The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (18 page)

Each Blade’s western end forms a sharp tip, a
fracture-gorge cut kilometers into the surrounding Rim slopes.
Azrael says it reminds him of the “paw-print” of some three-toed
clawed terrestrial beast, as if he’s seen such things in more than
just ancient teaching files. (Is he a Jinn, old enough to be from
Earth? Or is he like Ram, slept from before the Apocalypse? Or
possessed by the mind of a being from an undone future? He
says
he is none of those, but what else can he be?) And the
entire “head” of the fork looks bent toward the south, out of true
with the “spine”, perhaps twenty degrees.

The Spine Range itself does not form the “shaft” of
the Trident—this is a narrower and shearer-walled extension
eastward of the Central blade, the Spine Range forming its north
slopes, while the Divide Rim is its southern wall. Beyond the
eastern tip of the Spine Range, the Shaft valley begins to open and
branch out again, eventually forming the eastern fork of the Vajra,
thirty klicks or so past Katar. (That means the defined lands of
the Pax and Katar are much smaller than our traditional territories
in the open Melas desert, much smaller than the territory
controlled by the Silvermen, but much richer in terms of obvious
resources. It may be that the Pax and Katar have no need of larger
territories, or perhaps have only managed to hold these boundaries
against others we haven’t heard of yet.)

As for our immediate goal: What Terina indicated as
Lucifer’s Grave is best visible on the older images, before the
greening masked the terrain in the valley floor. There’s an odd
rise in the middle of the Central Blade that looks like a right
hand, seen from the thumb-side, making a half-grasping gesture, the
“arm” stretching along the central line of the Blade
east-northeast, as if reaching for the Spine range from the “claw
tip” of the Blade. On the “greened” map, the semi-circular crest of
this rise—the thumb and index finger—can be seen as more sparsely
covered, apparently rising above the denser forest floor. On the
old bare-ground map, this “hand” rises several hundred meters or
more above the valley floor. In the semi-circle of its “grip” is a
depression a klick-and-a-half across, possibly a large crater or
some kind of ancient geologic sink—how deep isn’t clear on my maps,
but it looks lower than the surrounding valley floor. (There are a
number of old meteor impact craters in this region, more than in
Melas or Western Coprates, suggesting the terrain has somehow
preserved them against wind erosion, or perhaps this place was
victim to a focused shower sometime over the eons.)

Terina was apparently able to identify the dust from
the site due to uniquely rich concentrations of certain iron
compounds. (The fact that she could make this determination with
her physical senses alone suggests that mineralogy and perhaps
metallurgy are important studies for her people.) I wonder if this
has anything to do with the place’s naming: Lucifer’s Grave might
imply the impact point of a great falling star. I suppose we’ll
know soon enough. If we keep traveling at this pace, I calculate
we’ll come upon the sink by…

The Ghaddar has stopped still, holding up her hand at
me. I realize I’ve let myself get distracted between referencing my
maps and letting my mind spin away from the current moment. Stupid.
I shut down my card, crouch and become still, use my eyes and ears,
shut out everything else. Look and listen for a target, a
threat.

I see the Ghaddar carefully pull aside her mask.
Murphy does the same. It’s an old stealth-trick: Mask filters make
a distinctive sound when inhaling and exhaling. Thankfully, the air
is thick and rich enough here that light-headedness can be staved
off by a passive oxygen bleed under the nose, so a talent for
extended breath-holding isn’t necessary. (It also allows our
canisters to last three to four times longer than they would in the
deserts of home.)

We have a problem significantly worse than noise, of
course: Our cloaks, patterned to blend into the Melas deserts, are
bright ruddy beacons in this green world. We have to cling to the
growth, get under the leaves and vines, and that makes its own
noises.

But I already hear other noises: Rustling. Crushing.
And then the unmistakable sounds of machinery. Motors. I can’t tell
how far away—sound doesn’t travel the same through green as it does
through open desert air. The growth muffles it, blunts it. But
whatever’s moving doesn’t seem to care about stealth. It also
doesn’t seem to be coming closer, more like moving across our
path.

We hold, wait. Breathe quietly.

I consider bringing up by binoculars, or my rifle
scope, and trying infrared. Then I remember that Chang’s machines
don’t radiate much heat.

