by Gavin Smith
Miska shrugged. She didn’t really care one way or another.
‘All right, so Artemis comes out here to form the ultimate horticultural society, do the god thing and create her own life, the tree ladies.’
‘We believe that Artemis’s dryads are little more than what you would consider drones,’ the owl told her. ‘But there was one other step that Artemis took. She found reference to a Project Crom, a biotech programme that utilised Themtech …’
‘Naturally occurring bio-nanites,’ Miska said, thinking back to her conversation on the boat with Hemi. ‘She used this Project Crom to stimulate the plant life here even further on its evolutionary path. So what, her own vegetable queendom?’
‘We don’t think so. We think it’s part research project, part hiding from her abusive family.’
‘She only started killing when the war started. She was happy to live in peace with the Maasai colonists, wasn’t she?’ Miska asked. She had just been trying to defend herself. Admittedly, in the Bastards’ case, perhaps a little too proactively.
‘Just so.’
‘Let me guess. New Sun want to weaponise her work?’ Miska asked.
‘They think they can turn the planet into one huge military biotech manufacturing facility. They could quite literally grow their weapons of war. The possibilities are boundless.’
And terrifying, Miska decided. She tried to avoid big picture thinking for the most part but the idea caused cold dread to creep through her very being. It was a very unusual feeling and she didn’t like it. The pollen alone, the ability to turn off your enemies’ most sophisticated weapon systems, was a game-changer. At best it would lead to warring swarms of nanites, itself an end-of-civilisation scenario.
‘The UN would never grant them a colonial charter,’ Miska said but she didn’t believe it herself as she said it. She suspected that Martian intelligence had enough money and enough dirt on the UN Colonial Committee to push something like this through. The owl just looked at her. The flames of the data fires around them reflected in its round eyes. Miska had long known that short-sighted greed and fear tended to win out over long-termism and enlightened self-interest every time.
‘So they need to kill Artemis and push the colonists off-world?’ Miska asked. The small-scale proxy war made sense as well, just another colonial brushfire war, not big enough to draw any real attention. Until the infamous Bastard Legion turns up, Miska thought. It explained the all-out smear campaign.
‘I expect they would rather take Artemis alive,’ the owl told her. ‘But yes, they certainly need to neutralise her.’
‘So where is Artemis?’ Miska asked.
The owl spread her wings.
‘We don’t know,’ the owl told her. ‘At a guess, watching.’
‘Waiting for the mortals to amuse her?’ Miska asked. The owl didn’t say anything. It just flew away. Miska watched it go and then tranced out.
She opened her eyes. She was lying on the wet earth. She was somehow managing to feel cold, clammy and sweaty from the rising humidity at the same time. She was in darkness. The pilot light on the flamer had gone out and she couldn’t get it to light again.
‘Shit,’ she muttered.
She had almost found herself feeling sorry for Artemis. But somehow the Small Gods always find ways to behave like assholes, Miska thought as she sat up.
‘Miska! Come out and face me!’ Torricone screamed from outside the ship.
Chapter 20
Without the flamer’s pilot light Miska couldn’t see a thing. Fortunately she was able to follow the sound of Torricone’s voice as she felt her way along the long-range strike craft’s overgrown bulkheads. Whoever was controlling Torricone had overplayed their hand. The kind of horrible things that Torricone was shouting at her were so unlike him as to be absurd. The content of his graphic threats and insults were easy to ignore. She did, however, wonder at the control mechanism as she groped her way through the ship back towards the open airlock. The sequestered couldn’t have been controlled remotely because of the pollen. That meant they must have been receiving orders verbally before they went into battle. Verbal orders could only be so sophisticated. You couldn’t plan for every contingency in advance, after all. That was the problem when you tried to turn people into machines.
She could see the grey light from the open airlock now. See the corridor that led to the outside. See the figure that was crossing back and forth in front of the airlock, casting his shadow down the corridor as he ranted about all the improbable things he would do to her when he caught her. Miska knelt down by the corner and aimed up the corridor, the pad of her finger on the AK-47’s trigger. It would be so easy. One shot to put him down while she couldn’t see his face. While his shouted words made him a stranger. Problem over. Except she knew she’d have to close and make sure that he was dead. That would be no fun at all.
