The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades (26 page)

“Is this about her implant?” Wei puts together. Now
he’s ignoring me, too. I’m surrounded by assholes. Nice
funeral.

“They’ve tried hacking UNMAC—as I said, that’s easy,
especially for them,” Dee is still showing off. “Accessing the ETE
personnel directly let them into the ETE network. Perhaps when
their first attempt with Erickson was blocked, they tried again
with Elias—so apparently that’s a priority for them. Both brothers
were convenient: in proximity and in need. And maybe being
brothers—one searching for the other—was part of it: The swords
became stronger in proximity, synergistic—they knew Elias would
bring them together. Then they were strong enough to signal
Bly.”

“Why Bly?” Wei asks, getting into the pace of the
weirdness.

“Bly has Chang’s technology inside of him,” Dee
guesses. (Actually it sounds like more than guessing. Maybe Dee did
manage to hack into them, at least enough to listen in.) “Bly could
be their link to Chang, perhaps get them control over his bots, his
weapons.”

“There is no Chang,” Erickson corrects. “It was
Asmodeus
, wearing a disguise. He told me Chang’s been
unaccounted for since the nuclear blast took his ship, possibly
dead.”

“That’s not good news,” Dee tells him. “I’ve dealt
with Asmodeus. The
real
one—the original.”

“Why
me
?” I almost scream. But I think I
already know the answer.

“You have a connection to Colonel Ram,” Dee’s talking
to
me again rather than over me. “I doubt they can use it to
affect him, since it’s only a simple beacon, but they may be able
to track him, monitor him, and the others like him. If that’s a
priority for these things, maybe Ram and those like him pose a
threat.”

I want to ask them what’s happened to me, but decide
it’s time to look for myself. I raise my head—I feel weightless.
Look down. I’m gripping the sword in both hands with it lying on
top of me like one of those old warrior tombs I’ve seen in history
files. The rest of me looks pretty normal: L-A uniform. Gear
harness. Boots. Gloves. Except everything looks better than
new—there’s no wear on anything. (Wei was freaking out about my
eyes.) I realize I’m missing my breather gear, my mask, my goggles.
But I’m breathing fine. Actually, I feel pretty good, getting past
feeling like I’ve got serious current flowing through my nervous
system.

I sit up in my hole—it’s well under half-a-meter
deep, and only the bottom ten centimeters or so is dirt and rock,
the rest being deadfall desiccated to the point that it turns to
fine ash at the slightest touch, blowing away in the breeze. But
the hole is me-shaped, like I melted into the ground like melting
through ice. I try to figure roughly how much that is in whatever
raw resources the sword put to use remaking me. (I’m also
half-buried in a fine, pale dust-like substance—possibly what the
sword discarded in the process.) I’m guessing my mass should be
nearly doubled, but I don’t feel that much different. There’s no
way to tell if my body looks different while I’m dressed.

I check my gloves, my armored uniform. There’s no
sign of how anything new might have been put into me, but I’m not
sure I really want to understand the process right now.

I let go of the sword with my left hand, but find I
don’t want to let go with my right. That’s when I realize I’ve got
a nice black scabbard for it on my belt—the brothers both have
matching ones. But I don’t want to put my sword away, not yet. It’s
so beautiful, all perfect lines and surfaces and gorgeous
scrollwork that… moves. So does the layered pattern on the blade.
Like it’s alive.

I think I hear it singing to me. In me.

I look at Wei. He almost glows with heat.

“You said there was something wrong with my eyes.
What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“They’re… Green. Bright green. But metallic,” he
breaks it to me.

“Like a hybrid’s,” I think out loud. “Like Ram and
his friends.”

Is that what I am? Like them? No one comments, but
they all look variously uncomfortable (except for Dee, who seems to
be taking this all in with his standard serenity).

I look at the brothers. They also have metallic
irises—Erickson’s are a deep bronze, Elias’ bright copper—but
that’s not unusual for an Eternal, an ETE, evidence of their
nanotech implants. I remember Ram’s eyes turned gunmetal when he
changed. So did Colonel Ava’s.

I can see heat. I can hear breathing, heartbeats,
every leaf rustling in the breeze and know exactly where it is.
And

“I’m hungry.”

