The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are

by Michael Rizzo

  The figure has just appeared here, just a few meters from where I’m standing, seemingly out of nowhere (unless I’m that exhausted that I didn’t see him or hear him crawl out of some nearby hiding spot). I initially suspect another illusion, a projection like Star used, but his boots do sink into the dusty slope.

  Up close, he’s wearing shimmering black armor, similar to Bly’s but more… reptilian? Sectional. Angular. His breast armor is in roughly anatomic sections, like metal muscles, over mail. His collar and belt are ornate, with a repeated pentagram theme. He’s wearing a flowing crimson cape, a broadsword at his side. No helmet or mask. His skin is pale, somewhat oriental. His features—and I think it’s a he—are feminine, his face long and elvish—even his eyebrows curve upwards, his ears point. But his hair—long and thick like mine—is black, flowing over his shoulders, except for two locks at each corner of his sharply peaked hairline that point upwards like… horns?

  “Oh… No, he’s figured it out. You might want to close your eyes.”

  I turn back, see Chang start to back his ship away from the figure. (And I check: the figure in front of Chang’s bow is the same one standing behind me.) Then a black gloved hand is in front of my eyes. Just in time for a massive flash. Blinding light, then heat. And I feel almost like I felt when Burns tried his EM gun on me...

  EMP.

  And shortly thereafter, twin shockwaves: The first a quick sharp overpressure wave that smacks me in the face, I feel it up my sinuses. The sound of the blast comes with it, deafening. I realize I’ve only heard something like this a few times, and with more barriers and distance. Then right behind comes the wind…

  I have to hunker, turn away, duck and cover. I’ve never been standing in a nuclear blast wave, but I seem to be well beyond the radius of the worst of it. Still, it feels like an instant hurricane, hits me like a wave, hot, sandblasting my exposed skin, almost takes me off my feet. I stagger in the momentary storm, stumble and fall just trying to weather it.

  That was a nuke. Probably a small tactical yield, maybe a few kilotons.

  “Mmmm… Yes. Well, that should slow him down for awhile.”

  The mystery figure is shaking out his cloak. Then he reaches out a gauntleted hand to help me up off my knees. I take it cautiously.

  I look back toward Chang’s ship. It’s listing in the air, backing away drunkenly from the mushroom cloud that rises from the slopes, smoldering. The entire bow has been obliterated, one “wing” sheared off and the other twisted, towers wrecked. But it’s still up.

  “I was hoping he’d get closer before he realized that wasn’t me, maybe even come down for a chat,” the newcomer rambles idly, as if we’re talking about something trivial. “I never was that lucky.”

  “Who are you?” I have to ask.

  He looks crushed. Actually pouts.

  “I suppose it’s the residual DNA,” he considers. “The host he picked for me. A touch of the Persian. It’s rather growing on me. You, on the other hand, look simply yummy. Except for the dust.”

  “I know you?” I risk hurting his feelings again.

  “Not intimately, but a boy can hope,” he toys. “Professionally. We’re both critics of our excuse for a society, in one fashion or other. And we’re both on the same team, just in case you didn’t get read in. Covert infiltration and all. Or was. I had a bit of a righteous meltdown. She’s still inside, though. Huh… I hope I didn’t just blow her up. She would be rather cross.”

  “What?”

  “How’s your memory?” he sounds concerned.

  “Missing some important details.”

  “We should walk and talk,” he gestures to the mushroom cloud, now flattening out against the atmosphere net. “Evening wind might bring some of that back our way.”

  Shit.

  “There are several hundred people living exposed about thirty klicks back that way,” I point to where I came from.

  “They should be fine. The isotope I used was from my Trident. It’s reasonably clean. I can keep an eye on the levels. Thirty kilometers, you say?” He seems put off by the idea of walking that far.

  I look back after the mangled ship. A sandstorm is beginning to whip up around it. The blast will have been detected by both UNMAC bases. Flights will be incoming to check it out. Satellites are probably already on zero. Chang needs to hide. (I find I don’t doubt he survived.)

