The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (28 page)

He’s in my way.

“Colonel Ram,” I greet through my own mask, dropping
my own camouflage. He doesn’t react to the sight of me, like he
could see me all along.

He’s in my way.

“Ishmael,” the fanciful animal skull greets back,
sounding like he’s just been given deeply bad news.

“Drake,” I correct him impulsively. “My name is
Jonathan Drake. And you’re in my way. Colonel.”

I expect him to raise his sword, to challenge me, to
defend the helpless, to play the hero regardless of whether my prey
deserves him or not. But he just steps aside, gesturing me to pass
with his blade.

“You know what I’m going to do?” I ask, confused.

“It’s never enough,” he says absently. It takes me a
moment to realize what he means. Then I know exactly what he means.
But

“They just killed a man and left his mutilated body
displayed for his family to see.” I’m not sure if Peter is
defending our intentions or I am, but I’m not surprised that it
feels like me. “They took others as slaves.”

“I saw,” he says evenly. “I saw you make them pay in
blood and fear. I’m sure I would have done the same. But it isn’t
satisfying for very long, is it?”

My silence is my answer.

“The limitations we had when we were mortal were the
only thing that curbed that hunger,” he continues. “Without those
limitations, our rage can feed and feed, as long as there’s
something left to kill.”

I know exactly what he means. But

“We have enemies on multiple fronts, enemies that
would slaughter innocents.” My rage becomes reason, or at least a
kind of reason he might understand. “We don’t have the luxury of
mercy, not even like this.”

The horned skull nods.

“If you hold your blade now, anyone they kill in the
future is on your conscience.” He does understand. Exactly. But
then

“Why are you here?” I ask a practical question,
probably already knowing his impractical reason. “Shouldn’t you be
defending the Pax or Katar? Or hunting Asmodeus?”

“Or Thelonious Harris?” he takes my thought. Then he
lets me know: “He tried to attack White Station, probably looking
to acquire more ETE tools. He didn’t realize the ETE had hardened
their networks against Companion tech, and his Companion isn’t as
strong as the others. The Carter brothers sent him on his way,
discouraged and with a few new scars.”

“But he still lives,” I hiss on Peter’s behalf.
“Because they let him live, he’ll keep trying. Or he’ll try to
enslave some other group of people. He’ll torture and kill and
terrorize whoever he meets. So will the Eureka Keepers.”

“I know.”

“So have you come to help me kill them, or do you
have some other solution?”

Smoothly and gracefully, he sheathes his blade. He
takes off his helmet, and it collapses into a flat slab of metal
that slips into his robes. His long dark hair is tied back, pulled
back from his pale, angular (and unnaturally youthful) features.
His dark metallic eyes look weary, frustrated, defeated—not unlike
my father’s at the end of our bloody journey.

“I’m sorry this had to happen to you,” he says
pointlessly.

“It was fate,” I tell him what I’ve decided over the
last several days, accepted. “In my search for the origin of my
birth parents, I would have eventually found the ship, would have
been infected by the ghost within. It was waiting for me, and I was
looking for it. Fate.”

“But fate in this case could be the plan of a
machine.” He also blames this on Yod, all of it.

“Still fate,” I also accept, but not without
bitterness. “Unless you’ve figured out a way to defy that
plan?”

I hear the crushed sigh again, and he shakes his head
ever-so-slightly.

I look upslope, wonder if the Keepers are watching
us: two monsters deciding their fate. Assuming the decision is
ours.

“So is it Yod’s plan that I kill the Keepers?” I have
to ask. And in asking, my rage goes wrong, loses focus. I’m just an
instrument. A playing piece on a game board. My rage lets Yod move
me as he desires.

Did Yod make those animals kill my family? Kill you?
Torture your friends? Butcher that man back there?

“Don’t assume Yod can’t control flesh and blood,” Ram
cautions, apparently hearing Peter.

“So do we let the animals do as they please, just
because it might be part of that machine’s grand plan?” Peter
argues through me. Then I reassert control. “You knew this thing,
this AI. Would it make men kill against their will? Or does it just
choose to let them? And then expect us to stop them?”

