The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are

by Michael Rizzo

  “Maybe that would have put their lady in too much danger?” Bel tries, but doesn’t believe.

  “More likely the whole thing was just for show,” I let them know what I’m thinking, as far as it goes. “They’ve had more than enough opportunity to prepare—they put up a pitiful fight. And Sakura only executed the shinobi that tried to use a grenade, likely because he broke protocol and endangered her. He was the only one who really tried to hurt me.”

  “The only one who really failed his mission,” Kali concurs.

  “You really shouldn’t go alone,” Azazel warns, sounding honestly concerned despite the short time he’s known me. But he bonds quickly, and cares for those he bonds with, despite his preoccupation with building things (usually dangerous things, though he did wonders for the Tranquility recyclers).

  “I can’t risk Earthside seeing you, not yet,” I insist.

  “They’ve seen me already,” Bel counters.

  “And me,” Paul throws in.

  “You don’t think these Shinkyo have already revealed what they know of us to sell their tale of cooperation?” Lux grumbles. I shake my head.

  “I don’t think so. They have something else in mind. And I don’t think the trap is for me.”

  “Maybe not in the usual sense,” Kali criticizes. “But she is trying to ensnare you.”

  “One way to find out,” I don’t budge.

  “Forewarned isn’t always fore-armed,” Lux reminds, sounding almost seductive as he says so.

  The group falls into silence, knowing I won’t budge. I suppose I should be grateful they’ve respected me as a de-facto leader, instead of running off and getting in trouble. (Lux isn’t the only one who’s bored and wants to explore this world, do something, do anything. Immortal humanity quickly lost its concern for consequences.)

  Azazel spends the time using his mods to make the Shinkyo rifle reform, compact, change. He improves the sights and the balance, syncs the programming module to his own will, engraves the barrel and housing with fine scrollwork, makes dull polycoat surfaces into lustrous polished blue. It takes barely five minutes. Then he sets the weapon beside his chair, like it’s just another idle craft project.

  Lux fidgets, draped over his shoulders. She starts making hungry eyes at Paul, who turns his eyes nervously away. I start to smell sex again. She whispers something in Azazel’s ear. He shrugs, looking mildly amused by whatever the suggestion was. Another whisper gets him to stand, take her by the hand, and the two excuse themselves for the bedrooms. Lux is already dropping her armor before she gets to the corridor, exaggerating her gait. Paul glances up, then looks quickly away when more skin shows than he’s comfortable with. Kali rolls her eyes.

  I’m not sure how long this group will stay cohesive and stay put.

  16 June, 2117:

  Richards and the main relief fleet are due tomorrow. If Chang (or anybody else) is going to do something to break the UNMAC foothold before they arrive, it has to be soon. Of course, that’s certainly expected.

  They’ve taken precautions, at least against me. I detect new hidden sensors placed well out beyond the base perimeter, specifically designed and tuned to detect my hacking, as well as the usual: heat, motion, EMR. Too bad for Burns that Anton and Rick were sure to do less than their best work. They’ve left me a discreet frequency to slip in, listen. They even included a linkage map, letting me see where the best gaps in their grid are. Conveniently, that’s just south-southeast of the base, letting me come in from the low range out past the south perimeter. I fly in low, using the range for cover, ditch my flyer out of sight, and hike in under cloak. Then I find an outcropping with a good view to settle in and watch.

  The walled “yard” of the base is now filled with a complex of inflatable shelters, like a marshmallow subdivision, all linked by pressurized fabric umbilicals. One umbilical is patched directly into a junction fixed to Airlock 2, letting people move from the shelter town to the base without surface gear. This is probably to change whatever security shifts watch over the refugees, as well as to filter the refugees through medical checks.

  I reach out, try to get a read on Straker. I sense her deep within the main bunker structure, probably E-Deck, suggesting the Industry refugees did get assigned to the unused sections, while the Shinkyo were semi-wisely kept outside. But if they’re…

  “What are you doing?”

