The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (13 page)

I assume he knows this because he’s been discreetly
hacking them. If anyone can get away with it, Dee can.

“These aren’t warriors, Captain Colonel,” Bly gives
me his assessment. “They panic when it hits. Freeze. Can’t get the
shot, even with their assisted guns. It’s sick, sending them out
there. They have no instinct for it, and certainly no talent.”

Azazel keeps us moving, puts the Grave behind us.
Another blaze tears through the green in our rear cameras. They
want a defensible space around their perimeter, terrified of what
may be hiding in the forest. I’m sure Asmodeus is watching,
enjoying the pyrotechnics, the spectacular senseless
destruction.

“Colonel Burns has called off the ground patrols,”
Dee continues, “but they’re still moving troops and supplies down
like they’re planning something big. Whatever it is, they’re smart
enough to keep it off-network.”

“But dumb enough that Asmodeus is already expecting
it,” I grumble. “He’ll massacre them. And while they’re panicking,
he’ll find his way through to orbit, then plant something to get
him a foothold on Earth.”

“Their planetary quarantine is still in place,” Bel
tries to find a flaw in Asmodeus’ plan. “Nothing goes back. I’m
sure they’re ready to blow up anything that tries.”

“Asmodeus is a patient fuck,” I warn needlessly. “And
he’s working on hacking living brains. If he can take control of
key personnel, he might lever a policy change. He might even play
dead, try to convince them they’ve won, to get them to drop their
guard.”

“But they haven’t won until we’re all dead, too,” Bel
worries.

We fly into the shadow of the Rims as the sky in our
rear cameras fills with smoke.

I spend the next few days recovering, or that’s what
I tell myself. The similarity to my hallucinated (or Yod-induced
virtual) time in the Barrow doesn’t escape me, but this hiding
place—while no less dark—is certainly more comfortable.

I take regular soaks in a stone tub Bel made, eat the
nutrient blends he concocts and the fresh food Lux brings because
he knows that living on liquid gets old fast. And I don’t have the
strength of will to protest when Lux shifts to her female form,
spontaneously drops her gleaming armor and insists on taking care
of me in other ways.

I notice that no one brings me further news of the
outside world, of UNMAC or Asmodeus or the stubbornness of the ETE
Council. I wile my time in a (relatively) luxurious cave away from
the world, soaking, eating, and having idle sex.

In between our “therapy sessions,” Lux tells me the
story of her life, from his repressed sexuality before conversion
through the experiences of becoming one of the first of the
“Trans-Morphic-Gender” and the wild adventures that followed. I
find she makes me smile, in a way I haven’t in recent memory (false
or otherwise).

For three days I don’t wear my armor or pick up a
weapon.

My armor self-repairs even without direct contact—I
don’t bother to check on its progress. My sword… I suppose I could
make a new one, given a few raw materials for my nanites to work
with, but I find myself uninspired.

“It’s too bad your orientation is so tragically
unipolar,” Lux pouts one night (or is it afternoon?) after one of
our playtimes. I’m growing to suspect her intentions are more
selfish than they seem, no matter how attentive and generous she is
in matters of pleasure. But then I expect she hasn’t had a lot of
time to pursue her own personal needs, since we’ve spent the last
several months in almost nonstop battles. In my idle wanderings
through the caves, I’ve come across her with Azazel (probably
making up to him her time with me), and also with Bel in her male
aspect. “I really wish you’d let me be a man with you, just
once.”

I don’t humor her with any kind of answer. But I
realize I’m using her like a drug. A distraction. Because I don’t
care. Or, more accurately, because I don’t want to.

And I keep feeling like I’m back in the Barrow, or
whatever illusory version of the Barrow Yod created for me while I
was buried under several tons of rock, sucking Harvester corpses to
heal. I can’t help but wonder if I’m still there, still buried; and
if so, would I be able to tell one of Yod’s illusions from reality?
Would I be able to do anything about it?

At least the fucking feels real.

Bel brings me breakfast. And then he offers me his
sword—his
new
sword, the modified Companion Blade that Yod
gifted him.

“Take it. Make some good use of it.”

I barely shake my head.

