The figure shakes back the red cowl to show me reddish hair pulled back over a high forehead, a trimmed beard, and a hawk-like face with a heavy brow, cheeks hollow under large cheekbones.
It is him. But that’s not possible.
“Surprise,” he says like this is a minor joke, an idle prank, grinning like a fool.
Asmodeus.
Ange Apollyon. Codename: Asmodeus. Assassin. Sadist. Psychopath. Trained by the same deep-immersion VR program I was, designed to cram lifetimes’ worth of tactical experience into months. Except he was made to do secret wetwork by the conspiracy inside the original UNACT. He’s a brilliant, skilled killer. Obsessed with me, as some kind of mirror-image of himself.
And dead. Almost a hundred years ago. In both timelines. Decades before Chang’s splice.
“Confused?” he plays with me. “I was, too. Probably more so. Of course, I didn’t remember my death. But they showed it to me—a virtual reconstruction, anyway, since you conveniently forgot to record your little act of justice for posterity. So bizarre to know you’re dead, know you’re not really you… But then, Chang’s been whining about his own identity crisis these last few days. I’m just ahead of the curve.”
I look at Lisa. She remembers him, thankfully not from meeting him face-to-face. But Star… Ange Apollyon was her partner, her mentor before he threw himself into his own darkness. (Where is Star? Did she know?)
“I’m just like you,” Asmodeus continues when I don’t have anything coherent to say, clearly enjoying this moment. “Some salvaged essential DNA, a stack of memory files. Except mine was from an experiment, the boredom of immortals… Someone figured if they could restore even the most destroyed of you from backups, why not re-create the dearly departed? All you’d need was a viable DNA sample and enough memories to fill the back story of an identity. You’d be surprised how much of our personality is in the wiring… They figured they’d have a hot new product.”
“And you…?” is about all I can manage. He grins broader, spreads his arms.
“I’m for you, sweetie! Somebody that apparently doesn’t like you very much found what they needed in the sealed Beta Project files, grew and programmed themselves somebody for you to play with…” The dagger extends into a Japanese-style spear, a weapon he’s used before. “It’s been a long time.” But then he turns to Chang, prompts: “Don’t let us interrupt anything. Just old friends catching up.”
Chang takes his cue, and the railgun fires again, blasts another massive divot out of the slope below the Green Station.
Fohat sends his “Bugs” after Lisa. Bly runs and jumps to her aid, taking advantage of the way even the bigger robots begin to hesitate when they get in her control range, starts hacking and stabbing. Bel starts circling Chang, drawing his sword, charging his armor. Asmodeus points his spear at me, challenging, still grinning like this is all good fun.
“Ange…!”
I hear Star’s voice. It gets Asmodeus to look with me. She appears up on the main deck, near the “breech” end of the rail gun. Something’s wrong with her. She staggers, looks blank, stunned. But it isn’t seeing Asmodeus resurrected. She…
Explodes. In a blaze of blinding light, her body disintegrates. The blast came up through the deck, pure energy, like the railgun misfired somehow, or was sabotaged. The shockwave slams us. Passes. But the light barely fades. Another figure steps out of it, spreading arms like a performer on a stage as debris rains on the deck. Making an entrance. In the glare I make out a familiar helmet.
Ra.
Her hands gracefully produce her weapons: her sickle-sword and her tri-flail. She moves fluidly, like a dancer. Poses.
“You have got to be kidding me…” Asmodeus grumbles.
“Broke your toy, Shadowman,” Ra taunts with a boyish voice, striking another theatrical pose. “Happy to break them all.”
The way Chang is standing, I expect his jaw would be on the floor if he had a visible face. Even without, he looks stunned, incredulous.
“Me first,” Azazel’s voice booms. The Siren’s Song slides across the port side, rakes the decks with its turrets, chopping up Chang’s soldier bots. Chang starts launching Discs.
“Me, too!” I hear Lux come back, leaping off her flyer and actually onto a Disc in flight, driving his sword into it before jumping to the deck. The Disc blows.
