The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (48 page)

“Why has Asmodeus put you in my path?”

I think I see the slightest sign of a smile in what
little of her face she leaves exposed.

“I have put
myself
in your path, my lord,” she
says with calm confidence.

“No, you haven’t,” I correct her firmly. “You just
think you have. The demon has played several steps ahead of even
you.”

Her body language very subtly sinks inside her robes,
but it isn’t shock or denial I feel from her.

“He has. And I have allowed it. The gamble was too
tempting.”

“He offered you technology,” I’m sure.

“He offered an advantage, one I felt I could not
afford to refuse,” she tells me as if I’m her confidant now. “He
had a new delivery system for his Harvester devices.”

She pulls something very small out of her kimono and
sets it on the table with her left hand. It looks like a winged
insect, less than half-a-centimeter in body length and not much
wider in wingspan. But it
is
mechanical. A micro-bot. And
has a prominent stinger.

“We helped him mass-manufacture and then place
them.”

“At Melas Two,” I guess, remembering the vague
message that I may or may not have dreamed. She nods. I feel
flushed, see red. For an instant, I actually consider reaching
across the table and sucking the life out of her, just to teach her
the price of such “advantages”. But there’s something else: I sense
regret, maybe even honest regret. And… fear?

“The devices were intended to mass-infect first the
civilian charges of the UN presence on Mars, and then infiltrate
the base to endanger their personnel, paralyzing their most
significant asset on the surface and pressuring them into
desperation.”

She’s talking assets and tactics like we’re not
talking about hundreds of lives she may have condemned to horrible
deaths. I can barely sit here in my own skin. But I play the game,
play along, because I need her to tell me more.

“For a cure,” I follow her logic like I almost agree
with it, “which you would then conveniently provide them.” I think
it through like she would, like Asmodeus would: detached,
calculating, devoid of empathy. “Earthside wouldn’t trust such a
gift from you directly, but you would present it because your own
people were endangered, and it would be used on them first to prove
it ‘safe’.”

She doesn’t confirm or deny.

“You put hundreds of your own people at risk,” I
condemn selectively, like I don’t care about all the others at
Melas Two, like I don’t want to fucking rip that polite inscrutable
mask-hidden smile off of her face, face and all.

“We
had
a working countermeasure,” she defends
dully. “A nano-agent that would clear the Harvester infection and
then de-activate. It was our own design,
not
his.”

“But I expect he tampered with your cure, or modified
his weapon. It would only
appear
effective. It would then do
something else to its victims, something more difficult to detect.
And more insidious.”

Now I feel her tense. She’s angry, but not at me. And
I realize my Dee/Yod “dream” was true.
It’s already done.
The micro-bot vector
was
unleashed on Melas Two and its
refugee charges. Two days ago.

I feel numb. My guts drop through the floor. I can
barely hide my shaking. Whatever the damage, whatever lives have
been lost, it’s
done
. And all while I’ve been babysitting a
truckload of nukes on a slow grind to nowhere, to no good purpose.
I kept my eyes focused on that sick fuck, and he used her stupid
sociopathic lust for power to hit me from behind, to kill friends
and strangers and wipe their blood on me.

“He’s been refining his technology,” the part of me
that can stay detached, that can still pretend, tells her what she
probably already knows, “developing nano-devices to influence
behavior. Or to alter DNA.”

She sits perfectly still for a few moments, staring
at me through her lenses. Something’s wrong. Something about that
got to her. She looks like she’s been stabbed but doesn’t want to
show it. Then she smoothly reaches up and pulls away her
goggles.

Her eyes… they’re
reptilian
: golden irises
fill up her eye sockets. Her pupils are oval semi-slits.

She jerks her mask away, starting to lose the stoic
façade. The right corner of her mouth initially looks scarred,
puckered, but then I realize I’m looking at
scales
. She tugs
off her gloves and her right hand pulls her kimono down off her
right shoulder. Her arm and that hand have also begun to take on an
alligator-like texture, turning greenish-brown in patches in stark
contrast to her ivory skin.

“He kept calling me ‘dragon lady’.” Her voice is
distant, absent. “I thought it an idle insult.”

