I can’t see what’s happening.
“Hold position,” I order Wei. “Keep giving me eyes.”
I scramble over the rise and down, after Dee.
Even in the dense growth, it’s easy to find my way now. The fresh clearing is still intermittently blazing. And then the green becomes brown, brittle. It snaps and crumbles as I push through it.
I come up on a bizarre scene: two figures are having a disagreement with swords. Both wear an odd assortment of armor over what look like ETE sealsuits (except they’re red, which is the color of the far western Station way back in Melas). Both are young-looking males with long, slender features and pale skin. Both have shoulder-length hair, one black, one white, making it easy to keep track of who’s who as they circle. They alternate exchanging blows—the source of the flashes each time their broad double-edged blades clash together—with exchanging words.
“You will come back with me, little brother!” The white-haired one sounds like he’s screaming at a child.
“This is not the time for this!” The black-haired sounds only somewhat more mature. “People are dying!”
“Someone is using you to hack our network! You need to come with me! Now!”
“You need to let me go, Elias! Please! I don’t want to hurt you!”
“You can’t hurt me.”
The ETE network hacks… They’re coming from these two, and they have no idea…
I jump when I feel a hand on my shoulder, solid as metal. It’s Dee. He gives me a sign to stay put, stay out of sight. Then he goes still, his face blank. I expect he’s doing whatever an AI would call concentrating, trying to get control over what’s at work here.
I play the contingency, aim my ICW’s targeting laser at the pair, prepare to send a signal over my uplink. I figure when I get confirmation that missiles are incoming, I can probably run back and over the rise, grab Wei and grab cover before everything goes boom. (This is assuming Rios got out, and a sky-strike is waiting.) But Bly is here too, somewhere, and I owe him my life and hundreds more.
The pair are fighting again. They move fast—immortal fast. And I almost get run into as the black-hair tries to get past his apparent brother. Fails.
I suddenly get the stab of a headache, deep behind my eyes. Blinding. I realize Dee didn’t budge in response to us nearly getting trampled. Dee isn’t budging at all. He’s completely unresponsive.
I get my targeting laser back on the pair, but now my link isn’t working. Then the gun isn’t. Everything is shut down, frozen. I can’t even call Wei.
What the hell is going on? Is this interference, or has my gear been hacked?
“There are bots going after innocent people!” the black-hair is pleading as they keep fencing. “Right now!” He waves his sword north and northwest, toward the sounds of gunfire. (Toward me—I crouch lower. Dee still won’t move.) “You know what they can do! People are dying, Elias! We can help them! We need to help them!”
“I need to get you back to the Station!!” The white-hair—Elias, charges in and slams the other so hard I’m blinded by the flash. The black-hair flies back into the brush, gets up… but I see the brush dying around him. Where he landed. Where he steps. Everywhere he touches—everywhere they both touch—everything vital is being drained. I start backing away reflexively, imagining what their touch could do to me. I feel a vibration on my skin—it moves as the swords do, as if they’re affecting the very air around them.
I should get out of here, get Wei, and find a way to report.
Then Wei comes up behind me.
“Problem, Lieutenant…” he starts to spit out in whisper, pausing when he sees me glaring at him for leaving his position. But what he’s got to say is more urgent. “We’ve been hacked. Something tried to get through the uplink, something smart. They had to pull the plug, shut it all… What the hell…?”
He’s looking past me.
It’s Bly. He’s stepped into the deadfall clearing. With his mask on (and it’s permanently on, since Chang fused his regenerative armor to his flesh as a punishment for his defection) I can’t see his expression, but his body language seems to say he’s dazed, unbalanced. The duelists break when they realize they have company. Now there’s a triangle of drawn swords.
“What are you?” Bly demands. “What are you doing to me?” He sounds somewhere between rage and pain.
“Did you do this to my brother?!” the white-hair spits back.
“You pulled me here!” Bly hisses back. “How?! Why?!”
