The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming (55 page)

Selfish in my own rage, I pull the spearhead out of
my chest, draw my blade and charge at Asmodeus, leaping over a
foundation wall, aiming to intercept. He limbos backward to avoid
my cut, and sweeps his spear into my legs as I land. I stumble to
get my footing back and he takes a swing at my head. I block his
weapon and counter-cut at his hands. He parries me and thrusts at
my face, going for the eyes, giving me a bloody grin through a torn
lip with broken teeth that are already reforming. I grab his spear
shaft with my left hand and chop his right knee before he can free
it with a twist that lays my cheek open to bone.

“See, now, I miss this,” he hisses at me, spitting
blood as his lip knits back together, “even if it
is
pointless.”

I hammer him with a relentless series of cuts,
ignoring the minor jabs he’s able to give back as he blocks me. But
the chest wound his clone gave me is slowing me down, which means
he’s started this game in better shape than I did.

“You never said…” he keeps chattering as we hack and
stab at each other. “Did you like my new toy? It was a design
Fuckhead was working on… never got a chance to try it… I was
thinking of giving it to the Ninjas, but they’re such a bunch of
stick-asses, they’d never do anything really fun wi…”

He gets slammed by a 20mm round in the torso armor,
under his right arm. The blast knocks me back as it throws him
sideways. I see his plate caved halfway into his lung. Kel had
moved into position for the shot while I kept him busy.

Still, he’s recovered enough before I can get up that
he clocks me upside the head with a long, one-handed swing of his
spear, so fast that it cracks the air like a whip. Then he kicks a
cloud of dust in my face.

I expect him to come charging through it, but when I
can see again, he’s up on top of Kel, about to drive his spear down
into his bio-core. But before he can strike, he has to dodge more
of Lyra’s bullets. He gets hit in the left knee, partially dropping
him, but only grins.

I feel him send out a hacking signal through physical
contact, taking control over Kel using the bot command codes as his
tech starts to restore the link systems. He forces the main gun
around at Lyra, and starts pumping explosive shells at her as she
runs to keep from being an easy target. But this takes just enough
of his attention for me to draw my pistol and put my own shell
right into his spine just below the base of his skull.

He flops face-first, paralyzed, sprawled across Kel’s
hull, losing his spear into the green. The command signal stops,
and so does Kel.

I run, jump up on top of Kel, on top of Asmodeus,
pinning him down to finish him off. But then he jerks his head
sideways unnaturally—I can hear his shattered cervical vertebrae
grind. He’s gritting his teeth in pain. And now I can see there’s
no exit wound—even if this clone was as tough as Bly, my shell
should have come out thr…

“Give me a second…” he grunts through clenched,
bloody teeth. His lip has already healed. So have the other wounds
Lyra gave him.

His body comes alive with a violent convulsion, then
he shoves up into me, buys himself enough room to twist around, and
as he does, he connects with the side of my head, first with an
armored backhand, then with a roundhouse as his other hand follows.
Both blows sound (and feel) like a sledge hammer against rock,
stunning, splitting my face open. He’s strong, as strong as I
am.

I block his next blows, try to hold him. He only
grins up at me.

“Hi, sexy. Yup, it’s really me. Well, not
all
of me, of course, but you have to park the vessel someplace,
right?”

I fight the hope that he’s throwing at my feet, that
he was really confidently stupid enough to show up in his primary
body. But I can’t pass up the chance.

I hit him back with everything I’ve got, slam his
head into Kel’s armor, then I focus on his right wrist and shove it
into one of Kel’s mid-edge section wheels, a metal cylinder
serrated with longitudinal “teeth” like a reaming bit, wedging his
hand deep between the wheel and Kel’s armored body. Kel gets the
idea, spins the wheel, dragging Asmodeus’ hand in deeper. I can
hear it start to crush before the wheel jams, and Asmodeus gives me
a satisfying scream. I’m about to hit him again when he kicks me
off of him. But then Kel takes it, rotating sections to throw
Asmodeus under him, then rolls his full weight over Asmodeus,
crushing him into the ground. The sections reverse directions, and
Kel backs over him, before kicking into high speed, rolling the
demon over and over. It looks almost cartoonish, slapstick.

