The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (24 page)

“Still interrogating?” I prod at Jackson.

“Always,” he tosses back easily. “But actually, I was
going to give you the benefit of the doubt about something. Or test
your reaction. Specialist Jameson, I need the use of your
device.”

Lyra makes room for me to sit next to her on her
couch so we can both view the small screen. (I really wish she’d
just handed it to me. She smells
really
good…)

First, I’m looking at aerial footage of a series of
craters that look like the Pax bombardment, but in a desert. It
takes me several seconds to recognize the surrounding geographic
features, and then I have to hold back my desire to punch my way
out of this flimsy plastic cell and smash Jackson into a paste.

“You bombarded the City of Industry from orbit,” I
accuse him, levelly. The shocked and crushed look in Lisa’s eyes
tells me that she didn’t know.

“Two days ago,” he confirms like it’s nothing. “We
gave them several clear warnings. When they didn’t respond, we had
to assume they had all succumbed to infection.”

“I’m assuming there were no survivors,” I grumble
through gritted teeth.

“That’s the confusing part…” He still doesn’t seem to
care that he’s killed potentially hundreds of people. The feed
shifts to a ground view. The bobbing tells me it’s from a helmet
cam. They sent boots in, just like they did at Pax. (And I’m
partially hoping I’m going to see a similarly messy outcome.)
“There was no sign of any human remains. Not even organic trace.
But there was one ‘survivor’…”

Suddenly, in the middle of the devastation, I see a
perfectly black figure, a silhouette cut in space. It appeared out
of nowhere in a blink, just standing there. I can’t see his face,
of course, as he has none visible, but from his posture, I can tell
Chang is angry.

The trooper cams zoom in, and I hear them nervously
calling for orders. And then the feed goes to pixilated static.

“Twenty-four troopers. Just vanished. Not a trace.”
Jackson finally sounds uncomfortable. “The aerial feed blacked out
for less than one second, and when it came back up, they were all
gone. Right out of their boot-prints.”

The feed shifts. I get combined aerial and ground
video of a group of two-dozen troopers in H-A gear, looking dirty
and disorganized, moving like they’re in some kind of daze. The
surrounding desert has changed. I notice they have no weapons.

“We found them twenty-four hours later, twenty klicks
east-southeast from where they were last seen, in the open desert.
They have no idea how they got there, no memory of the last day, no
video records. And no tracks coming or going. No sign of aircraft
landing. And there was nothing on radar or satellite.”

The obvious guess would be Chang, but he didn’t have
that kind of power—almost Yod kind of power—the last time I saw
him.

“And none of them were harmed?” I ask,
incredulous.

“They’re still undergoing tests, but they have no
obvious injuries, other than the missing time.” Jackson’s trying to
stay casual, objective, clinical, but I can tell he’s deeply
unsettled. “Any ideas?”

“None,” I shake my head. But something does strike
me: Why did Chang leave them where he left them? Why
east-southeast? Was he simply dropping the troops in the general
direction of their home base so they’d be more easily found? Or…
was he
headed
there, to exact revenge?

“Any further sign of Chang?” I wonder out loud.

“Negative.” Now he sounds frustrated. “Not at the
site. And we’ve increased patrols and sentry remotes, assuming he
might be headed for Melas Two.” So he’s already thought of
that.

But I consider the bigger picture: Chang didn’t harm
those that bombed the home of his former minions, the home I’d
assumed he’d left the Barrow to go protect. So the Earth Force may
not be his concern. If he is heading east-southeast, he could be
coming here, to Coprates.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of any help. I’m afraid I’ve
never seen anything like this.”

Lisa gives me a deeply worried look, probably
imagining what’s headed our way (on top of everything else, real or
paranoid fantasy).

The only reaction I get from Jackson is Lyra’s pad
resetting back to what she’d been working on. He doesn’t say
another word, but I’m sure he’s still watching and listening.

I sleep very poorly. It’s not because I’m
unaccustomed to the contours of the exam couch—I’ve certainly spent
enough time in Melas Two Medical after doing something stupid. It’s
because of who I’m having to sleep in such close proximity to. No
matter how much I try to ignore her, I keep
smelling
her—she
hasn’t had a shower since before the battle and she either doesn’t
wear or hasn’t been issued deodorant. The accumulated pheromones in
her sweat are driving me increasingly crazy.

