Hand of Raziel (Daughter of Mars Book 1)

by Matthew S. Cox

  She swiped again, across his chest, expecting the body to disintegrate into shards as the others had. This time, the room turned white, and her skull burned.

  When the blinding radiance faded, she found herself lying on her back. A warm trickle of liquid seeped down the side of her neck. Right away, she knew she bled from the M3 port. The sight of her wire hanging from the bomb fifteen feet away worried her more.

  The crunch of gravel under a boot scared the pain out of her head. She flipped over, as if doing a push up, and sprang to her feet. A muscular male figure covered head to toe in a clingy black suit stood two steps behind her with his arms folded. The rubbery material enshrouded his face as well, save for a pair of dark, round lenses. Unlike her ballistic suit, his had a matte finish, with rigid patches over his chest, knees, and elbows. A heavy filter mask obscured the contours of his mouth and nose.

  Oh, shit. Risa took a step away. One of the C-Branch operators came back.

  “I’m not here to kill anyone,” she said, trying to sound braver than she felt. “No one has to die.”

  “I’m not going to ask how you found out about this op.” He chuckled. “Get out of here while you still can.”

  “This is senseless. These people are UCF citizens. What the hell are you doing?”

  The man gestured as if scratching his head. “Hold on a moment, aren’t you with the Front? You know, terrorists and bombers? Since when do you care?”

  Risa seethed. “That’s not true. We’re fighting to free Mars from the kind of government that murders its own people for a political side show.”

  He shook his head, gazing at the ground. “It’s a real pity those people are going to believe the Front destroyed Arden.”

  Risa kicked on her speedware, as high as it would go. She leapt, claws bursting from her fingers, a droplet of blood flying from each tip. The man seemed to freeze for a fraction of a second, after which he moved at the same speed. They both seemed normal as the rest of the world stopped, in defiance of the laws of time. He caught her wrists and kicked her feet out from under her, dumping her on her back.

  She somersaulted away and lunged again. This time with one hand swiping low for a knee. He caught her arm again, twisting it up behind her back and swinging her flat against the wall-facing side of capacitor unit two. Risa stood on tiptoe to take some of the pain out of her right elbow. Her left hand’s claws gouged metal as she tried to hold on.

  Distant mechanical noises announced the approach of the four-legged walker.

  Damn, that girl is going to get herself killed. What are you doing? Go away. These bastards don’t like witnesses.

  Risa struggled to push off the capacitor unit, but he was too strong―boosted. She might as well have been trapped between metal plates.

  “Not bad. I didn’t think your people had access to military-grade speedware. Black market Chinese?”

  “No, NSK.” She grunted in another feeble attempt to squirm loose. “Why?”

  He flung her aside, tossing her again to the ground. “The Senate has lost sight of the situation on Mars. They need to be reminded how much of a threat the Liberation Front really is.”

  She cradled her sore elbow, not liking the sarcasm in his tone. “You don’t sound convinced we are.”

  “A couple of rat-eating malcontents hiding in the tunnels? Hardly. If we really wanted you gone, you’d be gone.” He crossed his arms again. “Your people are useful, and your existence feeds money into Mars Ops.”

  Risa sat up. “This has to stop. Innocent people are dying, all because of dustblow.”

  He laughed.

  With a snarl, she attacked again. He blocked her claws four times, leaned back once as she slashed past his face, and drove his fist into her sternum hard enough to take her off her feet. She crashed flat on her back, all the air forced from her lungs.

  The four-legged walker stopped, rotated, and hurried away as fast as the frame could move, a disjointed scramble of whining actuators and clunking metal.

  “What happened to you? You were once classified as useful.” He shook his head. “They should’ve trained you how to fight. Idiots think all it takes is boosts? You’re just another kiddie coasting on the hardware. Do you really think there’s nothing more to fighting than sharp blades and fast reflexes. You’d think they’d have had the foresight to give you at least a basic hand-to-hand sim.”

