Hand of Raziel (Daughter of Mars Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  Risa let off a haughty laugh. “You think the men are the only ones who like to play with the young girls?”

  Ingrid stared, open mouthed. She glanced between him and Risa as though she couldn’t decide who to fear more. His arm began to lower despite his anger, until he took notice of dozens of red ‘Offline’ indicators on the terminals.

  “You almost fooled me. You are disabling everything? This is a lie! You are traitor too.” He pointed at Ingrid. “That is why you confessed to wanting to defect. We are being attacked!”

  Risa’s gaze went to the right and down as her posture took on that of a broken marionette draped in a chair. No emotion showed on her face. “How old are you Anatoly?”

  Ingrid slouched. For a second, she seemed relieved, then terrified. She bit her lip and cringed away, boots scuffing at the floor in an effort to push a bolted chair.

  “Out of the chair. Hands up, turn around, on your knees.” When Risa only stood, Anatoly took a step closer and pointed the gun at her head. “I don’t know who you are, but you did find a traitor. For that, they probably won’t execute you. Now, get down!”

  She remained motionless, a slender doll leaning askew. “You didn’t tell me how old you were. I’m going to feel guilty if you’re too young.”

  Ingrid shivered, unable to look away from Risa. Her bindings creaked as she fought to break her hands free. “Anatoly, please don’t do this. We can get out of here. We can find a real life away from the Council.”

  Anatoly sighed at Ingrid. “I will be promoted for exposing your disloyalty.” He narrowed his eyes at Risa. “I almost hope they do not kill you. You would make an excellent recreation officer.”

  “I’m sorry, Anatoly,” whispered Risa, still not looking directly at him. “You look so young.”

  He hasn’t showered in weeks.

  The tip of his pistol wobbled. A manifestation of either anger or fear. “Stop ignoring me! I said put your damn hands in the air.”

  “No! I’d rather you shoot me!” Ingrid yelled and kicked at him. Her lunge jerked to a halt by her wrists bound to the seatback.

  Anatoly flinched. Speedware plunged Risa into a slow-motion world. Anatoly’s cringe melted into a caricature. Nano claws sprang out of her fingers as she leapt. Four eight-inch blades sliced his gun―and the hand holding it―into several pieces. At the same instant, her right arm lanced forward, five fingertips touched his chest.

  Time returned to normal.

  Blood darkened in an expanding blotch down his shirt before his face showed any reaction. Anatoly’s breath gasped over her face, hot with the stench of synthetic alcohol. He fell backwards, sliding off the five slender daggers that had pierced his heart. She left her arm outstretched, statue still as Ingrid stifled a scream. His body settled on its back, one knee bent, left leg straight. Red spurts from his half-forearm slowed, and stopped.

  Risa stared at two drops of blood swelling at the tips of her claws, wondering if they would fall. Ingrid’s gasps for breath and weak efforts not to sob seemed ten times louder than they were. Risa rotated her hand, mesmerized by the gravid droplets shifting on the clear edge. A chirp from her left forearm snapped her out of it. She squatted and wiped her claws on Anatoly’s jumpsuit before retracting them and looking at the message.

  Black letters floated in a field of cyan: ‹ETA 30 sec.›

  “Wie haben sie das gemacht?” whispered Ingrid, sounding afraid of her own voice.

  The translation, ‘How did you do that?’ floated at the bottom of Risa’s vision. A split-second mental command shifted her active language chip from Russian to German.

  “You disappeared and then you were in front of him and he…” Ingrid cried, boots squeaking on the metal floor as she rotated her chair to face the console. “I knew you would kill him as soon as you stood like a dead doll.” She shivered. “That’s what the stories say. Whenever the black ghost does that, it means people will die.”

  “I don’t enjoy it.” Risa fell into the empty chair and flicked a few more systems offline.

  With all the sensors down, she would not be aware of anything that went on outside.

  “He was a pig.” Ingrid raised a knee to wipe her tears. “Thank you. Do not mistake this for sorrow. I… I’ve never seen a man die before.” She took a few breaths. “It is different for men. He wanted to join the DMS. I just wanted to go to the university.”

  Risa studied the console, trying not to dwell on how she’d only made it to third grade. Garrison gave me e-learns. I suppose that counts for something, right? “You came out here to the ass crack of Mars to go to school?”

