The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are

by Michael Rizzo

  “How are your friends holding up?” I catch him before he heads for his rooms, probably to bathe, definitely to sleep in the bed he made for himself.

  “Like I said: Lux got a little tired of what he kept calling ‘our little camping trip’, but I think he really enjoyed it, seeing the world. Az definitely did, especially the thought of finding new societies.”

  I’m wondering if that’s all it is. Lux seems like pure selfishness, even when he joins us, like she’s looking for appreciation, reciprocity, or at least to alleviate his pervasive boredom. Azazel has his curiosity, his compulsive need to tinker, but he’s also got his ravenous hedonism and thrill-seeking. He truly seems to enjoy his immortal life, and takes every opportunity for experience, action, sensation. And he seems to be what he presents as, where Lux frankly oozes deception and manipulation. (I would say the two are the difference between the sensuous and the sensual, complex seduction and simple wonder.)

  I decide I need to talk to Star, if only to ask if she recognizes any of the sites Bel found from her time with Chang. I quickly regret that impulse when I find her in the apartment Bel set up for her, and she’s definitely not alone: The hatch has been left ajar. I know what I’m hearing (and smelling), but my brain doesn’t want to process. So I make another impulsively regrettable choice and silently slip inside.

  She’s passionately engaged with Lux, both of them naked on a blanket on the deck in the middle of the front room, and I get the bonus surprise that Lux is in her female form. I’d never previously known Star to have that orientation, except for some calculated professional flirting—I’m immediately wondering if I’m witnessing residual Cal.

  Lux sees me first, grins at my visible discomfort, and gives me the usual so-glad-to-see-you come-hither there’s-room-for-one-more. Star turns from what she’s been doing with a start, then freezes, locking my eyes. She looks a little shaken, maybe more than a little embarrassed, but Lux prods her back on task, and she complies, however distracted. Lux closes her eyes and gets back to being lost in the moment, ignoring me if I’m not going to make myself useful, but I think I hear her giggle as I make my sheepish retreat and give them their privacy. I make sure to shut the hatch (I fully expect it was Lux that left it ajar). Through the steel, I hear things get rougher, more intense—either the unintentional voyeurism excited Lux further or she’s aggressively endeavoring to keep Star’s attention.

  I get out of there, trying to convince myself that I have nothing to be jealous of, that we’ve always had our unspoken understanding. Star was always in and out of my life. When she was in, things were intense, passionate. When she was out, when she was off on another job or random adventure, it was like we didn’t exist. Then she’d just show up again, out of the blue, and we’d be like hormonal teenagers for awhile. Over the years, I got used to it—my own duties kept me occupied, demanded too much of my attention. I knew she must have had others in between—she certainly didn’t keep her desires in check, and I knew full well she used them for business purposes. And considering the rejection I’ve just dealt her…

  Now I feel like an idiot in one of Bel’s cheap romance dramas. I take a walk back to the Lower Dome, pause to watch the sun set on the way, then head for my old quarters—Fera’s apartment, unused since Bel and I moved over to the port, Kali having set herself up in much more regal spaces, where she can better watch over (and be seen by) her people.

  I see Kali walking in the green, and she looks up at me, gives me a wicked smirk like she knows I’ve been the idiot from the cheap romance drama. I go shut myself in.

  Kali lets me stew for a few hours, then comes up and reminds me why I married her.

  Chapter 6: Siren’s Song

  26 June, 2117:

  The caves where Bel found the message left are barely two-hundred klicks east of Tranquility, in the shadow of the ETE Turquoise Station.

  Since I don’t know that much about geology, especially Martian geology, I’m glad I decided to take Paul, even though I expect he’s uncomfortable being so close to the Station, maybe close enough to be seen. He tells me these caves—which go well-back into the Rim slopes—were probably the result of a miscalculation in their resource extraction: They take careful precautions to avoid destabilizing the bedrock, but sometimes their scans miss something and they pull too much from a permafrost vein, and a piece of the Rim comes down (not unlike that natural thaw process that’s crenellated the rims over the eons). These slides can expose a virtual labyrinth of caves, some reaching all the way back to the Station thermal cores, making for tempting shelter, sometimes complete with small springs. But these caves are also highly unstable—any construction could cause catastrophic collapses, bringing down more of the Rim.

