The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are

by Michael Rizzo

  Oh no.

  “Chang,” Bel recounts like it hurts. “He told me a warrior came to him. Many years ago. Hunted him. Fought hard—impressively so, even though he was hopelessly powerless to do Chang any harm. Chang said he kept him to study, kept him preserved. Then used the body as a host for my seed when it was time. Left enough memories so I would know something of this world. But otherwise, he was destroyed… I know his name: Abdullah Rashid. I remember his wife. His daughter. His daughter by his daughter…”

  Sakina is frozen. Her eyes are full of rage and loss. I look uphill at Abbas, who looks like he’s feeling at least some of her grief. I can only shake my head to convince him I had no idea.

  “Please,” I try reaching Sakina. “He isn’t your enemy. And he had no choice in this.”

  She keeps the gun leveled for several unbearable seconds, then lowers it. Turns on me.

  “But you did.”

  She turns and marches off, back over the hill. I move to go after her, but Abbas raises his hand to discourage me.

  I turn back to Bel. He looks crushed, sick.

  “I guess I should have mentioned that…”

  “We have heard extremely disturbing news,” Abbas tells me, once we’ve set up an impromptu “shelter” using one of Paul’s Spheres, since Abbas wasn’t yet willing to trust us with the location of his camp (at least he was willing to dare entering a Sphere field to sit with us). His warriors remain surrounding us.

  “Chang sent emissaries to Mohamed Aziz: an angel in white with golden hair, a demon in black armor, and a mechanical monstrosity armed with grenade launchers. He offered an alliance: power and protection from the Unmakers and the Jinn, in exchange for their loyalty and assistance in securing the territory including your secondary base. The angel offered Aziz his choice of one of her two companions to fight for him. He chose the mechanical. The angel told him to attack the thing with his best men. Their strongest weapons could not hurt it. Then it showed them what it could do.”

  I’m assuming the emissaries were Astarte, Bly and

  “Brimstone,” I name the monstrosity in question. Abbas nods heavily and continues:

  “That evening, the Food Trade caravan arrived. Aziz tried to seize everything they were carrying and forbid them to trade with us or Hassim’s people. When they resisted him, he unleashed his monster. He slaughtered them. Families worked that caravan. He showed them no mercy. And showed his intent to starve us all.

  “The next morning, Aziz marched his people into Unmaker guns, eager to take your base, blinded by the opportunity for conquest. Many were killed. After that, a few of his people fled. They surrendered to us, told us this tale, warned us what was coming. We sent scouts to confirm, including your former bodyguard, who came to us one month after we thought you had died, refusing to speak of your fate.”

  At least he’s referring to me like he believes I am me. I tell him:

  “Bel crippled Chang’s main ship. He’s limped off somewhere to repair it. But he knows another relief fleet is incoming from Earth, this one much bigger than the first two, due in a little more than a month from now. Taking out Melas Three would be a severe setback. They’d lose their only other airbase, limiting their flight range and giving Chang more maneuvering room.”

  “And who is the enemy here, friend Ram?” Abbas has to ask. “It feels like we should let the two sides destroy each other. Do you know what the new Unmaker commander demanded of us?”

  “I’ve been told. It’s a question of the lesser evil. Chang doesn’t care who dies in his righteous war, including his allies. He also doesn’t consider the brutality of who he arms, only that they will serve him because they want that power. Aziz has made a deal that will slaughter his people. Unfortunately, others will be harmed. Your people. Hassim’s.”

  “And how is Earth better? They will take our lands by force, imprison us, kill us if they can’t.”

  “I’m hoping we can convince them otherwise.”

  “Your old plan of a unified Mars?” But he sounds like he’s lost the idealistic hope he once had.

  “Maybe it takes a larger enemy,” I consider.

  “And we are facing two. What about your Jinn friends? We have seen no sign of them in weeks.”

  Paul looks sheepishly down at the rock and sand.

  “Something’s driven them to ground,” I offer an explanation. “Hopefully to develop a means to defeat Chang.” But I don’t believe that. And Paul looks like he doesn’t believe it either. Still “If someone on this planet can prove effective against Chang, Earthside might decide it’s in their best interest to negotiate rather than force. And they’ll lose their biggest excuse to escalate.”