Azazel is flinging the ship through evasive patterns—he’s made improvements on the propulsion and maneuvering systems—picking off two of the Discs as they come after him. Then four more just get swatted out of the sky. The ETE ships rise into view, having slid in below the line of the starboard deck. The Guardians start boarding, advancing to meet the robot defenders, heading for the railgun section to make sure it’s as broken as Star assured. I flash them the location of the hostages so they can secure a dust-off point.
“Ra” joins Bly in hacking and smashing the Bugs, her light apparently b;inding their sensor eyes. Azazel gets his guns to helping them by shredding the reinforcements, but the big bots are as resilient as the prototype. Then “Box” bots rise up out of deck ports to join them, open fire. It’s all the ETE can do to keep up shields against the barrage. The Boxes even manage to chase back Azazel. I can hear him cursing his frustration, calling Fohat creatively obscene names (he’d told me he was eager to meet the designer of some of his favorite “game” toys, to show the toymaker how good he’d become at defeating his best product).
I see Lux move in a flash, projecting light-based decoys as she zig-zags at the gun bots, leaps high, lands on one and gouges out one of its heads, his blade transmitting a disruptive charge on contact. Leaps on another. Sinks her blade in. Fries its systems. But this one is ready, spins its sections to throw him off. She manages to dodge as it turns guns toward him, then leaps away as another Box fires at her at the expense of its fellow.
I’m instinctively moving toward them, ignoring the Asmodeus clone, but he gets in front of me with his spear. He wants my undivided attention. I try dividing his.
“Ground fire! Now!” I call out. A perimeter goes live around the ship, as cloaks spring up roughly a hundred meters out—Knights and Nomads—and start launching rockets at the Stormcloud’s hull guns and launch ports, battering the drive sections, sniping at convenient targets. I turn back in time to see Chang get hit in the head, then in the torso with HE rounds. The shells manage to rip him apart, but he reforms quickly, shaking off the abuse. Then, through the Knight’s feed, I see him drop four more Boxes onto the sand as his intact ship guns fire back into the attackers’ lines.
I’ve got a dozen sets of eyes in my head, a dozen “screens” of different views of the battle, but I can’t just play general, not now. Asmodeus won’t let me—he knows I’m trying to coordinate. I have to sidebar the feeds as he charges in with his spear.
And he’s fast, even by enhanced-neuro standards. At first, all I can do is dodge—I can’t even make contact with his weapon—until I get his rhythm. Then I reach out and grab his spear shaft with my left hand and start cutting before he can free it. I lay his grinning face open to bone, stab him in the throat up under his chin, try to carve his head off. But he drives his spear into my chest, finds a gap in my armor, twists as his smile gushes blood.
I chop down on his lead hand, but his armor holds. I hack the side of his head. It’s enough to get the spear out of me, get out of reach, heal. He’s already closing his own wounds (though he has to push his ear and most of that side of his face back in place to help the process).
I attack first this time, smacking down his spear and going for the gap between shoulder and breast plate, but he stabs me through above the right knee. I get my sword into flesh, feel ribs, rip upwards to try to sever his arm at the shoulder like I’m butchering a carcass. He’s stubborn, slams me in the face with his spear shaft, tearing up my knee in the process, then pins me to the deck.
His spear comes apart in the middle—just like his original cane weapon did—and the free butt section flips ou
t the beak of a war hammer (his other favorite close-quarters murder weapon). I manage to block it before he can drive it into my skull, but then he drives himself forward onto my sword, all the way to the hilt, contracts his muscles around my blade, then takes it with him when he throws himself back off of me.
I rip the half-spear out of the deck and my leg, try to get myself together enough to lunge into him. It’s more of a stagger, but I block his hammer, hit him in his grinning face with the short shaft, then return the favor by stabbing the spear down into his groin. He gasps and groans, but actually looks like he’s enjoying it as we wrestle each other for our weapons.
Then something big hits us. Hard. Knocks us apart. It’s a Bug.
“Fohat! You asshole…!” Asmodeus coughs out. But then I see Fohat still struggling to control his toys, his crown looking like it might actually rip apart his skull. And Lisa’s got partial control of his big bot.
On my back, I draw my pistol, put an HE round into Fohat’s eye patch. It stuns him, but more importantly cuts off his bot feed. Asmodeus is on top of me, knocks down my gun with his hammer, and we struggle on the deck like a pair of drunks in a sloppy brawl.
