The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (26 page)

“I think I can help with that.”

It’s Paul. He’s standing up on the hill with Bel.
He’s not wearing his helmet, just goggles and a mask.

“This nice man says he knows you,” Bel tells me.

“He does.” I introduce Paul Stilson of the ETE
Guardian Force to Bel, Kali, Two Gun, Mak and Murphy.

“There may not be much of a Guardian Force anymore,”
Paul tells me after he skitters down the hill and
uncharacteristically embraces me.

“What’s happened?”

“I don’t know. The Council has ordered all operations
to cease immediately. All teams are being recalled to their home
Stations. No explanation. And my father won’t talk to me. He’s
sequestered himself. All the Councils have. All I know is they’ve
been making requests of certain of our sciences divisions. Quantum
mechanics. Astronomy.”

“Maybe he’s trying to determine how much of reality
was overwritten by Chang’s actions,” I consider what seemed to
unsettle him during our possibly final meeting. Paul shrugs. He
looks tense. So I confront: “What are you doing here?”

“You asked for my help,” he tells me. “So here I am.
Again. Just like old times.”

“Against orders,” I reflect on the help he gave us at
Melas Two.

“I am a lousy son.”

“But a good man,” I praise him.

“And sexy,” Kali leers over my shoulder, “in a geeky
professor sort of way. Oooh… I could probably whip up a naughty
schoolgirl outfit.”

“Be good,” I try.

“When am I ever good?” she tosses back. “Except when
I’m bad?”

“He is
very
cute,” Bel makes it worse.

“I really apologize for my friends,” I tell Paul.

“
Wife
,” Kali corrects me. Paul’s eyebrows go
up.

“
Ex
-wife,” I re-correct.

“You’re making poor Fera sad,” she taunts with a
pout, lays her head on my shoulder. It’s unsettling how quickly she
can shift her tone and affect to mimic the young girl she’s
overwritten.

“This
is
going to be fun,” Bel repeats Kali’s
earlier assessment with a grin. Turns to Kali: “I’ll help you with
that schoolgirl outfit.”

“Long story,” I excuse to Paul.

“I think we’ll have time for it,” he tells me with
his trademark patience. “It looks like we have a lot of work to do
here. Where should we start?”

7 May, 2117:

Bel manages to make us four serviceable “aircraft”
out of the wrecked Kite fighters. It’s enough to start making our
own recon flights, managing circles of a few hundred kilometers to
the east and west, keeping eyes out for any sign of Chang. But
Chang’s managed another effective disappearing act, probably taking
the time to rebuild his damaged ship.

There has been no further contact from Astarte. Bel
insists she’s probably fine, just playing whatever role she’s made
for herself within Chang’s ranks, though her silence may indicate
that wherever they’ve gone is out of her covert communication
range, or perhaps the terrain between us is interfering.
Unfortunately, his lack of concern isn’t comforting.

I’ve managed to teach Paul, Murphy and Two Gun to fly
the simpler versions of our ride-able ultralights—this gives the
latter two their first looks of the greater world beyond their
domes. Two Gun’s joy at the experience of flight was unexpectedly
childlike, the hardened killer laughing like a young boy.

Murphy has moved back out into the Cast community. He
doesn’t share much, but it seems clear his reunion with his people
was not a joyful one, and his relationship with his family (or at
least his wife) has been particularly strained. I expect he’s seen
by too many as a traitor to be blamed for the demise of Gardener
and their neatly managed existence, as well as the uninvited
presence of the modified “freaks” that keep imposing their help. I
expect it doesn’t help that Kali’s tracking implant has manifested
as a small blood-red tattoo-like image of a skull on the left side
of his throat. As a face-saving maneuver (or perhaps a life-saving
maneuver, assuming they all live in fear of Kali’s temper), the new
H-K “Council” has elected Murphy “Ambassador to Outside Peoples”.
(Not ambassador to the Cast—maybe his former fellows hope I’ll take
him far away from them.)