She knew this was a trap. He was there to draw her out. She relaxed her finger on the trigger and slipped it back over the trigger guard.
You have to stop walking into traps, she told herself. Even as she moved up the corridor Miska had no real plan as to what she was going to do when she reached the outside.
It was weird. Seven of the sequestered were faces she sort of recognised from the Hangman’s Daughter. They were all on their knees, stripped to the waist, many of them with prison tattoos on display. They looked like they were at prayer, except they had knives held to their own throats, as if they were about to fall on them. It was clear that it was a pose. Among the trees, the head-poles and the mist it was almost artful. And, Miska decided, not meant for me. This had been staged for someone else.
She was hunkered down by the strike craft’s interior airlock. She could see Torricone pacing backward and forward in front of the airlock as he ranted, his voice going hoarse. He was stripped to the waist as well. He had his back to her at the moment. A crucified Christ stared at her from his skin. He looked beautiful until he turned. The programmed madness was evident in his contorted, twitching facial features. His eyes were all Torricone, however. He looked trapped in his own eyes. After what he’d seen, the acts that his body had been forced to do, Miska was pretty sure that killing him would be a mercy.
Coward! her inner voice snapped. That was the easy way out. She stepped through the airlock anyway and levelled her weapon at Torricone.
‘Michael,’ she said quietly. He swung towards her. It was easy to believe that it wasn’t him any more. As long as she didn’t look in his eyes. He tensed, ready to charge. The pad of her finger started to depress the rifle’s trigger.
Then strange things happened in the air behind Torricone, as though she was looking at a distorted image of the undergrowth. Suddenly he was yanked backwards. She could see branches on the transplanted Earth foliage moving where Torricone had just been dragged through them.
It doesn’t make sense … Miska just about had time to think when the first of the sequestered deserters charged her. She swung round to face the screaming man. She squeezed the trigger and nothing happened. She just about had time to hit the sling’s quick-release. The AK-47/flamer combo dropped into the mud and he was on her. He stabbed at her with his blade. She guided the knife hand away from her and hit him in the throat hard enough to take him off his feet, crushing his windpipe. He hit the floor and she moved quickly away from him, expecting the rest of them to be all over her but as soon as the first hit the ground, the second was on his feet charging her. Miska fast drew the Winchester, levelled it, squeezed the trigger, wasn’t terribly surprised when it didn’t fire. She sidestepped the second sequestered deserter’s charge and used the shotgun as a club to take out his knee. He went sliding face-down in the mud and Miska stamped on his head until he stopped moving. Now the third was charging her. She threw the shotgun at him, distracting him momentarily as she drew the Glock. Tried to fire it. Nothing. She used it to break the sequestered deserter’s nose, free hand on the back of his head as she kicked out his knee and took him to the grou
nd. He tried to get back up, blood all over his mouth. That was when Miska’s knife found his throat.
‘Enough of this, this Thirty-Six Chambers bullshit!’ Miska screamed into the apparently empty clearing. She had left bodies in the mud. That was entertainment enough, she decided. She was breathing a little heavy. Her squad hadn’t interfered because they were waiting for Resnick. Though she was pretty sure that nobody had a functional weapon at the moment, bar knives, hatchets and other exotic weapons. And Hogg’s crossbow, she thought. Miska hadn’t heard any violence in the trees which meant that her people hadn’t found Resnick’s so-called Double Veterans either. ‘Come out and play.’
Resnick was using her as bait for Artemis. Everyone likes gladiatorial combat after all, and Miska needed Artemis as bait for Resnick. The sad thing was that one of the reasons this job had appealed to her was because it had seemed so simple: fight in a war. Between Martian special forces, Small Gods, sequestered deserters and P-fucking-R, somehow it had become very complicated.
They came through the mist looking exactly like the mythological figures they so desperately wanted to be. Up close, in their ‘natural’ environment, Miska could see that there were four different types of the dryad drones. Each type shared characteristics with one of the four types of Earth trees present, the oak, apple, walnut and ash.
