“Bly!”
I find him sprawled in a shallow crater he’s made in a dune. He doesn’t respond as we quickly land and run to him. Star keeps looking skyward, expecting another shot. Thankfully there’s still a lot of dust in the air.
At least he looks like he’s in one piece, though it’s hard to tell through his armor. I roll him over face up and he begins to move, very weakly and sloppily. I can’t hear or see him breathing. I try to pry his helmet off, remove his monstrous facemask, but it won’t budge, and now he’s struggling, trying to stop me.
“Don’t,” Star insists, putting a hand on my arm to stop me. She looks upset. “You don’t understand… The armor… It’s fused to him, part of him… When he quit, rebelled against Chang, Chang locked it to him. So he’d never get his old life back. He can’t take it off.”
I’m calculating if my flyer can carry three of us when I see Paul coming back.
“He can’t eat, can’t… everything is done by the suit…” Star laments, a soothing hand on Bly’s chest plate. “He can’t even feel. Only pain. Or see except through those lenses. Or smell…”
Paul lands. I pick Bly up and carry him—he’s incredibly dense, almost like he’s solid metal—and ease him onto Paul’s flyer. Then I find his sword.
In orbit, I can hear them cheering. Then I hear aircraft coming in fast, probably to check the wreckage, possibly to look for us. Paul lifts off and flies away with Bly. I take Star and follow.
23 June, 2117:
The landings go off without a hitch. I watch from the hills as they bring down more supplies, weapons, equipment, aircraft—more than we’ve had since the Apocalypse. And manpower. Most of them soldiers, too few medics and techs.
Richards stays in orbit to oversee the operations from a safe distance. No mention is made of Lisa, or us, in any of their uplink or downlink coms. I expect they’re being careful with their chatter, and I get no further word flashed from Anton.
The Shinkyo camp remains disconnected from the main bunker structures, and anyone who comes or goes is under battery guns until they pass an intensive checkpoint. Hatsumi Oda continues to insist the break-in and attempted sabotage was all Sakura’s doing, that she had snuck some of her agents into the “peaceful population”, and that the Shinkyo refugees would remain vigilant for any further “criminals”. Sakura makes a convenient villain, a part I expect she enjoys playing.
Recon to the downed Stormcloud has so far found no survivors, but plenty of remains. The ship is so vast, so badly damaged and so dangerously unstable that many sections haven’t been accessed, but there’s no sign of life or activity on all scans. Video from better vantage than I had shows Chang in his usual posture on the foredeck, with hundreds of his men in ranks ready to land or launch. Then the railgun “bullet” hit them, and the blast vaporized everything before it buckled and crashed the ship. Nano-specialists have been scraping the deck where Chang was, and claim to have found residue they expect is whatever he’s made of, inert. No one is estimating how many people they killed in the process. The official report upworld is that Chang was taken down with no friendly casualties incurred.
Piles of supplies are left at the highest-traffic tapsites as a show of goodwill. I expect they will remain untouched. The food may be safe to eat, but the packaging and everything else is probably densely tagged for tracking.
Bel, Lux and Azazel have gone to the North Rim across the valley to search for signs of where Chang may have been holing up and repairing. There may or may not be loyalists waiting for his return, but there may be a hidden facility, someplace we can move to, dividing our ranks to reduce the target-value of Tranquility. (Kali will certainly stay, I expect. I’m not sure about Bel or Paul, who still has work to do. But Azazel and Lux are antsy to explore, adventurize.)
Bly has been healing slowly (it’s hard to tell). He can absorb rudimentary resources through his mask, though he looks like a rutting monster as he does it. I wonder if Chang expected him to live by killing, feeding off blood and bodies like we can. He says very little, almost entirely withdrawn inside his nightmarish shell. Star cares for him as much as he’ll let her, and I spend time with him in quiet, patient attendance. (I hope Bel and his “team” find at least one camp of Zodangans still alive.)
