The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (21 page)

“Then why is he after me?” Thel needs to know.

“You said there was a raiding party,” Asmodeus
guesses. “Did you kill him? Or his friends? That would certainly
piss
me
off, if I still remembered what it was like to be
mortal.”

I don’t bother to resolve the mystery. Asmodeus keeps
looking at me like I’m some curiosity, like he can know everything
about me just by looking. But then I think I feel him again: he’s
managed to subtly find his way inside my head, his tech interfacing
with mine as he distracted me with his theatrics. We push back, try
to block him, shut him out, but he’s already…

“Who’s
Peter
?”

“The original… The host… My research partner…” Thel
stammers. “The one he
should
be!”

“Huh,” Asmodeus tries to make sense of whatever he’s
hacked. “He’s still in there. Two of them, in the same loaf. Or
maybe one in the meat brain and one in the code. Timesharing? Or
has Peter just not eaten you yet?”

I don’t answer. I just put the mask back on, ready to
kill them both.

“Ah, well… Whichever one you are, here’s a little
secret, just because I dig the outfit,” Asmodeus pretends to be
gracious. “Like I said: You can’t kill me any more than I can kill
you, and believe me, trying will get boring, a lot quicker than
you’d think. But you
can
kill him.” He nods sideways at
Thel, who looks freshly horrified, betrayed.

“
We made a deal!
” Thel almost screams. “I can
help you! You
said
I can help you!”

“That was last week,” Asmodeus corrects dully. “This
week, I have better prospects. He has Seed tech. You only have a
Companion, and a basic commercial model at that—I happen to know
there are at least three hotter custom-deluxe models walking around
attached to much prettier and less useless hosts. But just taking
into account my current choices, Seed beats Companion any day. I’m
not sure if anything short of a nuke at bad-breath range can kill a
Seed-Modded. But if
you
get separated from your gadget,
you’re killable. If he scoops your brain out of your skull with
that really ridiculously big sword of his, it won’t grow back as
you. And if you lose your toy, it passes to whoever comes along
next, and they still get to be them. Maybe they’ll make better use
of it.”

He’s telling me how to defeat Thel, how to kill him.
Why?

“But I’ve mastered ETE technology!” Thel puts the
Sphere between them, like he means to threaten Asmodeus with it.
What Thel can’t see from his angle is that Asmodeus has shifted his
grip on his half-spear, getting ready to strike. But still, he
keeps his lazy, cruel grin.

“And that was cool, but I seem to remember you had a
matching phallus to go with that big shiny surrogate testicle the
last time you were here trying to impress me. Did you misplace
it?”

Thel doesn’t have an answer. He just glares at me,
still keeping Asmodeus between us.

Asmodeus shakes his head like he’s annoyed,
bored.

“I really don’t have any desire for a toady,
especially a whiny little shit who thinks he’ll be able to
overthrow me one day and rule this pathetic rock pile… Skeletor,
he’s all yours,” he gives me, sliding out of the way with a little
bow. Then to Thel: “Gandalf: One more chance to impress me for old
time’s sake. Stay alive, and maybe you’re back in. Just don’t wreck
my ship, or I’ll scoop your brain out myself. Slowly.”

Asmodeus steps well back, giving us space, his spear
still at the ready in case either of us turns on him.

A wave of force washes over me, over Asmodeus as
well, trying to push us back. The ground begins to liquefy under my
feet. Then the rock walls threaten to come down.

But then it stops, much to Thel’s confusion. From my
angle, I see that Asmodeus’ spear isn’t just a spear: it has
concealed buttons. It’s some kind of device, and it’s either
interfering with the Sphere or Thel’s control over it. Thel
realizes it, starts to really panic.

He’s vulnerable. I could push forward, drive my sword
through his skull. But I want Asmodeus to tell me something
first.

“Why are you doing this? Why even let me in here,
show me your ship?”

“Like I said: We have more in common. And I
really
don’t like him.”

“Not afraid I’ll bring Ram and the others down on
you? Or the Earth military?”

“You’re not one of Ram’s. From what I’ve seen in your
recent hot memory files
and
his, you like the butchering
waaay
too much to be one of Ram’s not-so-white hats.”

