The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are

by Michael Rizzo

  A spear flies at him, but he deftly dodges it, sends back a burst of caseless rounds. I hear someone cry out, watch a heat-shape scurry away limping, then fall. He’s managed to access the suit’s heat imaging.

  That’s enough of that.

  I pull away from Fera, step out into the path. Get shot at. Show him how easily I can block bullets. Then dodge a grenade.

  “I want my gun back!” he shouts at me like a child.

  “I have your gun!” Murphy shouts back, stepping into view. But he doesn’t have the weapon un-holstered. (But then Two Gun steps up behind him, both of his own revolvers pointed steadily at Palmer.) “Let me guess: You couldn’t petition Hammond-8’s gun, so you got creative, took one of the dead Unmaker’s suits from Secure Storage.”

  “I tried,” he confirms, sounding almost broken. “I even petitioned to have your gun, but it was voted heirloom. The whole service denied me. But this is better.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I tell him drolly, turning my rage into a more creative solution. I mimic MAI’s code, hack his imaging, shut down his enhancements. Then his O2 feed. I expect it’s beginning to get stuffy in that helmet. He raises his weapon to send another grenade at us, but it won’t function. So I explain:

  “The suit and the weapon are AI controlled. You can use them on manual, but an AI with access can override your commands. Emergency protocols. Or I can.”

  Since he’s not a UNMAC trooper, he doesn’t know how to switch back to manual. He struggles with the ICW, trying to find a way to make it work. Then he has to rip off his helmet just so he can breathe and see.

  I’m enjoying his panic when Fera decides he needs to be more finally neutralized, flies up the hill in a blur of crimson, slams Palmer with her whole body, takes him off his feet and throws him head-first down the hill. She jumps down on his chest before he can get off his back, aims her blades for his now-unprotected face.

  “No!” I stop her as Murphy runs forward. The moment gets frozen: Palmer turtled in the stolen suit, Fera inches from ending him, Murphy obligated to stop her…

  “He’s still my partner,” Murphy tries. “He…”

  A scream of wind interrupts us. The rafters of the dome get slammed by a sudden storm. The sky goes dark and the air gets hazy with dust.

  I can feel the air around us charging, even before an artificial lightning bolt arcs into one of the dome ribs. There’s a deafening hum building up.

  Fera has scurried off Palmer, though he hasn’t managed to get up yet.

  “Stay!” I try telling her (and everyone else), head for the gateway hatch.

  Outside, visibility has dropped to nothing—everything is a thick ochre cloud. I consider putting my helmet on, but I want him to see me, I step out where he can see me.

  As quickly as it hit, the blow dies down, the dust slowly clearing. Revealing a shadow in the sky. Then a shape. A cross built of scavenged colony scrap, hundreds of meters long. Hovering low over the dome.

  I look at the open maw in the nose of the thing, looking for signs of damage from the Shinkyo Kamikaze attack. I see none. The railgun looks repaired.

  The big ship is alone, though: no Zodangan airship escorts—maybe that lesson has been learned. But the “wings” of the cross are hung with dozens of the new light 4-wing pod fighters.

  Fera, Murphy, Two Gun and Mak are behind me despite my warning. They pay for their curiosity when we all get scooped up by magnetic lift and carried up, up over the bow of the flying fortress (and probably intentionally, giving me a good look down the “barrel” of the railgun).

  After the impressive ride, we get set down on the forward deck, pretty much right where I got myself “killed” last time. Only this time, I don’t get kept waiting. There’s already a platoon of black uniforms in rank to greet us. And Chang, standing in the middle of them, perfect black silhouette, walking cartoon shadow.

  Faceless, he opens his arms as if to embrace me, but doesn’t advance. Starts laughing. Leaves us all hanging like that for too long.

  “I’m sorry…” he eventually gasps out an apology of sorts. “It’s… It’s good to see you again. Your old self. New self. Like that. I…” He seems as flummoxed for coherent words as he was the first time we met. “I really don’t know what to say. You present an impossible mystery, Destroyer. You can’t be here, not like this. But by all reason and science, neither can I. Seeing Ra was shock enough… My enemy has a sense of humor, and apparently more ability than even I feared…”

  Now he steps closer, as if examining me, appraising. He ignores my allies completely.

