A storm of metal answers me from all directions. I’m pelted with throwing knives, rebar spears, hatchets. I impress myself by managing to swat or dodge them all.
And so I earn my audience with Two Gun.
I’ve seen him before, on Link feed: Thin, ragged as his fellows, but proudly wearing a black and gray Light-Armor colony security jacket. He has a breather mask over his rusty beard, and a beat up old outback hat capping his mop of ginger hair. His face is so lean as to be skull-like. He stands over me, up on top of his hill, his hands wavering over his twin hip-slung revolvers.
“Draw,” he dares, like a bad western.
“No.”
He does. Just one gun. (I guess I don’t deserve two.) In just a few tenths of a second. Fires. Right at my face. I catch the bullet in my fist. Show it to him. (It stung, and my hand is numb, but it was worth it.) Let him watch it melt into my glove.
“I’m not going to hurt you. And you’re not going to hurt me.”
He seems to be appraising me like I’m only unexpectedly interesting, or at least he’s doing a decent job of bluffing through his shock. But he doesn’t fire again. Or back up. He drops his gun back in its holster.
Another figure steps up beside him. Female. Same ruddy hair. Younger. Also wearing a colony L-A jacket. Her entire body is bristling with knives.
“Mak the Knife?” I make the connection. This seems to surprise her. Two Gun chuckles.
And I realize I’m being distracted.
Behind me, in near-absolute silence (and only my new ears would have heard), has stepped another wild thing. She waits for me to turn, to face her. Her locked hair is even more flame-red and thick than Mak’s and Two Gun’s. She has bone beads in her hair, a cherub-round face, big blue eyes, freckles. I doubt she’s much more than a teenager. She’s wearing scraps of handmade armor over red leather-looking material I recognize as being cut from an old sealsuit. Her left arm sports a heavy guard studded with short jagged blades. Her right hand is sheathed in metal, with twin knives welded to protrude from her fist. She moves smoothly, sizing me up like a predator. I’ve seen her before. Killing one of my men.
“Fera,” Two Gun calls over me. “Is he pretty?”
“Pretty pretty,” Fera sings back. She grins and licks her teeth
“It’s the hair,” I discount.
“I want him,” Fera insists. I’m still not sure if she’s looking to kill or mate.
“Best draw now, Pretty Pretty,” Two Gun warns me.
“No,” I repeat. “And she’s a little young for me.”
This actually seems to make her angry. She starts circling me in the small space. She moves with smooth grace, like Sakina, only lower to the ground, more feral. (Is that what her name means?) My turn to try to look unimpressed. I sense the rest of them close in the green all around us, just watching. And then they start chanting.
“Fera Girl! Fera Girl! Fera Girl!”
“You can’t hurt me,” I warn her evenly.
“Fera’s hurt Eternals before, Pretty,” Two Gun warns back. “Even stripped naked by their magic.”
And to prove it, Fera draws an ETE Rod from inside of her cloak, tosses it on the ground between us.
“I’m not an Eternal.”
“Not for long,” Two Gun taunts.
“No. I’m worse.”
Her grin curls up into a snarl and she lunges—just not straight at me. She zig-zags, fakes. And she is fast. She crosses the space between us in less than a second, starts slashing with her blade arm quick enough that I hear it whistle. But I stay just out of her reach. Then I make it worse by smiling at her.
She leaps, springs over me, tries to score me from above, behind, but I twist and dance with her. The best she manages to do is tag my surcoat. But then she springs back hard on the landing, and I have to make contact, blocking her weaponized arms, then catching a kick. Somewhere in there, she manages to get through my guard, and her arm knives bite my left cheek. The chants turn to cheers at her small victory.
I have to get hold of her, restrain her, taking both her arms and holding her away from me, up off the ground, as she thrashes, kicks. I ride the blows, let her know she’s not doing any good.
“You bleed!” she grunts at me, struggling like a wild animal, refusing to accept.
“I heal,” I tell her. “And I’m stronger and faster than you.”
