None of them had even reacted to her.
Pavo peered around the doorjamb, blinking at the marionette askew. She stood at the end of the corridor, back to him, head down, guns aimed at the floor, heat blur surrounding their transparent barrels. He stepped over the bodies, lugging the bomb.
“Sweet shit, girl. I thought you said you didn’t like killing. That’s more like the stories I hear.”
“I don’t like it. That doesn’t mean I’m not good at it.” Risa holstered her guns and shredded another door panel with a claw swipe. “Besides, they were soldiers.”
“How the hell did the Front afford a tí-zhèn?” He gawked.
“I’m not an assassin.” I hate killing, but if you call me that one more time, I’ll make an exception.
A patch of fire burst forth from dying electronics, wavering with a trace of acrid polymer smoke. The sight of it caused her father’s scream to replay in her memory. I don’t even know how long ago he died. How old am I? In her mind, she huddled in the dark as flames consumed the only family she had ever known.
“You okay?” Pavo nudged her. “You’re just standing there. The door’s open.”
Risa glanced at him. For an instant, she wore the face of a terrified eight-year-old. “I’m fine.”
He stooped to grab a dropped rifle. “If that’s fine, I’d hate to see you get angry.”
She shot him a momentary look and stormed past the doorway, heading down a narrow corridor with metal-grate flooring. A few inches below, five parallel runs of glowing fiber-optic cables flickered in a utility space. The ghostly image of a map hovered at the top-left corner of her vision, rotating to keep forward oriented to the top of the ‘screen.’ Her hardware made it almost impossible to get lost, even in a place she’d never been before. Despite her rapid stride down several corridors, Pavo kept up with a lackadaisical stroll.
However many years it had been, she had still failed to find any trace of the person responsible for ordering her father’s murder.
After a sharp right, Risa halted at a door marked with Cyrillic text. Her eyes provided the English annotation: Primary Lab. Pavo cringed as she raised her arm, but rather than call a spray of sparks with her claws, she rested her pale hand upon an emerald-green metal panel. Two bright lines passed below her touch, one vertical and one horizontal.
As Raziel said it would, the code lock accepted her handprint.
Long white tables laden with terminals and other scientific-looking equipment lined a massive room on the other side of the door. After forty meters, stairs led down to another space full of larger machines. At the farthest point, a huge white sphere stood in an alcove carved from the wall, shrouded in fog. Women and men in white coats froze where they stood, eyeing the pair with evident alarm. She stepped in, glancing left and right. A mixture of pleads came in German, Russian, and Spanish. Words appeared in a scrolling line along the bottom of her view: “Who are you?”, “What do you want?”, “How did you get in here?”, and so on.
She thought about yelling ‘everyone out,’ and translations populated her vision.
“Alle raus, schnell. Hier raus.” Risa tried to pronounce the words drawn upon her retina. “Vybirat’sya!”
To underline her point, she fired a laser blast into a random terminal. The workers dove to the ground.
Pavo shook his head. People looked up from the floor, motionless until he waved his rifle at the door and made an explosion sound. “You should get a language chip instead of whatever you got translating now.” He took a breath and yelled, “Wir können nicht zulassen, dass Sie die unschuldigen zu töten. Vse von!”
“Yeah, yeah. I should do a lot of things.” She jogged past rows of workstations, glancing at screens that showed medical charts, chemical diagrams, and human test subjects in tiny, white cells, rotting on their feet.
Some of the victims had skin sloughing off in sheets. One man watched his fingers liquefy, but fainted before the effect made it to the wrist. A screaming, nude woman went into convulsions as all of her skin split and sank to the ground like a wetsuit coming off. Seconds later, her muscles melted to burgundy liquid and she collapsed.