But we do.

This thought hits me just as I hear the crunching and
motor sounds suddenly go silent, stop. A few long seconds pass
without any breathing. And then I hear a different motor noise.

“DOWN!” the Ghaddar shouts, and I dive into the
vine-laced ground. Full-auto fire cuts over my back with the
deafening buzz that I know is a motorized cannon. It effectively
saws through the foliage, sweeping at us. I realize we have no
solid cover, nothing that can stop bullets. I try to make myself as
flat as I can, but feel my cloak ripped across my back. I can’t
even see what’s…

I hear metal shear, grind. The gun stutters and
stops. But then there’s a different whirring sound, one I know is a
Box bot rotating its cube-like sections, probably bringing up
another gun. I hear the slow banging of some kind of heavy weapon,
steady and precise, but nothing flies at us. I risk raising my
head.

The gunfire has cut away enough of the growth to let
me see: It is a Box. One gun is twisted and smoking. It’s
in-process of rotating to bring up another shielded head array,
replacing a mangled one. I see it slammed by incoming fire,
high-caliber and explosive. It tries firing back. Then I see a
flash of light come out of the green, dancing around it,
shimmering, leaping. It’s…

“
Hah!
Too predictable…”

Lux. The immortal. Golden hair, pale skin, shining
polished plate armor. All grace and speed and violence, like this
is a dance. He/she is up on the machine, driving her/his sword into
the secondary head array. There’s an arc of electricity, a shower
of sparks. I can smell ozone and burning circuitry and seared
flesh. The bot spins sections, throws him/her off, but she/he lands
gracefully, pauses to appraise his/her work. The Box is blind.

It tries firing wildly, but she/he simply steps in
and hacks its remaining guns. Then out of the brush steps a larger,
bulkier figure in black armor. Azazel. He raises the heavy rifle
he’s carrying, waits for Lux to finish and step out of the way, and
then surgically pumps rounds in through the gaps in the machine’s
sections.

“Rest and be at peace, poor servants,” Azazel wishes
the wreckage when it finally settles. I remember that some of
Chang’s bots are actually cyborgs, run by human brains salvaged
from his wounded fighters, horrible.

“A week buried in a cave, and this is the reception
we get,” Lux complains lightly, sounding more in his/her female
aspect at the moment. (The gender swapping she/he does is
unsettling enough, but he/she’s so generally androgynous that one
is never sure what she/he
is
at any particular moment,
especially under his/her gleaming armor.)

“Good to see nothing’s changed,” Azazel jokes, his
voice deep and rich even through his dome-like helmet.

“
Lux! Azazel!
” I impulsively call out. My
companions rise more cautiously, neither appearing injured. The two
immortals seem to take a confused moment to recognize us, but then
do.

“Hah. Old friends! I see you’ve finally made it to
the party,” Lux sounds at least amused to see us.

“Not a safe place to be,” Azazel warns. I notice he
doesn’t remove his helmet. He’s also favoring the left side of his
torso armor. There’s a jagged hole through the plate that’s the
size of my fist. It looks wet, but against the shiny black plate I
can’t tell if there’s blood. As I watch, it slowly starts to close
itself, but does so much more slowly than I’ve seen immortals
self-repair before. He scans the green all around us, not fully
lowering his weapon. “These things don’t travel alone.”

“He’s right,” Lux goes serious, though her/his voice
keeps its melodic sweetness. “What are you doing here, children?
And are there more of you in this nasty gorgeous place?”

“My father is taking the rest of our group—forty-five
of our original seventy-five—around the north side of the mountain,
headed for Katar,” I report quickly. “One of their people has
granted us passage.”

“Lucky for you,” Lux says, “the Katar are not
terribly fond of strangers. Neither are their neighbors the Pax. Of
course, nobody seems to be on this bizarre rock.”

“Katar is still safer than here,” Azazel assesses,
looking back over our heads. With some of the foliage cut away by
the fight, we can see the sharp, jagged crest of the Spine Range.
(Being able to see any landmark so clearly is at least a small
comfort.) “The bots don’t usually leave this valley.”

“Though they have been attacking the Pax,” Lux
corrects him. “Maybe concerned they’ll join with the Katar, pose a
threat.”

