Hand of Raziel (Daughter of Mars Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  Boring sameness passed on either side: red silt, rocks, and the occasional dune. At least with a roadway under her, she no longer needed to watch the sky to keep course or stare at the ground to avoid pointy stones. Her body told her it should be sleeping now, but the futile message bounced off a brain in no way ready for rest. Too much adrenaline from her near miss kept her amped up. Even if she wasn’t lost and alone in the middle of who-knows-where, sleep would remain distant for some time.

  Odd thrumming emanated from the metal road. At first, she couldn’t comprehend the meaning, but as the sense of vibration reached her feet, she understood, and her augmented ears detected the sound of approaching vehicles in the metal. It seemed too faint to be another Millipede. She shoved her shirt down and held it in place, whirling about as the deep whirr of electric motors grew loud enough for normal ears.

  Four squat, wide e-bikes patched together from a mish-mash of random parts preceded two four-wheeled rovers. The rovers looked like something used by early explorers on an uncharted planet. Four long struts similar to spider legs ended with narrow wheels as tall as she was, with a pod-shaped main body suspended several feet off the ground between them. The vehicles had a broad footprint, and looked as though they would be stable even on the rough terrain of Mars. Both rovers appeared quite far removed from simple exploration vehicles, modified with crude armor plates as well as heavy weaponry. One seemed to have a pair of ballistic machine guns too big for a man to carry mounted on a motorized swivel ring. The other sported a particle cannon that looked big enough to destroy light armored vehicles.

  The drivers, all men, wore a mixture of black nylon, imitation leather, and scavenged protective gear. Some of the armor had UCF colors, some ACC, and others looked like chunks of Cydonian crab shell. The skinny figure behind the particle cannon stood higher to get a better look at her, his expression concealed by a goggle-eyed respirator mask. Several riders had hair done up in wild colors and styles, and at least two were bald.

  Risa surveyed them from left to right. Four bikes, two with a second axe-wielding passenger. Two rovers, each with a crew of three.

  Twelve men stared at her with such intensity her shirt felt even smaller. Guys on the bikes leaned on the handlebars, leering. The closest, a burly armored figure of at least three hundred pounds, nudged his e-bike away from the group and rolled to a halt ten feet away from her. The side panels of the front wheel hub were molded in the shape of skulls, eye sockets aglow from the drive system within. In the safehouse, she’d thought nothing of walking naked from the bathroom to her room, or loafing about in the barracks in only a tee shirt. Everyone more or less did that sometimes out of necessity or laziness. Right here, right now, she wanted to crawl into a hole from humiliation. The dark bruises on her ankles made it worse. What if they thought she was used to being captive?

  Shit, I look like an ACC runaway.

  Five handguns adorned his vest in various improvised holsters, and scabbards affixed to the bike held three swords. His copious beard frizzed in multiple directions, looking as though whoever had tried to braid it had been stumbling drunk at the time. A tattoo of a tribal bird on his bald scalp wrinkled into ridges as he grinned at her, displaying several missing teeth. From the left handlebar dangled a crude emergency respirator mask.

  Risa felt tiny, exposed, under-armed, and much like a mouse watched by twelve eagles.

  She tried to pull the tails of her borrowed shirt down to her knees. To pop claws, she’d have to let go of the shirt. If she let go of the shirt, the wind would give them a show. Risa stared, waiting for him to make the first move. She tensed, ready to engage her speedware the instant he went for a weapon.

  “Well look at that,” said the biker.

  Risa sucked in a deep breath. Don’t be stupid. To have a chance, she’d have to act complacent and get close enough to the particle cannon operator. Her speedware wouldn’t help her dodge a projectile moving at the speed of light. She felt silly for feeling embarrassment.

  None of these men would live long enough to enjoy the view.

