Hand of Raziel (Daughter of Mars Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  You have the power to keep her son from becoming an orphan.

  Her throat tightened. She clenched her hands to fists, knuckles scraping the warm metal below. Where was Raziel when the UCF murdered Colonel Darren Black? Where was this being of light when the military took away her father? She couldn’t cling to jealousy with the boy looking at her, even if he was an illusion.

  “As you wish.”

  The angel’s presence receded, leaving her quaking; her limbs sagged, tired and spent. Risa crouched on all fours, a cat on a precarious perch gazing at the rippling mass of people below. She pitied them, for they did not know the touch of such a being.

  Descent came easy. Risa slipped into a ventilation duct fifteen meters from the ground, evading the din of the crowd. The ceaseless assault of electronic media gave way to silence but for the dull scrape of her motion in a metal-lined tunnel. She crawled deep into the rock until the floor opened to a vertical shaft. Risa spun around, lowered herself over the edge, and climbed down. Horizontal slits of light drifted upward every ten feet until her boots touched the ground.

  For a moment, she gazed up at the distant portal to a world that had disavowed her, then scurried off on her hands and knees once again. Down here in the Old Shafts, no light existed. Walls passed in hazy shapes of spectral grey. The absence of detail brought the memory of long hair on her back and numbing cold on bare legs. Flames chased her from a warm bed into the square-walled dark. From every moment of perfect quiet came the sound of her father screaming, “Run.”

  Risa hadn’t looked back, didn’t see what happened. So why did the dream always show the fire consuming her father’s face?

  His scream stopped amid a ripple of explosions.

  Navigating the air circulation system of Primus City had become a reflex, as easy as following a NavMap for most people. Turns and climbs were second nature; the distant vibrating echo of a filtration unit or the rush of air from a busy tram tube served as landmarks. Even without her Wraith painting the walls in motion-blur grey, she’d been in this world long enough to find her way. Within a half hour, she traveled a mile and a half beneath the city in tunnels that once brought vital air to now-disused mines. At the clamor of familiar voices reverberating in the stillness, she opened her eyes. Up ahead, an inverted pyramid of light shimmered in the dust, banded with shadows from the vent.

  “That was a little too close for comfort, Colonel. I’m not sure using her is wise for these sorts of missions.”

  She recognized the deep timbre of General Maris’s voice.

  A chair screamed the song of rust and grit. “I have perfect confidence in her, sir.”

  Garrison.

  She crawled to the opening. Strips of light illuminated a face the color of snow as she peered down.

  “Word among the men is that she thinks she speaks to angels.” A muscular hand, dark as baker’s chocolate, swept through the light.

  “Considering I found her hiding among the vents fifteen years ago in nothing but her underwear, a little invisible friend issue is minor. So far, it hasn’t caused any problems. I have no idea how she didn’t freeze to death… and it’s only one angel, cut her some slack.”

  General Maris folded his arms. “So what you’re saying is she’s unstable, you know she’s unstable, and you see no issues with that? We wanted to disable the facility, not launch it into orbit.”

  Risa’s eyes narrowed.

  Garrison tapped his finger on the desk, his tone somber. “She was there when the Special Forces team went in. She saw the kill, and somehow stayed alive in the vents for almost a year on her own. I can’t think of anyone more motivated to help us liberate Mars from both sides. Most of our core people grew up in the UCF. They hesitate whenever we have to hit a ‘green target.’ She doesn’t. If she’s got an invisible friend, so be it.” Garrison raised an eyebrow, tapping the front of his chin with one finger for a moment. “You know, General, on more than one occasion, information she’s obtained from this ‘angel’ has proven helpful.” His chair creaked louder as he leaned forward, boots hitting the ground with a sharp clap. “For all I know, maybe she’s a precog and that’s how it manifests. Yeah, true, she can be a bit strange, but show me someone willing to help start a revolution that isn’t. How sure are you it wasn’t your man Pavo’s fault?”

  Precog? Me? I’m no psionic.

  “I’m sure.” General Maris flared his eyes wide. “Hollister thinks you paired them to see if she’d sense something wrong and kill him. I’m not sure how I should interpret your insinuation that someone I brought in is a spy.”

