The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (19 page)

…and get slammed in the back. By darkness.

“Must I do
everything
?”

I saw Chang do this to Paul: He’s become fluid, his
shadow form lashing out his arms like whips, tentacles. I cut the
darkness. Actually seem to hurt it. But it just reforms. I shift
the sword to my left hand, draw my gun, fire into the middle of
him. The shell penetrates, explodes. The shockwave is enough to
knock him back, make him expand almost to the point of coming
apart, but he instantly reforms.

I realize my remaining friends have started their own
fight, trying to whittle down Chang’s soldiers while they’re
distracted by this brawl of gods. Mak’s knives are flying. Two Gun
and Murphy are shooting, moving—Two Gun is fast and surgical, but
the anti-ETE rounds that Murphy is loaded with make his targets
explode.

Chang’s men go down in handfuls, falling, knocked
over the side but there are too many. Those that can, fire back.
Two Gun is smart enough to stay behind me, using Chang and I for a
shield. I see Murphy slide across the deck under me just as Chang
gets himself together enough to wrap his “arms” around me. Murphy’s
thrown himself at Chang’s men, manages to scoop up a dropped PDW,
sprays, still on his back. Tosses another weapon to Two Gun as his
revolvers run empty. (Mak still seems to have plenty of
knives.)

Meanwhile, I’m grappling with a black-hole octopus. I
can’t get another shot on Chang, so I send a few into his troops.
The bullets seem to respond to my will, air-bursting just before
impact to take out as many as possible. Chang wrenches my gun-arm
down at the deck, holds it there. My sword-arm is also immobile in
his grip. Now neither of us is going anywhere. So I get creative,
twist and shift my weight back, pull him instead of push into him.
It takes him partially off balance. I drop my pistol back in its
rig. Then instead of trying to get free, I reach my empty hand into
the darkness, shove it into him (it’s like tar and electricity).
Reach out…

The shadow convulses. Fights. Screams. I’m
in
him. Manipulating. Infecting. Hacking.

I
can
hurt him.

Then something unexpected: The shadow shivers,
vibrates and dances like iron filings hammered by sound waves. And
recedes
. I see flashes of pale flesh as the shadow cloaking
him (and it does seem to be cloaking him) fails in places. I see
teasing glimpses of a man inside: frail, wiry, naked. Gaps in the
darkness open and close as he struggles. What’s still black is
still fluid, but what get’s exposed looks solid, ordinary. Flesh
and bone.

He’s screaming in panic as I finally get pieces of
his face: smooth, mixed-race features, neither definitely male or
female. And his eyes are different colors: One black, one pale
blue…

The ship drops and spins beneath us as he loses
control, the deck tips. I see Mak go over the side, then Two Gun.
The slopes of the Catena Rim are coming up fast. Chang is trying to
crush me in his tentacles, hurt me back. One of his wings clips a
ridge. The ship jerks. Jerks me off my feet.

“
Get off!!
” Chang shouts, raging, restoring
himself to full-shadow, losing all shape, and his whole mass hits
me like a wave and I’m flying. He hits me again in midair and
there’s nothing I can do about it. Three seconds later, I land on
my back in rocks, start a small slide that takes me down. Down. I
realize I’m heading down-slope toward the ruptured dome. I manage
to stop myself before I fall through into the gardens.

In the air above me, Chang slowly gets his ship back
under control. Turns. Aims the muzzle of his railgun at the Lower
Dome, at me.

But he doesn’t fire.

His ship starts to turn away, turn west. Move
off.

“We’ll do this again…” I hear him gasping in my head,
sounding like he’s desperately trying to compose himself. “I’ve
wasted enough time… More pressing business…”

All I can do it watch him go.

No. I can chase him. I don’t care if I have to run
after his fucking ship. He is
not
getting away from me.

“Colonel Ram!”

It’s Murphy. Apparently he fell off too. Apparently
we were close enough to the ground—to the rim slopes—not to make
that fatal or crippling. His black uniform is rusty red from all
the sand and dust. He has a ragged bloody wound in his left upper
arm, but he seems to be ignoring it. He’s waving me over to where
he is, pistol still in his hand. He’s running, sliding, scrambling
downhill. I look where he’s headed. I see Two Gun, on his hands and
knees in the rocks. And Mak, sitting next to him. Between them in
the rock and sand is something else.

