The God Mars Book Five: Onryo (7 page)

“A fresh metamorphosis,” Negev tells us. “Life cycle.
In our honor. For good hunting.”

“I thought only the Pax bred Dragons?” my father
questions.

“We have our own hatcheries,” Negev says with
definite pride. “Just wait until you earn their meat.”

I’m thinking I can wait very well, thank you.

When they all rise from their community bow, Terina
immediately locks my eyes. And her father catches her at it,
catches me returning her gaze, and I get his disdainful glare
again. It’s not just his being protective of his daughter. He sees
us as inferior creatures, weak and ugly. I give him back the most
defiant look I can muster short of an outright challenge. I think I
actually see him smirk.

I haven’t been able to speak with Terina since we
arrived. Her reunion with her family, her people, has kept her from
us, but I expect her father has ensured it.

I try to read her eyes now. I wish I could speak with
her, alone, away from the eyes and ears of her people, away from
her role and her duty. But if I had those precious seconds, would I
even be able to speak, to ask what I need to ask? And how would I
even ask it?

I’ve had moments, before we came through their Gate
Wall, and I haven’t used them, haven’t asked what I so badly want
to. But then, she hasn’t said anything either, other than those
brief looks that she quickly acts as if never happened.

She’s not trying to pretend she’s not looking at me
now. I see her entourage, her family, trying to ignore it, looking
uncomfortable.

And now I have to leave before I know what it means,
what she feels.

So I tell myself I’m not doing this for her, or to
prove to her father that I’m worthy of something that may be my own
fantasy. I’m doing this for my people, to earn our alliance with
the Katar, and to try to protect all of us from this new
threat.

That, I tell myself, is worth dying for. (I’d just
rather it be a proper death, not having my body slowly taken from
me and used against my friends. I will blow my own head off before
that happens, and I won’t miss the thing growing inside of it.)

Formal farewell rituals apparently complete, we turn
and head into the pass through the Wall.

Besides the habitually stoic Katar warriors, I’m in
good company,
my
company: Jak Straker (taking point with
Cousteau), Ambassador Murphy, the Ghaddar, my father and Rashid.
Our numbers are limited by the number of functioning
condenser/re-breathers we have, since we’ll be traveling far from a
Feed Line. Of our number, I’m most concerned about my father.
Despite however Chang healed him, he’s still burdened by the wounds
he’s earned on this journey, and the losses. I don’t want to see
him like this, but to other eyes he must be looking old, weary. And
the way he looks back at Sarai and the others we’re leaving behind
betrays his too-human fears that he may never see them again.

It would be a better thing for him to stay, to
continue to establish our relationship with the Katar. But it’s the
Katar traditions (and their economy) that are pushing him out: The
“king” of a group must earn his Value by his own deeds, not by
proxy of his followers. And in turn, his Value is passed down to
his people. (Otherwise, each of us would have to earn our Value
individually. Or we would need a new Sharif, which none of us
want.)

We wind our way down through the zigzag gap, moving
in a column single-file since the vertically-walled pass won’t
accommodate two bodies abreast in armor and carrying gear. Now that
I’ve got a second up-close look at it in better light, the Wall
doesn’t look constructed at all, but rather rough-cut from the
natural rock, all the way through.

“Bannerman Negev,” my father calls as we’re passing
through, “the Pax told us that the Eternals helped them build their
Hold Keep. Did they help you build your Wall?”

Negev smirks. “They did. Not so much ‘built’ as dug
out, the plains lowered on either side. Perhaps they thought making
us a defense would help keep the new peace. The rest of Katar we
built without help, using construction equipment we brought from
Gagarin and Concordia, for as long as it would keep running.”

There’s pride in that statement, and maybe subtle
insult to the Pax, since the ETE gave them not only a wall, but
helped dig their Keep into their mountain.

We emerge into the morning winds, onto the outer
field with the Wall towering behind us, the warriors lining it now
facing outwards to watch us go. I see Khan and Terina join them in
their farewell vigil.

