The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (22 page)

“You’re free, Batak Cheng,” I try to be reassuring.
“No more Fohat. No more Asmodeus. They’ve gone. You can live or die
now. And I’ll help you do either. But I need you to help me
first.”

“So dark… So much pain… The Toymaker, he… he
cut
… he… horrible… my…”

“I know…” And I do. This is so much worse than it was
with the bots across the Lake. They could only talk to me. But now,
I’m in his head, or what violated thing is left of his head. I
don’t feel any pain, but I can feel his horror, his unbearable
despair, see his memory files. His body is gone, his human life.
He’s just a preserved brain and nervous system, and that’s been
slaved to a brutal machine. And Fohat let him see his gutted body
when he woke up in this shell, proud of his work, grinning.

I look down at Straker, still under me. I see the
same horror and pain in her eyes—she can link into him just like I
can. I’m grateful this isn’t someone she actually knew.

“Batak,” I focus him. “I know you can dig. With this
metal body. It’s made to tunnel. You also probably know the nearest
vertical shaft, the shortest way up and out…”

He answers by moving. I use my hands to help dig out
his bladed legs, and he starts to shovel. I get Straker free of the
rubble over her own legs, and we cling together, crawling under the
small shelter of Batak’s body and he works his way forward. We, in
turn, push away the dirt he scoops under himself. And together, we
move.

Batak doesn’t take us up, but after about thirty
meters, we make it to a section of intact tunnel, giving us some
more needed oxygen and much easier progress. The bot leads us
on—I’m guessing east—where we dig through two more shorter
collapses. We find a few bodies in black Chang uniforms, crushed in
the rubble, and when I check them I can see the Harvester units in
their heads. Straker looks freshly sick. She drops on each of them
and used her fists to crush their skulls, smashing the modules
inside. Her hands shake as her gloves absorb the gore. She crawls
away from the corpses, staying down on all fours like she might
vomit, but doesn’t.

“The few I saw that still looked alive looked like
prisoners,” she describes what little I managed to see of the
Stormcloud construction. She likely got a better look at it while
she was targeting it for the Unmakers. “All of the sentries I
encountered were lobotomized.
All
of them…”

It makes sick sense. They’re all networked. And
managed from a single hub. Makes for better security and no more
risk of rebellion.

I don’t say out loud what Peter is thinking.

We finally see daylight, but have to clear more
rubble to squeeze out into it. Based on the landmarks, we’ve come
out on the east rim of the Grave, overlooking a rocky plain that
eventually slopes down into forest. We can barely see the nearest
mountains: The Spine to the northeast and the South Blade Divide to
the south. The Central Blade Valley is filled with a ruddy gray
haze. But behind us, the crater spews a massive column of dust and
smoke that flattens as it reaches the atmosphere net.

Fresh air starts recharging my oxygen levels, but I
need water, food. I expect Straker is in worse shape. Her uniform
is still charred by Asmodeus’ energy discharge—no telling what kind
of tissue damage it did. She’s having trouble standing up straight.
I should get her to the forest, into the green, but I need to
see…

I climb back up the slope to the crater rim, and look
across. The heat and blast wave of whatever hit us has stripped and
charred the green from the bowl of the Grave, re-sculpted the
landscape and left Asmodeus’ hidden base a gapping pit—the source
of the smoke column. As there’s no radiation, I assume I’m seeing
the result of a railgun strike, fired down from orbit. I can see
several broken bodies and bots in the outer blast zone. A Box bot
tries to wheel itself away, but looks hopelessly wrecked. More
disturbing, a few of the human bodies also try to move, despite
being visibly crushed, burned, torn and dismembered. I can hear
their Harvester units pinging for their master, unanswered.

What I don’t see is any sign of the new Stormcloud,
not even wreckage. I remember the last one—the original—took a
similar strike dead-center. It punched a hole through it that
almost broke it in half and brought it down, killing everyone human
on board. This was a miss. Asmodeus got away.

I stand up on the crest, listening for signals, any
sign of which way he may have gone. I hear only the background
static of the magnetite, and realize from the color of the haze
that Asmodeus may have just salted the entire valley with it,
helping him hide from satellites. All he’d have to do is maintain
visual camouflage.

