The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (46 page)

That cleared, Simmons comes out to take a quick check
of our drive train, tightens down a few of his earlier repairs, and
deems us fit to continue.

We still haven’t seen or heard sign of an air patrol.
They haven’t even sent anybody out to look at what they’ve
done.

We’re soon back down in green that’s tall enough to
mostly hide the rig, but the scan I got from the high-ground of the
crest let me know that the growth will thin back to scrub again as
we cross the open valley. Any aircraft passing within a few klicks
then will likely spot us. What I should be more concerned about is
that Asmodeus—assuming he’s at Alchera—will be able to see us
coming long before we get there. But then he knows we’re coming
anyway: If he hasn’t been keeping eyes on us, then Liberty getting
vaporized has let him know exactly how close we are.

Over the mountains, the nuclear cloud has dissipated
to the point that it looks like a dying forest fire. The blast zone
is probably still hot, littered with smoldering plants and
smoldering bodies. (The ones I can’t stop thinking about are those
who may have been badly burned by the heat flash of the blast.
Other than UNMAC, no one has facilities to deal with that kind of
trauma. They’ll die slow, miserable deaths. Followed by an even
larger number with critical radiation poisoning.)

(Will Earthside try to help them? I expect they’ll
make an effort, once the terrible weight of what they’ve done
becomes clear, though it will likely be too late for too many
before they get around to realizing—and admitting—the atrocity
they’ve committed.)

(And how will any such help be received?)

As I try to estimate the fallout spread again, I’m
struck by another wicked irony: With sunset, the wind will blow the
residual contamination right across our path. That means we’ll
either need to stop and wait out the night here, still south of the
projected swath, or make the run and hope we get north of it before
it hits. I’m guessing we’d need to roll more than fifteen klicks
within the next four hours.

I pass this back to the crew through Simmons before
he goes back inside. He looks warily at the radioactive storm, nods
in his helmet and cycles back inside. After ten minutes of
arguments that I didn’t get to (or care to) listen to, Corso gives
the order to make the run.

The grind across the valley is mostly uneventful. The
terrain is overall very flat for great expanses, except for a few
smallish monoliths standing against the wind. It reminds me of a
dried old lakebed blown over with sand, and it’s fairly hard
underfoot (and under tread). But that also makes it less hospitable
to green life. Only the stubbornly tenacious Graingrass and a few
scattered Tealeaf shrubs grip the soil against the twice-daily wind
battering that keeps the exposed hard-packed soil scoured into
hypnotic micro-formations, a chaotic Zen garden that our crushing
treads distinctively scar. (For my own part, I find myself trying
to walk as lightly as possible, avoiding even stepping on the
plants whenever I can manage, even though my lumbering bot
companion can’t help but pulverize them.)

Smith keeps us on a course that holds us to the
lowest elevations and avoids any significant climbing. But the
growth here is indeed barely higher than our drive wheels at best.
The only camouflage it affords is that we may still visually blend
in to the terrain at great distances, assuming the rig’s shadow and
what dust it kicks up don’t mark us an easy target.

I occasionally look back westward, monitoring the
still-dissipating cloud. I find I’ve become sick of brooding on it,
sick of brooding over Earth, shifting my bloodlust back to idle and
ultimately pointless fantasies of what I’ll do to Asmodeus when I
finally catch up to him (when he finally lets me catch up to him).
After a few hours of that, even my most cruel imaginings become
mindless and boring.

Intermittently, I try to enjoy the scenery, try to be
in the moment, just be here and give my mind a break from its
exhausting spinning and stewing. But the thought-train into hate
gets sent spiraling again at the slightest trigger. Unfortunately,
my silent loyal companion is such a trigger by his very
existence.

“Why do you follow me?” I ask pointless questions as
we walk. I’m not sure if he (or she, I still don’t know) can even
understand me. “Do you just need human companionship? Purpose? Do
you think I can help you? Help you
how
? Restore you? Or just
give this existence meaning?

“Why do you keep going?
How
do you keep going?
What is it like to be bundle of raw nerves inside metal, everything
else that was you—body, limbs, your face—cut away?