  “Unless that excuse is you,” he cuts back sourly. “The Unmakers would kill us all just out of their fear of the Jinn. And you say what you are is even worse. How afraid are they of you?”

  “Which is why I can’t afford to get into a war with Earth,” I admit.

  “So you need to convince them that you’re more asset than monster,” Abbas concludes.

  “Or we could disappear,” Bel unexpectedly suggests. “There’s a lot of real estate to get lost in. We could even survive outside of the terraformed valleys.”

  “I’m not leaving while there are people in this kind of danger,” I state my bottom line.

  “I know,” he validates. “Nor could I. But eliminating Chang’s threat may not be enough. What happens when this Earth decides to keep pushing its ‘rescue’ agenda at gunpoint?”

  I don’t have an answer for him. I look at Abbas.

  “Do you have any way to contact the Knights?”

  “We have an agreed method,” he admits after mulling over what he can still trust me with. “A place to leave them a message.”

  “I need to meet with them. Whatever ground they choose.”

  He nods, but still looks unsure.

  “Thank you, old friend.”

  Abbas says his goodbyes and goes back to his warriors. My companions go back to their flyers, get ready to make the run home. I decide to linger, watching the Nomads fade into the terrain (probably retreating in a deceptive direction to prevent me guessing where their camp lies). They’re almost out of sight when I get what I’m hoping for.

  “He really isn’t my father, is he?”

  Sakina has appeared behind me with her usual stealth. Even enhanced as I am, I barely heard her over the wind.

  “No. I’m sorry. Just Chang being sadistic.”

  I can see Bel watching her from his flyer, still looking sad and ashamed, like he’s personally responsible for her loss.

  “And what does that make you?” she finally asks.

  “Still me. Mostly. Where it counts.”

  It only seems to make her angrier.

  “Why did you run away from me?” I ask her, not condemning.

  She stews in her mask, conflicting feelings doing battle across what little of her face I can see.

  “You don’t know, do you?” she finally gives. I shake my head, honestly confused. “That thing. That woman. You called her ‘Star’… She said you weren’t regenerating properly. After a few weeks… She would come and go. Then she brought back a body. Dressed in a Chang uniform. But she’d cut off the head. Laid it on top of you like a blanket. I watched… things… come out of you… into the corpse… I watched you consume it. All of it. Even the clothes and body armor. Like watching it decompose, only faster. A few days… When that wasn’t enough, she brought another one. She told me to be careful not to touch you…”

  I feel sick. Numb. Nauseous. Shaky.

  I remember Kali, ecstatic as she consumed Palmer, digging into him with her hands and…

  “She said you needed resources.”

  She watched me become a cannibal, a flesh-eating monster.

  I can’t even imagine what the conversion process looks like. And then what I finally turned into looks nothing like the man she served, the man she loved.

  “I’m sorry…” It’
s the best I can manage.

  But she’s seen the conversion. She watched. And I’m sure now she’s wondering what it was like for her father. Was he alive? Conscious? Did he feel Bel consuming him, taking him over, erasing him piece-by-piece? Did Chang feed him corpses to supplement his conversion?

  “I don’t remember any of it.” I’m not sure for whose benefit I’m saying it. “Just waking up. Like this. I don’t even remember saying ‘yes’ to Star.”

  “You didn’t,” she tells me, sounding like she’s letting go of something. “She didn’t wait. You were dying. Almost dead.”

  But she can’t look at me like she used to.

  And I have an even more horrible thought: I’m still carrying one seed. If I were to touch her, kiss her, ever become remotely intimate with her again…

  “Maybe I did die,” I say to the wind between us. “Maybe this isn’t me. Or too little of me to count as the man you knew, the man you believed in. So don’t believe in me. Not until I earn it.”

  I turn and walk away from her. Get back on my flyer. Go kill who I need to kill.

  Chapter 2: The First Casualty of War

  11 May, 2117:

  They attack at dawn, before the icing vaporizes off the battered pad elevators, while the morning winds are stirring the most dust to hide their approach.