  “Belial,” the strange stranger introduces himself as an afterthought, offers his hand to shake. “Call me Bel.”

  “Ram,” I use the name I’m used to, accepting the handshake. “Michael.”

  “I notice you’re still using your mortal name,” he opens after we’ve made some ground. “How much are you missing?”

  “What should I be calling myself?”

  “Ragnarok,” he reminds me. “It was your UNACT codename. It stuck when you entered the early Hybrid project. It suits you. I promise I won’t call you Rags.”

  “Michael,” I gently insist.

  “Archangel. Sword of God. Also suits you. What else are you missing?”

  “Who sent us?”

  That gives him a chuckle.

  “He doesn’t really have a name. Really ate the mythology on that: just a few gibberish letters. Not sure if He’s a he, actually. More of an It. Sounds rude to call Him an It, though. Some of us call Him Yod. Funny: I didn’t think I’d like Him. I was sure I would hate Him, in fact. But He kind of grows on you.”

  “Are we talking about this cryptic experiment Chang was so afraid of?” I try.

  “Mmmm… Yes. Actually, He scared quite a few people. Chang used that to get support. He thought he had mine. That was part of the plan, of course. Certainly I would be opposed to The Project. It earned me his trust, and a slot in his absurd time travel ploy.”

  “Not so absurd, apparently.”

  “Apparently,” he agrees dryly. He’s holding a lot back. If he’s buying into this whole rewrite-the-future scenario more than I am, I expect he did indeed have a meltdown when he saw what he woke up to.

  “So you were sent to be a spy in Chang’s ranks?” I put together. “He brought more with him?”

  “A few. A very bad few. And me, playing my part. Unfortunately, as soon as I realized what he’d done, what he’d pulled off, everyone he’d killed, everything he’d erased… I had a fit. Lost it. Completely. Lashed out. Mangled a few of his fragile minions. Fled. Only realized how bad I’d blown it after it was done. Thankfully, he didn’t want me wandering loose. So after a merry chase, I let him find me.”

  “Would that have killed him?” I need to know.

  “He’d have to be almost in the middle of it. But it could do him enough damage to set him back a few years. In the mean time, I might be able to take all of his resources. Then figure out a way to contain him.”

  “Why are we walking away?” I stop him urgently. “Shouldn’t we be finishing him while we have the chance?”

  “He wasn’t close enough to the blast. And as long as he has resources, he’d escape anything I managed. Plus, he has those other friends of his cooking. Maybe done by now.”

  “Bly?” I assume.

  “No,” he corrects. “The Pirate King is just a toy. Like his mangled lover, the one with no legs that likes explosions.” He’s talking about Brimstone, Nina Harper. “A fraction of what we are. Like a child’s science fair version. Makes for some muscle. Show. To impress the mortal meat.”

  “What about Astarte?” I ask.

  “In place,” he tells me.

  “She’s with Chang?” I need him to clearly confirm.

  “He thinks so. She’s playing much better than I did, give her credit. But then, she’s always been a spy. Huh… You’d think Chang would be a little suspicious. I guess she’s all they say she is.”

  “Which is?” I’m getting irritated by the walking interrogation.

  “She has a way with males. And some females. I’ve heard it’s one of her Company mods, but I think it’s standard equipment.
No effect on me, of course. Not my type.”

  “And you just blew her up?” I confront his earlier concern.

  “I doubt it. She knew what I was up to. She would have been deep in the ship, aft. Safe. I expect the only reason she hasn’t called is that Chang is still in one piece, probably venting like a brat. Or the EM interference is still too hot. She was an old friend of yours, wasn’t she?”

  “Usually,” I give back some of his own vagueness. He seems to appreciate it.

  “Where were we? Ah, yes: Your brain damage.”

  “Yod,” I focus him. “Who or what is a Yod?”

  The question visibly amuses him.

  “There’s this old Tibetan text of questionable origin,” he circumlocutes. “It supposedly predates human civilization. The gist of the tale is that a race of gods came to Earth and created us, warning that we would in turn become gods and create life ourselves, an endless cycle. Very poetic. But in this tale, very bad things happen when some of the experimenters try to create something they shouldn’t: something arguably superior to themselves.”

