The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (16 page)

“Do you want to kill them, too?” I try not to sound
completely snarky.

His chuckle comes out through my mouth.

That’s a lot of killing, lad.

But that wasn’t a denial.

Peter knows where the old access points were. Given
where we find sentries, they don’t seem to have changed their
layout much in twelve years. But then, I don’t suppose they’ve had
reason to, once they thought they’d finished off their “Reaper.” I
try to imagine what it’s been like for them: Generations without
facing an outside threat, then a few years hopelessly trying to
fight something they knew they couldn’t kill. (I wonder: Does that
include Thelonious as well?) And after whatever celebration they
allowed themselves for entombing Peter, twelve more years of
standing sentry against nothing. Until we showed up with a unit of
Katar warriors and gave them something to shoot at that they could
actually kill. I almost feel sorry for them. They exist to be
soldiers, but they’ve only faced external threats two or three
times in three generations. Unless I include the threats that come
offering them “gifts”…

Thelonious. And now Asmodeus,
Peter follows my
thoughts, incidentally letting me know I’ll have no more privacy,
not even in my own mind. And that makes me want to claw my own
brain out.

I try to focus on the moment, why we’re here (why
Peter
is here—my body is just his vehicle).

We move up around behind a sentry, get past him
without him seeing or hearing us. But then Peter advances toward
him, long blade ready.

“We could slip past him,” I argue practical mercy.
“Get in. Find Thelonious.” See if my friends are still alive.

I can’t believe you’re reluctant to kill these
animals. You saw. They’re not following Thel’s orders because
they’re afraid of him. They enjoy it. They’ve been raised to think
they’re elite warriors, and everyone else is trash. Their only
problem is they never get to leave their holes, they never get to
fight the battles of their dreams. So any time they get to go out
and encounter any other living thing, they slaughter like it’s a
party, and tell themselves they’re being brave and take home
trophies to brag over.

He comes right up behind the sentry, stands over the
Heavy Armor shell for several seconds—I can feel him enjoying the
moment—then scrapes his blade on the rocks. The man turns on us
with his gun, and Peter lets him get a good look and start to
scream in his helmet before we cut the man through diagonally
downward from collar bone to liver. Then we use the blade like a
prod to toss the upper half away from the lower, to leave a bigger
mess. Peter’s “art”.

I’m flooded with a storm of emotions: Rage. Terror.
Disgust. And giddy satisfaction. I feel sick and shaky but I also
feel unbelievably good, better than I’ve ever felt (better than the
thrill that Terina might have feelings for me). I’m not sure if
it’s Peter or me that’s giggling like a madman under this mask. I
feel so strong, invincible. But it’s not enough, not yet. The rage
quickly becomes dominant again, unsatisfied, never satisfied.

We have our way in clear, but Peter doesn’t take it.
I can hear the nearest sentry calling to check on the man we
killed. We send back gibberish, like the man’s link is just
fuzzed.

“Peter, we don’t…”

We move fast and smooth over the rocks, the Nagamaki
slicing the green out of our way. It makes enough noise for the
next man to be facing us when we come charging up on him. He starts
to get a call out, screaming “
It’s the Reaper! The Reaper is
back!!
” but we jam his link. Then we lock the man’s weapon when
he tries to fire it still set on target-assist. Peter cuts the
useless rifle in half, then the return swing takes off the top of
the man’s helmet. And his skull. The armor suit drops limp, spewing
blood out its open top. I get the rush again as rage shifts to sick
pleasure, then too-quickly reverses, demanding more of this.
More.

We look around, listen. There’s chatter. The other
sentries are nervous, calling to each other, trying to reach the
dead men through choppy links, trying to see them through scopes
blurred with static. But none are particularly close, so I manage
to get us turned around and heading back for the concealed
hatch.

Whatever lock it has yields to our touch without
setting off any alarms. We drop down into dim light, and tight
spaces that Peter warned me about but doesn’t seem worried about
now. We run through the rough-dug tunnels like he knows where he’s
going.

