He plays the video of my argument with Kali, when I comprehended what she’d done, and how she defended it. Then he shows her seducing Horton.
“Sergeant Horton is MIA,” Burns adds to the list of crimes. “I suspect I know what’s become of him. But this proves: You can convert others at will.”
“If you were paying attention, Kali used ETE technology, which is much simpler than ours. But you still don’t want it swimming around in your righteously pure bodies.”
“And that’s odd, Colonel, because we were told that ETE tech was also impossible to extract. Yet apparently the Shinkyo have had some success.”
“Then you should be talking to them, since they’ve been so ‘compliant’. While you’re at it, don’t forget to ask about the side-effects.” I flash on images of Tetsuo, turned into a walking metal sculpture, dying slowly and painfully in service to his Daimyo.
“The Shinkyo insist that was a rogue element that has been marginalized,” he regurgitates the bullshit they sold him in exchange for their “surrender”.
“Under Hatsumi Sakura, sister of the current Daimyo of record,” I subtly identify who’s the real leader.
“And their whereabouts remain unknown,” Burns shuts down.
I notice Lisa glaring at me. She’s definitely not happy with the news of what Kali has done, and is looking at me like almost everyone else has been, as if that’s somehow my fault.
“In any case, there’s nothing that we have that you want,” I redirect back to the original subject. Then accuse: “Unless UNCORT is making exceptions. Again.”
“That was also a rogue element,” he disavows the experiments secretly conducted on the locals when the rest of Earth believed that there were no survivors here. “We have investigated and dealt with the guilty parties.”
“You’ve used a convenient excuse to eliminate inconvenient opposition,” I impulsively reword, now openly accusing, though I’m assuming based on what little I’ve seen of the new Earth World Government. Burns doesn’t respond. Rick and Ryder look extremely uncomfortable.
“Staley to Colonel Burns,” I hear Anton thankfully interrupt.
“Go ahead,” he sounds dour. I’ve gotten to him, or at least frustrated the mission he’s under pressure to complete.
“I think we’ve got him, sir…”
It sinks in slowly: I’m the only one hearing this. The med screens and Lyra’s card have all gone back to what they were running, and no one else seems to be reacting to this new conversation.
“We’ve triangulated the command signals we were able to pick up with the source of the uplink hack,” Anton reports. “It came from the east, piggy-backed on the atmosphere net projectors to make it harder to pinpoint.”
Anton feeds him estimations, several possible points of origin, all well past Katar, into the eastern part of the Vajra. I see them in my head.
“Is it coming from one of the far colony sites?” he asks. Liberty, Alchera and Iving are out that way, all still unknown quantities, though the Katar have reported encounters with one group that still has firearms.
“We can’t be certain, Colonel. There was too much interference.”
No. That’s not it. Asmodeus wanted them to track those signals. He wants them to go chasing after him, spread themselves even thinner.
I don’t dare speak up, knowing I’d be accused of hacking into the conversation.
Dee? I ask as discreetly as I can.
Doctor Staley, actually, Dee answers in the back of my mind. He’s taking a hell of a risk, but he figures you need to know. Just don’t blow it for him.
I’m going to need to leave, I tell him.
Working on it. I know you’re not very good at it, but try to be patient.
Oblivious to my internal conversation, Ryder produces some sample cups.
“Any chance I can get you to fill these, Colonel?”
“Sorry, Doc. My Mods are pretty efficient with the resources. I don’t have to eliminate unless I really gorge myself. I suppose I could pee if I maxed out my hydration capacities, but you wouldn’t get anything different than anybody else’s healthy urine, maybe less.”
She leaves the containers for me, hoping I manage to be productive. Then she proceeds to give Lyra a cursory checkup, thankfully without having her undress.
“How long is the quarantine period?” I ask idly. “For her, I mean.”
