The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are (37 page)

“Doctor Mann?” Burns comes on nervously. “Why are you
down on B-Deck?”

“I’m still on Alpha,” Rick sounds confused.

“Fuck…” I hear Lisa hiss, and her vision becomes a
blur. She flies for the nearest stairwell, throws herself down it.
Too late. There’s a lot of shouting on the Link. I hack helmet feed
that shows me Rick, hacking through a checkpoint of troopers just
outside of B-Ops. ICWs try to lock, but he’s using the ones he’s
cut down as shields to keep them on holdfire.

“He making a run for Ops!” Hendricks is shouting. I
see blood spray the bulkheads. “I have men down!”

Then I see Lisa coming up fast on the massacre. She
doesn’t slow, slams into the fake Rick as he tries to turn on her.
She catches his sword-arm with her left hand and strikes the elbow
with her right. The blow is hard and fast enough to sever the limb.
She isn’t holding back. Her left hand follows with a spearing
action that penetrates up under his ribcage. She’s got her hand
inside his chest—maybe gripping his beating heart. He doesn’t cry
out—he might not be able to—but steels himself enough to pull out a
grenade with his remaining arm, trigger the fuse and shove it in
his mouth. (The fact that he still looks too much like Rick is
especially disturbing.)

“GRENADE!!” she shouts to clear the remaining
troopers in the corridor, then quickly throws the mangled body back
down the way she came. I don’t see the blast because she’s crouched
and covered, but I get the full benefit of the bang in the tight
steel space.

I count at least four troopers down as the smoke
clears, their armor cleaved like cardboard, limbs severed. The deck
is flooded with blood.

“Ops is secure!” Burns reassures (probably himself
most of all). “Resume the sweep. There could be more.”

It’s Lisa that calls for the medics. But then she
looks down at her hands. Both are bloodied, but the left is soaked
in gore halfway to her elbow. As she watches, her skin absorbs
it.

“….fuuuuUUUUKKK!!!” she builds up a cry of panic and
horror and disgust.

“I’m sorry,” I try too late. “I should have warned
you…”

“I
know
!” she spits out, visibly shaking.
“I’ve just… never…”

Thankfully she had her back turned to the sentry
cameras. Maybe UNCORT will just think she’s upset about killing
like that with her bare hands, give her credit for a sign of
humanity, and miss the suddenly-clean hands.

I want to go to her, hold her, take her away from the
suspicious, fearful eyes. But Burns would order my own people to
stop me, and much more than that: I know she’d never allow it.

I focus on what I can do something about, and take a
better look at the files the shinobi handed off to me. I’m still
not sure if his last word was asking me to take them to his master
or telling me he was giving them to me by her order. Of course she
knew I’d be here, and therefore her agents would, probably waited
until they detected me before they made noise, knowing I’d come
after them. All of this—and at least seven of my own people
killed—could have all been to pass me the chip. And I know the
files could be falsified, the whole escapade a manipulation…

What the micro-drive holds are communications and
files exchanged securely between Burns and Richards. Manifests.
Plans. Specs. It looks like the incoming fleet is bringing more
manpower and weaponry than we were told.

Including orbital weapons. And nukes.

17 June, 2117:

There isn’t any subterfuge about the arrival date
this time: The relief fleet makes orbit on schedule and without any
excitement. (Apparently the Shinkyo nav virus has been completely
cleared, though there was some panicked chatter around aborting the
whole thing and sling-shotting back to Earth.)

They aren’t bothering to mask their comms. I can hear
a sky full of voices and data. Eighteen ships. Two hundred and
forty personnel. Twelve tons of assorted cargo. The flight is more
than three times what Burns brought with him in March, six times
the initial unmanned drop from last January.

Eight of the ships carry drop shuttles to move people
and gear to the surface (and back, if the Planetary Quarantine is
ever lifted), compared to the old-school para-drops that Burns and
his cronies needed to ride down here like so much baggage. Six more
ships are carrying pairs of the new light AAV aircraft. The freight
hulls, once they’ve been emptied, are designed to be added to the
growing space station/orbital dock, where General Richards plans to
set up shop until a new base can be established on Phobos. (Burns’
people have already surveyed the wrecked original, clearing it of
whatever human remains were left after the Discs shredded it.) The
plans I’ve seen insist the new structures will be armored, blast
resistant, with redundant survival protocols. And they’ve brought
more satellites, supposedly to improve communications and help with
the planetary survey and search for the descendants of
survivors.

