The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades

by Michael Rizzo

“And sharing with the locals?” Lux considers. I look at my still-Normal friends. The force of Silver Warriors marching warily behind us, overjoyed to be going home but terrified of everything they know they’ll be facing. The Nomads. Murphy. Terina. They could all certainly tell their people what they’ve seen and heard, what it means (assuming they even grasp it, in all its devastating scope).

  “Yod didn’t seem too concerned,” Erickson tries.

  “Yod’s a fucking planet,” Lux snaps at him. “Two planets. Maybe more, depending on how far he’s spread in the last seventy years, assuming that’s really all it has been… You think a planet cares about the microbes on its skin?”

  “Until they get irritating,” Azazel qualifies.

  “He didn’t seem like that,” I hope out loud, invoking my faith. But realize I don’t really believe it, not enough to have any real level of comfort.

  “That was just an interface,” Dee reminds me. “Just like I am. A set of programs to mimic social interaction, communicate with the fleshware.”

  “You’re more than that,” Ram insists. Dee looks at him with suddenly lifeless eyes.

  “Am I? I’m a few billion behavioral algorithms and memory files, managed by a learning master program. And I can’t even assure you that I’m an expression of that system that you saw evolve. He could have just made me, right before I rebooted in the sand, convincing scars and all.”

  “Which makes you no different than the rest of us, really,” Bel allows him. “You’re just not made of meat.”

  Dee re-engages his social algorithms, starts to show convincing human expression again.

  “So now what?” Lux repeats my earlier question.

  “You do whatever it is you’re going to,” Elias answers with impressive serenity. “It doesn’t matter if it’s you or Him doing it.”

  We all digest that in silence. And walk.

  “You all weren’t here when we woke up yesterday morning,” I tell Ram when we make it back to our campsite. It looks pretty much the same as it did the night before I woke up drenched, the missing shelters back where they were.

  “You weren’t here when we woke up yesterday morning,” Ram explains. “Another illusion. Designed to separate us.”

  “What your senses react to is mostly waves and particles,” Bel gets scientific. “Yod can control what gets aimed your way. Call it ‘actual reality’ instead of ‘virtual reality’.”

  “He needed the swords to think they were getting hosts for their friends,” I remember, “and no one around who could interfere.”

  He accepts that with a nod. (But now here I am doubting my own senses.)

  Bel personally checks our blades, declares them “Reset to their initial settings.” The three of us have been left with a set of Mods, as has Bly, apparently matching “earlier versions” of the “consumer offerings” contemporary with the obsolete Companions. (For those of us with blades, it makes sense, but Bly is a curiosity. His Mods were not nearly so advanced while he was still fused to his armor. Did Chang—part Companion himself—upgrade him as he undid his “punishment”? Or was it Yod? I suppose I’d like to believe it was Chang, just because I’d like to believe in redemption, kindness, mercy, however selfishly.)

  Bottom line: We’re not as strong, fast and indestructible as Ram and his Alt-World kind, but we’re close enough for what we’ll likely need to face, be it Yod’s will or our own.

  We offer the Silvermen—the Children of the Forge—the opportunity to camp with us for the night, but their leader—who I gather holds the rank of something like a First Sergeant—declines. They seem uncomfortable in Pax territory, and tell us that they’ll march home on the north side of the mountain, spears down as a gesture of peace. Ram pledges them his and his fellows’ assistance as long as they honor that peace. We say our thanks and goodbyes and they parade off, all discipline and metal.

  “Fascinating people,” Abbas relates as they go. “They come from more than one colony, joined together in desperation. They survived and thrived all these years because they maintained their deep mining equipment, allowing them to shelter underground, tap their own resources. They learned to live almost fully underground, even cultivating greenhouse crops. Hitting rich ore veins, they spent their time reviving and mastering handcraft metallurgy and smithing—they take great pride in it. They define themselves by their fine metal.”

  “They also seem to have revived the best of bronze and iron-age military science,” Ram assesses, “mixed with exceptional stealth and use of the terrain.”