Risa recoiled and looked away as she passed the workstations. That’s why an angel wants me to kill people. She exhaled. Maybe some of them will escape. She jogged down six steps and navigated a grid of huge machine cabinets. Manufacturing equipment that produced nanobots. As much as she didn’t want to believe it, these people were making a bioweapon capable of liquefying targeted people, anything from one specific person to ‘twenty-eight-year-old males’ to indiscriminate. The ACC could eradicate everyone with the Marsborn gene tweak. Risa fumed.
Raziel had told her to connect a neuro-memory stick to the computer and wait at least forty seconds before setting off the bomb. Destroying this place won’t do much good if they have the data. She pulled a small, plastic fob from her belt and connected it to the last terminal by the nanobot fabricator.
“Need forty seconds,” said Risa.
Pavo tromped past her toward the tank. “No problem.”
Twitching silver hoses overhead connected each unit to the large white orb. Puffs of mist seeped from the occasional pinhole. She walked past the machinery and climbed a metal staircase to a catwalk ringing a spherical tank at least three times her height.
Even through thick steel, the odor of Cryomil stole her breath and blurred her vision. A half-inch layer of ice encased the thing. Touching it could freeze skin to shattering. Cheap bastards. Single-hulled tank. Foolish. Pavo set the duffel on the catwalk, pulling the cloth out of the way and opening the panel.
She looked back and forth from the bomb to the ice. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to mount it to the tank.”
Pavo’s usual unimpressed face had taken a vacation. He looked up at her with pure dread in his eyes. “We could put this at the door and it would still go. Cryomil’s a bit touchy. You’d make a great couple.”
Risa scowled.
“To be honest…” He poked a few buttons. “Having this damn thing within a quarter mile of a tank that big scares the hell out of me.”
Her anger evaporated as she backed down the stairs. “Yeah. Me too.”
“Okay, that’s it.” He jumped up. “Time to go.”
Risa hit her speedware and ran as fast as the wires could push her body. Out in the hall, she plowed into a mass of panic-stricken workers. No one paid any attention to her; she was nothing more than another body in a crowd fleeing for their lives. Grunts and shouts rose up behind her. She struggled to look, but caught a glimpse of a white lab coat for only a second before a man ran straight into her. Speedware couldn’t help without room to move. The strength of the crowd behind him, he swatted her little body to the floor. Pavo leapt on him, driving his fist into the man’s face. Blood and teeth went flying, and the scientist dropped as still as a corpse.
Risa sprang to her feet and grabbed on to random people, letting the current of the throng carry her forward. An eternity of jabbing elbows and grasping hands passed before a hard clap on the back dragged her free of the writhing mass. Pavo pulled her along for a few strides. To the right, the crowd amassed against the elevator doors, fistfights breaking out.
Those people… Risa didn’t have time to feel. That would come later. She got her legs under her and wriggled away from Pavo’s hand once they broke free of the panicking scientists. Only the two of them moved deeper into the facility, everyone else crammed into the single exit hallway. Risa ran ahead of Pavo, following the route back to the storage room and the salvation of a thick, nylon cord that thankfully still hung from the ceiling. She leapt the last six meters, wrapped herself around, and climbed. The rope drew taut as Pavo grabbed hold. Risa hauled herself up hand over hand until she got a grip on the hatch and pulled herself up into the space under the drop building.
The unconscious guard remained where she’d left him. She spat again, remembering the taste of blood as she crawled away. Yeah, so much for non-lethal
. Risa grabbed his arm and tried to drag him as Pavo emerged from the ground.
“What are you doing?” He slithered out onto his stomach. “We gotta get the hell out of here.”
“We can’t leave him.”
“Sure we can.” Pavo crawled three feet before stopping when she didn’t move. “Fine. Go, I got him.”
Risa scooted backwards, watching until Pavo seized the man by his armored collar and hauled him along. She sprinted back up the trail, eager to get the protection of a ledge between her and the ticking bomb.
