The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (41 page)

“You would. But given the current threats, the
hardliners will just have to accept the lesser evils. Right now,
you’re an asset.”

I remember the great feast at Tranquility, the
Unmaker delegation eating with the Cast, the Domers, the Knights,
and my people. And the Modded, who terrify them beyond sanity just
by existing. I remember the General, brave enough to come down from
orbit and eat in the company of such horrors. He seemed like a good
man, a reasonable man, but he also seemed like the minority among
his kind.

I have no time to concentrate on any of this. I’m
thinking I have several kilometers to run, when I hear the rush of
flyer jets, and the immortals’ three converted “Kites” drop down
into a hover a few meters away from us, rider-less. But if they’re
here to carry us, I’m wondering how their owners—and Ram—plan to
get off the Stormcloud before Richards unleashes whatever they’ve
planned, when I see Azazel fly the Siren’s Song down low over the
smoking deck and brake for landing.

Bly runs and jumps on one of the flyers and takes off
with only the briefest look back at us, burning southwest. Erickson
is heading fast for another when he realizes I’m not.

“I don’t know how to fly one!” I spit out,
frustrated. He jumps on, puts his hands on the controls, and after
a few precious seconds reassures me:

“I set the auto pilot to follow! Just get on!”

So I do, tentatively. I jump up, grab hold, and climb
on, the small winged machine wobbling under my weight. As soon as I
manage to straddle the seat, the thing lifts under me on its fans
and jets, matching Erickson’s. Then we get thrown into the air,
through the air, with Erickson leading the way northwest. The wind
batters me, and the forest passes like a blur under me, the plants
buffeted by our jets and fans. Looking ahead, we’re banking around
the north side of the mountain range. It’s dizzying, thrilling,
terrifying. I remind myself that falling off or crashing won’t kill
me, but it could take me out of the fight, and that’s what I really
don’t want.

Erickson keeps us uncomfortably close to the slopes,
possibly thinking it will be harder for whatever we’re rushing for
will see us coming. I can also feel him try to contact Straker and
Terina. He gets no reply.

Behind us, the sky cracks like a rifle shot, and then
we get hit in the back by the shockwave of a massive explosion that
shoves us on our way. Apparently five minutes has passed. I don’t
look back.

From the After-Action Report of First Lieutenant
Jacqueline Straker, regarding the events of 20 May 2118:

I am composing this by the order of Colonel Ram,
while overlooking the blasted landscape that was the scene of the
battle, though little of it is recognizable now except the mountain
itself. Mountains are hardy things. Or maybe it’s just that life is
so fragile.

That’s what I’m looking at now: Not death—the dead
have either been removed or burned away—but the
absence
of
life. I’m sitting in the middle of a circle of ash and rubble, a
sterile wasteland nearly a kilometer across. My gauges say it isn’t
hot. It should be, but it isn’t. I guess I should be grateful for
that, for Yod’s small gift, but all I can feel is anger, because I
know he could have kept all this from happening to begin with. He
just had to
want
to.

The god of this planet is a fuck.

Strike that last.

My anger is at myself. At the end of the day, I
should have done better. As it was, I let a lot of innocents under
my protection die. And I lost friends. My fault. My
responsibility.

Maybe that’s why Colonel Ram asked me to compile this
formally. Maybe he thinks if I look at it again, run it through
objectively, that I’ll realize I somehow did my best, that I’m not
at fault. But the bottom line is: I failed.

We lost good people. And the bastard is still out
there. Probably fucking laughing at us.

I’m not striking that part. It’s not opinion. It’s
fact. I have absolutely no doubt of it. And it’s important that I
say so.

The beginning of the op progressed as-planned. My
assignment was to lead approximately half the civilian population
of Katar to safety through their northern escape tunnel, and take
them to the relative safety of the Pax lands. Of course, we didn’t
even get that far. We didn’t get far at all.

