“I… I need to get back… I…”
“No…” Sakina tries to soothe, caressing my brow. She’s taken her mask off. How is she breathing? I realize I don’t have my mask either. How am I breathing? Is the cave sealed? Where are we?
“You’re not going anywhere like this,” Hawk Face is more urgent (probably because I’m dying).
I keep trying to say I need to go, go back, but all I can do is cough. And almost pass out again from the lightning-bolt searing pain where my liver should be. (Whatever’s in me feels like it goes as the way through.)
At least I’m not vomiting blood anymore.
“No talking. You just need to answer one question. Otherwise, shut up.”
The light fades, letting me see: the outfit is definitely Egyptian, though a lot more Vegas than authentic: Layered gold plate armor over a pure white body suit, ornate Egyptian collar, helmet shaped like a stylized hawk’s head—engraved feathers and all—with a “sun disk” on top. Even toned down, light is blazing out of the eyes, the mouth, the disk—I can’t look straight at it.
“Chang was telling you the truth,” the light tells me. And the voice is starting to sound female, more female, like the helmet is distorting it (or was distorting it). More familiar now, but I still can’t place it. “The technology that started here changed us. First they targeted disease. Then aging. Then they started modifying us. Military first. That’s how you and I got jumped in. And your old girlfriend—you talked her into it. Then it went to the rich, those that could afford it. Soon enough there was product for anyone who wanted it.”
“Matthew…?” I need to know.
“No. He opted out. Didn’t want the whole immortality thing. It caused a schism between you. He came to Mars instead of you. Actually married the Eco leader after he made peace with them. Died at ninety-something, still cantankerous as ever, but happy. You missed his funeral. Now shut up.
“We made ourselves stronger, faster, smarter, prettier; wired in to our world, all the gadgets on board. And invincible. We could heal from anything, even being blown to bits, incinerated—as long as something viable was left. And that made us stupid. Thoughtless. Bored. We stopped caring what we did, what happened to our world. Most of us just wanted to be amused. It was all too much, too fast. We weren’t ready. We didn’t deserve it. We thought we were gods. We became monsters.
“A few of us—too few—tried to do something about it, get us a moral compass. Chang was a radical. He wanted to take it all away from us, no choice, and didn’t care about the risk—millions, maybe billions, would have died without their mods. That’s why he looks like he does: his first attempt at a weapon to strip us of all of our modifications went wrong, almost killed him for real, and he wound up like that somehow. And then he got his hands on something new: technology to observe the past using the properties of certain kinds of sub-atomic particles. He figured out how to change the past by ‘seeding’ what he needed backwards in time on a nano-scale. It was crazy. It should have been impossible to change the past. But he did it. And here we are.”
I start to ask the obvious question, but he (she?) shushes me, anticipates:
“We were on the verge of creating something, something new, something better. There was a project… You were skeptical, just like I was, until you met Him. And He knew what Chang was planning. He couldn’t stop Chang—He wasn’t able to, not yet—but He was able to splice into what Chang was sending back, add to it. Send something—some of us—to stop Chang. It had to be done all at once, one shot, to avoid the paradox. But just like Chang’s seeds didn’t grow as expected, neither did ours. We were too late. Most of us haven’t even seeded yet—our seeds couldn’t access the raw materials. So he’s done his damage, gotten ahead of us… I have no idea what happened to our world, our time…”
I’m coughing again. Now the thing in my gut feels like a thousand barbs, a cactus of knives growing inside me. The cave spins. And even with all the light, I can barely see her. It’s getting really cold, like I’m in icewater.
“This is yours,” the light says, and she holds something where she hopes I can see it. It starts flat, folds open in both directions, grows… horns?
I remember this—she showed me this before—after Matthew died.
“I know. It’s ugly as hell. But you need to put it on.”
Ram’s skull. It’s funny. Tacky. Sick. Dumb joke.
The horns… look like they’re moving…
“You need to be what you were. If you want to stop this, stop Chang, save your friends, put any of this right, you need to be what you were. The seed of what you were is here. So far it’s only managed to rebuild this stupid ugly helmet. But if it can splice into you… It’s already matched to your DNA. It will work just like your original modifications. Heal you. Remake you. You’ll get everything back, everything you were in my time…”
I feel Sakina’s hands leave my face, feel her get up.
“Be good, little girl,” the light warns her. “I’m trying to save him. I’m one of the ‘good’ guys. And I’m an old friend—I’ve known him a hell of a lot longer than you have.”
I try to ask, can’t, but she anticipates. Takes off her helmet. The light fades, but I can see… Blonde hair, blue eyes, that smile I knew so well…
Star?
“Yes. It’s me. Glad to know some things are still intact in this timeline. Sorry about the silly outfit. I’m kind of undercover—long story. Just don’t tell Chang who I am.”
Star. Astarte. Astaroth. Assassin. Trained by a covert prototype of the program that trained me. Worked against me protecting a conspiracy manipulating terror attacks, but turned when she realized what she was a part of. Unfortunately, some of the things she’d done were unforgivable. I helped hide her, made her an asset. And then much more than that.
She looks no different. Younger. I haven’t seen her in so long… I try to reach out, touch her, but I’m too weak, can’t move.
“Stay with me, my love,” she says gently but urgently. “You need to say ‘yes.’ You need to let me put this helmet on you. It’s better if you say ‘yes.’”