Pavo threw the guard to the ground by the prowler’s tire as she crouched at the edge. Flat on her belly, Risa waited. Numbers ticked down in the bottom right corner of her vision. Breaths gasped from her lungs, kicking up puffs of red Martian dust. She stared along their footprint trail at the crowd of panic-stricken lemmings stampeding out of the drop pod. Shouts of desperation echoed in her memory. People who had worked together for who knows how long had bashed each other’s heads against the walls, fighting to get in the elevator ahead of everyone else. Some stragglers slowed, unsure of how far away they should be.
Thirty seconds.
Pavo wiped blood from his fist and tossed the rag. “You sure you want to watch?”
The cloth, crimson and white, fell in front of her. She cringed.
Twenty.
“We’re far enough here, right?”
“Probably.” He shrugged. “Maybe.”
She sprang into a squat. “You don’t know?”
Ten.
“I’ve never demoed that much Cryo before. Who the hell knows what it will do?”
Five.
Threads of burn raced down her muscles as she sprinted for the prowler. “Shi―”
Zero.
The rumble started as the toe of her right boot touched the ground, and the crimson soil pulled away. She windmilled her arms, caught in midair. A dome of dirt burst through the former scientific outpost, rising two hundred meters high. Shafts of brilliant blue light pierced the clods, as if an ascendant angel erupted from below. Drop buildings scattered skyward like toys. In her relative slow motion world, a visible concussion wave raced closer; she let herself go limp. Impact hurled her forward. She tucked into a ball and slammed into the ground, bouncing once before she slapped flat against the side of a nine-foot-tall tire. A curtain of dust roared around her.
Not far enough.
When the fury ceased, Risa tried to force herself upright. She clawed her way out from under a layer of dirt and rocks deep enough to be a shallow grave. Bits of burning clothing and ash snowed around her with the unmistakable fragrance of charred human flesh. She grabbed on to flanges of tread on the tire and dragged herself out into the open. After a few breaths, she staggered upright. Less than three meters from the prowler, the ground fell away into a massive conical void. Patches of blue flames dotted the hole wherever Cryomil soaked the ground.
She folded her arms and stared at a crater large enough to have eradicated the entire underground complex. It’s all gone… In the distance, a few workers picked themselves up. Maybe ten survivors out of fifty staggered around, smeared with dirt, and dazed.
What are we doing?
A distant clunk announced the arrival of one drop building back to the ground, more than a mile away. Twisted scraps of metal, body parts, and mechanical debris thudded, plopped, and clanked as far as she could see.
The crunch of a boot announced Pavo’s approach, but she couldn’t look away from the survivors.
“Nothing left of the place.” Pavo swatted at his coat. “I think we’re good.”
Risa’s gaze fell on a fragment of charred hand a few inches in front of her boot, settling upon a wedding band. “No… We’re not.”
umbness―a mask to protect her from the reality of a war fought from the shadows. In the darkness that clung to the ceiling of Primus City’s great square, Risa sat six stories above ground upon the deflector plate of an ancient air scrubber. This perch, the place she always came for answers, offered two things she could not find in the Martian Liberation Front safehouse: quiet and solitude.
Risa leaned her cheek against the warm plastisteel strut connecting the corner to a hydraulic actuator that hadn’t moved in decades. She dangled her legs over the side and gazed down at the mass of people. A large three-story column in the center of the courtyard sported dozens of holographic screens. One panel showed news of recent UCF gains in the war against the Allied Corporate Council. Two had cycled off their usual pablum of mindless entertainment in favor of adverts offering bright new futures on colony worlds. A large panel, the last one angled enough to see, relayed word of a disaster at a remote ACC facility. The UCF said the location had been a clandestine chemical weapon manufacturing plant. The ACC claimed it a scientific outpost containing two-dozen families. Both sides pointed at the Martian Liberation Front as the suspected cause of ninety-two deaths.
Sometimes masks break.
Risa hooked her boot heels on the rim, sliding back amid a tangle of wires and hoses to sob out her grief. Even if the upper reaches of the chamber hadn’t been pitch black, the air scrubber would have blocked her from the sight of the crowd. People died because of her bomb. She suffered a broken rib, dislocated shoulder, and a sprained wrist from the blast flinging her into the prowler. Her speedware added a healthy dose of full-body soreness as well, yet still she didn’t feel she’d been punished enough.
