Our attacker rides it, dropping onto his back as he tosses the ICW at me, using the distraction to draw twin pistols and empty them very skillfully at both Bly and I simultaneously. Then he throws himself tumbling down the slope, hoping to get some distance. But Lux is out of the tunnel, and in his way—we have him in a triangle. He reloads his weapons, then holsters one to pull a hand grenade. But then he hesitates, stares at Lux—something about the sight of her gives him pause. But then he slips, tumbles, loses his grip on the grenade. Lux reaches down in a blur of light, grabs a rock and flings it, striking the grenade in motion as it tumbles on the rubble, knocking it away. Our attacker ducks and covers as it blows (I just expand my forearm armor to shield me any further abuse). Lux shrugs, flashes a little self-satisfied grin.
“We don’t mean you any harm!” I try. A mask and goggles look up at me. I think I see big blue eyes, pale skin.
“Speak for yourself,” Bly grumbles, advancing. “Your sick friends killed mine.”
Our attacker manages to stand, freezes, nowhere to run. A defiant pistol points at Bly.
Lux has slipped up quickly and silently from behind, and a slight touch drops our assailant with a convulsive jerk. (Lux carries a mod that generates powerful electrostatic discharges. He insists it was because she had a lover that enjoyed an electrostim fetish. Azazel’s version is that Lux is also an accomplished live-gamer, and the shock mod is a popular “legal cheat” for use against robot opponents, just like those Fohat is famous for.) Then he jerks away the hood to reveal a bob-cut of thick white-blonde hair.
“I smell girl,” she purrs approvingly.
The girl—and it is a girl—jerks away, stumbles, tries to crawl. Lux just grins at her like he does when she’s planning a seduction.
“She’s a child!” Star suddenly materializes. It looks like Lux is finally hearing her too.
“Just wondering what it takes to get your attention,” Lux sings back.
I think I hear Bly hiss an exasperated sigh through his nightmare mask.
Star uses my hacking to access the HUD in the girl’s Link goggles, lets herself be seen.
“It’s okay, child. They’re here to help you.”
“And how do we know her?” Lux asks before I can.
“Her name is Lyra. Lyra Jameson. Her mother discovered she was pregnant on the flight here, but kept it secret—they didn’t want the mission to be scrubbed, lose what they thought was a dream opportunity. She was born on-planet, raised by the crew as her family. The… The body you found on the ship’s control bridge was her father. She was away from the ship—they had been keeping her away from the ship—when Chang came. He told her to hide, no matter what happened. Then he erased the personnel files—the medical records and the logs—so no one would know she existed to go looking for her.”
“But you found her?” I’m not sure I believe.
“I caught him doing it. I let him finish. Then I had to watch…” She trails off, closes her eyes. “Chang only knew about the original crew census from the smaller ship…” She looks at the girl, who stares back frozen at the sight. I think I see recognition in those big eyes.
“She’s seen you before,” Lux deduces.
“I found her hiding, convinced her to trust me by helping her avoid the patrols, blocking the scans. Chang left, satisfied he was done here, preserved the ships as evidence for leverage in whatever larger plans he was simmering. He set a beacon to detect the next to stumble upon it, figuring it might be you or UNMAC. I think he was hoping it would be you, that what you found here would make you join him. If it was Earth, he’d make sure they didn’t just bury the evidence. I just made sure the beacon would call me, too.”
If the mission had been sending updates, someone has to have noticed the silence, assuming Chang took steps to keep a distress call from going out. They may already have satellite eyes on the site.
I also realize we’ve cut the girl—Lyra—out of the conversation, as if she isn’t here, isn’t completely terrified.
“Lyra…” I try. “We really aren’t going to hurt you. We can help you. Please.” I put my sword away, reach out my hand.
“Trust him, girl,” Star reassures. “I always have.”
A small, trembling hand takes mine. Her grip is surprisingly strong.
I convince Bly to keep watch while Lux goes back inside to get the systems restored (pouting as he accepts the chore). Then I convince Lyra to lead me “home”.
“My parents, they helped me make this, called it my Fortress of Solitude. They… wanted me to have a place of my own, to study and draw… have my own life…”
There’s a smallish cave hiding a set of linked shelters, a hundred meters up above the Circe. Letting me in, I find the “foyer” piled with weapons.
“Some of these were from the ship, to protect the mission. Others were collected from archeological finds, left by whatever survivors there were here, before they moved on. Or died off.”
I expect that was a convenient lie told by her “family” to cover their activities. These weapons are far too precious to have been left lying around. More likely, they were taken from “test subjects”. Apparently, they didn’t want her to know. Did they hide everything they were doing from her?
Taking off her goggles and mask, Lyra has a round face with a small upturned nose, a small mouth and anime-large eyes. She strikes me as eloquent and innocent, despite the evident emotional trauma that makes her sound like she’s cowering somewhere inside herself, drained of joy, her voice trailing away any time she mentions those she’s lost. I’m quickly getting the impression that her “family” did keep her in the dark about their real work, especially their latest work, likely why they encouraged her “independence” and distance.
“You didn’t spend much time on the ships?” I confirm.
