I take regular soaks in a stone tub Bel made, eat the nutrient blends he concocts and the fresh food Lux brings because he knows that living on liquid gets old fast. And I don’t have the strength of will to protest when Lux shifts to her female form, spontaneously drops her gleaming armor and insists on taking care of me in other ways.
I notice that no one brings me further news of the outside world, of UNMAC or Asmodeus or the stubbornness of the ETE Council. I wile my time in a (relatively) luxurious cave away from the world, soaking, eating, and having idle sex.
In between our “therapy sessions,” Lux tells me the story of her life, from his repressed sexuality before conversion through the experiences of becoming one of the first of the “Trans-Morphic-Gender” and the wild adventures that followed. I find she makes me smile, in a way I haven’t in recent memory (false or otherwise).
For three days I don’t wear my armor or pick up a weapon.
My armor self-repairs even without direct contact—I don’t bother to check on its progress. My sword… I suppose I could make a new one, given a few raw materials for my nanites to work with, but I find myself uninspired.
“It’s too bad your orientation is so tragically unipolar,” Lux pouts one night (or is it afternoon?) after one of our playtimes. I’m growing to suspect her intentions are more selfish than they seem, no matter how attentive and generous she is in matters of pleasure. But then I expect she hasn’t had a lot of time to pursue her own personal needs, since we’ve spent the last several months in almost nonstop battles. In my idle wanderings through the caves, I’ve come across her with Azazel (probably making up to him her time with me), and also with Bel in her male aspect. “I really wish you’d let me be a man with you, just once.”
I don’t humor her with any kind of answer. But I realize I’m using her like a drug. A distraction. Because I don’t care. Or, more accurately, because I don’t want to.
And I keep feeling like I’m back in the Barrow, or whatever illusory version of the Barrow Yod created for me while I was buried under several tons of rock, sucking Harvester corpses to heal. I can’t help but wonder if I’m still there, still buried; and if so, would I be able to tell one of Yod’s illusions from reality? Would I be able to do anything about it?
At least the fucking feels real.
Bel brings me breakfast. And then he offers me his sword—his new sword, the modified Companion Blade that Yod gifted him.
“Take it. Make some good use of it.”
I barely shake my head.
“So what, exactly, has managed to get up your ass?” he challenges me, done with the bedside manner. “I know it’s not Lux—if it was, he’d never stop telling me about it.” Then, more seriously: “I’ve just scanned you. You did get a hell of a mangling, including a good brain squishing, but everything is back to spec now. Why the existential malaise?”
I don’t answer him with words, but I give him an answer: I flash him my memories of my meeting with Jackson. Then I show him my conversation—imagined or otherwise—with Yod (whatever it was, it was real enough to record).
Bel looks unusually pale after he’s had time to process it all.
“So… He actually expects us to be gods to these people?”
“Gods without the worship,” I play with the concept. “Guardian angels. Guides. Teachers. Heroes. Help the helpless. Defend the defenseless.”
“Defeat the feat-less,” he mocks through his stunned devastation.
“He did say you were his conscience.”
“Jiminy Fucking Cricket. I’ll pass, thanks. Do you know what happened to the cricket in the original book? Not the Disney version…”
“Pinocchio killed him with a mallet the first time they met,” I do know.
He offers me the sword again. I don’t take it.
“Earthside leadership may be a bunch of corrupt ignorant fascist fucks, but that describes pretty much every government in the history of shaved apes. Those kids that ate the propaganda and got on those one-way shuttles don’t all deserve to die ugly for Asmodeus’ amusement just because those that sent them might.”
“Do I need to get a mallet?” I tease poorly. But only because it’s struck the right fucking nerve.
“And are we going to leave the locals in the firing line?” he doesn’t give quarter. “Earth is going to march on them, assuming Asmodeus doesn’t kill them all first.”
I take several deep breaths (which also prove I’m pain-free and fully recovered). He offers the Blade again, but I still don’t move to take it.
