“This is pretty normal, actually, as things go in Mike Ram’s world,” Rick tries to lighten.
The reunion is painfully bittersweet. These people are not only some of my oldest surviving friends in this world, but also among the very few who were brave enough to accept me after I became this.
“I’m sorry I got you all dragged into this,” I begin poorly. “And I suspect we shouldn’t be getting too friendly.” I nod at the sentry cameras watching us, recording us.
“Fuck ‘em,” Tru defies, proclaiming her dangerous loyalty.
“Nothing we say or do is going to change their opinions of us,” Rick bravely agrees.
“They’re pretty sure we’re under some kind of nanotech mind control they haven’t figured out how to detect,” Anton lets me know how pervasive their paranoia is. “There’s even a theory that we were all tampered with while we were in Hiber. You and Colonel Ava just got extra helpings, and you activated on some kind of preset. And maybe we’re all loaded to turn into what you are at the right moment.”
“These Luddite idiots are afraid of the sand,” Rick digs. But I can still feel his fear.
“They’re not entirely out-of-pocket on that,” I return impulsively, then hope it’ll be taken as a joke. But I see Lisa glare at me. She does know. (And now I feel a profound guilt and sadness that she had to deal with that revelation alone, a prisoner of fearful destructive fools that she couldn’t dare share any of this with.)
I try to let her know how sorry I am with my eyes, but she just turns away. I wonder if she knows just how guilty I am, how I apparently inspired Yod to do the unthinkable.
“At least they’re giving us productive work to do,” Anton tries to soothe this enraging situation.
“Working on the Harvester problem,” Rick clarifies. “And your tech, too, of course. I think it’s a test. I suspect they’re comparing the progress we make against their own, to see if we’re giving honest effort.”
“We’re just doing construction,” Tru deprecates. “They’d probably have us clearing the perimeter, but I think they’re afraid we’d either run off or pass intel to someone hiding in there.” She looks up at the cameras and raises her voice: “Not that we have any intel worth sharing, since we’ve been kept locked out of the communication loop since you bastards landed.”
There’s a tense moment of silence after that, as if my former teammates aren’t sure if guards will be coming to haul them away for that outburst.
“We don’t get much better,” Anton adds after nothing happens, but much quieter than Tru. “They only give us access to what they think we need to work our projects, and everything we do is closely monitored, of course. And we don’t go anywhere they consider critical without an escort.”
“For our own safety,” Rick gives me the official line.
“Sounds like they’ve de-prioritized the ETE,” I say another thing I immediately regret.
“For now,” Rick tells me. “As long as they keep playing nice and stay in their Stations. Asmodeus has been getting the lion’s share of their attention since the Katar attack. After this morning, I’d bet he’s their only priority until he’s dealt with. If he can be dealt with.” And he looks at me like he’s hoping I’ll tell him some good news. I’m afraid I don’t have any.
“But they think we’re all in this together,” I tell them what they’ve probably already heard, “and that the ETE are somehow behind all of it.”
“That’s the UNCORT line,” Rick tries to convince me. “They’re not all that paranoid. I don’t think General Richards buys it.”
“I get the impression he’s not terribly popular because he doesn’t toe the party line.” I look up at the cameras, wonder who’s watching (and who isn’t).
If my friends have heard of any plans to remove Richards, they don’t talk about it here. But I suspect I know the reason he wasn’t in direct command of the Pax mission: He’s losing (or has already lost) Earthside’s trust.
The conversation devolves into small talk, how they’ve been keeping busy, complaining about the new-drop food, making fun of the new-drop repressive morality, grumbling about their lack of practical experience, their piss-poor rushed training. Morales has apparently been having a hell of a time keeping their slick new aircraft in the air, they’re made so sloppily. Even the new-drop pilots would rather fly the restored antiques.
But even such idle chatter makes them look frequently uncomfortable, nervous about openly discussing even the most trivial topics.