I also don’t see or feel any sign of Thel. I try to
estimate where he was when the blast wave hit, but that area has
all been stripped away, reshaped. He’s either dead or made his own
escape. I have to assume the latter. My rage demands it.

Batak crawls up to me, holding out one of his bladed
limbs, then makes a stabbing gesture at his own torso. I can scan
through his shell enough to see the heat that I assume is his power
core, and maybe his organic brain.

I nod my understanding, unsheathe my Nagamaki, but
then consider

“Straker!” I call down to her. “You need this more
than I do.”

She drags herself up-slope to see what I’m talking
about, but then her features sink when I gesture to Batak with my
sword. She doesn’t want to.

“He’s in pain,” I prod. “And worse. You can feel
it.”

She reluctantly steps up to the bot. Batak doesn’t
back away, doesn’t try to defend himself.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, then plunges her Blade
into his core.

I can feel her feed, reaping energy and raw materials
as well as the nutrients of the organic components. The bot settles
on its limbs as if deactivated. I no longer hear its signals, his
voice.

When she draws her Blade out, I can see the motion of
her technology under the skin of her face. Her uniform is patching
itself. Her color is partly restored.

She sheaths her Blade, and gingerly unfastens her
armored jacket, opens it, exposing her chest. The flesh over her
sternum looks charred down to the bone, but it starts regenerating
in from of my eyes. She makes a little grunt of disgust, and
carefully closes her jacket over the wound.

I hear new signals, and the roar of engines. Two
Unmaker aircraft come from the northwest, through the Boundary
between the North and Central Blades, and do a flyover of the blast
zone. I worry about being seen, but then I look at Straker and see
that her uniform has changed color and pattern to perfectly match
the terrain. Looking down, I see that my armor is doing a similar
trick. Again.

Still

“We should go.”

I hike with her down to the edge of the green.

“We got Murphy and Sulemon—the Katar prisoner—out of
Eureka with minimal losses, none of ours…” she fills me in as we
go, even though I didn’t ask. “The Katar managed to recover some of
the property taken from their dead. Between that and the rescue of
one of theirs and the blood revenge, I think they considered the
attack Valuable. Your father… He found your armor and your sword.
He killed the man who had them, after demanding to know what they’d
done with your body. The man said he didn’t know what he was
talking about, for obvious reasons, so your father cut off his
hands and gutted him. Then he took your things with him, bullet
holes and dried blood and all, hugging them like they were his
child.

“I followed them out, away from the colony until I
was sure they were out of danger. Then I followed your signals. It
was pretty easy to assume where the wizard ran to when he lost his
kingdom, but you left a pretty obvious trail…”

I’m poor company. I don’t say a word to her. I don’t
even drop my mask.

I feel numb, empty. Except for Peter, and all that’s
on his mind is what he’ll do when he finds Thel again. We look out
over the living forest and can’t appreciate it, because it’s hiding
our enemy. I think if Peter could, he would burn it all away, just
to find Thel.

“Your father…” she gets to the point she’s been
circling, “…he’ll be so happy to know you’re alive. So will the
others. I saw him at Eureka. How he fought. What he did to that
man… I’d never seen him like that. So ruthless, so
bloodthirsty…”

“You can’t tell him,” I insist flatly.

“I… Why not?”

I turn on her.

“Because I’m
not
alive. You know what the
immortals’ Seeds do when they take a body. It’s just resources.
This Seed is Peter Nagasawa, a scientist that worked on that ship.
Sixteen years ago, Yod let them into the Barrow, let them take away
tech: One blank Seed, one basic Companion. Another one of his
fucking tests of humanity. I assume we failed, but he should have
known what would happen if he’s as all-powerful as everyone says he
is.” I realize I just repeated Asmodeus’ own thought.

She starts to protest, but I cut her off before she
can get a word out.

“The Seed is coded to Peter. He’s trying to keep it
from erasing me, but it eventually will. I barely have control of
my own body and mind now. How many times should Abu Abbas have to
mourn me? You think I want him or Sarai or any of the others to
watch me fade, turn into some stranger?”