“It’s a technological virus,” I tell her something
else she’s probably figured out, but not to be helpful. I want her
to know how fucked she is, even if she already does. “It goes from
cell-to-cell, altering the DNA. He’d been using it to make clones
of himself.”

But this… A reptile? I’m almost amused. But where did
he get the DNA, or the code?

Then I remember, like ice water poured down my spine
on top of everything else: The Pax preserved an extensive library
of DNA, a bestiary—animals, insects, plants—brought from Earth for
research and to provide fauna for a terraformed Mars. Some were
still in their Earth-original state, but several had been adapted
to the greening environment, like their livestock and the insects
that helped manage the forest.

And now he has it all. That’s why he took the Keep.
It wasn’t just about the real estate or the opportunity for
slaughter.

“It’s resisting all of our attempts to defeat it,”
she admits, sounding like she’s giving her own terminal diagnosis.
But that’s not it—I know she has little fear for her own death.
There’s something more.

Cruelly, I wait for her to tell me what she’s really
afraid of.

“The risk was mine. The humiliation mine. But he will
not let me pay the price for it…” Her claws come up, and she makes
deep slices in the pale skin of her chest, just above her left
breast. I watch the wounds open, gape to expose the muscle
underneath, then close themselves. “My life is no longer in my own
hands.”

I lunge across the table, clamp my hand onto the side
of her neck. Her own hand comes up to grasp my wrist, and I can
feel her claws cut into my armor. Her other hand goes for my
throat, my face. She’s much stronger and faster than she used to
be, but still not in my league. I catch her wrist and hold it while
I work. She finally realizes what I’m doing and lets me.

“The technology is an inferior version of mine, of
his,” I tell her what I’m reading. “It’s similar to what Chang used
to convert Thompson Bly.” That’s probably where he got it from. So
I give her the “good” news. “You’re not fully immortal. If your
brain is destroyed, so will you be. But your body may still
regenerate, a blank slate.”

“An animal. An abomination,” she curses. “As I will
be forever remembered.”

I almost feel for her shame, her loss of honor and
dignity. I release her more gently than I seized her. She doesn’t
let go of my wrist.

“Contagious?” she asks, sounding honestly
concerned.

I shrug. “We’re not sure what vector he’s using. But
I am sure he’s developing new ones as we speak. What you have
inside you is contained in your tissues, your fluids.”

“Then you are the only one I can ever touch…” She
goes uncharacteristically soft, vulnerable. “…for as long as I
have.”

I know this is just more manipulation, a pathetic use
of her feminine wiles, and it pisses me off. I actually chuckle.
She throws my hand away from her. But she doesn’t back away.

“This—all of it—is exactly what Asmodeus intended,” I
explain my irreverent and insensitive outburst. “He knew this would
make you seek me out, dare to seek me out, despite what you’ve
done.”

And for what, I’m also sure. Does he know about my
remaining Seed? Did he cull that information from Star? Or does he
just expect Sakura to keep me busy stupidly trying to take my tech
to heal herself?

“And will you give me what I seek now?” she
confronts, confirming.

“What you seek will consume and erase you as surely
as what you already have in you,” I remind her needlessly. I’m sure
she’s thought this through endlessly.

“But there is a chance that some of the host will
remain, for a time,” she lets me know she’s done her homework.
“Perhaps enough to influence that being to carry on my fight, to
lead my people, to at the very least avenge me. And if not, then
the result will certainly be preferable to what Asmodeus’ is making
me into. And I will become an ally of yours, to help you in your
fight. In your victory, I will have my revenge, and perhaps my
people will have the hope I have taken from them.”

It’s good speech, but…

“You must know that Asmodeus would be pleased with
either outcome.”

“You will ensure that he is not,” she says like she’s
ordering me.

She stands up, sets aside her sword, and pulls her
kimono open all the way, revealing a lean, muscular body; pale skin
laced with old blade scars. There are more scale patches on her
right leg.

“This is how it is done, is it not?” she challenges
me. “The demon—he kissed my hand like a filthy Western dandy. But
you… You prefer more intimacy…” She steps around the table, moves
in very close as I stand. She dares putting her body almost up
against mine, her face nearly touching my cheek. “…and I know your
technology increases your libido…” Her claws caress my flanks, move
downward.

