The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (45 page)

“Harris killed him,” I feel the need to say, then
close: “Harris is taken care of.”

Straker shows them her second Blade as proof, but
doesn’t describe how he died, how I killed him. I look down at my
gloved hands. All the blood and gore is gone. Like the rest of me,
they look brand-new, and clean except for the traces of ash.

“So why did Yod damp the radiation and the EMP when
he just could have defused the bomb?” Azazel wonders as we search
the blasted terrain. The distant perimeter of the crater is a
barrier of broken, charred and felled forest.

“He didn’t decide to do
shit
until Peter
begged him,” I grumble. “Begged him to do just one good thing.”

“Save you,” Bel concludes, sounding like he
appreciates the act, however minimal it was.

“Doesn’t explain the lack of EMP,” Ram argues.
“Unless he’d planned to intervene all along.”

“Then why allow the fucking thing to go off at all?”
Straker rewords Azazel’s prior question.

No one answers that, but I’m sure we’re thinking
variations of the same damn thing: Another test of our character,
our use of free will. Another fucking experiment.

Maybe there
was
an EMP. And a radiation blast.
Maybe Yod just erased all our memories of it when he undid the
damage.

“In any case, it’s going to be hard to explain,”
Azazel processes something likely to cause trouble down the road,
looking skyward. “Earth Command certainly would have seen it, would
have registered the blast. This doesn’t look like the work of any
conventional bomb.”

“They’re going to want to know what kind of scary
weapons we monsters have down here,” Lux rephrases.

“Thermobaric,” Ram offers absently, as if he’s
rehearsing the lies he’ll tell later.

“There!” Erickson find first: An armored leg sticking
out of the rubble.

The Seed-Immortals go about digging him out with
their hands, quickly but carefully. When they get to his head, it’s
still missing most of the brain-case, but I can see where his
nanites have been trying to weave a new skull, start rebuilding a
brainstem.

“Fuck…” Lux sighs at the damage. Then adds lightly:
“Head.”

Ram, not in the mood to be amused, brings his boot
down on the nanites’ work. I chuckle involuntarily when I hear the
squish.

“Can you contain him?” Erickson asks with practical
urgency.

“I’ve been working on something,” Bel tries to
reassure, but he sounds like he’s eager to try out whatever he’s
put together.

“Is it really him?” I doubt. “Or just another
double?”

Bel considers that. He puts his hand on Fohat’s chest
plate. I see the body jerk, just once, just a little. When he
withdraws his hand, he’s got a slight smile of satisfaction on his
face.

“It’s definitely him.”

I remember overhearing Bel saying that he’d worked
with Chang and Fohat in the erased future, as kind of a spy for
Yod, just like Astarte supposedly did. (But why would Yod need two
spies? Why would Yod need spies at all?) Of course, all those
memories are suspect, just like everything the Seed-Immortals think
they know.

“Any idea where the
real
Asmodeus went?” I
have to ask.

“He must have another base somewhere,” Ram gives the
obvious answer, but I can tell he doesn’t think it’s that
simple.

“He didn’t care,” Straker tells us. “About losing his
ship. Or Fohat. All he seemed to want to do was kill, use his
Harvesters to make more and sweep over the whole region, kill
everyone.”

“That makes no sense,” Erickson grasps at reason.
“What does he
gain
? What good is territory without a people
to occupy it?”

“And if he kills most of the people here, UNMAC will
drop nukes on him,” Straker takes it further. “Their only reason
not to will be gone. And what does he gain from
that
?”

“He gets Earth to destroy everything good here,” I
hear Dee’s voice coming from behind us. I see him walking briskly
from the direction of the tunnel, kicking up ash and dust as he
goes. “He gives them their wish, and then leaves them to live with
it.”

Ram looks like he agrees with the AI’s assessment,
however dark.

“The evacuees are back home,” Dee reports more
positively. “They’re assessing their casualties now, checking to
see if anyone was hit with a Harvester injector. Funny, though: The
orbital railgun blew through the second Stormcloud’s reactors,
which were already leaking hot coolant. But Orbit is picking up
only minimal radiation bleed from the wreckage, like the fuel cores
were all depleted. Environmental contamination is restricted to the
crash site.”

