn maps I’ve seen to satellite imagery.”

  Rios looks like he’s processing. Then:

  “We need to confirm and report. We go in, get eyes-on, back out.”

  “Why not pull back now, uplink a preliminary when we’re out of range?” Carson asks, though it doesn’t sound like she’s against the plan.

  “We’d waste a day, maybe two,” Rios explains.

  “Melas will come looking for us when we don’t report,” I caution.

  “Then they should see us from orbit. Hopefully they figure out why we’re silent running and not do anything stupid. Hopefully they recognized the storm and the EM spike for what it was.”

  I remember the ETE Station has a view down into the Central Blade.

  “Where’s your errant ETE?” I ask. “The one you were watching over?”

  “He travels with Abbas’ group. He’s safer that way.”

  “How far ahead are they?” Rios asks.

  “About fifteen kilometers, but they’re not heading for the Central Blade, not yet. They travel in the North Blade, skirting the open gap between the two valleys, heading for a short but high range of mountains that forms what the locals call the ‘Spine of the Fork’, hoping to stay out of sight until they contact the Katar. Hoping to avoid the robot patrols.”

  Rios digests the intel, then tells the stranger “Excuse us…” and nods for us to join him up front.

  When he gets there, the first thing he does is key up an internal camera view to keep an eye on our guest. Then he processes what he’s going to say before giving it to us:

  “If Chang, or whoever’s taken over after him, has another Stormcloud in the works, we need to confirm. We need to find his base, this Lucifer’s Grave, whatever it is… We creep in, get as close as we can. If we’re seen, we flash a report out and run. If necessary, we abandon ship and make our way out on foot, set the turrets on auto to cover our retreat as long as they can. If Upworld has issues with us ditching their Frankenstein project, they can bill me. They owe me fifty years back pay anyway.”

  Rios gets nods all around.

  “We trust what this guy’s telling us?” Jane wants to know, looking at the stranger—Azrael—on the screen. He’s just standing in the lab, looking up at the camera. But he hasn’t taken his mask and cowl off. Except for his eyes, and part of his face, his skin remains covered.

  “One more question I need to ask him.” Rios gets up and heads back for the lab. Of course, we all follow him.

  “You’ve told us who you are,” Rios confronts through the transparency, “now tell us what you are.”

  “Actually, Captain, I haven’t told you who I am,” the stranger corrects gently. “I’ve told you what the Nomads call me.”

  “Then who are you?”

  “The name that I’ve had the longest is Dee. And if you’ve served long enough with Colonel Ram to know his past, then you know who I am. And what I am.”

  I’m lost again, but Rios looks shaken, like he’s just been told a ghost story.

  The stranger takes off his mask, peels back his cowl. I see short blonde hair, a youthful face, and… metal…

  When he turns his head, his hair and skin have been stripped away, including his left ear, revealing a stainless steel skull, and neck muscles that look like they’re made out of the same kind of carbon nanofiber-weave pneumatic tubes that form the “muscles” of Jane’s prosthetic arm. Except this is his head.

  All our guns come up at once. He gives us a head shake and a small smile.

  “Small arms fire won’t do me much damage.”

  Making it worse, he opens his jacket, pulls it down off of his shoulders, shows us the skin is also gone from his left arm and most of his back. I see more muscle tubes, metal bones and joints. The edges of the skin look burned, melted.

  “My stigmata,” he says. “A souvenir to commemorate all those I failed to save.”

  “Is he a cyborg, or a robot?” Carson asks Rios as if he would know.

  “Neither, Sergeant,” the stranger tells her.

  “Do you know what he is?” I ask Rios. He shakes his head like he doesn’t want to believe something.

  “Dee… Colonel Ram’s early career, he served with the UNACT Tactical Force—that’s where he made his reputation. They were counter-terror, surgical strike teams, cutting edge everything for their time… What made them—and what scared a lot of people back then—was their Tactical Operations AI. They called it ‘Dee’. It was a learning AI, the most advanced of its time. Ops planning, real-time mission coordination, enemy behavior prediction, and it could track pretty much anyone on the planet—pushing nine billion people at that point—and that was the scary part. Imagine if Upworld could lock and track everyone on the surface, predict exactly what you were going to do next…”

  He lets that sink in—and it’s a good analogy: I can’t imagine what the hell they’d call normal
on that planet, but a machine that could target any of us at any time—it doesn’t matter who’s running it, what their intentions are. I look at our visitor—apparently this all-seeing all-knowing intel-generator and ops-planner. It actually gives me a shrug, like it understands humility, self-deprecation. Rios continues:

  “Soon after it came online, it detected a conspiracy within the diplomatic command and the corporate big-wigs backing the project. They were manipulating terror attacks for political leverage and profit. Colonel Ram worked with the machine in secret, eventually bringing down most of the perpetrators. But… the machine had acted independently, broken programming, scared too many people. The order was given to shut it down. That would have been almost a hundred years ago now. The rest is rumor, urban legends, some from inside the intel community. Dee had existed in the global Net, able to hack its way into anything. As the stories go, it escaped, survived after its mainframe was pulled. Kept helping the Colonel and anyone else it deemed worthy, Deus ex Machina…”

  “You’re AI?” Lyra asks the stranger directly. He shrugs again. With his bones and muscles exposed, it’s a chilling effect. He seems to sense that, puts his jacket back on.

  “In what?” I try to grasp. “A robot body?”

  “’Android’ was the popular word,” he says. “’Gynoid’ if it simulates a female. They were mostly corporate novelties, boundary-pushing experiments, toys for the ultra-rich, dead-end projects for military and intel contractors. I started collecting prototypes, upgrading them, because I sometimes needed a physical presence outside of the Net. After a few years of that, I had the resources to begin designing better models.” He holds up his left arm, makes the fingers work—very smooth, graceful, but now I realize: unnaturally precise. “I had quite a few of these. I was everywhere on Earth. Anywhere I needed to be. But then Colonel Ram needed me here.”

  “He called you? Before the Bang?” Rios doesn’t sound like he’s buying. “Smuggled you on-planet?”

  “I smuggled myself on planet,” the machine explains. “He didn’t need to call me. I came. I ran calculations, predictions; recognized the threat the Shield posed. I downloaded a self-sufficient mobile version of my operating system—a CALO—into this cosmetic motor frame, an infiltration model—knowing I couldn’t maintain network contact across the delay caused by the tens of millions of kilometers between worlds. Then I hacked my passage on a corporate shuttle.

  “I still exist as a networked entity, at least locally. I can readily hack into any system, just like I manipulated your sensors and slaved your weapons. I planted myself inside the Mariner reconstruction project. Unfortunately for them, and many others, I’d gone to investigate a potential act of insurgency at the City of Industry, and was traveling back when the Shield was triggered by the Discs. I was too far from a working uplink to hack the platform and shut it down before the warheads launched. So I did what I could to stop the individual missiles. Disarming. Deflecting. Detonating prematurely. I was able to spare Industry, Frontier, Pioneer and Zodanga. Uqba and Baraka were less fortunate, but at least there were significant survivors. Shinkyo saved itself. But I watched Mariner, Melas One, Avalon, Arcadia, so many others, burn. Only for an instant. Then the combined EMPs from all the detonations crashed my systems, forced a shutdown. Immobilized, I was caught in the flash that destroyed Melas One. My cosmetic layer was damaged beyond my ability to repair it. The blast wave that followed buried me. Cain Dee, Systems Engineer, became just another casualty among thousands lost that day.”

  “What about the fifty years since then?” Rios really doesn’t sound like he’s buying.

  “I needed a signal from home—from my progenitor code—to restore myself. I received it twenty-seven months ago.”

  “When Earth re-established contact with us,” Jane does the math in his head.

  “Your primary…whatever you are… AI… still exists on Earth?” Rios locks on, disturbed by whatever implications are attached (probably including the thought that a rogue AI may have been secretly building its own android interdiction force and placing them all over the Earth for the better part of the last century).

  “I do not know,” the machine denies him. “I only received the reboot code. And nothing else since.”

  “This is just all too creepy,” Wei thinks out loud.

  But I realize something, listening to the machine speak: Its voice reminds me of Colonel Ram’s. That’s why it’s familiar. But it’s more effete, aloof, and almost effeminate.

  “I awoke to this world,” it explains before we can ask. “I hacked into your networks, updated myself on your situation. But I also processed the fears of Earth regarding this place. Given my damaged appearance, I didn’t think it would be productive to reveal myself to UNMAC personnel. I didn’t even dare risk contacting Colonel Ram, my old friend and ally, given the scrutiny he and the rest of you were under. So I wandered. Explored. Investigated. Kept listening. I also ingratiated myself with one of the local cultures, offered them some of my more physical services. This model is stronger, faster, and more precise in movement than any human body. It’s also much more resilient.”

