The thing forms tentacles, lashes out.
I duck one swipe, then block, cut. The sword gets stuck in the “limb”, and everything goes electric. The thing convulses, the limb I’ve cut into seems to lose its fluidity, begins to crumble. It strikes at me with another liquid limb, tries to wrap itself around me, constrict me, but the sword meets it, cuts deep. The first appendage I cut is trying to recover, but it’s losing parts of itself, breaking down into what look like little crystals. It throws its whole body into me, collides with the sword, tries to flow around it. But it’s not immune to the sword’s ability to feed, to draw resources. Everywhere the sword makes contact, the thing goes brittle, begins falling apart. It disengages, circles me, moving like an injured cephalopod.
“Huh…” I hear Asmodeus mutter as he watches.
“You have another problem,” I hear Astarte tell him with casual satisfaction. She nods her head up to the crest of the crater rim. “You got distracted. They’re out.”
“And I expect they’re rather cross with me,” he pretends to pout. He looks up to the top of the crater rim. Three figures appear, looking like they’ve come a long way through exhausting difficulty.
I recognize two from our files: Colonel Ram, in his younger, immortal version—all black armor and robes, long dark hair whipping in the breeze, katana in hand; and Bel, in more reptilian-looking black plate, covered by a blood-red cloak, his long black hair curling up into cosmetic horns at the corners of his hairline.
The third… I think may be Doctor Stilson. I see what may remain of his sapphire blue sealsuit, but so much else has changed. He’s wearing sections of armor over it, not unlike the samurai-style of the Katar I’d just fought. His dark hair is a short-cropped disarray. And the expression on his face—even from here—is all battle-weary rage.
Asmodeus turns to his damaged construct, and jerking his head uphill, orders it: “Go greet our guests.”
The thing goes fluid again, rushes up-slope as a tumbling, thrashing chaos.
Ram lets it get within a handful of meters of him, then draws his big pistol and pumps two rounds into the center of the mass. The shells explode, bursting the monster, staggering it. Stilson pulls something from his belt that I initially assume to be one of his Spheres, but he tosses it into the flailing mass, resulting in another explosion, this one significantly larger.
“I suppose it was more challenging in the tunnels,” Asmodeus sighs, his monster badly shredded, struggling to recover. “Maybe not so much out in the open like…”
There’s a loud bang and he gets slammed in the chest, then knocked off his feet as whatever projectile sunk into his armor explodes. I look uphill. Through the dissipating blast-smoke, Stilson has a rifle on him, having shot through the cover of the explosion. Asmodeus lands and slides in the gravel, tries to get up. Then his lower jaw gets blown halfway off by another shot.
He groans more in frustration than pain, holds his face together as he bleeds into the sand. He waves a hand at his “Boogie,” and it shifts and makes a dash just as Bel is descending on it with his sword, his armor glowing red-hot. It gathers itself together and vanishes past them over the crest. Heading for my friends.
Asmodeus takes the distraction to run and leap into one of the deep sinks. I run to the edge and look down, but see no sign of him. The abyss branches in multiple directions. He’s vanished into a subterranean maze.
I look for Astarte. She’s giving Ram a conspiratorial nod, then she dissolves. She was also a hologram.
The three look at me like they don’t know what to make of me, hesitating.
The wounded but still functionally lethal “swarm” bot is still headed for my friends, as are an unknown number of Boxes and Bugs. Even down in this hole, I can still hear the echoes of gunfire and explosions, far away.
I bound up the slope, past Ram and his companions, leaping over the crest. No time for introductions.
“People are in danger!” I yell as I fly.
I don’t get winded. I don’t get tired. If my energy levels start to flag, I hack at the green as I go, giving the sword something to feed me. Us. I have no time to question. And I realize: I don’t want to, at least not right now. Because right now I feel exhilarated, more alive than I’ve ever felt.
