The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (36 page)

“Anybody else?” she presses me like she knows.

“You really want to know?” I immediately regret
asking.

“I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough,” she gets
testy.

“Astarte. Kali. A couple of Bel’s friends. And Paul
Stilson’s defected to…”

“
Astarte and Kali?
” she locks on. “Jesus
Fucking Christ.”

“Didn’t bring him,” I joke poorly. I get cold
silence. Try to salvage it: “Kali is protecting Tranquility. Star
is working inside Chang’s camp. And Chang has Fohat.”

“The Toymaker?” she remembers after a few seconds’
thought.

“Now he’s a weapons maker,” I clarify. “I’ve sampled
his latest. He’s building things to hurt
us
. And slaughter
anyone less sturdy.”

“Straker had that in her report, said her group were
driven out by a pair of new killer robots.”

“Prototypes. Would have killed them all. It took Bel
and Paul and I
and
Bly to take them out.” I flash her my
memories. She processes them for awhile. I get dizzy when she
shakes her head.

“If Chang follows pattern, he’ll hit before Richards
makes orbit,” I press her. “Earthside must have something in
mind.”

“Whatever it is, they’re not sharing,” she laments.
“We’re in the dark, no need-to-know. Even Anton hasn’t been able to
crack anything. I’m sure Burns suspects him by now. And pretty much
all of us.”

Silence again. I consider that she’s been torn
between her loyalties all this time, trying to justify duty against
what Earthside seems determined to do here.

“I miss you,” I stumble out.

“
I
miss me,” she deflects. “I can’t get used
to this weird young superhero body.”

“You need to get out, put…”

There’s a quiet but urgent knocking at her hatch. She
gets up, goes to open it. I see Anton. He looks pale. He whispers
quickly, almost breathlessly:

“I was just over in Aux Ops A, hoping to slip in and
access the uplink—no one’s usually working up here since we shifted
everything below B-Deck… I… I saw… one of the junior techs—Darla,
the cute one—she was in there working. But it looked like she was
putting something into the main line to MAI’s server core, up under
the Tower… She made some small talk, but sounded off. I figured
maybe she was suspicious of me, so I made an excuse, turned to
leave… Saw… It was
her
. Dead. I think. She wasn’t moving.
Her body was stashed under a console. I pretended I didn’t…”

“Doctor Staley!”

It’s Burns. Coming down the corridor from the general
direction of Aux Ops. Looking unhappy with what he’s seeing.

“I need a word, please, Doctor. In private.
Now
.”

Two H-A troopers are down the end of the corridor
behind him.

“Colonel, Doctor Staley had…” Lisa begins to defend,
but when she locks on Burns’ face, it shimmers.

“That’s not Burns,” I tell her what she’s already
realizing.

“
Get behind me!
” she orders Anton, stepping
into the corridor between them. “Burns” has something cylindrical
in his right hand.

“You’re not authorized to be out of your…” he begins
to scold her, but then tries to surprise her mid-sentence, swinging
the device. I’m processing at her speed, see what looks like a very
thin blade telescope out of the “hilt” in his hand to sword-length,
aimed for her neck in an eye-blink. She dodges back, and the blade
slices into the heavy steel bulkhead like it’s butter.

Down the hall, the H-A suits raise their guns, but
they don’t point at Burns.

I’m out of my “nest” and running for the base.

“MAI! Intruder alarm! Lockdown!” Lisa shouts, but MAI
doesn’t respond. The sentry systems must be down in the section.
Anton is wheeling backwards as fast as he can. Lisa is backing away
to avoid more slashes from whatever nano-blade gadget the fake
Burns in using, making sure to keep between the unknown intruder
and Anton, and keeping low enough to put the intruder in the way of
his apparent cohorts’ guns. She yells at Anton to go find help,
times the slashing, then lunges in, catches the sword wrist and
breaks the arm. The intruder’s face ripples, shifts, turns into
something that looks more like plastic film than flesh. He tries to
punch and kick her with his free limbs—he’s brutal and accurate,
goes for what should be crippling or lethal targets, but she shakes
it off. She punches him in the chest, shattering ribs, probably
collapsing a lung, then dislocates his weight-bearing knee in quick
succession. She grabs hold of his L-A jacket to keep him close and
upright to use as a shield.