  Paul has never been to these particular caves, nor have any of the local ETE reported on them. We find some of the mixed writing Bel showed us, along with drawings of what are likely supposed to be people—entire groups in some of them—but their shapes vary from unusually squat and thick, to unnaturally tall and thin with exaggerated torsos, giving them a cartoonish quality. Some of the drawings illustrate battles between the squat and the thin people. All of the carvings are weathered, possibly decades old.

  But there are fresh boot prints in the dust of the cave floor, coming in and out. The clearest ones I know belong to Bel and Lux and Azazel. Others look like they’ve been carefully masked, brushed over.

  “Here,” Paul lights up the one-word message in the dirt.

  “Colonel Ram?” A voice calls to me out of one of the deeper branch caves, deep and authoritative through a breather mask. I stand put, keep my hands away from my weapons. I call back, demonstrating my familiarity:

  “Grandmaster Kendricks. You take a hell of a risk coming yourself.”

  He steps into view, but keeps back in the smaller branch tunnel. He’s wearing his usual mix of hand-crafted armor and camo-cloaks, his ICW held casually low, his sword sheathed at his hip. He appears to be alone, but I can sense more heat and slight movement behind him, and in some of the other branches.

  “Not so much of a risk,” he tells me, nodding over my head. “My engineers set charges that will send that part of the cave down the slope. Even if you’re as indestructible as you say, thousands of tons of rock should prove inconvenient. And, I expect, uncomfortable.”

  I give him a smile of appreciation. Paul tenses behind me, backs up a bit, stops himself, stands his ground. He has a hand on one of his belt Spheres.

  “Doctor Stilson,” Kendricks greets him. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  The gesture sounds more formal than sincere. Paul doesn’t respond.

  “Why the invitation?” I nod toward the codeword in the dirt.

  “You sent me one,” he returns. “Through your Nomad friends. Apparently they trust you, sir, despite your interesting appearance and unlikely authentication.”

  “What brings you out so far from Melas?” I deflect his polite doubts.

  “I expect we share reasons. Searching for Chang’s hidden base, hopefully to destroy it before he can reconstitute and resume his war machine, hamstring his operations. And to put distance between us and your former command.”

  “Abandoning your mission to protect the vulnerable?” I challenge as gently as I can.

  “The Nomads insist they can manage without us, and I believe they can, at least for a time. The Keepers and any stray Zodangans are not our concern, nor are the Shinkyo. The small numbers of refuges we protect are moving with us.”

  “You know you’re eventually going to run out of places to hide,” I confront.

  “We believe we can make a better stand where it’s greener and richer. And we have brethren near Liberty Colony, or so we hope. And where is it that you intend to hide?”

  “At the moment, I appear to be stuck between poor choices.”

  “Earthside will never accept you, and fighting them directly will only escalate their violence, with innocents likely paying the price,” he accurately sums up m
y predicament. “But the war with Chang will certainly be far more devastating—the measures each side may take to ensure their victory may kill us all. And Chang only offers slavery or death.”

  “Earthside’s offer hasn’t been much more appealing, as you’ve noticed.”

  “Internment or death,” he agrees. “What is your offer?”

  “The same as it was,” I appreciate his opening. “I want to restore the alliances I’d made before I was removed from my command, only outside of UNMAC. The Nomads and the two Tranquility factions have made treaties. The former Zodangan commander is trying to draw his people away from Chang, and there is a similar resistance among the PK. And there is evidence of more peoples to the east.”

  “A unified Mars to better negotiate with Earth?” he reflects on prior dreams. Then he acknowledges Paul. “What about the Terraformers?”

