The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (14 page)

He raises his left hand, looks at it, flexes it.
Something starts to form around it, like it’s growing. It’s the
hand and forearm armor from the suit, chain mail and metal scales,
red lacing, with a bright blue glove under it.

“I should have gone. I was afraid. Too bad I was
afraid of the wrong thing.

“You and your parents were gone one morning, no
goodbyes. They either disabled their tracking implants or removed
them, and did the same to the Lancer, so we couldn’t chase them
down, not that we had the fuel to spare. But you three were the
only ones gone. Apparently Deck had also refused your dad’s offer.
Maria, too. This was their ship, their home, and they didn’t want
to leave it to Thel and whatever he might do. But they didn’t have
the stomach to do what should have been done. And then it was too
late.

“Thel waited until January, I have to give him that.
He actually had us thinking he was getting reasonable again. I was
wishing we had a way to contact your dad, to get you to come back.
But then we found Thel, locked in his lab, sprawled on the floor.
We checked the security feed: In the middle of the night, he’d
opened the bigger cylinder, put his hand in it, his bare hand, and
grabbed the object. It wasn’t as inert as it had been pretending to
be all those months. It looked like it killed him on the spot,
electrocuted him or something. His tracking implant telemetry was
down, so we couldn’t read his vitals remotely. We no longer had our
doctor, and none of us were willing to open the hatch to check him.
From what we could see, the object was gone, like it had absorbed
into him.

“He laid there like a corpse for two days. His body
would jerk sometimes, but it was more like his muscles were being
shocked by something. He never responded, didn’t wake up. Then, on
the third day, he just got up and let himself out.

“He had this stick in his hand, like walking stick,
or one of those wizard staffs. Maria and Deck tried to corral him,
tried to get him back into isolation, but he was strong.
Really
strong. And fast. He knocked them around—I thought he
was going to kill them. So I shot him. It barely seemed to hurt
him. And when I shot him again, the bullet hit his staff and just
broke up. I emptied the magazine. Every shot burst off his stick,
no matter where I aimed.

“I woke up half an hour later. Apparently he’d
shocked me with his staff, knocked me cold. Deck said he wandered
the ship for awhile with this sick grin on his face, then shook his
head and left. Just left.

“We found out later that he went to Eureka. He used
whatever power he’d gotten to impress them into accepting him,
following him. He came back after two days with his new army, the
stupid kids and grandkids of the former Peace Keepers, still
wearing their ancestors’ uniforms and armor. He demanded we give
him the ship and leave. We could either become ‘civvies’ of the
Keepers—not much more than slaves—or go try to live with the
Rusties, the Katar. Or the Pax. But he said they would probably
just kill us, especially if they learned we were from Earth.

“We tried to seal ourselves in, use the ship’s
batteries for defense, but he was able to shut us down remotely,
pop the hatches. Deck died first. The animals shot him. He never
raised his weapon. He was just trying to talk to them, reason…
Maria and I saw it on the monitors. We grabbed Alice and ran, tried
to find a place on the ship hide, maybe seal up in the secure hold
or the labs, but I knew that Thel could get to us no matter what
with the technology he had in him. So I figured we needed some kind
of leverage, something to bargain with. I detoured for the lab and
grabbed the other cylinder, the smaller one, and opened it… Inside
was something that looked like a pill. It had always been inert
during the tests, but I know Thel valued it, wanted to keep
studying it, and probably could do something with it now that he’d
become whatever he was. I put on a pair of gloves and took it.

“I could hear them, rifling through the lab,
searching for it for him. They found us in the hold, trying to open
an access hatch to get into the maintenance spaces, and dragged us
out… Alice was screaming… I panicked, swallowed the thing before
they saw I had it. Thel demanded to know what we’d done with
it.”

The black and red armor has grown up to his shoulder.
Now his other hand is getting covered.

“He was sure Maria had it—she was the strong one. So
he had one of his thugs shoot me in the gut so she could watch me
die, so Alice could… She was screaming… My little girl… I couldn’t
move, but I could see. Then he beat my wife half to death, used his
staff or whatever it was to throw her around like a ragdoll, broke
her body. All she did was beg for Alice’s life. So he had one of
his animals shoot her in the head. Shot them both in the head. And
they did it: killed a child and her mother just because he said to.
Killed a child in front of her mother… Like it was nothing to
them.”

