Chapter 9: “…Our Shadow’s Taller Than Our Soul”
“Your ‘invitation’ was not one I could ignore,” I snarl at her. “But I’m sure you designed it so.”
“Would you like some tea?” Hatsumi Sakura ignores my rage.
I nod cautiously, curious enough to see how she plays this. She gestures to a low table at one side of the chamber. On a flat-top heater near it is a rustic iron tea pot, and a smaller table with a short cylindrical lacquer-ware container, a bowl-sized ceramic cup, a thin spoon, a brush-like whisk, and a folded white cloth.
Seeing her intention, we exchange bows, and I kneel across from her at the table as she deliberately and precisely makes a bowl of powdered tea. She presents it to me with a bow, and I accept it in kind, carefully rotating it 180 degrees before taking a sip and savoring it. The flavor is crisp and has a nutty aftertaste. I use the cloth to wipe the spot I’ve just put my lips to and offer the cup back to her in kind. She smoothly moves her mask to the right (rather than lower or remove it—her own ritual?), accepts the cup, rotates it, and takes her own sip before setting it down and resetting her mask. (I notice she’s wearing gloves over her clawed fingers.) Then we sit formally facing each other. If she appreciates my familiarity with the ceremony, or my acceptance of the gift of it, I certainly can’t read it in her eyes or on her lips.
I suspect she knows what a poor and disrespectful guest I’m being under my lip service to the ritual, because throughout all I can think about is the life she’s taken for no good reason and whatever deceptions she has in play. I had my Mods analyze the tea for toxins and tracers (and found none obvious), and consider what potentially useful materials I may have left for her on the cup. Or perhaps the gesture is a simpler form of manipulation.
I know my best strategy is to sit here quietly, wait until she speaks first to reveal her intent. But she knows she has me in the position of urgency, because she has lives in her hands. (Is she even considering that I have her life and the lives of her Shinobi in my hands? Or is she counting on the fact that I value the lives she holds far more than she values the ones I could take?) So I decide to play what I hope is a less expected move:
“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 pa
y 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?”
She reaches her hand out sideways,
and one of the Shinobi passes her the gift sword I threw back at them, still intact as if one of them managed to catch it after I threw it. She offers it to me again.
“We will take the warheads and deliver them for you. You know my Shinobi have a far better chance of success, and will be able to do so far more accurately. We will destroy the demon’s key assets, eliminate his physical forms all at once. And then, when the demon is reeling from that blow, you and I can move to finish him, together. But first you will take me to your ally, to your friend Belial, and he will remove what has been set to consuming me cell-by-cell, but leave me with your advantages.”
“And what about them?” I ask, nodding up at her prisoners.
“If we are to succeed, the demon must be convinced that we ended their mission, that we tried to take the weapons from them and failed. We will use one of the warheads to destroy the vehicle and this whole site. This is an outcome he expects—you were right in saying he put me in your path, that he knew I would act to intercept you, just as he knows our meeting will likely go badly. So do not give him what he wants, but only convince him that we have.”
It’s a sounder plan that Earthside’s, sounder than mine, but
“But you’ll kill them.” It’s not a question.
“We cannot leave them alive and risk Asmodeus detecting our deceit. You know they are dead either way. Do you think you have any hope of protecting them when Asmodeus decides it’s time for them to die, or worse? Do you think he will not use their suffering and deaths to torment you, and revel in it? They are soldiers. They know their lives were forfeited when they took their oaths of service. Let them fulfill their duty, let them die now for our tactical advantage, and they will die with honor, with dignity; not in vain, in defeat and agony, at the demon’s whim. Or would you give up this chance at victory that I offer you, hand the lives of thousands to the demon’s bloodlust, for no chance at all of saving these six lives?”
This is the second time on this trip that someone’s thrown math in my face, reduced human lives to currency. But Hatsumi Sakura has no right to speak to me of saving lives or any greater good.
The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Page 36