As if an answer, the brothers’ swords arc, forming a bridge of white between them. The deadfall decays, disintegrates to dust. The perimeter of death comes at me, at Wei, and I push him back, leaving Dee. But the death stops before it reaches us. And it isn’t obviously affecting Bly, at least not any more than it already is, however it is. The arcs strike into the ground, burning, but it looks like they’re pouring energy into the charred dirt.
Then the dirt gives something back: It heaves, pushes up, like I’m watching some plant growing, speeded up into seconds. But it isn’t a plant. When the dirt and organic debris fall away, I see gold and silver. Steel. It’s another sword, identical to the brothers’, rising hilt-first out of the planet. Like it’s been buried there all along.
No. Looking closer at the point it where it’s still sunk into the ground, I see tendrils; roots, but liquid, moving. It’s being grown.
The stabbing pain deep inside my head feels like it’s trying to push my eyes and teeth out of my skull.
The two brothers are staggering away from what they’ve just apparently helped make, dazed, weakened. But there’s nothing left within easy reach to consume. Except maybe Bly.
“How are you in my head?!!” Bly roars, clutching at his helmet, almost losing his grip on his own sword. “I can see you… I can see your memories… I…” He stops, gathers himself, looks like he’s going to crush the hilt of his sword in his grip. His facemask turns to look at the black-hair. Then Bly points his blade at him.
“It was you. The Silvers told me about you… I went to parlay with them, negotiate safe passage for my people. But when I came back… Dead! They were all dead. The Silvers say they saw them attacked by raiders, strangers… Now I see it in your head! It was you!!”
The black-hair doesn’t back down, points his own sword back at the threat.
“Your ‘people’ were torturing a delegation of Katar, killing them…”
“The Katar attacked them!” Bly insists, advancing. Now white-hair’s sword comes up, comes to his brother’s defense. Bly seems to ignore him.
“And the Silvermen killed your people!” black-hair insists, circling. “Or did they not tell you that?”
“That’s not what I see… Your own eyes… You attacked…”
“Then you should see why I attacked!” black-hair screams.
They lunge into each other, their blades clashing. There’s more arcing, but the color is dimmer, bluer. Bly staggers, but holds his own. They start hacking and slashing at each other, fast and hard—I can hear their swords rip through the air. But then Bly has to deal with the white-hair, coming at him from his left. He circles, tries to get closer to one and farther from the other. The brothers’ former argument appears to be forgotten—they move together.
Bly tries to knock them off balance, taking the offensive, but their blades appear to hit harder than his. He’s faster, surer, quicker, but the brothers are obviously stronger. And each time they clash, Bly seems to come away weaker.
The brothers pull back, hold for a moment. Their eyes look like they’re processing something, calculating. Then they explode into Bly, even faster now, and more coordinated.
Bly staggers—a blade makes contact with his left thigh, leaving a deep cut through his plate. Another blade catches him across the back. Then Black Hair smacks aside Bly’s sword while White stabs him in the upper left chest. It doesn’t penetrate far, but it does penetrate. And it sticks. White’s sword charges, arcs into Bly,
while Black keeps his weapon locked. Bly staggers back, goes down on his knees. The brothers keep on him. I can’t tell if they’re frying him or draining him. Black swats Bly’s sword out of his hand. Moves in to stab…
I owe Bly my life…
I run into the clearing, empty my ICW into the brothers. The shells just ping off their armor. Then their swords come around, and my rounds seem to be drawn into them, bursting into plasma as they hit, like the swords are eager, hungry for the violence. I run dry—all I have left is grenades, but Bly is too close, we’re all too close together.
Wei starts shooting. It does no more good than I did. The brothers are headed for me. Bly looks out of play. I’m out of options…
Almost.
I sling my gun, grab the blade that’s come out of the ground. Maybe if I can…
My nervous system explodes. Every cell in my body is on fire.
I can’t let go of the sword. I can’t m…
SECONDARY TARGET ACCEPTED.
Voice in my head. The sword…
PLEASE WAIT WHILE I FINISH YOUR UPGRADES.