The ploy doesn’t work: the two imposter troopers go
ahead and start shooting. At least their weapons appear to be
standard issue (I hope just stolen from an armory locker and not
taken from troopers they’d killed getting in). Bullets punch into
the fake Burns through his L-A uniform. The fake troopers empty
their weapons mercilessly into the body. Lisa looks back long
enough to be sure Anton is long gone, then charges forward and
throws the limp meat into them. They dodge to either side, and run
down opposite corridors. I finally hear MAI’s alarms. Hatches
slam.

“Shinkyo?” Lisa assumes out loud. She looks down at
herself: she’s been slashed deeply across the top of her left
thigh, her belly, her forearm. Her wounds knit quickly, but she’s
soaked in blood and her clothing is sliced cleanly.

I’m leaping the south perimeter wall, flying into the
shelter-town.

A hatch bangs open behind Lisa. She turns, meets a
squad of troopers.

“Intruders!” she tells them quickly. “At least two
more in H-A suits. This one could change his appearance, mimicked
Burns and a tech…”

“Are you okay, Colonel?” It’s Rios. He sounds
honestly concerned.

“Fine. But whatever hidden blade this one had did
that
to rolled steel…” She shows him the cuts in the
bulkhead. Rios passes the warnings to his response team, as well as
the likely course of the remaining two.

“You should get back in your quarters, Colonel,” Rios
insists gently but firmly.

“I can help,” she insists back. She reaches up, makes
physical contact, splices discreetly into his helmet and tells him
“Colonel Ram is here, too. We don’t know how many there are. You
remember the last time Shinkyo shinobi got in here?”

He hesitates, nods.

“Colonel Burns!” she shouts at the sentries as she
moves forward with Rios. “I need access! Security feed. My modified
vision can detect their disguises. Let me help.”

Rios, for his part, doesn’t argue with her coming
with him. They check the junction—the two imposter troopers are
long gone. Another team moves in from the Barracks Section. But the
two known intruders have had plenty of time and choices: They both
could have made Airlock 2 and out into the shelter town to vanish
among their own. Unless they had more mayhem in mind. The one who
went left could have cut through the Mess to get into Stores, or
worse, Atmosphere and Water or the civilian sections (and beyond
that are the hangar bays). The one who ran right could be in the
Barracks Section (and that didn’t go well last time) or made it
around behind to Medical.

Burns finally comes on, wastes too much time wanting
it all explained to him. Despite probably taking this long to
compose himself, he sounds confused, hesitant, scared.

I’m almost to Airlock 2 when I decide this is my
fucking base and hack into MAI, get a live grid, feed it to Lisa.
(I’m tempted to lock Burns out—he’s in the new Ops down on
B-Deck—but I want him to see the kind of fight he’s in.)

Lisa is ignoring Burns, calling Tru to let her know
what may be coming her way.

I pick up a lone trooper coming out through the
airlock, heading for the shelter town. I make sure the umbilical is
clear, cut my way in with one long vertical slice, push through
against the quick rush of decompression.

The trooper almost runs into me. He hesitates for a
full second to either consider his options or steel his resolve,
then tries emptying a magazine into me point-blank, tries a grenade
(which I swat outside), throws the weapon at me as a distraction,
draws one of the collapsible nano-swords, lunges. I let him try
driving his slim blade into me, hardening my armor. The blade
shatters like fine glass against my torso plate, making only a
temporary hole in my surcoat.

I’ve sheathed my own blade. He’s got nowhere to go
with an H-A team closing in behind him. But then that team chimes
in to report that the two guards who had been manning the lock are
dead. I’m sure he’s heard the news in his stolen helmet, and is
figuring I’m hearing it too in the split-second before I punch him
through his visor. I drive broken acrylic into bone and teeth and
eyes, stopping surgically short of driving skull into brain or
snapping his neck. He impresses me by managing to stay on his feet,
but his face is a bloody mess inside the ruptured helmet. His left
hand reaches desperately into his belt, comes out with what looks
like a chip the size of a pinky nail. He grabs my wrist and pushes
the chip into my gloved hand. I expect a weapon, but get… flash
feed?