“So what, exactly, has managed to get up your ass?”
he challenges me, done with the bedside manner. “I know it’s not
Lux—if it was, he’d never stop telling me about it.” Then, more
seriously: “I’ve just scanned you. You did get a hell of a
mangling, including a good brain squishing, but everything is back
to spec now. Why the existential malaise?”

I don’t answer him with words, but I give him an
answer: I flash him my memories of my meeting with Jackson. Then I
show him my conversation—imagined or otherwise—with Yod (whatever
it was, it was real enough to record).

Bel looks unusually pale after he’s had time to
process it all.

“So… He actually expects us to be
gods
to
these people?”

“Gods without the worship,” I play with the concept.
“Guardian angels. Guides. Teachers. Heroes. Help the helpless.
Defend the defenseless.”

“Defeat the feat-less,” he mocks through his stunned
devastation.

“He did say you were his conscience.”

“Jiminy Fucking Cricket. I’ll pass, thanks. Do you
know what happened to the cricket in the original book? Not the
Disney version…”

“Pinocchio killed him with a mallet the first time
they met,” I do know.

He offers me the sword again. I don’t take it.

“Earthside leadership may be a bunch of corrupt
ignorant fascist fucks, but that describes pretty much every
government in the history of shaved apes. Those kids that ate the
propaganda and got on those one-way shuttles don’t
all
deserve to die ugly for Asmodeus’ amusement just because those that
sent them might.”

“Do I need to get a mallet?” I tease poorly. But only
because it’s struck the right fucking nerve.

“And are we going to leave the locals in the firing
line?” he doesn’t give quarter. “Earth
is
going to march on
them, assuming Asmodeus doesn’t kill them all first.”

I take several deep breaths (which also prove I’m
pain-free and fully recovered). He offers the Blade again, but I
still don’t move to take it.

“Take mine, then,” Bly comes into the dim cavern.
Apparently he’s been listening. (I haven’t seen him since we landed
here, but I figured he was just disgusted with all of our casual,
meaningless fucking, and went to find some better way to waste his
immortality.) He draws his weapon in clear frustration, first
pointing it at me, then flipping it to offer the hilt, but he’s
pointing the tip at his own heart like he expects me to run him
through.

“Come on. What’s yer excuse? Or were all those pretty
speeches just the wind?” I notice he tends to get his Zodangan
accent back when he’s angry. Or happy, but that’s a rarer event.
(Of course, the fact that the Mods that Chang gave him
significantly changed his speech patterns in the first place has
its own deeply disturbing implications.) “I’ve watched all o’ meh
own people die, lost meh fucking soul, meh love, meh future… But
I’m not hidin’ in a cave. I may’ve failed my own, but I’m not
givin’ one more life without a fight. I don’t care if we have to
take on the whole of Earth. This isn’t their planet. And it isn’t
Asmodeus’, either. Yeh promised me that fuck with a spear up his
ass and out the top end.”

I have to give him credit: He gives better speeches
than I do. But I don’t even know where to start anymore.

Bly puts his sword away in disgust.

“Yeh know, I’ve read about the old gods of Earth.
Yod’s right: Y’all make a fine set. Selfish. Moody. Egos as big as
the sky. Happy just teh fuck and eat when the fight’s not fun
anymore.” He breathes himself down, but only a bit. Then he tells
me: “When I met yeh, I thought I was better than yeh. Thought I was
better than all. Captain ‘o Zodanga… Then pretty quick after that I
wanted teh kill yeh, oh so very badly, an’ that lasted a good
while. Even thought I’d succeeded, once. But here I am now, callin’
yeh goddamn friend. I’d die for yeh if I could, yeh pouty fuck, for
what yeh stand for.
Stood
for... Is it done, then? Are
we
done?”

I don’t have an answer.
I don’t know
.

He keeps pushing, pacing now like a caged animal.

“I expect it’s different for me than you… I grew
here. Earth was
always
the enemy, the Unmaker who burned us
and left us for dead, so news that they hate us and fear us and
plan to hurt us is no fucking shock. But you… You served ‘em. Good
soldier. Now they want to burn you, no matter how much you run to
save them from Asmodeus and their own infinite stupid. I expect
that’s quite frustrating. But try teh see the world from
here
, through the people that live here, have
only
lived here.”