While we chat, we have to contend with a number of distractions:
The techs working on Ryan have finished performing surgery on his leg, and have sealed off his couch from the rest of the ward. Now I can hear them having a hushed argument over whether or not to start “treatments”, as one of the medics is concerned that he’ll tear his sutures. The other is more concerned about his infection, and calls up Burns (not one of the on-planet physicians) to get permission to proceed. Burns gives it like he’s been expecting the call, and Ryan’s head and torso are attached to leads while one of the techs carefully restrains him.
As this is happening, the Iso ward gets more crowded as they start bringing in other “patients”, all ushered in stripped naked and made to endure head-to-toe exams before being given something to wear, just like Lyra was. No consideration is given to modesty. I recognize the surviving members of Ryan’s team, and Sharp. The others are probably troopers that somehow got prioritized, unless there are more Iso wards like this in this smallish facility. None of these others are visibly wounded, and none are set up for the same “treatment” that Ryan is. I have to assume these people have been deemed potentially exposed to Asmodeus’ DNA hacking “virus”. Those with conventional wounds or Harvester infections must still be exiled outside.
Ryan’s “treatment” starts, and none of us can ignore his convulsions as he gets current run through him in hopes of killing—or at least slowing—the nanotech that will consume his brain and commandeer his body. His two surviving companions look particularly distressed by the sight, breaking away from their exams to watch through the transparency, now oblivious to their own nudity. The techs run five surges through his body, causing him to arch up off the couch against his restraints, and knocking aside the flimsy half-smock that was preserving his own modesty. More upsetting (to those watching as well as those charged with administering the procedure), he loses bladder control with the third jolt. The medics grumble at the inconvenience and rush to catheterize him, again with no concern at all for modesty or dignity.
I wonder if Ryan is in here because his celebrity pulls priority treatment, or because he has the dubious distinction of being Harvester infected as well as being at-risk of exposure to an engineered nano-virus.
I look to Lyra, who shakes her head to confirm this procedure will do little to forestall his fate. I think about Horton, about what his life will be like, assuming he’s accepted Kali’s “gift”. He’ll have his life, or a kind of life, but he’ll never be able to return to service, to his comrades-in-arms. And that, in turn, makes me think about Jak Straker, also exiled from her surviving people because of what she became.
It takes me a surprising amount of time to get around to realizing the two of them are versions of me and Lisa. I agreed to my conversion, knowing what I was likely buying. Lisa didn’t—she just woke up in her own grave in her current state, after I’d inadvertently passed her the Seed of her alt-world Mods. Neither of us intended or wanted it to happen to her.
But Yod did.
That gets my anger burning fresh: All of this is in Yod’s direct control. He’s either controlling it or allowing it, because he wants the human race to stay just the right degree of afraid, so they won’t repeat a past none of them remember.
“What is it?” Lyra catches me brooding.
“Just thinking about Sergeant Horton,” I downplay.
My friends-turned-hostages decide to give the “patients” in here with us at least some privac
y. Rick and Anton look freshly stoked to get back to their research, now with more lives on the line.
We say our good-byes, and with nothing better to do, I try to settle into one of the couches and consider my best next move.
Lisa watches me from her own cell, trying not to look like she is.
They bring us food, and I get to experience first-hand the bland, bizarre semi-vegetarian diet that Earth has been shipping to Mars.
“The protein source is a combination of soy and farmed maggots,” Lisa unhappily informs me. Despite this, I decide it’s better to eat with my mouth rather than to absorb the nutrients through my fingers, especially sitting here under UNCORT scrutiny. It tastes like vaguely-off tofu and raw shellfish. I think I prefer the Katar’s giant-insect delicacies.
Almost immediately, my Mods detect mildly-radioactive tracer media in the food, probably designed to give UNCORT a look at how my digestive tract works (or maybe to help them track me). I don’t react visibly, but let my nanites break down and neutralize the isotopes.
