The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are

by Michael Rizzo

  “Fought his way back to a hatch while most were focused on that thing in the sky. He’s lucky he was wearing the armor. But that ship proves what you were trying to tell us. I expect they’re pretty shaken up inside.”

  “You think they’ll go forward with the plan to blow this dome, burn the gardens?”

  “If they think it’ll keep Chang from coming back. Palmer will probably volunteer to plant the charges himself, just to get another shot at restoring his Score.”

  I have Murphy and Bel follow me up to Fera’s home, figuring it’s currently unoccupied. Both of them lose themselves for awhile in the remnants of her life, Bel mourning someone he didn’t know and Murphy steadily coming to accept the Cast as fellow humans.

  “Huh…” Murphy’s found a carved wooden box—a precious treasure from Earth, and heirloom of generations past. Opening it, he finds a necklace and bracelets, intricately woven out of fine wire, with artistic inclusions of old circuit boards and shell casings. I can see there’s old dried blood still stuck in the wire weave—memento of mourning, or a trophy? Then he pulls something different out of the box: It’s a remote micro-cam, a common supplement to operational Link gear. He turns it in his fingers, looks like he’s reading its markings. He freezes for an instant—I watch his eyes go wide—then drops the piece back in the box and closes it, puts it back where he found it without a word, acting as if trying to pretend he’s found nothing of interest.

  I decide to let it go for now. I go out myself to gather them something fresh to eat, needing to be back outside, even in the cold and dark (or especially in the cold and dark). When I bring myself to going back, Bel is working on Murphy’s wounds with a found old med kit.

  “Something else I haven’t done in awhile,” Bel admits as he cleans and stitches what looks like the result of a cluster-flechette round (and one easily capable of penetrating L-A grade armor). “Did you come up with a plan while you were out there?”

  “Too many fronts,” I complain. “We need to make sure this place doesn’t destroy itself. And I need to convince Earth not to do anything stupid. And we need to stop Chang.”

  “The Cast know about Gardener’s plan,” Murphy updates me. “They’ll be expecting the H-K to come out to plant charges. Gardener will anticipate this. So the H-K will come out in force, from all sides. Up to now, we’ve only had to thin the Cast population. I don’t know what would happen if we actually tried to exterminate them. I don’t think even you could stop it.”

  Bel looks at me with honest concern. He’s no fan of needless bloodshed.

  “We need help,” I conclude. Then complain: “But I don’t have time to go walking to find it.”

  “Could you fix any of those small flyers?” Murphy asks.

  “What small flyers?”

  “When Chang’s ship hit the slopes, it knocked loose several of his small craft,” he tells me what I failed to notice because I was too focused on Fera and my rage. “They’re pretty mangled.”

  It’s worth a hike in the dark. (I make Murphy stay inside since it’s already well below freezing.) Bel and I find the remains of nine light fighters, two of them almost promising, especially given parts from the others. But on closer inspection, the wing surfaces, control struts and canopies are damaged beyond air-worthiness.

  “So: How pretty do you want it?” Bel surprises me by offering.

  2 April, 2117:

  The finished product isn’t pretty, but it’s a beautiful thing.

  “I think it’s slicker like this,” Bel praises his own work. “That excuse for a cockpit was too cramped anyway.”

  Working through the night, dragging tools from the Lower Dome, we manage to have one operational something by morning. In the early light, we get a proper look at our labors: It still retains the basic design of Chang’s “kites”: Four short broad wings—two main, two tail—each connected to the main hull with an ingenious strut system that allows them to pivot at their center points for an insane level of maneuverability. (I’d even seen one lose a main wing, only to flop sideways and let the remaining one act like a parasail to keep flying.) Thrust is provided by a powerful electric fan supplemented by hydrox and solid fuel jets. What we couldn’t salvage was the cockpit canopy. Bel cut most of it away, leaving a barely-functioning windscreen—I’ll be riding more on the thing than in it. He also managed to double the lift surface of the main wings, making the thing more efficient.