  “No. To go to university, you must be military to become a citizen. It is―” Ingrid looked up at a muted boom. After a few seconds of silent staring at the ceiling, she sniffled. “It is not easy for women. We are expected to…” She blushed. “I say no to the wrong person. I get transferred. I say no again. I get moved to worse and worse places until I wind up here. In six years, I will get papers to apply for school.”

  “After six years of hell it’s a maybe?” Risa’s guilt over Anatoly weakened.

  “If I am still even alive, yes.” Ingrid looked at the floor. “I was a fool to believe them. I should have stayed a commoner.”

  A distant explosion shook the room and took out the power. Ingrid squirmed and tugged at the plastic straps holding her down, freezing when she met Risa’s violet gaze.

  “Are you really the Schwarzgeist?”

  Another heavy rumble rolled overhead, accompanied by falling dust.

  “Is that what they call me?” Risa leaned forward, elbows on knees. Hurry up out there. I hate this suit.

  “I’m astonished Anatoly did not recognize you. He was stupid. I am happy you have come here. I wish to join you.”

  “You sound too eager, even with your sad story.”

  Ingrid’s eyes glowed like diamonds in Risa’s night vision. The girl glanced around in the pitch black, eventually staring at the only thing she could see: the light from Risa’s eyes. “I know you do not trust me. It is okay that you”―she tugged at her hands―“have taken precautions. Bring me with you. Leave me tied. I don’t care. I am miserable. I would rather be in a UCF prison than here. I want away from these Corporate pigs. Take me with you.”

  “You don’t have any family?”

  “Only a brother, and he is as bad as Anatoly.” Ingrid sniffled. “I wrote to tell him I am being transferred because I refused to sleep with my supervisor. Stefan said it was my fault. He said I should’ve done what I was told. No. I do not have a family.”

  Weak red light saturated the room. Backup power finally kicked in. The holo-terminals ran various startup tests and settled on displaying ‘Error’ or static.

  Rippling detonations passed overhead, bringing more dust.

  “Friends of yours? UCF?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Ingrid looked like an eager child on Christmas morning. “The Liberation Front? I will join your rebels if I have to.”

  Floating hair-thin lines appeared in Risa’s vision, closing around Ingrid’s eye with others tracing to points on her face and forehead. Electronics in her head measured the woman’s stress response. Her Somatic Detection System indicated she was truthful. ‘Alert: elevated heart rate’ scrolled by the bottom. No shit. I don’t need one hundred and sixty thousand credits worth of cybernetics to know this kid’s frightened.

  “Join the MLF?” Risa put her boot on the seat, next to Ingrid’s knee. “You wouldn’t want that.” She kicked, spinning the chair around so the girl’s back faced her.

  Ingrid strained at her bindings, taken by panic as Risa drew up behind her, close. “W-what are you doing? Please don’t kill me. I swear I won’t tell anyone I saw you here!”

  The young woman whimpered at the faint click of a single Nano claw snapping to the ready. She crunched forward, as if trying to make it harder to slit her throat.

  Risa put a hand her shoulder, causing a squeal. She waited for Ingrid�
�s eyes to open again, and cut the ties with a flick of her finger.

  Ingrid brought her arms around in front of her and gathered her shirt closed, shaking. “You are toying with me?”

  “No.” Risa collected her gloves and helmet, then drew one of her pistols and moved to the door. “I believe you. Are you sure you want to come with me? It’s going to be dangerous outside.”

  “Yes. Yes.” Tears trailed down her cheeks to a wide smile. “It is worth the risk for a chance at freedom.”

  Risa swung out into the hall behind her gun, finding it empty and quiet. She hesitated briefly before reaching into her thigh pocket and returning Ingrid’s sidearm. “Okay. Follow me. We have a plane to catch.”

  isa’s hand rested inches from her eyes, stark white against the grime-stained plastisteel shelf upon which she lay. The din of people echoed up from far below in Concourse 4, the second largest open square in Primus City. Innumerable slackened cables hung from the walls, thick, black vines in a jungle of technological ruin. She didn’t know what any of them were for. Judging by the filth, nobody else did either. No one could see her in the dark―no one but her own guilty conscience pushing her another step farther from human. Heat from her metal bed permeated the gel of her ballistic suit and wrapped her in warmth. It almost took the sting out of the frigid air caressing her face.