“Get used to it,” Elias tells me grumpily.

“The swords draw a lot of resources,” Dee fails to
make it better. “Raw materials. And energy. By contact.”

I see Bly on his back in the deadfall. He looks
cold.

“We need to help him,” I insist.

Then I hear gunfire in the distance. So do Dee and
the Brothers.

How long have I been out?

“Forty-seven minutes,” Elias tells me. Did he just
hear my thoughts?

“We need to go,” Erickson insists, anxious,
impatient. I’m getting up to join him automatically. I feel fine,
just electric and starving. The blade feels really good in my
hands, like it was made for me. I’m ready for a fight. But I look
back at Bly.

“I’ll take care of him,” Dee assures me like he also
knows what I’m thinking. “We’ll catch up. You’re easy to
track.”

“Wei, stay with him,” I order. Then to Dee: “Take him
out of here as soon as you can, back to the Leviathan.”

The machine nods.

“Are you okay to do this, Lieutenant?” Wei needs some
reassurance.

I get myself on my feet, shake off the dust, move my
limbs. They feel funny. Light. Stronger. They want to move. Fast. I
feel like I could jump over these trees, or rip them out by the
roots with my bare hands. I can barely stand still.

“I can fight. We’ll deal with the rest later. You
just get back to Rios and report.”

“Everything?” he seems to need my permission.

“Everything,” I order, knowing I’m probably
condemning myself beyond redemption or acceptance. But that’s not
important right now.

The brothers turn east and start running, Erickson in
the lead. I join them, like I don’t have a choice.

I can run
really
fast.

I’m confused: the battle sounds I hear
north-northwest are definitely closer than those to the east, but
east is the way we’re headed. I’m not sure if that’s Erickson’s
priority (he’s still leading the way) or the swords’. (Are they
looking for another useful host?) (How many of them are there?)

I keep my mind on the questions of the immediate as
we fly through the brush—the forest (somehow it’s become a familiar
place, normal, even comforting—though that last part may just be
because it’s edible). If I think about what’s been done to me… I
feel sick. Violated. Something’s gotten
in
me. Body. Mind.
Right down to the bone…

It feels
good
. Maybe that’s to keep me from
fighting it, though I can’t imagine how I could fight it. There are
things—microscopic machines, run by their own intelligence—in every
tissue, in my blood. And I don’t even know how they’ve changed
me.

What I can tell: I’m having no trouble at all
breathing this thin air. And despite the ridiculous full-out
running, I’m not winded, not breathing hard, not fatigued at all.
Nor am I breaking a sweat. (I also haven’t had the need to void,
but that may just be too soon to worry about.)

Also, my uniform has apparently learned a trick: The
original Mars desert-camo has shifted to a blend of ochres and
greens, better matching the local environment.

One thing I don’t question: Where we’re going. The
excuse is we need to help people in dire need, fight the enemy (and
I can hear the encrypted chatter of the enemy’s signals in my head,
leading me to them). But what feels most important is that there
is
a fight. That’s all that really matters. And my hunger
burns harder every time I slow down, hesitate.

What am I?
Am
I? Am I just an appendage for
this alien thing that’s latched onto me? Am I a puppet, a bot made
of meat?

And adding what my father called “insult to injury”,
it starts to sink in: I can’t go back. UNMAC would lock me in a
containment cell, a secure Iso, like they did with Colonel Ava
after she got “infected”. They’d experiment on me. Never let me
out, let me serve. (And they’d try to take my sword away—somehow
this feels like the worst thing.)

The sword in my hand seems to react to my building
rage, channels it, focuses it: Serve. Save people. Kill the enemy.
Kill them all. Never stop. Never go home. Never die.

(Elias said they can control our emotions, manipulate
us.)

(I feel like I have to keep my own thoughts secret
within myself. Is that even possible? Does the sword know what I’m
thinking? Does it know
everything
I’m thinking?)

I can’t even calculate how fast we’re running. I’ve
never moved this fast before, not even in a ground vehicle
(certainly not in the Leviathan). I feel so light…

The sounds of violence get louder.

