The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (4 page)

I know he’ll just go elsewhere, but maybe I can catch
him when he makes that move. Unless he already has.

Our combined efforts get everyone out into daylight,
out into the bowl of the long box canyon that forms the approach to
the Keep. I jumped over another six disabled Harvesters on the way
out, and two dead Pax Hunters. Lux and Bly report similar
casualties.

As the evacuees mill in the canyon, I listen for
Harvester signals. I hear nothing, but a gestating drone doesn’t
transmit until it’s complete and online. Any of these people could
be infected. We need to check them all. I count nearly four hundred
men, women and children. And then I get news that’s only part of
our problem.

“Your containment is shot,” I hear Azazel, see him
circling above us in the Siren’s Song. He flashes me video from the
hull cameras and his own eyes: There are two other visible exits
from the mountain, both of them streaming terrified evacuees. Warm
bodies are fading into the forest.

The Pax Hunters are holding the ones in the canyon on
the inside of their defensive wall, but the Pax instinct is to
hide, to fade into the green. I can see more heat blips slipping
away, some in small clusters, probably families.

Small consolation: Most are heading generally west,
back toward their ancestral ruin. Away from Katar.

“Try to gather your people together,” I encourage
Archer. “We need to ch…”

I hear a signal, see a Harvester come staggering out
of one of the Keep caves. This one is a teen boy. The Hunters put
three arrows into his skull before he falls, tumbling down the
cliff.

“We still have too many unaccounted for,” Archer
insists. “We need to clear our home.”

“Asmodeus has a way in that you don’t know about,” I
argue. “He was able to get to your Leder, put something in his
brain. He was turning one of your Hunters into a copy of himself, a
clone. We need to evacuate until we can clear every tunnel, then
reinforce your defenses so nothing can slip in. And we need to
check everyone thoroughly, maybe quarantine them.”

“The infected may have already spread too far to
contain,” Bly complains, too frustrated for discretion. His sword
and mail are splattered with gore. Lux’s brilliant white and chrome
are still absorbing her own stains.

“You need to save who you can,” Lux tries a softer
approach. “Protect who you can. So your people can live, once this
is over.”

I look skyward. Phobos is making one of its quick
passes overhead, visible in daylight as a dull blob that looks
about one-third the size of Earth’s moon, even though it’s only
eleven klicks long (because it’s barely six thousand klicks up). I
know UNMAC has been scrambling to rebuild their base up there, as
well as a new space dock in lower orbit, this time armed and
armored against Disc attack. I also know they have at least one
mass driver up there that serves as an impromptu rail-gun, pointed
down at the planet’s surface. And probably more nuclear warheads,
salvaged and revitalized from the stockpiles they should have
scrapped a century ago.

Are you thinking what I am?
Bly asks in my
head, discretion returning.

When the Earthers find out about this, they’ll
burn this place, blast it to dust,
Lux answers for me.
There
may be no point in trying to secure the site. We’d just be leaving
these people under the barrel of a rail-gun.

Then we need to get everyone away from here,
now,
Bly concludes with some urgency.
We can check them for
infection later.

But I don’t budge.

“What?” Bly demands as I continue to stare at the
sky.

I’m listening for signals, frequencies. If this
has
gotten any attention from Orbit, it’s still being kept
quiet.

“Azazel, get the ship away from here,” I order. Then
to Bly and Lux: “Help the Pax round up their own. Keep them
together. Get them moving in the same direction. Then get Bel to
help with the checks. And don’t assume we still have three days
gestation.”

They don’t like me dismissing them, but they do what
I ask.

“What are you going to do?” Lux has to ask as they
go.

“Something probably very stupid.”

I reach out, hack in. Send my message.

“This is Colonel Ram, calling General Richards. We
need to meet. Your terms. Your ground. I have something you need to
see.”

Actually I don’t, not yet. So I go back into the cave
network and get it.

The reply comes forty minutes later. I assume that
means they had to consult with Earth. But they do give me a where
and a when. Only the reply isn’t from General Richards. It’s from
Colonel Jackson.