  “This is you,” he finally agrees. “Makes sense. But Ra? Ra?” Something about that amuses him. He asks me: “Why Ra?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit warily. “Why not Ra?”

  He laughs again.

  “You have your memories? You must have lost a few of the more trivial files. Ra. Ra!” he says it like I should be in on the joke. And I get vague images. Music. Wild performances. Special effects. Silly costumes.

  “Ra is a pop star!” he finally can’t wait for me to catch up. “A ridiculous attention whore! Fancies himself a serious artist? Models himself on a sun god? He has his worshipers, granted, but he’s… You really don’t remember this?”

  “Missing the trivia,” I deflect (though I am now playing memories of some of Ra’s more popular performance pieces—some of his compositions are catchy). Then admit, hoping he’ll be forthcoming: “Including who sent me. UNMAC thinks it was you. A trick.”

  I really am amusing him.

  “Now that’s a sense of humor,” he declares. “Ultimate irony: He sends a pop star. And you—that part makes sense. But you don’t know why or how or what… That is funny. You have to see how funny this is.”

  “Too many dead people,” I bring him down. “Tends to kill my sense of humor.”

  “Fine,” he accepts, sounding only mildly irritated. “So: Why are you here? I mean here here: this ruin specifically. Happy accident? Expecting me?”

  “Looking for you,” I lie with a partial truth. “You were headed east when we lost you.”

  “But it’s not we anymore, is it?” he criticizes, calculating. “I expect your old command is as scared of you as they are of me. So: is this the new army? A few mortal monkeys with pistols and knives? Best you could do in a pinch?”

  His disdain at least tells me he didn’t come looking for recruits. So

  “Why are you here?”

  “My people still need to eat,” he admits (though his use of the word “still” is ominous at best). “And as for me, I need to make sure nothing the old colony labs were working on has gone wrong. Engineering life… Stupid, dangerous pride. Man trying to play God…”

  “Isn’t that what we did?” I confront him.

  “See: You do remember. What we became. What I’m trying to stop from happening again. We did play God. We even started thinking of ourselves as gods. A whole world full of gods. Some of us even named ourselves after our myths. But we both know: ‘Demon’ is the better word for what we became. Demon. Devil. Petty. Selfish. Destructive. Sick. Even your wife—what was her name? Didn’t she join one of those Live Guro cults? Wasn’t that why you left her, let the marriage expire after only one contract cycle?”

  I feel pain. Simmering hate. I get flashes of memory: blood and horror, nauseating. I push it away. He’s trying to get to me. (He apparently is getting to Fera, who tenses to spring at my side. I put a gentle hand on her to reassure, keep her holding. The others are also waiting for whatever signal I may give, however confusing this whole show is.)

  “So now what?” he shifts when I don’t respond. “We can’t hurt each other. We should be on the same side. Or we could waste each other’s time.”

  He may be right, at least about not being able to permanently hurt him, and wasting time trying. So I decide to work around the problem. I reach out, pick up his command signal—his link to his ship—hack it. He’s a scientist. Brilliant. But my mods are milit
ary, intel. I get in.

  His ship creaks, starts to shift under us, tilts. I can hear metal complain as I turn his lift and thrust systems against each other.

  “Really?” he dismisses me. Tries to get control back. Fails. Decides “I guess we need a distraction.”

  “Oooh. Pretty hair…” I hear a familiar voice, however muffled through a helmet mask.

  I turn. Just as before, Bly has appeared behind me: Medieval armor, black surcoat, bug-skull helmet with silly dragon wings. Broadsword that gutted me.

  “I wouldn’t,” I warn him, not letting go of the ship. “Last time was Chang punishing me. This time he’s handing you to me to see what I’ve got. You’re expendable, just like all the rest of your people.”

  He doesn’t give ground, either doesn’t believe or doesn’t care.

  Just to add to the distraction, Chang’s troopers bring their guns up. I fully expect Chang would be smiling if he had a visible face.

  I feel Two Gun and Murphy get ready to draw. Mak fills her hands with knives. I start to warn them: “Keep low, I’ll…”

  But Fera springs forward, flies into Bly.