Chang doesn’t make his grand entrance until all the
ships have made stable orbit, as if he wants the biggest audience.
He also doesn’t go for the biggest target—Melas Two—like he did
last time. He slinks (if you can call moving a ship the size of a
naval aircraft carrier “slinking”) out of the Catena in his
signature dust storm, comes right up on Melas Three from the east.
And that takes him past Tranquility, as if he also wants to give us
an invitation to the show.

We’ve been ready to take him up on that offer, just
not quite the way he imagines.

I get a call from Lisa on a proper (though encrypted)
Link channel as soon as the UNMAC sky eyes see Chang coming. On the
surface, this looks like a gesture of building trust and gratitude
from Burns and his up-world masters for how helpful my cohorts and
I have been for “reducing potential loss of life” in the incidents
with Brimstone and the Shinkyo. He even pinned a commendation to
Lisa’s file for her actions against the shinobi saboteurs (if
that’s really what they were), and no UNCORT grief about how she
was so easily able to destroy two human beings with her bare
hands.

“He’s coming,” she keeps it brief, flashing me
sat-imaging, including a projected time to rail-gun range. “M-3.
Your team ready?”

“We’ll be there.” This is the most damning detail:
Burns is inviting us—all of us—to come and “help, for the greater
good.”

We make it look like we’ve come too late to the
party, letting Chang slide by long before we’re close enough to
engage. Then we make sure not to close the gap, taking position in
the trench-like partial cover of an arroyo in the valley floor, as
if assessing the situation.

Chang doesn’t waste any resources against us,
probably hoping for another opportunity for a monologue and a
rousing battle on deck. Watching his flying fortress slide away,
its cloud-cloak already thinning in preparation for the big show,
his black-uniformed pawns arrayed on deck, I regret not being able
to warn Star what’s about to happen…

…but then I see her coming to meet us, sailing out
from one of the Stormcloud’s flight decks on a ride-on flyer
similar to what Bel tinkered for us. She sets down a few dozen
meters in front of our line, gracefully steps off, her long golden
hair blowing in the valley winds. She has a form-fitting suit of
shimmering mail under her brilliant white dress, but carries only a
simple staff. She stops when she’s ten meters away, and I risk
standing up over the rim of the ditch to greet her, though I keep
up the pretense of enmity.

“I am the eyes and ears of Syan Chang,” she
announces, then subtly gestures to a diadem she’s wearing, a
spider’s-eye cluster of black jewels in the center of her forehead.
She wants to make sure we stay in character. I do my best to look
completely disgusted with her, assuring Chang that our relationship
has been irreparably broken by her choices.

“You are a fucking whore!” Kali spits back at her,
stepping up between me and her sometime rival, not needing to
pretend. The others move to support her, a show of solidarity.

Star ignores her, looks over my “team”, then locks
eyes with me. I see her mouth twist into a grin that doesn’t match
the pain in her eyes, and then I hear Chang’s laugh come out of her
mouth.

The black gems burst and spread and cover Star in a
liquid sheath of absolute darkness, turning her into Chang. Or at
least some kind of avatar—I see parts of Star slip out as she
struggles against whatever he’s doing to her. Her right hand stays
visible long enough to gesture us to not try to help her.

“You look like the Satanic Super Friends,” the
projection mocks lightly, looking us over. Then shakes its head as
if confused. “How are you all even here?”

“We outnumber you,” Azazel tells him coolly.

“Depends on how you’re counting,” Chang denies.

“Already bored,” Lux feigns. “Please get on with the
big speech. Here, I’ll do it for you: ‘Join me or suffer the
consequences…’”

“No speech,” Chang replies very casually. “You’ll
make your own decisions. Whatever you are.” It sounds like he’s
doubting what he’s seeing.

“Then why come to face us?” I challenge.