He makes me see it through his eyes. It’s brutal,
cold, completely merciless. And I can’t look away or close my eyes
because he didn’t. He tries to scream, but he can’t get a
breath—he’s choking on his own blood. I know how that feels. I know
what it’s like to realize what it means.

All I feel is rage. I want to kill them all. I want
to kill them all. But I’m helpless, dying.

I see the dead faces of Alice and Maria. Eyes staring
at nothing. Empty.

Then the world goes mercifully dark.

When it’s over, when we come back to the cockpit, the
armor is across his chest now, and coming up his legs,
plate-by-plate, ring-by-ring, forming out of nothing, lacing
together with what looks like flowing blood.

“They threw us in a hole, like trash, buried us
together. I was still alive when they threw my daughter’s body on
top of me, when the dirt covered and blinded and choked me. The
last thing I saw was Thel, looking down at us like we annoyed him.
And his fucking minions, his human dogs…”

At least he decides to spare me that experience.

The armor is complete now, except for the helmet. His
skin has gone pale. His eyes have turned blood red. They glow like
hot metal. He grins.

“This is how I woke up. Dug myself out of my grave.
Our grave.” He chuckles. I can’t imagine what could be funny. He
looks down at himself, his armor, his long blade.

“A few things I really liked growing up: Old samurai
movies. And the westerns based on them…”

He passes the sword to his left hand, and draws the
revolver from his hip and cocks it, all in the blink of an eye. He
de-cocks it, spins it around his finger by the trigger guard.

“…and ghost stories. Japanese horror…”

I look up. He’s wearing the helmet. I didn’t see it
happen. The skull mask hangs loose in front of his throat, joined
to the neck armor at the chin. He drops the revolver back in its
holster, then pushes the mask up. It seals itself to his face. The
eye sockets glow red.

“I think you’re done now, Jonny.” His voice through
the mask is an echoing growl. It seems to come from everywhere.

In a blink, my vision goes red. I’m disoriented. I’m
now looking at the open hatch, from the inside. I’m sitting down,
in the center chair. No one else is here.

The Nagamaki in its scabbard is in my left hand,
upright like a walking stick. I’m wearing the armor, a
mask—
the
mask—over my face. My breath hisses through it.

I stand up out of the chair. My body is covered in
heavy plate and mail armor, but I feel so light, so strong. Not at
all like I’ve been shot. I feel like I can punch my armored fist
through the bulkhead. I feel like I can rip a man’s heart out of
his chest with my bare hands, and drink his blood through my
fingertips.

I draw the long blade, nearly a meter of Damascus
steel with a cloud-like temper line all along its single gently
curved edge. I see myself reflected in the mirror-polished blade:
Skull grinning beneath a samurai’s
kabuto
, eyes glowing
red.

I sling the scabbard over my shoulder, adjust the
angle of the short sword in my sash, and go out to do what I need
to do.

Outside the ship, it’s late in the day. The sky is
turning purple as the sun sets over the Planum at the terminus of
the South Blade. There’s a slight wind against my armor as I face
into it, making a faint whistling between the segmented plates. If
it’s getting cold, I don’t feel it. I don’t know if that’s the
armor, or whatever else has been done to me.

I’m also having no trouble at all breathing.

I take a better look at my armor: all the bullet
holes are gone, and there’s no sign of charring. All the plates are
pristine, high-polished. The mail and lacing look new, as does the
black jumpsuit and boots underneath it. The ammo in the gun belt
has also been restored. I count twenty-four rounds of what I
somehow know are .454 caliber.

In addition to the long and shorts swords and the
gun, I also have a sizable knife—a
tanto
—in my sash. There’s
a simple brown canvas satchel over my shoulder. Inside is a spare
cylinder for the revolver marked as “.45ACP”, a drawstring bag
filled with empty casings, a small box of primers, a bullet mold, a
powder-horn and a hand-loading press with dies. I flash on memories
of using these things, of passing hours painstakingly making shells
by hand, even though I know my Mods would happily do it for me. I
feel satisfaction in the work, each cartridge representing one more
life owed to me, ready to be collected.