  “Earth has been putting us in increasingly defensive postures, demanding that we surrender our technology, and soon enough our Stations as well,” Paul tells him uneasily, “but something about Chang’s science, his claims of successful retrograde time travel, the presence of the new immortals… This has profoundly disturbed the Council, causing them to withdraw entirely. They will not communicate their specific reasons, but all Guardian operations have been suspended indefinitely.”

  “He is here in defiance of his own Council’s edicts,” I credit him. “Perhaps others will join him.”

  Kendricks gives Paul a slight bow of earned respect, but he still reads like he’s very wary of us.

  “I can arrange a meeting with the Tranquility leadership,” I offer the Knights.

  “That would be appreciated, sir.” He sounds impressed with the offer—Tranquility has been a monster of legend for generations. But then, so have Zodanga, Shinkyo, the PK colonies, and the deeper green to the far east. “But we have pressing concerns: Our advance teams have not returned from scouting beyond Tyr. We have a dozen Knights unaccounted for, some for many weeks.”

  “Chang?” Paul guesses.

  “Or one of the factions that left the more-permanent cave markings,” I add in. Then offer: “My people can move faster and incur less risk, detect beyond the usual spectrums. If you can flash me their last reports…?”

  Kendricks considers the offer thoughtfully, finally nods.

  “We would be grateful for your assistance, sir.” He sounds like he’s offering me a test of our renewed relationship. “This would allow us time to settle our camps, send emissaries to Tranquility.”

  “I’ll tell them to expect you, just make yourselves visible on the approach to the north-side dome entrance. And leave a Link channel open for me. I’ll be in touch as soon as I find out anything about your missing people.”

  I decide to end the tense reunion by making a little bow and leaving the cave. Paul takes his cue and follows. Kendricks fades back into the labyrinth.

  Bel brings me disturbing news from the Stormcloud when we meet back “home” that evening.

  “There have been two more fatalities. One of the newly arrived technicians was ‘accidentally’ electrocuted trying to access the supposedly dead power systems. And then one of the troopers on night watch was found suffocated inside his helmet—a malfunction. But no alarms were received by the monitoring AI. At least they were smart enough to double the guard posts. But they’re bringing more personnel onsite…”

  He hesitates, like he’s doubting he should tell me something. He does anyway.

  “I have to admit I did something I don’t think you would approve of—asking forgiveness versus permission and all that—but I cloaked myself—very carefully—and got myself on board for a closer look. I was not detected. I don’t think I was detected. Anyway… I don’t think the Earth team is just examining the wreck. I think they’re actually trying to get it operational, or at least useful bits of it. Power supplies. Lifters. Fighters. The railgun.”

  He lets me digest that, watches me sink down inside myself.

  “They’re keeping it very hush-hush,” he continues. “No uplink reports. And only new arrivals working those targeted systems—your people are stuck doing structure and materials analysis, cleaning up the human remains, hauling junk, standing guard…”

  I’m not sure how much of this is desperation or greed for the tech they can reap. I can understand a need to take any and all measures expecting Chang to make some kind of return, but I wonder how much of this is designed to give them something to come after us (and in turn, the ETE, followed by everyone else they want to deem “safe”).

  “What are you going to do?” he asks me gently.

  “I have a promise to keep. In the morning. You keep watching the wreck. Take Azazel with you—we could use his eyes on this. I’ll take Lux. I expect he’ll enjoy another ‘camping trip’, especially if there’s trouble.”

  I find Bly where Bly’s been spending his time when he’s not trying to get his legs back, doing self-imposed PT. (At first he would just walk the paths outside the Lower Dome—I think he preferred being outside because there were less eyes on him. Now he’s up to walking the slopes around the colony, up and down, making himself climb, for hours at a time. Always alone. Otherwise he’s in the bed Bel set up for him, though he uses it more as a slab.)

  He could be the sculpture ornamenting the tomb of a knight: laid out straight on his back, arms crossed, sword at his side, absolutely still. On the cut rock that serves as a nightstand, there’s a large tumbler half-full of one of the local fruit and protein supplement “smoothies” that Star has been making for him, with part of a breathing line as a drinking straw.