They all stay as they are until we disappear into the
tall, thick green at the mouth of the canyon. After that, we can’t
see much of anything past a very few meters in any direction.

The Katar have no trouble at all with the lack of
visibility, moving with purpose, probably having traveled this
environment since they were old enough for their culture to allow.
I remember them mentioning hunting and gathering parties, made up
of any able-bodied citizens, but always escorted by their warriors.
I also remember the incredible grace and stealth of the Pax as they
moved through their own part of this dense living world, and the
Katar appear to be just as skilled. Even wearing more armor than
the Pax and carrying longer weapons (their bows are over two meters
long, almost as long as their Naginata), they weave like the forest
is only smoke to them, no physical barrier at all. It behooves us
to follow in their footsteps, and mimic their movements as best as
possible. But I can see perhaps one reason why Khan has such a low
opinion of us: Compared to them, we are squat and bulky and not
meant to move stealthily through thick intertwined growth. In this,
I expect their disdain is practical: Our clumsiness out here could
get them killed.

Their most unwieldy burden are the tools they’ve
brought to try to take the animated dead intact for study. Negev
took a moment to make sure we were familiar with their use before
we left. Both types of tools are on shafts three meters long. The
Sodegarami is the most sadistic looking: Its head is a wicked
arrangement of forks and hooks, all barbed. Negev called it a
“sleeve catcher”, designed to grab a potential prisoner by the
clothing or armor without seriously hurting him, though I doubt
anyone it was used on would come out un-bloodied. The Sasumata
isn’t much more merciful: it’s capped with a large U-shaped fork,
blunt-edged but sharp-tipped, and—as Negev showed us with a willing
volunteer so we would know how to use one—just the right size for
catching a neck or a limb between the prongs and holding on by
applying the right twist. Any combination of two should be
sufficient to hold and guide an enemy while keeping him well out of
reach.

“Did all of this come from the west?” my father asks
Negev about the incredibly dense and healthy plant life. “Or did
your Founders have engineered plants from the old labs as
well?”

I see this question get Murphy’s attention as well,
as all the plant life we saw in western Coprates was supposedly
spread from his home gardens. But then we passed the Badlands,
which were nearly barren, before descending into the lush growth of
the Pax Lands. Since then, the valley floors have been nearly as
thickly overgrown as the Tranquility Garden, and without the
benefit of careful tending.

“Some and some,” he answers vaguely at first. “The
Founders had been gifted samples grown at Tranquility, which they
carried here in the Crossing. The Pax also had such gifts. But most
of this was seeded by the Eternals.”

“How long has it been like this?” I dare ask, all
wonder. This gets a quick chuckle out of Negev.

“When I was a boy, there were only small groves. The
rest was barely above my knees. Sparse. You could see more rock
than green. I remember when we had to change our patterns, when the
Pax Hunters began to wear all green.” He reaches out a hand and
caresses a branch of Graingrass as he passes—the plant, if I can
tell it apart from those it’s grown together with, is over five
meters high. “These plants are hearty, stronger than flesh,
stronger than us. They grow fast, and need little. If it wasn’t for
the insatiable hunger of the Cats and Butters, we would probably
not be able to move through them at all. But then, the Cats and
Butters feed them in turn, as do the Dragons, the Worms, the
Beetles. And us, for our small part.”

“’Cats’?” Murphy wonders for all of us. This gets
another chuckle out of Negev.

“The Butter’s larval form. You will see.”

The growth has managed to become even more
foreboding.

Behind us, the Spine Range is already barely visible
through the foliage. We turned south as soon as we passed the end
of the Katar Canyon’s southern wall, which is also the farthest
eastern tip of the Spine. But now, from what I can see of the
position of the sun, it looks like we’re moving southwest.

Used to getting lost in this place, I’ve programmed
my flashcard with a pedometer program that Murphy had, allowing me
to roughly measure our progress. I also took the time to draw some
notes on my maps, based on the maps that the Katar with us studied
during their briefing.

We seem to be heading slightly but steadily downhill,
and I think I can see rises on either side of us. This would put us
in a narrow ravine that diagonally crosses the “base” of the
Central Blade, pointing us directly toward the South Blade.

