There’s more shooting. Pistols. And another ICW. I’m thinking it may not have been Palmer up in the rafters—they have two stolen suits and guns.
I find two more uniformed H-K, fly into them, draw my sword. I hurt them badly but don’t kill them—a small price to pay for participating in genocide. I break their bomb and move on.
“Two more down,” Bel tells me in my head. I haven’t heard any news from Kali.
“Colonel Ram!” I hear Murphy shout. I find him standing over two of his former comrades. One is dead, the other has been shot in the throat—he’s gripping at the wound, trying to keep from bleeding to death. Murphy has already disarmed them both for good measure, their revolvers wedged in his belt. “Bomb!” he directs me. I bust through the top of the case and kill it. The bleeding man is glaring at Murphy—he’s made himself traitor to his own people to protect these people. His face is stone. I give him a quick nod, try to reassure him.
More ICW fire. Stray bullets whip through the green at us. Murphy gets himself behind a support pillar. One of the rounds hits the bomb case and I hear hissing. I rip the lid off, get a face full of O2. The case has three main components: two gas canisters—one oxygen, the other probably hydrogen—set to burst and disperse, prime the thin air; the third is packed charge that will likely disperse a powdered fuel, possibly as simple as aluminum. A final thermal charge then ignites the aerosol mix, incinerating everything in and around the cloud. The bombs are probably timed to perform each stage in sync with each other: fill the whole dome, then light it up. It’s all homemade out of common supplies.
I tear the leaking O2 canister free and throw it as far as I can. I surprise myself by making it fly out through one of the gaps in the dome.
Then I go find whoever has that ICW. It doesn’t take me long to lock his location based on sound alone. But then the sound changes: I hear the cycle and pop of a grenade, hear and feel the blast somewhere still well ahead of me. I decide to forgo mercy, pop my own round back at him through the green. I don’t hear any more ICW fire. But I do hear Kali scream in frustration—I guess I just took her target.
We finally seem to have routed their genocide attempt: Eight bombs. Sixteen H-K “porters”. Two more as diversion. And two in taken UNMAC armor for “cover”. (Neither one is Palmer.)
Only five are still alive. Three won’t be without prompt surgical care.
“Do you have anyone skilled enough to help these men?” I ask Two Gun. We’ve moved the wounded to the clearing behind the skull hill, put them in view of Gardener’s cameras, but no one has tried to come out to help them. (Bel’s moved the bombs outside into the open air to disassemble.)
“We don’t help Hunter-Killers,” he says coldly. I catch him locking eyes with Murphy. Murphy impresses him by not pressing the issue.
“I’ll ‘help’ them,” Kali offers, flexing her claws.
“No,” I try to hold her off.
“Don’t play noble. I know you.” She circles. The wounded men are now between us. “I also know them. From the girl’s memories. You have no idea… Her parents: both killed when she was still a little girl. And you weren’t her first crush. There were others. All dead. Her first was a girl: Alia. They grew up together. It turned intimate. I can feel how much she loved her… I… She heard the shot. Found Alia with her face mutilated, nose cut off for one of their fucking trophies. But the sick fuck wanted more. He sliced off her nipples, too. She was still alive. Punctured lung. Choking on her own blood. Crying. Not in pain—she didn’t want Fera to see her like that… She never did see the piece of shit who did it.” She looks at the wounded men. “Might be one of them. Or they know who it was.” Then she jerks her head and glares at Murphy. “Or maybe you do. Story jog any old memories? Late-night war stories with your buddies?”
Murphy looks just sick enough to confirm.
“This ends,” Kali declares. “Right now.”
She turns and marches for the primary airlock—the Casting portal—and uses her claws to cut the welds I made. Then she tears the hatch open by force—I can hear metal pop and shear.
“Kali! Don’t…”
She whirls on me.
“Really? Are you really going to pull some kind of Star Trek Prime Directive bullshit on me?”