I don’t grill Star on whatever she’s been part of or seen transpire since we last spoke, or even since her awakening in this timeline. She seems to appreciate that.
After three nights, she comes to me and we make love. It’s very much like I remember it, like I remember her, but somehow her body is different, not quite her. I remember what Bel said about residual DNA, wonder who played host to her seed, but I don’t have the nerve to ask.
We make love again in the morning, and she surprises me by bringing us a fresh breakfast. Naked, she could very well be a normal, mortal young girl. Except for the eyes.
“What?” she wants to know.
“Nothing. Just enjoying the view. Thinking about old times.”
She hums her appreciation, lays back, stretches, exposes herself fully. Smiles at me. Then pouts a little.
“You haven’t said anything… I know you’ve noticed… I’m not the same.”
I lay down next to her, roll on my back. She rolls over me and holds me. Her skin is very warm. She puts her head on my chest.
“I was the next to wake up, after Chang,” she starts to tell me, her voice hesitant, like she’s not ready to talk about this but needs to, needs to tell someone. “But not really, not all at once, not all the way… I’d started to rebuild, out of raw materials, but without organic matter or a full DNA sequence to replicate on. So my mods started before me—I don’t know why. Maybe Chang did it, desperate for a companion… But I was more of a machine, a partial metal skeleton, non-organic brain. Memories. Basic conscious awareness, not enough to question what or where I was…
“I remember Chang letting me go, like he was trying to lose an unwanted pet. I guess he thought he had won, mission accomplished, so he didn’t need me. Or maybe seeing what I was reminded him we’re not real, not the people we were, just mechanical copies. I think I remember wandering the desert for a long time. I remember being very spider-like. I couldn’t feel anything. It was like a long dream. Endless rock and sand. Skittering metal legs. Searching…”
Her fingers play on my chest as if she’s acting out her nightmare journey. She tells the story like she is relating a dream, reciting a story, detached. But she knows it isn’t a dream. This was her. Or at least the her that’s here now—the only one, now that the original is gone with that timeline. (And I’ve wondered what happened to the Star in this time. I expect she died while we slept—old age or misadventure—but I no longer have access to Earth records to satisfy my curiosity. I’m not sure I would have the nerve to…)
“Maybe that’s what it’s like to be an insect—basic awareness, driven by simple programming… One day I found a man. In the sand. In a suit. He had these rovers with him, but the power was dead when I touched them. He wasn’t doing much better. What I was scared him, of course it did, but he was too weak to move. He was low on air, all his tanks empty. He probably thought I was a hallucination. He could barely wave me away. I remember how he kept staring at me through his visor, his pale blue eyes. He looked like a castaway in that helmet, all grizzled, like in an old movie. I remember waiting, watching him die. I wanted to help him, but I was just a bug-thing, and I knew that if I touched him I would hurt him, maybe kill him… So I just sat there with him. I could see myself in his visor…”
I feel her tense. She holds me tighter.
“The last thing he did was beg me to help him, to at least tell someone his name, let someone know what had happened to him…”
I feel my guts sink, my heart surge. I’m afraid I know what she’s going to say.
“Cal. He said his name was Cal. Copeland.”
She lets that hit me, then sits partially up to look me in the eye. Her eyes are glassy with forming tears. She knows what it means
to be telling me this.
“You knew him. He was your CO. He couldn’t take the waiting, went looking for survivors, anyone. One day he went too far. He was so sorry no one would know what happened to him, that he’d left you all, that his wife would never know…” She’s crying now, trying not to. “I touched him. I went inside him. I knew his last thoughts. His pain. Fear. Regret. Then he was gone, just meat, and I needed the meat. The DNA to complete myself. And everything else…”
I lay there frozen, numb. Mystery solved. Be careful what you wish for. I knew Cal was probably dead, long dead. And probably died doing just what she described, looking for other survivors. But…
“Finding him… I needed him so I could finish rebuilding… But the memories I saved, they let me know what happened here, and more importantly for me, they let me know you were here, asleep in your base. I watched over you, all those years. Kept the opportunistic scavengers away. Waited. Watched this world change.”