Yod. We all think it, but nobody says it, like we
don’t want to acknowledge it out loud.

We carry the semi-headless body of Fohat to the
Siren’s Song. Bel and Azazel take it to the rear compartment, where
I catch a glimpse of them loading the still-twitching armor suit
into what looks like a modified Hiber-Sleep tube and seal it.

Terina we carry with much greater reverence. Bel
covers her wounds with wrapping and places her in one of the
original crew flight beds in the midsection, her Companion still
lying on top of her. He hooks her up to a nutrient feed system he’s
designed, so that at least her body can heal.

Then we lift off from the blast zone, and on the
cockpit’s screens I get to see the devastation from above. A rough
circle has been scoured from the northern slope of the spine out
into the green valley as if something had taken a bite out of it
the same way the caterpillars cut pieces out of leaves. The
shockwave has flattened and broken the forest even further beyond,
like a giant round foot had stepped on the world.

But the higher we get, the less significant it looks.
Just one scar pitting a still-green corner of this planet. And
maybe that was Yod’s point: Something to remind us what we have to
lose, if any side in this struggle for Mars should go too far.

The only problem: Asmodeus will go too far just for
the sake of going, for his own amusement. And maybe that’s Yod’s
point as well: Asmodeus is a shadow of the worst of that world that
Yod undid. So let everyone imagine Earth’s entire population made
up of monsters just like that, and never go that way again. He’s a
warning that can’t be ignored.

We take the straightest route, flying up over the
northern crest and into the Katar Canyon. The blast has left the
Trident masked in haze again, but as the morning winds send it
westward, I can see a column of smoke rising from beyond the peak
of the lone mountain to the east where we found Terina battling
Harris. Maybe they thought the mountain would provide some
shielding for Katar against the radiation from the ship’s reactors,
though Yod, in his occasional mercy, seems to have resolved that
worry.

When we finally can see over the City itself, it has
one significant scar of its own: Where the Oculus and the Great
Plaza once dominated the colony, there is now a crater perhaps
fifty meters in diameter and perhaps ten deep. If the Kings and
their entourages had remained in their War Room, they would have
been wiped out all at once.

Otherwise, the rest of the City looks relatively
intact, though its camouflage has been defeated by a masking of
dust, revealing its true lines to the sky, likely for the first
time. As we get closer, I can see scarring on the Wall and up on
the slopes over the City from turret and Disc fire, but otherwise
there’s no major damage. What I can’t see is the human toll, not
yet. What I initially think are fallen warriors on the Wall turn
out to be their stick-decoys. If there were any flesh-and-blood
casualties, they’ve already been moved.

We come in to land within the City, on the plain
inside the Wall. Now I can see bodies laid out. They’ve been set
neatly side-by-side, and covered by blankets. I count twenty-three.
Tents have been set up in another area, it looks like to triage the
wounded.

But the most shocking sight, at least a first look,
are the dozens of bots arrayed like guardians protecting those dead
and wounded, their guns pointed outward beyond the Wall as if
expecting further attack. I can even see the familiar saucers of
Disc drones parked on the field. I’d never seen one sitting still,
landed like that. I’ve only seen them in flight and firing, or
ready in their launch-racks to do so. They seem almost serene like
this, lift fans whirring alternately at low-power, not unlike a
bored man fidgeting on sentry duty. I look to Dee, but can’t read
his expression. He seems… elsewhere.

From within the City itself, I see people moving,
coming out to see the dead and wounded, and some running to embrace
the warriors who came through this unscathed. Among their number, I
recognize several of my own people, especially the Ghaddar, looking
up at us as we descend. Paul Stilson and Elias stand with her. I
don’t see Bly.

Our jets blow a section of the plain clean as we
land, almost like a ceremonial first act of making repairs. I
remember Ram promised that, that we would help them rebuild
whatever was destroyed, at least in terms of stone and clay. I hope
we have the luxury of the time to do so, before Asmodeus makes
whatever next move he surely has already planned.