  “Something I didn’t want to mention…” Bly speaks up, watching the armored warriors get farther away. “When I met with the Silvers outside Concordia… Their local Tribune—a kind of ruling council officer—spoke of a ‘Lost Century’, a unit of about one hundred sent as a delegation to the Pax and Katar a standard decade ago that never returned. They were assumed to have been killed in an act of treachery. This spurred the Silvers to expand their territory against treaty, prepare for war, and increased their intolerance for trespassers. Otherwise, they would never attack anyone who did not raise arms against them first—such is their code.”

  He looks at Terina as she processes this news.

  “We never knew…” she mutters, shaking her head. “We thought they had just ignored the Call…”

  “I promised the Tribune I would investigate their fate, confront their enemies, find evidence of the atrocity, assuming their enemies had kept trophies or told stories,” Bly continues.

  “I think you’ve done a bit better than that,” Erickson gives him.

  “A happy accident, and certainly not of my doing,” Bly shrugs off. Then hopes: “But perhaps the beginning of something better.”

  “Why did Yod let them over there to begin with?” I’m still not grasping.

  “Let them, or lured them?” Lux accuses.

  “Social experiment?” Azazel considers. “Test of character?”

  “They didn’t attack the locals,” Abbas speaks up. “Ten years… I think the worst they did was steal a water-craft or two to try to get home.”

  “Warriors who don’t make war,” Dee muses.

  “We should be going,” Abbas insists after only a brief rest for water and simple food. “My people have been waiting two days. They may have assumed us slain, and moved on to Katar.”

  “They wait for you, old friend,” Ram reassures him. “We contacted them in your absence, then set about trying to defeat Yod’s barriers.” He gives Ishmael the coordinates to a point near the eastern end of the Spine, barely five klicks away.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Abbas tells him warmly, and they grasp forearms. Ram repeats the gesture with Ishmael, then Murphy. When he turns to the Ghaddar, they simply look at each other in silence, then exchange nods, as if they have some kind of unspoken agreement.

  “Are you coming with us still, Erickson Carter?” Abbas asks him. “Your brother is also welcome, if he does not choose to return home.”

  “I do not,” Elias answers almost lazily, eyes lost in the clouds pumped against the ceiling of the Atmosphere Net by the nearest Station. “Not yet. There’s a lot to see. A world. People.” He idly puts his hand on the hilt of his sword. “And, I think, more good I could do out here than proving what Yod did or didn’t do in a secure lab.” He turns and looks at his brother. “Besides, my little brother needs me.”

  Erickson pretty thoroughly glows at that. The brothers embrace like they haven’t seen each other in a very long time.

  “You’re welcome to come with us,” Ram offers them. “We could use you.”

  “Probably what Yod had in mind,” Bel devalues it.

  “I would be honored, Colonel,” Erickson breaks the embrace just enough to accept. I can see tears fresh on his face, a trembling smile. It feels like Ram’s offer is something he’s wanted for a long time. Still, he doesn’t fully let his brother go—they stand together, side-by-side.

  “Good,” Dee accepts with a grin. “I d
id promise Hassim I’d try to keep you out of trouble.”

  Lux whispers conspiratorially in Azazel’s ear, looking the brothers over like he/she is sizing them up for something. I think I catch the words “pretty” and “fun”. Azazel does his best to ignore whatever it is, but he rolls his eyes just a bit.

  “What are your plans, Lieutenant?” Ram asks me like he’s making a similar offer.

  “If the boys are going with you, maybe I’ll fall in with the Nomads, assuming they’ll have me.” I know I’m refusing something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now: Serve with Colonel Ram. But not yet. I have a lot of figuring out to do, a lot of getting used to this new me, and I’d rather not have him watching my growing pains.

  “Of course we will,” Abbas accepts instantly. I give him a little bow of gratitude and respect, then turn back to Ram.

  “Besides,” I downplay, “this Katar place sounds interesting. And I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon enough.”

  “We do seem to keep colliding, Lieutenant.”

  But then he gives me a sad look, chews at his lip like he’s reluctant to tell me something, something he needs to.

