The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (32 page)

…and Bel is on it. Unarmed. But he’s picked up a big
rock and rams it down the barrel of the cannon. It blows up in his
face. I see him fly back. He looks limp and broken. His left
arm…

Box is in convulsions, trying to roll, trying to get
a gun working, smoke pouring out of every seam. The head I shot
still looks about half operational, and one of the chain guns
sounds like it’s still spinning, but it rattles instead of
firing.

Bly—battered and torn up—throws himself at the thing,
finds his sword still stuck in it, pulls it out and starts stabbing
into the remaining head. I’m up and moving in, Paul behind me. I
think I see blood on Bly’s sword. I send rounds into the damaged
gun barrels, hoping something will do more than defang the thing,
and when that doesn’t seem to be working, I draw my sword to help
Bly’s task. But before I get to it, Box lets out a scream like a
turbine, and Bly throws himself off of it, shouting at us to get
down.

Three seconds later, Box blows itself apart, its
sections becoming devastating projectiles.

Paul has a field up around us as we hug ground. A
piece of Box the size of an oven digs a trench not two meters from
us. The smaller frag dissolves in a fireworks show against Paul’s
field, but the shockwave is still punishing as it rolls over us. If
we were human…

Bel is still down, the glow of his armor fading. The
left side of his face looks like it’s taken a shotgun blast—I can
see the teeth in his exposed jaw, and his ear is gone. And his left
hand has been ripped away mid-forearm, leaving broken bones
protruding from his torn armor. But I can already see the wounds
trying to close, the bone ends growing. He rolls over like he can
barely move at all, sees me with one intact eye, gives me a weak
grin that looks like something out of a horror movie with his face
half-gone. Looks at his stump. Grimaces (which looks even
scarier).

“…isss it lunch time yet…?” he manages to rasp.
Raises his head enough to get a quick look at the remains of Box
before he can’t hold it up anymore. I’m thinking about those dead
bodies again. Resources.

Brave men and women who died for their people.

No, it’s not lunchtime yet.

“Those were just prototypes,” Bly tells us,
staggering our way. His armor is reshaping, repairing, but it’s
clear he’s hurt, needing to heal. I wonder if he can absorb
resources like Bel and Kali and I can. I also wonder if Chang’s
“gift” to him just replaces his damaged body parts with dead
cybernetics, like it did with Brimstone—Harper. Will he eventually
be all machine?

There is blood on his sword. He sees me looking.

“Bug was an ‘it’, Box was a ‘him’. Cyborg. If there
was enough of a man to call it that. Just the brain and nervous
system of one of mine—pilot named Julian—too shot up to be of any
other use but not too shot up for Chang to let us bury. Just parts
for the sick toy shop.”

“Janeway?” I follow. He shakes his helmet.

“Not Janeway. Just his corpse. Squatted in by some
one-eyed butcher. Calls himself ‘Foe Hat’.”

“’
Fohat
’,” Bel corrects weakly, sounding like
his day just got worse.

I know it from both my memories, my fondness for
mythology: Obscure term for the creative force of the universe,
possibly Tibetan. Not the creator, but his creative power.

But my alternate memories put a face to the name, and
a reputation. He could indeed be called a toymaker, a creator of
engines of flamboyant destruction for bored and indestructible
customers, like the extreme challenges of a VR game, only live. I
don’t think he ever made anything that wasn’t designed for
outrageous violence. And Chang brought him—or remade him—here.

“There’ll be more of these things,” Paul states, not
making it a question. Bly nods.

“He had the prototypes close by, figuring you’d be
coming this way when you heard he was stripping Pioneer and the
Keepers were fighting back.”

“So this was a test?” I assume, looking at the
wreckage, still feeling my residual damage, my critical need to
replenish.

The remaining Disc runs a recon buzz on us. I shoot
it down as an afterthought.

“We’re going to need more help,” Paul calculates
darkly.

“…funny…” we hear Bel rasp, still on his back in the
dirt. “…funny you should mention that…”

Unfortunately, he passes out before he can
elaborate.