Our debarking is met by a roar of cheering from the
Katar, filling the canyon. Not one of us, not even Lux, stops to
bask in it. I doubt any of us feel like we’ve actually won
anything, only forestalled more tragic losses.

Ram leads our group to meet the Ghaddar and the
others. Elias embraces his brother, but Erickson seems in no mood
for comfort or celebration. Ram clasps forearms with the Ghaddar
like formal allies do, even though they were certainly much more
than that once. But then I see grief in the Ghaddar’s dark eyes
above her demon-mask. She looks at me, locks my eyes. I’ve never
seen her cry bef…

Over by the neat rows of covered dead, I see Rashid,
standing sentinel, along with Hosni and Abdel.

I go there directly, quickly. I realize my mask is
still hanging down around my neck, and, according to those that
have seen me since whatever Yod did to me (to Peter), my face is
recognizably mine again. I consider covering it, but instead I pull
my helmet off entirely, even though I’m sure it’s too late to
matter.

Rashid is the first to see me, to recognize me. He
gapes like he’s indeed seeing a ghost. I lock eyes and nod to him,
and he rushes forward to embrace me. I’m sure he has obvious
questions, but he can’t speak—all he can do is sob. All I can do is
embrace him with my cold armored suit.

The others—my former brothers—involuntarily back away
from the sight of me, back from the dead as I am and no longer what
I was. I open my arms to them, tell them softly that I am me, and
they find the courage to embrace me as well.

Rashid looks at me with his tear-flooded eyes and
then looks down at one of the covered bodies. I fall to my knees. I
know who it will be without looking. I sit there for a long time,
just staring at the shape under the blanket, thinking of all the
things I want to say, wanted to say, didn’t say when I should have
because I was a coward.

My gloved and armored hands are shaking when I
finally pull back the blanket. Gently. Carefully.

At least they closed his eyes.

His cowl is gone and there’s a bullet wound in his
forehead. It was quick. Sudden. At least they cleaned up the blood.
Closed his eyes. He looks like he’s sleeping, but he’s far too
still. And something vitally important is missing.
He
is
missing. I’m looking at an empty shell.

I barely realize that Ram and the others are standing
behind me. Ram kneels by my side. He reverently touches my father’s
face. I see his hand tremble like mine. My father called him
brother. Even when he became what he is now. What I am now.

He puts his gloved hand on my armored shoulder. We
are two beings of steel, unable to comfort each other, no matter
how profound our loss.

My tears fall on stones.

I hear screaming, wailing. I turn to see my mother
Sarai running to us from across the field. I shift to make room for
her, for her grief. She falls on her husband, embraces his body,
sobs into his robes. I reach out to comfort, but can’t bring myself
to touch her, not like this.

When she finally sits up, to look into her husband’s
face, she’s lost in it. She can’t see anything else.

“Sarai…” Rashid whispers to her, and manages to catch
her eye. He gestures to me. I’m not sure if I should feel angry or
grateful. She turns slowly, hesitantly, and I watch her eyes widen
as she tries to make sense of what she sees. I make myself smile at
her through my own pain. I let her see me.

She throws herself on me, throws her arms around my
armored collar, and holds me for dear life. She kisses my cheek,
kisses my tears, puts her hands around my head—the only part of me
that feels human—and presses her face against mine. I can feel her
tears pouring through the space between us.

I hold her like that for a long time.

The rest of our people gather, and sit with us in
mourning. For our Sharif and Imam. For our father.

The funerals lasted for three days.

The Katar bury their dead much like we do, with care
and reverence and community ritual. But instead of a hole in the
ground, they entomb their dead in small caves dug high up in the
slopes above the City.

The climb takes them up where they begin to suffer
some hypoxia, so the ritual becomes an ordeal for the mourners,
possibly having a quality of personal sacrifice. It wasn’t unusual
to see a participant collapse and require the aid of their fellows,
which seemed no offense. Maybe putting oneself in the care of one’s
community, relying on each other physically, is a part of the
ritual.