  “And that’s Yod?”

  “I really don’t know what Yod is. The idea was to take what we were becoming out of the proverbial box: an ultimate life form, interfaced and interactive with everything. Omniscient omnipresent omnipotent. If we were like the gods of our myths, this would be more like the Biblical version. It’s quite funny, actually: God makes man. Man makes God. Proves just how stupid we are as a species.”

  “We made an all-powerful being?” I don’t buy.

  “We created something,” he allows. “What, exactly, is open to debate. New life? Something else? Close enough to all-powerful. Closer than us. Call it a working scale model.”

  “And somebody thought this was a good idea?”

  “Chalk it up to the ego of the invincible. Or the daring of the exceptionally bored. I seem to remember you being buddies with an omniscient omnipresent Artificial Intelligence. That was certainly terrifying for its time. But was it alive? Yod is organic, self-replicating.”

  “And that sounds terrifying, even by my standards,” I admit uncomfortably (and more uncomfortably because I should remember this).

  “Your AI was just plugged into our networks. Yod could plug into anything. Matter itself. Maybe even energy. He was showing us he could operate on a quantum level. This was potential extinction.”

  “Sounds like we’re on the wrong team.”

  “You’d think. Actually, you did. So did I. Until we met Him. I can’t describe it. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry you can’t seem to remember—maybe the depth of the experience just didn’t store in your regen code. But you’re here. You agreed to this. Maybe it was because you trusted that other scary omniscient omnipresent being all those years.”

  We walk for awhile in silence.

  “We were on the wrong path,” he continues idly. “You wanted something better for us. So did I. We were doomed on the path we were on. You and I and a few others believed Yod could be better. Not the end, like Chang thought. Maybe a new beginning.”

  “So Yod sent us to stop Chang,” I feel the need to confirm after another klick passes under our boots.

  This also amuses him.

  “Yod actually developed the technology to time-splice, for observation only—a miracle of his capability. Chang stole it, corrupted it. Yod couldn’t stop him in time, but he could insert a few of us into the code. Astarte and I got into Chang’s graces enough hitch a ride, cue Yod to when it was happening.”

  “Why not just sabotage the code?” I confront.

  “He’d just try again, and we might not be spliced in. It was a long shot anyway. I don’t even think Yod believed Chang would succeed. I mean: this isn’t really you and me—you know that, right? We’re more like copies, backups. It’s really quite unnerving, when you think about it. The whole crazy plan was just-in-case.”

  “But we failed,” I have to remind him. “Chang sent simple machines, drones that replicated long before we did. Your ‘superior being’ didn’t know that?”

  He looks down at the dirt, chews his thin lips, looks… guilty?

  “My fault. I didn’t get that information in time. The drones were Chang’s last-minute flash of sick brilliance, a fall-back assuming something as complex as us didn’t cross over. The code was already set—it was massive. No time for an update. I guess Yod decided to send us anyway.”

  “Bad move.”

  “Remains to be seen. Maybe He picked right. He does think and exist on a whole different level than we do—or at least He did, since He’s as gone as the rest of our world. Maybe this was His backup plan. Maybe we’re the ones to get things back on track. Maybe better, this time.”

  “Benevolent deities?” I muse.

  He gets a good chuckle out of that.

  I spend the drag of the long hike trying to plumb my memories. I still have nothing at all on this thing called Yod that supposedly made all of this—the atrocity and the potential save—happen. I certainly don’t remember signing up for some kind of time-traveling Super Friends adventure with Star and this Bel character to save the world. (But it is exactly the kind of stupid shit I’d agree to.)

  So I drag my second memories for Bel.

  “Belial” is old Hebrew, badly translated as anything from “worthless” to “unsalvageable” to “without virtue,” a catch-all term for evil scum. (“Bel” just means “lord”.) The name became associated with a fallen angel (and not the first of them—a straggler). Then a lord of the fallen.