It explains a lot. Except for one thing:
“What about Paul? He made it into the base. More than once.”
Asking a practical question takes me out of it a little, lets me be objective…
“I knew the ETE meant no harm. If anything, they could help you, did help you, in ways that I didn’t dare to. I altered your sleep systems, tampered with your AI, all to keep you safe, but the ETE presence gave it an explanation that didn’t reveal my part.”
I sit up, push away from her.
“Why keep us asleep so long?” I need to know. I’m grilling her, interrogating her in this moment of vulnerability. Selfish. Bastard. But it also shifts the topic, moves her through it.
“Because you were safe. The planet was in chaos, and still toxic. The few survivors were savage. I could hear Earth, hear their fear, knew what they would do if they came back to that. And Chang was still here, somewhere. But I could see the valleys terraforming, see cultures evolving—it was beautiful.”
“And us waking up did bring Earth back, and Chang, and here we are anyway,” I have to point out, regretting saying it but unable to stop myself. It’s what I do, what I’ve always done: hammered by emotions, conflicted, locked up and torn—what processes through first is always anger. Anger is safe.
“But now we have a world worth saving,” she insists earnestly, forced to defend herself from me. And I’m trying to imagine what her experiences did to her: Coming to consciousness in a nightmare world in a nightmare form. Taking another’s body (and feeling what he felt as he died, probably without the filters to cope with it). Then waiting for decade after decade, alone and afraid of whatever inevitable outcome. And then whatever she saw or did in Chang’s service.
I’ve already played the same guessing game she must have countless times: What would have happened if we’d been awakened after a few months, a few years, a decade, two. Too early, and Chang’s drones would have slaughtered any relief effort. And even if they came prepared, what would have happened between any rescue and the equally terrified survivors? Life was much more fragile before the terraforming progressed. And there was no proof that the planet wasn’t contaminated…
But she actually had to make the choices, alone.
She wants my understanding so badly—I can see her desperation in her eyes—but my head and heart reel. I’m looking at a beautiful woman that I’ve loved on-and-off in two realities for much of my life, but I’m also seeing Cal Copeland all too clearly in the subtle changes to those so-familiar features. And I understand what she was trying to do for me—for this world—all those years alone, but I can’t help but second-guess her (and reflexively condemn her for her pride in making the decision for so many), just like I did with the ETE for their part in keeping us under, letting the world evolve as it has.
I can’t help her. I can’t give her what she needs. Not now. I can’t…
I get up, turn away, prompt my armor to reform around me, become the warrior, insulated in my shell. But I can still feel her behind me, naked and on her knees, crushed, crying…
“I can’t judge you. I wasn’t there.” It’s poor absolution, muttered at a cold steel wall. Then I make it all about me. Selfish. Bastard. “I don’t even remember why I came here, why I agreed to this.”
“That was between you and Yod, just like my reasons were,” she whispers back, going cold, allowing me to wallow in myself, probably having expected a reaction like this, maybe worse. But it still hurts. So she diminishes me: “Maybe it’s better you don’t remember. How much of a god can any of us pretend to be when touched to our core by a being that can be part of everything, all at once, and show us what that’s like? I can’t tell you. I don’t have words. Maybe it’s better you don’t remember. I expect it’s simpler… And now He’s gone anyway…”
“Simpler, maybe…” I accept her counterattack, but can’t let go of my bitterness, my own self-pity. “I’m still Mike Ram. I remember that other world, but I don’t feel like I lived in it. Maybe that’s what I don’t understand. I don’t miss that world and I don’t like this one. And I certainly never let an artificial supreme being into my head.”
I turn to face her. She stands, summons her own armor, her pure-white dress, transforms from woman to goddess, becomes less real. It doesn’t help that I can still smell her, taste her.
And so ends our poor therapy.
“I do still love you, in my own way, for whatever it’s worth,” she tries, already distant, aloof for her own protection.
