The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (35 page)

Sakura still looks unfazed. I step through her broken
fighters, wanting to see if she wants to try me herself, and she
just stands there, letting me come. Unfortunately, one of her
snipers fears for her life enough to defy her hold-fire. I “play”
the tracking bullet so that it curves just wrong, flies for
Sakura’s center-of-mass, then shatter it with a swat of my blunt
blade. All she would have seen was a full-body blur and something
almost invisible smacking the projectile less than three feet from
her chest, making a hypersonic whip-crack that I’m sure she
felt.

Nothing. I just spared her life, and she could just
as well be a statue. I wonder if she intended that, planned for her
sniper to shoot at her just to see if I would save her, to prove…
what? Would she really risk her life on an idle gamble? (Or is she
wearing armor capable of stopping these rounds under her neat
robes?) (Or was she hoping to be injured just critically enough
that I would be pressured to save her by giving her my healing
tech?) Trying to understand Shinkyo planning has always been a
multi-layered mind fuck. (I want to rip off her lenses and mask, I
want to see what’s under there, just to get any kind of honest
reaction out of her.)

“Have you seen enough?” I want to know. But then I
pick up on what she’s feeding into her implanted Link gear: her
lenses include high-speed cameras. She’s recorded my performance,
slowed it down to visible. She’s replaying it in her eyes as she
sends it to her nano-engineers. I expect they’ll use what they see
to improve their counter-measures (which is why I didn’t use any
mods beyond basic strength enhancement and neuro-acceleration). So
all she really knows is I can process and react at
bullet-speed.

“You don’t trust our intentions,” she says dully,
probably still distracted by the replay running in her visual
field. “Yet you spared my life, however impulsively. I will give
you a gift in return. Go to your old base. Go and see.”

I realize blood is dripping on the rusty gravel at
her feet. Hers. She’s bleeding. Probably a stray fragment of the
bullet I smashed. She’s completely ignoring it. A small price to
pay to manipulate me, setting the stage for a “gift” she fully
intended to give long before today.

I turn and walk away, summon my flyer, leap to meet
it. I take a circle of the mess I’ve just left. Sakura watches me
for a few seconds, then turns to her broken men. She steps over to
the one who tried to use a grenade. Without ceremony, she draws her
blade, makes a single cut across the shinobi’s throat that looks
like it takes his head mostly off. I can see his body convulse
briefly as the head flops unnaturally. Then the masked form
settles, blood soaking the sand a darker red. Sakura wipes her
sword and puts it away. Then she leaves the others as they are and
starts walking for the Dragon’s Tail. She doesn’t look back
once.

“Cold bitch,” Kali assesses after I flash my memories
of the odder-than-usual interaction with Hatsumi Sakura. “I almost
like her.”

“You can’t leave us out of this one,” Bel protests.
Both are sitting lazily back in two of the plush “thrones” Bel
furnished our temporary “base” with. The buried ruin of the
Tranquility spaceport has cleaned up nicely. The layered
polycarbonate transparency that Paul remolded to refit the
pillbox-style viewports gives us natural light, even though the
facility is still completely hidden under rock and wild plant life.
Inside, we have heat, light, atmosphere, a repaired food processor
(which we rarely use unless severely in need of resource
replenishment), “handmade” furnishings, and respective workspaces
for Bel, Paul and Azazel. It also gives us some distance from the
Tranquility population, which reduces their incidental appearance
as human shields while also reducing their simmering discomfort at
our growing “team” of superhumans.

“And not just because we
really
need the
change of scenery,” Lux concurs, in her female aspect, wrapped
affectionately around Azazel from behind, idly stroking his thick
hair with delicate fingers as he examines the sniper rifle that Bel
took from one of the Shinkyo while they were too busy watching me
fly off.