  She wheezed, unable to breathe or speak. He stepped over her on his way to the bomb, and plugged her wire into a small device strapped to his arm. Risa’s fingers dug into the dirt as she coughed, cried, and gagged.

  “No!” she screamed, finding the strength to fling herself onto his back.

  He caught her right wrist, but couldn’t get his left arm up in time. She speared four claws into the capacitor wall. Nano blades pierced the armored material as if it were no tougher than dense rubber, causing an eruption of sparks and smoke.

  The man growled, overpowering her. He flung her off like a coat, slamming her into the machinery again, her shoulder blades striking the bomb. She bounced away, staggering into a spinning backhand strike that knocked blood and spit from her mouth. Risa stumbled, managing to avoid falling, and whirled to face him again.

  “What happened to you, Risa? You used to be an asset. What’s with all this bleeding heart ‘oh you shouldn’t kill people’ whining. Did you forget SO391?”

  Risa glared. “That wasn’t our fault.”

  “Seventy-two families, Risa.”

  He wanted to make her cry. He wanted to dredge up the worst mistake she’d ever made. How could it be her fault? All the intelligence said it was a military installation working on a nanobot-powered weapon capable of taking over machines as well as people with enough neuralware.

  “That’s a cover story the ACC put out after the fact. There were no civilians there.”

  “You saw the images. All of Mars did.”

  “Only a moron would believe anything on the NewsNet.”

  “You had to know, didn’t you?” The tone of his voice conjured the image of a wide grin under that mask as he leaned away from another claw strike. “You went back.”

  Her next attempt to slash him ended with a hand grasping behind her head and shoving her face into the wall. She stumbled back, snarling. “They could’ve moved the bodies in later.”

  “Now who’s bending believability to suit their own purposes?” He advanced a step. “Come on, we’re both after the same thing. Two sides of the same coin. Play the game.”

  She faked a claw strike, instead kicking for his balls. He took the hit, but caught her leg. Risa leapt over herself, twisting into a kick across his face before landing on her hands. The strike didn’t seem to do much other than stun him for a moment, but it gave her a chance to get her ankle out of his grip.

  “I suppose I’m being too critical.” He adjusted the fit of his facemask. “You’re actually not that bad, but I’ve had eighteen years of practice. You really don’t have a chance.”

  “So why am I still alive?” She couldn’t quite stand upright, too tired and sore.

  “Call me a chauvinist. I don’t want to kill a pretty little girl. Especially since you’re crying like a child. Besides, you might still be useful.” He glanced at the bomb, and grumbled. “Okay, I’m impressed. How did you jam our comms?”

  The fading mechanical ka-chunka-chunka noise of the fleeing walker made her think of a thirteen year old who was about to die because the military wanted more money. Warmth spread down her limbs along the wirepaths of her speedware. She leapt, scoring a superficial slash across his back as he twisted away. He continued the spin, driving a knee into her gut. She vomited on impact. His fist came down between her shoulders, drilling her face into the puddle of bile seeping over rough gravel. He stepped on her neck, holding her down. Stone points bit into her cheek.

  “You’re making this rather difficult for me. I should break both your arms so you sit still like a good little girl and stop trying to kill yourself.” />
  “Fuck you.” Grit and cold puke invaded her mouth.

  “You should’ve taken the warning to leave Arden alone.” He lifted her off the ground by a handful of hair and shoved her into the wall next to the bomb with a knife under her chin. “Since you fried my command module, you’re going to re-arm the device. I ain’t going in with you here, and I’d lose a whole two hours of sleep over having to kill such a pretty little thing.”

  “I can’t.”

  He pulled the knife away only long enough to punch her in the stomach. She raised her head away from the point, cold metal at the back of her skull.

  “Don’t give me that moral-high-road crap. Do it or I’ll end you right here.”

  “I don’t know how,” she whispered, blood leaking between her teeth. “I just clawed the program and it died.”

  “What kind of F.N.G. moron do you take me for? You disarmed the fuckin’ thing, you can re-arm it.”

  “Please don’t do this. There are children here, innocent people who you’re going to kill just for money? How can you call us terrorists?”

