The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (8 page)

“So… What is this?” Murphy asks diplomatically.

“Your first Dragon,” Negev celebrates with a grin.
“Too bad it has to be as Jerky. The meat is much more succulent
fresh, of course. Perhaps when we return.”

I feel vaguely ill. I remember Colonel Ram warning us
that since we’d lived our lives without eating meat, we might not
have the necessary enzymes to digest it, and I’m beginning to
imagine what that would cause. The Dragon Jerky isn’t unpalatable,
but it seems to sit heavy in my gut, despite being only a few small
bites. I see my companions reflect my discomfort, except for my
father, who eats with his usual reverent gusto.

“Meat isn’t something we ever get where we come from,
not since our Earth rations ran out, and that was before my day,”
Murphy tells Negev.

This seems to give Negev an unexpected look of
relief, followed by an uncharacteristically broad smile.

“Hah! And we’d thought you might be thinking us
stingy and inhospitable, since we didn’t provide you meat when you
arrived.”

“We have been grateful for everything your people
have given,” my father speaks for all of us. Negev gives him a
small bow.

We eat in silence, then Negev signals his warriors to
prepare to move.

“We have a choice before us,” he tells my father. “We
could move northwest to the Grave, dare the machine guards, and try
to see where the dead man came from. Or we continue southwest, into
the Dark Blade, and see where he was going.”

“Dark Blade?” Murphy plays into his descriptor.

“The South Blade from here is very narrow, with steep
walls on either side, rising all the way up to the Sky Roof,” he
confirms what I see on my maps. “Once the sun passes noon, it
begins to fall into shadow. It’s a colder place, and the terrain is
perfect for ambush.”

“Have you encountered violence there before?” my
father asks.

“We have not gone beyond the mouth in my lifetime. My
father tells tales of many deadly guns in the Shadow Canyon,
wielded by invisible men.”

That sounds like Keeper tactics. Snipe from
cover.

“And you’re willing to enter the South Blade now?” my
father wants to confirm.

“We have not gone beyond the mouth in my lifetime,”
Negev repeats, this time with a lopsided grin and a shrug of his
armored shoulders.

“Terina—Kah-Terina Sher-Khan—told us that you’ve seen
the airships of the Black Clothes going east and south from the
Grave, and coming back with loads of structural scrap,” I remember.
Negev nods. “Could they have gotten their southern loads from
Eureka Colony?”

“Unless there was some sky-fall, a colony would be
the only other source of such a bounty.”

There were a lot of ships in orbit when the Discs
triggered the Apocalypse, not to mention the space dock and the
nuclear platform itself. Remarkably little of it crashed in the
parts of the Great Valley that I’ve seen or heard of, but Marineris
is only a small part of a big planet, and I certainly haven’t seen
all of Marineris yet.

“I need to see Eureka,” Straker repeats her personal
mission. “I’m in a lot less danger from bullets than the rest of
you, even from unseen snipers. I should go in alone.”

“You should take point,” Negev counters, sounding
insistent. For whatever reason, he doesn’t seem willing to back
away from a potentially bad fight. It strikes me that perhaps we
shouldn’t have bragged so much about our abilities against
better-armed forces. The Katar may be using us in hopes of winning
battles they’d probably been losing at great cost. I do hear a
desire for revenge in his voice, or at least for restored honor and
the Value such feats might bring. I see it now in the eyes of his
fighters. They’re all eager for this, no matter the risk. I’m
suddenly starting to regret their “help” on this mission. They may
wind up getting us in more trouble than we would have as a small
raiding party, even with their home terrain advantages. (Come to
think of it, they might not even have that—Negev said none of them
have been into the South Blade in their entire lives. That means
all they have is the same maps we do.)

Worse, I expect if we withdrew from any fight before
they did, we’d be seen as cowards, Valueless or worse than, and
that would cost all of us dearly.

I’m hoping Negev isn’t just a stubborn idiot, eager
to die.

“I guess we’re going to Eureka,” Murphy states the
apparent decision.