Despite how much I’ve come to trust and value him, it
feels like Bel has been doing something behind all of our backs.
He’s been taking semi-regular “meditative” walks in the surrounding
hills, “studying the spread of life beyond the dome gardens”, and
always has some excuse to discourage company. My suspicions gel
when Murphy—in his capacity as ambassador—brings a petition to the
Cast for the return of H-K dead. Apparently there are two H-Ks that
remain unaccounted-for from their attempted genocide.

Paul has managed to restore enough of the “Domers”
systems to secure their survival for another several months. He’s
also been working with a crew of skilled Cast engineers to begin
rebuilding their dome. He’s had no apparent contact with his own
people since he arrived, and we’ve seen no ETE Guardian patrols on
our recon flights.

I’ve kept myself busy between flights, helping the
Cast repair their survival gear, pitching in with Paul’s
reconstruction team (as do Kali and Bel), trying to regain some
mastery over my mods. My personal flyer has taken on a raptor-like
appearance that Bel describes as very “gryphon-ish”. He insists the
self-conversion is the effect of a “peripheral seed” to provide
useful equipment, much like Chang’s seeding of Disc drone tech. (In
other words, I won’t just set everything I touch to morphing.)

As for Kali, she continues to demonstrate an almost
reassuring level of restraint, at least in matters of violence. She
hasn’t killed, maimed or harvested anyone’s raw materials since her
righteous tantrum against Gardener and Palmer. Instead, she seems
to be channeling her unbridled malice into a bizarre dance of
seduction and abuse.

She’s thrown herself at me with brutal aggressiveness
over a dozen times, leaving us both bloodied to levels that would
probably be life-threatening to a mortal. And there’s enough left
between us (or maybe it’s just the mod-boosted libido) that I let
myself reciprocate on several of those occasions, only to have her
act as if nothing happened the next morning.

In between these impulsive attacks, she continues to
sling idle ridicule at what she calls my “moral and ethical
pussification”, flirts with the locals (making Two Gun especially
uncomfortable with her Salome-level performances), and—possibly
cruelest of all—randomly channels Fera. (And I’m not sure if it’s
just an act or if there really is enough of what Fera was still
inside her to make the occasional appearance.)

One comfort: Her presence has solved one of my
problems. I can pursue Chang with confidence that she’ll protect
Tranquility in my absence. She’s easily as dangerous as I am, and
far less restrained in expressing her protectiveness of her adopted
people. (At least she’s not demanding they worship her.)

And I do have pressing business elsewhere.

On a routine circle this morning, we saw smoke rising
from Melas Three.

I tried to hack in, find out what had happened, only
to have Burns order the entire Link network shut down. He’d rather
they be unable to communicate at all rather than risk my access. So
I stayed off the channels, fly away, let them get back online. (I
wonder if that was Burns’ plan, to take advantage of whatever
concern for my former command I might still harbor, holding their
safety to lever my compliance?)

I go back out in the dark of night, alone. Use my
“gryphon”—its skin now radar-invisible—to set me down out of visual
scan, and hike in under cloak.

The base looks like it’s taken a pounding. There’s
serious damage to the Ops Tower, and two of the pad elevators are
wrecked. It also looks like they’d restored the surface batteries
(with new guns from Burns’ “relief” flight) only to have them all
blown away.

Playing detective in the below-freezing wind, I get a
close look at the divots in the bunkers, the scarring on the
buckled blast doors. Grenades. Lots of grenades did this.

I kick up my night vision, scan the perimeter. The
landscape to the west looks like there’s been a major battle, the
ridge lines re-sculpted by what were probably UNMAC rockets. I look
again at the damage to the base structures. It looks like
everything they took came from the west, from ground-based
launchers, not from the air. Chemical trace also says it didn’t all
happen at once: there have been attacks over a few days. Hit and
run. Like the Nomad attacks we suffered, from Aziz’s band. But they
didn’t have this kind of firepower. The base has been hammered by
dozens upon dozens of grenades.

I decide to take a calculated risk, camp out on the
battered flight deck under my coat, sitting there until
sunrise.

I wake up surrounded by a squad of H-A guns.

