The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (38 page)

With Scheffe limiting me despite impressive effort on
her part, it takes us two hours to get to the point where the faint
tracks start climbing. I can hear Scheffe sigh inside her suit,
panting from her effort, sucking on her canteen line. I know she’d
do better if she stripped down to L-As and a mask, I know that the
shell she’s wearing probably won’t stop what they’re likely to send
at her anyway, but I can’t guarantee I can block everything headed
her way, especially if there’s a crossfire waiting for us.

“You sure you want to come further?” I give her a
chance to take the safer move.

“I’m fine, sir,” she pants bravely.

“Well, at least you’re getting to see the
planet.”

“It is very beautiful, sir.”

That gives me a smile.

We start climbing. I keep my eyes on the steeply
rising jagged rim ahead of us. There are too many places for a
sniper to nest up there.

“Just be ready to grab ground when I say so.”

We take the climb slower than I’d like to, but I’m
trying to give Scheffe a course that follows the trail while giving
her as much potential cover as possible. I scan no sign of
movement, heat or signals.

After another half-hour-plus, the tracks lead us into
a narrow pass. It’s barely meters-wide down in the treacherous,
rocky bottom, but it looks like it may wind all the way through to
the outside—I can hear and feel the beginnings of the evening winds
whistling through it, pushing gently at our backs like they’re
nudging us forward encouragingly (or conspiratorially).

There’s no way the ‘Horse could fit in here, much
less get over the man-sized boulders in our path. I’m surprised
that whoever took Horst and Lyra managed to drag the rover through
here, but I can still see the telltale marks of the sledge, leaving
scrapings of dried Graingrass wood on the rocks.

The use of local materials gives me hope that we’re
dealing with a survivor group. Asmodeus wouldn’t bother to soil his
hands with handicraft, and his bots and Harvesters probably
wouldn’t be capable. My greater fear is that he’s seduced the
survivor-descendants into his service, like Chang seduced the PK
and Zodanga. Asmodeus would do it just to give us the hard choice
of shooting at otherwise innocent humans, but that would also give
him reason not to convert them, and that gets me back around to
hope.

The curse of that hope is that I will need to try to
avoid hurting whoever these people are, and they may or may not
give me that choice.

The green thins out as we climb through the fissure,
and that means Scheffe’s camo stands out brightly against the ruddy
rocks. Thankfully, the deep shadows we’ve entered blunts the
contrast somewhat, just not enough to keep her from looking like an
ornate bug crawling clumsily over the jumble of boulders,
scrambling and slipping as I leap much more gracefully from rock to
rock, doing it in spurts so that the rippling effect of my cloak is
harder to track. Several times, Scheffe herself loses sight of me
and freezes apprehensively, until I risk disturbing some pebbles to
show her where I am.

They let us get about a hundred and fifty meters into
the fissure before they spring their trap. At that point, there
would be no running, not without exposing our backs as we scrambled
our retreat.

There are two shooters, one on either side of
fissure, up high in the cliffs about thirty meters above us,
staggered so that the one on our left is about twenty meters closer
than the one on our right, forty and sixty meters up-canyon,
respectively.

I have to jump to get in the way of the incoming
rounds. I suspect our ambushers get quite a start when they see
their rounds impact and shatter against something unseen, which
almost makes the sting of the hits against my chest and forearm
armor worthwhile.

I shout for Scheffe to get down. Her instinct was to
hunker and try to get her rifle on target—but I tell her to get all
the way behind the rocks if she can. Then I deal with the dual
threat.

Not wanting to kill, I fire an explosive round over
the head of the farther shooter, bursting it against the rock eaves
of his shallow cave nest, hoping to disable or discourage with the
shrapnel. Then I fly, leaping up the left slope, slinging myself on
whatever handholds and footholds I can find (almost slipping and
falling all the way down twice) until I propel myself into his
larger nest. In the meantime, he’s sent three more rounds down at
Scheffe, and on the third, I hear her scream.

He jumps back at the shimmering semi-visible whatever
suddenly flying at him, and tries to raise his rifle. He’s dressed
in a collection of dirty and patched colony rags, a scarf pulled
across his mask and goggles. Not wanting to shoot him, I twist out
of the way of the nearly point-blank shot, scoop up a handy
egg-sized rock, and try to bounce it carefully off of his forehead.
Unfortunately, I miscalculate between momentum and adrenalin, and
hear the sickening crunch of his skull giving way. His head whips
back and he flops over like a ragdoll.