  “You’ll probably need to wear that hideous helmet,” he reminds me as I’m already unfolding the ram’s skull. “Try not to completely terrify everyone you meet.”

  “You sure you’ll be okay staying here?” I ask again.

  “I’ll be fine. And these are your friends you’re going to see. I’m sure you’ll scare them enough all by yourself.”

  I see Murphy coming out to check on us, bundled in a parka. He looks impressed by what we made in the cold and dark.

  “Besides,” Bel adds, “someone needs to watch over these people until you get back.”

  “You’re going to make yourself one of these, aren’t you?” I tease him, getting settled in what passes for a pilot seat.

  “Mine will be prettier.”

  I put on my helmet, get a grimace from Bel.

  “What were you thinking?” he criticizes.

  “Yeah,” I agree. “And the hair.”

  “I like the hair. It’s like the cover art for one of those cheap old romance novels. All I need to do is get you to take your shirt off and stand in a breeze.” He demonstrates by striking a romance-fantasy pose: chest out, head back, hands on hips.

  I shake my head inside the big metal skull. The controls—Chang’s design or the Zodangans’—are pretty intuitive. I kick in the lift jets, just enough to get air to engage the main thrust. I get slammed back in my seat as the thing tries to fly out from beneath me, then struggle to get the feel of the extremely sensitive wings. Almost crash twice. Don’t. Take a semi-graceful circle of the Lower Dome, nothing fancy. Return Murphy’s wave.

  Go.

  The ETE Station Turquoise is northeast across the valley, but Station Green is closer: over the Catena Divide southwest, about a hundred and fifteen klicks. It’s also the way Chang seemed to be limping after Bel broke his precious mothership.

  Melas Three is that way as well—I’ll have to pass right by it. I doubt this cobbled machine is radar-invisible.

  I stay low, keep fast. But that also means I don’t get a good sentimental look at one of my old bases as I do my best to avoid it. I pick up some Link chatter: Jackson has a flight out checking the crater Bel made, confirming wreckage, but it’s clear it’s not enough. Chang is hurt, not down. I hear speculation the Shinkyo may have pulled something. Or the ETE. Or maybe Chang had some kind of accident with his terrifying technology.

  At least the mystery should keep Burns and Earthside Command occupied for awhile and away from Tranquility.

  I have to stop at a tapsite in the valley floor, refill my tanks. I land about twenty klicks northwest of the base, out of sight thanks to the rolling terrain. The Station is almost visible up on the valley rim—at the junction point of Melas and Coprates—at about 5600 meters elevation. It’s intimidating even from here, the billowing exhaust that rises from the massive quad-tower cluster rising up the cliffs to Datum, then flattening and spreading against the electrostatic atmosphere net. A volcano feeding a thunderhead.

  I pick up motion two klicks to the west as I take the time to get drinking water and replenish my onboard oxygen. I’m being watched. Probably by Mohamed Aziz’s Nomads. I stand up, let them see me, wonder what they’ll make of me. (I did just come from the general direction of a nuclear blast.)

  They stay put, try to stay invisible (and they would be, if my vision wasn’t so heavily modded). Let’s see what they think when they see where I go.

  I’ve gotten accustomed to the touchy flyer. I kick up, burn, get air. I could buzz my watchers, but decide to play aloof for now, ignore them. Conserve fuel.
>
  The engines have to increase output as I climb, the air getting thinner fast. And colder. Ice is glazing my wings. And my helmet. I have to burn some of my own reserves to keep warm.

  I figure I probably look too much like a Chang fighter to get anything like a warm reception, so I slow as I approach the Station’s pads, stand up in my harness, offer an open hand that I hope gets taken as a truce gesture. That my fragile flyer doesn’t get disintegrated out from under me I take as promising. But no one comes out to greet me as I come to a scraping short landing.

  I take off my helmet and fold it away despite the icy cold. They won’t recognize me as the “normal” they knew, but a human-looking face should be more reassuring than the metal ram’s skull. I climb off of my rigged ride and wait. Patiently.