“Take mine, then,” Bly comes into the dim cavern. Apparently he’s been listening. (I haven’t seen him since we landed here, but I figured he was just disgusted with all of our casual, meaningless fucking, and went to find some better way to waste his immortality.) He draws his weapon in clear frustration, first pointing it at me, then flipping it to offer the hilt, but he’s pointing the tip at his own heart like he expects me to run him through.
“Come on. What’s yer excuse? Or were all those pretty speeches just the wind?” I notice he tends to get his Zodangan accent back when he’s angry. Or happy, but that’s a rarer event. (Of course, the fact that the Mods that Chang gave him significantly changed his speech patterns in the first place has its own deeply disturbing implications.) “I’ve watched all o’ meh own people die, lost meh fucking soul, meh love, meh future… But I’m not hidin’ in a cave. I may’ve failed my own, but I’m not givin’ one more life without a fight. I don’t care if we have to take on the whole of Earth. This isn’t their planet. And it isn’t Asmodeus’, either. Yeh promised me that fuck with a spear up his ass and out the top end.”
I have to give him credit: He gives better speeches than I do. But I don’t even know where to start anymore.
Bly puts his sword away in disgust.
“Yeh know, I’ve read about the old gods of Earth. Yod’s right: Y’all make a fine set. Selfish. Moody. Egos as big as the sky. Happy just teh fuck and eat when the fight’s not fun anymore.” He breathes himself down, but only a bit. Then he tells me: “When I met yeh, I thought I was better than yeh. Thought I was better than all. Captain ‘o Zodanga… Then pretty quick after that I wanted teh kill yeh, oh so very badly, an’ that lasted a good while. Even thought I’d succeeded, once. But here I am now, callin’ yeh goddamn friend. I’d die for yeh if I could, yeh pouty fuck, for what yeh stand for. Stood for... Is it done, then? Are we done?”
I don’t have an answer. I don’t know.
He keeps pushing, pacing now like a caged animal.
“I expect it’s different for me than you… I grew here. Earth was always the enemy, the Unmaker who burned us and left us for dead, so news that they hate us and fear us and plan to hurt us is no fucking shock. But you… You served ‘em. Good soldier. Now they want to burn you, no matter how much you run to save them from Asmodeus and their own infinite stupid. I expect that’s quite frustrating. But try teh see the world from here, through the people that live here, have only lived here.”
He’s right, of course. Absolutely. But…
“But that’s not the whole haul, is it?” he realizes, turning on me. “It’s not just the big guns in the sky or the nukes or the amazing stupidity of Earth-grown mankind… It’s fucking Yod…”
He sees me lock on that, react however involuntarily, betraying the root of my paralysis. He has a chuckle at it, at discovering it.
“You’re all sand-crashed because Mr. Omnipotent let his little story get impossibly fucked and is leaving us to fix it all for him!”
Then he attacks it.
“You of all people know he can’t show his hand in this. Ever. If the Unmakers ever find out about him, even get a hint there’s something like that free in the world, they’ll nuke this whole planet to glass, too stupid to know it won’t do any good. So that’s what we’re for. That’s all we’re for. Fix the mess and take the hate… Fine. I’ll fix his mess if it makes this right, if people get to live and have families an
d keep going.”
I look at Bel. He’s shaken, crushed. He’s probably been feeling as helpless as I am but he’s been counting on me for direction—maybe they all have.
So I give him some:
“Asmodeus had Harvester drones in canisters, metal tubes…” I flash him images from my memory files. “He implied it was a ‘present’ for Earth, for UNMAC. Any idea what he has in mind?”
He flashes me back his own similar images, explaining: “We found a few of those in the rubble of the Pax Keep while we were looking for you. The bodies inside were mostly pulverized from the blasts even if the casing was relatively undamaged. But a few survived intact enough to be dangerous.”
“If they’re meant to be protection, protection from what is the question,” I give him another mystery I’ve been stewing fruitlessly.
“Something he’s anticipating Earth will try?” Bel guesses vaguely.