“We need to be better than…”
“Better than what?! Genocide? Mass murder? Hunting people for sport? Culling your own people when they don’t measure up? What was that old mantra of yours, how you were better than the monsters you killed? ‘They kill innocents. I kill them. Which one of us makes the world a better place?’ This is me making the world a better place.”
She rips open the inner hatch. The decompression almost knocks us both down—I have to hold onto the hatchway. I hear alarms. Inner hatches slam, stopping the pressure loss before the whole Middle Dome is vented. But it gives her what she wants. She steps into the corridor, finds a live panel, sinks her claws in.
“One unfinished piece of business first…”
I hack. She’s sifting through the personnel files. Then she roars in rage.
“I had him!! I had him under my knives!”
Her rage reaches out into the system, frying file after file. I feel Gardener crashing.
“Kali!”
“Don’t worry… I’m leaving them basic systems… Barely…”
She is. But all of Gardener’s higher functions are…
“Now they won’t be able to blame a machine when they want to decide who to murder for their own comfort.”
She disengages from the panel. As far as I can tell, Gardener is hopelessly burned out. Only basic backup systems are online, enough to pump air, keep the lights and the heat on, run the recyclers. One thing I realize that went with Gardener is the security systems—they can no longer see outside of their domes. Another is their personnel files, their Scoring records.
She doesn’t turn back to look at me.
“Now I have a lesson to teach. And a debt to collect.”
She heads down the corridor. Murphy is with me as I pause long enough to close the airlock behind us, keep the colony from completely depressurizing when Kali tears her way through the next set of hatches. The corridor pressure-balances with a rushing of wind.
Murphy takes off his mask. He doesn’t draw his revolver, probably hoping he doesn’t need to come home at gunpoint.
The Middle Dome is on emergency lighting. We see no one out in the open, probably on lockdown as soon as the initial breach was detected.
Kali isn’t lingering. She’s marching with purpose across the open court, heading for the passage to the Upper Dome. She’s almost there when she gets shot at. The shooters are under cover up in the terraces. She swats the first few rounds away with her arm guards, not pausing in her course. But then one explodes on contact. It should have at least taken her arm off, but she shakes it off with an angry grunt, her armor barely dented and already reshaping, the frag wounds I can see on the side of her face healing away. Then she’s tearing open more hatches.
Murphy and I don’t get shot at as we follow several meters behind her. Either the H-K have decided not to waste any more ammo, or they’re reluctant to hit a comrade (even a Cast traitor). In return for this courtesy, he gestures and shouts up at them to head for the Town Hall, anticipating Kali’s destination. He also warns them not to engage the intruder.
They decide to ignore the latter advice. I hear more gunfire ahead of us, echoing through the connecting tunnels. We find two H-K down and one of the elevators ripped open. They’re both still alive, but she’s made a bloody mess of their faces, taken their guns. Murphy checks them quickly, reassures them they’ll be okay.
Kali didn’t bother with an elevator car. She’s climbed the shaft, torn through the door on the “ground” level of the Upper Dome. We climb after her. Find her in the Zen garden, facing the Hall entrance. The remaining H-K are making a stand, semi-surrounding her with guns. I can pick out Palmer, hunkered in their midst. But I also see childr
en: Young H-K trainees standing with their elders. Including Murphy’s own son—his jaw drops and eyes widen when he sees his father, come home, but with a demon.
“Hold fire!” Murphy tries. They do the opposite. Kali gets hammered with pistol rounds. She just stands there are takes it, just to show them she can. Gets knocked around a bit, barely staggers. Heals. Absorbs. Then I hear the distinctive bang of an explosive shell. Apparently Kali recognizes it as well, because she catches it, manages to keep it from detonating. Then she tosses it back at the H-K line like she’s passing them back a lost ball. It blows in front of them as they try to duck, knocking several back. They’re bloodied, but it doesn’t look lethal.
Lesson at least temporarily learned, they hold fire.