  “I’m sorry I talked you into surrendering to UNMAC,” he says the unexpected. “It… It was a mistake.”

  “We were short on choices, Colonel,” I insist. “And my people are alive because of it.”

  He just keeps giving me the regret face. He’s definitely not telling me something.

  “Something you should know, Lieutenant,” Dee speaks for him. “While you were deployed running recon, Earthside Command ordered the ‘securing’ of your remaining colony sites at Industry and Pioneer, assuming they could still be Chang assets. When the holdouts responded with gunfire, Colonel Jackson used missiles, hit them from range. He left very little standing, and used enough ordnance—bunker busters—to reach down to your tunnels, trying to force a surrender. Casualty estimates are unknown.”

  My sword is quiet. The one time I don’t want my sword to be quiet…

  “They’ve kept it quiet,” Dee continues, “kept your people on-base in the dark.”

  I see red, and it has nothing to do with my sword. I’m shaking, all helpless rage. I see it in Ram’s eyes too. For all his abilities… For all our abilities…

  I could go back, hike all the way back to Industry right now, but I know they’d never accept me or any help I offered. As far as they’re concerned, I’m traitor and deserter. (Like Ram is in the eyes of Upworld Command.)

  I look at my new “Normal” friends. And Terina.

  “You still looking to unite Mars against these fucks?” I ask Ram, my teeth clenched tight together. He nods. “Then I’m going to Katar,” I decide. “First Asmodeus. Then we deal with Upworld. All of us. This is our planet.”

  He nods, then taps his finger to his head.

  “You know how to reach me.”

  “Just don’t be down some hole when I do.”

  We exchange salutes, and I go stand with my new “team”. They do seem happy to have me.

  “Captain Bly?” I call to him. He’s wandered off a bit, gazing back across where the Lake used to be like he can still see it. He turns to me lazily, still lost in being able to feel, smell. “What about you? You want to come with?”

  “I’m sure we’ll meet again, Lieutenant,” he tells me, “but I still have my own mission, and that’s in the other direction, at least to start.”

  “I don’t think we have anything better pressing, Captain,” Ram offers.

  “You mean besides helping the Pax recover their lost territory, brokering peace with the Forge kids and taking on an endless army of bots and borgs so we can put Asmodeus and Fohat up on a couple of stakes until we can find a way to end them permanently without proper technology?” Bel lists, exasperating himself.

  “I certainly wouldn’t miss that last part,” Bly accepts with a wicked grin. “Long stakes, you say? Inserted where, if I may ask?”

  Lux looks like she/he might actually jump for joy. (Azazel goes full eye-roll.)

  “Lieutenant…” Erickson calls to me as our groups prepare to seperate.

  “Jak,” I correct him. “Call me Jak.”

  “I… I just wanted to say thank you. We got ourselves into quite a mess. You comported yourself well.”

  “Is that an ETE thing?” I rib him. “Talking like you’re out of some dry-ass old-lit story?”

  “My brother’s thing,” Elias answers while Erickson tries to formulate a snappy reply. “My thing is more egotistical asshole.”

  “You’re working on it, though,” I give him.

  “Like the pirate said: I’m sure we’ll meet again. Jak.”

  Erickson decides it’s better to shut up, and offers his hand. I make him hug me instead. Then Elias.

  Ram makes one of his formal pledges to Terina. Then we say our final goodbyes and good-lucks and head southeast, while they start heading west.

  As we walk away from each other, I’m trying to remember some old saying about endings and beginnings, but all that keeps popping into my head is Yod’s story about a man made of salt.

  Epilogues: Endings and Beginnings

  Jonathan Drake:

  Lieutenant Straker continues to reassure us that there’s no looming threat of bot attack, so we keep a good pace across the narrow valley to the Spine. I find I’m grateful for her decision to join us, and not just because we’ve lost the company of Erickson and Azrael, though—practically and tactically—that is a big part of it. Talents like hers are certainly precious, given our situation. But she has a good heart, and is impressively brave in ways that have nothing to do with those new abilities.