Straker leads her refugees out and away from the
colony through an arroyo that provides reasonable cover. She lost
eleven of her soldiers to Box. One is barely hanging on with an
abdominal wound. Another lost a leg. Both are being carried on
makeshift stretchers, and are in need of better medical attention
than we can provide in the field, much less on the move.

Pursuing snipers get a few shots at them. Paul stops
all but two incoming rounds, costing the refugees two more lives,
both civilians. But each time they shoot, I get a target, and pay
them back with a high explosive round. After I silence five of
their riflemen, they stop pursuing us.

We walk with the refugees a klick and a half south
into the open Melas valley. Bel is managing to stagger, dead on his
feet, his mangled limb wrapped up in what’s left of his surcoat,
still a stump pending better resources. At least his face has
healed enough that he’s not showing skull.

Bly is visibly limping, but remains completely stoic
underneath his helmet. He keeps his distance from me and mine,
doesn’t say a word to anyone. The refugees eye him as if they’re
beginning to re-assess how much of a monster he is.

Paul and I just drag as if we’ve just lost a bad
fight. My internal readouts are still screaming for replenishment.
If I was mortal, the organ damage I’m waiting to repair would have
killed me.

I’m still stewing on the revelation that Chang
brought Fohat with him. It makes perfect sense: the “toymaker”
excelled in making products designed to thrill the invincible, and
that meant dangerous enough to do impressive damage to an immortal
superhuman. That tells me Chang was either expecting the
possibility of needing to build a robot arsenal—one even more
powerful than his Disc drones—to meet whatever human resistance his
righteous mission might encounter, or he was expecting us. Or
something like us.

So was he anticipating failure—that he wouldn’t be
able to completely stop the modding of humanity, and have to face
early hybrids? Or did he suspect that his impossible jump might
have stowaways? (Or maybe he just suspected that Bel and Star might
turn on him. But what if Fohat turns on him?)

But the worst part is what Straker pointed out: If
Fohat’s creations can give
us
this kind of a run, they’ll
tear through anyone and everyone else with minimal effort. Fohat
will engage UNMAC—and any survivor faction that tries to resist
Chang—like a sadistic child declaring war on an anthill.

(And if Bly hadn’t come to help when he did…)

Straker calls a rest. We’re still hours from the
nearest tapsite. I consider offering our flyers to make refill
runs. But we need a longer term solution. These people can’t last
long in emergency shelters on the open desert. And neither Abbas
nor Hassim have the resources to take in hundreds of extra bodies,
even if there weren’t generations of blood spilled between the
Nomads and the PK.

I’ve been stewing another option. I take Straker
aside.

“The best chance for your people is to surrender to
the UNMAC commander.”

She starts to protest, looking at me like I’ve asked
for their souls.

“I still have friends there,” I explain. “And there
are enough unused sections to house all of you. There’s food and
medical care. UNCORT will put all of you into quarantine, put you
through exams to ensure you’re not carrying anything they might be
afraid of. But you can play into their egos. Let them ‘save’ you
and have a victory they can play up back home. Then you can offer
them your skills. You have UNMAC training, you know the gear and
the procedures. They could use the on-planet manpower, especially
if you play cooperative. You’ll have to give up your guns for
awhile…”

“What’s the plan?” she cuts to it.

“I don’t know yet,” I have to admit. “But I’d like to
have more people I can count on close to zero if UNMAC pulls
something lethally stupid. Until then, your people will be safe and
you might even get a shot at hitting Chang back. Who knows: If you
impress them enough, you might be able to take your homes
back.”

“Under
their
command,” she discounts.

“There are too many people living here,” I sell a
dream. “Mars won’t stay under Earth rule forever. But that’s not
going to come out of a lot of isolated factions trying to hold
their little patches of ground. And it’s not going to come while
Earth is afraid of Chang.”

“And you,” she doesn’t pull punches. Nods toward my
ragged companions. “And them.”

“Which is why you need to make the call. Contact
UNMAC on their channels. Tell them you were driven out of your
colony for trying to resist Chang.”

“Forget to mention you and yours?” she gets it. Seems
to buy in. But then chews her lip under her mask. “And what if we
need you? What if things go too wrong?”