  Her nails scraped as she made a fist against the metal. What was it that pulled her to this high, lonely place whenever she needed comfort? Risa opened her hand, fluttering her fingers in a slow rhythmic motion, trying to stare through her skin at the lethal crystalline blades within.

  A spark jumped a synapse in her brain, traversing living tissue for two hundredths of a second before a nanometer-wide platinum thread responded to the impulse, carrying it to a tiny metal box on her brain stem. From there, a miniscule current ran down wires down her arm. One Nano claw erupted, piercing droplets of blood from the tip of her index finger. Seven segments, three held within the finger, four from her palm, locked into a single, rigid, curved instrument of death. Blood ran in thin channels down the edge, pooling at her fingertip before dripping with a pat to the metal vent. She turned her hand over, staring at the triangular blade with a razor’s edge along the inside curve.

  Anatoly was a pig.

  The Nano claw snapped into its embedded sheath; the small hole it left behind sealed seconds later, knit by an army of unseen nanobots.

  He was still a person.

  She made a fist once more, and brought it down hard on the metal. The knowledge of what kind of man Anatoly had been, of what he was planning to do to Ingrid, did sap some of her guilt―enough to keep her from crying, though the nausea still came.

  Risa had kept out of sight in the tunnels with Ingrid until the shooting stopped. Only five out of forty or so of the ACC soldiers walked away. Ingrid was one of two women there; the other had been augmented, armored, motivated―and overconfident. Three of the four MLF fatalities came at her hands. The woman had charged into the open, assuming the MLF carried energy weapons or normal ballistics her armor would’ve laughed at. Silvery energy-absorbent plating on her metal arms as well as her vest had done nothing against the magnetic rifles. Had they gone in there with their usual stock of lasers, they would have walked into a slaughter.

  Did Shiro know they had a combat aug? How could he? Risa closed her eyes, hearing a memory of Raziel’s voice.

  Money and information are the same coin, Risa. Different only in who holds it.

  Faces of the lost flashed through her mind, lit in pulses from a nonexistent camera. Yanna… She’d only been twenty, her neck crushed by the cyborg bitch when she tried to drag her brother, Thomas, to safety. She collapsed dead on top of him, siblings together in a final embrace. Risa curled into a tighter ball, overcome with guilt at the loss.

  So senseless.

  She had never met the other two who died―both had been new recruits from Drakus Mons settlement―but the sight of dust-covered faces gaping at the sky beneath shattered visors had already filed itself into the library of memories that would haunt her forever.

  Pavo had suffered a minor laser burn to his shoulder. Risa found herself as upset over that as she was over the dead strangers. He had carried her back from veritable death in a dive hotel bathtub, and she hid like a rat in a tunnel while they shot him. Those were my orders. Stay down, stay out of sight, watch the console in case they brought it back online. Risa pushed herself up and sat, legs hanging over the side. Whose order was it? Is Garrison feeling fatherly? Certainly not Maris. Curiosity waltzed with betrayal as she thought of the way Shiro had looked at her over dinner. How does Pavo feel? Am I a sister in the cause, or more? She rubbed the bridge of her nose with both hands. Shiro is a way out. I could get away from all of this. Arms fell slack, crossed in her lap, head down. Who am I kidding? I’m too broken for anyone to want.

  A smile teased at the corner of her mouth as she recalled Pavo walking into an overhead pipe. She’d thought him at best an idiot amateur, at worst an infiltrator she’d have to kill. Risa hugged her knees to her chest. If she was the cold, heartless killer everyone assumed her to be, she’d have slashed his throat open without even asking why he acted strange. Imagine the look on Denmark’s face watching that.

  A band of pink light crept up the wall, stretching shadows from the arm-thick cables. An orb bot rose to eye level and tilted like the head of a curious dog. Blinking ion emitters surrounded the lower half, creating the eerie glow amid drifting cables. When she looked at it, half a dozen holo-panes opened nearby showing ads: cakes and candies, frilly women’s clothing, dolls, stuffed animals, and other cutesy items.