Lyra’s been brought a flashpad to let her interface with the nano-research team. An alarm has been integrated into the firewall to detect any attempts by me to access it, but she can show me what comes up on her screen.
“Twenty-seven confirmed infected,” she mourns. “That’s just of the ones that came back.” She scrolls through what she’s been fed, then shows me the screen. “This is interesting: Some of the drones that hit us were different than what we’ve seen before. The nanotech was starting to reinforce their skeletons with carbon fiber and steel, and building a secondary motor system to replace the decomposing muscles. They’re slowly being converted into simple bots, all the necessary materials extracted from the body or the immediate environment. If we hadn’t have disabled them all, who knows what they would have constructed? But the changes are so far only being seen in the drones that hit us here, not the ones we’ve checked from the Pax Mountain fight.”
“Is that because Asmodeus had them buried here longer?” Lisa wonders. “He probably planted them in the forest before we blew the crater.”
“No,” I shoot down. “It’s not just gestation time. The Katar had a ‘volunteer’, one of their warriors who was hit and let them study his conversion. He suffered the whole process alive. But his body eventually degraded, decomposed until the muscles wouldn’t function anymore. The module produced the preservative media to keep the tissues viable for a few weeks, but that was it. Upon examination, his body was just rotting flesh and bone. We haven’t seen one build anything more than the control module, not until now. This is new.”
“They can’t be new,” Lisa argues. “Those improved drones were buried almost under our feet. We’ve been watching the site since Lieutenant Straker painted it for us and we blew it to hell from orbit. Then we thought we checked it thoroughly before we built. We pulled wrecked bots and human remains, but no activity has been detected, not until today.”
“The crater and rims were laced with natural caves. Some of them may have survived the blast, or maybe he just used the caves to plant the drone-tubes before they were collapsed by the mass-driver hit,” I guess. I turn my face to the cameras watching. “You need to check, now. Use Ground-Penetrating Radar, look for airspaces or shadows that could be more tubes. The insulation layer that blocked your EMP probably also defeats your signal scan, and the high magnetite content in the rock would make them hard to see clearly.”
No one replies. I can only hope they decide to take my advice seriously, and not instantly discount it in their doubt.
“So those things were here, gestating or whatever, since before Asmodeus buggered out of here, before he really started hitting Katar and Pax with drones, before the siege,” Lisa puts together the likely timeline.
“Either these drones take longer to form, or he was saving them for some reason,” I hypothesize.
“Saving them for us?” she wonders, then specifies: “For the Earth force?”
“He couldn’t know we’d build a base here,” Sharp insists, inserting herself into the conversation from three polycarb panels away.
“He was probably intending to catch you sweeping the site, like he did today at the Pax Keep,” I let her know my prior guess. “But when he saw you start building here, it would have been like Christmas. I’m sure he could barely wait for the perfect moment to spring his trap on you.”
“Catching us as we were crawling home,” Lyra grimly accepts. “Just when we thought we were safe.”
“This Asmodeus…” I hear Ryan rasp from his restraints. He must have come to while we were talking. “Is he really that smart?”
“He was devastating when he was just human, back on Earth,” Lisa remembers. But she never had to face him first-hand. Or see his atrocities up-close.
“I’ve only had one other opponent who was sharper than Ange Appolyon,” I admit. “Thankfully, we wound up on the same side in the end.”
“Was that… Zarovich?” He lets me know he’s done his homework, studied my history, maybe thinking he’d have the opportunity to get me on camera.
I nod, and can’t help but look at Lisa. She killed Zarovich herself. First-hand. Up-close. I think she still feels a little bit bad about that, or bent because I did. All I get now is ice in her dark metallic eyes.
“Zarovich had a moral code of sorts, made him do the right thing in the end,” I defend the most-wanted villain of the early twenty-first century. “Ange—Asmodeus—proudly has none. He’s vicious, sadistic… He does what he does just to prove he can, at least when he isn’t getting off sexually on it. As far as I know, there were only two people in the world he ever remotely cared about…” I let out a sad chuckle. “He died saving one of them.” But that doesn’t make him redeemable.