  “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you aren’t so useful anymore.”

  “Go ahead, kill me.” I’m sorry Kree… Tears rolled out her eyes as they closed. “I can’t arm that bomb. I don’t know how. It’s way beyond any device I’ve ever planted. I can’t explain how I broke the programming. I don’t know the first thing about them.”

  He jerked his arm back, fast enough to make her expect the feeling–however brief it would be–of a knife piercing her heart. She opened her eyes, pleading. His movements slowed, as if the air around him solidified to thick gelatin.

  A shimmer flare like a northern star winked into being behind his head, exploding into a seven-foot-tall energy form with immense, feathered wings. An entire apparition–Raziel–manifested as a blazing outline of light. Her legs weakened; if not for the hand at her throat pinning her to the capacitor, she’d have fallen to her knees. Static flickered across her vision as a patch of painful warmth manifested at the back of her brain.

  The length of a broadsword extended from Raziel’s hand, thrusting through the C-Branch operator from behind, piercing his chest and stalling the knife that slid toward hers. The man convulsed and gurgled, though no blood appeared. A sound like bones breaking inside his muscles crackled in the silence.

  He slumped to the side. Risa collapsed, staring up at the dome. Raziel vanished. Her head throbbed with a burning migraine and dancing flashing lights. Nausea came and went, and her tongue went numb.

  Boom.

  Sirens rang out in the distance, lost amid a rumble of collapse. Her eyes snapped open, her placid calm shattered. A second distant explosion roared overhead.

  Risa tried to sit up, managing to get her arms in front of her face before a shower of debris fell all around her. She curled into a ball as a falling slab of wall blotted out the sky.

  Everything went dark.

  eeping, slow and distant, pierced the lightless silence in which Risa floated. Lumps jabbed at her back and legs. A blunted point pressed into her left breast. The flavor of metal and dirt filled her mouth. She tried to moan, but spat a spray of soil and rock chips. The beeping, a sound once far away as if on the other side of a long tube, seemed to get closer and faster. Like an alarm clock inches out of reach, the noise made lying there intolerable. Risa fought a wave of panic when she couldn’t open her eyes. Seconds later, she realized they already were―she stared into pitch black.

  Her left arm lay pinned to her side under the weight of broken concrete. As if caught in the blocky teeth of a stone giant, her body lay draped amid hunks of debris. Risa coughed and spat Martian regolith and kept choking. She’d had enough bad experience with e-suits to know the air was too thin. A growling cry slipped from her mouth―an attempted scream―as the only possible explanation sank in.

  The black ops team had destroyed Arden’s dome.

  I’m trapped under tons of rubble, suffocating. She closed her eyes. I suppose that’s it then.

  Time passed in silence as she thought back over her life. Pain like a forge-hot sword stabbed her from above her left eye, all the way to the back of her skull. Images of every bomb she’d ever planted flashed by in her mind. The sensation of blood, slick and warm, coated her hands from everyone she’d killed. She preferred stealth to killing, but sometimes there was no other way. Finding the people who’d murdered her father had been more important than keeping her soul clean. Risa had done whatever Maris wanted, staining it. Finding the truth had been the killing blow. After all I’ve done, why would Raziel have chosen me? I’m beyond saving. The last bomb she’d planted ticked down to two seconds. Her half-conscious dream-self slumped with relief and sighed. Kree looked up at her, smiling.

  I almost killed those kids. Her eyes shot open. Pavo… No, I can’t give up. I have to get back to him.

  She thrashed and squirmed, pulling on her right arm with as much strength as she could summon. Risa rocked her body back and forth. Minutes and millimeters passed. Eventually, she got her hand loose enough to reach up and brush silt from her face. After a few long breaths to stop her head from spinning, she grabbed the rough shard jabbing her in the chest and shoved. The concrete went left as she slid her body out from under it, winding up on her side. Her motion triggered a chain reaction in the debris, calling a small avalanche of scraping and clattering overhead.

  Raziel, if you’re still with me, I could really use a guardian angel right about now.