  After a few minutes of staring at an unresponsive hatch, I feel the air around me charge, get warm. Then I hear the familiar hum of ETE lifters, turn in time to see one of their modified Guardian aircraft rising from somewhere down slope, rising over the pad, hovering with its nose pointed at me. Intimidating.

  We face off like that for awhile, then the upper hatch opens and a trio of sealsuits levitate out: One blue, one green, one red. They glide and set down warily semi-surrounding me, Rods and Spheres in hand. Ready for a fight. They remain anonymous behind their chrome masks, but the blue one has one of his Rods modified with pistol and vertical fore grips. I know the mod—I assume I know the man.

  “Paul?”

  The blue suit hesitates, but doesn’t lower his weaponized tool.

  “It’s me,” I try to convince. “Colonel Ram. I know this doesn’t…”

  He raises the “barrel” of his Rod gun to point straight at my face, steps up to me, reaches out his left hand and presses his gloved fingers to my cheek. I can feel what he’s doing on a cellular level. He withdraws his hand after a few seconds, takes a step back.

  “DNA confirms,” he tells the others. I feel the air around us get warmer and denser as they generate a shelter field. Then he raises his visor—it is Paul, but looking even more weathered and weary than the last time I saw him. I can only imagine what the last few months have been like for him and his people.

  “What are you?” he asks the obvious question.

  “Can we talk inside? I really need an audience with your Council. Please. I’m not a threat.”

  He digests it for a moment, but not alone: I can hear the signal chatter in his head, their internal link-ware.

  “Leave your weapons here,” he insists, still on alert for treachery.

  I’ve never been inside Green Station, but the structural layout is identical to Blue, where I spent quite a lot of time. It only varies when we get into the caverns cut into the Rim cliffs, since this has to conform to the geology, but still the architecture and technology is consistent. As is their concept of a “Council Chamber”: a big dark space, giving the illusion of being without walls or ceiling. Except now I can see in the dark, see the walls and rafters of what was probably a hangar for heavy construction equipment, see the holographic arrays that project their virtual gatherings.

  Paul and his still-helmeted fellows marched me here directly and without a word. We didn’t encounter another soul on the way—everyone was probably warned to stay clear. The fact that they’ve let me so deep into their facility is the only sign of any trust, unless they think I’m even more under control in their midst. (I remember the ingenious prison they engineered to contain their Shinkyo invaders, Hatsumi Sakura herself among them. I expect they’ve been considering how they could contain something like Chang or one of his hybrid monstrosities.)

  Then they do something uncharacteristic: They don’t keep me waiting. The room blazes as I’m semi-circle-surrounded by ten different colored sealsuits, all faceless. I expected Council Green to come in person as the local representative usually does, but they seem to want distance from me. Only Paul and his two Guardian partners are actually in the chamber with me.

  “Council Blue,” I greet the most familiar of them, then dare use his name to prove that familiarity: “Doctor Stilson.”

  “My son’s question remains unanswered,” he plays the cold authority, yet acknowledges the family relationship. “What are you?”

  “Potential proof of your theory of reverse-causality,” I play. “You seem to have been expecting me.”

  “We’ve been monitoring the UNMAC channels, even the new commanding officer’s dedicated uplink.”

  “I’d very much like to know what Burns and his superiors have been chatting about,” I try for some constructive conspiracy.

  “You already know some of it,” he denies me.

  “Their plans to quarantine everyone by force,” I confirm. “The demands they’ve made of you.”

  “And now their speculations regarding whatever you are.”

  “Including that you’re behind all of this,” I name the most damning fear.

  He doesn’t respond, waiting for me to answer his question. So I take a breath, show them good faith by briefly recounting my rescue and awakening, as well as my competing theories of my origin and purpose: future god sent to save the world, or pawn of a contemporary evil genius. Then I quickly describe the situation at Tranquility. Make my plea:

  “I’d initially planned to ask you for materials and assistance to repair their Lower Dome, restore their support systems, maybe help me defend them from Chang and UNMAC. But I also need your help resolving an internal crisis: The inside-dwellers plan to exterminate the Cast, burn the gardens to make the place look uninhabited and without resource-value. I’ve tried to tell them they’ll only accelerate their own extinction.”