I’m shaking with rage, and right now I’m grateful for
it. If I was feeling what I should be feeling… I don’t want to. I
don’t want to feel.

“Bel… maybe Bel could help you…”

“Bel overwrote the Ghaddar’s father,” I snap. “I
don’t see him making that right.”

She looks crushed, defeated, like the loss is
hers.

“Where will you go?”

“Asmodeus was right. I can’t join Ram. Peter only
cares about his revenge. He hates the whole fucking planet for what
it took from him, what it did to him and what he still sees it
doing. I’m already lost in that. His rage is my rage.” I look
south. “I… There are things I need to do.

“Go back to Katar. They’re going to need you,
especially if Asmodeus and his Harvesters are on the move. Tell Ram
what you saw in the pit.”

“And what do I tell him about you?” she needs to
know.

I take a deep breath, feel my nanotech process the
oxygen deep down in what used to be my lungs. Every breath I take
from now on is going to be like this. Every breath. Every moment I
have left.

“I’m Peter Nagasawa. Reaper. Onryō. A failed test. No
concern of his.”

She forces a sympathetic smile, but still looks
deeply sad. I expect she went through a similar crisis when she
became what she is now: the changes, the shock, being unable to
return to her people. But she’s still her. What am I?

“We’ll probably cross paths again,” she tries. “Small
world. Enemy of my enemy.”

“Enemy of my enemy,” I allow.

I turn and walk south and don’t look back.

“Who’s Skeletor?” I ask Peter as we hike the easier
way around the tip of the divide.

I feel him chuckle in my head.

A character from a cartoon… An animated serial for
children, used to sell toys. Heroes and villains in outrageous
costumes. Silly.

I can see some of it as he remembers. Garish.
Ridiculous. And all the males have an absurd amount of muscle—they
look like their bodies have been inflated. They shoot guns and
swing swords and axes, but no one ever seems to get more than
mildly stunned. What kind of a lesson is that for children?

“And Skeletor was a hero?”

No. He was the main villain.

He shows me. I look nothing like that, except maybe
the skull face. And the villain is a whining, screaming, cowardly
idiot—I can’t help but feel insulted by the comparison, even when
Peter insists that Skeletor was a very popular character. Still, I
watch some more of it, and find something else more bothersome:

“The main hero… No one seems to know he’s the young
prince, but he looks the same. All he does is take off his clothes
and get a little more tan. Are they all so busy looking at his
naked body that they never look at his face?”

Peter gets a good laugh out of that. At least he
can
feel something besides rage.

We make it back to the ship by late afternoon.
There’s a lot less haze in the South Blade, but looking back
through the gap, the Central is still thickly veiled in it—it
doesn’t seem to be fading. Asmodeus could be anywhere.

I stop at the graves.

“You made these,” I remember. Then remember another
detail: “Who painted the hatch?”

The warning? One of Thel’s more forgivable minions.
Old man, but still low-rank. He took a lot of ridicule from the
others, but he was Japanese, kept the old legends from his parents,
even tried to appease me by leaving sacrifices of food and prayers
on folded paper. The only known way to exorcise an Onryō is to
transform it, deify it, give it a shrine. I think Thel encouraged
it so the others wouldn’t try breaking into the ship to look for
anything they hadn’t already looted. He didn’t want to risk anyone
restoring me.

“Except my parents.”

Peter doesn’t have a reply, doesn’t try to assure me
that he wouldn’t have taken them. He knows whatever he’s done for
me is temporary, and irreversible. He’s killed me. That it was not
malicious doesn’t alleviate his stain.

I give Peter control, let him pull a string of beads
out of his satchel and chant his prayers, kneeling before the grave
of his wife and child (and his own that he’ll never occupy). I
realized I haven’t bothered with
Salat
since before I died.
(Are the dead still obligated to pray?) (And how can I be buried
properly if my body keeps walking around, forever?)

My situation is ridiculous. I haven’t even urinated
since I was killed. Or eaten or drank anything with my mouth.