The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (31 page)

And we failed. We lost the world, the entire human
race. Superhuman, and we weren’t strong enough. We were nothing,
not against ten billion superhumans.

I also know that after we failed, we made something
to try to fix it all, something crazy-desperate, something
alive
. New life. And it promised it would fix it. It
promised
me
…

But it wasn’t by time travel. I’ve managed to put
that together, or it’s put itself together, ideas suddenly all
falling into place like puzzle pieces over the last few days,
finally hitting me with dumb shock—not for the inconceivable
enormity of what was done, but because the truth should have been
so
obvious
. And I heard it in the way Michael chose his
words, the way he looked at me when he did, like this is our ugly
secret. And that’s confirmation. Just like we share the same
memories of the same undone reality, we share the same burden of
how it was undone. (Do they all know, all the others like us,
preserved for whatever reason when the hell-world got erased?)

Doing my duty is my only comfort, no matter how empty
or dysfunctional it’s become. I need this. I need the ritual. I
need the routine. I need to serve, to serve something, some
obligation just to keep moving. (Why can’t Michael see that?)

Doing it now, I check the simple tablet they left me.
But it’s dead. No signal. Nothing loaded. Just the useless OS ready
screen. I look up at the sentry cameras to accuse, to rail at them
for letting me do my job but then giving me no job to do…

The cameras are turned off.

I barely have a second to process that when I hear
the locks to my hatch disengage. Alarms should be going off, but
they don’t.

I reflexively set myself to attack, and feel my skin
harden. My processing speed ramps up, slowing everything down. The
hatch swings open…

…and the blonde tech from the Iso steps through,
shutting the hatch behind him like this is his own suite. He turns
to me and gives me that fake smile again. Then he seems to
understand that I’m ready to kill him. But he doesn’t do what I
expect:

He reaches down, takes my hand, lifts it and presses
it to the side of his face.

I feel him. I feel what he is. Synthetic and alloy
and nano-carbon weave fluidic muscles and…

“It’s good to see you again, Colonel Ava.”

The voice is smooth and soothing and somehow sounds
like old enemies and old friends at the same time. I realize it’s
synthesized, digitally produced, but impressively convincing. I
look down at his ID tag.

“DEE. CAIN A.”

No.

“No…”

“I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on me before this,”
it says sweetly. “I have been trying to feed you intel, brief you
on recent developments. I’ve had to be subtle about it, of course,
given the circumstances.”

I feel a surge of hysteria, a sudden desire to laugh
and cry and scream all at once.

“Dee?” I scan through his synthetic skin, see the
marvelous mechanisms underneath. “I… There were rumors… Back after
they pulled your mainframe… Some of us suspected that Michael was
still… that you were still… There were cases, incidents involving
what appeared to be realistic robots…”

“Androids,” he corrects lightly. “Mobile
physical-world interfaces. Tools. This one is a CALO, an
independent remote subsystem. I would tell you that I came to Mars
to help Colonel Ram just before the nuclear bombardment, but given
recent revelations, I have calculated high certainty that this
isn’t true, that I was created here, a convincing facsimile.”

“By Yod,” the name pops into my head, the name that’s
been hovering in my thoughts and I’m not sure why or what it means.
But suddenly, now I do. “
Was that you, putting these ideas in my
head?
” I ask without speaking. He nods.

“The truth has been revealed to us only recently, I
estimate for some specific intention. Prior to this, those like
you—those agents of Yod—only knew the time travel story, and
honestly believed it to be true. And I only knew the current,
edited timeline.In fact, I still only know of no other series of
events. I have only heard of the overwrite.”

He’s talking like we’re only discussing files,
software, not human minds, not the whole fucking world and everyone
in it.

“What are you doing here?” I have to focus on what’s
more immediate, more addressable.

“I am able to access the UNMAC systems in ways that
will avoid detection, even in light of recent advancements made in
detecting hybrid nanotechnology. I am not nanotechnology. I am AI.
Therefore, I can help.”

“You got Michael out,” I state the obvious.