The “when” is a few hours after dawn the next day

The “where” is a remote plateau in the maze-like
Badlands, about twenty-five klicks west of the ruin of the original
Pax Colony. The Badlands are situated just this side of the “teeth”
of Coprates—a row of sharp peaks across an especially narrow part
of the great valley. This funnels the daily wind-cycle into a
sand-blasting intensity, resulting in erosion that’s carved the
Badlands into a treacherous labyrinth of rises and fissures as the
underlying layers of fractured rock have been exposed and sculpted
into a nightmare landscape. The elevation is also a few klicks
higher than the greened regions of Coprates, which means thinner
air and more extreme temperature shifts. It all combines to make
the place barren, inhospitable, and extremely treacherous to
traverse. Not even the subterranean-dwelling Forge bother expanding
their territory this far. (Though I had heard that Abu Abbas—used
to the deserts of Melas—had bargained for the real estate with the
Pax and Katar as a potential new home for his people, displaced by
Earthside stupidity. But now that his people have proven their
commitment to defending the peoples of the Trident—at the cost of
his own life among many others—I expect they’ll be welcome anywhere
in that region.)

The wind here screams like no other place in the
terraformed Marineris chain. If this is the “mouth” of Coprates, it
wails like a Banshee for hours on end every morning and evening, as
if mourning (or heralding) all the death in the green to the
east.

Earthside apparently has at least one asset in the
region, and one they must feel is both secure enough and expendable
enough for a meeting with a potentially valuable monster: The Long
Range Recon Vehicle designated Leviathan Three. It’s an ingeniously
rigged monstrosity, built on-planet out of salvaged and repurposed
parts: Four massive treads from mining machines supporting a
freight shuttle reactor and an armored pressure hull, crowned by a
spare base battery turret. Its camouflage paint job is a pathetic
effort, since the thing is well over twenty meters tall and thirty
long.

Slightly promising sign: they don’t turn the guns on
me when I approach.

Parked near it are two older ASVs, museum pieces
restored and sent to Mars in Earth’s rush to provide us support
against threats that evolved into something entirely other before
they could arrive. Outdated and clumsy compared to the newer,
sleeker models, they’re also probably seen as expendable, likely
only here as transport for those I’ve come to meet from Melas Two
(since the Leviathan would take days to make the trip from there to
here at its top speed). I hear no link chatter between the craft,
and that tells me they’ve probably taken the precaution of shutting
down their network, worried I might hack in and do something… well,
I’m sure they’ve imagined all sorts of extreme possibilities.

Covering the ships, and not as invisible as they
think they are, are a team of snipers in Heavy Armor shells, nested
in the rocks all around and about three hundred klicks out. They
have to realize by now that I can increase the processing speed of
my brain and nervous system enough to see bullets coming and react,
assuming anything they could shoot me with could do more than piss
me off. But I suppose they felt they had to have some kind of
security onsite. I fully expect they have a satellite rail-gun
positioned overhead, should things go as bad as they’ve
fantasized.

Me, I’ve brought myself. And my flyer, which has been
taking on a strange but beautiful gryphon-like shape the more I’ve
used it.

I think I surprise them by coming in from the west
instead of the east, but I had an errand to run that I’d already
delayed too long, and recent events also required I have an urgent
face-to-face with someone at the same location. I kept it brief,
using the need to be at this meeting to excuse me from lingering. I
tell myself it was to avoid things getting uncomfortable, though
the truer version is that I just can’t deal with the peripheral
drama right now, and ran away from it like I’ve always done. (This
gives me a brief chuckle inside my helmet at the idea that I’d
rather sit down with Earthside’s commanders-on-planet rather than
spend more time than absolutely necessary at Tranquility.)

I set down seventy-five meters from their impromptu
mobile outpost. Before the dust of my landing settles, I pull off
my helmet and fold it away, tie my eternally-unruly hair back into
the ponytail it refuses to stay in, dismount my fantastic ride, and
casually start to walk in like this is routine. I almost
immediately get fed a warning on one of the old UNMAC channels:

“Leave your weapons, please, Colonel.” It’s Jackson
again.