  Thin green lines traced across Risa’s vision, outlining the most efficient movement patterns during a theoretical attack. Weapons flickered with red outlines wherever her cybernetic eyes detected them. The particle cannon on the rover wore a crown of a red exclamation point, as did four laser pistols among the riders. The three-dimensional wireframe polygon ran through a dozen permutations, a bird’s nest of glowing lines beating like a mutating digital heart. Each iteration of the pathing algorithm came to an identical conclusion: the particle cannon operator had a seven in ten chance of hitting her before she could get to him. Odds dropped to four in ten if she ignored attacks originating from the rest of the gang, but the combat computer’s simulation predicted fatal shots coming in from at least three angles.

  If she attacked from where she stood, she would die.

  Risa clenched her fists on the tails of General Everett’s shirt, keeping it down over her thighs. She didn’t shiver as much from the cold as from the unusual feeling of vulnerability. In her years spent in vents and underground, she always kept a wall at her back. Out here in the desert, she had nothing to hide behind. Few things scared her like energy weapons, since her speedware couldn’t outrun light. Garrison once told her that’s how other people felt about any firearm. His attempt to cheer her up hadn’t worked then, and the memory of it provided no solace now.

  The wall of humanity dismounted and approached, stopping four feet away. His height left her eye-to-chest. She stared up at his wafting beard, feeling as short as she did the first time she met Garrison, at nine. She hated the particle cannon even more. Despite this monster’s size, he wouldn’t work as a body shield. Having him between her and the blast would accomplish only leaving enough mess behind for someone to realize she had once existed. Whether or not that would be a better outcome than complete vaporization was debatable.

  The man pulled his fingers down his beard and furrowed his eyes. Psionics scared Risa to tears, but at that moment, she would have killed to be a telepath. His expression betrayed little emotion, as if appraising a new motorcycle he considered buying. Her gaze flicked to the anti-vehicle cannon. She had to get close to that gun. Risa tried to convince herself to act meek. She would allow them to kidnap her and hope she could do something before… Nausea rose up in her throat.

  “Ya lookin’ a wee bit underdressed ta’ be out ‘ere.”

  Confusion mixed with dread turned her attempt to speak into a cute burp. At least, the bikers seemed to think it cute, as they all laughed.

  “Wander inta the dust fer a little, uhh… ‘adventure’”―he winked―“or, you alone?”

  She stared. There’s a question with no correct answer. A lie about armed men waiting for her ‘just over the next dune’ would never work. It would also make them doubt everything she said from then on. Admitting to being alone would be as good as begging them to kidnap her. Her toes had gone numb; another hour out here could do permanent damage. It made her sick to think about what these men would do to her, but she had no ideas, and fewer options.

  “I’m alone.”

  He squinted over her head, scanning the horizon. “Come on, ain’t leavin’ you out here like that. We ain’ got no spare suits yer size, but we kin get ya to Eebo’s.”

  For no reason Risa could fathom, she held still as the huge man scooped her up like a child and carried her to the particle cannon buggy. She tensed, waiting for the collar, the rope, or the cage, but the living skeleton behind the gun made no move. He looked like he weighed less than she did, six foot and change, gangly. The spray of salt and pepper hair exploding from his head would’ve made her laugh if she weren’t wound so tight.

  She clamped down on the shirt, keeping it from baring anything vital as he hefted her over the rover’s sidewall and lowered her into a small cargo space behind the two front seats. He set her down seated on a plastisteel crate about as comfortable as sitting on an ice cube. The vehicle’s h
ull came up to her chin on both sides, though she couldn’t decide if she felt protected or trapped. Bolts on the floor hinted at where a rear bench seat had been removed, making room for a number of boxes and cargo nets full of supplies.

  The skinny man behind the particle cannon waved at her when she peered up at him. From tip to handle, the mechanism was longer than her height and about as big around as her thigh. Thin metal hoses seeping mist supplied cooling fluid, likely Cryomil based on the biting aluminum smell, to various components. She wondered what genius decided to cool an energy weapon with something so prone to exploding.

  That’s gotta be a jury rig. No one in their right mind would use that shit to cool a―

  A wad of dense, soft material fell on her head.

  “Lookn’ aike you’k yooz dat,” said the cannon operator.

  She gathered the mass of cloth, which turned out to be a blanket, from her head and wrapped herself in it as fast as she could get her hands to move. It stank like grease and machinery, but she’d reached a point beyond caring. The huge biker’s face hovered over the side of the chamber, his look gone from appraising to friendly.

