The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (25 page)

We finally seem to have routed their genocide
attempt: Eight bombs. Sixteen H-K “porters”. Two more as diversion.
And two in taken UNMAC armor for “cover”. (Neither one is
Palmer.)

Only five are still alive. Three won’t be without
prompt surgical care.

“Do you have anyone skilled enough to help these
men?” I ask Two Gun. We’ve moved the wounded to the clearing behind
the skull hill, put them in view of Gardener’s cameras, but no one
has tried to come out to help them. (Bel’s moved the bombs outside
into the open air to disassemble.)

“We don’t help Hunter-Killers,” he says coldly. I
catch him locking eyes with Murphy. Murphy impresses him by not
pressing the issue.

“I’ll ‘help’ them,” Kali offers, flexing her
claws.

“No,” I try to hold her off.

“Don’t play noble. I know you.” She circles. The
wounded men are now between us. “I also know
them
. From the
girl’s memories. You have no idea… Her parents: both killed when
she was still a little girl. And you weren’t her first crush. There
were others. All dead. Her first was a girl: Alia. They grew up
together. It turned intimate. I can feel how much she loved her… I…
She heard the shot. Found Alia with her face mutilated, nose cut
off for one of their fucking trophies. But the sick fuck wanted
more. He sliced off her nipples, too. She was still alive.
Punctured lung. Choking on her own blood. Crying. Not in pain—she
didn’t want Fera to see her like that… She never did see the piece
of shit who did it.” She looks at the wounded men. “Might be one of
them. Or they know who it was.” Then she jerks her head and glares
at Murphy. “Or maybe you do. Story jog any old memories? Late-night
war stories with your buddies?”

Murphy looks just sick enough to confirm.

“This ends,” Kali declares. “Right now.”

She turns and marches for the primary airlock—the
Casting portal—and uses her claws to cut the welds I made. Then she
tears the hatch open by force—I can hear metal pop and shear.

“Kali! Don’t…”

She whirls on me.

“
Really?
Are you really going to pull some
kind of Star Trek Prime Directive bullshit on me?”

“We need to be better than…”

“
Better than what?!
Genocide? Mass murder?
Hunting people for sport? Culling your own people when they don’t
measure up? What was that old mantra of yours, how you were better
than the monsters you killed? ‘They kill innocents. I kill them.
Which one of us makes the world a better place?’ This is me making
the world a better place.”

She rips open the inner hatch. The decompression
almost knocks us both down—I have to hold onto the hatchway. I hear
alarms. Inner hatches slam, stopping the pressure loss before the
whole Middle Dome is vented. But it gives her what she wants. She
steps into the corridor, finds a live panel, sinks her claws
in.

“One unfinished piece of business first…”

I hack. She’s sifting through the personnel files.
Then she roars in rage.

“
I had him!! I had him under my knives!”

Her rage reaches out into the system, frying file
after file. I feel Gardener crashing.

“Kali!”

“Don’t worry… I’m leaving them basic systems…
Barely…”

She is. But all of Gardener’s higher functions
are…

“Now they won’t be able to blame a machine when they
want to decide who to murder for their own comfort.”

She disengages from the panel. As far as I can tell,
Gardener is hopelessly burned out. Only basic backup systems are
online, enough to pump air, keep the lights and the heat on, run
the recyclers. One thing I realize that went with Gardener is the
security systems—they can no longer see outside of their domes.
Another is their personnel files, their Scoring records.

She doesn’t turn back to look at me.

“Now I have a lesson to teach. And a debt to
collect.”

She heads down the corridor. Murphy is with me as I
pause long enough to close the airlock behind us, keep the colony
from completely depressurizing when Kali tears her way through the
next set of hatches. The corridor pressure-balances with a rushing
of wind.

Murphy takes off his mask. He doesn’t draw his
revolver, probably hoping he doesn’t need to come home at
gunpoint.

The Middle Dome is on emergency lighting. We see no
one out in the open, probably on lockdown as soon as the initial
breach was detected.