We clear the denser forest of the valley floor,
skirting the northern slopes of a sharp-crested mountain range that
runs west-to-east. I remember this landmark from the satellite
maps, and generally know where I am. The battle we’re hearing and
heading for is not far now, straight ahead. The telltale dust and
smoke of explosions hang over the slopes. This fight has been going
on for a long time.

We leap over rocks and ridges, giddy like children
playing a chase game. The terrain is a blur under my feet. I feel
like some kind of self-guided missile. I make it a race, try to
beat my new “brothers”. Elias still looks permanently grumpy when I
pace him, but Erickson flashes me a grin—he’s enjoying this. So am
I.

The swords begin to sing louder in our hands, sing
together.

I can smell the powder smoke in the air. The gunfire
echoes crisp. I almost trip over the wreckage of a Bug bot.
Slowing, I see what may be parts of two more, scattered over the
lower slopes, as well as the still-smoking hulk of a burst Box. The
terrain has been battered and broken by blast craters. Then I make
out the telltale tracks of half-a-dozen Boxes, moving in a pack,
headed the same way we are, east. The path of violence goes
uphill…

Just ahead of us is a ridgeline, a crest branching
north out of the main range, reaching into the forest valley as it
descends. Over the crest, I see smoke.

We’re here.

We climb up to the sharp, rocky crest. This high
ground has us looking down on a depression a few hundred meters
across, a shallow U-canyon into the main range, a half-bowl, all
old talus like it was formed by a big slide. Holding the slopes
across from us, hunkered in the rocks, are a very few warm bodies
(I can see their heat), taking cover in the bigger boulders.
They’re holding off a force of four Box bots down in the bottom of
the bowl that are almost-casually popping rounds at them from their
chain guns. Two of the Boxes are smoking, damaged, but still
functioning. I see a fifth Box, blown apart like the one we passed,
and the remains of three more Bugs, chopped apart and
scattered.

The defenders seem to be trying (needing) to conserve
ammo. The bots have been stupid enough to get lured into a perfect
kill-zone, but they have the advantage of firepower and
damage-resistance. The Boxes appear to have their human prey
well-pinned-down, and since they aren’t blazing away with their
guns, I figure they’re also conserving ammo for a protracted siege.
(I’m not sure why the bots haven’t simply tried to run over
them—perhaps the talus slopes hinder them. I think I see bot-tracks
going part-way up to the defenders’ line, then reverse. I also
wonder why they simply haven’t brought the whole slope down with
their big main cannons.) If the defenders try to retreat from their
positions, they’d be cut to pieces before they made it over the
crest above them. And even if they made it, the machines would just
run them down.

I can’t tell from here if any of the fighters are
wounded, but then I see bodies and what may be parts of bodies
amongst the rocks, all the way up to the crest above their line,
like some of them did try to run. Almost all wear Nomad cloaks,
except for a pair of defenders down in the bottom of the bowl,
hiding behind rocks in what looks like a blast crater on the bots’
forest flank: The bigger one wears heavy black armor and a
dome-like helmet, while the smaller one is highly visible in
polished silver and white (white that’s stained blood red in too
many places).

I’m flashing on the slaughter that a
single
Box inflicted on my people at Industry. My rage seems to feed my
blade, wet its appetites. In turn, it makes me feel strong,
invincible, fearless. I’m overwhelmed by a desire to destroy, to
kill. I can feel it right down to my bones.

Then I see motion up-slope, above the defenders on
their branch-ridge. The sight is instantly unsettling: It’s black,
formless, moving like liquid, sprouting and re-absorbing tentacles
as it moves. I think of Chang, when he forgoes his human shape, but
this isn’t quite like that (and Erickson said Chang was probably
dead, his lackeys now in control of his forces). It crawls and
slides down through the rocks, coming down on the defenders. It
doesn’t look like they’ve seen it yet.

“Boogie,” Erickson growls. I have no idea what that
means, but he sounds like he knows what it is, and immediately
starts running across the slopes of the U toward it. The Boxes soon
see him, and the two closest start shooting upslope at him.

“Idiot,” Elias grumbles, then throws himself down
into the depression at the Boxes.

I can’t think of a single reason not to join him.