Artemis, however. Artemis was something else. She had a more obviously statuesque woman’s figure. A skin of smooth, sectional bark covered a powerful looking musculature, leafy twigs for hair, thicker branches formed a spine across her upper back and shoulders. She wore a loincloth of moss that became a skirt at the back and carried a long bow and arrows in her left hand. Both the bow and the arrows looked as though they had been grown rather than made. Her eyes were two glowing ovals the colour of amber resin. She had no mouth that Miska could see but the bottom part of her face curved down into a sharp point. She was stood with four of her handmaidens, among the overgrown Corinthian columns on top of the mound formed by the crashed ship. Miska had to force herself not to step back. Artemis was terrifying through sheer physicality alone. Miska was struck by the seeming futility of Resnick’s impending assassination attempt. Frightening or not, Miska felt drawn to the ‘goddess’ but she had heard that was always the case with the Small Gods. Their sheer force of personality was hardwired.
‘This is just entertainment, right?’ Miska asked. She had to force herself to look away from the so-called goddess. She was looking for Resnick to make his move now. She was pretty sure that a lot of his so-called Double Veterans had just tried to use their weapons out in the woods somewhere. Resnick would be close though, he’d have a contingency, he’d want to be sure.
‘How is it different to you watching wars on vizzes?’ the goddess asked. Her voice sounded like wind blowing through the trees. Her ‘mouth’ trisected the triangular bark below her eyes. She sounded odd using a word like ‘vizzes’. Miska was almost disappointed.
Concentrate! Where the fuck was he?
‘Mars is trying to kill you,’ Miska told her as she searched the surrounding area. It’s movement that gives you away, she told herself.
‘My half brother wants me dead.’ It wasn’t a question, just a simple statement of fact.
Miska had meant the planet, or rather the government of the planet, but it was pretty much the same thing.
‘I think it’s more he wants the planet for himself,’ Miska said. She had no idea what Artemis was going to do, though it must have been obvious to her that some drama was unfolding here. She seemed content to let it play out.
‘There is nothing he won’t try and turn into a weapon,’ Artemis said.
‘Yeah, well one of his assassins is here now and he may just have the tools for the job,’ Miska told the goddess. She was sure that there was movement in the woods now but it was too far away for Resnick. Even if he had a bow or a crossbow like Hogg’s he couldn’t be sure it would hit. ‘If you’ve got any intel you could offer, like his whereabouts, well that …’ Just the slightest movement. ‘Move now!’ she ordered the goddess, as Resnick seemed to explode out of the earth at Artemis’s feet. Miska was moving but it was futile. He had some kind of hypodermic dagger in his hand and it was stabbing down towards Artemis’s leg. Miska watched as the blade pierced the bark of an empty husk that looked like Artemis. One of the handmaidens stepped forward. Root-like tendrils wrapped themselves around Resnick, stilling his struggling form, the tips of the roots growing into his nostrils, holding his mouth open, his eyelids.
‘Don’t kill him!’ Miska shouted. Resnick had used an old-fashioned ghillie suit and the even older technique of being really sneaky, mostly from being quiet and still. He must have either observed or guessed the rough area where Artemis would reveal herself and then moved towards her very slowly. It was as much luck as observation skills and knowing what she was looking for that had allowed Miska to see the movement. God, he’s good though.
‘Why?’ Artemis asked as she grew out of the earth next to Miska.
‘Ah!’ Miska cried, almost stabbing the goddess. ‘I want to do it,’ Miska told her after she had composed herself. Only up close did she realise just how big Artemis was. She had to be at least ten feet tall.
‘Well, your warning saved my life,’ Artemis admitted. Somehow Miska doubted that, but she wasn’t about to argue.
‘He’s got some more people around,’ Miska said.
‘So have you,’ Artemis pointed out.
‘They want to kill them as well,’ Miska admitted.
‘You’re quite bloodthirsty, aren’t you?’