  Garrison stood, leaning his hands on the desk. Risa’s anger faded at the sight of his tanned face deepened with shadows from the overhead light. He looked like an Earth native. No one in his family had opted for the genetic surgery to turn themselves ‘Marsborn.’ As pragmatic as he is. She smiled. Just a silly color change.

  “I’m not insinuating anything, General.” Garrison’s steel-wool eyebrows furrowed. “I had a hunch they should work together.” He straightened up and moved around the desk. “Don’t forget it was your choice to throw all that hardware at her.”

  Maris grumbled. “Some choice it was. Need I remind you, the girl demanded to volunteer?”

  Lithe fingers moved the flimsy slats, careful not to make a sound. She lifted the vent cover, set it aside, and tucked her knees to her chest so she could slide her boots through the hole. Like a phantom drifting out of the ceiling, she lowered her weight without a noise, dangling for a moment by her fingertips before she let go. Neither man reacted to her landing behind them.

  General Maris towered over Garrison. The dark red beret is a tad much. She frowned. ‘General’ my ass. They’re just overgrown boys playing soldier.

  “I’m not saying I thought he was one, but if anyone could ferret out a mole, I’d expect it would be Risa. Angel or not, she has instincts, and we don’t have anyone else as good at getting into places.”

  “You have a lot of faith in that woman, Garrison. You should’ve sent Huang with him.”

  Garrison held his temple as if to stall a migraine. “Huang’s good with electronics and hand to hand, but he has no training on demolition.”

  “Damn shame about Genevieve,” said Maris, pursing his lips.

  Garrison scowled. “Yeah. Risa’s our best demolitions operator. She could’ve handled that run alone.”

  A lump swelled up in her throat. If Garrison was what passed for an adoptive father, Genevieve had been her big sister. For a moment, the perpetually dirt-smudged redhead appeared in her mind, smiling at her. Risa felt older now than Gen had been when they’d first met.

  “Do you honestly think she’d have pulled off the job without Pavo?” Maris extended his arm. “The bomb weighed more than she does.”

  “We could have blown that place with one-tenth the explosive, and I trust Pavo.” Her tiny voice snuck through the air. “He is PVM.”

  General Maris let off a bellow of surprise and staggered to the side with a hand clutching his chest. Garrison went rigid for a moment, showing only a faint tremble, then broke into a guffaw with his head tilted back.

  He’s gotten good at holding it in.

  “We made a minor error in detonation strength using that much Cryomil. We expected a fireball deflagration, not an explosive reaction. You sent a soldier, not an engineer. The fault does not lie with Pavo. Blame whoever planned that mess.” Risa narrowed her eyes. “Or was someone trying to make sure neither one of us came back?”

  “Good Christ, Garrison. What kind of security do you have here?” Maris’s eyes bulged white against his dark face. “And you, don’t you know how to use doors? Or salute?”

  “The sensors are already online again.” Risa leaned back, slinking sideways to sit on the edge of the desk. “I don’t trust doors, and as for the salute… I’ll do that after all this is over and your rank is more than, ‘I’m a general because I say so.’”

  Garrison stifled a smile. “I didn’t call
you in, is something wrong?”

  She let her legs sway, heels tapping against the desk; her presence mixed juvenile boredom with feline lethality, as she stared a mocking challenge at the self-styled commander.

  With a great breath, Maris backed away, finger leveled at the pair. “I want that report. The next operation better be flawless, delusions or not.”

  Once the general walked out, Risa slipped from the desk and embraced Garrison. His red-camouflage-covered chest pressed warm against her cheek.

  “What’s wrong, Risa. You seem… excited.”

  After a tight squeeze, she made eye contact. “Raziel found us some recruits.”

  “I see that look again. You’re going to do something foolish with or without our help, aren’t you?”

  She stepped away before anyone caught them. “I have no choice.”

  Garrison pinched the bridge of his nose. “All right, let’s hear it.”