  It’s Lisa. She’s in my head. Not talking, not exactly. I close my eyes. See… light. The familiar ceiling fixture of an officer’s suite. I’m lying face-up in a rack. Or, more accurately, she is. I’m seeing through her eyes. And she’s being careful to show me nothing.

  “Hatsumi Sakura suggested I need to be here.” I realize the connection is two-way: she’s seeing through my eyes. “Impressive.”

  “I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. Between experiments.” She sounds surly, certainly less-than-pleased to talk to me again. “You sent the Industry PK here?” she keeps it curt and to business.

  “Who knows that?”

  “Lieutenant Straker spoke to Anton. Anton told me. Don’t worry. She passed. The nanochip you stuck in her doesn’t show up on any scanners we’ve got on-planet. Yet.”

  “They’re locked up in the basement?”

  “Housed fairly comfortably in the lower deck barracks, getting healthy. Most are suffering from chronic malnutrition-related disorders, bone loss, the civilians more so than the soldiers—Earthside actually seems happy about that, because it proves their relief efforts are needed. Mostly they get debriefed in turns for intel on Chang. Some of the ones that have been cleared have been given simple jobs, under supervision. What’s the game?”

  “You may need the manpower. Especially with the Shinkyo on your doorstep.”

  She doesn’t comment. I wish that I could see her, not just through her eyes.

  “I’m not planning an insurrection,” I reassure.

  “But you don’t trust the new leadership,” she knows. “You want to make sure they’re outnumbered. Just in case.”

  “My ‘big dream’ hasn’t changed. I still want the peoples of Mars standing together. Not so much as a force to be reckoned with, but as a population to be negotiated with.”

  “I know,” she reassures me. It’s the first time I’ve heard her soften since before I turned her and upended her entire world. But then she changes the subject. “What’s the deal with your new pal?”

  “Does the name ‘Yod’ ring any bells?” I probe.

  “No,” she finally tells me after a long pause. The answer in itself is damning: She—or at least this “backup” set of memories—wasn’t involved with Yod or any plans to defeat Chang or fix our now-nonexistent future. And that implies I may have brought her seed here without her knowledge or consent.

  “Chang got his time-splicing tech from another entity—Yod. And Yod slipped extra code into his stream, a few select agents to take him down if he managed to succeed. That included you and me.”

  “Why me?” she asks the hard question.

  “Our seeds are backups, so we’re missing the memories of what happened before the jump,” I excuse (and maybe that is true for her too). “I don’t remember signing up either.”

  “And Satan is on our team?” she gets back to her original query.

  “Belial Shaitan was a spy for us on Chang’s team. He says he lost it when woke up here and had to run. I trust him.”

  “Anybody else?” she presses me like she knows.

  “You really want to know?” I immediately regret asking.

  “I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough,” she gets testy.

  “Astarte. Kali. A couple of Bel’s friends. And Paul Stilson’s defected to…”

  “Astarte and Kali?” she locks on. “Jesus Fucking Christ.”

  “Didn’t bring him,” I joke poorly. I get cold silence. Try to salvage it: “Kali is protecting Tranquility. Star is working inside Chang’s camp. And Chang has Fohat.”

  “The Toymaker?” she reme
mbers after a few seconds’ thought.

  “Now he’s a weapons maker,” I clarify. “I’ve sampled his latest. He’s building things to hurt us. And slaughter anyone less sturdy.”

  “Straker had that in her report, said her group were driven out by a pair of new killer robots.”

  “Prototypes. Would have killed them all. It took Bel and Paul and I and Bly to take them out.” I flash her my memories. She processes them for awhile. I get dizzy when she shakes her head.

  “If Chang follows pattern, he’ll hit before Richards makes orbit,” I press her. “Earthside must have something in mind.”

  “Whatever it is, they’re not sharing,” she laments. “We’re in the dark, no need-to-know. Even Anton hasn’t been able to crack anything. I’m sure Burns suspects him by now. And pretty much all of us.”