She throws both her legs up through my restraining arms, wraps them around my neck, tries to wrench my head off, squeezes with everything she’s got. Tries to get her arms free. Her freckled face is bright red from the effort, her teeth grinding. I’m still trying to patient, careful. She tries throwing her weight from side to side to take me off balance, but I don’t budge. She could be wrestling a statue.
“STOP!!!” Two Gun shouts over the chanting, silencing it, silencing everything. But he’s not talking about the fight (and Fera is still hanging around my neck, but she’s frozen, alert).
“Hunter-Killers!” Mak announces, filling her hands with knives. Two Gun has also drawn his weapons, but doesn’t aim at me. His eyes scan the rafters of the broken dome, sweep the perimeter through the green. Then he takes a shot at something off to his right. Mak has run. He scrambles after her, and a bullet smacks the hill where he stood, shattering an old skull. The crack that echoes after sounds like a pistol.
More follow, and I hear rounds whistle through the green, smack on metal. But it’s not battle, the fire is slow, controlled, careful. Like a sniper. Or a hunter. But the bullets are coming from multiple angles, all around us. Fera is struggling again, but now she’s trying to push away from me.
“Leggo!!” she’s shouting at me.
I see the bullet coming. Right at the back of her head.
I jerk her out of the way, but I’m too planted, too locked with her, I can’t…
Owww…
I’m looking up at the sky through the broken dome. My head feels like someone took a bat made of lightning to my skull. I’m on my back. Fera is looking down at me, crouched low, my blood sprayed on her face. Then she scrambles away. A bullet cuts right over her back.
I can feel my forehead shoving the bullet that hit me back up through my skin even as it starts the process of absorbing the copper and steel core. For some reason I decide it would be a good idea to stop the process, keep the wound open, lay here and play dead. I go limp, lock my eyes open so I can still see, and stop bothering to breathe. I force more blood out through the wound to be convincing, feel it ooze back into my hair.
The shooting continues sporadically for another few minutes. The throng of wild people has well scattered (but I pick up at least two cooling bodies laying in the green).
I count off three more minutes before I hear the sounds of cautious boots.
Three figures wearing black and gray colony security L-As weave out of the brush, keeping vigilant for any remaining locals. Their uniforms look old but in good repair, like the PK; and like the PK, they’re groomed military neat. Two males, one female, all probably in their twenties, from what I can see under goggles and breather masks. They all have the same big stainless revolver, out and ready. Their belts have multiple speed loader pouches and a sizeable survival knife.
“Check him,” one of the males whispers. The female starts to kneel over me, when the one giving the orders tells her to stop, get out of the way. Then he aims his gun and shoots me in the he…
“…did you do that?”
…ad again.
The other male is leaning over me now, checking my pulse, my eyes that still stare dead upwards. My left cheekbone is stabbing on fire. I can feel my teeth resetting themselves. I stop the repair process again before it becomes surface-visible.
“Making sure,” I hear the first male, the one that shot me. “Something’s not right. He walked in here alone. Fought the animals off. Alone. Including that bitch Fera. And he didn’t draw his weapons.”
“Never seen a gun like this,” the female mutters, sounding awestruck
. She’s taken my weapons. “Nice sword…”
“We’ll divvy later,” the first male assures.
“No,” the second corrects. “We need to take him and his things inside. Gardener needs to see this.”
“We need to get out of here,” the female insists. “Before they regroup.”
“I ran inventory,” the second won’t budge. “His DNA is on file. But Gardener says this is Colonel Michael Ram. UNMAC. He’s supposed to be dead, fifty years ago in the Bang.”
“The Colonel Ram?” the female seems to recognize, getting herself a closer look at my face.
“Are the ETE cloning now?” the first male wonders.
“We need to know, given what we’ve seen in the skies,” second keeps pushing.
“Fine,” the first gives in, but it sounds like he’s just gotten orders from someone else. I pick up a Link signal, but it’s encrypted beyond what I can easily read. “Gardener agrees with you.”