Kali isn’t lingering. She’s marching with purpose
across the open court, heading for the passage to the Upper Dome.
She’s almost there when she gets shot at. The shooters are under
cover up in the terraces. She swats the first few rounds away with
her arm guards, not pausing in her course. But then one explodes on
contact. It should have at least taken her arm off, but she shakes
it off with an angry grunt, her armor barely dented and already
reshaping, the frag wounds I can see on the side of her face
healing away. Then she’s tearing open more hatches.

Murphy and I don’t get shot at as we follow several
meters behind her. Either the H-K have decided not to waste any
more ammo, or they’re reluctant to hit a comrade (even a Cast
traitor). In return for this courtesy, he gestures and shouts up at
them to head for the Town Hall, anticipating Kali’s destination. He
also warns them not to engage the intruder.

They decide to ignore the latter advice. I hear more
gunfire ahead of us, echoing through the connecting tunnels. We
find two H-K down and one of the elevators ripped open. They’re
both still alive, but she’s made a bloody mess of their faces,
taken their guns. Murphy checks them quickly, reassures them
they’ll be okay.

Kali didn’t bother with an elevator car. She’s
climbed the shaft, torn through the door on the “ground” level of
the Upper Dome. We climb after her. Find her in the Zen garden,
facing the Hall entrance. The remaining H-K are making a stand,
semi-surrounding her with guns. I can pick out Palmer, hunkered in
their midst. But I also see children: Young H-K trainees standing
with their elders. Including Murphy’s own son—his jaw drops and
eyes widen when he sees his father, come home, but with a
demon.

“
Hold fire!
” Murphy tries. They do the
opposite. Kali gets hammered with pistol rounds. She just stands
there are takes it, just to show them she can. Gets knocked around
a bit, barely staggers. Heals. Absorbs. Then I hear the distinctive
bang of an explosive shell. Apparently Kali recognizes it as well,
because she catches it, manages to keep it from detonating. Then
she tosses it back at the H-K line like she’s passing them back a
lost ball. It blows in front of them as they try to duck, knocking
several back. They’re bloodied, but it doesn’t look lethal.

Lesson at least temporarily learned, they hold
fire.

Even though Gardener is dead, she hacks into their PA
system, announces to the whole colony with a grin:

“Welcome to the new world order. My name is Kali.
Look me up, assuming any of your library files are still readable:
I am not generally known as a benign goddess.” She jerks her head
to gesture in my direction. “You should have done business with my
better half when you had the chance. He’s the one with the
tolerance. You’ll find
I
have very little.

“You will not be killing any of my people. You will
not be dumping any of your people on us to kill for you. Feel free
to murder each other all you like. But now you no longer have a
machine to blame your murdering on.”

“Kali…” I try to slow her roll.

“Fine. Here’s my benevolence: If any of your civilian
citizens wish to ask me for protection from you butchers, I will
grant it. I will not be extending that protection to any of you.”
She turns to glance at Murphy. “Except maybe him. I like him. And
he’s easy on the eyes. But the lesson is: You can
earn
my
grace. If you choose…”

A weapon fires—full auto, PDW (apparently the H-K
have more than just revolvers, probably saved for emergencies like
this). But not at Kali. I move in a blink, get myself in front of
Murphy as he gets behind me. I get smacked in half a dozen places,
then catch a grenade round, use Kali’s trick to keep it from
detonating (but I just disarm it). Two shots come from behind me.
Murphy. It looks like he’s firing into the crowd, but he’s being
surgical. His fellow H-K’s are already ducking, leaving Palmer more
exposed. One of Murphy’s rounds hits Palmer’s weapon almost down
the muzzle, shattering the polymer casing and kicking it back at
him, spraying fragments into his face. The next one hits him in the
forward hand, shattering the weapon’s fore grip and almost taking
off the middle two fingers of his left hand.

Kali marches straight into them as Palmer staggers
backwards, cursing and screaming. One of the other H-K’s tries to
halt her, points his pistol at her face. A quick swat of her hand,
and his hand disappears at the wrist, hand and pistol flying away.
The rest move back, at least to try to stay out of reach. Palmer
backs away, gripping his mangled hand, then turns to try to
run.

I don’t even try to stop her.