“Lieutenant…?”
Fuzzy.
Everything feels electric.
The sky is so bright.
“Lieutenant?”
Wei.
“Don’t touch her, Specialist.”
Dee.
“What’s it done to her?”
“Fohat called it a Companion.” Familiar voice. Can’t place it. “Some kind of nanotech symbiote. It helps us, makes us stronger, faster. Enhances our senses. Even more than our ETE implants.”
“A lot more.” Another voice I know.
“It’s AI. More advanced than I’ve ever encountered.” That’s Dee. He’s unfrozen. “It’s been trying to hack your network. And UNMAC’s.”
“They’ve had to shut down to block it,” the second voice complains. “That leaves them all blind, deaf and mute.”
“Is she awake?” Wei. “Her eyes are open. Her eyes… Oh shit…” He sounds scared. Of me.
“Bly…?” First thing I say. “Where’s Bly?”
“Alive,” the first voice answers, sounding sorry about something.
“Hurt,” Dee adds. “Weak. He needs to eat, drink. He can’t absorb resources from the environment like… well… you.”
I’m in a hole. I’m lying in a hole. Like a grave. Did they think I was dead?
“Who… who won?”
“I think you did,” Wei tries to be comforting. “When you grabbed the sword, there was this big flash. It was like you sucked the life out of the other two. Chilled them.”
“We’re sorry we drew you into this.” I can see enough to put face to first voice: The black-haired ETE. Somehow I know his name is Erickson Carter.
“Speak for yourself.” Second voice. That would be his brother Elias. (I still don’t know how I know this, I just seem to. Just like I know they are ETE. Third-Gen Red Team. A long way from home.) “We don’t even know why it picked her.”
Elias seems to be the bigger asshole of the pair.
“It didn’t,” Dee corrects him. “Her sword was meant for Bly. I could hear it calling him, accessing his nanotech implants. Probably for similar reasons that yours contacted you. You have technology they can use. That also made you easy to sync with, overwrite.”
“The blades have reprogrammed our implants,” Erickson concludes heavily, looking down at his body like it’s become creepy and uncomfortable.
“The blades have restructured your implants, modified them, added to them,” Dee informs him coolly. “I expect your connection is irreversible, unless you have a means to completely separate yourself from your nanotechnology. Maybe not even then. It’s made itself part of you.”
“Why?” Elias demands. “It said it wanted to help…”
“And they did,” Erickson admits. “But what are they taking in return?”
“They don’t seem to function independently,” Dee tells them. “They need some kind of partner, host. Their first priority seems to be finding a suitable one.”
“They also seem to be able to control our minds,” Elias grumbles, “at least our emotions.”
“I’m sorry, Elias,” Erickson tries. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“I got myself into this, thank you. I came. I took the sword.”
“You were attacked?” It’s not really a question. Erickson seems to know. Elias nods.
“I don’t think this is their default form,” Dee considers. “They may have chosen it to attract you.”
“I wanted to hurt Bly,” Erickson admits. “The sword kept showing me how. Cripple him. Disarm him. Make him suffer. Not kill…”
“Make him take the sword,” Elias figures. “Of his own free will.”
“What about her?” Erickson says it like I’m not here. Maybe asshole runs in the family.
“Is this… the idiot… you were talking about?” I ask Dee from my grave. He flashes a convincing smile, nods. Then he manages to make my day worse:
“I expect it would have killed her on contact, consumed her, except she had something it could use.”
Now he’s talking like I’m not here. At least he has an excuse: he’s a robot. Android. Whatever.
“It called me a ‘secondary target’…” I feel so strange. “Why am I in a hole?”
“You kind of dug it, Lieutenant,” Wei tries to be gentle. Then blows it: “Freakiest thing I’ve ever seen. Like you sucked up the ground.”
“It needed raw materials, organic and mineral, to do whatever it needed to do to interface with you,” Dee goes robot-technical. “You lack the full-body nanotechnology modifications that the ETE have.”