“Do you wonder how long you’ll live like this, how
long that machine will keep your brain alive? Do you even feel
alive? You must, I suppose, enough to not want me to end you. Or is
that just reflex, instinct?

“And who were you? PK? Zodanga? Or is that unfair,
that I immediately lump you in with an entire group? Who were
you
? Did you have family? Do you still? Did…”

I finally get a reaction, a gesture, as it spins its
broken secondary gun around at me and seems to glare at me with its
sensor head.

“I’m sorry.”

The gun rotates away, as does its eyes.

“I wish you could tell me. If there was someone… If I
could help you, help them…

“If I could just know your name…”

It does something I haven’t seen a Box do before. It
flops itself ahead of me, rotating sections until it stabs its
broken gun cluster into the dirt. Then it uses what’s left of the
aiming system, combined with its section motors, to carve
something. It’s a jerky, almost furious act, and I can feel the
frustration in it. But when it rolls back, I can see a few sloppy,
jagged letters.

KEL

“Pleased to meet you, Kel. And very grateful for your
company.”

The evening wind only reads as mildly hot at our
backs. It fills the valley in front of us with a thin haze of
dust.

The approach to Alchera is open, plains all around
except for the mountain slopes behind it, but even when we risk
getting within a klick, we can’t see anything there. No heat, no
movement, not even any above-ground ruins, even though our recent
satellite maps show signs of foundations and framework.

I also have 3D images of the original colony in my
memory: habs, fabs, storage facilities. I lay the model graphic in
my vision over the empty terrain. Even blasted by a close nuke,
there would be something still standing, even just a few twisted
scraps of structural frame. Nor has the terrain obviously been
built up to bury it as other colonies have done to hide. Did
Asmodeus strip it all, down to and including the foundations? And
if so, how did Orbit not see that?

The Sons of Liberty said they hadn’t seen anyone come
from that way in several decades, but that means there
were
survivors at one point. The distance between the two colonies would
have been hard to cross on foot with only canisters. There is a
feed line in proximity to both sites, but nothing in between across
the open valley, no oasis of precious air, fuel and water for the
intrepid traveler.

Alchera was an ESA conglomerate facility, dedicated
to macro-tech manufacturing, a support industry for the other
colonies, and for the planned expansion further into Coprates. Even
the meaning of the name—from the native Australian for their
concept of the Dreamtime—implies a place of ideas and creation.

They did no risky nanotech or biotech research that
I’m aware of. But they were still burned. I remember studying the
old pre-Bang maps against the newer mapping we culled from the
Lancer. The terrain showed the telltale scarring of an airburst
detonation, almost right over the colony site. And the ETE (when
they were still willing to talk to us about such things) reported
no significant feed line draw over the decades after. But they did
have reason to believe there were survivors who potentially
relocated because the site was so thoroughly compromised.

If so, how far did they get? And are any still
around? It doesn’t sound like the Liberty survivors met them with
open arms. I wish I’d had the time with the local Knights to ask if
they’d met them, perhaps provided assistance as they do, and if
they knew anything of their ultimate fate.

I suppose I could ask the Katar, the Pax or the
Forge, assuming I ever get the chance. But that doesn’t help me to
understand what happened here now. I can only beat myself up for
not gathering better (or much of any) intelligence before throwing
myself into this mission.

I could run ahead and take a look, but I don’t want
to risk getting too far from the ‘Horse, especially if this is some
sort of a trap. On the other hand, bringing the ‘Horse and its
payload in close is probably exactly what the demon wants. Maybe
that’s why we can’t see anything from a distance, nothing to either
confirm or discount his presence. He’s led us here, left the
breadcrumbs. He knows what we’ll do.

And I know I’ll have to give him what he wants.

But that decision gets made for me. Corso gives the
order to roll in close, slow and steady, with Simmons, Horst and
Jenovec manning the turrets.

“
That
is a really big hole,” Smith
proclaims.

We couldn’t see it from a distance. There were no
raised, excavated edges, but it is an excavation, that’s clear. The
ruins of the colony have been dug out, down a good ten to twenty
meters in places, in what resembles an act of
archeology-meets-strip-mining. The roughly clover-shaped pit is
even somewhat terraced to show that it happened in stages, as
Asmodeus’ human, bot or drone workers dug systematically downwards,
rooting out all the structural materials they could cut or rip from
what I’m guessing was an extensive underground facility.