“Two more days,” Ryder lets us know. “Then we run her DNA again, cell test for the nano-virus or any sign of DNA replacement.” She nods at the “patients” in the far ward. “We’ll probably release them then, assuming the tests are clean. And the troopers we’re holding outside.”
“And her?” I catch that she didn’t include Lyra in that projection. Ryder doesn’t answer, doesn’t look me in the eye. Rick does. He looks dour, disgusted.
I feel a sinking in my gut.
Lyra’s picked up on it. Her face screws up with apprehension, but she knows better than to ask certain questions with Earthside’s cameras on us.
As Ryder collects her gear and prepares to cycle out, she finally does look back at both of us for an instant, and I’m glad Lyra happened to be turned away at that moment: Ryder looks like she’s got a terminal diagnosis to give, and she has orders to keep her “patient” in the dark. But the gist is obvious enough:
Lyra’s being kept in here with me as a guinea pig. Earthside is probably hoping I do infect her, preferably with something lethal, because she’s inconvenient, embarrassing; because of what she knows about UNCORT’s “rogue” projects, information that I’m sure has never been part of any honest, open investigation. And if that doesn’t happen, they’ll probably keep trying to expose her to whatever they can get their hands on (and they already have their hands on Harvester seeds and possibly a viable sample of Asmodeus’ DNA hacking agent). It’s for the “greater good”, after all.
That means I have to get her out of here, too.
Patience, Dee tries to soothe.
Another day of boredom and aggravating sexual frustration in a clear plastic cell passes with the usual bland, barely-palatable food and pointless exams. Lisa tries to keep me from brooding myself into doing something stupid by catching me up on the months that have passed since I got her “killed” and fled Melas Two, but the topics stay fairly trivial. I expect this isn’t just about the constant monitoring, as she quickly deflects any questions about how she’s been treated, other than to say that they’ve let her out of containment, let her “consult” on various missions and intel, with “safety precautions” taken.
If we’re talking about this when Rick or Ryder make their rounds, I can see in their eyes the disgust and anger for what they know about what was done to her: Anton let me know they were abusing her months ago; experimenting on her freely, invasively; and that their “tests” included vivisection and even sexual assault.
I would take her from this place in an instant, but I know she wouldn’t go, she’d fight me, tethered to her now pointless and self-destructive sense of duty. I remember what Yod said about her, what she represented to him: Selflessness. Service to others. But there are limits. There need to be limits.
I also remember more than one of my Modded cohorts wondering why we weren’t on Chang’s side, because driving these twisted dangerous fucks the hell off the planet seems like the righteous course more and more every day. It was Chang’s methods more than his intention that kept that from happening (and now he has to be doubting that either of those was his at all, having supposedly taken Yod’s “offer” to play the role of the scary villain in a moment of absolute despair, mind and memory altered accordingly). Now that Asmodeus has taken over that role, that door is well-closed.
If I would have known, if I could have gotten to Chang earlier, maybe we could have worked together, eliminated Asmodeus, taken a saner course, and we wouldn’t now be stuck between two devastating threats.
And here I am, beating myself up again over things I can’t change. I suppose
it’s a marginally better use of time than spinning Mod-induced bad thoughts that involve Lyra naked.
Something interesting, Dee thankfully invades my brain.
I get fed decrypted transmissions between Burns and Jackson, vague and minimal, but referring to the status of something called the “Warhorse”. Dee sends me a set of images, specs of an armored ground vehicle, about twelve meters long and three high and wide, all angular plates like it’s designed for stealth as well as impact deflection. It rides on four caterpillar treads, and features a base-sized 20mm gun and launcher turret on top, paired with two smaller chain gun turrets. Its purpose seems similar to the Leviathan Long Range Recon vehicle, but it’s significantly smaller and lower to the ground. There are references to “arming” and “camo upgrades”.
New drop, Dee feeds me. Designed anticipating hostile encounters with the locals. Three units were sent on the latest shipment, but the build was so shoddy that only one is still running after they were dropped from orbit. Priority is to get it here from Melas Two. Everything on it is old-tech, hack-proof—they built it after you showed up converted and showed them you could get into their networked systems.