  Silence again. I consider that she’s been torn between her loyalties all this time, trying to justify duty against what Earthside seems determined to do here.

  “I miss you,” I stumble out.

  “I miss me,” she deflects. “I can’t get used to this weird young superhero body.”

  “You need to get out, put…”

  There’s a quiet but urgent knocking at her hatch. She gets up, goes to open it. I see Anton. He looks pale. He whispers quickly, almost breathlessly:

  “I was just over in Aux Ops A, hoping to slip in and access the uplink—no one’s usually working up here since we shifted everything below B-Deck… I… I saw… one of the junior techs—Darla, the cute one—she was in there working. But it looked like she was putting something into the main line to MAI’s server core, up under the Tower… She made some small talk, but sounded off. I figured maybe she was suspicious of me, so I made an excuse, turned to leave… Saw… It was her. Dead. I think. She wasn’t moving. Her body was stashed under a console. I pretended I didn’t…”

  “Doctor Staley!”

  It’s Burns. Coming down the corridor from the general direction of Aux Ops. Looking unhappy with what he’s seeing.

  “I need a word, please, Doctor. In private. Now.”

  Two H-A troopers are down the end of the corridor behind him.

  “Colonel, Doctor Staley had…” Lisa begins to defend, but when she locks on Burns’ face, it shimmers.

  “That’s not Burns,” I tell her what she’s already realizing.

  “Get behind me!” she orders Anton, stepping into the corridor between them. “Burns” has something cylindrical in his right hand.

  “You’re not authorized to be out of your…” he begins to scold her, but then tries to surprise her mid-sentence, swinging the device. I’m processing at her speed, see what looks like a very thin blade telescope out of the “hilt” in his hand to sword-length, aimed for her neck in an eye-blink. She dodges back, and the blade slices into the heavy steel bulkhead like it’s butter.

  Down the hall, the H-A suits raise their guns, but they don’t point at Burns.

  I’m out of my “nest” and running for the base.

  “MAI! Intruder alarm! Lockdown!” Lisa shouts, but MAI doesn’t respond. The sentry systems must be down in the section. Anton is wheeling backwards as fast as he can. Lisa is backing away to avoid more slashes from whatever nano-blade gadget the fake Burns in using, making sure to keep between the unknown intruder and Anton, and keeping low enough to put the intruder in the way of his apparent cohorts’ guns. She yells at Anton to go find help, times the slashing, then lunges in, catches the sword wrist and breaks the arm. The intruder’s face ripples, shifts, turns into something that looks more like plastic film than flesh. He tries to punch and kick her with his free limbs—he’s brutal and accurate, goes for what should be crippling or lethal targets, but she shakes it off. She punches him in the chest, shattering ribs, probably collapsing a lung, then dislocates his weight-bearing knee in quick succession. She grabs hold of his L-A jacket to keep him close and upright to use as a shield.

  The ploy doesn’t work: the two imposter troopers go ahead and start shooting. At least their weapons appear to be standard issue (I hope just stolen from an armory locker and not taken from troopers they’d killed getting in). Bullets punch into the fake Burns through his L-A uniform. The fake troopers empty their weapons mercilessly into the body. Lisa looks back long enough to be sure Anton is long gone, then charges forward and throws the limp meat into them. They dodge to either side, and run down opposite corridors. I finally hear MAI’s alarms. Hatches slam.

  “Shinkyo?” Lisa assumes out loud. She looks down at herself: she’s been slashed deeply across the top of her left thigh, her belly, her forearm. Her wounds knit quickly, but she’s soaked in blood and her clothing is sliced cleanly.

  I’m leaping the south perimeter wall, flying into the shelter-town.

  A hatch bangs open behind Lisa. She turns, meets a squad of troopers.

  “Intruders!” she tells them quickly. “At least two more in H-A suits. This one could change his appearance, mimicked Burns and a tech…”

  “Are you okay, Colonel?” It’s Rios. He sounds honestly concerned.

