The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (10 page)

So why is Star telling me I was all for it?

It’s funny, but something about that otherwise
sinister possibility is actually liberating, because it lets me
feel like it’s not two of me sharing this body, this mind. I’m
really just the me from this time, simply given the tools, weapons
and (incomplete) intel of the other version, like somebody (for
whatever reason) just left me his gear.

And that’s fine. This me I know. That other one was a
flake.

I wait until the sun is well up, the morning gusts
easing, before I make my big entrance.

I do it casually, just walking up on the “front door”
of the exposed dome from the most open approach, so they have
plenty of time to see me coming. I don’t bother to alter my
appearance. (I do fold up and put away the helmet—a skull head with
big horns is just a little too outrageous, even if it might go far
to intimidate.)

The “front door” is the way Thomas brought her team
last time. A fresh water gully runs down the bottom of the ravine
the colony sits in, apparently passing through the garden dome and
coming out a large cargo airlock at ground level, its doors cut
away a long time ago. (And that was our first sign of trouble: If
you wanted to protect your home from invaders, why remove a
blast-grade set of hatches? Unless you wanted them to come
inside.)

One thing Thomas’s team didn’t get the benefit of,
because they were sealed in their H-A shells: The smells. Green.
Wet. Almost full-wetland. It hits me thick as I come up to the
hatch. And under the green-smell: Human smells. Shit. Piss. Sweat.
And death. Corpses and rotting meat. I imagine this is what a
primitive village might smell like (assuming they weren’t managing
the trash and sewage).

It’s thick by the time I’m through the great airlock
and inside the dome. And humid.

The interior is more stunning than I imagined from
the feed. This used to be a terraced garden, ringed by labs and
smaller greenhouses. (The other two domes were housing and support
facilities.) Now it’s overgrown like a rainforest took root, took
over, the original structures barely visible.

And it’s several degrees warmer than outside.
Atmospheric pressure is up above .30 because we’re deeper here than
in Melas, but the oxygen content is much richer, almost rich enough
to survive without a mask.

I’m walking in the footsteps of Thomas’ ill-fated
expedition. Under foot, the ground crunches beneath the webbing of
Graingrass that sparsely carpets the path in. I can see bits of
bone in the gravel. Teeth. An appropriate welcome mat for anyone
stupid enough to dare come here.

Another familiar milepost: A support column on the
path, twisted with vines, original paint giving up to time and
exposure. But it is marked with new paint: childlike scrawls in old
blood:

“2GUN” “MAK” “SPYK” “AKS” “FERA”

By each name are tally marks.

I stand and appraise the scorecard while I wait.

They are absolutely silent: no rustling, no crunching
of gravel. And invisible. Or they would be, if I couldn’t see
heat.

There are hundreds of them. All around me.

I look over the green smoothly, calmly, looking at
where they are so maybe they’ll get that I see them. Then I
approach their Golgotha.

The trail ends at an overgrown hill I know is made
entirely of human bones, crested by skulls, four meters wide and
two tall. This is where Thomas’ team encountered

“Two Gun!” I call into the dome, letting them know
I’m impatient. “Mak! Spyk! Fera!”

“No fear,” I hear a mask-muffled rasp from the top of
the hill. “Stupid stupid. Dead dead.”

A low chant repeats all around me. “Stupid stupid.
Dead dead. Stupid stupid.”

The indoor forest erupts. Something ape-like comes
flying out of the green at me, tries to land a spear-point. While
the creature is still airborne, I grab the shaft and snap it (it’s
made of rebar), using the whipping action to fling its wielder past
me overhead. Another one is already lunging from my blind spot (if
I had one). It’s child-small, thick dreadlocks, wearing a breather
mask and dressed in a hodge-podge of rags and scraps of colony
clothing. I grab it by the cloak before it can stab me, and toss it
away, not sparing it height or distance (and clearly demonstrating
that I’m strong enough to toss a human being like a small
knapsack). It flies into the shrubbery with a satisfying yelp.

A storm of metal answers me from all directions. I’m
pelted with throwing knives, rebar spears, hatchets. I impress
myself by managing to swat or dodge them all.

And so I earn my audience with Two Gun.