I realize I’m shaking my head. I don’t know why I’m shaking my head.
“You’ll still be you,” she tries reassuring. “You might have some different memories—the regeneration tech rebuilds damaged brains, personalities, memories, but it doesn’t erase existing memory—it’s a safety if there’s head trauma between updates. You’ll be you and the other you. And you’ll be able to fight, to stop this. Please. You aren’t supposed to die. Don’t make me find another body and try to write you over it—that you doesn’t know this world, these people, doesn’t have friends here, and won’t be this you. This you will be dead. And I don’t want to lose you, not in any version…”
Spinning away. Thinking about Lisa. Sakina. Paul. Earth.
Earth. What will Earth do if I…
What…
Where did the light go? I…
…I…
“…losing him. I need to do this right now…”
Ram’s skull. Coming at me. Dreaming. But I feel it…
“…be mad at me later…”
Dark. It’s…
…covering me… stabbing… stabbing into me…
Dark.
Light.
Light…
Epilogue: Cenotaph
22 January 2117.
From the Personal Log of Colonel Lisa Ava, Acting Commander of UNMAC Ground Forces:
We held the ceremonies at sunrise.
Jill Metzger. Toni Weiss. Paul Li. Ninety-eight others—our people, Nomads, Knights, even Shinkyo—who died while I wasn’t here, while I was following Colonel Ram’s last order: maintaining a command post out of the line of fire, keeping an uplink to Earthside, waiting for the worst to be over (or to be ready to take over, if the worst happened).
And that was the last thing he did: kept me safe, if I wanted to be or not.
I don’t have the heart to change his
status, not yet. Colonel Mike Ram is still just MIA (and it’s not the first time). But Juan Rios, still recovering from the leg wound he got leading the boarding assault on Chang’s flagship, saw him gravely injured (run through with a goddamn sword, wielded by a superhuman monstrosity). Juan said the pool of blood left on the deck alone leaves little doubt (unless whatever that was that carried him off had means and desire to perform some major surgery).
I suppose it’s a good sign that his “bodyguard” hasn’t returned. Or maybe she just has no reason to, nothing else to tie her here if Michael is…
It’s been five days. Five too-long days.
We’ve done the cleanup: buried the dead, patched the injured, fixed the base as best we could. The Knights and the Nomads came in force to help, even after all they’d sacrificed themselves. And the ETE, of course. Even Hatsumi Sakura called to pay her respects, to officially grieve a fallen warrior.
And I suppose that’s Michael’s best legacy: We have friends here, friends willing to shed blood for us (and not just because we can give them food and supplies).
But Chang is still out there. We hurt his ship, broke his big gun (though the one shot he got off hurt us bad). Sent him limping away when we pulled most of his teeth—I guess he wasn’t willing to waste everything he’d put into building it. He fought off our boarders, turned and headed back into Coprates while a second wave of drones kept the ETE too busy to pursue him. Then he blew up a storm to cover him, hacked into the ETE atmosphere net and upped the output to mask his EMR signature until he could hide himself somewhere. But he lost a lot of people, assuming that means anything to him. We collected another hundred and fifteen bodies—from the downed airships and the fight on the big thing’s deck—and nineteen wounded left behind.
Earthside is calling it a “stunning victory,” “a testament to the human spirit” and a lot of other things people who weren’t here might call a fucking slaughter. All we bought ourselves, and way too expensively, was another reprieve. Chang will fix his flying fortress and his base-killing gun and come back, probably harder.
The one possible consolation: when Chang abandoned Zodanga, he lost his hidden aircraft factory, apparently putting everything he had into the one big ship, and that may be all he has left now. Unless he has another factory somewhere in Coprates. Or his ship is a factory—Zodanga was stripped of whatever manufacturing gear they had.
At the very least, he can probably make more Discs. And repair his rail gun. Hopefully he won’t be able to get it back online until we can get a better defense in place, or at least be able to take this fight to him. But we won’t have assets to go after the bastard until at least June. That means the ETE are our best hope, something Earthside is still loathe to admit.
What I do have is a new set of satellites overhead to keep looking for him, and to get us some of the recon we don’t have means to do, maybe find other survivors (preferably before Chang does). And a clear uplink that doesn’t rely on our Candor relay, letting us pull those assets back home.
And Colonel Markus Burns, calling himself Acting Planetary Commander even though he hasn’t set foot on planet, won’t even be in orbit for another two months. But he’s The Appointed Voice of UNMAC, at least until General Richards gets here in June. (Neither one of them sound particularly broken up by Colonel Ram’s assumed fate, despite all the official condolences.)
For now, all I can do is watch the screens. Keep everyone fed. Maintain the goodwill (especially with Earth getting closer to re-establishing a working presence here).
And hope Michael’s just going to show up, limp out of the desert (or get found by an ETE Guardian patrol), apologize like an idiot for getting dragged away from the fight, then resume pissing off his so-called superiors while he makes friends out of enemies.
With me.
I…
Stop the recording, MAI.
###
Map of Melas and Western Coprates
The God Mars continues in Book Three: The Devil You Are
About the Author:
Michael Rizzo is an artist, martial artist, collector (and frequent user) of fine weaponry, and has had a long, varied and brutal career in the mental health and social services battlefield. (He is locally regarded as the Darth Vader of social work.)
His fiction series include Grayman and The God Mars.
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
The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds Page 36