Even though Gardener is dead, she hacks into their PA system, announces to the whole colony with a grin:
“Welcome to the new world order. My name is Kali. Look me up, assuming any of your library files are still readable: I am not generally known as a benign goddess.” She jerks her head to gesture in my direction. “You should have done business with my better half when you had the chance. He’s the one with the tolerance. You’ll find I have very little.
“You will not be killing any of my people. You will not be dumping any of your people on us to kill for you. Feel free to murder each other all you like. But now you no longer have a machine to blame your murdering on.”
“Kali…” I try to slow her roll.
“Fine. Here’s my benevolence: If any of your civilian citizens wish to ask me for protection from you butchers, I will grant it. I will not be extending that protection to any of you.” She turns to glance at Murphy. “Except maybe him. I like him. And he’s easy on the eyes. But the lesson is: You can earn my grace. If you choose…”
A weapon fires—full auto, PDW (apparently the H-K have more than just revolvers, probably saved for emergencies like this). But not at Kali. I move in a blink, get myself in front of Murphy as he gets behind me. I get smacked in half a dozen places, then catch a grenade round, use Kali’s trick to keep it from detonating (but I just disarm it). Two shots come from behind me. Murphy. It looks like he’s firing into the crowd, but he’s being surgical. His fellow H-K’s are already ducking, leaving Palmer more exposed. One of Murphy’s rounds hits Palmer’s weapon almost down the muzzle, shattering the polymer casing and kicking it back at him, spraying fragments into his face. The next one hits him in the forward hand, shattering the weapon’s fore grip and almost taking off the middle two fingers of his left hand.
Kali marches straight into them as Palmer staggers backwards, cursing and screaming. One of the other H-K’s tries to halt her, points his pistol at her face. A quick swat of her hand, and his hand disappears at the wrist, hand and pistol flying away. The rest move back, at least to try to stay out of reach. Palmer backs away, gripping his mangled hand, then turns to try to run.
I don’t even try to stop her.
She darts forward, grabs him by the collar of his L-A uniform, throws him back over her head like a ragdoll, out of the Hall and onto the stepping stones of the entry path. She’s quick enough to be almost on top of him before he comes to rest on his back. And then she’s sitting on his chest.
“So. Did you keep her nipples after you cut them off?”
Palmer tries to get out from under her. Can’t.
“Alia?” I ask. Murphy chews his lip, nods with difficulty. He knew.
“Did I mention: My other name is Fera?” she tells him as he struggles, whimpers. And her voice suddenly sounds very much like Fera’s as she tells me: “I never saw the sick fuck who tortured and mutilated my Alia. But he left a camera. Hidden. To watch her suffer. To watch me suffer. Two Gun found it. It had his ID number on it.”
“Fera?” I want to know how much of her is intact.
“One more lesson,” she shifts back to full-Kali. “Least I can do for use of this body.”
She clamps a hand over Palmer’s face, digs her claws in. He screams. Convulses. But she just holds him there. And I watch him… waste. Shrivel. Desiccate. Kali looks almost orgasmic as she rides his jerking body. Or like she’s enjoying something really tasty.
“What are you doing?” I need to know. Murphy and the other H-K can only watch in shock.
“Resources…” she tells me easily, with eyes closed in near-ecstasy. Palmer is making gagging noises, rasping, gurgling…
“Stop it!”
“What?” She’s grinning at me wickedly. “This something else you’ve conveniently forgotten about?”
“It’s forbidden,” I remember. Some of us would feed off each other, as a form of assault or consensual paraphilia—the “victim” could simply regenerate afterwards. But consuming a mortal for resources…
“And I notice you’re not stopping me,” she taunts. “I’d invite you to join in—there’s still plenty left—but you never were into threesomes.”
“Calliope!”
“Fine.” She releases her grip. I see tendrils retract back into her fingertips that had apparently wormed deep into Palmer. “And don’t ever call me that.”
Palmer looks like he’s been dead for months.
“We need to help these people,” I insist.