With me was the daughter of the Katar military
leader, Kah-Terina Sher Khan, recently…altered… by her conjoining
with a piece of enhanced Companion technology, of the same type and
series as my own Blade. (Only her transformation was much more
profound: Where she had been incredibly tall, long-limbed and
broad-chested like her people, she now was built little different
than me, her body “reset” to an Earth-grav ideal physique,
something her kind had long ago foresworn. I can only imagine the
impact it had on her, and on her family and people.) Also, I had
the company of a few squads’ worth of Katar warfighters for
additional escort, led by Bannerman Negev. (I got the impression he
was there to watch over Terina as much as the evacuees.) And
Ambassador Murphy, still suffering from his hip wound and related
infection, but trying his best not to let it slow him down.

We waited inside the long tunnel until the signal was
given, our oxygen enriched in that tight space by bleed from an
underground Feedline at the tunnel midpoint. The Katar themselves
only carried basic supplies—everything else was left behind to face
the destructive power of Asmodeus’ railguns, along with the main
force of their army, and a contingent of Melas Nomads—also my
friends.

The signal to move came in the form of a shockwave
through the rock all around us, which I recognized from prior
misfortune as the impact of a railgun strike, probably on the City
we had just evacuated from. As dust shaken from the low ceiling
rained over us and filled the long, narrow escape with choking
haze, I ordered the civilians out through the far exit, and quickly
down the slopes of the Spine toward the visual cover of the green
in the North Blade valley.

Behind us, we could hear the combined fire of our
response, and also the lesser batteries of the Stormcloud. A thick
column of smoke was billowing up over the crest above us, marking
the unknown devastation of the Katar City, causing the refugees to
pause and stare.

As no further railgun strikes were heard, I could
assume that the first objective had been met, and that Asmodeus’
main weapons had been disabled. (Unfortunately, we had all assumed
that the railguns were his most deadly weapon.) But our mission was
to get the refugees well clear of the target zone, preferably to
the shelter of the Pax Keep, so we prodded the refugees on.

As we moved, I attempted to contact my fellows for a
sitrep, only to find my signal blocked or jammed. This was my first
indication that something may have gone wrong. But by then, we were
mostly exposed on the rocky slopes.

They hit us without warning, with withering fire from
the growth-line of the valley floor, the same boundary we were
hoping to make our own cover. It was all small-arms, or so I
thought, until I saw a few of the Katar struck by what looked like
some kind of large dart.

Kah-Terina was on point, leading her people
west-northwest, and ordered everyone down behind whatever cover
they could find. I could see families trying to dig themselves
holes on the spot, shielding their children with their own bodies.
The warriors hunkered down and started returning fire surgically
with their bows, but the enemy combatants I saw hit didn’t seem
fazed by arrows, not even in clearly vital areas. These were
definitely Harvester drones. If I listened, I could hear the
buzzing chat of their combined signals.

Terina moved herself between the vulnerable refugee
line and the enemy, whirling her long weapon to draw fire, but she
proved to be only a very narrow shield, and the enemy quickly
ignored her. She apparently decided she could only be effective at
close quarters, and ran into the enemy line.

The Katar were taking casualties all along the line.
Those hit with darts could still fight, of course, and either
served to shield their fellows or charged into the enemy line with
swords, pole-arms and the long “arresting” devices we had been
using to immobilize the Harvesters. Several were cut down by
conventional small arms as they crossed the field of fire, but not
as many as would have if facing a conventional force of
warfighters. The Harvesters continue to prove themselves poor
shots, and worse at tracking a moving target, not able to move or
react as fast as a living person. The battle quickly deteriorated
into a melee.

The enemy force strength still unknown (their low
body temps defying scans through the green), I decided to abandon
my post as rear cover for the line, and charged into the enemy to
engage them close. Ambassador Murphy, though wounded, remained at
the rear, propping himself in the slope rocks and using his own
weapon to pick off visible Harvesters, surgically bursting their
skulls and the modules inside.