I’ve seen him before, on Link feed: Thin, ragged as
his fellows, but proudly wearing a black and gray Light-Armor
colony security jacket. He has a breather mask over his rusty
beard, and a beat up old outback hat capping his mop of ginger
hair. His face is so lean as to be skull-like. He stands over me,
up on top of his hill, his hands wavering over his twin hip-slung
revolvers.

“Draw,” he dares, like a bad western.

“No.”

He does. Just one gun. (I guess I don’t deserve two.)
In just a few tenths of a second. Fires. Right at my face. I catch
the bullet in my fist. Show it to him. (It stung, and my hand is
numb, but it was worth it.) Let him watch it melt into my
glove.

“I’m not going to hurt you. And you’re not going to
hurt me.”

He seems to be appraising me like I’m only
unexpectedly interesting, or at least he’s doing a decent job of
bluffing through his shock. But he doesn’t fire again. Or back up.
He drops his gun back in its holster.

Another figure steps up beside him. Female. Same
ruddy hair. Younger. Also wearing a colony L-A jacket. Her entire
body is bristling with knives.

“Mak the Knife?” I make the connection. This seems to
surprise her. Two Gun chuckles.

And I realize I’m being distracted.

Behind me, in near-absolute silence (and only my new
ears would have heard), has stepped another wild thing. She waits
for me to turn, to face her. Her locked hair is even more flame-red
and thick than Mak’s and Two Gun’s. She has bone beads in her hair,
a cherub-round face, big blue eyes, freckles. I doubt she’s much
more than a teenager. She’s wearing scraps of handmade armor over
red leather-looking material I recognize as being cut from an old
sealsuit. Her left arm sports a heavy guard studded with short
jagged blades. Her right hand is sheathed in metal, with twin
knives welded to protrude from her fist. She moves smoothly, sizing
me up like a predator. I’ve seen her before. Killing one of my
men.

“Fera,” Two Gun calls over me. “Is he pretty?”

“Pretty pretty,” Fera sings back. She grins and licks
her teeth

“It’s the hair,” I discount.

“I want him,” Fera insists. I’m still not sure if
she’s looking to kill or mate.

“Best draw now, Pretty Pretty,” Two Gun warns me.

“No,” I repeat. “And she’s a little young for
me.”

This actually seems to make her angry. She starts
circling me in the small space. She moves with smooth grace, like
Sakina, only lower to the ground, more feral. (Is that what her
name means?) My turn to try to look unimpressed. I sense the rest
of them close in the green all around us, just watching. And then
they start chanting.

“
Fera Girl! Fera Girl! Fera Girl!
”

“You can’t hurt me,” I warn her evenly.

“Fera’s hurt Eternals before, Pretty,” Two Gun warns
back. “Even stripped naked by their magic.”

And to prove it, Fera draws an ETE Rod from inside of
her cloak, tosses it on the ground between us.

“I’m not an Eternal.”

“Not for long,” Two Gun taunts.

“No. I’m worse.”

Her grin curls up into a snarl and she lunges—just
not straight at me. She zig-zags, fakes. And she
is
fast.
She crosses the space between us in less than a second, starts
slashing with her blade arm quick enough that I hear it whistle.
But I stay just out of her reach. Then I make it worse by smiling
at her.

She leaps, springs over me, tries to score me from
above, behind, but I twist and dance with her. The best she manages
to do is tag my surcoat. But then she springs back hard on the
landing, and I have to make contact, blocking her weaponized arms,
then catching a kick. Somewhere in there, she manages to get
through my guard, and her arm knives bite my left cheek. The chants
turn to cheers at her small victory.

I have to get hold of her, restrain her, taking both
her arms and holding her away from me, up off the ground, as she
thrashes, kicks. I ride the blows, let her know she’s not doing any
good.

“You bleed!” she grunts at me, struggling like a wild
animal, refusing to accept.

“I heal,” I tell her. “And I’m stronger and faster
than you.”

She throws both her legs up through my restraining
arms, wraps them around my neck, tries to wrench my head off,
squeezes with everything she’s got. Tries to get her arms free. Her
freckled face is bright red from the effort, her teeth grinding.
I’m still trying to patient, careful. She tries throwing her weight
from side to side to take me off balance, but I don’t budge. She
could be wrestling a statue.