All my fear is gone. I’m free of it. (Of course I feel fear for the lives of others—that’s what drives me now; but what fear I had for myself—about myself—the fear that paralyzed me, made me hesitate in the face of violence—that fear has been purged from me.)
I faced Asmodeus, and I faced him without fear. Fought with him, held my own, made him run from me. Made him fear me. I faced his bots—machines meant to kill even modified beings like me—and I beat them.
And now I’m running to take more of his toys from him.
The forest is a blur as I fly through it. I have to try not to laugh out loud—my legs are moving impossibly fast. I expect I could cross a kilometer in less than two minutes. And I can leap dozens of meters into the air.
Companion. That’s what Fohat called my blade, his best guess at its nature. He also called it “unstable”. I don’t care. I don’t even care that it’s apparently tried to access my Station network. “Tried” implies “failed”, so it was unable to gain access. I expect this may be just a design feature, a default process: as it interfaced with me, connected to me and modified me, it would certainly have accessed my deactivated internal links, explored their function. I have no reason to believe the blade is hostile to me or my own—in fact, it’s actively helping me to protect those I care about right now. Its ability to interface with other networks was invaluable in facing the Box bots, and it’s invaluable now:
I can “hear” them. The blade is letting me pick up on the bots’ signals at distance, locating them. There is indeed a force of them descending on the western end of the Spine, likely attacking Abbas and his people. But there’s another force—a larger set of signals—moving further west, into the North Blade…
…and I realize I’m being pulled off course.
North-northwest instead of north-northeast. I try to correct, but somehow I keep drifting the wrong way. (Or does the sword think it’s the right way? There are more targets…)
My world explodes as something collides with me, slamming into me from my left flank. I hear and feel the clang of metal on metal as my sword meets something just as hard. There’s a flash of light, of blue-white plasma, and I’m thrown sideways, tumbling through the brush, smashing into trees, bouncing.
But not breaking. Or losing my grip on the sword. I’m aching, the wind knocked out of me, but I should have been crushed by the impact. I get up, stand to face my attacker, shaking off the plant debris and raising my blade, ready for anything.
“Erickson!!!”
No.
“Erickson! You will come with me! Right now!”
And I see him, coming through the green at me: It’s Elias. But not. His white hair—his proudly-worn “recessive aberration”—has grown out long, like mine. His red sealsuit has been supplemented with scales of dark metallic armor. There’s a look of murder on his pale features, a rage in his eyes that I could never imagine coming from my stoic, detached, self-absorbed sibling. And he’s gripping a sword.
Just like mine.
“You. Will. Come. With. Me.”
In my hands, my sword begins to sing, to scream.
His blade answers in kind.
Chapter 3: Secondary Target
Jak Straker:
“I need to deal with this,” the machine that looks like a man (as long as he’s wearing his cowl) calmly insists.
He’s let himself out of his “cell” and is heading for the airlock. Wei tries to block his path, ICW in hand but not leveled. I’m on one side in the hatchway to my own “cell”, informally confined to quarters until Earthside can “review my status,” given recent revelations. Rios and Jane are behind him, having come from the Bridge.
“That means I need to get closer. Now
.”
Nobody budges, but nobody argues. The machine—Dee—makes his point:
“Whatever is trying to hack the ETE network is smart and powerful. And it’s using a terraformer’s implants, so I’m assuming that my former charge has done something characteristically stupid and gotten himself captured, probably by Chang, given where the signal is coming from. Do you want to imagine what Chang would do if he gained access to Station or Atmosphere Net control, or should I generate some predictive models?”
“And if Chang gets hold of you, what could he hack into?” Rios counters, nodding at the open hatch.
“Nothing he couldn’t anyway,” Dee returns, still creepily calm. “If he has Erickson Carter, he’s just using his internal link. The hack itself must be his own, and it’s very good, even by my standard. That means he could hack into the UNMAC network at any time, just like Colonel Ram can. You’d have to shut down to block him, just like you did to convince Ram to stay out—except that won’t stop Chang from trying. You’d have to stay shut down. The only reason he hasn’t is that he thinks he has nothing practical to gain, other than listening to your transmissions, which he can do passively.”