  They advance to within two hundred meters of Melas Three from the west-northwest, then hunker down to avoid the remaining base batteries, letting her take the lead, but ready to move in fast, expecting she’ll breach them a way in this time, having taken the days to maximize her grenade load.

  Too bad I’m standing in her way.

  “Nina Harper.”

  I hear her chuckle over the wind. But it doesn’t sound remotely human anymore. Broken machine. Buzzing and crackling. Her bulky armored head and torso take shape first in the haze, then the thick maw of her launcher arm. Finally, her legs: frog-like prostheses protruding from a pelvis made of heavy universal joints and motors. The only part of her that still looks human is her left arm, clutching its own launcher.

  “He said ye had such pretty hair now…” The voice is a poor vox. I could be talking to any simple machine. But her body language—if you could call it that—still sings of human malice.

  I cover my pretty hair with my ugly helmet. Draw my pistol.

  Let her take the first shot.

  She pops a grenade right at me. In the armored can of her conjoined torso and kettle helmet, with only a thin eye-slit where her face would be, I can’t see her reaction as I swat the projectile away. It blows harmlessly in the loose regolith. All I feel is the distant shockwave. I know this will piss her off, get ready for it.

  She does the stupid thing: Plants herself and starts hammering me full-auto. At least she’s smart enough to aim low, use the technique she used against the ETE, tries to knock me off my feet or take the ground out from under me. I drop into a crouch, having preset my armor to shift into a sloped shield, plant it in the sand.

  I take a pounding, enough that I almost do fall back. Her grenades are blowing within a meter or two. I’ve picked soft ground to soak up a lot of the blasts—an old desert-warfare trick—and she’s quickly kicked up a blinding cloud between us. I cool down my surfaces so she can’t target me on infrared, and she apparently has no such cloaking mod: I can see her heat signature through the smoke, her launcher blazing. Perfect target.

  I get her firing rhythm and poke out between explosions for a shot of my own. I’ve loaded my own rounds for penetration and explosive effect. Hit true. Her launcher arm bursts. I take the interruption in fire to hit it again.

  She staggers. Screams like stripped gears. But she’s quick: recovers enough to level her “live arm” launcher and answer back. But I’m not there.

  I’ve collapsed my shield and run a circle around her, got a dune to hide behind while she wastes more grenades. Then I take a shot at her “head” that feels like it makes it through her thick helmet and does some damage where it counts, but it only seems to stun her. She spins, pops a pair of grenades back at me with impressive accuracy, but I’m already rolling clear.

  She’s hesitating as I get a look at her over the dune. I can see her launcher arm repairing, but there’s smoke leaking out of her eye-slit. She staggers. But then springs into the air, either trying to get a better vantage or make herself a more slippery target.

  She tries to keep her bounding random, but is generally advancing on my last position. I stay prone, visually cloaking myself in the haze, time her jump once she gets close. Then I throw myself into her landing zone as she comes down, draw my sword, hack her legs. I do her hydraulics serious damage, but don’t manage to sever the tough robot limbs. She’s getting the muzzle of her left hand launcher on me when I spring up and chop it, cleaving the barrel, then destroying the action. She tries to fire it anyway, and luckily fails—the blast would have cost her remaining hand.

  I consider taking that hand myself, but some modicum of mercy holds my blade. But it doesn’t hold me from driving my sword through her midsection, twisting it in her mechanical insides. I feel no flesh. No blood flows from the wound. She tries to get her launcher arm—now repaired—pointed between us, but I wrap my left arm around it, hold it fast. I pull my blade out, aim the tip for her eye slit…

  And I get hit by something large and fast that throws me sideways off of her. Metal and fabric. Black. I land on my ass in a dune, get ready to roll to avoid a grenade volley, get ready for another attack from who I’m pretty sure hit me.

  But he steps between us. Holds a hand out to gesture me to sit put. Points his blade at her.

  Bly.

  “No!” he yells at Harper when she tries to get her shot. “No more!”

  “…whatareyoudoingwhatwhatareyou…?!” Her voice is almost unintelligible, the buzz of a broken child’s toy.

