The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (30 page)

I’m locking it, too: Multiple points, spread over
dozens of meters.

“If I had a better sense of where the caves were, I
could get us down,” Paul offers. I think for a moment, then restore
their communications. I hear frantic chatter on separate channels.
Apparently I did more than kill their Links—I triggered a
firefight.

“Got it,” Paul confirms. He pulls out a fresh Sphere,
links arms with us, pulls us in close, and we sink.

I’ve taken this ride before. It’s easier this time,
mostly thanks to my armor, but I can feel it vibrate as Paul bends
the molecular bonds of the rock, and my ears are filled with what
sounds like a hailstorm of static. It goes on for an uncomfortably
long time—I’m thankful I have no urgent need to breathe, and no
inherent claustrophobia—and then we’re falling. Not far. We come
through a tunnel roof into a space that’s barely big enough to
stand up in. And we get shot. Again. From both sides.

He brought us down between opposing factions.

Paul staggers, having been hit in the right kidney
before he could get his fields re-adjusted. Having seen him shot
before, I know about how much time he’ll need to recover.

“Pick a direction,” I tell Bel. He nods, charges his
armor, and turns down the dimly lit tunnel one way. I go the other,
hardening and expanding my plates. I walk into gunfire, the uneven
strobe of flashes lighting the tunnel far better than the meager
fixtures embedded into the cut rock every four or five meters. Down
my end of the tunnel I count a dozen PK with UNMAC-issue ICWs
wasting ammo into me, trying to hold a barricade of crates,
bulkhead plates and old construction girders at some sort of
junction. More come up to reinforce them, called up or drawn by the
shooting. I realize they’re not all PK—some are civilians, dressed
in old colony gear and work suits. All of them look like they’ve
had a rough time: dirty, bloodied, some wounded but still fighting.
Under the bite of gunsmoke I smell the stink of humans in tight
conditions: sour sweat, urine, shit, garbage…

I stop, try holding up a hand to get them to cease
fire. They don’t. I can hear screaming and shouting and more
gunfire coming from behind me, from Bel’s direction. Then I feel an
ETE field expand past me. It fills the tunnel, dissolves all
projectiles (including a desperate grenade that would have been
disastrous in this tight space).

“I’ve got it!” Paul lets us know he’s back in the
fight.

The shooters in front of me freeze. A few—mostly the
civilians—fall back in panic. The uniforms hold their ground. I
finally realize: The PK I’m facing are wearing their original
Mars-camo UNMAC L-A uniforms, with a few H-A suits among them.
Looking back, the ones beyond Bel look like they’re all wearing
Chang’s new black uniform.

“Hold fire!” I hear a firm female voice shout, see
someone coming up from behind the ranks I’m facing. In the gun
smoke haze I make out a familiar face under reddish hair that’s
pulled back military neat, a scar under the corner of her mouth.
She warily approaches the line, weapon leveled on me, and locks my
eyes.

“Are you really who they say you are?” she demands to
know.

“Lieutenant Straker,” I name her. Take off my helmet.
“Good to see you’re still in the fight.”

“Colonel Ram?” she wants to be sure.

“Mostly,” I don’t help. But then offer to: “What’s
your situation?”

“
Don’t speak to them, Lieutenant!
” a voice
shouts from the opposite end of the tunnel. Her face hardens, and
she ignores the command:

“Things have gone bad, sir. Chang has been putting us
in harm’s way to no good purpose. He’s a bad tactician, doesn’t
care about our losses, which I’m estimating are over three hundred
and climbing. The Zodanga have lost even more. He came to rebuild
his Stormcloud—his flying carrier—and started scavenging Pioneer.
There… was some resistance. It was bad enough when he stripped
Frontier… We… He ordered us to open fire on our own people. When
some of us refused, he ordered his Shadow-Knight—that thing that
used to be Captain Bly—to execute the ‘cowards’. Bly refused, took
off. So he did it himself: crushed Captain Stiles and First
Sergeant Jacobson to death. That got his loyalists back in line,
got us slaughtering each other. When word got back here, we tried
to make a stand, hold the colony, but too many are either afraid of
him or still think he’s the only thing that can save us from
Earth.”

“What happened to Colonel Janeway?” I need to
know.

She looks shaken, unsure of what to say, then points
a nervous finger at Bel.