‘They did some bad things. What are you going to do now?’ Miska asked. It wasn’t as if Mars was going to stop because Resnick had failed.
‘I had hoped to live in peace with the modern world. We observed the colonists. I like them well enough, their ways, but now …’
‘The pollen?’ Miska asked. Artemis nodded. ‘The colonists?’
‘They can stay or leave as they wish. If they stay then things will become simpler for them.’
‘Why did you attack my people?’ Miska asked.
Artemis looked down at her. ‘Same weapons, same equipment. It was only when you came here that we realised you were different from these others,’ Artemis said and gestured to Resnick’s struggling form.
‘So you get that we’re on your side?’ Miska asked hopefully. ‘Because we could really do with getting a shuttle in here to evac.’
‘Don’t you have some unfinished business to deal with?’ Artemis asked. Figures were emerging from the woods on the high ground at the northern end of the clearing. Resnick’s so-called Double Veterans. The dryad drones were moving back into the trees. The handmaiden holding Resnick plucked the hypodermic dagger from his grip and then she too backed into the woods, her tendrils drawing back from the Spartan’s struggling form until he was free. Miska looked around and Artemis had gone.
‘It was nothing personal,’ Resnick called. He was on his feet now, moving down the mound created by the crashed ship. ‘Just a job.’
‘I’m still going to kill you,’ Miska told him. Though she had been hoping that the handmaiden could hold him down while she stabbed him to death because he would be filled with Martian nanotech. He would be faster and stronger than her. His Double Veterans formed a staggered line either side of him. There were ten of them. She recognised some faces from the aerostat. Doubtless they had already tried to shoot her and found their weapons not working. Doubtless her Bastards had done the same as soon as Resnick and the Double Veterans had appeared.
‘I think we both know that’s not how this is going to go down,’ Resnick said. Miska was aware of her people walking out of the woods behind her. Knives, hatchets, māripi already drawn. She noticed that neither Hogg nor Kaneda were with them. This, she hoped, was a good thing. Either that or they’re both already dead.
Mass came to stand one side of her, Grig the other.
‘Come a long way from sitting in a nice warm
mech,’ Mass muttered.
‘It’s just war, fam, just war,’ Grig told him and then turned and grinned at her.
Miska used her thumbs to gesture at the legionnaires on either side of her.
‘The real deal.’ She pointed at Resnick’s Double Veterans. ‘Copycats.’
Resnick just strode towards her.
‘Get ’em!’ Miska told her people. The Bastards charged.
Bean died first, of his own stupidity. For reasons best known to himself he charged Resnick. Resnick batted the hatchet out of Bean’s right hand. Miska heard the bones in the cannibal’s hand breaking. The Spartan locked up and then broke Bean’s left arm and now he had a knife. He hamstrung Bean because he could. The cannibal hit the mud and Resnick stamped on his head so hard he got grey matter on the sole of his boot.
Corenbloom went down next. He was backing away from one of the Double Veterans, knife in hand, looking for an opening, obviously outclassed, when he got too close to Resnick as the Spartan strode towards Miska. Resnick punched Corenbloom in the side. It looked like a casual blow from his left hand. Miska heard the audible crack of Corenbloom’s hard armour plate breaking as the force of the blow spun him into the air. He hit the mud hard and didn’t move.
Miska was struggling to hold her ground as he closed with her. This wasn’t some Martian-tech augmented Triple S contractor like Major Sheldon had been on Faigroe Station. This was a full-blood Martian Spartan and, unlike her, he didn’t have a bullet lodged close to his spine.
Resnick threw a lazy sidekick at her. He was clearly feeling overconfident. She didn’t step back enough to avoid the blow, just enough to take some of the force out of it. Her inertial armour helped too. It still knocked the wind out of her. He may have been fast but he wasn’t fast enough to draw his leg back before she’d rammed the diamond-edged blade of her knife into his leg, hard enough to go through his inertial armour and whatever bullshit subcutaneous armour his nanotech-filled body provided. She tore the blade down his leg and was rewarded with a grunt of pain. It would probably be the last lesson she taught him.