“But this one… isn’t him,” Ryan’s heard. “The real one died in… twenty-twenty-five… twenty-six…?”
“And that makes him even more dangerous, because he knows that. He knows he’s just a copy, made from preserved DNA and reconstructed memory files.”
“That’s why he has no qualms about cloning himself,” Lyra understands.
“And those clones don’t care about dying,” I relay what I’ve seen. “They just upload themselves to wherever his ‘hub’ or network or whatever is.”
“We need to trace that network,” Lisa gives the obvious conclusion.
“That’s why we were so hot to take the Pax Mountain,” Lyra reminds us. “We didn’t get what we needed from the remains we found in the Stormcloud wreck. We were hoping there’d be a better specimen left at Pax, an intact brain module or other bodily tech.”
“He knew that. He probably knew you’d move to recover the first clone’s remains to examine, and set me up to tell you where you’d find another one,” I confess my unwitting culpability.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Lisa tries to absolve me. “If you’d lied, if you’d told us Asmodeus wasn’t in the Pax caves when we hit it, Command wouldn’t have believed you. We’d have gone in anyway.”
It suddenly galls me that she keeps referring to herself as part of this paranoid intolerant idiots’ brigade, that she can’t let go of a duty that died while we were sleeping.
“Colonel Ram…” Ryan calls out to me. “You… I know you saved my life, carried me out of there… I want to say thank you… But… I’m scared… I’m sc… I don’t want to die, not like this… I know you can save me… save me again…”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him softly, feeling small with everyone’s eyes on me. “I really can’t.”
“I… I don’t care what it takes…” He’s starting to struggle against his bonds. “You… You changed her, Colonel Ava… I don’t care what it takes… If you have to be… intimate… with me, then please… I beg you… please…”
“It really doesn’t work that way.” I don’t tell him how it will work: If I was able to give him the last Seed I’m carrying, if somehow it would accept him, he wouldn’t be him anymore. He’d be consumed
, just like the Harvester infection is going to consume him.
“Please… I have influence… I can help you… Make them see that you’re good… I’ll do anything you want me to do…”
He’s starting to rave, to panic as he’s realizing his fate. Thankfully, the couch recognizes his elevated vitals and knocks him down with a sedative.
“Why won’t you help him?!” Ryan’s female aide pounds her fist on the transparency and continues making his plea for him, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Why won’t you help us?!”
“He can’t,” Sharp tells her firmly. She nods up at the cameras. “They won’t let him.”
The aide slides down the barrier and curls up on the floor, sobbing.
Lyra settles into her work, reviewing the data being collected from the recovered Harvesters, as well as any signals that her equipment was able to pick up and record during the fight. (Unfortunately, my presence flooded her gear with anomalous noise, making it harder to track any command signals.) I remind her that the drones can run effectively on preset algorithms, so may not have needed any command signals, but she smartly argues that the various stages of the attack were too well-timed. Asmodeus must have had eyes on the battle from start to finish, and I’m sure—no matter how well he’d pre-programmed the attack—he wouldn’t have been able to resist running the drones himself when he saw how the action was proceeding.
“So either he was on some high-ground overlooking both the Pax site and here, or he hacked your satellites,” I assume easily. And that means he was watching me the whole time as well. I reflexively beat myself up thinking that if I’d have just looked in the right direction I would have seen him, but I know he was probably using nano-cams…
“Scan the west end of the Spine Range,” I tell the sentry cameras. “He may have planted micro-cameras to watch the action.” But as I say it, I realize he’d likely have set them to disintegrate as soon as the battle was done. (Unless he’s still watching us.)
Not relying on our watchers to pass along my advice, Lyra sends it directly to Anton, who’s been working on how Asmodeus hacked his video through to Earth.
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 17