“And I disabled the political leverage of
UNCORT.”

“That was
you
?” I feel a fresh shock. “Not
Asmodeus?”

“The first one today was Asmodeus. I simply took
advantage of his strategy with one of my own, old but still
effective.”

“I remember…” I do. I remember the mess he—it—made
out of UNACT back in the day, just by making certain very
uncomfortable facts very public. I grin involuntarily.

“It was necessary in order for General Richards to
rein in his UNCORT-backed officers, so that he could retake command
and give permission for Colonel Ram to accompany the reconnaissance
mission.”

“He…
What
?” I don’t believe what I’m
hearing.

“He would not have been effectively able to follow
the recon vehicle without being detected and treated as hostile. It
is essential that the nuclear warheads on board be used only
against an appropriate target, and not fall into enemy hands. Or
that is how we hope it will appear to said enemy.”

I want to strangle him… it… whatever it is. I want to
rip its smiling robot head off.

“Despite this, the situation is far from stable,” he
keeps droning like he’s reporting the weather. “I have calculated
several potential counter-moves by various key players that could
easily reverse the gains made. The Colonel may find himself
targeted again very soon, before he is able to complete his
mission.”

“Just to be clear: His mission is…?”

“Nominally the same as UNMAC’s: locate and neutralize
all aspects of the networked entity Asmodeus.”

“’Nominally’?”

“UNMAC has no hope of complete success. And
incomplete success will assure an ongoing threat.”

“And you think you’ve worked out a way to assure
complete success?”

Halfway through my question he holds up a hand to
stop me talking. I hear movement out in the corridor, soft
footfalls and the hum of an electric motor, wheels.

He turns and opens the hatch just as Rick is about to
knock on it, making him jump. Next to him, in his chair, Anton
jumps even more.

“Sorry to startle you, Doctor. Doctors.”

When neither of them give Dee any kind of
who-the-fuck-is-this looks, I put more together.

“You knew?
Both
of you?”

“We have been working together for quite some time
now,” the android admits for them, speaking quickly and quietly.
“But I was only able to insert myself physically with the arrival
of all the new personnel.”

“We’d been chatting for a while now,” Rick confirms.
“But we only got to see his… um… physical interface device a few
days ago. It really is impressive…”

The fake person does an impressive facsimile of a
humble shrug.

“His documentation is also impressively forged,”
Anton praises. “And he really doesn’t show up as anything other
than human on any scans. Assuming he shows up at all.”

“That’s not true,” Dee corrects lightly. “I do show
up on all scans. I simply alter what the systems report.”

Something else I know he—it—has done before. I’m sure
whoever is watching this room right now is seeing me sitting on my
rack, alone and bored out of my mind, or maybe having a nap. The
corridor cams will be showing nobody at my door. As long as no one
comes wandering by—but Dee will see that coming in time to warn us
or redirect them.

He would have been useful to have had around months
ago, when all this went insane. And as I think that, he looks at me
like he’s sorry. Is he reading my thoughts? Does he have that kind
of access to me because of my nanotech?

“What else don’t I know?” I decide to move on.

“The massive shift of personnel to this site has left
the new-drops seriously outnumbered at Melas Two,” Rick tells me in
near-whisper. “Our vets have been provided with codes to crack any
attempt to lock them down. Tru’s people are ready to move as
well.”

“Move on
what
? Or did you forget we have
mass-drivers and nuclear warheads aimed down on us all from
orbit?”

“With people manning the triggers that are going to
have to decide right from wrong,” Rick insists. “Let’s say there’s
some re-education happening. Maybe even a touch of
enlightenment.”

Do they know about the Yod thing?
I think hard
at the Dee-bot. He gives me a subtle head shake, proving that he
can pick up on my internal dialogue just like Michael can. (But I
can tell when Michael’s listening. And I can tell when he’s
sending. But this thing… It was able to plant thoughts in my head
like they were my own internal dialogue.)

“The plan is to further marginalize the
UNCORT-aligned personnel and then isolate them from critical
decision-making,” the machine states its plan.