“Is this about her implant?” Wei puts together. Now he’s ignoring me, too. I’m surrounded by assholes. Nice funeral.
“They’ve tried hacking UNMAC—as I said, that’s easy, especially for them,” Dee is still showing off. “Accessing the ETE personnel directly let them into the ETE network. Perhaps when their first attempt with Erickson was blocked, they tried again with Elias—so apparently that’s a priority for them. Both brothers were convenient: in proximity and in need. And maybe being brothers—one searching for the other—was part of it: The swords became stronger in proximity, synergistic—they knew Elias would bring them together. Then they were strong enough to signal Bly.”
“Why Bly?” Wei asks, getting into the pace of the weirdness.
“Bly has Chang’s technology inside of him,” Dee guesses. (Actually it sounds like more than guessing. Maybe Dee did manage to hack into them, at least enough to listen in.) “Bly could be their link to Chang, perhaps get them control over his bots, his weapons.”
“There is no Chang,” Erickson corrects. “It was Asmodeus, wearing a disguise. He told me Chang’s been unaccounted for since the nuclear blast took his ship, possibly dead.”
“That’s not good news,” Dee tells him. “I’ve dealt with Asmodeus. The real one—the original.”
“Why me?” I almost scream. But I think I already know the answer.
“You have a connection to Colonel Ram,” Dee’s talking to me again rather than over me. “I doubt they can use it to affect him, since it’s only a simple beacon, but they may be able to track him, monitor him, and the others like him. If that’s a priority for these things, maybe Ram and those like him pose a threat.”
I want to ask them what’s happened to me, but decide it’s time to look for myself. I raise my head—I feel weightless. Look down. I’m gripping the sword in both hands with it lying on top of me like one of those old warrior tombs I’ve seen in history files. The rest of me looks pretty normal: L-A uniform. Gear harness. Boots. Gloves. Except everything looks better than new—there’s no wear on anything. (Wei was freaking out about my eyes.) I realize I’m missing my breather gear, my mask, my goggles. But I’m breathing fine. Actually, I feel pretty good, getting past feeling like I’ve got serious current flowing through my nervous system.
I sit up in my h
ole—it’s well under half-a-meter deep, and only the bottom ten centimeters or so is dirt and rock, the rest being deadfall desiccated to the point that it turns to fine ash at the slightest touch, blowing away in the breeze. But the hole is me-shaped, like I melted into the ground like melting through ice. I try to figure roughly how much that is in whatever raw resources the sword put to use remaking me. (I’m also half-buried in a fine, pale dust-like substance—possibly what the sword discarded in the process.) I’m guessing my mass should be nearly doubled, but I don’t feel that much different. There’s no way to tell if my body looks different while I’m dressed.
I check my gloves, my armored uniform. There’s no sign of how anything new might have been put into me, but I’m not sure I really want to understand the process right now.
I let go of the sword with my left hand, but find I don’t want to let go with my right. That’s when I realize I’ve got a nice black scabbard for it on my belt—the brothers both have matching ones. But I don’t want to put my sword away, not yet. It’s so beautiful, all perfect lines and surfaces and gorgeous scrollwork that… moves. So does the layered pattern on the blade. Like it’s alive.
I think I hear it singing to me. In me.
I look at Wei. He almost glows with heat.
“You said there was something wrong with my eyes. What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“They’re… Green. Bright green. But metallic,” he breaks it to me.
“Like a hybrid’s,” I think out loud. “Like Ram and his friends.”
Is that what I am? Like them? No one comments, but they all look variously uncomfortable (except for Dee, who seems to be taking this all in with his standard serenity).
I look at the brothers. They also have metallic irises—Erickson’s are a deep bronze, Elias’ bright copper—but that’s not unusual for an Eternal, an ETE, evidence of their nanotech implants. I remember Ram’s eyes turned gunmetal when he changed. So did Colonel Ava’s.
I can see heat. I can hear breathing, heartbeats, every leaf rustling in the breeze and know exactly where it is. And
The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades Page 19