“Captain Thomas,” I greet her casually. She doesn’t
answer me, but neither does she move to threaten me. “Please assure
Colonel Burns that I mean you no harm and will be on my way
promptly. I only want to know what happened here.”

She hesitates accordingly, waiting for orders. I can
feel the Link chatter go back and forth, but keep good to my
personal promise not to hack in. Then, receiving, she nervously
tells me:

“It was Brimstone. That hybrid of Chang’s you
encountered at the old Zodangan stronghold. She’s with Aziz’s
Nomads, leading them to try to take this installation. She shows up
at their head, empties her complement of grenades, takes everything
we can throw at her, retreats for several hours. Probably to
reload—your own report suggested her tech manufactures her grenade
load. We got a few of the Nomads on the first two tries—now they
stay back, let her do it all for them. She can take our guns and
just keep coming. And she’s managed to knock down our rockets in
flight. All we’re managing to do is tire her out for awhile and
waste ammo. Sir.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I assure her. “And thank you,
Captain.”

Through her visor, she looks like she’s desperate to
say something else, but holds her tongue and her position. I wonder
if she already told me more than her orders authorized, trusting me
to use the intel to help and not betray.

I stand up slowly, summon my flyer, and leap into the
air to meet it.

On the way back I get a flash, a compressed message
on a secondary Link channel. Voice only.

“Colonel Ram. Do not attempt to reply to this
message.” Lisa. “Anton’s found a way to create a distraction just
long enough to get this file to you undetected. I include his name
with his permission. There are more that I’m sure would help you if
they could, but I’ve been discouraging it. There’s too much at
stake right now.”

Her voice is level, formal, measured. I wish I could
see her face, read her expression, get an idea of what condition
she’s in.

“I know you’ve been told that Brimstone has been
attacking Melas Three. I expect Burns did that because our
on-planet weapons can’t stop her. It’s only a matter of time before
she renders the base completely non-operational. And there has been
no sign of any ETE activity in over a month now. They’ve even
abandoned their stewardship over the original Shinkyo site.

“General Richards is still on schedule with the
larger relief mission, arriving in orbit in six weeks, but we
expect Melas Three will be taken or destroyed long before that.

“There has been no sign of Chang’s ship on our
satellites, but our listening posts have registered intermittent
gunfire coming from the City of Industry over the last few
days.

“Please know that I am fine. I will try to send you
updates as I can. Do not attempt to contact me or hack into our
Links, and don’t you dare attempt any kind of rescue. Please.

“I wish you luck. Take care.”

She is definitely holding back, keeping it
professional. I wonder what she’s not telling me. And then I’m
wondering just how pissed off Anton must be to risk his complacency
being documented in the message when a second file comes up, tacked
onto the first:

“Colonel Ram… if that’s still you, and I really hope
it is… this is Anton. Colonel Ava will probably kill me for this,
but you need to know even if she won’t say… Sir… They’ve been…
experimenting on her. Worse than a lab rat. Halley and Ryder and
the rest of the Med team wouldn’t participate, so they’ve all been
relieved, restricted to limited duty. Burns brought his own flight
surgeon down from orbit. They’ve been examining her, cutting her
open—it’s fucking vivisection. They even tried cutting into her
brain
. She heals up good as new, but… They’re trying
everything to crack her nanotech. Implanting tissue samples into
their own volunteers. They even fucking
raped
her when she
was out for surgery… I’m so sorry… I’m just glad nothing’s worked.
I’ve got my own hack into Burn’s private uplink, and he’s getting
hammered by Earthside and those sick fucks at UNCORT for
results.

“Tru Greenlove is on the warpath. They’ve got her
people locked down, claiming the civilian population needs to be
kept quarantined. They won’t even let anyone work the greenhouse.
They’ve sealed it for study, put us back on ration packs. The whole
damn base is about ready for a mutiny. They’re so scared of what
we’ll do or say they’ve even cut us off from any contact with home.
We can’t even walk topside without Burns’ direct authorization. And
they’ve still got you listed as missing in action—the public back
home has no idea you’re still out there. I’m not sure if that’s
because UNMAC thinks there will be a panic or if UNCORT’s afraid
folks will start rooting for you.