“Then it’s about hearts and minds,” Rick follows. “I
hate to say it, but we actually owe Asmodeus in that area. He’s
making them question…”

“He doesn’t have a sense of justice,” I warn. “He
just likes to humiliate. The duplicitous types are easy targets,
that’s all. He does it because it’s fun for him, not because it’s
right, not at all.”

“Enemy of my enemy,” Anton argues. “But still my
enemy. I’m happy to let them swing at each other if it makes either
or both easier to take down.”

“Depends on who gets in the way of the swinging,”
Rick says it before I can.

On my tiny metal desk, my tablet comes alive. Dee
gestures for quiet, but doesn’t move or prod Rick or Anton to hide.
He nods for me to answer.

“Colonel Ava, this is General Richards,” his face
comes up, looking tense like he’s under fire. (In my own
thumbnail-view, it looks like I’m alone in my quarters—Dee’s doing
in realtime.) “I need you in Ops now! Clearance on my orders!”

“Yes, sir.”

Rick and Anton look panicked. But Dee simply
states:

“Melas Two is under attack.”

I get to Ops in thirty seconds running and slamming
my way through hatches. The troopers on live sentry duty hesitate,
but let me through quickly enough—they must have gotten word of my
clearance. Either that, or they know they can’t stop me if I’m
determined.

Ops is a two-level chamber that reminds me of
someone’s private movie theater: A lower level featuring a
half-dozen terminal stations hovered over by a kind of balcony deck
that seats two more senior tech officers and a central command
officer’s chair like some kind of TV starship. All seats face a
forward wall, six meters high, which I know is facing east. It
would be overlooking the crater bowl if there were any actual
viewports. Instead, the armored wall is dominated by screens, and
the screens show chaos.

I’m seeing remote sentry feed—multiple angles—as the
Shinkyo “refugee camp” inside the Melas Two perimeter wall comes
apart. The network of pressurized shelters has been torn open in
places, and not from the outside. People cut their way out, trying
to escape. They’re running for the perimeter in panic, some of them
not even wearing surface gear—they won’t last minutes in that
atmosphere—but several dozen of them are trying to get away from
something I can’t see, swatting at the air around them like they’re
hallucinating. Or like they’re being attacked by insects. There’s
visible violence in the intact shelters and tubeways that matches
what I’m seeing outside: running, stampeding through tight
hatchways and accesses, flailing—the fabric-walled structures
convulse from within.

I also see status graphics of the base bunkers: some
of the outlying sections of A-Deck have been locked down, sealed. I
realize these are the sections containing the airlocks out to the
shelter tubeways.

Kastl is manning one of the command-deck stations,
which is a welcome sight. Jackson is a far less welcome one, on his
feet at the rail, intermittently barking orders at the downstairs
techs, sounding like a man whose ship is sinking out from under
him, and on fire.

He’s ordering a flight to Melas Two, but for recon,
not relief. He’s telling them to get eyes on, keep their distance,
and be ready to fire, on their own if need-be.

“What’s happening?” I blurt out. He spins on me for a
second, his one eye glaring at me like the thought of me being here
is a personal insult, then ignores me and turns back to trying to
manage what he can.

“General… Report!”

“We’ve sealed ourselves in as best we could, but I
have personnel in the compromised sections, not to mention a few
hundred civilians. We can’t get to them—the drones are too fast,
too small… And we’re getting alarms: They’re trying to cut through
the hatch seals. We’re going to need to weld over the gaskets, but
that means we can’t get out. And we can’t get to anyone outside. We
can’t even open a bay to launch a flight.”

“Stay put. We have a flight headed your way,” Jackson
isn’t remotely reassuring.

“What hit you, General?” I need to know.

“Drones…” He feeds me magnified video. The Shinkyo
were
swatting at bugs: mechanical ones. Micro machines.
Armed with stingers. “Probably loaded with Harvester tech. Or
something worse. They cut right through the shelters, spread out
fast. We didn’t even see them coming. They got in through the
airlocks before we could seal. We had to lock down, lock people
outside with them…”