Not the first impression I was hoping for.

I check the body: He’s alive, breathing raggedly in
his mask, but I doubt for long without serious medical attention.
His eyes are already glazed and unequal.

He smells about as ripe as he looks. The skin of his
face is so filthy and capillary-ruptured that I can’t tell
ethnicity. He looks well-fed, but muscle-wasted from living all his
life in Martian gravity without centrifuges or supplements. The
only identifying marking on him is a well-worn and faded American
flag patch on the right shoulder. His rifle is old UNMAC issue.

Scheffe is shouting for me, shouting for help, back
down in the crevice, in the panic that comes with bad injury. I can
see her flailing behind her boulder cover, but can’t tell how badly
she’s hurt. The other sniper is struggling to get reset, to aim his
rifle at me (or in my general direction, as I’m still not providing
a good visual target). His probably-ruined goggles pulled aside,
his dirty face is running bright with blood.

I’m thinking about how I can disable without killing
from here when he gets shot through the left clavicle from
somewhere higher above on my side of the fissure. It’s messy enough
to spray his nest with gore, and puts him down.

I feel them coming: motion down the cliff-side above
me, before three bodies wearing cloaks and plate armor rappel down
into the nest. Two level ICWs in my general direction while the
third checks the wounded man, kicking his rifle away from him as if
he still might be a threat, then stripping him of a handgun, a pair
of knives and a climber’s pickaxe.

I recognize the general style of the home-forged
armor and swords they carry, but not exactly. And their cloaks and
cowls are a mix of greens and browns and ochres, not the rusts of
their Melas brethren.

“You’re Knights,” I greet them, making myself
visible. My appearance doesn’t seem to startle them as much as it
should. “New Knights. I know your Order of Avalon.” I slowly put
away my pistol, show them empty hands.

“Shoot him,” I hear an order from above. “Just once.”
But it sounds more casual than a kill order should. One of the
armored warriors obeys, firing just one round from his ICW, which I
decide to dodge.

“Confirmed.” The shooter calls back up. “Clear.”

Two more bodies rappel down and join us in the
crowded space. I recognize one by cloak and armor and sword.

“Grandmaster Kendricks,” I greet gratefully.

“Peacemaker,” he gives me one of my popular titles.
His eyes grin through his armored faceplate.

I see motion across the fissure. More Knights are
rappelling down into the nest of the other sniper, and down to the
bottom to where Scheffe is.

“Does this mean your mission was successful?” I ask,
nodding at the others I don’t know.

The man who shot at me lowers his weapon and drops to
a knee, bowing his head formally.

“Sir Frodo Baker,” he introduces himself. “Of the New
Knights of Liberty. At your service, Colonel Ram.”

Apparently they share the tradition of their Melas
brothers of naming their children after popular fictional heroes. I
resist the temptation to count his fingers.

“My companion…” I look back down the ravine where two
Knights are pulling her helmet and giving her oxygen. Her visor is
shattered. I see blood.

“Superficial,” I hear one of them report on a
close-range rotating encryption. The other is rinsing her eyes with
a squeeze bottle while he reassures her. “Round lanced across her
visor, blew some polycarb into her face… Her eyes look to be
intact…”

“Someone took two more of my companions,” I tell
them.

“And a rover-bot,” Kendricks confirms. “We saw.
They’ve already made it home across their perimeter with their
prizes. Still alive. For now.”

“Who?”

Baker bends over the man whose brains I accidentally
bashed in, and tears open his jacket and the threadbare thermal
shirt underneath. This reveals what looks like a primitive tattoo
that’s both readily recognizable and not: A rectangle of seven red
horizontal stripes with a smaller rectangle of blue dominating the
upper left corner. But instead of the expected fifty stars (or some
historical reduction thereof), there’s only one. The white parts of
the flag are the pallid tone of his skin.

“Liberty?” I assume.

“Descendant of the colony survivors,” Baker confirms.
“Third-gen. I know him. Militiaman. One of their better snipers.
Was, from the look of the skull fracture, even if he survives.”