“I could still flash what I’m seeing to the Earth
forces in orbit.”

He shakes his head, still grinning dismissively.

“And I know you’re smarter than that, especially if
you’ve just run all this way from the last time Earth got
over-excited about our kind.”

“Then
I
must be pretty stupid…”

It’s Straker’s voice, booming from above us. She
drops down through the canopy, tearing through it, Blade in hand,
landing on her feet between us and the new Stormcloud.

“…because that’s what I just did while you were busy
chatting.”

I expect Asmodeus to rage, to attack her, but all he
does is sigh like he’s mildly disappointed. Then

“
MARINES! WE ARE LEA-VIIIING!!
” he sings loud,
his voice booming in the covered pit. Up on the Stormcloud’s deck,
I see Astarte and another figure in a white cloak and golden armor,
wearing a crown and an eye patch that I know are actually bot
interfaces. Fohat.

The concealed hangar swarms with bots—Bugs, Boxes,
and his little gun drones—but they ignore us and scramble for the
ship. There are some of his black-uniformed soldiers as well, but
they don’t seem to move willingly, more like prisoners being herded
by the machines, except for a few that stagger in a daze like
they’ve been badly beaten. I hear more Harvester signals.

I can see from the look on Straker’s face that she’s
also seen what he’s done to those that chose to serve him,
including her former fellows. Her Blade is vibrating in her grip,
almost screaming.

We stand in a rough circle: Asmodeus opposite me, and
Straker opposite Thel, but only for a few seconds. Then Asmodeus
shakes his head like we’re all being useless and foolish, and he
starts walking for his ship like we don’t matter. Straker steps in
his way, pointing her sword at his face.

“You’re okay with us all being blown up together,
Red?” he taunts her. “Because two of us will grow back.”

When she doesn’t budge, his spear expands to full
size, and he calmly extends the blade toward her, as if offering
her combat. She crosses weapons with him, ready and eager.

There’s a bright flash and a crack. A bolt of energy
arcs from the head of the spear into her chest, throwing her
backwards. I smell ozone and charred synthetics, flesh and
hair.

“Never pose in front of a real opponent, silly girl,”
Asmodeus chastises like he’s her sword teacher, then keeps walking
away. On her back on the damp stone, Straker looks like she’s in
paralyzing pain, wind knocked out of her, convulsing as she tries
to get up. There’s a fist-sized hole burned into the breast of her
armored uniform.

The Stormcloud’s engines come alive with a deep
thrumming, and I feel even more numb and tingly all over. We’re too
close to the big ship’s mag-lev field, which is probably playing
off all the magnetite in here. The ship starts to lift, and the
canopy above it simply dissolves like it was just an illusion (but
I heard Straker tear it). Then worse, the hangar pit begins to fill
with intense winds and dust. (Where is the dust coming from if
everything is so wet?) I start to get sandblasted, blinded. I can
see black particles adhering to my armor—the sand is full of
magnetite.

I want to help Straker, but Peter takes control,
turning on Thel while he’s hesitating in indignant shock for being
betrayed and abandoned. We quickly thrust our Nagamaki at his face,
taking Asmodeus’ advice to go for the brain. Thel manages to block
us with his staff, then tries to push us off with a Sphere field,
but his control over it is still weakened by whatever Asmodeus did.
Peter wants to chop the staff out of his hands, preferably with his
hands still attached, but Thel is too strong; the staff easily
resists us.

I get a flash of inspiration, take control, turn the
blade edge back toward me and make a quick cut back and up the
staff, slicing the Sphere free with a flash of energy that makes me
lose sight of Thel for an instant. In my head, Peter shouts with
joy.

Thel curses and slams me with the shaft of the staff,
finally using it as a weapon. When it makes contact with my
shoulder armor, it feels like all of me rattles under the impact,
and the blow deforms my plate. Then he shows me how fast he really
is, hammering me with either end of the staff alternately, driving
me back, keeping me on the defensive. If I was still mortal, still
Normal, I’m sure each blow would easily shatter my bones.

He takes a leg out from under me with a sweeping
action. I take a blind slash as I fall, feel my blade hit meat and
bone, hear Thel shriek over the noise of the Stormcloud.

