The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (27 page)

I’ve caught the Ghaddar following me on more than one
of these recons, always at distance. I still don’t know why she’s
stayed with me, but I can only suspect she’s somehow been reporting
to Ram, or at least Straker, without me picking up on it. (How else
was Straker at the colony just as I found myself there? I can’t
believe it was just coincidence.)

So I’m about eight klicks east-northeast beyond my
drone perimeter at midday, just having finished
Salat
(and
I’ve been neglecting
Salat
) when I hear the manual alarm
signal from Eureka.

And that means I have to run if I have any hope of
fulfilling my promise to protect. Thankfully, rage lends speed as
it overcomes fatigue, and I manage to hack my way back through the
forest in just under forty-five minutes.

I take a moment to replenish my resources as I scan
the colony site, breathing deep and absorbing from the green. I see
no obvious sign of attack, but I know that the Keepers could
certainly have entered the colony and retaken it without much
violence—all they’d need to do is crack my locks. My only evidence
that they haven’t is that I’m still receiving the alarm signal. The
Keepers would certainly have detected and disabled the system if
they’d re-occupied the Barracks, even with their limited tech
skills. Unless they’re using it to set a trap for me.

I decide to take a circuitous approach, Peter
apparently content to give me full control, and head for one of the
peripheral tunnel hatches. If the Keepers really don’t have the
numbers to hold the colony, they can’t have set ambushes at every
entrance (though they might have set booby traps).

Now I’m wondering if it really was one of the Civvies
that triggered the alarm—if so, the Keepers haven’t had much time
to prepare for me, unless they worked out their tactics in advance
while they stewed in their caves. Conversely, there’s also the
possibility that the Civvies didn’t even try to call me, that they
offered no resistance at all to their masters, even showing them
how to summon me into their trap, hoping for mercy.

I decide to go fully around the west side of the
site, listening for their signals, looking for any sign of recent
surface activity. I hear no Keeper signals, but, thanks to my
enhancements, I soon find several sets of tracks. They look sloppy,
like no attempt was made at stealth. And these tracks come and go
from the hatch points. What’s especially odd is that one set of
tracks—what looks like a party of half-a-dozen adults—appears to
leave and not return. Perhaps they were out foraging or exploring
when whatever happened. Or maybe their failure to return is the
reason for the alarm.

I scan the green up-canyon, looking for sign of
activity, heat, motion…

Zooming and magnifying, I see something that makes my
guts sink: There’s a male Civvie… His bloody body has been strung
up in the trees, on a rise visible from the colony. He’s cold
enough to be perhaps a few hours dead. A message. (For me? Or for
the Civvies?)

We should have made Straker tell us where they were
hiding. We should have gone looking for them, eliminated the
closest threat first, eliminated all of them.

I give Peter no argument.

Too angry for caution, I head for the nearest hatch,
and crack the airlock after only a cursory check for booby traps.
There’s no ambush waiting for me in the tunnels below
(disappointing), so I head in the general direction of the Barracks
with purpose, ready to respond to attack at every juncture. I
encounter no Keepers, but neither do I see any Civvies. Their
living spaces appear to have been quickly evacuated.

I stop and listen for Harvester signals. Did they
come over the crest, circumventing my sensor perimeter? I feel a
fresh wave of dread.

All I hear is the alarm. And beneath it, the security
systems indicate no hatch breeches other than my own entrance. But
there have been several logged exits over the last few days, the
hatches popped using the new codes I gave the Civvies. So they
have
opened the doors…

I pick up my pace.

I finally encounter life, and in quantity, in the
corridors approaching the Barracks. The Civvies are packed in—and
appear to be intact—like they’ve all gathered in a hurry. They’ve
filled the corridors so tightly that I can barely pass through to
the Barracks. They all turn to me when they see me coming, make the
best path for me that they can. Their eyes beseech me, but they
don’t tell me what’s wrong.

I let myself through an unlocked hatch on a
mid-level, and find the dome also filled with Civvies. It looks
like a colony meeting. They all go quiet and look at me as I come
in. They all look desperate, terrified, and unsure if they should
really be glad I’ve come.