“Can they be fired?” Bly easily joins the brainstorming, as if his prior chastising of me didn’t happen. “Launched at the enemy? Or dropped like bombs?”
“The landing would do as much damage as the rail-gun blast did, maybe more,” Bel estimates what I’ve already thought about. “They’d be tubes of squished meat, or at least too broken to move.”
“But still infectious,” Bly considers.
“The Earthers are too smart for that,” Bel doesn’t buy. “So is anyone else who’s heard of the threat.”
I have a flash of inspiration. Bel looks at me like my grin must be especially disturbing.
“What?”
“I was thinking about medieval siege tactics… They’d catapult rotting and infected animals into the fortifications, try to spread disease. There might be easier and more efficient ways to spread the Harvester seeds, but if he’s trying to spread fear…”
“The corpse bombs don’t have to work,” Bly follows. “They just have to get ‘em running scared.”
“He definitely understands psychological warfare,” I remind them needlessly.
“But we still don’t have a launching system,” Bel argues. “And as far as we know, he doesn’t have another Stormcloud.”
“But he did have smaller ships,” Bly remembers. “The Flying Crosses that Chang designed. He used them to haul the scrap to the Grave to build the last ‘Cloud. The Katar counted three or four. Straker didn’t see ‘em in the crater before it blew.”
“So where are they?” I focus. “He must have another base somewhere, a physical facility.” And if he does, maybe I’ll find him there—the real him.
“But why leave all the ammo where there’s no gun or bomber?” Bel criticizes. “Why not just make and fill the tubes where you’ve got your delivery system?”
He’s right. Stockpiling the tubes in the Keep makes no sense unless it was supposed to be a stockpile, but Harvesters don’t last indefinitely, even intact with nutrients and oxygen. Pax is where the bodies were, but to use them on another target, he’d have to move them there (and being inside heavy steel cylinders makes that a much harder chore than simply herding drones). Maybe he didn’t know where his target would be yet. Maybe he was waiting for Earthside to land and stage their forces, show him where to hit them.
But why let me walk in, without resistance, and see what he was doing? Why did he tell me it was part of his plan to attack the Earth force?
I have a sick thought, an Asmodeus kind of thought: Maybe the tubes were just for show. He knew I’d come, after all. Maybe he expected I’d report to UNMAC, get them all spun (like we three are now) on a distraction. So
“What’s happening at the Grave?” I change subjects back to what we do know.
“They’ve burned and tractor-crushed a swath all around the crater slope over a hundred meters wide, and they’re still at it,” Bly fills me in, obviously depressed and frustrated by the damage done. He shows me long range images. It looks like the barren hole Asmodeus blasted in the North Blade, only neater, in terms of it being more intentional. It reminds me of the sad desolation of clear-cut forest land on Earth.
“There haven’t been any more attacks on the base that I’ve seen, so they probably believe this is working for them. They found a few charred drones in the burn zones, which I’m sure helped justify the environmental damage. They’re also clearing a path north, heading into the North Blade, which is where they’re still sending their foot patrols, just more carefully now. Harvester hunting. I’ve seen them carry back several bodies, and a few still active in restraints on long poles, so it’s easy to assume they’re studying the tech. If more of their own have gotten infected in the process, they’re not chatty about it on-link. But Dee says they’ve logged three new deaths—two soldiers and one construction tech—no cause listed.”
“Have they tried heading toward Katar again? Or Pax?”
“A few small teams, in-and-out fast, just to get a look and set up remote scanners,” Bly reports. “The locals find ‘em and smash ‘em promptly. So far there’s been no shooting, but there was one tense confrontation with a Katar war party. If the Katar didn’t have the number and terrain advantage, and their command didn’t have weapons control, there would have been a lot of lives lost on both sides. The ‘Maker kids are as jumpy as they are useless.”
He shows me what he saw. It’s infuriating. There are going to be massacres.
“What about the Pax?”