“Lisa! Crown!” I tell her. She releases the Bug, which staggers around as if confused, then turns all the guns of her makeshift exoskeleton on Fohat, on his head. He tries to cover himself, tries to dodge, but he’s too focused on trying to regain control to move effectively. I see his fingers get shot off, his face peppered with holes. He freezes, staggering, stunned, trying to stand against the storm of bullets. Pieces of his crown fly off, shatter, short out. I see bits of skull and brain go with them. She puts a grenade under his chin. His headless body drops limp to the deck.
But it doesn’t kill his toys. They just start lashing out at whatever moves. Thankfully, Asmodeus is between me and the closest Bug when it picks a target. Still, I get the sharp end of a claw-arm digging into my chest when it goes through his body from behind. He vomits blood in my face. I get hold of my sword, rip it out of him (he gets to keep his arm). The Bug opens its claw, expanding it in his torso, picks him up as he flails against it. Then it tosses him away like a doll. (I don’t see where he landed—he may have gone over the side.)
I take the split-second I’ve got before it turns back on me to get up, get in close, chop off one sensor head, then the other. I barely slip through before it snaps all its limbs inward to crush me. It tumbles and flops on the deck, blind.
I finally have time to catch up on the larger battle: On the main deck, the ETE are still managing to hold a shield-line against the combined firepower of the Box and soldier bots, but now the Cast and H-K have joined them, having been dropped by the ETE ships. The H-K are firing HE penetrators from behind the ETE shields while the Cast hack apart any soldiers that force through or get in behind the line. I see a few bodies down on the deck. Then one of the Boxes gets smart and tries blowing the deck out from under their shields. It staggers two of the Guardians enough that rounds get through, and I see more fall before they regroup. Three of the Boxes look down, and two more are badly damaged. I see the twitching remains of three of the Bugs. Lisa is moving to add her exoskeleton to the fight.
But then something comes flying through the ETE shield line from behind, charges the bots like a raging animal, starts tearing into them, ripping them apart with clawed fingers and bladed arms. It’s Kali, finally making her choice. Her people rally behind her, taking on the damaged machines with axes and picks and hammers. The H-K back them up with their guns. I see Murphy and Two-Gun advancing side-by-side.
In the purpling sky, I see Azazel and two of the ETE ships dog fighting with a handful of Disc drones. But then the Discs break off, fly fast straight west.
Zooming, I see aircraft incoming. Shinkyo fighters—five of them. Chang is up on the aft port deck, directing the Discs, not chancing that the Shinkyo are laden with bombs—or even a nuke or two—for a suicide run. His starboard hull guns are all firing at the incoming ships.
Beneath us and around us, the remaining hull guns and dropped Boxes have done serious damage to the combined Knight and Nomad lines. The bots have all taken severe damage themselves, but stubbornly keep firing. Then, one-by-one, the hull guns go silent. Seconds later, twin balls of light fall from the ship like flares, land on the Boxes and start hacking them apart. It’s Lux and Star.
I hear Kendricks order the advance. The surviving Knights and Nomads charge in, up under the ship, and use rappelling lines to haul themselves up to join the boarding party. But then I realize I’m seeing more lines than I see warriors. There are motion-blurs on the extra lines as I zoom in. I shift to heat-scan, see the shapes of lean, wiry climbers among the Knights and Nomads. The ghost-fighters make the deck before the visible fighters, start hacking and shooting bots, then hurl charges into gun ports and bot ports, and down into the hole Star made in the railgun.
Shinkyo Shinobi. They’d salted themselves in with the Knight and Nomad lines, practically invisible in their new camo suits, taking their opportunity…
I look east, try to hack in to the UNMAC channels again, get chaos from ground units sent out to help the base batteries deal with the rocket bots, and confused chatter from first-responders in the ruins of the Shinkyo camp. They’re not finding any bodies in the blasted remains of the shelter-town.
I can’t help but grin. Burns and Jackson might have shut me out over the past few days, but Sakura was listening, probably snuck her people out during the night as she moved her shinobi in with my allies on the ground. The warriors overrunning the ship now might well be some of those “refugees”.