They’re going after Asmodeus, I easily figure.
Armor and weaponry should be able to deal with Harvester attacks, small arms, Dee allows.
But not Asmodeus. This thing is big and stupid and slow. And these people are idiots.
They’re counting on its lower profile and masking to hide it in the local growth, Dee gives their poor excuse for strategy.
Assuming it doesn’t move, I criticize. What’s the mission?
Seek and destroy. Dee flashes me more on the “upgrades”. They’ve armed it with four nuclear torpedos, four kiloton yield.
Shit.
They’re basically handing him four nukes, I’m certain. And while Earthside deserves that humiliation, the people on this planet don’t deserve what he’ll do with those warheads.
We need to take it from them first, I decide.
Working on it, Dee tells me that he’s ahead of the game. As usual. Patience.
I’m brooding over this new stupidity—and helplessly waiting for Dee to get around to busting me out of here—when I finally get graced by a call from Richards. They make me watch it on one of the terminal screens out in the gallery, through the layered transparency, like he needs the extra barrier between me and his on-screen image.
“I’m sorry for this, Colonel,” he opens, sounding reasonably sincere. “But you understand. Given recent events, recent discoveries, we need to take extra precautions.”
“The one you need to be taking precautions against is out there, not in here,” I toss back what I’m sure he fully understands. (I do it for the record, for those that will see this, not to slap him when he’s already on shit ground.)
“There’s no way we can be sure of that,” he admits regretfully. “Not even Colonel Ava’s extraordinary cooperation and compliance is adequate assurance.”
(You raped and tortured her, you pieces of shit, and I should skin every one of you alive for it… I need to choke that down, not say it, not show it.)
“So we get to sit in here and enjoy the hospitality while your field commanders get your people killed trying to fight someone who hasn’t killed you all yet only because watching the stupid shit you do amuses him.” I should have pulled that, censored myself, but I’m just too pissed and stir-crazy. Blame it on the unnaturally-elevated testosterone. “I’m sorry, General. I know you’re doing the best you can with what you have to work with. But what Asmodeus did to you two days ago is just him saying hello. He’s not running. He’s not hiding. He’s taunting you. Baiting you.”
“I’m well aware of that, Colonel. But I’m short on options. And assets.”
“But not short enough to make a deal with the devil, as it were,” I partially accept. “And what happens when you finally realize Asmodeus is not an enemy you can defeat, not with anything you’ve got?”
“We’re not giving up on that yet, Colonel. I’m sorry.”
Something odd about the way he said that, like he’s apologizing to me personally.
“I come from a world where people like me, people who had the full resources of our much more advanced technology, tried to defeat our product fail safes. To restore our mortality. To give us back death and vulnerability and human limitations. They all failed.”
“We can’t take your word for that. You understand.”
Again, it sounds like he’s trying to tell me something without telling me something.
I look at Lisa, who looks deeply worried, but not for herself. And slowly, my boredom and hormone addled mind puts it together: They plan to figure out how to kill us. And they plan to use Lisa and I as test subjects.
I think they’ll find I don’t have the same sense of duty that Lisa does.
“I do understand, General,” I give him back. “And I’m sorry. I really did try to help.”
On Day Three, they make good on their word and release Sharp and the others in the ward, having decided that they’re free of any infection or other tampering. Ryder also lets me know that they’ve been releasing the troopers in the external shelters back to duty, except for the ones who were Harvester infected, and those they’re keeping in induced comas, like Ryan.
And that gives us fewer witnesses in here, which is what Dee was apparently waiting for.
After shift change, there’s only one tech left in the gallery for the night, zoning out as he watches our unchanging telemetry. He starts to look fuzzier, tries to shake the drowsiness out of his eyes. His movements get sloppy. Then he tries to get up. He makes it two steps before he hits the floor. Dee thinned out the oxygen in the section, silenced the alarms.