“Considering what you’re afraid I might do, I can’t
imagine me having a sword or a pistol would make that worse,” I
dismiss him (and subtly remind him how helpless he is, which
probably isn’t a good move if I’m hoping for diplomacy here, but he
just brings out the righteous asshole in me every time he opens his
mouth).

“Consider it a gesture, Colonel,” Richards comes on,
sounding like he wants this to be productive. (Rather than ending
with me beating Jackson to death with his own spine, something I’ve
certainly imagined since the psychotic theo-fascist martinet tried
to suicide bomb me and hundreds of brave fighters—including his own
people—with a four hundred and fifty kiloton thermonuclear warhead
because he’s sure my kind carry a plague that will wipe out all
life, not to mention being an abomination in the eyes of his
twisted version of God.)

I take a breath of the thin, brisk, gritty air, and
make a show of leaving my katana and my gun with my ride. For their
part, they don’t just blow it up as soon as I walk away. But they
do have other surprises waiting, designed—I assume—to keep me
polite.

The reactor core beneath the Leviathan isn’t the only
radiation signal. There are nuclear shells strapped to the
undercarriage. They read as low-yield gun-type tactical, maybe a
few kilotons each.

Then I get a one-person welcoming party, as a single
figure in an L-A uniform climbs down out of the pressure hull. I
can hear her distinctive signals before she turns to face me. It’s
Lisa.

Her long dark hair is tied up military-neat, and—of
course—she’s not wearing a mask or goggles, needing them no more
than I do. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t transmit anything,
just waits for me. I quickly see why: They’ve rigged her with some
kind of collar bomb. They have to know it won’t kill her, but they
must be counting on it disabling her if she tries anything. They’ve
also got her wired with sensors, likely set to detect her
communicating with me, or trying to hack them. (I expect they’ve
made good use of their time with her, trying desperately to come up
with countermeasures against our kind.) She gives me a tired,
bitter grin. I want to tell her I’m sorry, but I know that will
make it worse.

“They’re waiting for you,” she tells me flatly.

“Tell them I need a nano-containment tube.” I’m sure
they can hear me.

About thirty very awkward seconds pass, and the lower
airlock pops again. An H-A suit climbs down, tube strapped across
his chest. When he gets boots on sand, he unclips the tube and
hands it to me. I recognize him through his visor.

“Juan… Captain Rios…”

“It’s good to see you, sir,” he gives sincerely. We
don’t trade salutes, not under the camera eyes of his new
superiors. Our reunion is understandably uncomfortable, given the
circumstances, but he’s prepared to do his job as always.

“I’m sure this is somehow my fault you’re out here,”
I give by way of an apology, feeling crushed. He’s a good soldier,
a fine officer. But Dee told me how he was basically exiled to this
duty, his Company taken from him and given to cherry Earthside
New-Drop true-believers, all because of his prior loyalty to me.
(And I’m thinking about helping Jackson meet his God in some
satisfying fashion again, and Burns with him, but I know there’s a
planet full of faith-driven idiots just like them lined up to take
their place. I’d have to declare war on the Earth.)

He doesn’t answer, just forces a smile and shows me
how to work the container. I put my “presents” inside, and he
checks the seals and fields. A familiar female voice over his link
declares it safe. Then he takes the tube back up into the vehicle.
And we wait again.

“The samples you’ve provided are secure, Colonel,”
Jackson comes back on the link channel. “You have permission to
come aboard.”

I realize I’ve never met Jackson face-to-face, that
to this point he’s just been a voice over link, but every
interaction I’ve had with him so far makes me want to rip this
pressure hull open with my bare hands and show him that the last
thing I need or want is his permission. And there’s my curse again,
the most unfortunate side-effect of what I’ve become: The arrogance
of the invincible. I used to say I wasn’t anything like the
monsters I hunted, and I was absolutely confident in that
distinction, but now… The only thing that keeps me from being what
Asmodeus is, is that I won’t let myself give into it, no matter how
seductive it is.