“The Siren’s reactor was damaged, so we all had to stay away. Radiation,” she relays another convenient lie she was told. “The Circe… Less and less… Usually just for meals or to hang out with my uncles on the bridge. My parents said their work was getting riskier, they’d upped safety protocols because they were near a breakthrough, wanted me away from the ship when they were running experiments, just in case… And I liked exploring, studying. Geology. Meteorology. The new fauna.”
She shows me covered plant samples in another shelter, a carefully tended personal garden.
“These are all safe,” she assures me like she’s been given reason to believe there’s danger.
Another shelter has a cot, a desk, a non-networked notepad, and artwork: Drawings of the local landscapes, the ETE Station as seen from down slope, faces that must be her family. There’s another ICW and spare ammo by the bed, along with knives and one of the triangular-blade rocket-spears, and a spring steel bow with metal-shafted arrows.
“How did you learn how to use these?” I ask about her arsenal.
“My uncles. Arnim and Hollandbeck. They were our pilots, and our security. They…”
Another wave of loss hits her. She goes blank, sits down on her cot, chews her lip as she stares at the floor.
“Did you go back to the ship?” I ask gently. She hesitates, shakes her head. Tears start flowing.
“The woman… the one in white… she said it was toxic, that I needed to…”
She jumps up, backs away from me, goes scrambling in a panic for what looks like scanning gear.
“I’m fine,” I insist. “There’s no radiation. And all the nano-cultures are neutralized.”
She checks anyway, and I play along.
“What are you?” she asks with nervous wonder, probably taking her first detailed look at me. “I mean… Can I ask?”
I sit on her floor, make myself smaller, then tell her a simpler and cleaner version of my life story. She has indeed heard of Mike Ram, is fascinated with the idea some of us had slept since the bombing, excited to hear there are many more people out there, and glad that Earth has begun to make relief flights.
But th
en I have to explain Chang. And me. And my odd scary friends.
“Is that why Chang killed my family?” is her first most-important question. “Because of the work they were doing?” I only nod. Then get an unexpected response: “Then I can help. They taught me nano-science, nano-biology. Maybe I can salvage their work, make something to fight back with…”
I have to put my fingers to her lips to slow her down. She’s energized, focused. I almost expect her to bolt back to the Circe. I almost feel like I need to give her a chance at revenge, no matter what atrocities her parents got themselves involved in. But I also feel I owe her a modicum of truth, given what I’m planning.
“Lyra, you need to know… Earth is terrified of us, of the nanotechnology. Your parents were doing something very secret, something desperate, something a lot of people aren’t going to approve of, no matter their reasons…”
“But the UN sent us,” she protests, denying.
“I know. And those that did will be the ones to face whatever consequences.”
“But don’t we need weapons? Against Chang?”
“You do. But those weapons were being developed before Chang, for use against the ETE, the Terraformers.”
“Why are the Terraformers a threat?” she tries to understand.
“They aren’t. Just the opposite. But Earth is afraid of them just for what they are, and because they won’t share their science. They have reason to be afraid of what others will do with it.”
She digests that, her big eyes rewriting her reality.
“And you?” she extrapolates.
“They’re as scared of us as they are of Chang, even though we’re here to fight him, to protect them.”
She looks up at me, narrows her eyes.
“You aren’t willing to share your technology either,” she condemns me.
“Our technology led our world to ruin,” I remind her, “led Chang to come here and destroy yours so it would never happen.”
“So what happens to you if you beat him, destroy him? Then what?” She looks like she’s about to come apart on me. “Do you just go away? Destroy yourselves? To keep us safe from what you are?” But she doesn’t back away from me again—she really just wants to know.
“We might leave. We’d like to keep helping if we can. Repair the damage done between the worlds. Help make a better future.”
“But you’re not fair,” she confronts me after a pause. “Why should only a few have that kind of power? How is that going to work out? I mean… You’re like gods, in a way—the gods in the old myths—really just humans with a lot more power, too much power. At least in your world, you were all gods. How long until you—even one of you—starts to do what gods did to plain people in those stories?”
Out of the mouths of children…
“How is anyone ever supposed to trust you? I mean, that one in the helmet… he sounded like he didn’t like your decision not to kill me. He was going to kill me… And he looks like a monster. Why does he look like that? At least you and the woman in white and the… um… was that a boy or a girl?”
“It’s complicated. Depends on when you catch him. Her.”
That seems to throw her chain of thought for a moment, but she gets it back. It’s important.
“At least you look kind. Sound kind—except for the…”
“Lux,” I name, fully understanding the pronoun issue.
“Lux… sounded cruel too. Maybe any of you can be cruel. How can we tell you’re not just pretending? What good is trusting you if we don’t get another choice?”
“You’re right,” I give her. “You just have to see what we do—and that’s a poor answer. You want guarantees, protection. I can’t give them.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?” she puts it all on me.
She’s been taught by soldiers as well as scientists. She’s learned how to fight, to fend for herself, to rely on herself. I remember Sakina, who made herself into the perfect fighter, and how fearful she became, faced by more and more things she had no way of fighting, until she had to run away, at least for awhile.