The light—which comes from old survival lanterns
strung sparingly along the cut-rock walls—let’s me see that we’ve
been sprayed in blood from our opportunistic slaughter, but as I
watch, it absorbs into us, like the lacing is drinking it. I feel a
rush of satisfaction, satiation. I tell myself I can’t really taste
the blood, that it’s just my imagination.

We come upon a side-chamber where they store their
armor. A teenage boy is hard at work cleaning the camo-painted
laminate plating, scrubbing the crevices like his life depends on
it. He wears a work suit that’s barely suitable for rags. His pale
skin is stained and crusty with old dirt, and he looks chronically
malnourished. He has very little muscle mass, like he’s barely more
than a skeleton inside his clothes.

Only the Keepers get access to their G-Sim
centrifuges and PT machines. They want them weak and fragile.
Easier to control.

He looks up and sees us and freezes, but doesn’t make
a sound after an initial gasp. He’s missing several teeth.

They’re slaves. Do you know what slaves are, lad?

My answer gets interrupted by the sounds of running
and orders barked from down the tunnel. It’s a pair of sentries in
Keeper soft armor, armed with PDWs. They stop so short when they
see us that they almost slip on the dirt floor. They raise their
weapons in panic, but then hesitate, eyes wide, mouths open,
unwilling to believe what they’re seeing. Peter cuts their links,
then just stands put, spreads our arms as if welcoming them, and
lets them open fire.

Everything slows down—I can see the rounds coming.
And I know I could easily dodge them, but Peter plants our feet and
lets their bullets ping into our armor. They deform, fragment, and
stick. I watch the copper and alloy soak into us like the blood
did. What pitiful dents they made in the plate quickly reshape. My
armor is barely smudged for the abuse.

He even lets one of them throw a grenade at us, only
to catch it. I can feel our tech interrupt the fuse. He lets the
two men realize their device isn’t going to go off, then he sets
the Nagamaki against the wall and draws the revolver, both in an
eye-blink, and puts a shell through each man’s forehead. The
revolver kicks like it’s firing rifle rounds, the flame blinding in
the dim spaces. The grip of the gun slams back into the web of my
hand as if I’ve been struck in the palm by a baton. It makes me
giggle involuntarily. The gun is back in its holster before they
even begin to fall.

“Get out of there,” we growl at the boy, who edges
past us, gripping his ears against the gunfire, trembling and
wide-eyed. Then he runs like a terrified child, leaping over the
dead Keepers. Peter tosses the grenade into the armory, and steps
us aside to avoid the worst of the blast. The shockwave that
hammers us through our armor is deeply satisfying, just like the
recoil of the revolver. I want more. I want to blow it all up.

We take the time in the storm of dust that floods the
tunnels to replace the two empty casings in the gun with fresh
shells from the belt, saving the empties in our satchel. Then Peter
reaches out his hand, and the Nagamaki flies to us as if
tossed.

“Links jammed or not, they’ll have heard that,” I try
to warn.

They rely too much on their links. Even if I let them
talk to each other, it takes them time to prepare a proper ambush
for me, and they’re twelve years out of practice. Plus, they’re
spread thin in the outer sections, everywhere except in their
Barracks. Their tunnel complex is vast, much bigger than the
original colony was.

“How do we know where to go?”

I know Thel.

He also knows his way, at least through the tunnels
that look better established. We do meet some resistance along the
labyrinthine path: a few unfortunate soldiers coming to look for
the source of the gunfire and grenade blast. Peter doesn’t take the
time to butcher the bodies, just deals with them with a surgical
pistol shot or blade thrust, the Nagamaki’s geometry letting it
serve as an effective spear as well as a sword.

Otherwise, the Keepers holding seem to be spaced out
as section guards, or the random rotating patrol, usually in pairs.
And they haven’t seemed to coordinate any kind of significant
response yet, most defaulting to holding their posts until they
receive orders, which Peter is blocking. That makes them easy to
take out, but Peter seems disappointed with the slow accumulation
of kills, like a starving man being fed only one bite at a
time.