  “We’ll be there in ‘bout twenty.” He patted the hull twice. “Holler up ta Styx if you need anything.”

  Risa managed an ill-aimed nod while trying to get her feet inside a blanket cocoon. Shock at such rough-and-tumble men treating her like a rescued traveler rather than a kidnap victim left her brain operating two clicks above cavewoman. Kindness had been the last thing she ever expected from a crew like this. She huddled in the coarse blanket, grateful to have it between her ass and the cold metal. Sensation crept back into her toes as she scooted her feet back and forth over the fabric to generate heat.

  Low, droning whirring came from somewhere ahead. She couldn’t see a damn thing but the back of seats and a faux-leather cap on the driver in the right side seat. His profile changed color as the holographic Navcon display flicked among different modes. A few seconds later, the rover lumbered forward. She shifted with the rest of the cargo, and snuggled tighter. The taste of metal entered her mouth when she covered half her face and breathed through the synthetic wool.

  “Ey,” said Styx.

  She looked up again. The bone-thin man had his goggles down. Individual round lenses held a coppery tint. A strange pattern recalling the image of ancient coins silkscreened onto the glass caught the light with a flash. He reached a spindly arm down, holding an eight-inch Mars-red plastic pouch between two fingers.

  “Take et. Is a chem-cal heater.” After she accepted the offering, he made a crushing gesture with both hands. “Squeeza shit outta it ta get it goin’, ‘an shake it.”

  Her hand drew the precious packet into the blanket. She held it against her chest and twisted it in a two-handed grip until an ampule inside burst. A few seconds after she shook it, the packet gave off heat. Risa wanted to hug it to her gut, stand on it, and sit on it all at the same time. She wound up sliding off the crate and sitting on the floor cross-legged, with only her eyes and a bit of nose peering out of the blanket.

  Styx attempted to make pleasant conversation, with a surprising display of intelligence given his broken language. Risa returned polite nods at his boasting of killing seven men with one trigger pull from his ‘baby.’ Before long, the rocking motion of the buggy coupled with the warm softness surrounding her reduced his words to a smear of sound.

  Faint mechanical thrumming permeated the silence, drawing Risa’s mind back from sleep. She curled on her side, surrounded by softness and warmth. Minutes passed. She didn’t want to move. Metal clanks grew louder, approaching from her head before growing faint in the other direction, the sound of heavy boots on a plastisteel floor. When she opened her eyes, she found herself in a chamber a touch larger than a coffin. Plastisteel walls glowed with soft orange light from the Comforgel pad under her.

  The riders’ blanket remained around her, as well as the general’s shirt. In the tight space, it left the air tasting like the underside of a vehicle. Of the two long walls, the one she faced had a basic set of controls―physical buttons rather than a holo-terminal―for the Comforgel heat as well as air filtration. Behind her, the sidewall consisted of plain plastisteel, featureless except for a central handle with a squeeze lever.

  Dull points of pain stabbed at the bottoms of her feet, as though someone had forgotten to remove acupuncture needles. She curled tighter, rubbing her soles for a few minutes, milking another excuse not to get up. At the realization no amount of massaging would chase away the phantoms of a thousand sharp rocks, she stretched and sat up. The low ceiling left her head tilted sideways at an uncomfortable angle.

  Tapping on the small square panel to her left grew into thumping. A woman’s moans joined a man’s grunts. Risa slipped a hand out of the cocoon and rubbed her face. Like the layers of an onion peeling back, the previous day revealed itself to her consciousness. Great hunger dimmed as the reality of her close call with execution punched her in the gut. Lancaster and Donovan had once suggested a sob story about her childhood might get her life imprisonment instead, but it wasn’t an outcome to bank on. She tuned out the amorous couple in the next bunk while trying to figure out her next move.

  ‘Eebo’s’ appeared to be some manner of hotel. The super-economy bedding suggested a drop-box building out in the middle of nowhere, possibly along the Millipede track. That made no sense. Millipedes couldn’t leave their special routes. If the driver stopped for the night, he’d block the road. No, those things were self-contained. They went off the road after I fell asleep. I could be anywhere now.