“The threat being a really big slaughter might get
satellite attention,” Azazel grumbles. “Though Chang might not care
about that if his new ride is ready.”

“You saw the storm?” the Ghaddar finally speaks up,
focusing on the urgent.

“Crawled out into it,” Azazel tells her. Then
explains: “The rim around the Grave crater is laced with caves.
Chang has had us trapped in them for the last eight days, along
with a company of his human troops and an amusing selection of
Fohat’s new monstrosities.”

“You’ve seen Chang?” the Ghaddar wants to know, as do
we all.

“Only from a distance. He’s not really trying to hide
from us, for some reason, but he’s kept us too busy to get anywhere
close to him, sending his monsters after the locals when we try. He
knows we won’t leave them to try to handle his slaughter machines
alone—they have settlements, children, and nothing much that can
stop his beasties. We tried to slip in through the cave maze,
hoping to find a way through to the crater so we could take out his
bot factory, his ship factory, but he was expecting that. He pinned
us down and then blew the tunnels, buried us along with his own,
even set his bots on his live personnel, whether they’d switched
sides or not—just another play to keep us busy. It was a
slaughter…”

“The others are with you?” Murphy asks when Azazel
trails off. “Colonel Ram? Bel? Doctor Stilson?”

“We were separated,” Lux sighs, frustrated and tired.
“Almost from the start. They may be out. They may still be in. We
were lucky to find an exit, and that was probably only because
Chang had blinded himself with his own cloaking storm. Of course,
we came out even further away than where we started.”

“We can’t communicate, not over any distance,” Azazel
explains. “What the Katar call Lucifer’s Grave is an ancient
crater: A meteor strike penetrated a layer of magnetite that had
been permanently magnetized way back when the planet still had a
dynamic core. The place is snowy with background EM, and charged
debris is scattered all over the Blade. It’s probably why he picked
the place: his ship’s lift engines won’t show on satellite over the
environmental noise and the stronger Atmosphere Net here. Plus,
there’s a lot of iron compounds handy. And titanium. And ground
water—melt is what created the cave-maze, and left a sink that
takes parts of the crater down who-knows-how-deep. It’s a perfect
base.”

“But you’ve seen his ship?” I want to confirm. “He’s
rebuilt his Stormcloud?”

“We were close enough for a glimpse through the storm
when he took it up. It’s a work in progress. But this one looks
like it’s got
dual
main guns. Built for fighting and
launching flyers. Not for housing personnel.”

“What’s left of his conscripts are being treated as
slaves, held under the guns of his bots and ‘borgs,” Lux adds. “We
managed to break a few dozen free from a supply-gathering party
about seven weeks ago, got them away before more bots could come
retake them. Bly took them west. He’s hoping to find a safe place
for them, away from here or anywhere Chang might be tempted to go.
But that’s the only shot we’ve had at any kind of rescue—he’s kept
the meat workers close to home ever since.”

I catch Murphy and the Ghaddar both looking at me,
just as I’m wondering if these might be the same refugees as the
ones we fought at Concordia. It’s clear they’re considering the
same tragic possibility. But Bly wasn’t with those people. Still, I
don’t say anything about it, and neither do my companions.

“What are you three doing coming this way?” Lux gets
back to the immediate.

“One of ours—A young Jinn, a Terraformer—recognized
the storm for what it was, ran into it,” the Ghaddar explains,
sounding like she’s calculating exactly what to say and not say.
“He may be trying to avenge his father, killed by Chang’s first
railgun.”

“The Guardians have been grounded, disarmed,” Azazel
says like he knows.

“They have,” Murphy confirms. “But he’s no Guardian.
One of their youngsters. More eager than smart.”

“If he’s gone that way, he’s probably already in
pieces,” Lux says, nodding in the direction of the Grave.

“You need to get out of here,” Azazel insists.
“Return to your people. We’ll find your friend, if he’s still
alive.”

None of us move.

“Don’t be stupid,” Lux argues, voice going deep. “You
can’t even see them coming in this. You’re good—I know that well
enough from our previous fun—but you’re still just plain meat, and
I’ve seen more than enough of it shredded since we wandered into
this pretty little garden of murder. I’ve been fucking
wearing
you people…”