  Violet light glimmered in her eyes. Grinning, she kicked the door closed.

  he entirety of Garrison’s assistance took the form of a single Foxbat LRV, thanks to the general. One little light-armored quad wasn’t much, certainly not comfortable, but it would get her where she needed to go. Benton Mining Corporation, being independent of both the UCF and ACC, didn’t count as a politically significant target, and Maris refused to commit resources to an operation that far out in the middle of nowhere. When he started blathering on about how they needed to keep the ‘independents’ friendly, he sounded no different from the politicians they all supposedly hated.

  Plump, knobby tires sprayed dirt as she steered into the base of an incline at a touch over forty-five. Exertion from controlling the little four-wheeler over rough ground fogged her visor and intensified her hatred of helmets. Limited vision allowed the top of the ridge to sneak up on her before she could slow down. Electric motors rose to a shrill whine as vehicle and rider caught air at the crest. Weightless, she tensed as the yawning basin of the Mare Acidalium opened before her, unable to breathe at the sight of the tremendous drop yawning open below.

  A fraction of a second felt as though a colossus dangled her over a chasm.

  The LRV slammed into the loose-packed gravel along a severe downward grade. Risa crashed against the frame, and a starburst painted in saliva appeared on her visor. Speedware kicked on as the small vehicle twisted into a sideways slide, allowing superhuman reflexes to prevent a roll of death. She wrenched the handlebars in a desperate struggle to keep from flipping as her descent became a series of slow-motion bounces.

  The Foxbat slid to a spinning halt at the bottom. Risa’s fingers were numb from gripping the handlebars, her pelvis ached from smashing into the seat, and threads of white-hot pain shimmered in her muscles. Condensation rendered the visor all but opaque. She clutched her helmet, wanting it off, wanting to escape the claustrophobia locked around her skull. Only the red stickman choking himself in the top-left of her view stopped her from pulling the release catch. Of course, BMC would pick an area devoid of atmospheric terraforming. Enslaved miners couldn’t run away if they had no air to breathe.

  Stupid… Careless. Risa glared at the dust peeling from the trail she cut down the slope. Seventy miles away or not, BMC might pick up a cloud that big on the long-range. Hope they think I’m a drunken crab. A slow turn revealed a ridge wall behind her, and wide-open ground everywhere else. Solitude became oppressive, pressing in on her as if she were the only human being on the entire planet.

  She sat up, panting, lost in the sunlight shimmer over miles of flat crimson nothing. Purple and indigo wrestled in the sky, fronts of variant atmospheric density responsible for the dancing light.

  So this is the Acidalian Sea? I wonder why they call it that? On Earth, that means water… Ocean.

  Elbows on handlebars, she leaned forward, lost in the beauty of the landscape, wondering what a real ocean might feel or smell like. Out here, the Martian Liberation Front, the UCF, the ACC, none of it mattered compared to the grandeur of an untouched world. Garrison must have hoped the offer of a meager light recon vehicle would change her mind. He’d tried to hide the surprise and worry in his face when she drove off. Ever since Raziel had chosen her, he’d grown distant. Is he still angry with me for letting Maris wire me up?

  This journey, into the middle of a hazardous zone, with one suit and two extra filter cores, would’ve been suicidal enough, never mind trying to take on a corporate installation alone.

  Eyes closed. The blurry visor already had her rattled. She couldn’t let rising fear add tears to the stagnant world inside the helmet. Garrison’s eyes lingered in the dark, pleading with her to wait. She wanted to. How she wanted to stay with her second father.

  Alas, she couldn’t.

  Raziel, an angel, had set her a task. I don’t care if they all think I’m Cat-6. They don’t know how it feels.

  Risa slumped forward, as close to resting as she could get, and waited as the minutes ticked by.

  When the visor cleared, she sat upright and squeezed the throttle. Down in the basin, the Foxbat could hit sixty or more, but she stayed slow enough to avoid kicking up another trail. A five-by-seven panel, covered in dust and surrounded by a dented screw-per-inch metal frame, offered the most basic navigational functions, while the computer seemed to take great delight in warning her she’d strayed into unclaimed territory. Every two minutes, it brought her attention to the big red button covered by the friendly black and yellow shroud on the left of the screen that she could use to beacon for help. She kept alert. Cydonian crabs did not venture this far northwest as a matter of routine, but they remained a risk. At best, they’d think of her as food. At worst, one might mistake her Foxbat for another crab and try to mate.