No. Oh no.

I’m up and running. Falling. Crawling. I see her
before I get there. I see her face. I see…

Two Gun is trying to put her guts back in. The fall
knocked them out. It’s all a mess of bloody mud and gore. It’s
sprayed up over her face. All over her. Her eyes are open. Her
mouth is open.

I fall down, fall to my knees. Put my hands on her
face. Her heart. Her guts. I try to hack in, infect, heal. Stick my
hands in her guts. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. She’s not
tech, not metal. Whatever I can do to flesh isn’t enough. I can
destroy. I can’t heal.

I take her face in my bloody hands. Kiss her. Hold
her. She’s already getting cold. All I smell is blood.

Another one. I’ve killed another one.

I’ve killed…

“No.”

I ease her head down, gently, gently. Brush her locks
out of her face. I can’t touch her eyes to close them. I make
myself stand.

Chang is getting away. He’s left over a dozen of his
men dead and dying on the sand, forgotten, abandoned, unimportant.
His ship is sliding west along the rim. Heading for Melas. For
Melas Two? Melas Three? Heading to bring more death to people I
care about…

“No.”

Murphy and Two Gun and Mak are looking up at me,
helpless, in shock, bloodied, hurt, angry…

“No.”

Chang isn’t getting away. I’m going to kill him. And
Bly. And if I can’t kill them, I’ll do something much worse.

I don’t say a word to my friends.

I start running. Covered in Fera’s blood. But not for
long: my body starts to absorb it. Resources.

The ship stays well out of my reach, but it isn’t
pulling significantly ahead of me. Either Chang’s toying with me,
or something else is slowing him down. He’s just cruising the
Divide. Idle. He said he had more pressing business. Or maybe that
was just an excuse to get away from me—maybe I did hurt him, maybe
he needs time to recover. (But he didn’t fire when he had his shot.
Maybe he just wants the gardens intact.)

I even try jumping, inspired by old comic books from
my childhood, but even though I can clear a good fifty meters at a
time between my modded strength and speed and the lower gravity, I
find I lose momentum as soon as I’m airborne. I’m better off
keeping traction, scrambling over rock, pushing my energy and
resource levels to exhaustion.

I spend hours doing this. I figure I cover thirty
klicks. He’s at least half that far in front of me. But he’s still
not increasing his lead.

And now he’s slowing down.

What is he doing?

He’s still hell-and-gone from either UNMAC base.
There’s no sign of an intercept flight, no Link chatter. We’re
alone, in the middle of nowhere.

I slow, use my eyes to get a better look. He’s
turning, bow into the Divide. I’m thinking he might climb, hop the
ridge, head for Melas Three. But then he actually starts to
descend. There’s no dust blow to mask him.

Is he looking for something?

I zoom in as close as I can and still get resolution.
There’s a figure on the slope, dressed in black, just standing
there as the ship descends on him. Holding some kind of staff.
Chang hovers close. Getting a look. Maybe having a conversation. Or
a confrontation.

“Do you think he’s figured it out yet?”

A melodic voice comes from behind me. I turn.

The figure has just appeared here, just a few meters
from where I’m standing, seemingly out of nowhere (unless I’m that
exhausted that I didn’t see him or hear him crawl out of some
nearby hiding spot). I initially suspect another illusion, a
projection like Star used, but his boots do sink into the dusty
slope.

Up close, he’s wearing shimmering black armor,
similar to Bly’s but more… reptilian? Sectional. Angular. His
breast armor is in roughly anatomic sections, like metal muscles,
over mail. His collar and belt are ornate, with a repeated
pentagram theme. He’s wearing a flowing crimson cape, a broadsword
at his side. No helmet or mask. His skin is pale, somewhat
oriental. His features—and I think it’s a he—are feminine, his face
long and elvish—even his eyebrows curve upwards, his ears point.
But his hair—long and thick like mine—is black, flowing over his
shoulders, except for two locks at each corner of his sharply
peaked hairline that point upwards like… horns?

“Oh… No, he’s figured it out. You might want to close
your eyes.”