“He’s like that one. Chang said he was punishing him…
Colonel Janeway tried to take over the Joint Force, after we tried
to take your Melas Two base. Chang went missing for a few days
after the battle—we thought maybe the ETE had destroyed him. But
then he came back. Pissed that Colonel Janeway had attacked Shinkyo
without his order. Chang…put something in him. Told him it would
slowly remake him into something better,
something—
someone
—more useful to the cause, but it would
consume his brain, his mind, except for useable memories. We
listened to him screaming for a week, trying to fight it as he
faded away. Now he’s… something else. Someone else.”

“
Ragnarok!
” Bel calls me by my codename.
“Story time later! The meat are being stubborn…”

I look. The black suits are bringing up heavier
ordnance, including launchers, not caring what will happen in the
confines of the tunnels.

“I’ve got it,” Paul repeats, still hoping to keep the
issue as bloodless as possible. He steps past Bel, draws a second
Sphere from his belt, and repeats a trick I saw his brother do the
first time we met: It looks like the black suits get hit by a wind,
which quickly starts to look like a sand storm. But it isn’t sand.
It’s their weapons, their armor, their clothing—everything
inorganic—disintegrating, very much like sand against a wind.
They’ve got the tunnel so packed they can’t retreat in time, start
falling over each other as they get stripped naked. A few in the
rear start firing, and unfortunately manage to wound a few of their
own, who get dragged off by their fellows. But then I notice other
casualties: Some of the stripped are missing limbs. One is missing
part of his face, including an eye.

“Prostheses,” Straker explains after the black force
has fallen back around a tunnel bend. “To keep the wounded in the
fight.”

“Chang?” I assume.

“Janeway,” she tells me grimly. “Or what he is
now.”

“How many are you?” I keep to priorities.

“Barely three hundred. We’re outnumbered about
two-to-one. And they have more weapons and ammo.”

“Maybe we can tip the scales for you,” I offer.

“They’ll never be able to hold this site,” Bel
discounts. “Not without help. Unless you want to pop off down a
romantic little side-tunnel with the pretty Lieutenant and cook up
another ex-girlfriend.”

I actually feel myself blush, but it gets quickly
replaced by guilt, and even fear of the unknown seed I’m still
carrying. Straker gives me an uncomfortable look as it dawns on her
that Bel’s implying I might be able to do to her what Chang did to
Janeway. But to her credit, she doesn’t step back. I shake my head
to try to reassure her I have no such plans, however dire the
situation.

Then I’m thinking we’ll deal with the long term
later, when we hear a cheer go up from the general direction of
Chang’s loyalists.

I see a shadow come walking down the dimly lit tunnel
toward us.

“Chang?” Paul worries (but it also sounds like he’s
eager for another shot at the thing ultimately responsible for his
brother’s death).

“I don’t think so,” Straker offers.

“Captain Colonel,” I hear the familiar greeting.

It isn’t Chang. It’s Bly. He walks into Paul’s
fields, staggers slightly like he’s just walked into a strong wind,
keeps coming, intact. Then stops. He doesn’t draw his sword.

“Can I be of any assistance?” he calmly offers. I
think I hear apology in what comes through his helmet.

“I expect so,” I tentatively accept. I imagine
Chang’s loyalists are starting to realize their celebration was
premature. But then:

“You need to get these people well away from here,”
he warns us urgently. “Now. Fast. You’ve got bigger problems
coming.”

“The Stormcloud?”

“Toys. Bad toys.”

Bly reaches into a satchel he has slung over his
shoulder, and plants a demo charge that collapses the tunnel behind
us as we fall back with Straker’s group. As we come upon more of
her people, we get more guns pointed at us until she orders them to
stand down, then orders a neat pack-up and retreat.

The PK tunnels are all square-cut, with
arch-supported hard-packed walls, a hallmark style of the heavy
excavation equipment dropped by the early colony construction
crews, sprayed with sealant to keep pressurized. The lighting is
comprised of rechargeable efficiency survival lanterns, placed
sparingly. The ground is packed smooth by generations of foot
traffic. The air is thick and stale.

I try to imagine what it must be like to live down
here, maybe to have lived down here for lifetimes. But the
explosions get distracting: Bly blows a few branch tunnels as we
go, as soon as Straker calls them clear. (I wonder if the
charges—which don’t look UNMAC or colony construction standard—are
keepsakes of his late lover, or stolen from Chang.) More of
Straker’s forces have fallen in with our retreat, having held
multiple chokepoints in this maze. But that makes the going start
to slow.