“We need to relieve the pressure on his brain,” the
Knight tending my victim decides.

“Can you work on him here?” Baker asks him. The
Knight shakes his head.

“They can’t afford to let the any of the Sons see the
locations of their bases,” Kendricks explains grimly. “It prevents
unnecessary bloodshed.”

“Is that why you didn’t interfere with the party that
took my people?”

“We didn’t know they were your people,” Kendricks
doesn’t apologize. “We thought they were Earthside. We owe nothing
to Earthside, not anymore.”

“They
are
Earthside, but one is an old friend
from before the Apocalypse. Lieutenant Horst—I think you might
remember him.”

Kendricks nods.

“The other is a new friend, born on-planet. I left
her with Earthside because she had nowhere else after Chang made
her an orphan. Their mission is to find where Asmodeus is basing.
I’m tagging along because of what will happen if they do find
him.”

“I thought Asmodeus was defeated?” Kendricks takes
the news with a mix of shock and anger.

“That was a clone, made out of an innocent victim.
I’ve encountered three others like it so far. His primary body is
somewhere else. Or maybe nowhere at all—he may be existing as a
networked consciousness between multiple host bodies. Signals were
detected coming from the east. Earthside believes he may have taken
Liberty, Alchera or Iving. He was seen transporting scrap to build
that last Stormcloud from somewhere out this way.”

“Not from Liberty,” Baker insists. It seems he’s been
briefed enough that my tale neither confuses nor surprises him.
“But we’d observed large aircraft passing from the directions of
both outer colonies a few months ago, headed west.”

“He made no attempt to approach Liberty?” I’m having
trouble believing, though I’m sure he had a scheme in doing so as
Baker shakes his head.

“You’re wondering why not,” Kendricks picks up.

“You’ll see,” Baker assures me heavily. Kendricks
flashes me a sad half-smile. “We need to move quickly, if we’re to
have any chance of extracting your friends alive.”

Scheffe is having trouble seeing, but she’s only
suffered some minor facial lacerations and corneal abrasions. The
Knights have cleaned her up, sealed the larger wounds, and hooked a
mask into her re-breather, her ruined helmet discarded. They set
her up with rappelling gear, while I wave away a similar offer,
having what I need built into my armor.

Soon we’re being hauled up the ravine, up high in the
cliffs. We have to take multiple lines. When we’re up five-hundred
meters, I start seeing the telltale signs of frequent climbing,
wear on the rocks. Then we get our boots barely on a very narrow
ledge, and do a slow but smooth slide eastward along the sheer
jagged wall, clinging to it face-first. The evening winds get
stronger and stronger as we go, as if trying to peel us off.

We travel a good hundred meters like that, before we
come to a niche that gets us partly out of the wind. Scheffe looks
tired and shaken. One of the Knights gives her a thermal cap to
protect her bare head and ears from the icy cold up here.

“You all right, Specialist?” I ask her over the wind.
She gives me a shaky thumbs-up, her eyes raw and bloodshot under
her borrowed goggles.

We stop long enough for water.

“We’ve got an hour until nightfall,” Baker prods us
stoically. “We’ve still got two klicks to the Perimeter.”

“Roughly-drawn colony border,” Kendricks clarifies.
“The survivor-descendants have spread out from the ruin over the
decades. They have outposts all through the foothills of the
mountains on the northeast side of the crater, similar to the Pax
‘Steads, but fortified in the rocks and tight-knit enough to
maintain a secure perimeter.”

“Against who?” I wonder, since the Katar only spoke
of a few encounters many years ago.

“Us,” Baker admits heavily. “And now you, come to
justify their paranoia.”

He doesn’t explain further, as if the subject offends
him, just turns and leads his team forward. We quickly come to the
head of a narrow trail the winds along the slope—we’ve come through
the rim itself and out onto the range of mountains that sprout from
the crater. Ahead and below us is a small valley between the short
mountain chain we’re on and a longer one just to the south.
Everything on this side of the crater has already been swallowed by
the shadows of the setting sun at our backs, but in the far
distance, in the bottom of the valley, I can see the remains of
Liberty Colony, blasted to a skeletal ruin and overgrown.