I turn back, see Chang start to back his ship away
from the figure. (And I check: the figure in front of Chang’s bow
is
the same one standing behind me.) Then a black gloved
hand is in front of my eyes. Just in time for a massive flash.
Blinding light, then heat. And I feel almost like I felt when Burns
tried his EM gun on me...

EMP.

And shortly thereafter, twin shockwaves: The first a
quick sharp overpressure wave that smacks me in the face, I feel it
up my sinuses. The sound of the blast comes with it, deafening. I
realize I’ve only heard something like this a few times, and with
more barriers and distance. Then right behind comes the wind…

I have to hunker, turn away, duck and cover. I’ve
never been standing in a nuclear blast wave, but I seem to be well
beyond the radius of the worst of it. Still, it feels like an
instant hurricane, hits me like a wave, hot, sandblasting my
exposed skin, almost takes me off my feet. I stagger in the
momentary storm, stumble and fall just trying to weather it.

That was a nuke. Probably a small tactical yield,
maybe a few kilotons.

“Mmmm… Yes. Well, that should slow him down for
awhile.”

The mystery figure is shaking out his cloak. Then he
reaches out a gauntleted hand to help me up off my knees. I take it
cautiously.

I look back toward Chang’s ship. It’s listing in the
air, backing away drunkenly from the mushroom cloud that rises from
the slopes, smoldering. The entire bow has been obliterated, one
“wing” sheared off and the other twisted, towers wrecked. But it’s
still up.

“I
was
hoping he’d get closer before he
realized that wasn’t me, maybe even come down for a chat,” the
newcomer rambles idly, as if we’re talking about something trivial.
“I never was that lucky.”

“Who are you?” I have to ask.

He looks crushed. Actually pouts.

“I suppose it’s the residual DNA,” he considers. “The
host he picked for me. A touch of the Persian. It’s rather growing
on me. You, on the other hand, look simply yummy. Except for the
dust.”

“I know you?” I risk hurting his feelings again.

“Not intimately, but a boy can hope,” he toys.
“Professionally. We’re both critics of our excuse for a society, in
one fashion or other. And we’re both on the same team, just in case
you didn’t get read in. Covert infiltration and all. Or was. I had
a bit of a righteous meltdown. She’s still inside, though. Huh… I
hope I didn’t just blow her up. She would be rather cross.”

“What?”

“How’s your memory?” he sounds concerned.

“Missing some important details.”

“We should walk and talk,” he gestures to the
mushroom cloud, now flattening out against the atmosphere net.
“Evening wind might bring some of that back our way.”

Shit.

“There are several hundred people living exposed
about thirty klicks back that way,” I point to where I came
from.

“They should be fine. The isotope I used was from my
Trident. It’s reasonably clean. I can keep an eye on the levels.
Thirty kilometers, you say?” He seems put off by the idea of
walking that far.

I look back after the mangled ship. A sandstorm is
beginning to whip up around it. The blast will have been detected
by both UNMAC bases. Flights will be incoming to check it out.
Satellites are probably already on zero. Chang needs to hide. (I
find I don’t doubt he survived.)

“Belial,” the strange stranger introduces himself as
an afterthought, offers his hand to shake. “Call me Bel.”

“Ram,” I use the name I’m used to, accepting the
handshake. “Michael.”

“I notice you’re still using your mortal name,” he
opens after we’ve made some ground. “How much are you missing?”

“What should I be calling myself?”

“Ragnarok,” he reminds me. “It was your UNACT
codename. It stuck when you entered the early Hybrid project. It
suits you. I promise I won’t call you Rags.”

“Michael,” I gently insist.

“Archangel. Sword of God. Also suits you. What else
are you missing?”

“Who sent us?”

That gives him a chuckle.

“He doesn’t really have a name. Really ate the
mythology on that: just a few gibberish letters. Not sure if He’s a
he, actually. More of an It. Sounds rude to call Him an It, though.
Some of us call Him Yod. Funny: I didn’t think I’d like Him. I was
sure I would hate Him, in fact. But He kind of grows on you.”

“Are we talking about this cryptic experiment Chang
was so afraid of?” I try.

“Mmmm… Yes. Actually, He scared quite a few people.
Chang used that to get support. He thought he had mine. That was
part of the plan, of course. Certainly
I
would be opposed to
The Project. It earned me his trust, and a slot in his absurd time
travel ploy.”