“I know.” But I can’t say it back, not right now.
She leaves me alone to deal with myself.
25 June, 2117:
I come back “home” before sunset, done with another day’s excuse for solo brooding, watching the UNMAC teams trying to secure and analyze the wreckage of the Stormcloud. Burns has moved in a full platoon—Thomas’—to camp in shelters as full-time security for the “research team”, mostly new arrivals, probably working under UNCORT. But today I heard Rick onsite. And Morales. While the troopers keep working with the engineers to cut open and clear more sections, the primary team is trying to understand Chang’s power source, and even more importantly, his lift systems. With the ETE being stubbornly unresponsive, standard feedline production won’t keep up with the fuel requirements for the reinforced airwing, much less get heavy shuttles skyward when the Quarantine lifts. Jackson has to ration his flights, which means thin patrols and minimal recon based on highest priority. This news manages to cheer me up, despite how nervous I am about my people poking around in Chang’s derelict.
One of the newbie troopers was already found dead after a night watch, apparently fallen and impaled on some wreckage—it’s being officially called an accident. I’ve spent the day debating what I’ll do if there are more such “accidents” and the newcomer command doesn’t take steps to ensure the safety of the boots on the ground. The argument was pointless—I know I’ll do what I’ll do depending on what happens—but it kept me distracted from Star’s crushing revelations, and how shitty I was receiving them.
Coming back to Tranquility has been uncomfortable these last few days. Star has been keeping her distance, letting me process. I usually see her wandering the Cast gardens, watching the children. A beautiful phantom in white. But I know I’ve hurt her by not fully accepting what she’s become and done, not being able to let go of my pain and rage to even attempt to soothe hers. That she says she did a lot of what she did for me only makes it worse.
It’s Bel that greets me this evening, back from his excursion to the Coprates North Rim. He looks urgent, excited.
“We found signs of several abandoned habitations of varying sizes, hidden in the foothills. Some looked like they hadn’t seen life in decades. Others were fresher, maybe weeks. A few sites look like they’d been reused several times. No obvious signs of violence. Maybe some kind of local nomadic group moving on, looking for better real estate. Or somebody running from something.” He flashes me his memories. I see “Zodangan graffiti. Recent. We found these a
t two sites near Tyr, higher up in the cliffs, but neither was big enough for more than a few dozen people. And these…” He shows me unfamiliar symbols. They look like a hybrid of stylized English letters, ancient runes and Chinese pictographs. They’re carved into the rock instead of painted like the Zodangan work. But I think I’m seeing at least two distinct styles, languages. In some cases, one set has been crossed out, partially obliterated. I’m reminded of old-school graffiti, especially competitive gang tagging. But there’s also art: Stylized drawings of warriors, families, long-destroyed colony sites, even commemorations of the nuclear bombardment. Depictions of tragedy and hope. “We found these at more than a dozen sites along the Rim, some at the mouths of caves that looked like they were intentionally collapsed.”
“The ETE told us the few survivors of Tyr found better sites, dug in and vanished,” I tell him. “And the Cast have repelled attacks from other groups over the years. Nothing else left behind?”
“A few scraps. Trash. Waste pits. But then there was this…”
He shows me another image: a cave floor, with familiar letters drawn in the dirt. Fresh.
“CROATOAN”
“We made a return trip to this cave on the way back—Lux was getting cranky but Azazel agreed it looked like promising real estate for our new home. That wasn’t there the first time, the day before.”
The Knights were there. Maybe looking for Chang’s base themselves. Maybe getting themselves away from UNMAC territory. They’ve probably been watching us, watching Tranquility’s restoration, watching me. And they left a message. Why? To test my memory? Reaching out? Did Abbas succeed in getting word to them, but they’re being cautious?
“Can you take a turn watching over the Stormcloud site?” I ask Bel. “There’s been a death—a trooper on late watch. Supposedly an accident.”
“Of course.” It sounds like I’ve given him something else to be intrigued about.
The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are Page 29