And they did it carefully and artfully so it wouldn’t
be obvious from orbit. I compare the satellite maps to what I’m
seeing up close now, and it’s like Asmodeus took a cue from the
Katar, hiding the dig edges, minimizing shadows, even replacing
where ruins and plants were previously visible with convincing 2-D
paint patterns.

I can see the torn and shattered mouths of several
remaining tunnels exposed in the dig all around the inside of the
wide, shallow pit. I wonder how much is left, how much they had to
leave when Asmodeus pulled out of here.

And he did, as far as we can see. There’s no sign of
him, his ships, his drones. There’s no heat or movement. The tracks
I can see—bots and boots—have been well-dulled by wind.

But this could still be a trap in any of a number of
ways. That’s why I talked Corso into giving me link gear, parking
the ‘Horse fifty meters back away from the edge of the artificial
crater, and letting me get a look down into it for them.

She’s sent Horst out to somehow babysit me. He stands
like a relay halfway between me and the rig, sealed in his H-A
shell. The Box—Kel—stands next to him, at my request and Corso’s
discomfort, but I want to give him whatever protection I can.

I scan the hole with their eyes and mine, but if
there’s anything here waiting for us, it’s certainly well hidden.
It suddenly strikes me that the trap may not be some ambush of
drones, but something more old-school. With all the digging, this
whole place could be laced with explosives. Maybe that’s why he
left some of the tunnels un-stripped.

“Corso! Roll back another twenty-five.
Carefully.”

The ‘Horse begins to slowly grind backwards. And I’m
on a razor’s edge, expecting something to happen. Nothing does. The
treads slow and stop, and everything is quiet again. All I can hear
is the evening winds howling across the pit. But nothing feels
peaceful about this.

Doubt buzzes around my head like some harassing
mosquito, because I know every move I make could have been
predicted. But if he wanted me to park farther away from the pit,
I’d think he would have left some small telltale sign that the
place was rigged. (Or maybe that’s his play: Show me nothing, and
let me sweat out everything it could mean.)

It’s getting dark, making my decision (or indecision)
all the more urgent.

“Ram to Corso, I’m advising you to pick a spot at
least a hundred meters back from the dig, out in the open so you
can cover all approaches. Then wait out the night. We can explore
further in the morning.”

“Are you coming in, or staying outside?” she comes
back after a delay she probably spent deciding whether or not I’m
trying to trick her. She sounds like she’s hoping I’ll take the
second option.

“I’ll stay out here.” But I’m not doing it for
her.

I cycle in long enough to get some supplies, some of
which I could use (water, nutrition bars) and some I really don’t
need (a portable heater and a survival blanket). But asking for the
latter gets me more access to the stores, where I can perform a
little sleight-of-hand.

Corso lets Horst come in and get some rack, but sends
Jenovec out in a shell to keep me company for first watch.

“Keep your eyes open, Specialist,” I tell him when
we’re back outside. “I’m going to take a quick look around. I won’t
go far.”

I start taking a slow, smooth walk around the dig,
keeping a good twenty to thirty meters from the edge, like I’m
daring something to come out of it. Kel follows me, which is what I
want, and when we’re far enough from the ‘Horse so that Jenovec
doesn’t have good eyes on me anymore in the fading light, I stop
Kel and pull what I’ve taken out of the pack I put together when I
was inside.

“It’s only two hundred and fifty rounds,” I tell the
Box as I open the access panel to load its one working gun with
7.62mm micro-explosive caseless. The guns are conveniently
chambered for standard UN rounds rather than some proprietary load,
probably to take advantage of any existing stockpiles, or stealing
from the enemy. “Shoot sparingly. I’ll try to get you more. And
maybe a new barrel for your twenty.” I saw where the spares were
kept when I was in the stores, but concealing a nearly-meter-long
gun barrel enough to walk out and away with is going to be a trick.
That, and I think they’ll notice the replacement. Maybe
circumstances will convince them to just give me what I need to
give Kel back his (her?) teeth.