“
Really?
” Asmodeus complains indignantly
between crushings. He finally gets his footing enough on a
flip-over to pull with all he’s got and free his hand. But he
doesn’t get all of it back. The flesh has been ripped off, leaving
him a bloodied skeletal extremity as he falls backwards on his
ass.

“
GOD DAMN FUCKING SHIT THAT HUUUUURTS!!!
” he
howls, looking at his flayed limb. Then he actually manages a weak
smile. “Heh… I look like one of my meat toys…” He wiggles the
fingers, fascinated that he still can.

Star appears then, and tries to nail him to the
ground with his own spear while he’s distracted, but he rolls,
scissors his legs, and sweeps the spear out of her grip. But by the
time he gets back on his feet, Lyra is shooting at him again, and
he has to run to give her a poor target, keeping his head down and
hugging his mangled hand to his chest.

“
Time out!
Time
out
you trigger-happy
bitch!!” he complains like a child. She tags him across the
forehead and in the hip. “
Fuck!!
”

Then Kel blows the ground out from under him.
Impressively, he rolls with it, sets his spear into a guard
position, and starts sending his overrides at Kel again, turning
the 20mm at…

“You didn’t think I just
let
you take that
spear from me?” Star taunts him.

I see him look down at it just a spit second before
it explodes in his hands.

He actually manages to stay on his feet, but both of
his hands are now mangled messes and his face has been shredded by
the blast. I can’t see his eyes through the gore. He’s blind.
Still, he grins at us like this is all fucking hilarious.

I run into him and hack, chopping right across that
madman’s grin, sinking my blade deep into his facial bones just
above his teeth. He twists his face off my blade, tries to say
something I’m sure is supposed to be witty but just comes out as
incoherent. I chop his skull again. And again. He gets his wrecked
left arm up in the way, staggers back. And I can’t help myself: I
kick him in the balls as hard as I can.

The fucker just starts laughing at me, like he’s won
something, like he’s truly enjoying this. I need to contain him,
chop off his fucking limbs and get a call out to Bel, or just leave
him with a nuke shoved up his…

“
MICHAEL!
LOOK OUT!!!
” Star
screams.

I look up in time to see the wave coming at me, the
pure blackness, knocking aside the growth like a storm, like a
flood, like an avalanche. Then it hits me, sends me flying through
the air, through the brush, bouncing over the foundations. But then
it leaves me, lets me go. It starts to shrink. Condense. Swirl.

I hear Asmodeus screaming, his cries gurgling out
through his mutilated face, but I can’t see him. He’s
inside
the black storm. It spins around him like a dust devil, continuing
to shrink, to solidify, until it assumes a man-shape. The shape has
Asmodeus by the throat. But it isn’t Asmodeus anymore. It’s a
desiccated skeleton wearing his armor. When the black silhouette
finally lets it go, it falls to the ground and shatters apart.

The black melts away then, revealing an underlying
human form, naked: male, short black hair with random blonde
streaks, Asian features—though when he turns to look at me, one of
his eyes doesn’t match, like it’s been spliced from another
body—that eye is blue and looks almost female. I know exactly why
it does.

He smiles a little, seems to remember that he’s
naked, and a plain light gray jumpsuit forms over him.

“Colonel,” Adam Chang greets me.

“What did you…?” Star starts to ask. I step over to
the crumbling bones, reach out, feel…
nothing
.

“What I always wanted to be able to do,” he tells us,
sounding deeply sad. “Funny I should get my wish now, after
everything.”

“Is he…?” I really need to know.

“Completely,” he assures calmly, taking a long, deep
breath. “I isolated him from his network, burned out his
peripherals, then broke down all of his nanotech, consuming his
organics in the process. I did the same to Fohat. There’s nothing
viable left. Nothing to come back. It’s the least I can do, I
suppose, for my part in this.”

“You weren’t exactly yourself at the time,” I try to
absolve him.

“I still had consciousness. I still had free will, or
what felt like it. I still remember everything I did. And it felt
like I did it by my own choice.”

“How…?” Star still can’t wrap her head around what
she’s seen.