Her tears slowed, gliding over a developing smile as she thought of Pavo’s incessant whining when Eva had tended to his broken leg. He’d spent the entire ride back to Primus grumbling like a boy with a skinned knee, as if someone else had miscalculated the safe distance. She’d remained silent and stoic until they’d left the Liberation Front safehouse, deep in the subterranean maze below Primus, hidden in the old mine tunnels where rumors of unexplained noises kept away the curious. Perhaps she should have accepted Pavo’s invitation for a drink. Two people shouldering the burden of guilt would have made it easier to bear, but she couldn’t take the risk of going out in public, not with so many eyes searching for her.
The mask had remained intact until the solitude of a raven’s perch allowed her thoughts to chip it away. Sure, the ones who’d died had planned to visit incalculable suffering upon thousands of non-combatants. If she’d seen any one of those scientists administering the lethal agent to those helpless victims, she’d have thought nothing of driving her claws into their hearts… but something about a panicking crowd reduced to creatures of primal fear evoked sympathy. The images from the terminal haunted her with could-have-beens, but how many of the scientists had families? Raziel assured me there were no innocents there. The ACC news feed showed family portraits, claiming children had died. The same kids they show every time we blow something up. How does no one notice?
She crossed her arms over her knees and let her forehead rest against them. Of the people she killed, how many had been mothers and fathers? How many families have I broken? Could anyone argue these people deserved it for the horror they would have brought upon others?
Probably, but am I the person who should decide? She exhaled. No, I’m a weapon.
Risa curled tighter and closed her eyes, ballistic stealth armor smooth upon her cheeks as her face touched her leg. The presence of thick wires wavered like ribbon-spirits all around her, drifting in the hot, dry breeze. Their motion traced them in ghosting shades of grey, smears against the black.
Living in the dark, prudence demanded she never be blind.
You did what needed to be done.
Raziel’s voice sent electric tingles through her body―warmth, safety. She uncurled and gripped the strut with both hands. Her mood bolstered by his presence, she swallowed the last of her tears and trembled with excess energy.
They are lying, child. The corporate machine seeks to hide their tools of evil. Feel no pity for them. Suffer not the lives of those who would strip the flesh of the innocent to sate their own greed. Would you have preferred…
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Images of children filled her head, screaming, sick with disease, skin sliding off tiny, writhing bodies. She bit her knuckle almost to the point of bleeding.
“No, please stop. Don’t make me see that, Raziel.” Words left her lips in a breathless rasp. The awful visions drowned to blackness in her mind. “Why… did you choose me?”
Destiny is not a choice. You are an instrument of greater things. I cannot act in your world; you are my influence.
She shook, overwhelmed by the celestial energy pulsing within her limbs. Tears of elation rolled down her face. “What must I do?”
The battle for Mars takes many forms, but one thing remains constant―suffering.
Energy built within. She broke out in a sweat, fighting the urge to scream it off.
Threats exist to the innocent of Mars beyond the warring factions. Benton Mining operates a facility west of Cydonia, on the far arch of the Mare Acidalium.
“In the Acidalian Sea?” She pressed her back to the wall. “BMC has a large operation there, over a hundred tunnels. How do they threaten our brethren?”
Slaves. Free them.
“As you command, so shall I do.” Hands braced the metal at her sides. She bowed her head past her knee.
Risa?
“Yes?”
There is a woman among the prisoners, Mara Avoris. Please ensure you protect her.
“I understand.” She kept quiet for a few seconds. “Why is she special?”
A hazy image of a too-thin Marsborn boy of about ten years with long, wild hair faded into her vision. Tragic, soulful eyes stared into nowhere. Risa grunted.
Hand of Raziel (Daughter of Mars Book 1) Page 4