He’s right, of course. Absolutely. But…

“But that’s not the whole haul, is it?” he realizes,
turning on me. “It’s not just the big guns in the sky or the nukes
or the amazing stupidity of Earth-grown mankind… It’s fucking
Yod
…”

He sees me lock on that, react however involuntarily,
betraying the root of my paralysis. He has a chuckle at it, at
discovering it.

“You’re all sand-crashed because Mr. Omnipotent let
his little story get impossibly fucked and is leaving us to fix it
all for him!”

Then he attacks it.

“You of all people know he can’t show his hand in
this.
Ever
. If the Unmakers ever find out about him, even
get a hint there’s something like that free in the world, they’ll
nuke this whole planet to glass, too stupid to know it won’t do any
good. So that’s what
we’re
for. That’s
all
we’re for.
Fix the mess and take the hate…
Fine
. I’ll fix his mess if
it makes this right, if people get to live and have families and
keep going.”

I look at Bel. He’s shaken, crushed. He’s probably
been feeling as helpless as I am but he’s been counting on me for
direction—maybe they all have.

So I give him some:

“Asmodeus had Harvester drones in canisters, metal
tubes…” I flash him images from my memory files. “He implied it was
a ‘present’ for Earth, for UNMAC. Any idea what he has in
mind?”

He flashes me back his own similar images,
explaining: “We found a few of those in the rubble of the Pax Keep
while we were looking for you. The bodies inside were mostly
pulverized from the blasts even if the casing was relatively
undamaged. But a few survived intact enough to be dangerous.”

“If they’re meant to be protection, protection from
what
is the question,” I give him another mystery I’ve been
stewing fruitlessly.

“Something he’s anticipating Earth will try?” Bel
guesses vaguely.

“Can they be fired?” Bly easily joins the
brainstorming, as if his prior chastising of me didn’t happen.
“Launched at the enemy? Or dropped like bombs?”

“The landing would do as much damage as the rail-gun
blast did, maybe more,” Bel estimates what I’ve already thought
about. “They’d be tubes of squished meat, or at least too broken to
move.”

“But still infectious,” Bly considers.

“The Earthers are too smart for that,” Bel doesn’t
buy. “So is anyone else who’s heard of the threat.”

I have a flash of inspiration. Bel looks at me like
my grin must be especially disturbing.

“What?”

“I was thinking about medieval siege tactics… They’d
catapult rotting and infected animals into the fortifications, try
to spread disease. There might be easier and more efficient ways to
spread the Harvester seeds, but if he’s trying to spread
fear
…”

“The corpse bombs don’t have to
work
,” Bly
follows. “They just have to get ‘em running scared.”

“He definitely understands psychological warfare,” I
remind them needlessly.

“But we still don’t have a launching system,” Bel
argues. “And as far as we know, he doesn’t have another
Stormcloud.”

“But he did have smaller ships,” Bly remembers. “The
Flying Crosses that Chang designed. He used them to haul the scrap
to the Grave to build the last ‘Cloud. The Katar counted three or
four. Straker didn’t see ‘em in the crater before it blew.”

“So where are they?” I focus. “He must have another
base somewhere, a physical facility.” And if he does, maybe I’ll
find him there—the
real
him.

“But why leave all the ammo where there’s no gun or
bomber?” Bel criticizes. “Why not just make and fill the tubes
where you’ve got your delivery system?”

He’s right. Stockpiling the tubes in the Keep makes
no sense unless it was supposed to be a stockpile, but Harvesters
don’t last indefinitely, even intact with nutrients and oxygen. Pax
is where the bodies were, but to use them on another target, he’d
have to move them there (and being inside heavy steel cylinders
makes that a much harder chore than simply herding drones). Maybe
he didn’t know where his target would be yet. Maybe he was waiting
for Earthside to land and stage their forces, show him where to hit
them.

But why let me walk in, without resistance, and see
what he was doing? Why did he tell me it was part of his plan to
attack the Earth force?

I have a sick thought, an Asmodeus kind of thought:
Maybe the tubes were just for show. He knew I’d come, after all.
Maybe he expected I’d report to UNMAC, get them all spun (like we
three are now) on a distraction. So