  “NO!!”

  I can’t reach her to stop her. She manages to block Bly’s sword, slams him across the faceplate and sinks her right-hand blades into his neck between visor and bevor, twists, digs. He barely staggers, grabs her by the hair and pulls. She doesn’t scream. She kicks. Slashes. Bly twists, spins, throws her free of him, follows with his blade. It catches her across the stomach. I watch it lay her open. She flies back. Hits the deck hard. Slides over the edge. Gone. There’s blood on the deck where she hit…

  I’m running at him when Two Gun draws and shoots him in the face—this barely fazes him—but I’m on him, drawing my own sword, slashing and hacking, a whirlwind. Cleaving his armor like wood. He manages to block my blade once, and it almost takes the sword out of his grip. I chop his blade—like I did the first time we met, like he did back to me the second—and it complains but doesn’t break. A second hit takes it out of his hands. But his armor is already repairing itself. I hit him in the back of the knee, where he has no plate—it doesn’t sever the limb, but I can feel things pop and snap and he goes down. I do similar damage to his arm, then aim for his neck…

  …and get slammed in the back. By darkness.

  “Must I do everything?”

  I saw Chang do this to Paul: He’s become fluid, his shadow form lashing out his arms like whips, tentacles. I cut the darkness. Actually seem to hurt it. But it just reforms. I shift the sword to my left hand, draw my gun, fire into the middle of him. The shell penetrates, explodes. The shockwave is enough to knock him back, make him expand almost to the point of coming apart, but he instantly reforms.

  I realize my remaining friends have started their own fight, trying to whittle down Chang’s soldiers while they’re distracted by this brawl of gods. Mak’s knives are flying. Two Gun and Murphy are shooting, moving—Two Gun is fast and surgical, but the anti-ETE rounds that Murphy is loaded with make his targets explode.

  Chang’s men go down in handfuls, falling, knocked over the side but there are too many. Those that can, fire back. Two Gun is smart enough to stay behind me, using Chang and I for a shield. I see Murphy slide across the deck under me just as Chang gets himself together enough to wrap his “arms” around me. Murphy’s thrown himself at Chang’s men, manages to scoop up a dropped PDW, sprays, still on his back. Tosses another weapon to Two Gun as his revolvers run empty. (Mak still seems to have plenty of knives.)

  Meanwhile, I’m grappling with a black-hole octopus. I can’t get another shot on Chang, so I send a few into his troops. The bullets seem to respond to my will, air-bursting just before impact to take out as many as possible. Chang wrenches my gun-arm down at the deck, holds it there. My sword-arm is also immobile in his grip. Now neither of us is going anywhere. So I get creative, twist and shift my weight back, pull him instead of push into him. It takes him partially off balance. I drop my pistol back in its rig. Then instead of trying to get free, I reach my empty hand into the darkness, shove it into him (it’s like tar and electricity). Reach out…

  The shadow convulses. Fights. Screams. I’m in him. Manipulating. Infecting. Hacking.

  I can hurt him.

  Then something unexpected: The shadow shivers, vibrates and dances like iron filings hammered by sound waves. And recedes. I see flashes of pale flesh as the shadow cloaking him (and it does seem to be cloaking him) fails in places. I see teasing glimpses of a man inside: frail, wiry, naked. Gaps in the darkness open and close as he struggles. What’s still black is still fluid, but what get’s exposed looks solid, ordinary. Flesh and bone.

  He’s screaming in panic as I finally get pieces of his face: smooth, mixed-race features, neither definitely male or female. And his eyes are different colors: One black, one pale blue…

  The ship drops and spins beneath us as he loses control, the deck tips. I see Mak go over the side, then Two Gun. The slopes of the Catena Rim are coming up fast. Chang is trying to crush me in his tentacles, hurt me back. One of his wings clips a ridge. The ship jerks. Jerks me off my feet.

  “Get off!!” Chang shouts, raging, restoring himself to full-shadow, losing all shape, and his whole mass hits me like a wave and I’m flying. He hits me again in midair and there’s nothing I can do about it. Three seconds later, I land on my back in rocks, start a small slide that takes me down. Down. I realize I’m heading down-slope toward the ruptured dome. I manage to stop myself before I fall through into the gardens.