  With both arms over her face, she stretched out as much as the space would allow. When the rumbling stopped, everything remained black. She tried night vision, but the cavern around her was perfect dark, not even a tiny pinhole of daylight crept in. The Wraith created fuzzy grey shadows whenever a bit of debris bounced past overhead. That her cyberware could ‘see’ motion gave her hope―it meant freedom was only a few feet away.

  Pain throbbed in her bones. Between the C-Branch agent beating her senseless and the onslaught of crushing rubble, the thought of curling up and letting herself go was too appealing. Her head sagged as fatigue and lack of oxygen threatened to drag her into permanent sleep. She grunted, focusing on the mental image of Pavo holding Kree in the doorway of their future home. Hoarse grunts and moans escaped as she struggled to her knees and braced both hands on a slab overhead. Straining got her nowhere but tired, and brought on a dangerous bout of dizziness. She slumped back, sitting on her heels with a hand over her mouth. The incessant beeping poked at her brain like some manner of torture. Trapped in the dark with an alarm clock she couldn’t see and couldn’t stop; she tried to scream again, but managed only a gagging wheeze.

  Faint thuds made her wonder if her heart had crawled up into her skull. The sound grew louder, and the ground shook with each impact. Her mind raced. If something was moving around out there, it had to be more of the C-Branch assassins, or perhaps military forces coming to mop up. Risa slumped over, playing dead. Mechanical whirring accompanied the scrape of metal on stone. Grey shapes moved upon the blackness of her closed eyes. Distinct swaths of brightness took on the outlines of thick slabs, even down to the detail of the mangled reinforcing spars sticking out of the edge. Another piece of stone dragged past, dropping a wave of dust on top of her.

  A blast of wind hit her face. The ground trembled with a sharp impact, accompanied by the higher-pitched clatter of a huge rock sliding over chips. Seconds later, the machine noises ceased. A feminine grunt came from above, followed by the crunch of someone landing on loose rocks. Ethereal shadows defined a human figure approaching out of the black. The form stooped, reaching for her, and a warm hand brushed grit from her cheek.

  “Aww, fuck,” said a young voice amid the whoosh-click of a rebreather mask. “That sucks.”

  The girl from the walker.

  Risa opened her eyes, staring up at naked sky. Weak strands of medium blue swirled around a starfield rendered in indigo and black. From where she lay, the entire dome appeared gone. She sat up, makin
g the thirteen-year-old kneeling over her emit a muffled scream. The girl had added a facemask to her dingy orange jumpsuit. Her four-legged chariot loomed behind her, front end lowered in an ungainly stooping bow. It seemed quite a bit larger from the ground.

  “What’s that damn beeping?” asked Risa.

  “Holy shit, you’re alive!”

  She accepted the girl’s offered hand and wobbled upright. “You too. I was expecting a massacre.”

  “Atmo-alarms went off about three minutes before the dome took a shit.” The girl gestured up. “My dad thinks it was some kinda missile from the outside.”

  Risa swooned to her knees.

  “Shit, you ain’t got a rebreather.” The girl grabbed her arm and pulled her up. “Try an’ hold your breath, I’ll get you to the hut.”

  “Beeping?” Risa’s voice sounded as if it came from someone to her left.

  “Over there.” The girl pointed before grabbing her arm and dragging Risa a few paces to the left. “Under this.”

  “Make it stop.” Risa kicked a six-foot triangular slab of semitransparent plastisteel―a piece of the dome.

  “Keep your panties on,” said the girl, jogging back to her walker.

  “I’m not…” Risa blushed. “Never mind. I’m gonna hear that fucking beeping in my dreams for years.”

  She knelt, dizzy and choking, as the girl scrambled up a thin ladder and swung herself into the dangling chair stuck to the front end of the machine. The kid plugged her boots into sockets one after the next, grabbed a pair of joysticks, and pulled the behemoth upright. It took a step sideways and a pair of four-elbowed arms folded down from either side of the pilot’s seat. The machine moved concrete hunks of debris as easily as if they were foam.