We pass several small caves that serve as living
spaces for their civilian workers. They live in cramped, dark,
filthy conditions, stinking of old human waste and sweat and
garbage. They all look universally deprived. And not a single one
moves to recover a dropped weapon from a dead guard and raise it
against us, not at all, as if the idea is unthinkable to them.

My own rage floods me now, adding to Peter’s
unquenchable blood thirst. This isn’t the deserts of Melas. Food is
plentiful here. Water mists down from the sky—the Katar collect it
using homemade devices. The air is livable—the Katar and the Pax
have proven that. The plants provide fuel for heat and materials
for building and weaving. All of these people could live healthy,
comfortable lives.

But that wouldn’t serve their masters, now would
it?

Peter’s right. There’s only one way to deal with the
Keepers.

I have a sickly satisfying thought: The Cast showed
us how good corpses are at making plants grow lush and
bountiful.

I hear Peter chuckling in my head, appreciating my
practical bloodlust.

As if I have my flashcard maps in my head, I can see
the layout of the underground aspect of Eureka take shape as we go,
and see the overlay of the original colony habs, fabs and support
facilities, adjusted for damage and what stripping we saw. Peter’s
aiming us on a circuitous route for what used to be a colony
habitat dome, one that apparently survived mostly intact, but was
then buried to hide it as we’ve seen done at other colony sites. I
imagine a hidden paradise of clean, comfortable living, like the
Tranquility Upper Domes.

The corridors become concrete, though cracked and
patched over the decades. There are still steel hatches between
sections and sealing side chambers, but they’re chipped and
corroded. The lighting is barely brighter than it was in the
civilian sections. But it smells less rotten—mostly just the reek
of chemical toilets and poorly maintained recyclers. And there are
more Keepers.

Deciding on a modicum of stealth to avoid bringing
them all down on us at once, and being too focused on the primary
target of his vengeance to dally with butchery anymore, Peter picks
off the Keepers we run into very cleanly now, but not with the
revolver. Instead, he uses steel spikes the size of a pen
stylus—
shuriken
—which he can throw with the force and speed
of a crossbow bolt. Through a skull or a throat, they’re very
effective. They’re also reusable and easy to carry in quantity in
small pockets hidden in our armor.

As we go, as we kill, I feel more and more like a
passenger in my own body. Peter’s single-minded rage is locking me
out of controlling my own muscles.

Stop fighting me, Jonny,
Peter tries to calm
me, even though he can barely contain his insatiable desire for
slaughter as he does.
I’m sorry. Just trust me. I know where we
need to go. I know what we need to do. I promise I’ll give you
control when this is done.

We come upon a main hatch that’s being held by a
squad of Keepers in heavy armor, and Peter moves to avoid them
before they see us in the dim lighting, ducking out of sight at a
junction.

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” I question in my head.
“More targets?”

We’re too close to Thel. I don’t want to give him the
chance to run.

So we double back and around, following the old plans
until we find a sealed access panel, which he neatly rips open. We
slip into a service trunk and climb. It’s barely big enough to
squeeze through in our armor.

“How many Keepers are there?” I ask a practical
question inside my head as we go.

Only a few hundred, depending on how they’ve been
breeding since I was last here. They need to keep their numbers to
how many suits and guns they have. Without those, they’re just
privileged civvies, and that’s only one step above the shit as far
as they’re concerned.

I’m surprised by his choice of word. I thought
Upworlders didn’t use obscenities anymore; that they looked down on
us that did.

I’m not an Upworlder anymore, am I?

After about twenty meters, we carefully pop another
access panel and ease out. We come out onto a balcony that rings
the interior of the hab dome near the top, so I have a good view.
The dome is much smaller in diameter than the Tranquility domes,
but there are similarities to the construction, the engineering.
And just like those buried structures that were not built to be
buried, this one’s roof sections are also shored up with makeshift
beams.

But this is no clean, luxurious mini-utopia. It’s all
gray and dingy, and manages to feel oppressive—even more so than
the bunkers of the Melas Two Unmaker base—despite the great open
space that dominates the middle of it, several decks deep.