  “Fine. But whatever hidden blade this one had did that to rolled steel…” She shows him the cuts in the bulkhead. Rios passes the warnings to his response team, as well as the likely course of the remaining two.

  “You should get back in your quarters, Colonel,” Rios insists gently but firmly.

  “I can help,” she insists back. She reaches up, makes physical contact, splices discreetly into his helmet and tells him “Colonel Ram is here, too. We don’t know how many there are. You remember the last time Shinkyo shinobi got in here?”

  He hesitates, nods.

  “Colonel Burns!” she shouts at the sentries as she moves forward with Rios. “I need access! Security feed. My modified vision can detect their disguises. Let me help.”

  Rios, for his part, doesn’t argue with her coming with him. They check the junction—the two imposter troopers are long gone. Another team moves in from the Barracks Section. But the two known intruders have had plenty of time and choices: They both could have made Airlock 2 and out into the shelter town to vanish among their own. Unless they had more mayhem in mind. The one who went left could have cut through the Mess to get into Stores, or worse, Atmosphere and Water or the civilian sections (and beyond that are the hangar bays). The one who ran right could be in the Barracks Section (and that didn’t go well last time) or made it around behind to Medical.

  Burns finally comes on, wastes too much time wanting it all explained to him. Despite probably taking this long to compose himself, he sounds confused, hesitant, scared.

  I’m almost to Airlock 2 when I decide this is my fucking base and hack into MAI, get a live grid, feed it to Lisa. (I’m tempted to lock Burns out—he’s in the new Ops down on B-Deck—but I want him to see the kind of fight he’s in.)

  Lisa is ignoring Burns, calling Tru to let her know what may be coming her way.

  I pick up a lone trooper coming out through the airlock, heading for the shelter town. I make sure the umbilical is clear, cut my way in with one long vertical slice, push through against the quick rush of decompression.

  The trooper almost runs into me. He hesitates for a full second to either consider his options or steel his resolve, then tries emptying a magazine into me point-blank, tries a grenade (which I swat outside), throws the weapon at me as a distraction, draws one of the collapsible nano-swords, lunges. I let him try driving his slim blade into me, hardening my armor. The blade shatters like fine glass against my torso plate, making only a temporary hole in my surcoat.

  I’ve sheathed my own blade. He’s got nowhere to go with an H-A team closing in behind him. But then that team chimes in to report that the two guards who had been manning the lock are dead. I’m sure he’s heard the news in his stolen helmet, and is figuring I’m hearing it too in the split-second before I punch him through his visor. I drive broken acrylic into bone and teeth and eyes, stopping surgically short of driving skull into brain
or snapping his neck. He impresses me by managing to stay on his feet, but his face is a bloody mess inside the ruptured helmet. His left hand reaches desperately into his belt, comes out with what looks like a chip the size of a pinky nail. He grabs my wrist and pushes the chip into my gloved hand. I expect a weapon, but get… flash feed?

  They got into MAI, further into the new Earthside security than even Anton managed, hacked Burns’ eyes-only uplink. Found…

  “Sakura…” the shinobi hisses at me through blood, shoves himself back away from me, pulls a grenade from his belt and stuffs it in where his visor was. His helmet blows apart as I turn away to avoid frag and splatter.

  The umbilical is in tatters with a headless and handless body in my path as the pursuing real troopers pop the airlock and aim at me. Look down at the body. Up at me as I shrug.

  “Wasn’t me.”

  “One down outside Airlock 2,” one of them reports, deciding to accept the situation.

  “No one else came out this way,” I tell them. “The other one is still inside.”

  “Assuming that’s all there is,” Lisa comes back. I can see her moving through the Mess, sweeping Stores, checking the hatchway logs.

  “Nothing here yet,” Tru reports from her section, her people probably watching the corridor access to Atmosphere and Water. “Was that Colonel Ram?”

  “Social time later,” I delay her enthusiasm.

  “How many are there?” Burns is barking useless questions. And useless orders: “Don’t let Ram inside! Don’t let him inside this base!”