“First they need to want to be helped,” she argues. “Attempting genocide is not the way to ask. Unless what you’re asking for is to be paid back in kind. You should give me credit: It wasn’t long ago I would’ve just killed them all for what they tried to do. Assuming you didn’t beat me to it—you were a selfish fuck that way. I guess we’ve both mellowed with the decades.”
We glare at each other over Palmer’s corpse.
“Your precious code dies today!” she shouts at the still-frozen H-K. “You don’t get to close ranks around those who think carrying a gun and being part of your exclusive little club means they can do any sick thing they want. From now on, if one of you butchers does any fucking thing I would find offensive, he doesn’t get to hide behind the rest of you because he wears the uniform. So adopt a sense of humanity and social justice right now, or I will fucking eat you.”
Her rant is followed by absolute silence and stillness. She could have been screaming at statues. I scan the eyes of the H-K, hoping I see something more than just terror. Shame. I do see shame in a few faces. But only a few.
“Message sent,” I tell her firmly. “Lessons given. Time to go.”
She does the courtesy of following me all the way back the way we came in. The Cast have gathered silently outside the damaged outside airlock. They make a path for us as we come out. Then Kali keeps walking. I follow. She stops when we get back to the wounded men.
“Put these men inside the airlock,” she orders Two Gun. “I’ll signal their friends to come get them.”
Two Gun gestures for some of his people to serve as porters, and the wounded are picked up and carried off.
“I’m going with them,” Murphy tells me.
“You sure that’s wise?” I have to ask.
“I need to be with my family. Especially now. And maybe I can talk some sense into my people, get them to accept your plan to work with the Cast. Mutual survival.”
Kali surprises both of us by rushing forward and planting a kiss on Murphy’s lips. He stands frozen as she lingers a few seconds before pulling away. She grins at his discomfort. Explains:
“Tracking mod. If anyone hurts you, I’ll know.”
He nods his thanks warily, trying not to be obvious about licking his lips like he’s trying to find what she just planted in him.
“Your systems are failing,” I remind him, then shoot a hard look at Kali. “Crashing Gardener just accelerated that.”
“I think I can help with that.”
It’s Paul. He’s standing up on the hill with Bel. He’s not wearing his helmet, just goggles and a mask.
“This nice man says he knows you,” Bel tells me.
“He does.” I introduce Paul Stilson of the ETE Guardian Force to Bel, Kali, Two Gun, Mak an
d Murphy.
“There may not be much of a Guardian Force anymore,” Paul tells me after he skitters down the hill and uncharacteristically embraces me.
“What’s happened?”
“I don’t know. The Council has ordered all operations to cease immediately. All teams are being recalled to their home Stations. No explanation. And my father won’t talk to me. He’s sequestered himself. All the Councils have. All I know is they’ve been making requests of certain of our sciences divisions. Quantum mechanics. Astronomy.”
“Maybe he’s trying to determine how much of reality was overwritten by Chang’s actions,” I consider what seemed to unsettle him during our possibly final meeting. Paul shrugs. He looks tense. So I confront: “What are you doing here?”
“You asked for my help,” he tells me. “So here I am. Again. Just like old times.”
“Against orders,” I reflect on the help he gave us at Melas Two.
“I am a lousy son.”
“But a good man,” I praise him.
“And sexy,” Kali leers over my shoulder, “in a geeky professor sort of way. Oooh… I could probably whip up a naughty schoolgirl outfit.”
“Be good,” I try.
“When am I ever good?” she tosses back. “Except when I’m bad?”
“He is very cute,” Bel makes it worse.
“I really apologize for my friends,” I tell Paul.
“Wife,” Kali corrects me. Paul’s eyebrows go up.
“Ex-wife,” I re-correct.
“You’re making poor Fera sad,” she taunts with a pout, lays her head on my shoulder. It’s unsettling how quickly she can shift her tone and affect to mimic the young girl she’s overwritten.
“This is going to be fun,” Bel repeats Kali’s earlier assessment with a grin. Turns to Kali: “I’ll help you with that schoolgirl outfit.”
“Long story,” I excuse to Paul.
The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are Page 19