I still find Lux’s at-will gender-switching a little
unsettling, mostly because I’m never sure which pronoun to use.
When he’s in armor, she’s so androgynous that it’s hard to tell at
first glance where his mood lies from day-to-day. The first
indicator is usually the scent she emits, probably intentionally:
When she’s male, he smells like a man fresh out of a quick shower
after a hard workout; when he’s female, she smells like what my
heterosexual male tastes would identify as sex, which tends to
prove extremely distracting. And while I pride myself on being
accepting and open-minded despite my own strictly heterosexual
orientation, I still get thrown for a moment (or several) after
she’s tried throwing herself—usually naked and musky with
arousal—at me or Azazel as a fit, lean young woman, and then I walk
in on her another day pursuing Bel or Kali as a thin yet
well-endowed young man.

“The question is, what’s the nature of her trap?”
Paul considers from prior experience. “It’s probably not whatever
it appears to be on the surface. Or even the next two layers below
that surface.”

“Was she actually hoping you’d fuck her into
immortality?” Lux spins, sounding like he’s considering taking the
opportunity to make Sakura an offer. I don’t bother to speculate
for her.

“The rifle is a conventional fifty caliber bullpup,”
Azazel reins in the digression, demonstrating his intimacy with all
instruments of violence, and fabrication in general. “New
manufacture, probably within the last few years. But there have
been some very recent modifications, specifically a control unit to
program and guide these smart bullets. The design of the shell is
very amusing. Initially, I would assume it was indeed designed to
deal with the ETE, to penetrate their defenses and do the most
damage to a reinforced and rapidly-repairing body, especially if
they were hoping to take off a limb in hopes of studying the
nano-mods in still-living tissue. The interesting part is that the
control unit has an option to trigger ranged airburst. They could
just as well have blown these shells as you dodged them, battered
you even with a near miss…”

“Maybe that would have put their lady in too much
danger?” Bel tries, but doesn’t believe.

“More likely the whole thing was just for show,” I
let them know what I’m thinking, as far as it goes. “They’ve had
more than enough opportunity to prepare—they put up a pitiful
fight. And Sakura only executed the shinobi that tried to use a
grenade, likely because he broke protocol and endangered her. He
was the only one who really tried to hurt me.”

“The only one who really failed his mission,” Kali
concurs.

“You really shouldn’t go alone,” Azazel warns,
sounding honestly concerned despite the short time he’s known me.
But he bonds quickly, and cares for those he bonds with, despite
his preoccupation with building things (usually dangerous things,
though he did wonders for the Tranquility recyclers).

“I can’t risk Earthside seeing you, not yet,” I
insist.

“They’ve seen me already,” Bel counters.

“And me,” Paul throws in.

“You don’t think these Shinkyo have already revealed
what they know of us to sell their tale of cooperation?” Lux
grumbles. I shake my head.

“I don’t think so. They have something else in mind.
And I don’t think the trap is for me.”

“Maybe not in the usual sense,” Kali criticizes. “But
she
is
trying to ensnare you.”

“One way to find out,” I don’t budge.

“Forewarned isn’t always fore-armed,” Lux reminds,
sounding almost seductive as he says so.

The group falls into silence, knowing I won’t budge.
I suppose I should be grateful they’ve respected me as a de-facto
leader, instead of running off and getting in trouble. (Lux isn’t
the only one who’s bored and wants to explore this world, do
something, do
anything
. Immortal humanity quickly lost its
concern for consequences.)

Azazel spends the time using his mods to make the
Shinkyo rifle reform, compact, change. He improves the sights and
the balance, syncs the programming module to his own will, engraves
the barrel and housing with fine scrollwork, makes dull polycoat
surfaces into lustrous polished blue. It takes barely five minutes.
Then he sets the weapon beside his chair, like it’s just another
idle craft project.

Lux fidgets, draped over his shoulders. She starts
making hungry eyes at Paul, who turns his eyes nervously away. I
start to smell sex again. She whispers something in Azazel’s ear.
He shrugs, looking mildly amused by whatever the suggestion was.
Another whisper gets him to stand, take her by the hand, and the
two excuse themselves for the bedrooms. Lux is already dropping her
armor before she gets to the corridor, exaggerating her gait. Paul
glances up, then looks quickly away when more skin shows than he’s
comfortable with. Kali rolls her eyes.

I’m not sure how long this group will stay cohesive
and stay put.