  In the air above me, Chang slowly gets his ship back under control. Turns. Aims the muzzle of his railgun at the Lower Dome, at me.

  But he doesn’t fire.

  His ship starts to turn away, turn west. Move off.

  “We’ll do this again…” I hear him gasping in my head, sounding like he’s desperately trying to compose himself. “I’ve wasted enough time… More pressing business…”

  All I can do it watch him go.

  No. I can chase him. I don’t care if I have to run after his fucking ship. He is not getting away from me.

  “Colonel Ram!”

  It’s Murphy. Apparently he fell off too. Apparently we were close enough to the ground—to the rim slopes—not to make that fatal or crippling. His black uniform is rusty red from all the sand and dust. He has a ragged bloody wound in his left upper arm, but he seems to be ignoring it. He’s waving me over to where he is, pistol still in his hand. He’s running, sliding, scrambling downhill. I look where he’s headed. I see Two Gun, on his hands and knees in the rocks. And Mak, sitting next to him. Between them in the rock and sand is something else.

  No. Oh no.

  I’m up and running. Falling. Crawling. I see her before I get there. I see her face. I see…

  Two Gun is trying to put her guts back in. The fall knocked them out. It’s all a mess of bloody mud and gore. It’s sprayed up over her face. All over her. Her eyes are open. Her mouth is open.

  I fall down, fall to my knees. Put my hands on her face. Her heart. Her guts. I try to hack in, infect, heal. Stick my hands in her guts. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. She’s not tech, not metal. Whatever I can do to flesh isn’t enough. I can destroy. I can’t heal.

  I take her face in my bloody hands. Kiss her. Hold her. She’s already getting cold. All I smell is blood.

  Another one. I’ve killed another one.

  I’ve killed…

  “No.”

  I ease her head down, gently, gently. Brush her locks out of her face. I can’t touch her eyes to close them. I make myself stand.

  Chang is getting away. He’s left over a dozen of his men dead and dying on the sand, forgotten, abandoned, unimportant. His ship is sliding west along the rim. Heading for Melas. For Melas Two? Melas Three? Heading to bring more death to people I care about…

  “No.”

  Murphy and Two Gun and Mak are looking up at me, helpless, in shock, bloodied, hurt, angry…

&
nbsp; “No.”

  Chang isn’t getting away. I’m going to kill him. And Bly. And if I can’t kill them, I’ll do something much worse.

  I don’t say a word to my friends.

  I start running. Covered in Fera’s blood. But not for long: my body starts to absorb it. Resources.

  Chapter 8: The Devil You Know

  The ship stays well out of my reach, but it isn’t pulling significantly ahead of me. Either Chang’s toying with me, or something else is slowing him down. He’s just cruising the Divide. Idle. He said he had more pressing business. Or maybe that was just an excuse to get away from me—maybe I did hurt him, maybe he needs time to recover. (But he didn’t fire when he had his shot. Maybe he just wants the gardens intact.)

  I even try jumping, inspired by old comic books from my childhood, but even though I can clear a good fifty meters at a time between my modded strength and speed and the lower gravity, I find I lose momentum as soon as I’m airborne. I’m better off keeping traction, scrambling over rock, pushing my energy and resource levels to exhaustion.

  I spend hours doing this. I figure I cover thirty klicks. He’s at least half that far in front of me. But he’s still not increasing his lead.

  And now he’s slowing down.

  What is he doing?

  He’s still hell-and-gone from either UNMAC base. There’s no sign of an intercept flight, no Link chatter. We’re alone, in the middle of nowhere.

  I slow, use my eyes to get a better look. He’s turning, bow into the Divide. I’m thinking he might climb, hop the ridge, head for Melas Three. But then he actually starts to descend. There’s no dust blow to mask him.

  Is he looking for something?

  I zoom in as close as I can and still get resolution. There’s a figure on the slope, dressed in black, just standing there as the ship descends on him. Holding some kind of staff. Chang hovers close. Getting a look. Maybe having a conversation. Or a confrontation.

  “Do you think he’s figured it out yet?”

  A melodic voice comes from behind me. I turn.