Time, he tells me in my head, and apparently Lisa’s too, as she wakes up and sits up on her couch, confused.
“We’re leaving,” I tell her quickly. I look up at the sentry cameras. The lights are still on, but I know Dee’s feeding them false footage. They expected any hacking attempts to come from us, not from outside the Iso ward.
The airlocks to our adjacent cells unlock.
“No,” Lisa insists. “I can’t.” At least she doesn’t tell me I can’t. But
“They’re going to use us as test subjects. To figure out ways to kill us. Her, too,” I indicate Lyra, who’s waking up at the sound of our hushed argument.
“One of us needs to stay,” Lisa insists.
“Why?” I can’t understand.
“Because someone who knows what the fuck she’s doing may need to take command of this place,” she surprises me. Has she been working out a separate plan with Dee?
Fuck.
“We’re going,” I tell Lyra. “You’re in danger. Everybody’s in danger. We need to go.”
She gets her feet on the floor, gestures to the thin excuse for a garment she’s wearing. Unlike me, she’ll need surface gear.
Corridor, Dee hints. Containment boxes.
“Just come on. Now.”
As promised, we find containment boxes out in the corridor, where they had Lyra strip. They contain Lyra’s L-A uniform and surface gear, and her rifle. I turn my back so she can get changed. In another box, I find my knife, pistol and gun belt. Without proximity to my body or another source of the necessary building blocks, the magazines haven’t generated new ammo yet. But Dee has been thoughtful enough to unlock the armory cabinet, and I help myself to a bundle of ICW magazines to get the process rolling.
With no one in sight, and access cleared through the external airlock, we stop and “requisition” a cold oversuit for Lyra, as well as a pack-sized portable shelter, to protect her from the freezing night. And rations and water.
Then we let ourselves out and sneak away like thieves, across the plateau, down the crater slope and across the cleared zone into the forest beyond the perimeter.
We leave tracks going north-northeast, like we’re headed back toward the Pax Keep, but turn east for the Spine Range
after a few hundred meters.
After weaving our way through four klicks of forest like something is chasing us, we climb up the foothills, just high enough to give us a view of the place we just fled, but low enough to still have the concealment of the growth. I find a place out of sight-line in the rocks and help Lyra set up and inflate the shelter, then cover it with plants to keep it from being easily seen from orbit.
“You should come inside,” she offers. The shelter is barely big enough for two bodies to wedge into.
“Someone needs to keep watch,” I excuse. “I don’t need to sleep like you do,” I lie. She seems to know it, but does what I ask.
Then I wait for sunrise, alone on a rock, for the shit to hit.
If alarms are sounding, they aren’t projected outside. In fact, I don’t see any unusual activity at all, but I expect even Burns is too smart to send boots out looking for me (us).
He also hasn’t re-activated the uplink to send a report to orbit, either too embarrassed that I simply walked out through whatever precautions he’d taken or afraid Asmodeus is waiting to send another “documentary” to Earth. I can only imagine what his last show might have stirred up back “home”, but I’m sure, in this age of righteousness and compliance, the kickback isn’t remotely what it would have been in my time.
(“My time”? Even thinking those words leaves me feeling lost. Which time am I referring to? The one where I became this, or the one Yod created where I didn’t, then I did?)
But I don’t really care about any of that right now. I care about Lisa, and what they might try to do to her because of my necessary exit (what she might let them do to her).
As the sun rises beyond the eastern tip of the Range, Lyra crawls out of her shelter, bundled in her cold suit, and joins me where I’m hunkered in the ice-frosted rocks. That she needs binoculars to see the base is something I find endearing, something we immortals have lost. We’ve taken all of our tools and shoved them into ourselves. (I’m sure if Matthew was here, he’d make some crack about Inspector Gadget, and ask me where I keep my bottle opener.)
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 19