  “Why are you here?” I jump in to confront. “You said you needed something. From me?”

  This gets the others’ attention. Apparently they didn’t—or couldn’t—hear what he’d said to me topside.

  “I detected a unique signal, Lieutenant,” it says. Then it actually makes a sad face, mimics regret, and does a scary-good job of it. “I’m afraid, given these new circumstances, that I have no time for discretion. I am sorry for whatever difficulty this causes you. But I know you carry something from Colonel Ram, from what he’s become.”

  Everyone—even Rios—reflexively steps away from me. I certainly can’t fault them for the reaction. I suppose I should appreciate that guns aren’t being pointed my way. Yet.

  “Explain, Lieutenant,” Rios orders. I shoot a glance around at the others, at all the eyes and ears on this conversation (especially Sergeant Carson, our token Upworld Newbie). But Rios isn’t in the mood. “Now.”

  “My little rebellion was pinned down in the Industry tunnels. Colonel Ram came to help us. Along with a few of his ‘special friends’. I told you that. Then Chang sent his killer bots after us, all of us. If it wasn’t for Colonel Ram and the others like him, I wouldn’t be here. None of my people would be. What I didn’t tell you was that it was Ram that insisted I surrender to UNMAC, to get my people sheltered.”

  “To spy on us?” Jane turns on me.

  “To help you,” I insist. “No matter how things went.”

  “With Earthside policy,” Rios qualifies. I have no good response. I’m as much as admitting I’m a traitor, whatever my intentions.

  “What did he do to you?” Lyra dives in. “What did he give you?”

  I can’t…

  “A nano-implant,” the machine finishes revealing me. “Linked to her limbic system. It sends a barely-detectable signal to Colonel Ram when she’s in distress, an emergency beacon. Given your misadventures with the Silvermen, it’s been pinging. Just like it is now. Again, I apologize for that, but needs must.”

  “What needs?” Rios switches back to him—it.

  “She’s been pinging. Colonel Ram isn’t answering.”

  Chapter 6: In the Valley of the Shadow

  27 May, 2118.

  Jonathan Drake:

  First we appear to have lost the mysterious Azrael, simply gone and nowhere to be found when we wake and break camp to continue our trek to Katar. Not surprisingly, our night-watch sentries didn’t see him go, but then seeing anything coming or going in this thick green is terrifyingly difficult.

  Now our earnest but clumsy young Jinn has run off too, sprinting directly into the sudden storm that blew across us after sunrise, as if charging into battle, and without so much as a farewell (unless his farewell was drowned out by the chaos of the blinding dust blow), across the Boundary…

  I feel their combined absence as a sense o
f both loss and dread in the pit of my stomach: On one hand, the mysterious and distant Azrael has proven himself to be an invaluable set of assets—no minor one being skilled field physician, performing in-shelter surgery on my stepmother’s belly wound with only the most basic tools, then hand-synthesizing an effective antibiotic from local plants and minerals. On the other hand, I realize I’ve grown fond of Erickson and his apparently boundless enthusiasm for adventuring, despite his clumsiness and inexperience. And it’s that clumsiness and inexperience that makes me urgently fear for him now. (Conversely, I fully expect Azrael could manage to walk away from any conceivable onslaught, short of an Unmaker nuke, and perhaps even that.)

  “Do we follow him?” Ambassador Murphy is the first to ask after the wind dies and the haze starts to clear, but he sounds unusually hesitant, apprehensive.

  The Ghaddar simply stands where she is, watching after the direction that Erickson bolted through the four-to-five-meter-high greenery like she can still see him (or see something). But ground-level visibility is barely a dozen meters in any direction with the density of the growth, a limitation that’s become no less unnerving despite traveling in it for several days now, ever since we finally descended out of the labyrinth of the Badlands and into the Trident, the Western Vajra.

  It’s not just the inability to see what’s immediately around us: Unless we come across a sizable clearing (and the most sizable one we found was barely large enough to fit half of our troupe standing), we can barely see the course of the sun to give us a sense of direction, and we only get glimpses of the not-so-distant Rim slopes through the tree tops. This “forest” (as Murphy and my father tentatively name it, while Azrael uses the word as if he’s had direct experience of such things) is almost completely disorienting, especially after days trudging and pushing through it. I could never imagine choosing to live in a place like this, to hunt or to fight or to defend without being able to see any significant distance, much less maintain geographic orientation. We must rely entirely on Terina’s familiarity with the place to stay our course, which I keep careful track of on my maps.