In a few more klicks, we start moving into the shadow
of the South Blade’s divide rim. It does get cooler, and moister.
The ground underfoot is rocky and laced with Graingrass vines, and
other clinging species I haven’t seen before. The tall-standing
growth is lush and denser than what we’ve passed through, slowing
our pace, and the Katar proceed through it with much less
surety.

And we’re still climbing. On my maps, the belly of
the South Blade rises slowly but steadily all the way up to Planum
level, eight thousand meters above the Central Blade lowlands.
We’ve already climbed fifteen-hundred meters above the Katar
homeland. We’ll be at least another fifteen-hundred higher before
we get where we’re going, assuming Eureka is still where the old
maps say it should be.

The pressure has dropped a few more points. I’m
finally starting to see the Katar feel it: They’re obviously
breathing harder, their already unnaturally large rib cages
stretching and expanding so much further on inhaling that the
scales of their armor have to flex. They look like the steady climb
is taking effort, and taking a toll, but they refuse to let it slow
them much. I assume it’s a matter of pride: they’ve devalued us
because we rely on oxygen supplements, and now we have an advantage
over them because of it. And then there’s Straker, who’s had to
stop and wait for them to catch up three times already, her Mods
easily compensating for the low pressure.

I catch a few of the formerly sure-footed Katar
stumbling a bit, like they’re beginning to lose fine motor
coordination or peripheral sensation. The Keepers may not be the
only reason they stopped coming here. Once they totally gave up
breathing gear, the South Blade may have just been too
inhospitable, too debilitating. Time may let them adjust, but I
wonder how impaired they’ll be went we get to Eureka. (And I’m sure
the Keepers will be using their breathing gear and their
pressurized armor suits.)

I also expect the Katar are much less confident of
their navigation, as we’ve crossed out of their familiar home
territory. They do advance with much more caution now, as they know
someone else controls this canyon. They do their best to make no
sound, but the green makes that a slow exercise, even for them, and
the rocks are loose underfoot. This isn’t a path that’s been
well-traveled by anyone.

But then, the Keepers I’ve known in Melas didn’t
leave their Keeps, so if their fellows here follow that strategy,
we’re not likely to encounter them for awhile yet.

(I expect it was a shock for those at Industry,
Pioneer and Frontier when they joined Chang and were mustered onto
his airships, his flying fortress, and taken to remote bases. I
remember Straker saying that many of her people had never been
outside, except to serve as sentries and snipers. Their civilians
only went out to make repairs on the false surface structures. And
then she took three hundred with her to Melas Two when their
rebellion failed, likely never to return home again.)

So what was a lone Keeper doing wandering the Central
Blade? Do the shipments of scrap indicate that they’ve joined
Chang’s—now Asmodeus’—army? And what has that bargain cost
them?

I wish I could ask Straker more about her people,
beyond her briefings about their usual tactics. But right now,
stealth is priority, precluding conversation.

I remember her commanding officer, Colonel Janeway.
He was a charismatic leader, a strong personality, and his only
priority was to protect his way of life, his home. Unfortunately,
his choices cost him both, cost his people both. Then, when he
tried to take command of Chang’s forces after his first defeat at
Melas Two, Chang infected his body with Fohat’s Seed, let the
Toymaker slowly overwrite his brain, his mind. Not unlike a
Harvester…

I wonder what the leader of Eureka must be like, and
what Asmodeus may have offered to buy the Keepers’ service, their
sacrifice. Or did Asmodeus simply take the colony by force?

I check my map again, and zooming out to take in the
entire Trident, I’m struck with an amusing realization: We’ve been
so impressed with how the Pax and Katar move in this strangling,
blinding green world. But beyond their familiar lands, they seem
not much more competent than we are, the strangers from a faraway
desert. And their territories, as I can see them on my maps, are
measured in tens of kilometers. In Melas, ours was measured in
hundreds.

Granted, they have more than they need in that small
area, but suddenly their world seems so small to me, and not only
because I can only see a few meters in any given direction. In
fact, it’s small to them as…

As one, the Katar all stop dead, crouch down, and
then carefully spread out through the green. I can see Straker up
on point, signaling us to hold. The Ghaddar scans the growth, and
seems confused. I look at Murphy, and he shrugs. Straker comes back
our way.

“I’ve got a signal. Faint. Repeating.”