“Tell me what’s happened,” I demand impatiently when
they don’t brief me promptly.

They make room for a middle-aged women to approach me
on the catwalk. She’s been crying. She falls to her knees before
me. I start to shake my head, to remind her not to kneel to me, but
she starts sobbing. Another woman steps forward and speaks for
her:

“They killed her husband… They took… We sent a small
group out to get food this morning… They didn’t come back. Then we
saw the body…”

I nod to let them know I’ve seen it.

Of course Peter’s immediate urge is to go after the
Keepers, search them out, and just start killing them as we find
them, but I know they’ll be hiding, dug in deep. I could go get
Straker and make her tell me where they are, if she even really
knows, if they haven’t relocated since… It would take too long, and
I still don’t know how to call her from long-range. Maybe the
Ghaddar does. But if I even take the time to go back to the
ship…

I look to the hatches, expecting her to come in,
having followed me again. Certainly she would have heard the alarm
back at the ship. Of all the times for her to not to be following
me around like a worried parent…

I’m on my own. As far as Peter’s concerned, that’s
just fine.

Then I remember a tactic of my father’s.

“I need volunteers,” I tell them. “Just a few. It
will be dangerous, but I will try my best to protect you. And I
will
find out what they’ve done with your people. This I
promise.”

It takes a frustratingly long time to get five of
them to stand up and come forward. The grieving widow is one of
them.

I make a show of going out to cut down the body.
Small consolation: the mutilating wounds all appear to be
post-mortem. The man was executed by having his throat cut. I
visibly brood over him for several minutes, scanning the green.

A better consolation: I see no sign of other bodies,
or even blood-trails. So the Keepers may have taken them alive,
having need of their slaves.

I draw my blade and march straight off toward the
terminus of the canyon.

An hour later, my volunteers come out, brandishing
pathetic homemade weapons. (I made them myself.) They take
possession of the body, carry it back to the tunnels, with some of
them nervously covering their retreat. Then they come back out and
cautiously enter the forest, and begin to hastily gather, as if
they need the fruits and nuts desperately enough to risk their
lives again so soon. They don’t stray far from the nearest hatch,
afraid to go too far into the green, not even to look for their
missing family and friends.

But they go far enough. Within fifteen minutes, a
fire team of Keepers efficiently surrounds them, having crept up on
them. I expect the colony is being watched from a nest on high
ground that I haven’t found yet. I wonder what their spotter has
made of my own disappearing act, though I may have been out of his
sight when my armor did its camouflage trick. (They may not know I
can do that, since they’d only ever saw their Reaper at night, and
Peter usually wanted to be seen.) All I’ve heard on their channels
are the briefest chirps and stutters—they’ve figured out I can
listen in, so they’re being careful. Peter tells me it’s an old
Earth code, and our Mods translate readily, though what their
sending each other are only a few random numbers and letters, which
probably have preset meanings. A code within a code. Smart.

Too bad they don’t know about my camouflage.

I manage to get right up behind two of them as
they’re disarming and binding their prisoners, threatening to kill
any who remotely resist. Then I intentionally step on some dry
deadfall. They turn in time to see me “de-cloak”, my armor shifting
back to black from the high-resolution optical pattern it had been
projecting. My Nagamaki takes both their heads in one sweep before
they can fire.

I dash forward and run a third man through and use my
sword up under his ribs to lift him up off the ground as he shoots
me with his PDW. A quick jerk rips the blade out through his liver,
nearly bisecting him. I make the mess intentionally, for shock
value. The remaining two Keepers back up, back away from their
prisoners, turning their weapons on me.

They seem to move so slowly in my distorted
perception. I have plenty of time to shift my sword to my left
hand, draw my revolver, and fire. I shoot one in the gun-hand, and
the other in the knee and elbow. Then I feel the incoming sniper
round, spin and cut it out of the air. Their marksman having given
away his position, I make my calculations and send a .454 back his
way. I get no further incoming rounds, hear no further code
chatter.