  I do miss Erickson. His eagerness and enthusiasm, even his clumsiness—that apparently gone now, thanks to whatever’s been done to him. In the last days he’s grown into a leader, into the warrior he wanted so badly to be. I’d like to think that had nothing to do with whatever’s been done to him, that it was all just there, in him, all the time, waiting for its time.

  And Azrael: despite learning that he’s some kind of machine, I enjoyed his company as much as I valued his skills. (Is it strange to be fond of a machine, a programmed thing, as if it’s alive? Colonel Ram seemed to be close friends with him, even knowing what he was from the beginning.) (Does his being a machine make him really less alive than us? He feels like he has a soul—is that illusion, wishful thinking? Are our souls any more real?)

  I’m getting maudlin. There’s been too much death—I still don’t know the full count of our losses (only one: my step-mother Fatima, who raised me as her own after the loss of her own son). But I’ll be facing that tally soon enough. I catch my feet slowing when I think about it. I don’t want to face it. I can’t imagine what it’s like for my father.

  He marches at our head, Terina and I behind him (the Ghaddar has scouted ahead, while Rashid brings up the rear, Murphy and Straker in the center of our line). He’s kept the silence since we divided our companies. His limp is gone, his leg and arm wounds healed along with his damaged hands. By Chang.

  I look at my own hands, barely see any scarring, even though the flesh had been burned and torn away. Nor do I feel anything unusual inside of me. Tessarius Regin told us the last man to sever himself from that sword died of something left in him. I feel fine. Better: even my bruised collar bone seems healed.

  Could Chang always heal others? Or is this some new gift, given by Yod?

  I try to make sense of his apparent transformation (over all the other wonders and terrors we’ve seen): Chang is a villain, a true monster, the remorseless (or so I imagined) killer of many thousands. Now he’s a healer. A helper. Humble. And visibly crushed by the guilt of what he’s done, possibly for all of his eternal life, even though he knows that his very mind was altered to make him do it all.

  Or was it? That’s what I can’t be sure of. If my memories were changed in some extreme way, would it so fundamentally change who I am, or would I still act true to myself, no matter
what? Is that why Chang continues to blame himself for everything he’d been manipulated into doing, because he did it, willingly, and whatever drove him to it is poor excuse?

  I’ve seen men change. Bad things happen. Trauma. Loss. Desperation. I even question what’s changed in me. I still remember my parents, seeing them die. I was terrified at first, but then rage took me, and then I didn’t even care that those monsters were going to kill me next. I remember that moment, that sensation, over all the rest of the horror. All I wanted in was to kill them. And not just the two who killed my parents and tried to rape my mother. All of them. And I think if I had the opportunity, the power to do so, I might well have killed every single Zodangan, including their children, so they could never harm anyone ever again.

  And if I could, if I did, I can’t imagine how I could live with myself. (It’s no small irony that I consider Captain Bly a friend, a hero.)

  That power, right now, is in the hands of a select few. It was almost in my hands. I have to remember one very important thing: I didn’t want it. I was willing to have Bly cut off my arm not to have it.

  Yod called Chang a brave man. But he also said Chang had agreed to his role of genocidal monster. Assuming he had free will.

  Do any of us, if Yod can simply change our minds, literally? And even if he doesn’t, he still has what seems like full control. He led all of us into a trap, used us so he could correct one of his mistakes. (Assuming it was a mistake. The immortals don’t seem to think so, knowing Yod better. Was it a test of our character, our choices? Or just the whim of a thing that thinks it’s God?)

  I can’t begin to understand what I’ve seen and heard, but somehow I feel like I should forgive Chang, even though I can’t imagine it ever being possible.

  I realize Terina has been walking closer to me than she needs to. And she should be the one walking at our point—she knows the land and where she left our people, after all. She doesn’t speak to me, but I catch her looking at me (though she immediately looks away when I do, every time). And the way she cried when she thought I was… This gives me a rush, and I start thinking of possibilities, both wonderful and dangerous. (Does she feel something for me? Or is it just my imagination, my own hope?) I feel a thrill, giddy and anxious at the same time, so much so that I have to question whether the sword (or Chang or Yod) did leave something in me, change something.