“Automated?” Murphy guesses.

“Probably. Code’s all corrupted. Can’t make sense of
it.”

“Damaged bot?” I offer. “Or one of those dead body
drones, broken down?”

Now she shrugs. “Whatever it is, it’s a single
source. Somewhere ahead, along the rim.” She nods her head in the
indicated direction.

She goes to inform Negev, and we start moving forward
again, this time even more cautiously. The Katar keep fanned out
like a skirmish line.

We go another two-and-a-half klicks up the still
steadily climbing and narrowing belly of the canyon, advancing as a
broad wedge through the green. The Katar are definitely starting to
look fatigued.

We get one start, in the form of a flock of
Butterflies taking flight in a storm of fluttering wings. We don’t
make the mistake of assuming they were disturbed by our approach,
but there’s still no sign of any other human-sized heat or motion,
not even to Straker’s enhanced senses. The signal stays steady.

We’re all in shadow now, the whole canyon except a
bit of what I can see of the crest of its south rim. The sun is
setting. I begin to hear the howl of the evening wind, but very far
away, over in the Central Blade. The air here stays pretty
still.

“I haven’t seen a single set of tracks,” Murphy
informs us. “Or paths through the growth. If anything’s moved
through here recently, it’s been exceptionally careful.”

“I doubt one of those stolen bodies could manage that
kind of skilled movement,” the Ghaddar adds her own assessment. “Or
any of the bots we’ve seen.”

“What about a Keeper?” I ask. Murphy gives me a
shrug, but the Ghaddar looks like she knows it’s possible. I’d ask
Straker, but she’s well up ahead of us.

I haven’t slung my rifle since the gap. Now I click
the safety off.

Straker holds us up again, then gestures one-o’clock,
up the northern slope. We take every step like surgery, and start
climbing steeper. We’re going up into the rock fall at the base
slope of the rim.

The rocks get tiring fast. A lot of them require
climbing over rather than stepping over. The Katar have an
advantage with their longer limbs, making us look like the stunted
things they think we are, but we keep up if only because their
muscles are probably getting numb with hypoxia (though I doubt
they’d admit it to the likes of us).

The sky starts to get dark. It’s gotten cold enough
to easily see my breath, but the effort has kept me warm.

Just above us, Straker’s stopped again. But this
time, she’s not signaling us to hold. She’s just looking at
something, something down on the ground. When we get to her, she’s
found a patch of nearly level ground. Among the rocks is a marker
made of stacked stones, a meter tall. In the middle of the stack is
the largest stone, which looks hand-cut. On its flat front face are
carved three vertical lines of characters that I recognize as
Japanese, as some are Kana, not Kanji (and most of the Kana are the
more angular Katakana used to transcribe non-Japanese words). One
of the strings of characters has been painted red, though the paint
is well-faded. The marker is also overgrown by the local flora.

“It looks like a grave,” I consider quietly.

“It is,” Negev confirms. “’Peter Nagasawa.’ ‘Maria
Mendoza Nagasawa.’ ‘Alice Mendoza Nagasawa.’” He points to the
names as he translates. “The name in red traditionally means a
spouse who is still alive, the grave reserved.” He points back to
the painted character string. “’Peter Nagasawa’.”

“Here’s another one,” the Ghaddar finds. It’s several
meters away, and smaller, simpler. But the name carved on this one
is in Standard English:

“Declan Chance. 2103.”

“Fifteen years ago, assuming that’s a date,” Straker
calculates.

“Do these look fifteen years old?” Murphy
wonders.

“The stones, maybe. But someone’s cleared away some
of the growth more recently than that. And there’s this…”

Parting the growth, there’s a set of small handmade
bowls at the base of the stone tower. They are partially filled
with seeds, nuts, and dried fruits.

“Offerings to the dead,” Negev confirms.

“Someone’s tending the graves?” Murphy puts together.
“This ‘Peter’, assuming he’s alive?”

“No recent tracks,” the Ghaddar studies the ground
all around.

“The offerings are old,” Negev adds, picking up the
fruit and crumbling it in his fingers. Then he checks the nuts and
seeds, and decides “Years.”