“I can’t make guarantees that you’ll be safe from humans in general. There are many kinds of power to misuse.” I’m almost tempted to tell her what her parent’s orders entailed, but she feels like she’s barely dealing as it is. Still, I can’t help but be impressed: a young girl, all alone in the wilderness, standing up to the next best thing to a god.
I feel something… stir. It’s not sexual arousal, not really (I remind myself she’s only nineteen), but there’s an impulse… I want to touch her. I want to…
“I need to go see about the ship,” I excuse quickly, getting myself out of there as gracefully as possible, hoping I don’t look as flushed as I feel.
This is impossible. This girl probably wasn’t even born in the other timeline. My last seed can’t be keyed to her DNA. Is there some other selection criteria? Is that how it chose Fera—it wasn’t just incidental intimacy? And is that why I let myself be intimate with Fera? Did the Kali seed drive that, overriding my impulse control? I’d blamed what I’d done with Fera—and Lisa—on increased libido. Am I just programmed to plant what I’m carrying in suitable hosts?
I feel sick. If I’m right, some programming on a sub-atomic level just tried prompting me to overwrite an unsuspecting innocent, make her into something she’s terrified of. (And Bel and Bly and Star have all described what converting a living, conscious body entails.)
I hope it was just a random trigger, set off by opportunity. Maybe an emotional cue. Or some physical compatibility match. (Or has the seed made its final decision?)
At least I felt it coming this time, recognized it for what it was. And I still appear to have free will, the ability to resist, to choose.
So I choose to stay well away from her.
Chapter 7: Leverage
3 July, 2117:
I hear Lux yelp with the glee of a child as the Circe lifts out of its hole. It’s taken days of hard labor—and Bel and Azazel and Paul—to dig the thing out and get it in flight shape.
It’s a short flight, just a test—up, spin, land—because now I’m sure we’re going to draw unwanted attention. I expect Richards has seen us digging from space. I wonder if he knew about the Circe’s mission. I wonder if any of his team did. In any case, they’ll all know soon enough.
Paul goes to get Lyra—he’s the least-scary of any of us, in terms of both presentation and technology. We’ve already made sure to clean up the corridors and bridge (leaving the resealed labs in all their bloody glory). This will be the first time since the massacre that she’s set foot in the only home she’s known, where her family died (and died protecting her). I don’t go to meet her at the hatch.
I know she’s been watching me from her cave for days. I’ve sent Paul up to check on her, and I know Bel’s paid a condolence visit. I expect she thinks I’m angry with her about her challenging me to share my tech with Earth, with UNCORT, and that’s probably much more comforting than the truth that I might lose control of myself and undo her, make her into someone else (and I don’t even know who, thanks to my missing memories).
Through Bel’s eyes, I watch her hesitate at the hatchway, Paul patient behind her as she steels herself, makes herself cross the threshold. She looks proud of herself for doing so, then turns to Paul and asks
“Are we really going to one of your Stations?”
He smiles and nods, even though I know he’s not terribly looking forward to this.
The Circe—now that I can see it out of the ground—reminds me of a huge winged beetle. The smaller Siren’s Song fit into a keel-length recess on the underside during the flight from Earth, the whole thing capping a booster and fuel module that’s still in high orbit. Assuming that the flight plan the crew had was honest, a return trip was an option.
She’s a heavy ship—it burns a lot of fuel to move in atmosphere. It was designed for a direct drop and hard burn back up, not for recon. We won’t be going far.
Lyra comes forward to the bridge, and we do the uncomfortable mutual ignore. She almost loses her balance as we climb, head upslope for the Turquoise Station.
Paul sends recognition codes as soon as we’re in range. No one comes out to meet us, which is both a good and a bad sign.
Lux—enjoying playing pilot—manages to settle us on the largest pad, and I decide to make a show: Paul goes out first, with Lyra under his arm and shelter field. Bel, Lux, Azazel and I step out into the cold thin wind and simply stand in front of the ship, as if to say “Here we are. But we will honor your barring us.”
Paul and Lyra wait by the airlock for a full two minutes before it opens. Only three Turquoise ETE are on the other side of the hatch. I see Paul communicate directly, silently. Chrome helmets nod. Then one of the Turquoise turns to me and projects
“You may come.”
Lyra is all wonder as we go deep into the Station. I suspect she’s watched it from afar, like so many others that live here, all her life without being able to approach it: too far, too high, and then the resident Jinni would never let you pass.
We take the usual path, wind up in the usual dark chamber. Lyra jumps when it goes bright. But the only avatar we get is Council Blue. Mark Stilson.
“Thank you for seeing me,” I tell him. He doesn’t speak to me. He looks at Paul, who produces the flashdrive I made for him, containing all of the records of the Circe that we could salvage, including their orders, atrocities, results, messages to and from home. I can “overhear” Paul send it to him, feel him scan it. He spends ten minutes being an ephemeral statue. Then the feed stops, and his mask turns to me.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to give them their ship back. Then I’m afraid I’m going to make a scene. Just a small one. No fatalities. I won’t even break anything. Unless they insist.”
The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are Page 32