She darts forward, grabs him by the collar of his L-A
uniform, throws him back over her head like a ragdoll, out of the
Hall and onto the stepping stones of the entry path. She’s quick
enough to be almost on top of him before he comes to rest on his
back. And then she’s sitting on his chest.

“So. Did you
keep
her nipples after you cut
them off?”

Palmer tries to get out from under her. Can’t.

“Alia?” I ask. Murphy chews his lip, nods with
difficulty. He knew.

“Did I mention: My other name is Fera?” she tells him
as he struggles, whimpers. And her voice suddenly sounds very much
like Fera’s as she tells me: “I never saw the sick fuck who
tortured and mutilated my Alia. But he left a camera. Hidden. To
watch her suffer. To watch me suffer. Two Gun found it. It had his
ID number on it.”

“Fera?” I want to know how much of her is intact.

“One more lesson,” she shifts back to full-Kali.
“Least I can do for use of this body.”

She clamps a hand over Palmer’s face, digs her claws
in. He screams. Convulses. But she just holds him there. And I
watch him… waste. Shrivel. Desiccate. Kali looks almost orgasmic as
she rides his jerking body. Or like she’s enjoying something really
tasty.

“What are you doing?” I need to know. Murphy and the
other H-K can only watch in shock.

“Resources…” she tells me easily, with eyes closed in
near-ecstasy. Palmer is making gagging noises, rasping,
gurgling…

“Stop it!”

“What?” She’s grinning at me wickedly. “This
something else you’ve conveniently forgotten about?”

“It’s forbidden,” I remember. Some of us would feed
off each other, as a form of assault or consensual paraphilia—the
“victim” could simply regenerate afterwards. But consuming a mortal
for resources…

“And I notice you’re not stopping me,” she taunts.
“I’d invite you to join in—there’s still plenty left—but you never
were into threesomes.”

“
Calliope!
”

“Fine.” She releases her grip. I see tendrils retract
back into her fingertips that had apparently wormed deep into
Palmer. “And don’t ever call me that.”

Palmer looks like he’s been dead for months.

“We need to
help
these people,” I insist.

“First they need to
want
to be helped,” she
argues. “Attempting genocide is not the way to ask. Unless what
you’re asking for is to be paid back in kind. You should give me
credit: It wasn’t long ago I would’ve just killed them all for what
they tried to do. Assuming you didn’t beat me to it—you were a
selfish fuck that way. I guess we’ve both mellowed with the
decades.”

We glare at each other over Palmer’s corpse.

“Your precious code dies today!” she shouts at the
still-frozen H-K. “You don’t get to close ranks around those who
think carrying a gun and being part of your exclusive little club
means they can do any sick thing they want. From now on, if one of
you butchers does any fucking thing I would find offensive, he
doesn’t get to hide behind the rest of you because he wears the
uniform. So adopt a sense of humanity and social justice right now,
or
I will fucking eat you
.”

Her rant is followed by absolute silence and
stillness. She could have been screaming at statues. I scan the
eyes of the H-K, hoping I see something more than just terror.
Shame. I do see shame in a few faces. But only a few.

“Message sent,” I tell her firmly. “Lessons given.
Time to go.”

She does the courtesy of following me all the way
back the way we came in. The Cast have gathered silently outside
the damaged outside airlock. They make a path for us as we come
out. Then Kali keeps walking. I follow. She stops when we get back
to the wounded men.

“Put these men inside the airlock,” she orders Two
Gun. “I’ll signal their friends to come get them.”

Two Gun gestures for some of his people to serve as
porters, and the wounded are picked up and carried off.

“I’m going with them,” Murphy tells me.

“You sure that’s wise?” I have to ask.

“I need to be with my family. Especially now. And
maybe I can talk some sense into my people, get them to accept your
plan to work with the Cast. Mutual survival.”

Kali surprises both of us by rushing forward and
planting a kiss on Murphy’s lips. He stands frozen as she lingers a
few seconds before pulling away. She grins at his discomfort.
Explains:

“Tracking mod. If anyone hurts you, I’ll know.”

He nods his thanks warily, trying not to be obvious
about licking his lips like he’s trying to find what she just
planted in him.

“Your systems are failing,” I remind him, then shoot
a hard look at Kali. “Crashing Gardener just accelerated that.”