The incoming Shinkyo ships have taken evasive action of their own, picking away at the Discs, allowing the ETE ships to break off and rescue hostages. Azazel has come back around and is helping to finish off the Box and Bug bots on deck. Lisa is leading the combined ETE/Cast/H-K force to the hostages, as the ETE ships come in to land.
I look back toward Melas Two: The launch bays are damaged, but they haven’t even tried to launch a single aircraft. I try calling out to them again, to let them know we’re evacuating their people.
“…Colonel…” I get snowy feed from a voice I recognize as Rios. He’s using his armor Link, using the same channel Anton used. Defying orders. “…just mopping up the droids Chang launched our way…” I get long-range visual as the machines get picked off by battery missiles, but they’ve already expended their own loads. “…no casualties back at base, not even the Shinkyo—looks like they all snuck out sometime last night… smart…”
“Why aren’t you launching any flights?” I want to know.
“…pulled all the ships out two nights ago, sent them orbital…”
Could be a smart move, anticipating that Chang would bombard the bays. And it might be saving them up in orbit against Chang’s Disc launch.
“We’ll have your people clear in a few minutes,” I tell him, not that he can pass it along without busting himself. “The General is alive. But we lost Captain Thomas.”
“…I know…” he lets me know he saw it. Chang made sure they saw it.
I stand over Fohat’s headless body, take some satisfying precautions by hacking off his arms and legs, cleave his torso at the waist, scatter the parts. I’ll find a nice fire to roast them in later. Bly watches me, nods his appreciation for my impulsive butchery. Then I go looking for Chang. And Asmodeus.
Chang is still up on the aft deck. His form has gone semi-liquid. He’s lashing his arms out as tentacles at invisible pests—Shinkyo—who riddle him with small arms fire, pound him with grenades, even hack at him with their nano-blades. The Knights and Nomads can only watch from a distance, afraid to hit the Shinobi if they join in. Bel is watching, too, just standing there. But then he steps in through the invisible line, charges his armor orange-hot, and plunges his blade into Chang’s center-of-mass. And burns. Fire against shadow.
Chang struggles, tries to smother him, crush him, pry him off. Bel looks like he’s trying to get in
side Chang—he’s already up to his blazing elbows in what may or may not be Chang’s torso. Chang starts to re-form, wrestle with him as a man-shape, strangle him (or maybe he’s trying to break Bel’s neck, rip his head off). Black fingers snake up for Bel’s eyes. Then Chang’s head blows apart.
Paul steps up, his Rod-Gun leveled. He fires again as Chang’s head tries to re-form. And again.
Bly and I get there. The Shinobi become visible, pull back with the Knights and Nomads, all guns on Chang.
Paul blows apart another head, then takes out Chang’s legs. Bel’s fire is beginning to weaken.
“How do we kill this piece of shit?!” Paul demands, nothing but rage. I realize I no longer recognize the man who walked out of the desert only a few years ago, offering help, valuing life absolutely.
Star (still dressed as Ra), Lux, Lisa and Kali have joined us. I step in, sink my own hand into Chang, try to do what I did before. The shadow convulses, but I feel like I’ve put my arm in a swarm of hornets.
“Put a field around us!” I tell Paul. He does. Two of his fellows come and lend their tools to his effort. Chang won’t get away, not this time, even if I have to stay in the cell with him.
Chang starts to re-form again, but I can see details—he’s no longer absorbing all light. He looks like a man dipped in tar, or like he’s wearing some kind of fetish skin-tight body suit. Bel has him by the wrists as I keep my left arm inside him, then dig the fingers of my free hand into his skull. I think I feel actual tissue, bone…
The ship dips under us. I’m not sure if Chang is losing it or if he’s trying to shake us.
“You always hold back,” Kali growls at me, stepping into the field. “You can’t win this by holding back!” She sinks her claws into the opposite side of Chang’s head, her other hand stabbing into his back. She convulses, eyes rolling up in their sockets, but doesn’t let go.
She’s trying to absorb him.
“I’ve got incoming!” Azazel interrupts. He flashes me what he’s getting on radar: Something’s coming down on us from orbit, three blips, but not fast enough to be projectiles.
The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are Page 37