He thinks on that for a few moments, shakes his head
again.

“You’re right. We’re spread too thin, whether that
was Yod’s intent or if the random chance that he loves so much got
the better of his plans.”

“So either he’s making it happen or he’s letting it
happen,” I distil. “Is this another one of his experiments? Will we
slaughter weaker beings for the greater good? Or will we try to
prove we’re somehow better than that, even if it costs innocent
lives?”

He turns and looks upslope with me. I can almost feel
his own internal conflict, spinning losing options against each
other. I try to listen in on his thoughts, but have no idea how.
Either that, or he’s blocking me. Apparently all the other Modded
are
better at this than I am.

Eventually, I see the corner of his mouth twist into
a grin.

“We may have another solution.”

It’s easy enough to re-acquire the Keeper I’m
tracking. He has indeed rushed back to his fellows to report. I
hear their link channels come alive with more code. It sounds like
they’re smart enough to expect me to be following. I don’t bother
to jam their signals, so maybe they’ll believe I didn’t pursue, if
just for a few moments longer.

Ram finds a path around and above their sniper
sentries. We move slowly to avoid making noise—this also keeps our
optical camouflage from shimmering as it projects what’s on the
opposite side of us.

When we find their tunnels, they’ve done a good job
of hiding their hatches in the slope-fall rocks. They’ve also done
a good job of hiding explosives designed to intercept unwanted
visitors, specifically me. Thankfully, Ram is skilled at finding
both. Disabling the trigger devices for the traps is simple enough,
but then Ram carefully takes a few of the charges and puts them
inside his robes.

As we can’t crack their hatches without alerting the
guards we hear just inside, we wait in our functionally invisible
state until a shift of sentries comes out for relief. This turns
out to be a five hour exercise in patience, something else I seem
to be better at than Peter, who’s eager to just get to hacking and
shooting.

When a pair of snipers in Unmaker Heavy Armor pop the
hatch, Ram is able to drop down on them before they can close it
behind them, and then drops them both with a touch that pumps a
burst of current into their bulky suits. He then twists their
rifles into uselessness. (I wince at this waste of valuable
weaponry, but then remember I have little use for such things
anymore.) This lets us into the airlock space, which is barely big
enough for the two of us. Ram then transmits a signal on their link
channels that’s a garbled mix of their prior transmissions, choppy
to make it sound like an equipment malfunction. When we cycle the
lock and pop the inner hatch, the guards inside are barely
suspicious, and then confused when the lock appears to be empty at
first glance.

The air ripples as Ram charges into the three
sentries stationed just inside the cut stone tunnel. He makes quick
work of them as well, but again only to render them unconscious and
destroy their weapons. I feel Peter bristle at this mercy, but
looking down at the unconscious faces, I see teens years younger
than I am. Was.

Ram spares one of their ICWs and appears to meditate
over it.

“Dee, I need a hack,” I hear him talk to no one. I’m
slow to realize he’s not speaking. He’s transmitting, in my head.
His reply is a burst of dense code. That code then goes out over
the Keeper’s link channels.

“Just like old times…” I hear him mutter inside his
helmet with his actual voice. Then the metal skull turns to me.
“The Filipino Escrimadors call it ‘defanging the snake,’” he
explains. Peter flashes memories in my head of things I barely
remember from my lessons: Earth creatures. Bizarre tubes of muscle
that undulate and coil and spring at eye-blink speed, attacking
with pairs of long needle-like teeth set in gaping jaws. These
‘fangs’ carry deadly poison, making the ‘snake’ a fearsome
opponent. Removing these teeth, I suppose, would reduce the
creature to no more than a fascinating curiosity. (The creatures
are
oddly beautiful.)

“We take away their weapons,” I follow.

“The line troops and sentry snipers have only been
issued their original pre-Bang UNMAC smart weapons,” Ram explains.
“I expect it’s all they’ve been trained on, in order to conserve
what ammo they have for this long, so I doubt many of them could
shoot straight without the computerized targeting systems.”

I remember my own marksmanship training, how every
bullet was a precious treasure, so I did much more aiming than
shooting, and every poor shot was a personal shame.