Visibility is almost zero with all the dust, but the
beating stops and I can see Thel limping away, back down the tunnel
I came through. I have no idea where his Sphere went, but I doubt
he had time to recover it.

The Stormcloud lifts up out of the crater, partially
blocking the sunlight. In the thick haze I manage to find Straker,
drag her up.

“
We need to get out of here!
” she insists the
obvious. She staggers, still hurt—I can’t see how badly. I pull her
for the tunnel. Peter is still hoping to catch Thel rather than
escaping.

“You called the
Unmakers
?” I condemn, though I
also understand. Desperation. Rage. Seeing what Asmodeus has done
here, what he’s done to people—
her
people—she doesn’t care
what she brings down. She was probably willing to die in whatever’s
coming. But I’m not. We still have killing to do, and I want to be
around for it, I want to see Thel die, I want to see Asmodeus cut
to pieces.

I lead her through the narrow dark maze as fast as we
can move, my EMR-fuzzed visual graphics trying to show us the way.
I manage to beat both of us up colliding with the rock walls,
stumbling, even hitting her head on the roof at one point. I’m
surprised she doesn’t stick her sword in my back.

We finally find the column of light of the shaft I
dropped down through. The sky above us is brown with dust, the
artificial winds howling across the gap like a primitive flute. But
then a shadow moves above us. It’s Thel.

He uses his staff to send the rock walls down on us.
No matter how hard Peter wants to try, I know we’ll never make it
up that way, so I pull us on, down another tunnel, trying to get us
away.

And that’s when I hear an echoing crack from far
overhead, followed a split-second later by a deafening boom that
shakes the ground out from under our feet and then drops the tunnel
roof on us, just before a pressure wave comes at us through the
tunnels from behind, slamming and crushing us and turning the rock
all around us to rubble. I hear Peter in my head thinking the word
“liquefaction” as the tunnel completely collapses on us, battering
and crushing and burying. I think I can hear a storm raging
somewhere over us.

Rock is pressing down on me, trying to squash my
armor and soft tissues and break my bones. There’s no air to
breathe even if I could manage to inhale.

I still have Straker by the wrist, and she grabs mine
in turn. I think I can hear the scream of her Blade through the
rockfall, and the bigger rocks begin to crack, crumbling to gravel.
We’re still being crushed and smothered, but we can move, push,
crawl. The weight on our bodies must be enough to flatten a Normal.
There must be twenty meters of Mars on top of us. I can only hope
that parts of the tunnel are still intact somewhere ahead.

It seems to take hours, and my gauges are all reading
in the red, when the ground ahead and above me starts to give. I
get my arm out into open air, then my head, get a breath of stale
air to partially replenish my oxygen. I push my battered body
halfway out of my grave, then pull Straker for the gap. She’s limp,
unconscious. I remember my aid training, and though I’m not sure if
it will work on us, I drop my mask, tilt her head and blow my
precious little breath into her mouth. I feel her lungs expand, and
she gasps herself awake, flailing, nearly chopping me as her Blade
comes free. I have to restrain her, resetting my mask as an
afterthought. I don’t want her to see me.

It’s pitch dark, but my fuzzy night vision still lets
me see her. She coughs, looks up at me, grins, and then pulls my
mask away.

“It’s good to see you, kid,” she rasps, cupping my
face in her hand. “We thought you were dead.”

“I am,” I correct her bitterly. “This would be what
my father calls ‘borrowed time’.”

No time or desire to explain, I look around the tight
space we’re in, and see that the “roof” over our heads is metal,
and a familiar pattern. It confirms my suspicions by trying to move
with a whirring and grinding. Sectional legs push and struggle on
either side of us.

Bug. We’re underneath a Bug bot.

I remember Dakota and Snyder. I reach out, jam the
bot’s fading command signals, then wait for it to panic without
instructions, its stolen organic brain reasserting control of its
body.

“It’s okay… Your name… What’s your name?” I try to
focus it.

It takes minutes we can’t really afford, but through
a storm of gibberish code I hear

“Batak… Cheng… Zodanga…”