  Now I get the characteristic silence. I try to hack in and eavesdrop, but find they aren’t doing their chatting on a local network, just projecting their avatars here.

  Unlike previous visits, I don’t start to ache standing here waiting, no longer a man in his seventies, arguably no longer human at all. I stand like a statue, patient, finally able to match their immortal “we have all the time in the world” attitude. Hiding my concerns for what might have happened at Tranquility in my absence.

  They keep me on hold for a full twenty minutes. Then I feel the air around me charge again, feel my body bombarded my forms of radiation my mortal self would have been oblivious to. I’m being scanned. I let it proceed. It stops within thirty seconds, but I expect they’ve been thorough.

  Five more minutes of silent debate. Then Council Blue finally speaks for them:

  “You present us with disturbing possibilities, Colonel. What has been done to you is not only extremely advanced, but it is remarkably complex. Your DNA has been reset to a prime adult age, and made mechanically resistant to damage and degradation—the modification is impressive even by our standards. But in addition, we have detected at least forty two nanotech systems active in your body, more in your armor. Many of them appear designed to do more than repair and reinforcement, or even interface, but the majority appear dormant at this moment.”

  I realize I may have just enabled the ETE to “steal” and potentially copy some of my technology, but I’m not particularly concerned that they’d put it to any nefarious purpose. In fact, I find I’m hoping they manage to put some of it to use against Chang and Earthside’s more destructive agendas. So I give them a small demonstration.

  I shift my armor, expand and reshape the plates, change the color of my surfaces, give them a glimpse of my “cloaking” technology. Then I bend down, reach and touch the floor. The metal deck around my fingers begins to reshape, and I “sculpt” a raised geometric doodle into the material by force of will.

  Paul stands his ground, but his cohorts raise their Rods at me. I stand and turn to face them, give them what I hope is a benign smile, and push their goodwill. I reach out, make one of the Red Guardian’s Spheres fly into my hand. Hack it. Bring it to life. Generate a simple protective field. Then toss it back. Let them decide if I’m ally or nightmare.

  Paul, to his cred
it, gestures for his companions to lower their tools. I give him a smile and a nod to let him know I appreciate whatever trust or faith he still has in me. He still looks like he’s doing everything he can not to be terrified of me. I turn back to face the Council.

  “I am still the man you trusted enough to let into your facilities, advise you, share your dreams for the future of this planet, fight together with against those that would threaten it.”

  Silence.

  Council Blue speaks again, but no longer as the cool authority. His stoicism is cracking.

  “Your intent is not what most concerns us. You do not understand… It’s what you imply.”

  I don’t understand—that’s clear enough on my face. So he tries to explain it to me:

  “Our original theory… It was one matter to speculate that the Discs were future origin, a relatively simple and small-scale incursion against the paradox. We had even begun to simplify that theory, consider that it was only the design of the Discs that had been passed through some retrograde communication link to some contemporary ally to manufacture. Even Chang’s appearance could be explained this way, that he was simply the recipient of advanced science and technology… But now, your very existence here and now demonstrates that unbelievably complex and dense time-splicing has indeed occurred. Even if your so-called ‘seed’ isn’t from our technological future, the science that made you into what you are almost certainly is.”

  “So sending basic drone tech back in time was almost believable, but sending the makings for me is unthinkable,” I try to follow their existential meltdown. I realize I haven’t mentioned that it’s more than Chang and Star and I that have supposedly made the sub-atomic trip. (And I’m not sure if it’s comforting that folks a lot smarter than I am agree with how unbelievable this all is.)

  “You can’t begin to grasp density of what was sent through that sub-atomic link to make you—just you.” I’m not sure if they’re trying to scare me or insult me. “The level of technology required, and the power…”