  “No more!!” This time he’s shouting at both of us. I decide to stay down long enough to see what this is about.

  “Good to see you didn’t get yourself vaporized, Captain.”

  “Four hundred and eighty five of our people are dead!” he spits through his mask. The math seems dubious, but I realize he’s not blaming me for that as he turns to face Brimstone. “That number does not hold those ordered left behind when we had to evac our homes! Two thirds of our people are gone! And Chang only demands more! We’re just meat for his war machine!” He turns to me. “He scavenges Pioneer Colony bare to repair his ship. Some of the Keepers are trying to rise against him. He’s ordered me to slaughter them, make examples of them.”

  “What about Janeway?” I risk getting up.

  “Janeway isn’t Janeway anymore. He’s like the one who turned on us. Or Chang’s pretty emissary. Monsters like him, wearing the corpses of honorable men. Is that what you are?”

  “I’d like to think not,” I tell him honestly. “I still seem to have all of what I was.”

  “Then you’re better than me.”

  He turns to Brimstone, lowers his blade.

  “Look what he’s done to you!” he wails through his mask. “Look what I did… I begged him to save you… Sold him my body and soul and yours…”

  “…nonoIwantthisIlikethisIamthis…”

  He throws his sword down, steps up to her, sinks the fingers of both gauntleted hands into her eye slits, and pulls. Tears. Rips the top of her helmet off. Staggers back. Falls. Screams through his mask like he’s just watched a loved one die.

  I come closer and look. Inside the can is… It’s horrible. I’d guessed this but didn’t really want it to be true: When she gets hurt, the mechanical tech replaces the injured flesh rather than healing it. She has one eye, part of her face, half of her skull. Cables are deep where her brain should be. A few teeth stuck in bone for a mouth, the rest all metal…

  “…nomylovemylovedonotcry…”

  She tries to move toward him, only to have him recoil, crawl backwards away from her.

  “…nonononono…”

  �
��Stop it! Stop it! You’re dead! Dead! You’ve been dead… all this time… you’ve…”

  “…NONONO…” she’s bellowing, all distortion and feedback. And then she turns on me, points her launcher arm. I doubt she can even see me with her remaining, clouded eye…

  Bly’s sword comes down on her exposed head. I get hit in the face with blood or something in place of it, warm and thick. She emits an ear-splitting wail. And he hacks. And hacks. Screaming himself the whole time. He chops her “head” to pieces, then takes off her “real” arm (it isn’t—it’s all cables and steel), drives his blade deep into her can over and over again. Her remaining limbs flail, kick, jerk, finally settle into a sickening automated reflex, a motor short…

  Bly is on his knees, sprayed with whatever was keeping whatever was left of her alive. I can hear him sobbing inside his helmet.

  I’m about to say something I’m sure is poor comfort when Aziz’s Nomads come up out of their cover, train their weapons hesitantly on us. Bly leaps up, screams at them:

  “RUN AWAY!! RUN AWAY, YOU STUPID ANIMALS!! RUN AWAY, OR THIS WILL BE YOU! RUUUUNNNN!!!!”

  They stay put, a mix of misplaced bravery and confused terror under their layered cloaks and homemade armor.

  “I would listen to the man if I were you,” comes Bel’s voice, magnified over the wind, smooth and calm. He de-cloaks himself between us and the Nomads, where he set himself as my backup should they try to charge to their “champion’s” defense. He just stands there, as if there aren’t a few hundred guns on him. (Of course, he warned me earlier that his biggest concern was that UNMAC would shoot me in the back in gratitude for defending their on-planet assets.) Then he “charges” his armor, creating a defensive field that’s a lot more theatrical than it needs to be, turning his black armor and even his face and hair a blazing red-hot.

  “If not, perhaps you’ll listen to Iblis, to Shaitan.”

  A few fall back, but then stop themselves when they see how many of their fellows manage to stand put. So Bel draws his sword, makes it glow scary, holds it up in front of him, displaying it. Activates the “Wand” tech embedded in the long handle. Projects a simple microwave field.