“The Pax have the questionable advantage of a Harvester-occupied no-man’s land between them and the Earth force,” Bel assesses. “But that keeps them separated from the Katar as well. They can’t reinforce each other, or seek each other for refuge, not with an unknown number of drones in the body of the North Blade, not to mention the random trigger-happy Earth Force patrols.”
“Do we know what the Pax losses were from the Keep?” I have to ask. Neither Bel nor Bly seem willing to tell me, but Bel takes a breath and does:
“Too many scattered, so their own leadership—Archer’s in charge now—can’t be sure. But they’ve had encounters with their own, converted. So have the Earth patrols. And there were fourteen infected among the main body of refugees… They took care of it themselves.”
I allow a few seconds to mourn the dead, then press on:
“I’m assuming there’s been no luck with a countermeasure?” I ask without optimism. Bel shakes his head.
“It would take nanobots to fight nanobots… The locals might eventually be willing to accept such a thing, but the Earthers… And if Earth ever finds out that we put nanites in the locals…”
“It would justify their paranoia,” I take it. “They’re already sure that everything good we’ve done is toward some sinister purpose, that we’re working hand-in-hand with Chang and Asmodeus.”
“Chang isn’t a threat,” Bly defends. “Not anymore. He’s different, now.”
“He’s what he was,” Bel clarifies heavily, “before Yod cast him as the villain. Or closer to, depending on what having to play that role has done to him.”
“Earthside doesn’t know that,” I give them the bottom line, “and they wouldn’t care if we could tell them. They wouldn’t believe it.”
“But they would believe that the whole planet is infected by some super malevolent machine intelligence,” Bel grumbles.
“Do we have any idea what Earthside’s next move is?” I need to know. Bel and Bly shake their heads. (I almost expect Dee to suddenly chime in, inside my head, but he doesn’t.) So I decide: “Then I need to find out.”
I get up, head back to my sleeping space.
“Now?” Bel sounds surprised. “It’s the middle of the goddamn night.”
I have to chuckle at that, at myself. I had no idea. I’d lost track, lost all sense of day and night in these caves.
“Watching what Earthside does is the best way to anticipate what Asmodeus will do. Then I need to be ready.”
“Don’t move until your enemy moves, then move first,” Bly recalls the old adage, following behind me.
I strip
off my robes as I go, not caring about modesty. My armor, still piled in a heap on the stone floor where I dropped it days ago, begins to reassemble itself around me as soon as I get to the crypt-like chamber that I’ve wasted too much time hiding in. I look at my helmet, left propped in a niche in the cave wall—the ugly chrome stylized ram’s skull—and shake my head like it can see me. There will be no flash, no theater.
“Sword?” Bel offers again. Bly’s come in with him. And Lux and Azazel.
“No,” I insist. “That’s where I went wrong. A sword is a personal weapon. Up close and personal. That’s the fight Asmodeus wants me to fight, but it’s not the war we’re in.”
I take back my pistol, my gun belt full of regenerating ammo mags, and strap it on.
“Well… that’s… different,” Lux mutters, sounding both confused and disappointed.
I look down at myself. I wasn’t paying attention to getting “dressed”, too focused on getting out of here. My armor is… different. But familiar. It’s lost some of its stylized medieval quality. It’s just plain black plate and mail (in fact more plate and less mail, especially in my arm guards), and instead of a long robe-like surcoat over it, there’s just a simple black tunic. It’s gone tactical, practical, allowing me freer movement and better protection where I’m more likely to need it if people (and former people) are going to be shooting at me. In that sense, it vaguely reminds me of the early laminate body armor I wore when I was with UNACT, on Earth, fighting the Terror War.
“It suits you, Colonel Cap’n.” Bly compliments.
“And what are we doing while you’re walking into the idiots’ den?” Bel calls after me as I head for the cliff-side exit, feeling the night chill on my face for the first time in days.
“What you do,” I tell him. “Watch over the locals. Find a cure they’ll accept.”
“And watch your back in case the ‘Makers decide to shoot you in it,” Bly warns.
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 10