“But if he can crack the ETE, he could shut down the Atmosphere Net, let the air bleed away,” Lyra comes in behind Wei. “Or worse: melt down the Station reactors. All of them. He could kill everyone living here, and force Earth to leave Marineris for decades.”
“Without firing a shot,” Jane grumbles.
“We can’t wait for nightfall,” I shoot down our original plan, then add for respect: “Captain.”
Rios locks up for a few seconds, but only a few. Then he looks Dee in the eye.
“You have a better plan?”
Machine Man doesn’t hesitate.
“We divide. You take this vehicle back out of here, get a clear signal back to your commanders. Give them a sitrep and get a response spun up: air support, satellite, whatever they have. Just let them know there are thousands of people living here, out in the open, so no nukes. I take a small team into the Central Blade, to Lucifer’s Grave or wherever the hack is coming from. I can protect your people, avoid the locals, maybe even Chang’s patrol bots. Then if I can’t stop the hack, at least we can paint the target for you.” He rotates his head smoothly, looks at me. “I need her. If we can make contact with Colonel Ram, we could use his help.”
“Assuming he’s not the one doing the hacking,” Carson voices Earthside’s policy, hanging back by the armory locker. Rios gives her a hard glare. Then he looks at me.
“What’s your assessment, Lieutenant?”
“I think we need to try, sir.”
“Wei,” he orders, “you go with them. Crack out H-As…”
“No heavy armor,” Dee corrects. “We need to move fast. L-As. Basic survival gear. Squad weapons.”
Rios nods his agreement. Wei moves with purpose to collect our gear.
“Thank you, Captain,” the machine has good manners.
“Give Colonel Ram my best, assuming you do find him.”
My Earth-born comrades call this a “forest” with such easy familiarity, like it’s as common a thing as sand or rock. And maybe it is, on their planet. (Again, I really wasn’t paying attention during those lessons, something I’m regretting more and more the further we move into this strange new world.) To me, it’s beyond unsettling. It defies every attempt to move and operate in it like that’s what it was designed to do. It’s a tactical nightmare. There’s no visibility. Our sat-maps are our only orientation in here. It’s almost impossible to tread with any kind of stealth. (And it smells funny, like garden recycle.)
How did they fight wars in environments like this on Earth? (If I had the option, I’d cut and blast and burn it all away, but I know the plants provide oxygen and food, and scrub the CO2 out of the air. But does there need to be so much of it? Does it need to grow so tall?)
I know if I wasn’t worried that there was something (probably a lot of somethings) potentially hiding just a few meters away from me waiting to kill me and I’d never see it coming, I’d probably think the place was beautiful, wonderful. But mortal terror has priority on my perception right now, and it’s making me miss the open deserts of home.
Most disturbing, we get buzzed by more curious creatures—first butterflies, then dragons. (Thankfully they are only curious, but I fear their stirring might give away our position—was this ever a problem for Earth warfighters?)
Despite the adversarial environment, Dee leads us quickly and smoothly, talking to us directly through our links to guide us, stopping us when he detects a potential threat, turning us to avoid it, always calm and almost reassuring. The machine moves like a man, only maybe more precise—I suppose I only notice because I know what he is, so I’m scrutinizing. And I’m still not sure that I trust him. So I spin contingency plans. If he turns on us… He’s stronger, faster, tougher—but we brought weapons expecting Chang bots. (I keep my finger near my ICW’s manual override switch, just in case.) He could hack our maps, our links, disorient us and cut off our communications…
We start hearing gunfire, explosions. It sounds like a skirmish, somewhere southeast of us. The thick growth makes it impossible to estimate range.
We hike for half an hour, manage to cover a few nerve-racking klicks without incident. But then Dee stops dead. He looks like he’s trying to see something in the air.
“What?”