On my maps, the two Blades start as one valley where
we are, but soon branch, divided by the way they cut into the
Planum-elevation Catena Rim. The Central Blade is larger, much
wider, and stretches roughly west. The South Blade runs at an angle
southwest, eventually becoming a narrow canyon cutting ten klicks
into the Rim. And about five klicks deep inside that steep-walled
gash of a canyon is where Eureka Colony should be.

During the debrief, Cousteau indicated the point that
her party encountered the infected Keeper. It was very close to the
end of the ridge that separates the Central and South Blades. He
wasn’t coming from the lost colony. He was coming from the
north-northwest, out of the Central Blade. If I’m reading his
course right, he may have been walking home. And coming from the
general direction of Lucifer’s Grave, Asmodeus’ hidden base.

With the Katar as our guides, we cross in hours what
had taken days on our way to their colony. Of course, we’re moving
with more urgent purpose, and not with wounded and heavy gear.

After about a dozen klicks and a climb over a
north-south running rise, we turn west, following another low
ridgeline. On my map it looks like it was formed by whatever
seismic or freeze-thaw erosion that cut the South Blade, like this
is where a lot of what came down out of the Blade settled.

After another five klicks, the valley opens up again.
The hike here has been a steady incline that’s taken us—according
to old satellite relief mapping—up about a thousand meters from the
deepest parts of the Central Blade. The atmosphere density has
dropped a few percent on my gauges, but the Katar don’t seem to be
bothered by it.

We’re now at the westernmost joining point of the
bellies of the Central and South Blades. Three more klicks
southwest is the range that forms the tail end of the South Blade’s
northern rim. Around that point, and we’re inside the South Blade
proper.

But here we stop. Because here is where Cousteau’s
party crossed paths with the infected Keeper.

The Katar fan out, fading into the green, which is a
little thinner here than it was in the deeper valley closer to
Katar. They look like they’re forming a perimeter, hunkering out of
sight. The Ghaddar joins them.

I still haven’t seen a “Cat” or anything else Negev
so blithely mentioned, but I can’t help but get distracted trying
to find one in the growth. The most I have seen are odd patterns in
the exposed soil, like someone had drawn random curling lines by
dragging a metal pipe. And some of the broader leaves have oddly
neat circular cuts in them. Negev only smiles at my curiosity, and
leaves me to stew in my ignorance.

Straker draws her Blade and does her meditative
gesture, this time looking like she’s listening. After a few
minutes, she lowers her sword, looks confused.

“I’m not picking up anything. Not even Bot signals.
There’s nothing.”

“That is unusual,” Negev tells us, sounding
uncomfortable at what any sane person would consider good news.
“We’ve been encountering the machines across this gap every day
since just after the Black Clothes came to the Grave. They protect
it.”

“Maybe Colonel Ram and his fellows have been
depleting their numbers, drawing them north,” Rashid guesses.

“Or Asmodeus has decided that his Harvesters are a
more economic weapon,” Murphy counters. Then he asks Straker:
“Didn’t you say their signals were weaker than the bots?”

Straker nods, worried. “I didn’t hear the two at
Katar until I was almost on top of them. They may be out of range.
Or maybe they don’t need to transmit constantly. That would help
them avoid detection. The code I read contained simple
seek-and-attack programming as well as the motor control
algorithms. They could lie in wait, or wander until they detected
targets.”

“The free bots we met across the Lake,” I remember,
“they said they required constant command signals or their own
minds would be able to take over.”

“The Harvester victims no longer have their own
minds,” my father grumbles.

“A more economic weapon,” Negev reflects on Murphy’s
earlier assessment.

For whatever good it will do, I keep my rifle
ready.

We hold position for two hours, waiting and
listening, keeping still. My father leads Rashid and I through
afternoon
Salat
, and Negev offers us some of their rations,
which include dense grainy cakes and something salty and chewy in
pale dried strips. There is also a strong smoky taste and smell to
the latter, like the Pax’s Bar-Bee-Cue.