“Quickly…” the female urges as they move in to pick me up.
“You owe me pick of your Protecteds, Murphy,” the first grumbles as they lift. “Thanks to you, there’s no time for trophies.”
“Just doing my job.” Murphy—the second male—doesn’t sound like he accepts the debt.
I get carried quickly through the green.
I lose track of where I am (still more than a little bell-rung from getting shot in the head twice). But we come to a heavy hatch, its metal scarred like tools were put to hacking at it, but the wounds are rusted old.
They get it open easily enough, get me in. The female is covering our rear. She’s about to close the hatch behind us when she suddenly staggers back, goes down.
“Hammond!” Murphy shouts.
I get dropped and the hatch gets slammed shut. I can see the female struggling with something stuck in her upper right chest.
“Knife!” the first identifies. “This is P-6! I need Medical. H-8 took a knife. Right lung.” I see Murphy put pressure on Hammond’s wound.
“Now you owe her, too,” first grumbles at him. “This corpse better be worth more than fertilizer.”
I can hear Hammond sucking air, struggling as they try to tend to her. I’m temporarily forgotten.
Ten seconds later, it gets crowded in the airlock as medical personnel in white worksuits come in and start working on Hammond. The two males also get help in the form of more security uniforms. They pick me up and roughly drop me on a gurney like unusual baggage, making comments about how bizarre I look and “He can’t really be Colonel Ram.” “So what the hell is he?” “Should we be bringing him inside?” “Gardener wants to scan him.”
Murphy and his cohort finally strip off their masks and goggles. Murphy has dark cropped hair, a square jaw, strong lines, dark eyes. The other one, who I’ve so far only heard call himself P-6, has a rounder face, with a deep scar out of the right corner of his mouth. His eyes are cruel.
“Take the meat to Iso. Weapons too.” P-6 giving orders again. “Gardener’s waiting.”
I get wheeled out as a second gurney gets wheeled in for Hammond.
“…got a Legacy knifed…” I hear P-6 grousing somewhere behind me. “…look good on our records… I think I get Kara for this…”
“Sick, Palmer,” Murphy grumbles back. “Kara’s a child.”
“She’s grown up enough. Just because you haven’t…”
The second gurney gets wheeled past me in a rush, the medics trying to keep Hammond from bleeding out or succumbing to a punctured lung. At least they give their wounded higher priority than my dead ass, however interesting I may be.
Another hatchway, and it gets bright. And open.
I think I’m inside the second dome. It is intact.
But the original transparent roof panels are gone, the geodesic framework now supporting a patchwork of metal plates gummed with sealant. Additional support columns have been welded in place abstractly, probably holding up the heavier ceiling and all the dirt and rock that must be over top of it.
The situation begins to fall into place for me: The wild people live out in the shattered dome, making due with survival gear and plentiful food. Their hunters—apparently from another complete and separate society—live in whatever of Tranquility is buried beneath the slide slope.
Intimate neighbors—literally right next door to each other. Were the wild people from this colony? Or did they migrate in, drawn by the gardens? That might explain the “hunting”: The colony might not have enough guns and ammo to fight them off, but enough for the occasional show of force to maintain whatever understanding they have.
But I got the impression the killing is more sport than necessity—Palmer, at least, seemed more about trophies and records and compensation. (And “compensation” here sounds like it mean sex, and with someone who doesn’t get a say in the matter. Is this society as striated as the PK, where the warriors have far more value than the civilians?)
How long has this been going on?
Dome Two has its own green: neat gardens under bright warm artificial sunlight, beamed from up high in the structure. The facilities within, at least what little I can see and still play dead, are in near-pristine condition: The dome interior is ringed with terraced housing, labs, workshops, all well-maintained. And neat and clean, especially in contrast to conditions in the ruptured lower dome. It’s almost as impressive as an ETE hive.
The people we pass look fairly healthy, strong. Most wear plain colony work suits, shirtsleeves. They keep to UNMAC standards of grooming.