“Problem, Lieutenant. I’m picking up another hacking signal, almost identical to the first. But it’s coming from a second location. ETE link. ETE target. Different ID code.”
“Can you tell whose?”
“I don’t have access to the ETE network. But they seem to have shut it down to block the attack.”
“Location?”
“Southwest. Closer to the local Station. Five or six kilometers.”
“What about the original?”
“Hasn’t moved. Still dead ahead.”
“Which one do we go for?” Wei asks over my shoulder.
“Primary is still most promising,” Dee calculated. “It may be the source. Number Two may just be a repeater.”
We move.
The growth actually gets thicker, slowing our progress. I’m grateful that I’m used to moving through tight spaces, though they’re usually not alive. It takes us an hour to make two more klicks. I still hear intermittent battle sounds coming from somewhere east of us.
Dee holds us up again.
“Bots passing west of us.”
I hear them myself several seconds later: crushing through the green. They feel close as they pass maybe a few dozen meters off our flank, heading back the way we came. I wonder if they’re heading for our ride. Dee catches me looking back.
“There are settlements that way. Apparently we’re not a significant enough target. Just don’t fire on them.”
“They can see us?” I whisper.
“Just you two. Heat. But they’re ignoring us. Too few targets for their priority programming. They’re going for numbers.”
I wonder how Chang benefits from attacking the local settlements, unless he’s trying to force them into serving him. I feel a pang of guilt, both for whatever aid my people gave him and for my helpessness now to help whoever’s in his sights.
“Should we call Rios?” Wei asks, looking like he’s ready to chase after the bots himself. “If he’s sending those things to attack defenseless people, maybe…”
“They’d detect the signal, and Chang would target us and your vehicle,” Dee shuts him down. “We have to stay on-mission. Stopping the hack is priority.” I definitely see the machine now.
So we sit still and wait for the wave of bots to pass. Then Dee waves us to follow him again.
We come up on a rise that takes us up high enough to see over the growth. Out in the Central Blade, five klicks ahead, I see a rise above the green that looks semi-circular, kilometers long, several hundred meters high at least, with a lot of flat and reasonably bar
e real estate on top. It may be the partial rim of a large crater (it looks like there’s a big dark depression in the middle of it), re-sculpted by the ages.
“Target?” I ask the machine.
“I expect that would be Lucifer’s Grave,” he indicates the crater. “But that’s not where the primary hack is coming from. Not anymore. It’s moving. Fast.”
“Wh…”
“Headed this way,” he answers before I can finish asking. “So is the secondary source.”
I see the tree tops rustle. Something’s coming at us from both the south and the southwest. Really fast…
But the two paths intersect just ahead of us, the secondary actually veering towards the primary. I watch the two unseen targets collide.
There’s a bright flash, like a massive welder’s arc. But I don’t hear an explosion. What I hear sounds like a clang of metal-on-metal.
Then voices. Shouting.
“The hacking signal just got stronger,” Dee lets us know.
What the hell is going on?
I hear more clanging, see the growth rustle, collapse as if being cut down. There’s more welder-flash, intermittent, but not as bright as the initial collision.
“What is that?”
Dee doesn’t answer. He slides over the top of the rise, down toward the unknown event. Vanishes from sight.
“Aw shit…” I hear Wei behind me. “Company, Lieutenant…” He’s pointing back roughly the way we came, but above the trees. Something’s flying at us from the north-northwest. It looks like one of Chang’s light fighters, but then I see a figure riding on it. It’s one of the immortals’ salvaged flyers. The rider is wearing black armor under a red sleeveless robe. I recognize the distinctive helmet: skull-like faceplate, a crest of fanciful wings. It’s Thompson Bly, Chang’s former Shadow-Knight.
He flies in low, passes us (it seems like everything is ignoring us today), brakes over the growing clearing. Circles. Then Bly leaps off, down into the green near whatever’s happening, sword drawn.
The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades Page 18