  I seem to know him as what he sort of said he was: A critic. A scientist, moralist. Someone I remember appreciating, even if I didn’t fully agree with him. A fellow pain in the ass. Brilliant. Witty. Full of himself. Showy as hell. Pretty much the guy I’m walking with.

  But I don’t remember being friends or compatriots, or even ever meeting him before this. I knew of him. That was it.

  And he went by another name, a nom-de-guerre, at least when he was “working”.

  The Enemy.

  (In Hebrew, that would be Satan.)

  “So you built a nuclear bomb?” I restart the conversation when we start to lose momentum, climbing up and down the ridges that radiate from the Catena Divide. Bel has been marveling at almost every piece of green we pass. He apparently hasn’t been farther east than the Tyr ruin, so he hasn’t seen the deep green jungles that the ETE insist are out there.

  “It was a pretty simple mechanism,” he discounts. “I used the fusion core from my Trident—a variation on the Staff popular in our world, a bigger version of the Wand.”

  It jogs my memory enough to remember the gadgets: Similar to the ETE “tools”, capable of generating energy fields, manipulating matter. Mostly toys used for idle destruction, or a lazy extension of bodily mods. A few of us found more artistic applications.

  “So: No, I can’t make you another one,” he anticipates, “not without fissionable material.”

  I spend quite a few klicks catching him up on what’s happened in this supposedly altered timeline: The Discs, the Apocalypse, what I woke up to after fifty years in Hiber Sleep, the peoples I’ve met. The friends I’ve lost. Chang. The atrocities he’s done since he’s decided to go to war. My stupid death. The fatally dumb things I’ve done since Star “saved” me and made me into this. Ending with the Tranquility situation—what we’re headed back to.

  (I feel guilty for leaving them, no matter what the reason. Fera dead. Everyone else probably beyond terrified. Their one “savior” run off into the desert.)

  (And what the hell happened to Palmer? Did he get away? Did someone feed his meat to the gardens? Or has he stirred up more violence?)

  Bel, it turns out, hasn’t been “here” long. He regained consciousness only several days ago (maybe Chang decided he needed backup after he saw “Ra” flying to my rescue). He didn’t stick around long enough to see what all Chang had managed. He ran. Ran some more. Stumbled across a buried reactor in a stripped ruin I identify
as Arcadia. Then decided to set his little trap, using the nuclear material to supplement what was in his toy. I’m trying to imagine him building a functioning warhead with his bare hands like I fixed a few pieces of survival gear.

  It’s nightfall when we get back to Tranquility.

  Bel marvels at the dome, all the rich green life.

  It’s Two Gun that greets us at the main gate, initially at guns-point, then lowering them when he sees me. Murphy is behind him. His shoulder is bandaged under his shredded sleeve. He’s still got dried blood and dust on his face.

  “You almost missed the funeral,” Two Gun grumbles at me, then looks at Bel.

  “Another friend,” I tell him.

  “Like you?” he guesses. He doesn’t sound happy about it, confirms it when I nod. “More death?”

  He turns and goes back inside, ignoring us. Murphy gestures with his head for us to follow.

  I put off the obvious questions when I see the lanterns. And then a few hundred Cast, daring the H-K, gathered in the night up in one of the garden terraces.

  We follow Murphy. Climb.

  There’s a fresh dug grave in one of the garden beds, marked with a seedling of blood strawberry—Fera’s favorite, Mak tells me quietly. She tells me she is grateful that I returned her friend’s affection, let her have someone she could love and respect and care for, even if it was only one day. But then, the Cast don’t live by numbers.

  She also tells me that the Cast dead aren’t stripped, butchered and processed. They get buried whole, in a place of honor, their remains feeding a special plant or garden patch—a living memorial, tended for all time, giving back to her people.

  Bel and Murphy stay with me as the Cast all file past, some stopping to plant additional shoots on the mound. Only a few look at me. Two Gun is nowhere in sight.

  “I’ve forgotten what this was like,” Bel confesses near the end of the ceremony, clearly moved.

  “Let’s not make a habit of it,” I grumble.

  “What happened to Palmer?” I ask Murphy after the Cast have headed indoors.