They got into MAI, further into the new Earthside
security than even Anton managed, hacked Burns’ eyes-only uplink.
Found…

“
Sakura
…” the shinobi hisses at me through
blood, shoves himself back away from me, pulls a grenade from his
belt and stuffs it in where his visor was. His helmet blows apart
as I turn away to avoid frag and splatter.

The umbilical is in tatters with a headless and
handless body in my path as the pursuing real troopers pop the
airlock and aim at me. Look down at the body. Up at me as I
shrug.

“Wasn’t me.”

“One down outside Airlock 2,” one of them reports,
deciding to accept the situation.

“No one else came out this way,” I tell them. “The
other one is still inside.”

“Assuming that’s all there is,” Lisa comes back. I
can see her moving through the Mess, sweeping Stores, checking the
hatchway logs.

“Nothing here yet,” Tru reports from her section, her
people probably watching the corridor access to Atmosphere and
Water. “Was that Colonel Ram?”

“Social time later,” I delay her enthusiasm.

“How many are there?” Burns is barking useless
questions. And useless orders: “Don’t let Ram inside! Don’t let him
inside this base!”

“I can be useful outside,” I reassure the troopers
tasked with the unhappy duty, leap up and out of the blown
umbilical and onto the bunker roof. Now I can watch the vent caps
and the other airlocks while I continue to scan the interior grid
feed.

“Last time they went down and came back up in another
section,” Rios reminds.

“Problem, Captain,” Horst chimes in, sounding
frustrated. His feed is showing an abandoned H-A suit in the
stairwell by Medical. “And these guys can shape-shift?”

“Faces, probably hair,” Lisa guesses. “They may have
killed a tech in Aux Ops A. They were breaking into MAI, maybe the
uplinks.”

“They did,” Sergeant Jensen lets her know, showing
the body of a young blonde poorly hidden under a console. “Tag is
Darla Silver. No vitals.”

“Get a team to check the system!” Burns makes a
useful decision.

“This one’s wearing some kind of thin programmable
mask…” It’s Rick, checking the body Lisa left on the deck outside
her quarters, not bothering with contamination protocols. “I’d
guess it could mimic anyone he had an image of, which is all of us
if he’s accessed our personnel records.”

“Captain Rios! Set up checkpoints, all levels, all
sections,” Burns orders, finally sounding like he’s got his head in
the game, despite not knowing the extent of what he’s asking.

“Last one blew his own head off when he got
cornered,” I warn, “and their new blades conceal and can cut
through H-A plate.”

Burns doesn’t challenge my interference, though I
can’t help but notice two of the bunker-top AP batteries are
trained on me, probably just to make him or his up-world bosses
feel better. He also doesn’t argue with Lisa as she leads her own
sweep team. (I expect he doesn’t realize she gives me eyes on the
front line of the search.)

Twenty minutes pass. Rios coordinates securing
sections starting from the Ops Core outward. This lets Anton get
into Aux Ops A, to try to find out what they did (besides
downloading files I haven’t bothered to mention). Armored teams
come out to help me cover the obvious exits. They try to focus on
the job at hand and ignore the long-haired black-robed
sword-wielding thing on the roof that used to be their CO.

Thirty minutes. Medical and A&W have been
secured. The hangar bays are locked down and under guard. Fire
teams start sweeping the barracks sections. Lieutenant Straker gets
read-in to start checking her own people down on D-Deck (of course,
she isn’t issued any weapons to do so). I’m sure Tru’s people have
already been thorough with their own.

Thirty-seven minutes.

“Oh, shit…” It’s Anton. “Staley to Ops!”

“Report, son,” Burns replies.

“They got into the uplinks. It looks like they
successfully sent a virus skyward. I think it’s designed to
recalibrate the astro-nav systems on the incoming ships, throw them
off. If I’m reading this right, it would bring them in too steep.
They’d fly right into the planet before they realized…”

(But it was suspiciously easy to find, I’m thinking
but not saying.)

Burns sends the warning to the incoming fleet. Anton
promises he can undo the damage, but Burns shuts him down, insists
their own specialists will handle it.

“Keep looking,” Rick tells Anton despite Burns. “You
know how the Shinkyo are.”

Forty-two minutes. Lisa and Rios finish sweeping
A-Deck, move down.