As I advanced, I took hits from both conventional
ammunition and the darts, whose nature I was able to confirm as the
Harvester seeds inside attempted to infect my armor, only to be
rendered harmless and consumed by my own technology. That also
confirmed that those who had been hit by darts, though still in the
fight, were surely dead, and if they didn’t fall in battle there
would need to be more mercy killings.

This realization only stoked my rage, which I
directed into the Harvester force, hacking my way through their
ragged line, aiming to destroy modules through skulls. I was
quickly covered in foul gore, the host bodies having already begun
to decay. The battlefield stunk of corpse, choking and
blinding.

The Katar, for their part, were able to score
disabling hits on the modules, but not consistently. Several of the
drone bodies I chopped apart were already stuck with multiple
arrows through the soft-armor of their filthy Chang-black
uniforms.

As the Katar ran short of arrows, they took Terina’s
and my examples and charged the withering enemy lines. Their armor
proved capable of deflecting seed darts, but some of the
projectiles were still able to find flesh. Despite the certainty of
their fate, not a single Katar faltered, not until they were shot
dead or were too badly wounded to fight.

It was during this bloody, brutal engagement that I
saw that Bannerman Negev had been struck by several Harvester
darts. He locked eyes with me for an instant, confirming that he
understood his condition, and then continued his duty.

I admit I didn’t do as much as I could, because I
didn’t move from target to target as fast as I could. I hesitated
for a split-second with each skull I split, trying to recognize the
face of a former comrade. Those split-seconds added up to slow my
progress, and that extra time allowed the fire to continue longer
than it needed to. I cannot calculate how many lives my morose
sentimentality cost. And yes: I did recognize too many faces before
I put my Blade through them.

I estimate we disabled nearly one hundred Harvesters,
though total numbers cannot be confirmed because of the blast. I
had considered calling a retreat, getting the civilians back into
the cover of the tunnel, but had no way of knowing how the battle
over the City was progressing. The only thing I knew was that I’d
heard no further railgun strikes in the distance, so Colonel Ram’s
play with the Knights must have been successful.

I was just turning back to signal the line to move
forward, to push for the Pax Keep, when I saw the explosion, saw
the mountain come down on the tunnel exit. We couldn’t go back that
way now if we had to. But worse, our fight was further interrupted
by a voice I’ve come to hate above all other sounds.

“Well
I
didn’t do that.”

Asmodeus stepped out of the green, coming from the
valley to the west, the look on his face both amused and perhaps
honestly confused by the blast. But if he was here, then he
couldn’t be…

“Stunt double,” he answered my unspoken question with
far too little care in his voice for the situation. “You probably
don’t know what that is.
Sooo
many things you
people
have missed out on.” He said “people” like we disgust him.

“
Chocolate
. There’s no goddamn chocolate on
this planet! How do you live without chocolate?”

He’s insane. There’s no better explanation.

“Some of us unfortunately don’t seem to have a choice
about living,” I answered him back, “not even after they’ve
died.”

Some of the Katar fired on him. Their arrows just
pinged off his armor. He looked vaguely annoyed, and I could hear
him send out a signal.

There was a rustling in the thick growth, and more
Harvesters came marching out of it with their distinctive
shuffling. I could easily count another hundred of them. But this
time among the black uniforms were Pax green. And walking casually
in the midst of them: Fohat, impossible to miss in his bright white
and gold. I could hear the signal-song of his crown, coordinating
the modules, keeping them in formation, guiding their attack.

The drones opened fire on the Katar down in the
valley. The Katar tried to charge them, engage them with their
pole-swords, but didn’t get ten meters. Volume of fire combined
with lack of cover made up for their poor accuracy; and my
Blade—and Terina’s—could only draw what was aimed close to us, not
a widespread barrage. I saw Negev go down with his fellows, taking
half a dozen shots before he finally fell. I’m sure this was a far
better death than what had infected them would do, but Asmodeus
took even that from me.