  “If ya gonna stand there like I’m dyin’, at least sing me a song, or do a little dance, or tell me a tale of grand adventure to entertain a broken can o’ shit.”

  The armor doesn’t move at all—the surly voice could be coming out of an empty shell.

  “I can’t sing. And my tales are usually upsetting, devoid of heroes and happy endings. Are you up for a trip?”

  The helmet turns toward me.

  “What’s yer offer?”

  “Missing friends. New Knights. Scouting around Tyr .”

  The helmet turns back to the ceiling. Without a visible face, I can’t tell if he’s considering or dismissing.

  “We found signs of Zodangan camps in the area,” I offer.

  “Did you find the bodies, then?” he snaps after a pause. When I look confused, he tells the ceiling: “After I left you at Industry, I flew fast and got some of mine away from the Shadow-Bastard, before he could make it back from Pioneer. Women and kids. Took ‘em into the hills, found some caves. Told ‘em they’d be safe with me. Stupid. Of course the fucker can track me by this shell he stuck on me. When I went to find something to feed ‘em, he sent in his new toys, and they don’t know from women and kids, just heat and meat.”

  “How many?” I need to know after a few deep slow breaths of rage.

  “Doesn’t matter. Numbers and history, barely worth mentioning, and nothing at all in this righteous war of his. I’m not even sure if he was making an example or afraid they’d give away his position. But then he moved out anyway, before I could come back after him, and dropped a slide to bury the evidence. Then he went for the Unmaker base. And here we are. My stories aren’t much better.”

  “Bel didn’t find any remains,” I try to give him a little hope. “Maybe others got away.”

  He doesn’t say anything—again, I can’t tell if he’s shut down or processing.

  “That’s dangerous ground,” he finally says. “We lost a number of guards, killed quiet in the night, no sign of who did it. Stab wounds, like spears and arrows, but nothing left behind. Not like your Knight friends—they use blades when they want to conserve bullets. These wounds were triangular, some through-and-through despite Chang’s soft armor.”

  I’m thinking the missing Knights may have met a similar fate, but I can’t imagine they’d all fall without getting a call out.

  “Anybody ever go
missing and not get found?” I ask him.

  “Some ground scouts, when we were settling in. Their comms just went dead. Air search came back empty—Chang looked over the scans himself, then just ordered no further incursions.”

  “Can you show me?” I prod him.

  “Waste of time.”

  “Can you show me?” I insist.

  “I’m tired.”

  “In the morning. Please.”

  I don’t wait for an answer, just back out.

  Star is looking at me from her own doorway down the hall. She’d been listening. She looks deeply sad. She turns her eyes down and shuts her hatch.

  29 June, 2117:

  Lux has made an entertaining traveling companion: He has a ravenous appetite for culture—music, cinema, theater, literature, fine food—and fills the hours of our exploration with idle conversation of better things in better days. Apparently, she has an extensive onboard media library (though he laments this version of her didn’t have his latest updates). Also apparently, I’ve managed to impress by not being “the stereotypical jarhead who can’t think pass bad beer and big breasts”, at least in terms of keeping up with the varied topics of discussion. Her only drawback is his armor: it reflects like mirrors, and combined with the blazing-white surcoat, makes her look in daylight like a pillar of water with the sun glaring off of it. I expect he can be seen for fifty klicks, a shimmering bright star against the rusty landscape.

  Bly, on the other hand, has been just the opposite of a good co-traveler: stone-silent and distant, as if he’s barely able to tolerate us. (If he’s still in pain, he doesn’t let on.) He seems completely uninterested by the caves we visit, the markings we find, as if slipped deep into the anhedonia of depression. When we make camp for the night, he spends it sitting at the cave-mouth, his lenses scanning across the valley. (At least his sulking is enough to keep Lux’s libido in check, though she does engage me in an intimate if clinical reminiscence of erotic experiments, better things in better days.)