I get carried toward the center of the dome, to a towering ziggurat of a complex that reaches for the biosphere roof. I remember from pre-Apocalypse visits: these were administrative offices, operations rooms. Recycling. Food processing. And their medical facilities.
Everyone moves promptly out of the way of the black and gray suits wheeling me. What surprises me is their silence: no one speaks up to question what they’re carting. If anything, the apparent civilians look intimidated by the security uniforms, and either rush to go about their business or just get out of sight. There’s a great deal of fear here, for such a miracle of survival. Perhaps tyranny is the price of order.
Hatches open. I get rolled through a working medical facility—larger and in better condition to even the Melas Two facilities—and into a bright isolation room (which is also nicer than the last one I was shut up in). A pair of workers (Doctors? Or just technicians?) in bio suits promptly run scans, manually ensure I still have no vitals. They inspect my bullet wounds, my bizarre outfit, all with minimal chatter. It’s clear I’m more upsetting than just a curiosity, but it’s either discipline or something else that keeps them quiet. At least they don’t try to perform a surgical autopsy (not yet, anyway).
I’m not sure what they’ve done with my weapons, but I seem to feel them close by.
And through the scanning gear, I sense artificial intelligence. The colony still has its operating AI online.
Gardener. It’s not a person. Their machine wanted a look at me.
I dive in, see what I can find. The Med Scanners don’t have the encryptions their Links do, but I doubt they expected someone might hack them through their hospital gear. I’m in without resistance or alarms going off.
Most of what I find is just routine operations: running the atmosphere and water recyclers, managing the power plants, monitoring food production—much of that from waste recycle, supplemented by fresh produce I assume is acquired from indoor gardens or maybe raiding the lower dome. Further searching reveals a schedule of “harvesting” assignments, which suggests forays out (maybe another reason for the hunting—it covers gathering missions). Confirming this, I find detailed maps of the ruptured dome and the surrounding area, with plant life populations identified. The AI even predicts or monitors where the best bounties will be found on a seasonal rotation. The personnel dedicated to these runs are all designated “H-K”, followed by a letter/number designation, possibly like I’ve already heard: P-6. H-8.
There are perhaps fifty or sixty ID codes in the lists.
Digging further, I notice the AI seems obsessed with calculating resources and production against consumption, population. There are five hundred and twenty people in the two sealed underground domes. Each name is assigned a… value score?
Personnel files open for me, as if constantly active: Age. Sex. Job assignment. Skill sets. Health and fitness—medical history, specifically for injury and illness. These latter factors seem to count against their overall score, while positive numbers seem related to certain age ranges and value to the colony. And each has a rating for “consumption”. Conservation appears to be a powerful premium.
And H-K status. All H-Ks have exceptionally high scores—two to three times the average non-HK.
I expect H-K stands for “Hunter-Killer”, which is what I heard Mak shouting, but I find out it’s actually “Hammond-Keller”, the name of the security contractor that was providing protection for the colony project
I see that H-8—Hammond—is under “Status Review”, her scores all highlighted. I realize: she’s badly injured. The machine’s biggest concern seems to be prognosis: can she return to duty, how soon, and in what condition? She’s being worked on now in another part of the facility, so her numbers keep shifting.
I try to find out why these “values” are so important to the machine. And I find another set of stats. This one is a list of “Outcasts”. They currently number two hundred and eighty three. Two have been very recently eliminated. This has had a slight positive effect on resource estimates. Food. Incoming water and fuel (it looks like the ETE feed lines are still intact, or have been repaired since the Bang).
The hunting is justified to reduce the competition, the strain on resources. It’s all very calculated. H-K parties are assigned kill quotas. Highs scores here increase the H-K’s value. Only a few H-Ks are on “probationary status” for not meeting their quotas. (Hammond is one of these, but she also has a “protection” flag as a “Legacy”. What this means isn’t elaborated, but I remember Palmer calling Hammond a Legacy— she may be a descendant of the original contractors, afforded traditional status despite being probationary.)
The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are Page 8