What I don’t find is any food or water, re-breather
or oxygen supply. That doesn’t seem to worry me. I know everything
else I need, this world provides in abundance. Including
revenge.

Looking around, I realize I have no idea what day
this is. It could be the same day as when I was shot, but I doubt
it. I decide I need to have a look around, even though every cell
in my body wants to go walking west, toward Eureka.

In short order, I find a few Katar bodies, dead of
gunshot and blast trauma, but only a few. Neither Negev nor
Cousteau are among them. That should make me happier than it does.
Their weapons and helmets have been taken, likely as trophies. I’ll
make sure they’re paid for.

I find the last spot I saw Murphy. I think he’d been
hit, yelling for the rest of us to leave him. I don’t find his
body, but there is a sizable patch of dried blood in the dirt,
smears on the rocks. Looking closer, I find his revolver, wedged
under a rock in the underbrush as if he’d hidden it there, like he
didn’t want it taken as a prize. Semi-buried with it are a few
empty loaders and the “self-filling” ammo box that Yod gave him as
a gift. I shake the dirt off of these items and put them in my
satchel. If I can’t return them, I’ll certainly use them to avenge
their owner.

I go looking for my father, for the Ghaddar or
Rashid, but don’t find sign of them either. That also should make
me happier than it does, but it isn’t the fear that they’ve been
captured that’s simmering in my chest. I’m angry. I feel abandoned.
Those that could, ran—I shouldn’t fault them for that, given how
outgunned they were, but I do. Especially my father. I was shot and
he left me. My daughter was shot and I…

What?

“Uncle Peter?”

I’m here.

The voice is in my head, like my own internal
dialogue, but it isn’t me.

“What’s happened to me?”

I don’t get an answer for a few seconds. Then:

I’m sorry, kid. It was the only way I could save your
life. When you came into the cockpit, when you touched what was
left of me, what was left of me infected you. It needed resources
to rebuild me. Thel was careful. He burned away all my organic
tissue and left me sealed up. Still half-alive, but unable to
regenerate. For so, so long…

“I cut myself. On your sword.”

That made an opening, gave my Seed tech a way in.
Sweet blood and flesh… My tech jumped at it, starving for it, and
started the conversion. It took me awhile to even realize who you
were—I got that from the DQ’s security. It let you in, recognized
your DNA. Thel left it running, thinking maybe your dad and mom
might come back here someday. He set up an alarm to let him know
when they did.

“Jak Straker told me that,” I remember.

The redhead. I saw. I see her in your memories. She’s
got something similar to what changed Thel. A Companion. We didn’t
know what it was called. Or the thing that changed me.

“Seed,” I guess. My memories flash on Colonel Ram and
his immortals, what little I know of them and how they came to be,
what they are.

That’s a good name for it.

“But the immortals… Their Seeds contain their
personalities, their memories. They over-write the bodies they
take, unless the body is the same from… from the other
timeline…”

No need to keep up the Big Lie, kid. I see everything
that’s in your head. Something—Yod—changed the whole world, pushed
the big “reset”, because everyone was just like Thel. And me.
Monsters. I get it. Unbelievable. But I get it.

But he doesn’t: I can feel what he feels. I felt it
myself just a few days ago. Terror. Shock. Disbelief. A sense that
the very ground underfoot can’t be trusted anymore. Because Yod can
be in it, in all of it, and he can change it at a whim. He can
change
me
…

I also see what happened at the Barrow.

My head fills with sick laughter. It spills out of
me. I start laughing inside my mask. But I’m not doing it. Peter…
He’s realizing…

This must all be a joke to him. To Yod. To whatever
it is. He let us in there. Lured us in. Led us right to the
treasure. He even picked out what we took with us, pretty much
threw it at us. Then I’m betting he was the one that cut us off
from Earth. It makes sense… Sick sense. Like what he did to the
Forge, the Lost Legion. Or to your friends, letting the Companions
get out and latch onto them. We were just another experiment. To
see if the meat was worthy of being gods again… heh… And I thought
UNCORT was bad…