I turn my attention back to the wounded Keepers. I’m
about to make my threats, when one of the Civvies surprises me by
picking up a length of rebar I’d given him to use as a club, and
smashes the hand-shot Keeper across the face, sending him
sprawling. Inside my head, Peter can’t help but laugh. I holster my
firearm.

The other Keeper reaches for a grenade, and I stick
my sword tip through the back of his gloved hand, pinning it to his
jacket. I shake my helmeted head at him, then turn to the other,
who’s still on his back, stunned. His face is bloodied, and he’s
missing front teeth. The Civvy raises his club to finish the job,
and I reach my left hand out as if I can grab him even though he’s
just out of my reach. Then I surprise myself when the rebar baton
flies out of his grip and into mine. Apparently I can generate a
powerful short-range magnetic field—I remember Peter using it to
“call” the Nagamaki to his hand after he’d set it down, but it’s
not just my own sword I can so summon.

The Civvy stares at me with wide eyes and open mouth,
then they all drop to their knees. At least they don’t bow down
this time. I hand the man back his bloodied club. His hands shake
as he takes it.

I bend down, grab the twice-shot and once-stabbed
Keeper by the throat, pick him up, and let the other one watch me
start to drain him. I have mercy halfway through the process, and
snap his neck with a quick shake as he thrashes and fades in my
grip. He’s dead and nearly skin-over-bones before I realize this is
the first time I’ve consumed a living person, so taken by my rage
that I barely stopped to think… It sickens me through, worse
because of how easy it comes to me, but I tell myself need to make
the example (and I
can
use the resources). The body looks
like it’s been mummifying for weeks when I finally drop it. I can
hear it crack, dry, when it hits the rocks. And I feel so
strong
, so much more than what I was, so much more than
human…

No. I have to get control back. I have to. But it
isn’t Peter I’m fighting. Peter is just sitting silent, watching my
terrible conflict from some corner of my mind, like he needs me to
cross this line on my own.

I want to scream. I want to run away. But there’s too
much at stake for too many. I make myself continue. Play my role.
Be the Onryō.

I pick hand-shot face-smashed up the same way, and
let him feel my nanites weave their scavenger micro-tubes into his
throat. But then I drop him. And tell him:

“Tell your people: This place is under my protection.
You will return those you have taken and never come back here. If
you try to defy me, you will pay far more than you have today. Now
go. Deliver my message.”

He tries his link gear and finds I’ve disabled it. I
point my blade up-canyon, gesturing for him to deliver my message
in person. He finds his legs and runs off, which is what I wanted
him to do.

I give him a good head start before I follow. Sinking
my resource-scavenging nanites into him (with a modicum of
self-control this time) gave me the opportunity to leave a tracker.
He’s smart enough to take a circuitous route, but still heads back
to his people, too scared to delay delivering my message. Too bad
for him it’s not the message he thinks it is. Too bad for them
all.

I move up slow, up into the rocks near the terminus
of the canyon, about two klicks west on the colony. They moved so
many people and gear they couldn’t avoid leaving tracks, but I’m
frustrated to see that they’ve fanned out, split up. They probably
have multiple bunkers dug into the divide slope. But unless they
have a good source of oxygen and heat, they won’t go too far up, so
I won’t have to do much climbing. I’ll just make an example of the
first group I find, leave enough alive to either run for their
fellows or send out an alarm call that I can trace, work my way
from…

I hear the sound of gravel grinding under heavy
boots, just up in front of me, but I don’t see anything. And then I
do: The air ripples, and the long blade of a sword—a katana—appears
as if it’s been unsheathed out of nothing. It drops to the side of
the shimmering mirage, ready but not threatening. I’m suspecting
the Ghaddar, somehow blocking my ability to sense her cloak’s EM
bleed. But then the air turns black: black armor, black robes,
capped by a long-snouted skull with a pair of long coiling horns
made of polished metal. The horns move, coil and uncoil. Through
the snout, I hear a long, deep sigh of a breath.