16 June, 2117:

Richards and the main relief fleet are due tomorrow.
If Chang (or anybody else) is going to do something to break the
UNMAC foothold before they arrive, it has to be soon. Of course,
that’s certainly expected.

They’ve taken precautions, at least against me. I
detect new hidden sensors placed well out beyond the base
perimeter, specifically designed and tuned to detect my hacking, as
well as the usual: heat, motion, EMR. Too bad for Burns that Anton
and Rick were sure to do less than their best work. They’ve left me
a discreet frequency to slip in, listen. They even included a
linkage map, letting me see where the best gaps in their grid are.
Conveniently, that’s just south-southeast of the base, letting me
come in from the low range out past the south perimeter. I fly in
low, using the range for cover, ditch my flyer out of sight, and
hike in under cloak. Then I find an outcropping with a good view to
settle in and watch.

The walled “yard” of the base is now filled with a
complex of inflatable shelters, like a marshmallow subdivision, all
linked by pressurized fabric umbilicals. One umbilical is patched
directly into a junction fixed to Airlock 2, letting people move
from the shelter town to the base without surface gear. This is
probably to change whatever security shifts watch over the
refugees, as well as to filter the refugees through medical
checks.

I reach out, try to get a read on Straker. I sense
her deep within the main bunker structure, probably E-Deck,
suggesting the Industry refugees did get assigned to the unused
sections, while the Shinkyo were semi-wisely kept outside. But if
they’re…

“What are you doing?”

It’s Lisa. She’s in my head. Not talking, not
exactly. I close my eyes. See… light. The familiar ceiling fixture
of an officer’s suite. I’m lying face-up in a rack. Or, more
accurately, she is. I’m seeing through her eyes. And she’s being
careful to show me nothing.

“Hatsumi Sakura suggested I need to be here.” I
realize the connection is two-way: she’s seeing through my eyes.
“Impressive.”

“I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. Between
experiments.” She sounds surly, certainly less-than-pleased to talk
to me again. “You sent the Industry PK here?” she keeps it curt and
to business.

“Who knows that?”

“Lieutenant Straker spoke to Anton. Anton told me.
Don’t worry. She passed. The nanochip you stuck in her doesn’t show
up on any scanners we’ve got on-planet. Yet.”

“They’re locked up in the basement?”

“Housed fairly comfortably in the lower deck
barracks, getting healthy. Most are suffering from chronic
malnutrition-related disorders, bone loss, the civilians more so
than the soldiers—Earthside actually seems happy about that,
because it proves their relief efforts are needed. Mostly they get
debriefed in turns for intel on Chang. Some of the ones that have
been cleared have been given simple jobs, under supervision. What’s
the game?”

“You may need the manpower. Especially with the
Shinkyo on your doorstep.”

She doesn’t comment. I wish that I could see her, not
just through her eyes.

“I’m not planning an insurrection,” I reassure.

“But you don’t trust the new leadership,” she knows.
“You want to make sure they’re outnumbered. Just in case.”

“My ‘big dream’ hasn’t changed. I still want the
peoples of Mars standing together. Not so much as a force to be
reckoned with, but as a population to be negotiated with.”

“I know,” she reassures me. It’s the first time I’ve
heard her soften since before I turned her and upended her entire
world. But then she changes the subject. “What’s the deal with your
new pal?”

“Does the name ‘Yod’ ring any bells?” I probe.

“No,” she finally tells me after a long pause. The
answer in itself is damning: She—or at least this “backup” set of
memories—wasn’t involved with Yod or any plans to defeat Chang or
fix our now-nonexistent future. And that implies I may have brought
her seed here without her knowledge or consent.

“Chang got his time-splicing tech from another
entity—Yod. And Yod slipped extra code into his stream, a few
select agents to take him down if he managed to succeed. That
included you and me.”

“Why me?” she asks the hard question.

“Our seeds are backups, so we’re missing the memories
of what happened before the jump,” I excuse (and maybe that
is
true for her too). “I don’t remember signing up
either.”

“And Satan is on our team?” she gets back to her
original query.

“Belial
Shaitan
was a spy for us on Chang’s
team. He says he lost it when woke up here and had to run. I trust
him.”