  She waited for the banging to stop, and waited longer until the sound of people getting out of the adjacent chamber and walking away faded to silence. A light squeeze on the handle popped the hatch, which hissed open like an awning, propped up on thin hydraulic struts. Stuffy air laced with the smell of frying food and dust rushed into the formerly comfortable sleeping pod. Similar doors covered the opposite wall, five high. To the left, six more stacks lined both sides of a narrow walkway ending at a door with two more stacks of bunks on her right. The hallway in that direction ended at a dirty metal door spray-painted with ‘piss here not in the beds.’

  The smell hit her as soon as she processed the meaning of the words.

  One look at the door, and she wanted nothing to do with that bathroom without a full e-suit, much less a lack of shoes. After arranging the blanket into a makeshift dress, she lowered herself out of the third-tier bunk, cast a longing glance at the now eye-level Comforgel pad, and made her way to the not-bathroom door.

  A flexible corridor made of segmented black plastic and floored with metal grating connected to a matching door six feet away. Crackles and clicks flooded the little hallway, no doubt from windblown sand and small rocks striking the outside. The sleeping section had to be a separate pod building. She gritted her teeth and skipped over the freezing metal grid, gasping and hissing.

  Eebo’s, as indicated by a huge swath of white spray-painted letters over a bar, had the look of the kind of watering hole frequented by the sort of men given to rove in packs through the Martian desert and do unseemly things to solitary, defenseless women. Granted, those same roving men had proved themselves rather different from her initial expectation.

  Seven round tables to the right were empty except for a couple in scratched-up black armor nestled so close she couldn’t tell who was in whose lap. The only thing keeping them from fucking on that table is the armor they’re wearing. A bar, staffed by a man who could’ve been the grandpa of the huge biker, took up most of the long wall opposite a door leading outside. A small window, square with rounded corners, looked out over endless red dust, and no sign of a Millipede road. In the distant right corner, a rolling security door hung open over a thick bullet-resistant window where a black-haired woman looked bored out of her mind. She seemed older than Risa, but not so much as to give off a motherly vibe. Her disinterested gaze was a perfect match for the hardened, world-weary qual
ity seeping out from dark stains all over her tan jumpsuit.

  Risa moved away from the ‘happy couple,’ ignoring her hunger as well as her gait-altering need to use the bathroom. That would come next, provided the woman in the window had some manner of shoes for sale. If not, she’d go outside. Heck, peeing in a cup in full view of this room sounded better than braving whatever lurked at the other end of the corridor. As bad as it stank past a closed door with a rubber seal, she had little interest in opening it. The bored woman gave her an ‘oh, you poor thing’ look, which nudged Risa’s mood further into the ground.

  “What’cha need, sweetie?”

  A weak reflection in the two-inch thick material confirmed she did not appear to be a child, though grandpa would probably ask her for ID if she wanted booze. The coarse grey blanket-dress made her look like a peasant girl from a Monwyn video. Risa ignored the condescending tone, and raised an eyebrow at three projectiles trapped inside the barrier―two of them pointed out.

  “Got any clothes? Boots?”

  The woman laughed. The kind of laughter one usually gets from the waiter when ordering fish in a steakhouse. “Well, I suppose… Most people don’t come here for fashion.” She waved at a wall rack full of guns, blades, and various blocks of ammunition. “Let me see what I got. Open that blanket up a bit so I can get a size of ya.”

  Risa obliged. The woman frowned at the shirt.

  “Some bastard used you and left, huh? Enlisted or officer?”

  “Uhh. I dunno.” Risa blushed. Embarrassing, yes, but the convenient lie would trigger fewer questions. “Something like that.”

  The woman’s face reddened. She slammed her fist on the counter, causing a glass and several bullets to jump. “Sons of bitches. Are you okay, girl? Did he hurt you? I bet it was an officer. Damn bastards think they can do whatever they want to the settlers out here away from the big cities.”