The only way I manage to keep myself under control is
to stay angry: angry at myself, angry at Yod, angry at Earthside
for sticking me in this pointless, time-wasting situation when I’m
trying to save their fucking lives. But then, as soon as I let
myself relax, her presence distracts me again. I spend the night in
an exhausting cycle of horniness and rage.

I also keep reminding myself of the obvious risk,
keep that in the front of my consciousness: If my arousal
is
being triggered by the last Seed I’m carrying, suddenly urgent for
a host or somehow locking on Lyra as the ideal choice, I could
destroy
her with a touch. She’s only nineteen, maybe twenty.
She could still have a whole wonderful life ahead of her, assuming
she survives this war. This planet may do it’s best to try to take
it from her, Asmodeus might try to take it from her, Earthside
might try to take it from her, but I won’t. I refuse. I
refuse
. And I will do whatever I can to make sure she has
that life.

I could be wrong, I know: It may have nothing to do
with the anonymous Seed. This could very well just be my Mods
ramping up my libido because I’m sitting here with nothing better
to do, a meter away from a very attractive very young very…

Stop it. Stop.
It.

She’s mortal. She’s mortal. She’s vulnerable. I need
to protect her. From things like me.

And I can’t help but worry about what Asmodeus would
do to her if he got the chance, and even
that
gets me
aroused, and that makes me sick…
Sick
.
Stay sick
…

Hang on to sick.

It gets us both through the night intact.

Before they bring us breakfast, Doc Ryder makes a
surprise appearance, to give me an exam and let me know I’ve got
one more old friend and former teammate sitting on a nuke to keep
me in line.

Thankfully, she doesn’t make me strip all the way,
just my armor and my tunic. She jumps back when I unhook it all
with a thought and pull it away like some kind of neat stripper
trick.

I quickly realize that I’m not used to being this
exposed in proximity to “Normals”, and the last two times I
was—with Lisa and then with Fera—I wound up converting them. Ryder
and her nurse-tech are in bio-gear, relatively safe (I assume), but
Lyra is barely a meter-and-half away, so close…

“You’re in amazing shape for a seventy-three year
old,” she jibes as she scans and prods. “I’d say I’m jealous, but
I’m sure that’d get me in trouble.” She jerks her head up at the
always-watching cameras. She has her own flashcard, but she asks
the techs out in the gallery turn their screens so she can see them
through the transparency, possibly because she wants me to see as
well.

“Huh… This is amazing. Your muscles… your bones…
They’re much much denser even than they’d be at Earth gravity…
There’s no sign of injury, no scarring…”

This is weird. She has her hands on me, but I don’t
feel the urge to take her. She’s certainly an attractive woman. Is
it the bio-suit? Or is it the Seed—has it indeed “imprinted” on
Lyra? I glance over at her. She’s trying not to look like she’s
looking at my ridiculously toned torso, and blushes when I catch
her. And that makes me think about what I want to do to her.
Again.

(Sick.)

“If he’s anything like Colonel Ava…” I hear a welcome
voice. Another bio-suit cycles through the lock. It’s Rick.
Probably sent to assess my potential as a weapon. “…and I expect he
is, his bones and connective tissues will have the tensile strength
of titanium and nano-carbon.”

And now I’m wondering how they determined that. I
look through the plexi at Lisa, who’s also been watching this
process. She subtly shakes her head like she’s telling me not to
ask those questions.

“There’s no overt sign of technology in his body on
conventional scans,” Rick continues. It’s now clear he’s narrating
for someone else’s benefit. “But there are definite physiological
changes, if you look here: The lungs have doubled the number of
alveoli for increased efficiently—not that they needed to, since we
know they’re capable of converting carbon dioxide back into oxygen
in an oxygen-starved environment. His circulatory system is also
more elaborate. And his spine…” He points to the parts on me as he
describes, and they highlight on the screens. “This is a much
stronger structural design. The vertebrae actually interlock…”

I wonder if he’s still in a relationship with Ryder.
I look for signs, see him discreetly touching her arm, her shoulder
in passing; see her not try to move away when he gets inside her
personal space. And I see worry in his eyes that’s not just for
himself, especially when he looks at her when she’s not looking
back.