“It’s just nice to see a few familiar faces from
home,” he discounts, likely stalling. (He’s learning. Too bad he
doesn’t know we’re letting him stall us.) The silhouette points to
Kali, Lux and Azazel. “Is this Bel’s work? It’s pretty convincing.
What kind of mods did you give them?”

He doesn’t think the three of them are real, that
this is a trick, or a “knockoff” job like he did on Bly and Harper.
He sounds honestly curious, befuddled.

In the distance, I hear his railgun begin to charge.
He’s almost got his shot.

“Whatever you are: when you’re tired of being hunted
by the scared, stupid people you’re trying to protect, come…”

His soft-sell gets interrupted by a howl of rage from
the sky. We look up. It’s Bly, flying in on his nano-construct.
He’s waving his sword at us like he’s trying to rally a charge.

“What are you waiting for?!!” he’s shouting over the
wind and the hum of Chang’s weapon. “Attack!! ATTACK!!!”

He turns his mount and flies for the Stormcloud.

“BLY!! DON’T…!!!” I’m yelling after him.

There’s a thunder clap from the sky, and we see what
looks like a falling star coming straight down at Chang’s ship,
having just penetrated the Atmosphere Net. The thunder rolls into a
train-like rush and rumble as the object burns through the
thousands of meters of thicker atmosphere.

The Chang projection has just enough time to say
“Ahhh…” when the star-bright projectile slams into his ship almost
center of the cross, blows clean through the hull and explodes on
impact with the ground below. We can only see it happen in any
detail because of our modified processing—the projectile (probably
the size of a small torpedo) was moving nearly ten thousand meters
per second. The kinetic energy alone generates enough heat and
shockwave to do the work of a small tactical nuke. Anyone on that
ship not vaporized by the impact would have been incinerated or
liquefied by the flash and blast wave.

Which is coming our way.

I see Bly caught in it, his fanciful mount blown to
dust out from under him by the sudden overpressure, his body
slammed like a doll swatted by and invisible hand, sent tumbling
limply through the sky. I lunch forward, grab Star by her wrist as
Chang’s projection pixilates and vanishes, and pull her with us
into the cover of the arroyo. The wave nearly buries us, trying to
crush us with pressure and sear us with heat, even at this
range.

Then comes the secondary wave right behind. The storm
lasts only seconds, passes into a wailing wind and a rumbling roar.
I crawl and peek up over the rise. Chang’s ship is crippled,
blazing, twisted, spinning in and dropping to the blasted ground
just beside the smoking impact crater (that looks big enough to
swallow the wreck). Metal screams and grinds and settles.

I look over at Star. She rips the diadem off her head
and smashes it. I wonder how long Chang’s been making her wear
it.

“We need to move,” I remind everyone as they watch
the smoldering devastation in awe. I don’t know if Richards can
manage a second shot so soon, but I’d rather not give him the
target. Our flyers come in to carry us off.

“Come with us,” I offer Star, who still looks shaken.
She manages to nod. Kali gives me a glare of murder, gets on her
flyer and leaves us.

General Richards’ engineering team were busy during
the long flight. Inspired by Chang, they worked in packed cargo
holds and outside in EVA suits to convert one of the mass drivers
they’d brought (to sling raw materials from the surface to the
orbital construction projects) into their own railgun, then made at
least one projectile out of a gutted missile packed with dense
scrap. Then it was just a matter of using conventional targeting
algorithms and parking the thing geosynchronous over their bases.
Once Chang showed them where he was heading, they moved it into
position where they expected him to slow down for his own
kill-shot. The generous comm-traffic masked what they were
doing.

“Chang was on board?” I need to know. Star is hanging
onto me from behind as we fly, much tighter than she needs to, her
face buried into the back of my surcoat. I feel her nod through my
armor.

“There were over two hundred people on that ship…”
she mutters, still not believing the cost.

“Fohat?” Bastard that I am, I keep to my
priorities.

“I think so.” She doesn’t sound sure. “Chang kept me
away from a lot of his operations, trying not to look like he was…
I…”

“Can you stay with us?” I give her the option,
despite whatever drama I’m sure I’m buying.