“Other than side arms, only the officers and vet
instructors have weapons with free manual triggers,” Ram continues.
“They thought they were being smart enough by isolating their wired
guns from the UNMAC AI, but with the right set of codes, Dee’s just
locked their weapons using the old protocols that keep enemies from
using your weapons against you. The triggers are hard locked, and
so are the actions. They can’t even disassemble the weapons to
disable the locks without breaking key parts, which would need to
be re-machined from scratch.”

I remember he explained something like this to my
people when he provided us Unmaker guns during his time as Melas
Two Commander. His gunsmiths had already removed the offending
hardware, but left us the “smart sights” that would only fire when
the target was assured—a feature that quickly spoiled even our most
experienced marksmen. Now I wonder if he suspected how bad things
would go when Earth returned, and made sure we wouldn’t find
ourselves disarmed. (I wonder if his own people knew what he was
preparing for.)

“That’s just killed seventy or eighty percent of
their arsenal,” he estimates.

“If you leave them too helpless, they’ll be Harvester
fodder,” I hear Azrael—Dee—caution in my head. I find it’s good to
hear his voice. And I find his being pure machine disturbs me much
less in my current condition.

“Firearms and grenades aren’t terribly effective
against Harvesters anyway,” Ram repeats Straker’s earlier
assessment. I remember they’ve had practical experience fighting
the things since, and learned some hard lessons. “Besides, we’re
just putting on a child lock. If there’s honest need, and they
agree to play well with others, maybe we’ll let them have their
toys back. Conditionally.”

“What about their non-networked weapons?” I want to
know, Peter still hoping for a proper fight.

“Those we’ll have to take away a little more
personally,” he lets me know there will indeed be some violence
involved. “Your father can certainly use whatever old-school
weapons and ammo we can confiscate to help defend Katar.”

“And if they have hidden caches?” I worry.

The fanciful skull looks up at me. The lenses in the
eye sockets glow red. The horns writhe like they’re alive.

“Then we’ll have to convince them that there will be
consequences if they try to break the deal we’re about to make
them.”

Before we can move, a pair of Keepers walks up on us.
They can’t really see me, because I’ve still got my camo running,
but they do see the black-armored monster with the horned skull for
a head crouching over their friends on the tunnel floor. They raise
their ICWs and try to fire, but as promised, their weapons won’t
cooperate. Neither will their links to call for help. The time it
takes for them to decide to drop their primary weapons and reach
for their side arms lets Ram walk up on them leisurely, snatching
their weapons from their hands as they draw them, then stripping
them of their grenades before they try something suicidal. He does
look like he’s dealing with ill-behaved children. One of the
Keepers ridiculously draws a knife, visibly shaking as Ram gives no
ground, barely reacting. I decide to reveal myself as well. The
Keepers see me and fall over each other trying to flee in the tight
space. Ram glides after them and stuns them with a touch.

“This may take awhile,” he seems to feel the need to
apologize to me.

“I have nothing better to do today,” I tell him.

The tunnel network looks uniformly cut, probably by
the same mining machines that cut the colony tunnels. The rock is
aged enough to tell me the work is probably decades old. If it
predates the coming of the Katar, I wonder what enemy they felt
they needed a fall-back against. Earth, possibly. The tunnels look
like they go deep into the slope rock, maybe deep enough to survive
another Apocalypse. (Would they have left their Civvies outside to
burn if the bombs fell again?)

We divide to cover the complex faster, Ram apparently
trusting me to stick to his plan and not massacre. With their
channels full of falsified routine coded chatter (I assume thanks
to Dee), we move unannounced from section to section, using our
camouflage to get close to the Keepers we find, then use the delay
of their weapons lockup to rush in and stun them.

I have to hold back Peter’s urges to inflict more
injury than is needed. This is most challenging when we encounter
officers with manual weapons (conveniently highlighted in my visual
graphics by their lack of interface signal). I quickly decide the
best strategy is to take them out first, before they can fire,
while their underlings are struggling with their locked guns. I
think I manage to break one jaw, a few arms and several ribs before
I get control over my baser urges.