  All the things the government had taken away from her with fire and screaming. Her father’s smiling face appeared in her mind, between two outstretched arms. Behind him, the room blurred past in a spin and her childish voice giggled. A memory of a birthday party, six or seven perhaps. She’d had a room full of stuffed animals, dolls, and pink things.

  I used to be a little princess. Risa hooked her boot heels on the edge and buried her face in her knees. Her hair fell in a cascade down to her boots. The king died, and now I’m the Queen of Death.

  The orb emitted a series of beeps and chirps. Her head snapped up in time to notice the screens reacting as if someone had touched them, making selections. Before she could protest, the orb wobbled in thanks and shot straight down out of sight, taking the pink glow with it.

  “What the hell was that?”

  She lowered her legs over the side, gazing past swinging feet at the crowd six stories away. Everyone seemed tense. Parents kept little children close. Anyone alone always moved at a speed a touch short of a run. No one liked crowded spaces, perfect locations for an MLF bomb. They don’t understand. We don’t attack the people. We’ve never set off a device in a civilian population center. Risa felt the urge to scream with rage and cry with grief at the same time. Those weren’t ours.

  A few minuets later, a boxy hover-bot glided out of a distant tunnel and flew up to her. She scooted back against the wall, laser pistol in hand, and aimed. From a hundred or so yards away, the bot stalled in midair, simulating shivering. Her NetMini beeped with an incoming text.

  ‹Do not destroy ComTec Corporation Delivery Unit CBD-81403:4, contents non-hazardous.›

  Yeah, right. I’m going to believe that.

  ‹Define contents,› she typed back.

  A few seconds later, her NetMini beeped again with a text: ‹Confection, wax, cloth, plastic, synthetic textile fibers.›

  Risa lowered the laser pistol, eyes narrowing. The bot tilted forward with a whirr, gliding up to a halt close enough for her to reach it. The front panel opened downward and a tray slid out bearing an oversized cupcake. Chocolate, with pink icing and one candle. White letters around the edge spelled: ‘Happy 25th Birthday Risa!’

  Already brittle emotions cracked to tears as she holstered the weapon and accepted the cake, cradling it. The tray retracted and came out again beari
ng a long box. Black letters printed upon plain white plastic repeated the phrase ‘Happy Birthday.’ She set the mini-cake on her leg and took the box, allowing the bot to zoom away.

  Realizing it was her birthday brought shivers. Even she had forgotten.

  She covered her mouth and gasped at what lay inside. A cloth doll in a pink dress, the same one she had begged and begged her father to get for her ninth birthday. The unimportant day that came and went without notice two months after he died.

  Risa clutched the twelve-inch plush princess to her chest, feeling foolish for hugging a doll, but unable to stop crying. Her head sagged, catching more writing on the inside of the box:

  To the girl you should not let them destroy.

  Diagrams of molecules appeared in thin, amber lines superimposed over reality as she held the pink and brown treat in her upraised palm and sniffed it. Forty seconds later, the chem-scan found nothing suspicious. Perched in her protected sanctuary, Risa took an hour to eat her birthday cake, such as it was, savoring tiny bites.

  A series of meticulous folds reduced the synthetic paper into a dense lump imbued with the fragrance of strawberry. Risa slipped the crenulated wrapper into a small pocket on the left side of her weapons harness. I’m saving garbage. She shuddered into a ball, wrapping herself around the plush toy. No… It’s a memory.

  After securing the doll to her belt, she slipped off the metal plate, falling through the blast of a heating vent and landing on a thick, swaying cable. With the grace of a dangling gymnast, she climbed over wires and protrusions in the wall, her descent in the darkness unnoticed by the crowd. At ground level, warmer air heated by bodies and lights carried the overwhelming presence of seared meat from a gyro stand by the opening of a two-lane shaft lined with shops and glutted with people.

  Risa leaned against the wall, head down, holding the princess doll to her chest with both arms. She peered over its black hair, watching citizens go about their errands, feeling like a spectator on the edge of society. How badly she had wanted this doll as a child. Her father had teased her with alternate gifts, making her whine and cry each time he taunted her that he’d get some other present, pretending not to understand she wanted this one. Thinking back, she was sure he’d have gotten it. How could she have known when her birthday came she’d be curled up in a vent shaft, aching for a hot meal?