“It won’t hold,” Bly discounts his own work as we get
stalled for a few moments.

“What’s coming?” Straker asks before I can.

“Bug,” Bly tells her. “And Box.”

“The Box prototype I saw can’t fit through these
tunnels,” Straker sounds like she knows first-hand, but still
tensely chews at her scarred lip.

“The Bug can,” Bly insists. “The Box will be waiting
for you upstairs. Expect him when you surface.”

His implication is these people are stuck between
staying down here with a monster or getting caught by one if they
make the surface. Still, she orders her people to move faster,
keeps her eyes and her gun pointed behind us, looks like she’s
listening for something, something following us.

“What’s a Bug and a Box?” Bel wants to know.

“Ye’ll see soon enough,” Bly doesn’t take the time to
explain.

“They were made for you,” Straker warns us vaguely.
“But they’ll easily make quick work of us. Not much we have can
hurt them.”

We eventually come to a small manmade cave, filled
with even more people—civilian workers, families—and stockpiled
supplies. The stacks form partial walls for semi-private living
spaces, barely big enough a few bedrolls. It looks like a temporary
camp, but I get the impression some of these are their actual
homes, maybe just more crowded with the influx of refugees. (Or
maybe not, maybe this is as dense as they’ve always lived. Perhaps
denser, since they’ve lost so many in Chang’s crusade.) No
luxuries, just necessities. I see other crowded spaces off
branching tunnels, all protected with makeshift barricades.

“Do you have surface gear for everyone?” I ask
her.

“You can’t take them topside,” Bly warns. “Not yet.
We need to draw Bug away from them. Kill it. Then go deal with
Box.”

“
And
the enemy PK,” I add in the threat I
know. “Is there a tunnel exit close by without snipers all over
it?” I ask Straker.

“That’s not the main threat,” Bly insists. “Box…” But
then he turns back to the tunnel he just shut behind us, positions
himself at the incoming barricades, plants his feet, tells the PK
defenders to “Get back! Get out! Quick! You’re no good here!”

The civilians are scrambling to get on surface
protection, breather gear, collect what they can carry. The PK
soldiers gather up their packs and masks, grab ammo, grenades.

“We might be able to hold it here,” Bly plans
vaguely. “But the tender meat need to be somewhere else. It may
just target us, not go for them. Yet.”

“This is it,” Straker wrecks his plan. “The loyals
have us cornered in these sections. No place to move but out. I can
divide them, send them out multiple exits, spread out the targets…”
But she doesn’t sound hopeful. I know the tone: She’s sure she’ll
be sending some of her people to their deaths, best case.

I join Bly on the line.

“They’ll need you when they hit surface, Colonel
Captain,” he dismisses me. “You need to deal with Box if you’re
planning on taking any of these people out of here.”

“I’ve got it,” Bel mimics Paul’s confidence, then
heads down the exit tunnel Straker shows him.

Straker is on-Link with her group leaders,
coordinating an evacuation plan, trying to sound positive, even
naming a regroup point. I’m hoping Chang’s “bad toys” do focus on
us rather than hit Straker’s people. If they have simple AI like
the Discs, they’ll prioritize, move…

I hear the rumble and crackle of something big,
digging its way to us.

“Bug,” Bly identifies, drawing his sword, explaining.
“Guns won’t hurt it. Neither will Blue Boy’s magic. Our blades
might. But we have to get all of it. Both heads…”

“Go!” I shout at Straker.

Paul takes the rear as the last of them get out of
the cave cluster and into the exit tunnels. He puts up a field to
protect their exit route.

“Better move, Blue,” Bly warns him. “Ya can’t…”

Bly’s plug of rubble dissolves in a gush of rock and
dirt, and something very bug-like comes scrambling through. It’s
bigger than a man, with multiple jointed limbs that are strong
enough to move rock and dirt like a backhoe. They’re tipped in
massive stout blades that look equally suited to digging,
demolition or murder. A cluster of red “eyes” glow from a small
domed head. It gets free of the collapse, comes right at us. Its
six limbs are so universally jointed that it almost tumbles at us.
And there is another “head” on the opposite end of its almost
skeletal three-sectioned body.