  She’d rather dance with a cyborg again.

  Two hours later, a faint blue glow appeared ahead. She steered right of it, aiming at a protrusion of rock. A sprawling compound of charcoal-grey metal pod buildings formed a micro city around more permanent structures built into a craggy, dark ridge. A shimmering semi-dome of cyan light covered it, sectioned into segments between curved pylons. Three large crane arms at the center of the complex extended to within a few feet of the apex of the atmospheric retention field, no doubt to transfer ore and equipment between shuttles and ground vehicles. A massive transport cart with squat, broad wheels crept toward a shuttle pad at the installation’s left end.

  The closer she got to the outcropping, the more like a prison compound it looked. Armed guards in black patrolled while pri―workers in tan coveralls went about their tasks. Risa nudged the Foxbat up to the small rock island and shut it down, pleased the compound showed no evident notice of her. Then again, these guards were there to keep people in, not out.

  Risa dismounted and grabbed her helmet, still yearning to remove it. The flashing stickman mocked her. There’s air inside that field. She surveyed the facility, counted the guards, and noted the heavy support weapons posted on six towers around the compound. Four of them formed a defensive arc in front of the entrance built out of the side of the rock. After observing the site for a little more than fifteen minutes, she felt confident she wouldn’t need to go inside there. The ‘workers’ got relegated to living within the portable buildings. Only paid employees were permitted into the facility burrowed into the mountain.

  How am I going to get in there? Sneak? Act like a lost innocent? Hop a transport? BMC buys convicts and tricks honest miners, I wonder if they might be friendly to a ‘lost woman.’

  Something slammed into her back. A squidgy, pathetic noise followed it―a bullet fired in thin air. Non-Newtonian gel inside her ballistic stealth armor hardened in an instant. Free-floating threads of DuraFib composite froze into a plate, solid for eight-tenths of a second. Hissing flooded the helmet. Air rushed over her shoulders, chilling her neck as the visor erupted in a flashing orange mess of integrity warnings. Not that she could read them through the stars. The force of the hit had rivaled a cyborg’s punch.

  Nope, not fr
iendly.

  Her body bounced off the rock and hit the ground, the crunch of gravel on the side of her helmet louder than the gunshot. She lay still and tried not to gasp for breath, loathing the infernal cage around her skull for fouling her Wraith. The component that let her see motion couldn’t penetrate the damn thing on her head. Given how hard the bullet had hit, it had to be a rifle. Her armor was rare because it was expensive; most people wouldn’t expect someone in an e-suit to have any protection on under it. Be careless… be careless. Don’t notice I’m not bleeding. A boot displaced stones inches from her face and a rifle poked her in the shoulder.

  Adrenaline surged, controlled microbursts jolting Risa’s system at the prodding of speedware electronics. The two seconds that passed between the man’s boot touching down in her field of vision and his raising his rifle for a finishing shot became ten. She shoved at the ground, launching her body to the side as three slugs left the barrel. Plumes of silt sprayed upward in slow motion. She sprang into the air. To her, he moved as if swimming in dense syrup. She whirled around, kicking his legs out from under him and continuing the spin onto her feet. Another man a few meters away brought his weapon up to aim.

  She gave the near guard three-tenths of a second before lunging. Still in the process of falling, the corporate soldier swung his arms out for balance, rifle slipping from his hands. Nano claws pierced the glove on her right hand as she swiped at him. Blades split him open from helmet to gut at the same instant she caught the weapon with her left. Risa landed atop the dead man, letting momentum take her forward into a somersault away from another spray of bullets. The other guard dragged his rifle to the side, attempting to chase her sprint. Projectiles passed overhead, spinning in a slow-motion spiral. Claws retracted into her fingers as she grasped the first man’s rifle. Explosions of soil erupted, particles hanging in midair. The long session of boost left her head throbbing. She dove off her feet, firing as she sailed through the air. In her accelerated world, she hung airborne for five seconds with the trigger held down before landing on her side and skidding to a halt.