I immediately think of what Kali did to Murphy,
planting a tracker. I impulsively reach out, put my hand around the
back of her armored collar. She tenses, but doesn’t try to back
away. She’s trying to trust me. But…

“Bel?” I call out. “Are you with me?”

“No hard questions…” he grumbles.

“I need to give the Lieutenant a tracker UNMAC won’t
detect.”

“I
know
you haven’t forgotten how to kiss a
girl… I did walk in on you and dear Kali that one time… It was
quite the show…Okay,
two
times… You really need to learn how
to lock a door…”

His inappropriate sense of humor is intact, even if
it does make Straker go even tenser.

“I’m carrying an unknown seed,” I remind him.

“Unless you’re planning on taking the pretty
Lieutenant behind a dune for my romance novel fantasy, we won’t be
meeting any more of your ex-girlfriends…”

(Now Straker really does look scared.)

“
Kiss her
…” he prods, whining histrionically.
“I’m
tired
. I’m
hungry
. I want to go
home
…
This isn’t fun anymore…”

“Anton Staley,” I let Straker off the hook, letting
go of her. “He’s one of my friends. He’s got a secret flash Link to
me. He’ll let me know what…”

She pulls her mask off, leans in, cups my face in her
hands and kisses me. It’s sweet and awkward (and no more
ex-girlfriends are made). I subtly plant my tracker, let it work
its way in to hide itself in her cellular structure, to sit
undetectably inert until her limbic system triggers an emergency
signal. Or she gets badly hurt. Or killed.

“That’s it?” she needs to verify, cautiously licking
her lips.

“That’s it. Good luck, Lieutenant.”

She puts her mask back on. She’s having trouble
making eye contact. (And it could just be the “rose” everyone gets
from the thin atmosphere, but she may be blushing.)

“Thank you, Colonel… You, too.”

She gives me a salute. Her fellow Peacekeepers—who
have been watching us dutifully—all do the same. I return the
gesture.

Bel is already summoning our flyers to carry us
“home”.

“Captain Bly,” I call out to our apparently undecided
ally. He stops, turns on me like a metal robot.

“No ship, no captain,” his bug-skull mask says, like
I’ve unintentionally insulted him.

“Come with us,” I repeat my offer.

“And you’re off back to your little garden?” he
condescends.

“Unless you know where we can find Chang?” I try to
stoke his desire for some kind of justice, even though none of us
are up for the pursuit just yet.

“He abandoned his dock above Tyr. The Unmaker patrols
were getting too close to finding it, and then you squatted
yourself in Tranquility. By the time he pulled out of Pioneer, I’d
made it clear I was no longer in his service.”

“He’s afraid of UNMAC patrols?” I don’t believe.

“The aircraft are the eyes. Chang has reason to
believe the ‘makers have satellite weapons ready to rain down on
him. He’s not ready to deal with that yet.”

I wonder if this is true, if Burns has been hiding it
from everyone on-planet.

“So: No. I don’t know where he’s gone next,” he makes
sure I’m clear.

“Then why not come with us?”

“I need to save my own,” he lays it out. “No matter
what you think of us. Before there aren’t any left.”

I nod my understanding. He turns and walks away from
the makeshift camp, from us. Climbs a rise, stands in the wind. A
few seconds later, his flying construct comes for him, looking very
much like living mythology, and he rides it away
east-northeast.

15 May, 2117:

Bel and I spend the next few days resting and
replenishing, and that means eating like gluttons. I feel ashamed
that we might be putting an undue burden on the Cast’s harvest, but
I won’t scavenge the dead, and Bel seems to respect my limits, even
though he has more severe damage. His face healed in a dozen hours
once he got fed, but his arm still looks like an anatomy display.
He absorbed construction scrap from the dome rebuild project to
replace his forearm armor and gauntlet, hiding the sight from
curious eyes, but I get a look at it when he comes back to our
shared cluster of rooms. If it hurts (and I expect it does), he
doesn’t complain.

(Paul took me aside to uncomfortably ask me if we
needed to go back and collect Bel’s “lost tissue”. I explained that
the most viable “colony” of even the most vaporized body will send
a failsafe signal to prevent other clusters from regenerating a
full copy, an issue that caused a few high-profile ethical and
existential crises in my other timeline before it was legislatively
remedied.)