“Where it visibly shows most is in the eyes,” he
continues doing the job he was sent to, though with little
enthusiasm. “Besides the obvious cosmetic changes to the irises,
his lenses and retinas are no longer purely organic. I believe, as
Colonel Ava has previously reported, that they allow him to see in
multiple spectrums, increase magnification both telescopically and
microscopically, and provide a kind of tactical heads-up feed. And
no: We can’t replicate the eyes without the CNS conversion as
well.”

So that’s it: In hopes of creating a weapon they can
use, they’re trying to determine if any of what I am can be
replicated without requiring
being
what I am.

“We also can’t replicate his dermal reactions to
extreme temperatures and pressures. Or his wound-management. Or the
enhancements to his nervous system that allow him to react so
quickly.

“I’m sorry,” he officially apologizes to the cameras.
“None of the technology is stand-alone. It’s all an intimate
bio-nanotech hybridization. It’s beautiful, brilliant design, but
it’s all built on a cellular and molecular level. What we
can
replicate using bulkier conventional technology, we
already have.”

“And that includes his resistance to the nanotech
infections?” Burns speaks through the sentry cams.

One of the techs goes to retrieve a containment box
from a sealed pass-through, and brings it to Ryder. When she opens
it, I see an injector assembly from a Harvester. I understand what
they have in mind. When Ryder reaches for it, I hold up a hand to
stop her.

“It may not be safe, even with the suit,” I warn.
Then I get permission to pick up the unit myself. Ryder puts a
hand-held scanner on my forearm, and I stab myself with the
injector. It still functions, shoots a seed-cluster “shell” into my
flesh.

On the screens at high magnification, we watch the
seed-clusters break free of their delivery capsule as they enter my
bloodstream, but they only get a few centimeters before contact
with pretty much anything—vessel walls, corpuscles—disintegrates
them. Increasing the magnification, we can see eye-blink changes to
my cells, like something inside them is coming alive and attacking;
but even on high-speed, it’s over and done before we can really get
a good look at the process. The nanotech works faster than their
scanning gear.

“And there’s no way to extract that without… well…
the rest of it?” Burns tries.

“We can’t extract
any
of it,” Ryder reminds
him. “Just like Colonel Ava’s, his tech has fail safes. It
deactivates and breaks down to raw elements as soon as it’s no
longer part of the bodily unit.”

“It’s not a voluntary command, if that’s what you’re
thinking,” I head off what I assume he’s hoping.

“But you made
her
,” Burns implies Lisa.
“
And
there are others like you out there that weren’t there
before.”

“We’re each made from a dedicated nano-cluster Seed,”
I repeat. “Like the Harvesters, but much more elaborate. It builds
all the Mods, provides the memory set, alters the DNA if it doesn’t
match the coded target…”

“Which means it has that same virus-like component,”
Burns locks on.

“I really don’t know how it works.” But I suspect it
doesn’t work like we’ve been told it does. There may, in fact, be
no such thing as a Seed. It could all just be Yod’s cover-story—he
probably made each of us at his whim, in his own time, for whatever
his big-picture grand plan is. But if that’s true, I have no third
Seed. The only threat to Lyra is Yod. And I can’t protect her from
that.

“There’s something you’re not telling us, Colonel
Ram,” Burns picks up on.

I really have to stop brooding where they can see
me.

“There’s probably a lot of scary shit I’m not telling
you,” I intentionally salt my language to unsettle his repressive
morality. “Or not programmed to tell you. Or whatever you believe.
And that would be the problem with belief: It’s all based on second
and third hand information, or pure fuck-all imagination. And
because you
believe
, you stop looking for the truth. You
blind yourselves.”

“Man lives by faith, Colonel,” Burns defends,
persecuting the subtle blasphemy. “His faith defines him. Are you
really saying we’d be better off without it?”