“STOP!!!” Two Gun shouts over the chanting, silencing
it, silencing everything. But he’s not talking about the fight (and
Fera is still hanging around my neck, but she’s frozen, alert).

“Hunter-Killers!” Mak announces, filling her hands
with knives. Two Gun has also drawn his weapons, but doesn’t aim at
me. His eyes scan the rafters of the broken dome, sweep the
perimeter through the green. Then he takes a shot at something off
to his right. Mak has run. He scrambles after her, and a bullet
smacks the hill where he stood, shattering an old skull. The crack
that echoes after sounds like a pistol.

More follow, and I hear rounds whistle through the
green, smack on metal. But it’s not battle, the fire is slow,
controlled, careful. Like a sniper. Or a hunter. But the bullets
are coming from multiple angles, all around us. Fera is struggling
again, but now she’s trying to push away from me.

“
Leggo!!
” she’s shouting at me.

I see the bullet coming. Right at the back of her
head.

I jerk her out of the way, but I’m too planted, too
locked with her, I can’t…

Owww…

I’m looking up at the sky through the broken dome. My
head feels like someone took a bat made of lightning to my skull.
I’m on my back. Fera is looking down at me, crouched low, my blood
sprayed on her face. Then she scrambles away. A bullet cuts right
over her back.

I can feel my forehead shoving the bullet that hit me
back up through my skin even as it starts the process of absorbing
the copper and steel core. For some reason I decide it would be a
good idea to stop the process, keep the wound open, lay here and
play dead. I go limp, lock my eyes open so I can still see, and
stop bothering to breathe. I force more blood out through the wound
to be convincing, feel it ooze back into my hair.

The shooting continues sporadically for another few
minutes. The throng of wild people has well scattered (but I pick
up at least two cooling bodies laying in the green).

I count off three more minutes before I hear the
sounds of cautious boots.

Three figures wearing black and gray colony security
L-As weave out of the brush, keeping vigilant for any remaining
locals. Their uniforms look old but in good repair, like the PK;
and like the PK, they’re groomed military neat. Two males, one
female, all probably in their twenties, from what I can see under
goggles and breather masks. They all have the same big stainless
revolver, out and ready. Their belts have multiple speed loader
pouches and a sizeable survival knife.

“Check him,” one of the males whispers. The female
starts to kneel over me, when the one giving the orders tells her
to stop, get out of the way. Then he aims his gun and shoots me in
the he…

“…did you do that?”

…ad again.

The other male is leaning over me now, checking my
pulse, my eyes that still stare dead upwards. My left cheekbone is
stabbing on fire. I can feel my teeth resetting themselves. I stop
the repair process again before it becomes surface-visible.

“Making sure,” I hear the first male, the one that
shot me. “Something’s not right. He walked in here alone. Fought
the animals off. Alone. Including that bitch Fera. And he didn’t
draw his weapons.”

“Never seen a gun like this,” the female mutters,
sounding awestruck. She’s taken my weapons. “
Nice
sword…”

“We’ll divvy later,” the first male assures.

“No,” the second corrects. “We need to take him and
his things inside. Gardener needs to see this.”

“We
need
to get out of here,” the female
insists. “Before they regroup.”

“I ran inventory,” the second won’t budge. “His DNA
is on file. But Gardener says this is Colonel Michael Ram. UNMAC.
He’s supposed to be dead, fifty years ago in the Bang.”

“
The
Colonel Ram?” the female seems to
recognize, getting herself a closer look at my face.

“Are the ETE cloning now?” the first male
wonders.

“We need to know, given what we’ve seen in the
skies,” second keeps pushing.

“Fine,” the first gives in, but it sounds like he’s
just gotten orders from someone else. I pick up a Link signal, but
it’s encrypted beyond what I can easily read. “Gardener agrees with
you.”

“Quickly…” the female urges as they move in to pick
me up.

“You owe me pick of your Protecteds, Murphy,” the
first grumbles as they lift. “Thanks to you, there’s no time for
trophies.”

“Just doing my job.” Murphy—the second male—doesn’t
sound like he accepts the debt.