I realize Lyra’s circling him, keeping her pistols
pointed at his face. And I know it’s not because she isn’t willing
to accept. It’s because she isn’t able to
forgive
. He gives
her a bitter, tortured, guilty thin smile—facing one more sin he
can never atone for—then answers Star:

“Just like you—and he…” He nods down at Asmodeus’
ashes. “…learned some tricks from me and Fohat, I guess I learned
some new tricks from Yod. Or, more likely, he gave them to me.”

He turns and walks over to Kel, holds out his hand
like he’s trying to approach a frightened animal. Kel does shift
nervously, recognizing his former master. But then he lets Chang
touch him, lay hands on his armored sections.

“Some other good I can do, while I’m at it…”

Before I can react, Kel is swallowed in blackness,
emanating in a flash from Chang’s hands. The massive cube of the
bot shifts, shudders. I hear metal complain, then snap, crush. I
step forward to stop it (no idea how or if I even could), but Star
grabs my arm, holds me back. Lyra looks like she isn’t sure if she
should shoot or not, but doesn’t.

The blackness starts to compress, as if compacting
Kel, steadily swirling from a thrashing mass into a neatly fluid
ball much smaller than the bot. After nearly a full minute of this,
the blackness withdraws. Where the bot was is another naked human
form, curled fetal on the ground, with long ruddy hair. It’s a
girl, a wire-lean young woman. She looks up tentatively. Her
face—her skin—is deeply tanned, and she has big, dark eyes.

Chang offers his hand, helps her stand, shivering.
Then he waves his hands over her shoulders, and a black cloak
covers her as if he put it on her. It changes into a thick, warm
robe, complete with matching boots. She falls into his arms like
she’s forgotten how to stand. Then she starts weeping into his
shoulders, looking at her own hands, not believing that she’s
seeing them. Finally, still shaking, she looks at me, and smiles
shyly through her tears.

“Kelaryn Cortez-King of Zodanga,” Chang names her,
then apologizes. “Sorry I couldn’t re-create your ink.”

He helps her stand on her own. She gives me a little
bow of greeting, still sobbing. The joy of the moment is
agonizing.

“And you just made her a new body, just like that?”
Lyra isn’t buying, confronting the same monster she saw murder her
family. (At least she’s lowered he weapons.) “Regenerated her in
seconds?”

Chang shakes his head, looking small, inadequate,
unworthy.

“No,” he apologizes. “I just spun her an organic
synthetic analog based on her DNA. The body will function like a
human body, preserve her CNS, process oxygen and water and food
nutrition, eliminate, simulate all senses, respond to her motor
nerves. The design represents the height of our lost prosthetic and
android science. But it isn’t a human body. It won’t show age, and
if damaged will require mechanical repair. But I hope it will
suffice until I can clone her a true body.”

“I saw… At the Barrow… the shells of the two Bug
bots…” I remember.

“Snyder Sanchez and Dakota Ellis,” he names them. “I
have given them analog bodies like this and returned them to their
families. Or what family I could save.”

“What you did at Industry,” I also remember.

“I cannot restore the dead.” He very pointedly looks
at Lyra. “But I was able to get the living out of harm’s way, get
them to a safe place. Safer place. Maybe I’ll get a chance to show
you, one day.”

Lyra’s still glaring at him, unimpressed, and I
expect eager to test her own new body against whatever he’s become,
despite what he’s just shown us.

“I know who you are, girl,” he confesses. “And I’m
sorry for what I took from you, for whatever nothing that’s worth.
I only saw monsters doing monstrous things. I did not pause to
consider why they made those choices, could not imagine that they
could love and be loved. I could say I was not myself at the time,
but that would be a lie.”

“So this is you doing penance?” Star questions,
falling in to stand at Lyra’s side, also clearly not ready to
consider forgiveness.

“Just doing what’s right,” he mutters pathetically.
Then he looks over my shoulder and accuses: “Somebody has to.”

I turn to see what or who he’s accusing. Yod is
standing there on the blood-soaked ground, in his Old Doc
avatar.

“So is he your agent, now, doing what you can’t
without showing your hand?” I accuse (though I can’t say I’m
against the choice).

He shrugs with that lazy smile he likes to wear.

“And all these people had to die, just to keep it
convincing?” Now I’m getting angry.