And I do feel aroused, but not overwhelmingly so.
There isn’t the same maddening drive I felt in proximity to Lyra.
(And Fera before her. And Lisa.)

The Seed isn’t for her. It doesn’t want her.

“Give me this one gift,” she pleads softly,
seductively in my ear. “One warrior to another. Or do it for
yourself, for your own advantage…” Her razor-sharp fingers move
over my groin, up under my skirt armor, teasing.

I take a deep breath, and take a step back away from
her.

“I can’t help you,” I tell her the truth. “Not in the
way you want. But I
can
take you to someone who might be
able to.
After
I deal with Asmodeus.”

It’s not kindness, not mercy. I’m offering a trade
for my people that I’m not really intending to follow through on.
As far as I care, she can live out her extended life in a
containment cell next to Fohat. But she rejects my terms.

“There is no
time
for that!” she bristles,
claws flexing. She hasn’t bothered to close her robes. “My visible
condition has progressed this far in less than one week. It’s
changing me inside as well. I can no longer tolerate cold—it slows
me down, numbs me. I have to stay in humid air or my altered skin
cracks and peels. And I have a hunger for raw flesh, even human
flesh…”

She grimaces, shows me that her teeth are becoming
sharp. (But teeth don’t regenerate cellularly. That tells me that
some of her transformation is cosmetic, nano-surgical. That may
explain how quickly it’s progressing. But what is it turning her
into, exactly?)

She closes her kimono and covers herself with a thick
thermal cloak that’s warmed with a built-in heater. She resets her
mask and goggles, grabs her sword and dashes for the exit. I decide
I should follow her, even though she isn’t speaking to me or
looking at me anymore. In the airlock, she stares at the hatch as
if I’m not beside her as it cycles.

It equalizes and unseals, and she marches quickly
down the tunnel, all the way back out into the pit, out under the
cold night sky. I can see her breath steaming, bleeding out of her
mask.

The nine Shinobi are still where I left them, in a
semi-circle around the tunnel entrance, as if they’re waiting to
stop something from getting out rather than getting in. But there
are more figures out here in the dark now.

“You can see in this light, yes?” she addresses me
without turning to face me. Then she points a clawed finger across
the pit, up on the far crest, nearly a hundred meters away and
twenty-five up. There, I see my crew, the Warhorse crew, kneeling,
bound. Corso. Horst. Lyra. Scheffe. Simmons. Smith. They wear no
masks, so I expect they’re suffering hypoxia, weak, possibly
delirious. There are three more Shinobi with them. The one in the
center draws a long thin straight blade and holds it up as if in
salute.

“Your precious, idiotic, useless ‘mission’,” Sakura
growls back over her shoulder at me. “You know it has no hope of
success. You know he won’t
let
you succeed. The only way
you’ll find him is if he lets you, and that will certainly be on
his terms, which he’s had all the time in the world to plan. And
then he will kill these warriors horribly, without honor or
dignity, and force you to watch. You
know
that. Just like
you know he will never meet you in equal combat. You are wasting
your time. And mine.
Why?
For
them
?” She raises her
voice to the crest. “
Chokuto!
The Major!”

The one with the straight blade drags one of the
kneeling forms to standing. It’s Corso. She wobbles on her feet.
Zooming in, I can see that she’s terrified, raging silently at her
own helplessness, steeling herself…

“The mission was hers, yes?” she finally turns to
face me. “The fool’s orders to drive that big clumsy machine into
an obvious trap?” I don’t know if she gleaned this intel from
interrogation or if she’s had her ears and eyes through UNMAC’s
best efforts at security all this time. (And if she has, did she
share everything she knew with Asmodeus before their falling
out?)

“I don’t understand you,” she softens, as if
pretending to be my friend, pulling her hooded cloaks tighter
around her against the bitter cold of the night. “You know this
‘mission’ is a pathetic gesture by pathetic people. And you know
that the demon is glad of it, because it keeps them
and
you
conveniently distracted while he maneuvers for his decisive
counterstrike. So why do you go along with it? You tell me I have
played myself and my people directly into Asmodeus’ schemes, but
why do you then give him exactly what he wants?”